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paterso

"Elevated Account" Status for wurm players

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Hey folks,

Not sure if this has been suggested before, but here goes:

I'm a long time player of WO up until about 2013, playing from back in the early Gold days. I was a Forum Mod, a Community Mod, but ultimately I quit from burnout. However, I find myself every now and then contemplating returning, since WU doesn't always do it for me (It's infrequent updates has left the game dead)
I tried returning and recovered my old account, only to find of course I'm capped to 20 skills for being non premium. I made a portal to get back to Freedom from Epic, and then died before I could even walk down to the highway I had a vague memory of being near (Kinoss Bay ftw). When I recovered my stuff, I remembered the sheer chore it is to replay this game at 20.00 skills, just like I would have done back on my CA account on GV.

I don't know how many would agree, but it feels like asking people to resub to wurm, especially when you can't even just pay for a single month at a time, is quite bad for convincing players to return. We can't even get a feel for whether or not we still like the game, or check out any changes to see if things might have improved. We just get told "You don't want a spider to slaughter you? pay for 2 months premium just to see if this is still what you want to play".

To that end, I have a suggestion: Upgraded / Elevated Accounts.
In short, if a player has been premium before (Which means you've gotten 2 months of premium out of them at least once), then they are an upgraded account when their premium runs dry. Instead of being capped to 20, they are capped to 50.00 in skills, with characteristics capped around the 21.5 or 22 mark. They wouldn't be able to make deeds / become a mayor, and can't resize a deed if already a mayor, and their characteristics would be capped in a way that lets them still dig near roads etc, but wagons and large ships would be off-limits (though not large carts or small sailing boats). 

Now, why do this when these people could be premium instead?

Firstly, let's be perfectly honest, the wurm player-base has declined immensely since my time. It's down to maybe a literal quarter of what it was back in the day, if that. Instead of hoping to magically recoup the loss through premium players, perhaps a better strategy is to try and encourage players to buy silver, not silver *and* premium, so that you have extra players bringing in some income, rather than more players bringing in none. There isn't a non-premiums server anymore like Golden Valley, so I think there is zero incentive to play after getting to grips as a non-premium, and there is no reason to play as a returning player as non-premium. This way, you could market the first premium payment as more of a "buy the game itself" style, a little closer to what games like Haven & Hearth do I think (Where you're basically getting a basic set of upgrades in exchange for a tier of support, if I'm not mistaken / thinking of another game).

This way, at least then returning players aren't so limited without immediately resubscribing that they are faced with an ultimatum of Subscribe or Don't Play, and new players can know that even if they don't want to subscribe long-term, they will have an elevated account status and for about 12-14 euros, they get a proper wurm experience. If they want to keep grinding, own wagons and big ships, queue more actions, if they want to own deeds etc, they can become premium like others do. They could join a deed, contribute to the in-game economy, still buy some silver to help themselves along the way, and ultimately help wurm be a bit more alive again.


Ultimately I feel this would encourage players to return (assuming wurm actually tries to make them aware, since as someone who played wurm for the first half of its life, I can't even remember the last time I saw any article or even a newsletter in my email about it), and for new players, there is a nice incentive of not having to worry about a subscription-based MMO right away when they could try it out for £12/16e or perhaps a "first time subscription" price deal, e.g. 11.99euros, and if they don't want to pay for it, well you still made money off of them, they might still play the game since they aren't absurdly restricted, and thus we might help Wurm grow again.


This is just an idea I had tossed around with a few friends after we recovered some old GV and main-server accounts for nostalgia, and we realized that if we couldn't even get hooked on the game again, we struggled to find Incentive to subscribe at all. Would love to hear what others think about something along these lines.

 

Edited by paterso
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Life isn't always a bowl of cherries.

If you don't want to pay for Wurm Online then it would be better to go for Wurm Unlimited.

 

I mean you can suggest everything, but that is so unlikely to happen. Just imagine free players allowed to become priests, bash fences and have a ton of other priviledges only prem players currently have.

