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8 hours ago, Etherdrifter said:

.. <personal attack on other player removed>

 

8 hours ago, Etherdrifter said:

https://jenn001.game.wurmonline.com/mrtg/paying.html - Proof of decline in existing player base after announcement.  Do note, so far the "doomsaying" has been correct in terms of predicting continued decline.  It also seems it was correct about the state of the game (see Rolf's initial post).

 

There is a decline in playerbase of course. The shares sale and the steam announcement have accelerated it to some extent. It has been stated again and again, though, that such decline is inevitable for a niche game which is virtually invisible outside a relatively small base audience. Still the playerbase is not insignificant at all, and the decision to start on steam is certainly not unjustified and may address that problem without excessive spending on ads.

 

8 hours ago, Etherdrifter said:

Jackal was the case for the hyper-grind "meta" as some people call it ..

Jackal was third after Xanadu and Independence for many weeks, and still often is. Your affection to doomsaying notwithstanding, I would not call it a failure. There are lots of proposals to improve it showing that the community has definitely neither condemned nor abandoned the project. It may be reconsidered especially in terms of skill transfer, and better opportunities for "part time jackalists", and better combat experience for beginners as well as for those working on the front line.

 

8 hours ago, Etherdrifter said:

Read this thread (and others) for existing player opinion as to whether they will go for steam.  So far, it's not looking good according to the forum survey, and most folks I know in-game are prepping to move on.  Could be different for you, but then your evidence is no better than mine there.

 

I know quite a large number of players who don't intend to move onto steam, more exactly practically all I am in ingame contact. Your evidence is fairly pathetic, compare it to all the proposals of "concentrating servers" and so on which regularly receive widespread rejection. A move to steam would mean exactly the same,  abandoning your deeds, the infrastructure, alliances, all skills.

 

8 hours ago, Etherdrifter said:

The steam boom/bust phenomenon is documented.  Each mmorpg gets its server baked in the first week or two, the game then dies down as the next one comes along.  It retains a small share of players, though I have not seen a subscription mmorpg prosper.

 

This is an assertion I can not confirm. I know about a few games going on steam, and the boom period was 6 weeks at minimum, the dying down or evening out period similarly long. What is right is that you need a good peak and if possible many positive reviews countering the ranters (like you, scnr) for a game to establish.

 

What is right is that the first month on steam is very important, and that it is hard for any game to recover from a bad or slow start.

 

8 hours ago, Etherdrifter said:

So far, my only "assumption" is that it will be an existing WO group that will dominate, and that largely relies on the release/pristine observations.

 

Whether they dominate or just contribute, will highly depend on the number of new players, and the acceptance/success of steam WO. As already stated, it is trivial that an experienced player will have advantages in grinding from zero over any newbie. And there may be some dominators or profiteers among those switching to steam or at least opening a second account there. They may be outnumbered by those who just like to assist newcomers instead of suppressing them. And the RMT opportunities in steam are less and less legal compared to original WO.

 

8 hours ago, Etherdrifter said:

Demographic, I will admit, may have overreached.  Most of the folks I know on wurm are either semi retired, or "between jobs".  Could be my sample was just very skewed.

Your statements were simply stupid, pathetic, and offensive, and uninformed altogether. It is trivial that any time consuming game overrepresents groups with more disposable time, so pupils, students, unemployed, and pensionists will be, and freelancers and self employed as well. Generally, tech affine people too.

 

You seem to lack any scientific background. Mind that the potential of the aforementioned groups in the general population is nothing less than small. Pensionists alone are a group equal or larger than the teen/adolescent group in most industrialized societies making up 12-16% of the general populace. Unemployment and underemployment is not low as well in most countries.

 

8 hours ago, Etherdrifter said:

So....  Where is the evidence for the counter point?

Where was any evidence for your points?

 

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9 hours ago, Etherdrifter said:

Jackal was the case for the hyper-grind

 

ok so still nothing other than assumptions about the hyper ultra mega dirty meta grind, do you mean just COMMON KNOWLEDGE?

some people actually spend some time to find out how grinding works, and is it really that suprising that they can do it a little bit faster than a total noob? look at the top accounts on jackal niarja, I dont see anything weird there

btw did you know that jackal skillgain is different than freedom?

 

plz link the dirty tricks I want my body to be strong

 

9 hours ago, Etherdrifter said:

I am sure you can data mine it

 

let me get my pickaxe

 

 

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20 hours ago, Etherdrifter said:

 

Assume that your notion is carried through and a merge is ruled out.  Also assume that some WO players will move over (not many, but some, this is the best case scenario for the model by the way).

