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atazs

Another Release type server

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With this new "Frontier" update coming, (whatever it may contain) i was thinking how Release was released as a "fresh start" for new players in order to combat the skill gap and establishment between the veteran and new players and to make new players be able to "catch up" or so to speak and enter the market. 

Yet this was in late 2012, almost 7! years ago now. 

If you think about it or remember the great Wurmageddon, it happened in April 2007 where every single player had to start over from scratch on a fresh server because of data loss. I'm unsure who were compensated, or how, if at all, but thats another story.

Now between Wurmageddon and Release is a 5 and a half year gap. Between now and Release is almost 7.  The skill gap and establishment have only increased, higher quality goods and enchants have increased, the market is oversaturated, uniques are killed hours after they are found by a handful of people, and more. The game is stagnating. And this stagnation is much, much worse than how it was in 2012 where the "veterans" and established players only had a 5 year headstart on new players.

 

So what happened? Are there any plans for another Release? For those of you who don't know, it was an isolated server (later a cluster with Pristine) where you could only go to with a completely new character. It was only later that they connected the two to the rest of servers.

 

It would definietly breathe some much needed life into Wurm and attract a lot of older and new players, give advertising value to the game, all of these are desperately needed.  

 

Games like Heaven and Hearth do periodical fresh starts to stay alive and relevant.

Edited by atazs
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I think a dedicated server or two, that specifically aren't the current ones (so as not to wipe out current progress), could be designated as servers that restart every 18-24 months, maybe they use epic skillgain rates, but not epic effective skill, and players could earn points to spend on their start for the next wipe, e.g. upping their max sleep bonus cap, letting them have affinities to pick etc. The server would be new chars only, but you could transfer out of the server with your items at the end of each cycle back to Freedom cluster if you so wanted. That would be a nice incentive to return to a fresh wurm imo.

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If I am informed correctly, Xanadu was opened after Release, and also allowed only new characters for some time.

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5 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

If I am informed correctly, Xanadu was opened after Release, and also allowed only new characters for some time.

 

Correct. :)

 

It was this new server that brought me back into the game.

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Surely it's not fair to argue that even Xanadu is new anymore though? Every map of Wurm, outside of the minor touch-ups that one or two had, is old and dated and doesn't offer the fresh adventure that once characterised wurm, as so many players returned just for a chance at another land-grab goldrush, for the prospects of getting a decent coastal spot beside some clay.

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If I read the patch notes and road map correctly, there are now two new server projects in the making: The rework of Elevation for the PvP community (with a temporary rework right now), and the Frontier project, which will be something we do not know yet, but most probably for the PvE community.

 

Whether the latter requires new characters or not, is not known so far and not sure. I am not so sure that a start with brandnew characters will really be so much of help. I started about 1.5 years ago, have a deed and mining area still under development,  and do not feel ready and willing to forget this character to start a new one.

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Elevation was already revamped once in 2015 with the very first iteration released in december 2011. This will be it's 3rd revamp in 8 years. 

 

Nobody is forcing you to abandon your character/work/deed/whatever. 

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iirc wurm let us have like 5 chars per email, unless that's changed since my time back in '06 to '13/'14, so it's not like you'd lose your OG character

 

 

Edited by paterso

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It is the Pristine server you are talking about.

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Does it matter? Both were released in like the same month and were isolated from the rest of the servers for a long time and you could only play on them if you made a new character. 

 

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The character per email is no issue at all. That restriction should be overworked anyway, but that is a different discussion. Even with an email alias of the same address you may create 5 additional characters. The matter is about playing a character, raising its skills, developing a deed, or participating in the development of one. I fail to see that I shall get sufficiently bored for such an endeavour in the next one or two years.

 

I wish everybody luck and fun with the new environment/s though in case it needs "fresh" characters. But it would be naive to believe that such a "new start" would not necessarily, and at fast pace, reestablish the old hierarchies. But if it will bring back some old players and attract a few new ones, it is okay.

