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LorenaMontana

So whats gonna happen?

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Epic is on an all time low population nowadays, we have all spoken to retro and he showed us a list of things that are going to change, when will this happen? When is there going to be any moves according to epic in general? 

 

We have nothing unique anymore nowadays except playing on an unfinished/buggy valrei map. Do we get a transfer to freedom with our characters soon? Are the servers gonna be shut down? 

 

Is there anything that anyone can tell me? What is the plan!? 

 

It really hurts to see that the game (wurm epic) that I loved for years is dying so hard now.

 

Dont get me wrong, I was always positive about epic and everything in general but the decline is insane and makes me sad.

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I do feel really bad about Epic. Their numbers are dwindling very fast. I have always been interested in Epic but I am still deciding as I have strong ties here to freedom. I think personally that the team should allow a player to switch their characters to Freedom with there skills and maybe a limited amount of things as some of the Epic players are very OP and might balance out Chaos and their PvP. I could be completely wrong about this but I do really feel bad for Epic since they already got a server restart with Elevation. 

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I know you guys love epic, it sucks but it might be time to allow players to convert to freedom/chaos and phase epic out. I think epic lost a lot of players due to the WU appeal.

 

Obviously it going to create a lot of imbalance if this happens but its better then having a dead server.

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3 hours ago, khatanka said:

Epic is still alive and need new blood ;)

 

it's not ahahaha

 

 

20$ says now that i've sold my account, they follow my prediction and merge now that its too far gone and wonder why it didn't improve player count that much.

Edited by Propheteer
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I'd rather see epic rebooted with new mechanics, better structure, and clearer goals that have an impact on the world (and no, not player gods and meteors)

 

I know Epic is really hurting at this point, I'm constantly being poked for updates and I really wish we could deliver changes on the spot, but that's not something that's going to happen unfortunately. The changes with the dev team have caused a few delays in discussions but things are picking up pace again, the key changes discussed in the feedback threads should hit soon, with the more debated ideas coming after, once we spend more time fleshing the possibilities out.

 

The major thing is, in order to improve we need to avoid mistakes of the past, and while I know there's a great sense of urgency and impatience within the Epic and Pvp community, these things cannot be rushed else we'll make the same mistakes again.

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Maybe it is time to start the endgame and get rid of epic in the end. Wurm Online has far too many servers at the moment.

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41 minutes ago, Revelation said:

Epic was only ever a gimmick anyway.

The curve/skillincrease was a great concept to help people get into pvp.

The valrei system (gimmick) COULD have been good but was left halfassed for YEARS and still is. We played with no-model valrei creatures for eons and classic buggy missions like

"LOL SACK 50000 70+ql rubies IN 12h"

"Sack 10 80+ql minedoors... no not that type.. no not that one either... yep it was the silver one."

"Cut down the pinetree north of X... oh did i say pine? I ment birch."

"Build a obelisk in the NE... hold up.... I ment SW."

 

 

or the joyfull missions like "CUT DOWN 7000 TREES" followed shortly by "CUT DOWN 5000 MORE TREES"

Even now the scenario point distribution for missions is crap (saccing 3 30ql hats can be as rewarding as draining a enemy kingdoms capital) and the code to decide winner is still bugged.

there isnt even a code piece to avoid a god from spawning with the winning ammount of items on or next to its starting tile even.

 

Not to mention freedom got all our titles and all our rewards except godhood... and yet we never received any of the fancy 100 skill titles... apparantly our epic accounts are 2nd-class and not deserving of that, but freedomers deserve our archmage titles and abilities from valrei items given out at insane rates from uniques.

 

Wanna know the most hillarious part?

The rifts they speak of, that ###### was supposed to be a part of the valrei system.

We were supposed to ocationally go through portals to valrei and ###### to do missions against monsters etc.

 

The valrei system hasn't evolved much over the 4.5 years that has passed... We gained models for valrei creatures/items and the removal of the most broken missions... woppelido.

When something is a servers main selling point you would think they would put a decent ammount of effort into it...

Edited by Zekezor
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16 hours ago, LorenaMontana said:

Epic is on an all time low population nowadays, we have all spoken to retro and he showed us a list of things that are going to change, when will this happen? When is there going to be any moves according to epic in general? 

 

...

 

To be fair, all servers are on an all time low, that's nothing that's specific to Epic. Devs making changes to PvP mechanics on Epic will not miraculously revert that trend, in fact I believe it will do nothing at all to revert Epics population trend.

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Epic: "Well, we wiped Elevation and PvP hasn't magically gotten better. Any other ideas?"
Chaos: "Let's wipe it again!"
Epic: "..."