 

These WO players are EXCELLENT skillers, they are the diehards who know every dirty trick in the book to skill quickly; most of them lack RL jobs, and most of them are also fairly organised, so they can afford to specialise and skill 24/7.

 

A month passes, the player count drops like a rock (this happens with all steam hosted mmorpgs, it's just market saturation).

 

You are now left with a server where the diehard WO players run the economy (faster skilling and more time to skill), you've killed your original server (if we wanted to play on a dead server, we'd play WU), and absolutely nothing has changed.

 

So, in essence, you are already going to get the scenario you outline as undesirable, the only difference is that you're not going to have as many skilled players around to help people settle in, because they all cut their losses and moved to a legacy themed WU server.

I feel so attacked right now by this post :P

Stop sharing my plans with others on what i wanna do :(

Earlier on page 23 or 22 i read a post from someone who said how you cant grind body stats so get rid of body stats affecting combat id say i beg to differ last 7 days i gained 0.97 body stamina and 0.98 body strength and all that i am doing is i mined out 2 veins of silver 1 vein of gold dug about 45 crates of dirt chipped around 2 bcu's full of bricks made around 500 ribbons this kinda activity is really easy to do spread out throughout the week at a few hours a day
My characteristics are in the 60's now are still rising slowly but steadily  it really isnt hard


The following are 2 seperate things that i wanted to talk about as well all in 1 go

post 2 put into 1


A few pages earlier someone was talking about a shop selling all kinds of mtx although that would be an interesting idea i dont think wurm is ready for that especially with the fact that current jackal store stuff is bland vs exiting and who would want to see a "hey buy this huge axe skin for 350 points(3.50 dollars)" and the skin is your run of the mill huge axe with a blue tint on the metal a cosmetic store will only work if you got a big art team working on purely mtx to sell and not content for the game
Next to that yes selling sleep powder would be interesting but too many people will claim pay to win(they already do) but honestly there are so many ways to grind skills and in the end unless you pvp does it really matter if bob next door buys 50 sleep powder a month for his weekend binge of grinding vs you never doing that? if anything bob might shoot you some fruits of his labors sooner then later if you are on good terms with him so support it

post 3 put into 1
@Retrograde and co this is just my opinion but as stated below i think not using the market place is a mistake for silver purchase and selling(player driven) 

As for selling silver on steam's marketplace its such a wasted opportunity to not think of doing that as you the devs would knock out a big issue we currently have and that is potential scamming off people(happens from time to time) next to that people having to be online to trade
And you might say oh but i only get steam wallet money for it i dont wanna play other games so its useless and to that i say this is where you are wrong for a person like me i buy the mtx in path of exile i have spend over 900 bucks on that game over its lifespan i buy a lot of games on steam (
https://steamdb.info/calculator/76561197995755986/?cc=nz) i have spend over 9000 usd on steam not counting the 1300 in ingame purchases and the 859 in gift purchases
If i could make silver in wo steam and sell it on the market place for steam wallet money id do it as for 1 it would lesson my wallets cries and 2 the money i make wont sit idle in my bank and disappear into upkeep it would be pumped around in the economy it would move around people would buy and sell it newbies who have steam wallet money gifted to them from friends or bought a steam card can buy silver from the marketplace or directly from the steam store page
People would interact with the economy more and it would also draw a certain crowd of players over who would actually benefit the game(those who are trying to make money from wurm) sure that crowd is hated sure you rather not see them but these guys would sit there and mass make bulk items they would grind their toons up to make those items you dont want to make just to get that silver to sell it on the marketplace and buy games or csgo skins to gamble away but in the end of the day wurm is left with 1 a new sub 2 more economy 3 higher player count
 

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3 hours ago, Retrograde said:

We aren't looking at that at this stage. 

we are almost in december. i guess steam wo, at this rate, will launch middle of next or end of year

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22 minutes ago, tamat said:

we are almost in december. i guess steam wo, at this rate, will launch middle of next or end of year

He probably meant that building up a steam wallet is not cc/cg priority - which makes sense. I like the idea of doing their job and wallet right, before spreading love to rmts and alt hoarders. Nothing bad in 2nd but with the aquisition/trade of shares and all happening lately, stable move for the game should matter more than buying a few 'free'(wallet money) copies to bore people in a month.