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The Release/Pristine concept was failure.

 

The idea was it would be a place for new players. It was not. It was nearly all old player alt, who were well versed in power skilling. The fist big failure was in advertising. For it to be place for new players it would have needed to be accompanied by a substantial publicity campaign, which it was not. So it didn't bring in any, if few, new players.

 

The second was, allowing existing players to alt there. What few new players there were got quickly overcome by the power grinders. They got even further left behind when the servers were joined with the rest of Freedom. Most of new players from Pristine/Release made the venture instead to Xanadu. I wasn't boat capable, so I had to roll a new one, although moving people was big business, although risky due to still existing cross server issues. Of the 5 people I knew on Pristine/Release that were in fact new players and were still playing when Xanadu was released, 4 of them got a boat to Xanadu as soon as they could.

 

So in the end, all they had while on lock down was mostly just alts of existing players, who demanded to be joined with the rest of freedom..and a handful of new players that demanding another new server, just they got f**ked out of what they were promised, a chance.

 

The game is old. Very old. There is absolutely nothing you can ever do yo bridge that gap between experienced players and new players. Well, there is one thing. A complete wipe. Why do new players leave> becuase there's nothing here for them.They cant engage in the economy until they get a higher skills, then they find out, even the top end market is completely wrecked and saturated and the only thing that sells, is bulk...stuff that even a freemo can do. Alot of time wasted on game that might not be around when you get there. yes, we all know it will be, but to new player that is in serious doubt, when the standard lifespan of a game is 10 years, anything after that is borrowed time. Try explain to a new player that a 15 year old game will still be kicking in 17 years when they start to reach end game. Yea, doesn't go down well with most of them.

 

Release/Pristine, for a while, was the only place a middle level player could engage in the economy for things outside of bulk. New players weren't generally given 80ql gear by vets on day one just to get it out of their stockpile cause no one buys 80ql anymore (II can remember when you could at least get 20-40c for 70-80ql clean items...you nealry cant give it away, because even the noobs already have it from someone else who just gave it to them just to get rid of it). They had market. They had new players who would buy the mid-grade stuff for skilling. I know you all mean well, but giving day one noobs 80ql gear not only hurts the noob in terms of skill gain, it also screws the mid level player looking for a market...and for what, it's not like you made money, you gave it away. Just stop, please. All that gear just ends up in my smelter anyway when i raid their abandoned deed when they leave in 6 months anyway...cause i cant sell 80ql either. Might as well get the Ql iron from it. (Which remmds me, for gods sake GM's can we pleeeeeease melt caste items? What the hell am I supposed to do with a stupid 30 caste item..cant toss in the bin, cant melt them, cant sell them. Used to be able to at least sell to priests for a bit more then token for therm to recaste on and sell themselves..nope, it's gotta be rare now, with runes..and maybe an imbue) Why? becuase of instead of fixing whats broke and making some vets mad, they just added another tier of end game on top of the old broken one...making the disparity between new and old players even larger. It's not enough to have a rare these days becuase they wont fix rare spamming, they just added imbues now, and runes....how about fixing the rare spamming instead so we can close the gap instead of enlarging it?

 

So I am a no. Please not another Pristine/Release. For the love of the game, do what right and screw up the hand over to AWS so we can get another wipe/reset..pleeeease. At this age of this game, if you really want to attract new players, you have to stop catering the vets and get over your fear of losing them,. It's costing you new players. Old players, if worth their sale after all this time, will adapt, or leave and make room in the market for new players.

 

Creating yet another server like Pristine?Release will not bring in new players without a massive media blitz which they don't have the money for and will just be yet another division of of our player base for alt spamming, followed by demands of reunification with eh rest of Freedom, rinse repeat.