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I believe the once-premium skills have been raised to something like 30 or so nowadays... so it's kinda half way there. We obviously do not want highly powerfull non prem accounts, but maybe more incentive could be granted when you go for premium... maybe with different tiers and perharps things like double SB gains / double SB pool / monthly extra lil somethings... many games are already using those layered premium levels, why not wurm where you could have a cheap and dirty option and more expensive ones to bring in cash to CCAB and give more incentives to the players to return / pay more while not being utterly pay to win.

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I would agree that they shouldn't be allowed to become priests without being premium either. It's not about making the entire game free, just accessible enough to encourage returning players and the dated subscription model not actively deterring newcomers.
Priesting would have to be done as a premium player, and if you lose your premium, you wouldn't be allowed to do any priest-related stuff.

Wurm Unlimited is beyond quiet now, any server showing more than 15 online is padding the numbers, and most are this "free deed" system now for some reason. At the same time, how do you encourage someone to play WO instead when the non-premium is so capped that they won't be able to get a feel for the game again. I think an elevated account status that is marketed as a "pay for the base game" kind of style, would work well in terms of getting people to try out the game, and reassures them they aren't forced into subscriptions to play even semi-competently. It still doesn't let them grind to extremely useful levels, just competent levels, and CCAB would still make some money on these players rather than nothing (Since most people are reluctant to go for the subscription model nowadays for a singular game)

Edited by paterso

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If you can basically get a playable account without paying premium, why would most people pay premium at all?  Adding reasons not to pay for the game seems like a bad idea.  Wurm is already free to try, and with the change to cap characteristics at 30 for non-prems, you can still ride horses, drive carts and boats, etc (assuming you ground those up a bit while premium).  I can see an argument for a very tiny increase (like to 25) in the skill cap, but that should be to help newbies, not to make it easier for vets to play for free.

 

Maybe offer a 1-month sub for a little more (like €9 / month, or €16 / 2 months). 

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Well I wasn't aware that characteristics were upped for Non-Prems, which surprises me. However it also seems largely pointless with skills being capped so low.

In the end, vets would still have to pay to get to the 2nd half of skills, and would still have to pay to be priests or run villages, perhaps also to hold kingdom titles etc.
I don't think offering 1 month for an even higher price is going to incentivize people to return at all.

With a 50-cap, you let people get a taste for things like skill titles, they still get to feel what the game's basic gameplay loop is without just being at such poor skill levels that they are failing almost everything and nothing they make is particularly useful, but still offer much more of the game for a premium subscription.
I'm not saying every detail I've suggested is perfect, but given the clear drain on wurm's playerbase in the past 6-7 years, can you really say the current model is working at all and isn't just a system of attrition that will eventually bleed out the entire playerbase? I'm not saying this will magically reinvigorate WO back to 1200+ online, but it might help somewhat in at least getting some people into the game to contribute to the economy by paying silver and at least buying premium a bit. Going to a more mixed-F2P model is what basically every single MMO except WoW has had to do, even EvE had to bite the bullet and shift to favouring its PLEX purchases over outright premium susbcriptions.

Edited by paterso

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+0

Alright, this may end up a bit long...

Permium subscriptions are a good idea for game revenue; they work.

 

The problem is, that "premium subsciprtions" covers a much wider field than the one usually discussed here.  The nature of the subscription itself is generally considered to be important.  Are you paying for convenience, to unlock features, or to gain a solid advantage?  Even this categorisation is not entirely rigid, and there is a lot of overlap.

 

Wurm's current subscription model works on the premise of allowing free player movement regardless of subscription status (to a degree, there are mechanic limitations that do prevent free players from reaching certain locations without an unreasonable amount of work).  When a player buys premium. it allows players access to the post-20 skills content (which is continually growing), gives them a solid advantage over those who do not pay in this way, and adds in a degree of convenience once some time has been invested.  Players who pay more (for silver) are also given a heavy advantage in the form of usable shop items, and deed size.  The amount of ingame playtime required to "earn" premium is beyond what the majority of gamers can manage, and it has grown much much harder in the past few years with wurm's dying population.