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14 minutes ago, Finnn said:

He probably meant that building up a steam wallet is not cc/cg priority - which makes sense. I like the idea of doing their job and wallet right, before spreading love to rmts and alt hoarders. Nothing bad in 2nd but with the aquisition/trade of shares and all happening lately, stable move for the game should matter more than buying a few 'free'(wallet money) copies to bore people in a month.

But here is my question wouldnt it be better to have steam marketplace integration ready for launchday and start of with only silver being traded on it with future content maybe added later on? vs 6-1 year down the track when most players would have left?
Going of current history the wurm dev team isnt really business focused on "hey we should grow the player base and introduce ideas that will make us money without pissing off the playerbase" they rather withhold things like the golden mirror for a "future" shop and other items like that instead of letting players buy them sooner

There was talks for a long time about a new shop where we could buy certain cosmetic items(like the golden mirror) and this was talked about time and time again and then because steam news came out this lost all traction and no one is asking about it but to me its like this is the perfect chance to release these items and release them onto steam first as some incentive to go there next to the alure of a fresh start and steam and its store page and marketplace are the ideal locations to setup these new items and get the funds together to make that long promised store for normal wurm

Which is why i hope that they will change their stance from "its currently not something we are thinking of" to "we really should think about this as the possible extra income we can create during our launch window will be a nice boost to revenue" and best of all it wont impact any player in a negative way

edit: i had to add this

Now imagine you got your marketplace setup and the art team makes a bunch of new jackal skins that you can buy with your jackal points but oh look you can now also put them on the marketplace and sell them for a few cents to a few dollars for the popular ones and all the sudden more incentive to go play jackal for the player which in turn means better player numbers and more people engaged with new content which will look good on the dev's side of "is this project a success or not"

You throw the players a bone with stuff like that and they are more willing to engage with trade and content for rewards like that
Sure the current player base most of them are not part of that group who play games  in that manner where they engage with such a market but a majority of steam players do seem to interact with the steam marketplace sooner then later and with a huge number actually actively engaging with it even for shitty games which is still a boost to population numbers and a boost to the economy of wurm as a whole and a boost to revenue income for wurm so how can this not be a good thing for a business?

Edited by wipeout
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Golden-Mirror: I'm personally ok with looks change.. for the character, but gender in the sense of wurm is odd. Never the less at the end of the day.. nobody would give a .. if you want to change into a parrot or a doge.

Given.. at first characters were all the same with 1 model.. than you got to recognize people by their model preset, which became a thing(even though you just read the names in local 99.99% of the time instead).

I wouldn't give a .. about this once the game actually offers a lot more customization on characters that gender is one of a 100 possible changes. (mark my words, until than.. I'd feel cringy seeing an old face with a different gender; it's not like it matters but it's an obvious change that will feel odd somehow) O-K.. dat's about that..

 

BUSINESS-oriented: NO.. I do not believe there's anybody actively working on that.. at all.. other than drawing a line at the end of the month, there's no planning for things(so it seems), as no presence of the game is noted anywhere.. no news, no posts, no 'advertising'(I do not mean .... banners slapped randomly, but rather articles spreading that the game is out there in general from time to time and whenever there's a 'major' update in the game or content).
Devs surely could sell a ...ton of skins and eventually get it right(what people buy mostly, so they provide more of that..), but whenever income starts to dip close to a border events could be a thing to trigger.. selling skins, selling passes to do special events and so on. In the end it's subscription game.. your easter egg or wurm anniversary gift is a UNIQUE sh.. that no f2p can ever get.. special pass to do an event wont be any different.. you pay something to get something in return, seems reasonable.. if you do not want to participate - up to you, it's just business, right?

 

Imagine paying 2-5silver to be able to fight demonic trolls or w/e of that sort.. small change to get mm or other stuff from them as drop, by small change.. get.. you'll get mostly better FS gains.. and have a really ***** tiny chance to get a mm lump or imbue or w/e... TINY dam it.. read it already; said otherwise.. YOU PAY TO HAVE FUN, if you end up making more than you paid for it.. that's a BONUS not a required outcome. (it's called entertainment..)

 

If players love xmas and easter gifts, or anniversary gifts..and prems jump every time this happens.. imagine how much money could be made IF... we were getting this every season for some reason? Or Monthly.. offering a new skin variety to buy?

In the end players are buying these to get the UNIQUE stuff.. not like they have ocd to buy extra premiums for characters during holidays. There are so much money to be made, but they were never the goal.

