Basic Poll: is WU the right direction for Wurmonline?

[Mordraug 2,542]

You forgot those of us who basically have no intentions of *returning* to WO but are ready to throw our wallets at WU.  If the offers are good I'd even be willing to pay for some DLC content in the future (skin packs, tools, and such).

[akaedis 429]

Depends on the requirements but considering it runs on java i have not much faith in performance. This will be a pain in the ass to run especially since you have to run it on Windows, a OS notorious for it's ba Multitasking and resource management. I just hope someone will make a Unix port ASAP. If not we will see a lot of laggy and bad servers.

[enoofu 206]

If what rolf said is true that WU code will be almost an exact replica of WO, You can expect players to set up servers that could support several hundred people. The only draw back is if they can support that is, How fast will you let them do stuff? Because if everyone remembers challenge, So many people doing tasks nearly instantly slowed the server down by maxing out its cpu. 

Server code should be different except for the Databases Tables since real commercial DB software cost a lot of money.and commercial DB's is the only way you can support hundreds of users at the same time.

[akaedis 429]

Server code should be different except for the Databases Tables since real commercial DB software cost a lot of money.and commercial DB's is the only way you can support hundreds of users at the same time.

 

Someone going big enough to host hundreds of players would probably pay for that, Or donation button there way to paying and hosting it. 

[anfo 2]

Played WO for a while. LOVED WO but couldn't justify the continued expense for the actual amount of time i played due to RL commitments. (Same old saga). But this! WU. Haven't been this excited for a game in a long time.

[Audrel 2,223]

I said no because he plans to give content patches to it for free. Once off payment and new content for life is not the way to raise revenue. Why pay premium in WO when you can pay once forever?

[enoofu 206]

I said no because he plans to give content patches to it for free. Once off payment and new content for life is not the way to raise revenue. Why pay premium in WO when you can pay once forever?

 Not a bad thing just will force WO into completing with WU, which should help both player base's.

[Eldurian 86]

I am not completely over my concerns that there will be a few privately hosted servers that prove to have stable / well managed communities offering everything WO can for cheaper. In some ways that's a good thing but I could really prove bad for current WO players in terms of a smaller community, less character value, and less money going into development.

[Kruggan 519]

I can tell you right now that there will be some stable, managed privately hosted servers and I intend to host one of them.  It's been my hope and goal since I got involved with the game.  I suspect the vast majority will have 0-10 people at most on them, but there will be a few that stand out and may be donation based.  The community is a good reason to stick with WO... but then again, I interact with maybe 5 people per day in alliance chat and maybe 1-2 more in the Trade channel.  In this day and time, with server hosting options being as robust and cost effective as they are, I see no reason why there can't be a number of valid, private servers out there that have the proper management and DR to support a base of 25+ consistent players.  

[Eldurian 86]

Like I said. In some ways a good thing, just not good for WO if too many players go that route.

[topkos 504]

Let put it this way, IMHO, if WU proves to be a success, WO in the long run is dead , unless Rolf makes a lot of changes on the sub price, deed upkeep, shop prices and new good offering in the shop.

If WU is a failure, then everything will be as good or bad is now.

[Eldurian 86]

I'm really hoping dropping silver/premium prices isn't something off the list of options. After all I remember when they used to lower. Purchased a buttload of silver right before they raised them.

[FranktheTank 1,901]

too early to say.

[Mordraug 2,542]

There'll be new players coming in, that's for sure.

 

Now it's up to the community, not WU, whether they stick around or not. (tl;dr at the end)

 

PvP, oddly enough, should be the simpler one at retaining new players.  They know what they're in for when they join, however not many will stay if they're considered an "alt spy" on day 1.  Also, you guys may wanna consider a 3-kingdom "peacekeeping force" at the spawn points to prevent both current and new players from camping and ganking.

 

PvE... ohboy.... as long as "I screwed x person because I can" persists, y'all are gonna drive away way more people than you keep.

