Steam Launch: Why always splitting the community?

[zeeph 37]

Always when efforts are taken to get somehow more player to the game, or old players to return, theres the idea to make something seperated from the core islands and i rly disklike it.

 

I started wurm on the epic server and i still have a friend who dont want to join me on the freedom server, because he will have lower skills here and feels like home on his epic island, which means he doesnt play wurm at all, because epic is dead.

When Wurm Unlimmited launched, the already low population on epic dropped even more, to the point where only a handfull (max) of ppl where playing there.

That made me quit wurm online. It took me over a year to get comfortable with the idea to start again with no skills.

Then Jackal launched, but no surprise, it was seperated again. The community got splitted for a little while again, but luckily people got bored there pretty quick.

You could have add a interesting and challenging pve island, or prolly create areas on the existing islands with something new...

 

When i heard about the steam launch i was kinda happy, but even when i made  my experience before, i didnt thought about a new split again. But here we go...

 

New people will come and it will give WO a boost. I hope it will get a lot of positive reviews there. Some people from the existing playerbase on freedom will do a restart there, like it seams. So again freedom server will feel more empty for a while...

 

Why doing this split again, what was the thought about that? I mean give players from freedom, who start there again, a week and they will dominate the market with high ql items. On pve servers only the economy can make a new player have a bit less great experience, because they cant sell their semi good items, for what they grinded.

 

Also before launching on steam a few parts of wo should be reworked/improved. Like the fighting animations should be completed.

Look at spear fighting, its more like spear swinging, what feels really weird. Pretty much every other game with first/third person has a proper animation set for that.

Taming feels useless and bland (beside mounts). Pets are very weak, cant be trained or given usefull commands to them, beside attack, or move a few tiles. The attack command only works if you dont get suprised. If you get surprised you have to disengage first, what is super annoying and if u fight on foot almost impossible to do. Beside that you get less fs skill, what is one of the main reason why ppl dont use them in pve i guess. Or the squishyness, idk. 

 

Some people like playing a mage. We have our priests for that. Thanks to the dev who put so much effort in the priest rework and i thank again that he was rly listening to the community, but whats missing, is that people cant use their spells for pve fighting. I mean how much expensive gems you would have to use, to kill only a single mob with magic!? The pve damage should be raised by a huge amount.

 

 

 

[elentari 2,660]

WO sadly has had a history of no advertising to bring in new players. Pretty much the entire playerabse either heard about WO from a friend or just googled "interesting/good sandbox games".

 

There were mistakes made by management over the years. I won't delve into them, it's pointless now.  The steam launch is one last ditch effort to bring in new blood if WO is to survive. The reality is, if most people start on Steam, they will most likely remain there. I can't see WO having any sustainability plan, perhaps that is the intent of it. Just like  WU got the plug pulled , support wise, or how Epic was neglected for years, honestly I think the general unspoken plan is to launch Wurm on steam, WO will slowly bleed up players, then whatever accounts remain in WO will get transffered (copied) to the steam servers. At that point the market will be consolidated with average/a few high skills on the steam servers.

 

The impact of a few players from WO coming to steam will be minor at best. The market won't be affected that much.

In a way, it will consolidate the player base but first it will bleed out WO of players like WU did. That's just my general estimation of how things seem to be going. Might be wrong. Steam might be a failure. Who knows?

Edited June 23, 2020 by elentari

[Ekcin 2,407]

I fail to necessarily see the effects described. Ok, we shall see. To my observation, the recent WO population is fairly sedentiary, sticking to their skills, their deeds, their alliances, their projects, and their routines and trade interconnections.

 

Certainly, some will mothball their deeds for a while to switch over, or at least start an alt on the new servers to get an impression of the new world (I am not sure for myself whether I can withstand the seduction to waste a bit of time there 😎 ).  And especially PvP players will enjoy fresh blood to spill for a while (my personal prediction is that PvP will experience a short lived renaissance only, though I would hope for the contrary).

 

On the other hand, if the steam move is successful, certainly players from the new audience will be curious about an established cluster, with the opportunity to sail from one server to the other, to participate in community events, to tap into a host of high level crafters, builders, and miners, and an abundance of tools and materials.

 

It will depend on the overall participation from the steam audience which tendency will prevail.

[Brash_Endeavors 4,735]

2 hours ago, elentari said:

 but first it will bleed out WO of players like WU did. 