 

In short, wurm is pay to win by the very virtue of it's premium system design.  *Someone* has to buy the silver, and it is very rarely established players in a "trickle down" kind of economy.

 

A returning player finds themselves in a slightly elevated position to a completely new free player, ASSUMING that they put in the time to raise their stats.  Though, this is often offset by the fact that any time sensitive goods (i.e. deeds, and all they hold) will be gone if the absence is a long one.  Their options are to re-preme, earn preme, or leave; unless they are able to adapt to the massive inconvenience a 20 skillcap brings.  Population trends indicate that the majority are choosing the latter.

Modifying premium play in the way the OP has suggested would alleviate matters as returning players are more likely to stick around if they can enjoy the game without having to drop a premium subscrpition, but then you find yourself in a position of wondering where to draw the line, assuming you wish to keep the same "incentive" to preme up.  However, a lot of older players may login, find their contact list has been dead as long as they have, find no-one around, find their home gone, find their items/animal gone, and would be more likely to hop onto WU to scratch their itch, so to speak.

 

WU is a strong competitor to WO, especially given that some WU servers have a larger playerbase than some WO servers, which was the main draw of WO over WU.  With the elevation reset incoming, WO cannot even argue persistence as a selling point over WU.  Unless you see a change that allows WO to directly compete with WU, you're not going to see a player base increase.

 

Overall, I don't think the suggestions made by the OP would bring the change they hope, and a more radical solution would be needed. 

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The characteristics skills are capped at 30 now so you can ride a horse or cart, load stuff even sail a knarr.

You can get prem from the shop for 10e or from a token for 5s or even buy a referral for 6-7s.

Some option to buy premium in smaller increments with silver just like you pay for upkeep would be interesting, but raising the skill cap even higher is not a solution to attract players. You can already do almost everything with the current capps and should be enough to get a feel for the game again.

 

Welcome back.

Edited by faty

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Drop the sub back down to what it was way back when (5EU a month) and nobody would be talking about a hybrid player status.

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just fork over a couple bucks and pay for a limited time prem, to see if you still like the game.

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7 hours ago, Eyesgood said:

Drop the sub back down to what it was way back when (5EU a month) and nobody would be talking about a hybrid player status.

 

I do believe that this would work, and encourage players to pay for more than one account if wanted. (This also stimulates economy for more weapons/armour, etc... With more 'players' even if they're all alts.) 

 

I'm also with the terms that new unpremed players should have limited map access, that expands to everything once the premium is paid. (Let's call it a mini-Golden Valley at the starter deed, gated community type deal), same idea as Runescape I guess.

 

Consolidate servers to make population denser per square mile, that's something that is starting to ruin it for me... There's very little 'close-communities' left, if any. Might sound long, but cut 2-3 servers with a 6 month warning. 

 

That's a start to making it more attractive for a returning player (in my eyes, anyways)...

 

 

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Making the game free up until level 50 skill won't help anything for population.

 

If cost was a concern for most users, they will just play WU.

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5eu subscription cost will not bring old players back, they dont leaved game bc its 10eu now, looking from my sight

new players not going to shop in first place to check subscription cost, so it will not attract anyone, maybe, just maybe will keep somepeople who just joined

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Well WU is basically dead too though. It lacks support (things like hoping Nvidia users would just rollback all their drivers for like 6 months because a hotfix wouldn't be deployed when wurm stopped working with Nvidia GPUs). If a server shows more than 15-20 online, it's likely faked either from intentional padding or it isn't restarting the server often enough and the number is no longer accurate (A fortnight without a restart makes most servers start showing like 15-20 online when there's 3-7 online)

At the same time though, whether or not this elevated status idea would or wouldn't work, surely we can see that WO itself lacks a model that can keep its playerbase to even half of its peak, nevermind even a drop more. I can't say I wan't to pay 16e just to come back and see if I still like the pace and feel of WO and the nonprem caps don't really let you re-experience it, and WU is dead / dying. 
At least games like Haven & Hearth kind of know to restart their maps from time to time, and that reinvigorates its playerbase every year or 2 (I think their last server restart actually gave them the highest playercount they've ever had)

Edited by paterso

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