Given the snowball nature of the game and that the people in power typically stay in power until people quit the game from boredom, i would unironically be in favor of a challenge server relaunch and regular restart. I think the biggest crux of that would be tinkering with the mode so that it was less of a 1 week wonder and could be invested a bit more into. PvE rewards, what ever, that could be a whole other thread.
If I've seen anything in my time playing Wurm, its that the most fun and exciting period of any pvp server is the first 6 months of its existence.
I see a reply to this being that the great thing about the pvp servers as they are right now are that people are "invested" in the work they put in. However, just by a quick scan of this thread, and the Skirmish thread over the last year. I reckon most of us can agree that it has created a stagnant and toxic environment.
The amount of literal time it takes for progress to be made on PvP is atrocious. Its kind of a joke to expect any new player to ever be able to compete and the current system will never be new player friendly. The game mode will never grow. The set up for PvP as it is now, will always be in a state of attrition. It only takes getting 3 shot by the enemy kingdom's hyper active mega account a couple of times to remind you that you don't want to mine or dig tar 6 hours a day for 6 to 12 month to actually make a relevant account.
If the response to that is "that this is how the game is meant to be played and the intention is fully to make playing on it as difficult as it is" then we can stop here. But the PvP aspect of the game will never grow. And maybe fishing for Whales is the end goal of it all. No harm no foul. I just see so much more potential.
I think a merge of the PvP servers and finally getting the player base under 1 roof would be a good thing. It would definitely be "ripping off a bandaid" vibe. But I think we're kind of covered in bandaids at this point.
However, I feel like even once that is said and done, we still arrive at the same problem of player base stagnation. There will be, at most, one fresh account that ever becomes pvp relevant ever again in this game. If the main issue of the difficultly curve of having a playable character is not addressed then this will never change.
Hence, my support of the challenge server.
I dont know how we would make peoples current accounts relevant. Maybe there could be a bonus to base starting stats on a challenge server based on the current stats of your PvE character. But ultimately not something a player couldnt catch up to with a curve in REASONABLE time. Just spit balling here. But I think this could be explored. Its a fair point to acknowledge we'd need to figure out how peoples work on their current accounts wouldn't be all for waste if PvP transitioned to a less permanent, faster paced model with a collective playerbace under 1 roof.
And maybe this is just another dumb idea to throw into the endless sea of dumb ideas. Ive solidified my theory. That somewhere in a discord at any given time of day, someone is explaining an idea they think would fix wurm.
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