 

 

This is false and keeps getting repeated over the years until people seem to start convincing themselves of it.  You have been here long enough to know Wurm history better.

 

WO was losing players well before the announcement of Wurm Unlimited. The drop in population after WU was no more severe than the declining population in the period before anyone ever knew of WU. Yes, some people left WO for WU -- some people always leave WO. Some came back, some came back bringing new friends they met in WU, some in WU switched to WO because of trying WU first. Some continued paying for subs and deeds in WO while they were ALSO playing in WU (and paying for that, too). But gradually the WO population continued to decline after WU just like it was declining *before* WU.  A lot of the decline  actually started when they first jacked up subscription prices. Some of it was a general apathy after the opening of Xanadu and the ending of "new" stuff.  Many players, like myself, had our own personal reasons for leaving WO. All of those added up, and they existed before WU was ever announced. 

 

The only thing that has reliably boosted player numbers -- besides short term spurts from holiday+loyalty gifts, a global pandemic, or a major content update, was  the introduction of a new server. Wurm players adore new servers, and so did Rolf.

 

Too many new servers, too fast? Probably yeah. It's not so much that it was too many, as they just came too fast. Two new servers in 2011, three in 2012!  But they were needed as back then Wurm was bursting at the seams. Xanadu had kind of shocked me, coming so soon on the heels of Deliverance, Exodus, Celebration, Pristine and Release. Maybe they could have been spread out more, maybe no more than one new server every 18 months or something for starters, but they ALL did in fact boost income, at least shorterm. After Xanadu however, the sheen of a new server started to wear thin. What could Rolf do now to generate income, with subs declining yet again? 

 

He introduced WU, and it pretty much saved WO's ass. Rolf, who knows the actual numbers better than anyone here, said last fall that WU was in fact a success, not a failure. It brought in a lot of initial new money that gave WO time to weather out the next five years. Steamspy estimates as many as a half million people bought a copy of WU over the years. Of course, once it started getting discounted to 99 cent bundles, the income revenue dried up. WU sold what it could and then it lost some of its allure. It really has little to no "value" to CodeClub any more. It served its purpose.  But in the meantime, it introduced Wurm to a new generation of players, many of whom eventually graduated WU and moved onto WO. WU also remained a haven for people addicted to Wurm but struggling to justify paying Code Club a monthly sub, especially given how many people are hurting in the modern world economy. Rich get richer, poor get poorer, at accelerating paces.  If nothing else, WU is a blessing just as a "poor man's Wurm."  Overall, WU had many more healthy impacts on WO than negative ones. Don't forget -- the game was bleeding players before WU. WU injected money that helped it survive another five years. That period of WU "helping" WO is ending now, which is why staff made the possibly callous business decision to cut their losses and walk away from WU. But it was, in the end, an issue of survival. Wurm has always been about survival. 

 

 I am not sure what the staff situation is like right now, but when Rolf announced WU, he said they were down to five staff. I am assuming that includes Enki and server network people as well as active "developers". Since then, I might be wrong but it *feels* like the staff is  larger. The content updates are certainly more meaty in the post-WU era, which has helped maintain WO populations better than would have been the case otherwise. 

 

It's been many years since Xanadu, many years since WU. I imagine that now Code Club is starting to feel the strain of lowered income again.

 

Will the new Steam-Wurm launch and new server buy Wurm another five years like WU and Xanadu did? Possibly -- a lot of existing player base will continue to pay deed upkeeps, maybe even premmed subs, on the old servers even as they frolic on the new one and buy up goodies there too. Will veterans quickly dominate the economy on the new server? Of course -- many of them have been playing Wurm agressively on a daily basis for ten years. However, it will be mitigated somewhat by the fact they can no longer as easily churn out level 90 miners and blacksmiths and woodcutters and PVP fighters, to sell to other people. THAT will actually help the new server economy quite a lot. Eventually, a certain number of veterans will drift back to the older servers again, back to the deeds they love the most and the characters they have played the longest. The fact they cannot flood the new server market with another batch of hyper levelled RMT marketable characters, will give the "real" new people a chance to catch up a little. 

 

And, as has happened before, and as will likely happen again -- Wurm has bought itself another two, four, six years of survival.  Long Live Wurm, may she never finally fail as have most other MMOs of her age.   She's done what it takes to get through, even when older and bigger games have gone under.  She's a survivor. Do i sometimes doubt Rolf's judgment? Often! However, Wurm is still here when most games from that generation are dead. Rolf apparently DOES know what he is doing, who woulda thought.