Edited by Elisha
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lol ^
--------

Writing this as a person who joined a bit after xana got implemented.. I started on with the pris/rel servers and havent seen better places.. (literally.. never had to check the other servers)

Edited by Finnn

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Honestly, for years people have been screaming from the rooftops for Wurm to get proper advertisement. It goes largely unignored. Damn shame to consider new things like this without that in place. Emails to old players and the occasional article on a gaming website aren't enough.

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I'm actually really curious, because every time someone mentions "wurm is in trouble" the words "lack of advertising" quickly pop up.

 

They're generally followed by people 100% certain that all wurm needs is a good advertising campaign, and everything will be absolutely great.

 

So, to put a direct question to it, why do people think this?  Is there a peer reviewed paper indicating that this is the case?  If so, could I get a link?

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1 hour ago, Finnn said:

lol ^
--------

Writing this as a person who joined a bit after xana got implemented.. I started on with the pris/rel servers and havent seen better places.. (literally.. never had to check the other servers)

My first Toon, Snagletooth was Release. it was freemo so it got lost in time.

My second Toon, Fitch, was Pristine.

My third Toon was Sophrona. It was Release, but do to Yahoo and their shitty email system update a few years back, im locked out of it and the GM's cant help me retrieve it.

My Fourth toon, Elisha, was on Xan.

The rest of my Toons, Reuben, Rufus, Digdug, Popo, Scott, and Simpleton are all Xan. Chubby was born on Release long after merger to check out the then recent tutorial updates. My most recent, Ambercrombie, is Indy, for very much the same reason, to play with the noobie tutorial.

 

 

I can only have one log in here per account...Im supposed to move Fitch over to a different email just to satisfy you?

 

You see my point about alts. You want me to make a separate account for all them just to satisfy you, or do you actually have a counterpoint to anything I said other then which account I logged in on to say it?

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4 minutes ago, Etherdrifter said:

I'm actually really curious, because every time someone mentions "wurm is in trouble" the words "lack of advertising" quickly pop up.

 

They're generally followed by people 100% certain that all wurm needs is a good advertising campaign, and everything will be absolutely great.

 

So, to put a direct question to it, why do people think this?  Is there a peer reviewed paper indicating that this is the case?  If so, could I get a link?

 

It's a lot of wishful thinking. Frankly a mas advertisement would not be in Wurms best interest right now. We do get a regular stream of new players to Wurm. The problem is player retention. Until player retention is dealt with (turnover is always high in MMO's, it cant be eliminated, but it can be brought down to reasonable numbers), advertising to get more people who will also just leave in 6 months is just a waste of time and money.

 

Yes, we need more, new players, but we get those. First issue is,we need them to stay, then we can work on increasing the amount of new players we get.

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On 6/22/2019 at 6:31 AM, atazs said:

Are there any plans for another Release?

 

It's called Elevation this time.  Coming July 11th

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5 hours ago, Elisha said:

were well versed in power skilling

 

I stopped reading on the second line of your book.

 

Wurm is a grindy game.  One who favors those of us that have the time to play hours and hours and hours every single day.  If you want a new server catered to the needs of someone who doesn't want veteran players out-skilling you, not connected to your server..... then your solution is Wurm Unlimited.

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7 hours ago, Elisha said:

The game is old. Very old. There is absolutely nothing you can ever do yo bridge that gap between experienced players and new players. Well, there is one thing. A complete wipe. Why do new players leave> becuase there's nothing here for them.They cant engage in the economy until they get a higher skills, then they find out, even the top end market is completely wrecked and saturated and the only thing that sells, is bulk...stuff that even a freemo can do.

Didn't you say above that it got overcome by alts of people that knew how to powergrind? what would a full reset do differently in regards to bridging the gap?

 

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54 minutes ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

Didn't you say above that it got overcome by alts of people that knew how to powergrind? what would a full reset do differently in regards to bridging the gap?

 

It is in fact the very same thing ,just stylistically nuanced approach.   New toon new server= old toon reset, same outcomes will happen.