 

There are cute events that happen and give players all kinds of unique items.. being tools/statuettes/armor of special rarity/metal.. but.. what if.. such were given to grow the player base.. have contests for best done/biggest followage/subs or w/e.. of that sort.. for sites/blogs/streaming content players build.. referral system to bring friends seem sketchy.. but a well thought one.. could bring more income than not.. while providing the inviter with some discount or bonus.

 

-about steam rmt-/wallet building hoarders

NOTHING WRONG ABOUT THIS.. but the game is another business.. main thing is to sell entertainment, not to provide a platform for somebody to profit.. (like certain few metas in the game that trigger me a TINY bit)

 

-future shop-

I'd expect it to be ready.. even partially.. personally I'd like golden mirror to be a $ exclusive item.. if you want to look differently.. spend the RL money.. for the rest on the shop silver generated in the game or bought from the shop should be perfectly FINE. #JustIMO #NoReasonToHate

 

"its currently not something we are thinking of"

I STILL BELIEVE Retro meant that rmt wallets are not main priority for the moment.
IF anybody wants a statement exactly on that question.. I suggest to ask the right question and wait for response that the plans are if you care about that.

 

I do not plan to go and 'rule' Steam-WO with what I know about the current game or 'metas'. Can't care less.

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1 hour ago, tamat said:

we are almost in december. i guess steam wo, at this rate, will launch middle of next or end of year

Correct. They said in valrei international 90 that they aim for mid 2020

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1 hour ago, Jore said:

Correct. They said in valrei international 90 that they aim for mid 2020

still nothing solid, just thread of we are "working" on this or that, but not showing anything, give us ideas!

 

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14 minutes ago, tamat said:

still nothing solid, just thread of we are "working" on this or that, but not showing anything, give us ideas!

 

Check out the Valrei international for what we are working on. Lots to do in the game! 

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Edit:  You know what.  No.

 

Enough is enough.

 

I'm not going to change any minds by stating the obvious and pointing out flaws in arguments; and there isn't the capaciaty being shown here to change my mind.

 

@EkcinI really hope you're right, and I am wrong.  I honestly do.  But this post is my final point on the matter.

 

Wurm online steam, as it stands, will fail to compete in any meaningful way with wurm unlimited.  Unless it revokes the premium play model, it can in no way compete other than being a "free to try" demo of the WU experience.

 

It has alienated the a large proportion of the playerbase who now feel betrayed.  It betrays the one advantage wurm online had over wurm unlimited, that of promised "progress permanency" (a keystone in long term wurm play).  Regardless of semantics, this is de-facto revoked, and it has not been well recieved.

 

I suspect we'll see it down to numbers below the current wurm server peak (of around 300) within 3--4 months.  Again, I really hope I am wrong, but years of experience and a simple look at the data are arguing that I am right.

 

I'll refer to this point again if I am proven right , and will formally redact it if I am wrong.

Edited by Etherdrifter
Removal of argument, no point since no progress is being made either way and the name calling is just going to get worse..
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3 hours ago, Retrograde said:

Check out the Valrei international for what we are working on. Lots to do in the game! 

this is steam wo thread not normal wo...

add the dates to the updates on valrei thread!

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^ probably wants a section/paragraph with steam cluster progression.. have/want planned stuff, what's have been worked on and what's done, etc, such stuff..

--edit

something like keenan's aws server progression, yet.. probably not that 'detailed'

Edited by Finnn
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It's not a specific project to incorporate wo into steam. Our focus is on improving wo and continuing to work on wo, with the ui, qol and polishing. 

 

That's our process for going onto steam, getting the game to a point where we can be happy launching it. 

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5 hours ago, Etherdrifter said:

 

 

Where are the dirty tricks? We're still waiting

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On 11/16/2019 at 7:11 PM, Etherdrifter said:

 

"Truth is proof" - Here are my observations.  They are my rationale.

https://jenn001.game.wurmonline.com/mrtg/paying.html - Proof of decline in existing player base after announcement.  Do note, so far the "doomsaying" has been correct in terms of predicting continued decline.  It also seems it was correct about the state of the game (see Rolf's initial post).

 

 

 

Just pointing something out:

 

1) This is the 2019 image you linked "proving" player sub counts plummeted following the Steam announcement

paying-year.png   

 

2) This is the 2018 snapshot for the same months, one year previously

paying-year.png

 

do we notice a trend?  Playercounts go UP for Christmas, then DOWN increasingly till we hit the fall "back to school" slump.