Chaos: "But this time, force them to move to a server that they deliberately chose not to play on, make them buy PMKs, and then let those landless, 5-person PMKs get kicked in the nuts by the bandwagoners that own the entire server. That'll make them want to play again!"

Since Epic and Chaos populations are more or less equal (though at the time of writing this, Chaos has 22 people and Epic has 40), if we're really serious about a merge, let's do it in true Wurm fashion: leave it up to RNG. Flip a coin. If heads, Epic gets nuked. If tails, Chaos gets nuked. Loser has to move to the winner's cluster. And if you're not willing to accept the possibility of your own server getting deleted, you're in no position to demand that other people have their servers deleted.

And besides, when you consider that 70% of Epic consists of home server players who aren't interested in that type of PvP in the first place and would probably choose Freedom over Chaos, and another 10-20% are Ele players who would quit after having their work deleted (again), Chaos would gain, what, another dozen people divided out over the US/Euro/AUS time zones? Hope that temporary boost is worth pissing off half of your PvP playerbase that you're trying so hard to resurrect.

Truth is, Epic and Chaos are both suffering population-wise. A merge would be yet another bandaid and yet another mass exodus from the PvP side of Wurm. Just because it would help you does not mean it's good for PvP or the game in general.  I'm not the type to throw out these types of threats casually, but a large number of people would quit from this. And when PvPers leave, so does the money that they bring in, and that makes it even harder for Rolf to justify spending dev resources on this side of the game. Then, the updates that you're all crying so much about -- you know, the ones that are supposedly going to revitalize PvP and bring in new blood before our servers die altogether -- will take longer to be added, assuming they even get added at all. Hasty, high-impact decisions are part of what killed PvP on Elevation, and they can absolutely kill PvP on Chaos as well.

And I really hate to throw stones at other PvPers during times like this, but this has to be said: Chaos has long held the reputation of hosting some of the most exploitative, metagamey PvPers around. Not everyone, obviously, but enough for it to be a noticeable stain on what should be a proud, historic server. But since winning is clearly the most important part of any game, you have to stack everyone you can onto your kingdom, no matter how heavily you're already dominating the map (honor is for losers, like the Mongols). Drop empty war deeds everywhere so your enemies can't expand or drain without it showing up on Twitter, at which point you can teleport in from anywhere to defend. But because dying on Chaos means you also die in real life, this defense should include the use of throwaway alts wherever possible. The alts that you use to artificially inflate your fightskill and give yourself affinities will work perfectly for this. And if somehow you still can't win by doing that, abuse any and all bugs you know of, because lord knows Code Club won't punish you for it; hell, if by some miracle they don't let you keep your cheated skills or your bugged weapons, just throw a tantrum on the forum about "GM intervention," because everyone knows you're the real victim here. And the weirdest part about all of this is, we all treat this cancer as if it's such a vital cornerstone of Wurm PvP that nobody even considers the possibility of disrupting the Chaos side of things for the sake of this supposedly all-important merge. Instead, simply use Chaos's little brother as a guinea pig for new features which will eventually make their way to Chaos, and once you've squeezed all the usefulness and life out of him, absorb him back into the fold for your own benefit. Same song, different verse.

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8 minutes ago, Fawkes said:

Epic: "Well, we wiped Elevation and PvP hasn't magically gotten better. Any other ideas?"
Chaos: "Let's wipe it again!"
Epic: "..."

Chaos: "But this time, force them to move to a server that they deliberately chose not to play on, make them buy PMKs, and then let those landless, 5-person PMKs get kicked in the nuts by the bandwagoners that own the entire server. That'll make them want to play again!"

Since Epic and Chaos populations are more or less equal (though at the time of writing this, Chaos has 22 people and Epic has 40), if we're really serious about a merge, let's do it in true Wurm fashion: leave it up to RNG. Flip a coin. If heads, Epic gets nuked. If tails, Chaos gets nuked. Loser has to move to the winner's cluster. And if you're not willing to accept the possibility of your own server getting deleted, you're in no position to demand that other people have their servers deleted.

And besides, when you consider that 70% of Epic consists of home server players who aren't interested in that type of PvP in the first place and would probably choose Freedom over Chaos, and another 10-20% are Ele players who would quit after having their work deleted (again), Chaos would gain, what, another dozen people divided out over the US/Euro/AUS time zones? Hope that temporary boost is worth pissing off half of your PvP playerbase that you're trying so hard to resurrect.