 

The spirit at what you are getting at @Elisha, I can get behind that new server isolated can be exploited by old payer for profit not truly giving new player a clean fresh start and in that way P/R was a failure where people got stupid "rich" so to speak off off of it where prices were elevated over rest of freedom due to being isolated.  What is it you are trying to achieve?   You mention several things as valid problems that don't have the same solution.

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9 hours ago, Etherdrifter said:

.. They're generally followed by people 100% certain that all wurm needs is a good advertising campaign, and everything will be absolutely great.

So, to put a direct question to it, why do people think this?  Is there a peer reviewed paper indicating that this is the case?  If so, could I get a link?

 

First, no, there is no peer reviewed paper. It can be disputed - though it is not the right place here - whether economics, much more microeconomics, are a science altogether (or a religion with economists as its clerics), but it isn't the place here to discuss it.

 

Point is that Wurm is virtually invisible in the world of gaming, and that is not good, as Wurm is a niche game, and needs to be known to attract the kind of enthusiasts which will be sucked into the game and stay. There are not that many and never were, but there are some.

 

So all grinds down to cost vs. benefits. CC does not have deep pockets. A typical Wurm prem player account may throw 100 Dollars or bit less Euros per year into the game, some more, some less, and at best two third of it reaches the coffers of CC to make a rough estimate. To make 100k ad expense not a financial loss about 1000 prem players would have to join and stay for over a year. This demonstrates the limits of advertising.

 

Anyway, Wurm needs to be more known and recognized in the world outside.

Edited by Ekcin
clarifying addition
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6 hours ago, Wargasm said:

 

I stopped reading on the second line of your book.

 

Wurm is a grindy game.  One who favors those of us that have the time to play hours and hours and hours every single day.  If you want a new server catered to the needs of someone who doesn't want veteran players out-skilling you, not connected to your server..... then your solution is Wurm Unlimited.

 I don't want a new server, that's the whole point. OP wants a new server ala Release/Pristine. My point, that was failure, and fixes nothing.

 

Your getting a tad defensive, or reading to much into it. I would hope veteran players would have ins and outs on power skilling, or min/max skilling, or whatever you want to call it. Vets on a fresh toon will always skill faster the new player on a fresh toon because they know how. They;ve done it before, and many have done it mutiple times. Thats not a complaint, it's just pointing out the obvious to clarify for a bigger point.

 

4 hours ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

Didn't you say above that it got overcome by alts of people that knew how to powergrind? what would a full reset do differently in regards to bridging the gap?

 

 

In the case of Release/Pristine, it really became an issue when they joined the rest of Freedom. Yes alts skilled up faster then most of the new players, but since they all started the same, they weren't all that much higher, and so the low and mid level players had aplace in the market. Once they joined with Freedom, the new players now had to compete with the older players mains, who were years ahead and with a backlog of supplies ready ship in a moments notice. The point being, new and isolated server solves nothing. It will be mostly made of up of older players who will eventually demand to be joined with the rest of server. Thats where it became an isue and it would be an issue again. So you are once again deviding up even further the community for yet another server we don't need for a purpose that it will not succeed in doing, because it won't stay that way.

 

There is huge difference between two fresh toons and the rate which they skill (which even between two new players or two old players there will still be a difference based on time played) and a old player on a toon that's been skilling for 5-10 years and new player just starting. Ones just slowly falling behind, but overall within that gap, and is filling a market niche. the other is playing a long game of catch up, where there is no middle market because even the older toons have years of stock just sitting around in storage. Just go through the For Sale section and see how many people have so many rares to unload it takes 5 toons to of images to display them all. A new player will never catch up, because their will enver be market anyway. Just one player with a couple hundred rares has more stock to fullfill all of Wurms needs for the next couple years...and there;'s far more then one toon with quantities like that...and we arent even talking bulk yet.