 

If a new player posts "I joined, spend 2 hrs looking for a spot, set up a house, caught a cow along the way, went to bed, this morning it's all bashed down, the cow is dead and not even butchered" and is met with the traditional pro-thief pro-griefer victim blaming, player retention is gonna suck as badly as usual.

 

Pricing may have driven some people away, but I'm quite sure many more left because it's not fun to play a game where 8hrs of sleep and/or 8hrs at work could mean weeks of work gone because someone got a burr up their ass about another player having cooler horses and jumped through hoops to kill them, only to be praised for teaching that evil security non-expert a stern lesson for not being more paranoid.

 

Rolf annoyed the %$!"#% out of me with how Xanadu was handled, I quit, came back later on because what the hell, live and learn.  

 

Two things made me walk for good, however:

 

-  One was the addition of dropwurmians, me being an avid tamer.  Wasn't gonna expand AND re-do my deeds into wardeeds just because the tweens have free rein when it comes to being asshats, and certainly wasn't gonna force myself to login every couple of hours to make sure everything's safe and if not, be in time for tracks only to report it and get mocked without the option to retaliate.

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- Now the other thing that made me walk, and this is my personal opinion, like if you do, dislike if you don't, but keep the discussion to one of the other billion threads on the topic... PvP vs. PvE.

 

New players will notice bling, new players will ask "why is x feature so nerfed?"/"Why can't I build tower design 2 instead?" (good luck with tamers).  Reply:  "Would nerf PvP so it's a no-go"/"PvP funds its stuff selling the shinies to us so forget having it added for us to craft too".  

NOT saying that taking stuff away from PvP is the way to go, but say in the case of towers, ADDING 2 more designs for PvE to use (and if they dont' like it there's 3 more on PvP side) would rock, while the traditional reasons NOT to (ref: suggestions' forum) are a great way to make PvE players ask themselves:  "Why should I pay to fund people who deny our requests for features as if they owned the game?".

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tl;dr  :  the community's done a great job at spooking new players and lots of veterans over the years.  Population's remained all in all stable, but now people who've been spooked away have an option and it's gonna drop the numbers somewhat.  Steam exposure on the other hand is gonna bring in new ones.  Up to you Wurmians to determine whether the new players are gonna represent an overall increase in population, or if the population will be the same as now minus the extra veterans who can finally walk away from Wurm while still getting to enjoy Wurm.

Edited September 30, 2015 by Mordraug

[Ricowan 199]

I'm really hoping dropping silver/premium prices isn't something off the list of options. After all I remember when they used to lower. Purchased a buttload of silver right before they raised them.

WU servers can be set up so that settlement forms and deed stakes are free, or cost coppers, etc.  I don't believe there's any way to purchase silver outside of WU, but prices are completely up to the server owner.

[akaedis 429]

WU servers can be set up so that settlement forms and deed stakes are free, or cost coppers, etc.  I don't believe there's any way to purchase silver outside of WU, but prices are completely up to the server owner.

 

I feel a lot of server owners will hold events or random events to give coin away, Or even give-aways. Maybe, if its possible, make things like trolls drop like 10c per kill. 

 

One thing your over-looking is free-griefing. Yeah, Free deeds are fantastic, But with free deeds one could just make a 500x500 deed, With a stupidly big perimeter, Griefing a huge amount of land until a GM comes and removes it. 

[Ricowan 199]

One thing your over-looking is free-griefing. Yeah, Free deeds are fantastic, But with free deeds one could just make a 500x500 deed, With a stupidly big perimeter, Griefing a huge amount of land until a GM comes and removes it. 

 

This won't be a problem unless you open your server to the public.  Personally, I couldn't stand playing on public Minecraft servers for the reasons you state.  I ended up hosting a private server for myself, family and friends, and I only play on whitelisted servers where the players had to be invited and would be kicked for griefing behavior.

 

When WU goes live, my server will be password protected, along with the server my friend is hosting that will be connected to mine.