Truth is, Epic and Chaos are both suffering population-wise. A merge would be yet another bandaid and yet another mass exodus from the PvP side of Wurm. Just because it would help you does not mean it's good for PvP or the game in general.  I'm not the type to throw out these types of threats casually, but a large number of people would quit from this. And when PvPers leave, so does the money that they bring in, and that makes it even harder for Rolf to justify spending dev resources on this side of the game. Then, the updates that you're all crying so much about -- you know, the ones that are supposedly going to revitalize PvP and bring in new blood before our servers die altogether -- will take longer to be added, assuming they even get added at all. Hasty, high-impact decisions are part of what killed PvP on Elevation, and they can absolutely kill PvP on Chaos as well.

And I really hate to throw stones at other PvPers during times like this, but this has to be said: Chaos has long held the reputation of hosting some of the most exploitative, metagamey PvPers around. Not everyone, obviously, but enough for it to be a noticeable stain on what should be a proud, historic server. But since winning is clearly the most important part of any game, you have to stack everyone you can onto your kingdom, no matter how heavily you're already dominating the map (honor is for losers, like the Mongols). Drop empty war deeds everywhere so your enemies can't expand or drain without it showing up on Twitter, at which point you can teleport in from anywhere to defend. But because dying on Chaos means you also die in real life, this defense should include the use of throwaway alts wherever possible. The alts that you use to artificially inflate your fightskill and give yourself affinities will work perfectly for this. And if somehow you still can't win by doing that, abuse any and all bugs you know of, because lord knows Code Club won't punish you for it; hell, if by some miracle they don't let you keep your cheated skills or your bugged weapons, just throw a tantrum on the forum about "GM intervention," because everyone knows you're the real victim here. And the weirdest part about all of this is, we all treat this cancer as if it's such a vital cornerstone of Wurm PvP that nobody even considers the possibility of disrupting the Chaos side of things for the sake of this supposedly all-important merge. Instead, simply use Chaos's little brother as a guinea pig for new features which will eventually make their way to Chaos, and once you've squeezed all the usefulness and life out of him, absorb him back into the fold for your own benefit. Same song, different verse.

After reading this two things are affirmed for me:  1.  I've never had an interest in playing on Chaos, or most pvp for that matter as I feel Wurm is more pve oriented.  2.  If I were miraculously interested in going the pvp route I'd definitely do it on Epic instead (use a portal in my own deed to go back and forth? yes please!)

 

Just so it's clear I'll say this once more before adding in my final opinion -- I do not pvp.  I am a moron who knows nothing about pvp other than that you wear armor and punch other people.  That being said, if I were ever inclined to try pvp I'd much rather do it if Chaos was merged into Epic instead of Epic being brought to Chaos.  It is my pvp-noob opinion that PvE and PvP should be forever separate, and thus only connected by way of portal. 

Edited by Slickshot
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I still don't see the bad side of converting skills to freedom on some kind of formula making it fair or just a solid -10 or -20 in skills that aren't obviously weird on epic, like body stamina and meditating, but a lot of people just tunnel vision it and act like it's suggesting to crucify babies on the supreme court steps.

 

Some people don't actually have an agenda and just wanna have fun playing the game again :/

 

Like just think from a 'good for the game' standpoint how well it would be to be ONE world, if your friend plays it you could see him ANYWHERE in the game, you never need to decide where to start or settle because you'd have access to both pvp and pve with ONE account, that you spend ALL your time grinding on.

Edited by Cornchips
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When Epic first opened in 2011, I ported over one of my alts.

I pretty much had a ball on Serenity for a while, until I burned out and left that alt semi-idle for six months or so.

But a couple of years of relatively lazy play left me with a character who's skills, even without the effective skill curve, are reasonable in PvE terms, so I'd actually welcome a merge where I could port my Epic character, with a reasonable skill loss, to Chaos, thence to Freedom.

 

Why don't I want to play on Chaos? It's not that hard to figure out, Chaos is, to all intents and purposes done, it's probably gone as far as it's possible to go in terms of kingdom domination, let's face it, Mol Rehan has pretty much taken over most of the server, and the population has dropped to the levels seen before the first hiatus, when Wild closed and became a Freedom server, (I lived on it for a while, seeing the sights, and exploring the decaying ruins of better times).

 

Epic has likewise decayed, Serenity has become a ghost of it's former glory days as the largest server population in the cluster, but can still possibly rival the entirety of Chaos at times, but it's quiet and decaying as well.

 

I spent some time on Affliction on another character too, both old and new, and frankly, that was a load of fun too, I love new servers, but it didn't help boost the population at all, in fact I'd say the population on Affliction is lower now that it was on Old Affliction.