 

 

3 hours ago, Bloodscythe said:

It is in fact the very same thing ,just stylistically nuanced approach.   New toon new server= old toon reset, same outcomes will happen.

 

The spirit at what you are getting at @Elisha, I can get behind that new server isolated can be exploited by old payer for profit not truly giving new player a clean fresh start and in that way P/R was a failure where people got stupid "rich" so to speak off off of it where prices were elevated over rest of freedom due to being isolated.  What is it you are trying to achieve?   You mention several things as valid problems that don't have the same solution.

 

I never said that an isolated server can be exploited. I'm saying it won't stay isolated for very long, which makes the whole purpose mute...and even if they did keep it isolated, it's just that, another further dividing of the player base. Xanadu, despite it being my home, should never have happened. WU should never have happened. Another server is just repeating mistakes, and another isolated server is doubling down on those mistakes.

 

My only point about Release/Pristine being mostly older players was not about exploiting. It was about the uselessness of the concept of an isolated server for new players when it was not mostly new players, but just more alts of older players...which eventually demanded it get joined with the rest of Freedom. And they did, because at the end of the day, it was a failure It was not a special place for new players, it was just another server full of alts. It became stupid to keep it isolated. If anything, they should have just deemed it a failure and nuked them. removal of those two would have made Xanadu a viable concept...at least with the numbers we had at the time.

 

Wurm doesn't not have a problem getting new players, we still get them coming in all the time. Wurm has a retention problem. Every time these these threads come up the focus is always on attracting new players. Need to focus on keeping the ones we get before we worry about getting them in faster. To go back to the point Wargasm and Oblivion missed. two players skilling from 0, one will always skill faster, even if they are both new. So people think the solution is a separate server. Did that, didn't work. It didn't fail because some older players skilled faster. It failed because it it isolated the community, until it didn't, then the the new players got over run with the lats main and their ability to flood a market overnight. It failed because they couldn't keep it isolated, because it separated the community, and the new player draw just wasn't there and because it would eventually crash the economy faster. Why? because PvP.

 

In a player based economy PvE can not support itself.  To keep the economy going things need to go bye bye. Decay can only take so much away. a based economy needs PvP in order to absorb accesses in the economy.  Keeping Release/Pristine isolated from the PvP side of the economy would have created stagntaion far faster then the rest of Freedom, which we are currently experiencing....largely because PvP is dead at the moment...and for some reason they are focusing on Epic...another isolated server with 0 economy instead of Chaos, which is whats needed to revive Freedom's economy.

 

These are third rails no one wants to touch, not the players, not the devs. no one...for obvious reasons.

 

I personally would love a full wipe. I said the though in jest. We all know that will never happen. But that's just it. Thats one thing that would help...alot, but to many players have invested too much time...and alot of money, for things to just go poof. And you cant just do a partial because the established players will just rush over and flood it. You cant isolated because it thins out the playerbase, gains us nothing with new players, and will die rather quickly if it stays isolated. It would if ever done, would have to be all or nothing, and so far and for the forseeable future, it will continue to be nothing, despite being one of the best options, because too many people will refuse to let that happen. Im not poking at them. They have a legitimate stance. 10 years of time and money invested in this game and it all just goes away? Can't honestly say they are the problem, ect. Thats a serious concern to deal with,a dn they have a right to it. So whats another solution? Skill decay. There's another solution. A very good one. One that no one will ever go for. Nope lets abaondon all good ideas that hit at real problems and lets pretend the issue is not enough servers...yea, lets pretend. Thats fixes everything. Maybe we can make another one 5x the size of Xanadu this time, for even less players.

 

"Any solution, as long as it one that doesn't effect me." Too many people coming up with problems that don't exist so they can feel like they solved a problem in order to avoid acknowledging the real problems that would involve solutions that would effect them. Thats all another server, isolated or not, will be. Thats all OP's suggestion is.

Edited by Elisha
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