 

 

Wurm's subscriptions have been overall declining at a fairly even rate (maybe 500-800 a year?)  EVER since they first jacked up subscription rates in 2013, when it had hit a peak of 6500 players. Till then it was always going UP UP UP by 500-1000-1500 a year. After that it started declining at a somewhat more gradual pace. Some people eventually would come back, many never did.   Ever since then, it has an annual pattern of UP for a major event such as: Christmas Gifts, Multistory Houses, Bridges, Xanadu. Then it returns back to the decline that it started in 2013, picking up speed as we near fall and another new school year. 

 

Even the release of Wurm Unlimited in late 2015, predicted by doomsayers to be "the final nail in the coffin", did not deviate much from this overall trend.  

 

 

Edited by Brash_Endeavors
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"if all the new players go to steam then who am I going to flex my $300 10-year old account on? I demand compensation!" - Everyone in this whiny boomer thread

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9 hours ago, Brash_Endeavors said:

 

 

Just pointing something out:

 

1) This is the 2019 image you linked "proving" player sub counts plummeted following the Steam announcement

paying-year.png   

 

2) This is the 2018 snapshot for the same months, one year previously

paying-year.png

 

do we notice a trend?  Playercounts go UP for Christmas, then DOWN increasingly till we hit the fall "back to school" slump.

 

 

Wurm's subscriptions have been overall declining at a fairly even rate (maybe 500-800 a year?)  EVER since they first jacked up subscription rates in 2013, when it had hit a peak of 6500 players. Till then it was always going UP UP UP by 500-1000-1500 a year. After that it started declining at a somewhat more gradual pace. Some people eventually would come back, many never did.   Ever since then, it has an annual pattern of UP for a major event such as: Christmas Gifts, Multistory Houses, Bridges, Xanadu. Then it returns back to the decline that it started in 2013, picking up speed as we near fall and another new school year. 

 

Even the release of Wurm Unlimited in late 2015, predicted by doomsayers to be "the final nail in the coffin", did not deviate much from this overall trend.  

 

 

alts for chrismas gifts, also that dont mean players pay sub, just say total prem players => can pay alts with silver and now are 2s for each one

 

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On 11/17/2019 at 2:38 PM, tamat said:

we are almost in december. i guess steam wo, at this rate, will launch middle of next or end of year

We still havent heard any concrete details regarding Steam WO, yet they said they would launch it early next year.

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7 hours ago, MightySheep said:

"if all the new players go to steam then who am I going to flex my $300 10-year old account on? I demand compensation!" - Everyone in this whiny boomer thread

Compensation for your entertainment? How much are you paying and to who?

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2 hours ago, tamat said:

alts for chrismas gifts, also that dont mean players pay sub, just say total prem players => can pay alts with silver and now are 2s for each one

 

True.. showing RL money paying customers and separated silver in-game paying.. also the trash tossed 2s alts for events/cermons/shenanigans shown in 3 groups might change the picture a lot.

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Does Wurm on Steam gonna have separate team of GM's or it will be the same crew?

 

You know, in case if someone got stuck in or under the bridge ; ).

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Can we put this cat back in the box it leaped out of?  My ability to enjoy this game is seriously compromised because of the looming fear I'm wasting my time "enjoying" this game.  This statement shouldn't make allot of damn sense but it sure as hell does every time I read it twice.

 

Lets forget Rolph EVER announced this whole Steam release thingy and when/if it happens I can fantastically implode then.  I won't have much time to grumble because I'll be too busy getting that new account on Steam up and running for a fresh new land-and-skilling grab, aiming to be "that guy" selling Hi-quality shovels to the horde of new gold-miners.   New servers are just irresistible.  I'm sure it was with great compassion and good intent in him releasing this info, but in hindsight it created a terrible dark cloud following me around like that pathetic character in  Charlie Brown.  I would seriously like to be the Ostrich with his head in the sand on this one.

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There will always be somebody with better skills than you or having several characters being able to do what you alone can do. Normal in mmos, in wurm it just takes alts to compensate the time and fatigue limits.

All you need is the knowledge how to grind.. rest is.. doing it on your own or account sharing, not sure if steam allows that.. but it will be still done.. by some merchants to reach the goals of being 1st to sell 'decent high ql items'.

 

All in all in 2-3 months none of that will matter and you can be on/near top on your own, if not.. well you missed some hype wagon and knowledge or.. RL have that rope tight around your hands unable to play that much.

Steam blah.. idea there is to get new players not to ***** the existing cluster/s and build a new kingdom at Gaben's platform. Hopefully Gaben land is a good lifeboat for fresh income, and actual initial idea eventually goes as planned.. wtf happens.. will happen anyway.. pointless to speculate.. time will tell the one story.

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