 

So what are we left with, two PvP venues, one cluster of 4 servers, which doesn't have the population to really justify it's existence for the most part, and one annex of Freedom cluster that's pretty much played out, old and worn down, again barely able to cobble together enough population to justify it's existence.

 

A merge won't work, both Chaos and Epic will adamantly insist the other venue closes and theirs remain, maybe not all, but most, I can't see a way to fairly adjust skills between Epic and chaos either, so player merges and transfers are unlikely to happen, if they are even possible.

 

So I say close both, Chaos and Epic, and build one decent sized new server for PvP, separate from Freedom, the way Wild used to be, no Home servers, (I loved the Home Server idea, but they were actually the cause of most of my disaffection with Epic, not the fault of the concept, but the fault of the friction between Home server and Elevation populations). 

 

Of course there will be a huge amount of resistance to that idea, it's probably more contentious than a simple merge of one or the other, but has the slight advantage of offering a new map, a new start, and might be more than just a bandaid, if other PvP upgrades and changes are also implemented as well, it'll certainly get rid of the whole idea that a merge will leave one venue at some sort of advantage.

 

I'll personally be mildly upset at losing Serenity forever, I kinda liked it there, I also liked the Wild/Chaos hiatus, as well, but if something has to be done, and it involves closing servers, I say close both Chaos and Epic, Epic players already know how easy it is to start afresh, Epic probably has the most experience in fact, having started Epic, restarted Affliction and Elevation already.

 

 

Edited by Zenity
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7 hours ago, Zenity said:

Why don't I want to play on Chaos? It's not that hard to figure out, Chaos is, to all intents and purposes done, it's probably gone as far as it's possible to go in terms of kingdom domination, let's face it, Mol Rehan has pretty much taken over most of the server, and the population has dropped to the levels seen before the first hiatus, when Wild closed and became a Freedom server, (I lived on it for a while, seeing the sights, and exploring the decaying ruins of better times).

 

Epic has likewise decayed, Serenity has become a ghost of it's former glory days as the largest server population in the cluster, but can still possibly rival the entirety of Chaos at times, but it's quiet and decaying as well.

 

I spent some time on Affliction on another character too, both old and new, and frankly, that was a load of fun too, I love new servers, but it didn't help boost the population at all, in fact I'd say the population on Affliction is lower now that it was on Old Affliction.

 

So what are we left with, two PvP venues, one cluster of 4 servers, which doesn't have the population to really justify it's existence for the most part, and one annex of Freedom cluster that's pretty much played out, old and worn down, again barely able to cobble together enough population to justify it's existence.

Vindication is a sensation most don't get to enjoy. I make sure to bask in it as much as possible, whenever I'm given the opportunity to.

 

Free for all PvP in general is a sickly genre, predominantly because it always cycles in the exact same way: One side wins, the losing side quits because they lost their hundreds of hours of work, then the winners quits out of boredom because nobody is left to fight. (One side wins, the losers quit, then the winners quit.)

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Two words... Old Yeller

 

If you haven't seen it... spoiler alert (also wth is wrong with you? The movie was from 1957).

 

Saw this when I was like nine, "wtf... this is a Disney movie?!"

Edited by Klaa
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12 hours ago, Dairuka said:

Vindication is a sensation most don't get to enjoy. I make sure to bask in it as much as possible, whenever I'm given the opportunity to.

 

Free for all PvP in general is a sickly genre, predominantly because it always cycles in the exact same way: One side wins, the losing side quits because they lost their hundreds of hours of work, then the winners quits out of boredom because nobody is left to fight. (One side wins, the losers quit, then the winners quit.)

 

The previously stable hardcore population doesn't quit because of the loss of work, they quit because of game-breaking bugs/mechanics that take 3-4 years to get fixed and/or balanced.

 

Eventually you hit a point where you're sick and tired of losing everything on you because you glitched out and the world wouldn't load, or you're tired of waiting years for something to get balanced so you decide to abuse it anyway and then you're still mad because it still exists.

 

Most FFA PvP games are successful, the ones that aren't usually aren't due to the population but due to a failure of the developers to understand what's needed and a failure to reliably produce content and balance patches, (ex. Aventurine)

Edited by Propheteer
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19 hours ago, Zenity said:

So I say close both, Chaos and Epic, and build one decent sized new server for PvP, separate from Freedom, the way Wild used to be, no Home servers, (I loved the Home Server idea, but they were actually the cause of most of my disaffection with Epic, not the fault of the concept, but the fault of the friction between Home server and Elevation populations). 

 

Of course there will be a huge amount of resistance to that idea, it's probably more contentious than a simple merge of one or the other, but has the slight advantage of offering a new map, a new start, and might be more than just a bandaid, if other PvP upgrades and changes are also implemented as well, it'll certainly get rid of the whole idea that a merge will leave one venue at some sort of advantage.

 

I'll personally be mildly upset at losing Serenity forever, I kinda liked it there, I also liked the Wild/Chaos hiatus, as well, but if something has to be done, and it involves closing servers, I say close both Chaos and Epic, Epic players already know how easy it is to start afresh, Epic probably has the most experience in fact, having started Epic, restarted Affliction and Elevation already.

 

 

 

Good idea, I mean, with Wurm Unlimited, the Devs could just do dumps of the maps current state for others to download if they wish to view the remains.

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2 hours ago, Propheteer said:

 

The previously stable hardcore population doesn't quit because of the loss of work, they quit because of game-breaking bugs/mechanics that take 3-4 years to get fixed and/or balanced.

 

Eventually you hit a point where you're sick and tired of losing everything on you because you glitched out and the world wouldn't load, or you're tired of waiting years for something to get balanced so you decide to abuse it anyway and then you're still mad because it still exists.

 

Most FFA PvP games are successful, the ones that aren't usually aren't due to the population but due to a failure of the developers to understand what's needed and a failure to reliably produce content and balance patches, (ex. Aventurine)

 

We could measure success at 50k. The lowest possible benchmark for size. In this case, this would mean Age of Conan, Runescape and EvE are the only successful Open, otherwise known as FFA-PvP MMORPG game.

 

We could measure success at a 'growing' population. In this case, this would mean there are no successful FFA-PvP MMORPG games. Even EvE has shrunk substantially over the past year.

 

We could measure success at, 'still actively PvP'ing with groups of people larger than 20 at a time every week.' In this case, this would mean Age of Conan, Runescape, Lineage 2 and EvE are the only successful FFA-PvP MMORPG games. (4 MMORPG's out of hundreds of failures. Including... Runescape and Lineage 2... pathetic.)

 

We can change the measuring stick to give each game the best possible chance to seem far more important than it really is, but honestly, the aforementioned games have a lot more going for them than the PvP, which is why they've done so well. Excluding EvE, the PvP in every one of them is notoriously stagnant and often the butt of jokes of their far larger PvE communities. (Sound Familiar?)

 

FFA-PvP sucks the life out of gaming communities. It's most suited for fast-paced action, usually in the form of First Person Shooters, or games with quick recovery times. (Rust, Ark) - MMORPG's tend to be time intensive, which means that every loss costs the losers hundreds of wasted man-hours. This is why the most successful MMORPG's in the past have been Restricted PvP of some form, usually involving a 3-sided Realm versus Realm. Low loss, means a far smaller loss of man-hours. This makes recovery easier, allowing people to get back into the fight much easier. This means more conflict in the long run, which translates to more fun for all sides.

 

People love to talk about the spoils of FFA-PvP games, but they neglect to recognize that they, like all humans are ridiculously risk-averse. Humans tend to remember losses, or fear potential losses far more than they can see the rewards, or even feel the rewards of any given victory. Those of us who take heavy losses as a result of things out of our control tend to take it personally, and a loss of desire or determination quickly follows. It's human nature to quit FFA-PvP games after a severe loss of work, or man-hours.

 

Veterans in every single FFA-PvP game love to complain about patches of doom, or they come up with other false-flag reasons (Balance is the #1 reason.) as to why they've lost interest and quit. Of course, the true, honest to god reason people actually quit a game, is because they got bored. How do you keep people who are actually interested in a FFA-PvP MMORPG game, interested in that FFA-PvP MMORPG game for long periods of time? Conflict. What happens when that conflict fizzles out, and the rivalries move on? They quit. The servers shrink. In most cases the games close. (Roma Victor, Shadowbane) In others, maintenance mode. (Darkfall, Mortal Online, Age of Conan, Darktide/Asheron's Call.)

 

Anyhow, in Wurm's case. The FFA-PvP population here didn't quit because of game-breaking bugs. They quit because they found a better alternative, Wurm Unlimited, and jumped ship at the first convenient opportunity. The population before Wurm Unlimited was anything but stable. Complaint threads about population have been cropping up since Freedom opened up. You guys have always been in the minority, and always been shrinking.

 

Edited by Dairuka
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There are some people who shouldn't but have already posted in this thread. 

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I let my prem run out and don't plan on playing again until somethings done.

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There seems to be a really huge slowdown in new players going to both epic and chaos lately, not really sure on what can be done to avert this trend but something needs to be done or both will go the way of wild.

oh wait, that's already happened...

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