 

Anyway, please stop this nonsense of WU killed WO.  It's not true and it's never been true, it just makes a good story.

 

WU was just another chapter in Wurm's survival history.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 23, 2020 by Brash_Endeavors

[elentari 2,660]

I don't think anyone really believes WU killed WO. But some players did leave for it, to each his own reasons.

 

My biggest worry is that after the Steam launch, many from WO will go to steam and never come back to the legacy servers. Some just might want a fresh start to get that feeling of playing WO for the first time. Asking your neighbor who's a mason for bricks and skills, while you offer your carpentry expertise, that sort of thing. Hell. I'll probably be playing on steam as well instead of WO because I want that feeling again.

 

My personal opinion is about player influx to WO. Servers will be kept separate from steam, we know this. So how will the player influx from WO look like in say a year? I hope we'll get more players. I have nothing but the desire to see every server populated again, to say hello to neighbours and have fun again with random events made by players.

 

There's also the flipside. People coming in to Wurm from Steam might just stay there and WO will simply not get new players. Which we all know what that means.

 

I don't doubt WU was a financial success for CCAB's coffers. But I'm not talking from the perspective of an owner, or a dev, I'm talking from the perspective of a player who misses having many neighbours around to have fun with. Call me "spoiled" for playing for many years in a large alliance where at any time there were 20-30 names (in total I believe the alliance had 300 people at one point) bantering and having fun. It was a painful thing to see those people leave and fewer and fewer names joining.

 

I hope I'm wrong. I hope in a year we have 3000 players at least logged on at any hour of the day. Both on steam and the old servers.

[Brash_Endeavors 4,735]

55 minutes ago, elentari said:

 There's also the flipside. People coming in to Wurm from Steam might just stay there and WO will simply not get new players. Which we all know what that means... I'm talking from the perspective of a player who misses having many neighbours around to have fun with...

 

It's not the end of the world if the new server becomes the MAIN server of WO for the next couple of years, and the old servers are eclipsed and overshadowed, mostly nostalgia and people keeping touch with old friends and old memories. At some point they will likely join together all the servers (I hope not for 2-3 years), and at that stage NewServer becomes no more of a big deal than Xanadu-vs-Indy-vs-Celebration. 

 

I wouldn't over worry. I think it is more an optimistic than pessimistic change.  If it means the very survival of Wurm itself -- and it may very well mean that -- it is worth it.

 

So many good MMOs gone forever Asheron's Call, Dark Age of Camelot, Star Wars Galaxies, Anarchy Online, Chronicles of Spellborn, Tabula Rasa, City of Heroes. Probably 20 to 40 others. What would their players have been willing to accept, to have some of those last just a few years longer?

 

Yet Wurm survives. She does what she needs to get by, even if it costs her a little of her innocence and shine each time, and leaves her with a few more half-bitter "exes". She'll just add a bit more rogue and a new color of lipstick, brighten the roots some, shine those dancing shoes, and maybe she'll be good for another 3, 5, 10 years. We'll see!   She'll never be a young debutante,  the belle of the ball, that ship sailed long ago.  She dates back to 2003ish, long before you or I ever heard of her. And with any luck, she may be around long after we've left. 

 

 

__________________________________________________

 

*edit: I guess Dark Age of Camolet is actually still around. I was kind of surprised after looking it up  It used to be called one of 'The Big Three' in MMOs. Thousands of players!  Now it is probably smaller than Wurm? Maybe not. But they both are still here and hey that is what counts.

 

  

Edited June 23, 2020 by Brash_Endeavors

[Etherdrifter 2,518]

There is a lot of assumption here.

 

1.  Wurm steam will be a success

2.  The cluster join will occur before the original servers enter the "cluster collapse" phase of mmorpg death (we were there about 6 months ago, but we've pulled back after player gods were nixed), at which point they'll be "ghost towns"

3.  High skill players won't exist on the steam server before the join (hint: they probably will, because $_$), so why go explore a lootless ghost town when you can enjoy home comforts?

4.  Player loss to the new steam server will be offset by the player gain from steam (short term yes, long term probably not)

5.  Players on an empty server will keep playing (edited in)

 

My personal hypothesis on this matter is well known (the original cluster is *palmed*), but I'm holding out hope that when the old servers die they'll let us transfer ourselves over with full skills intact.

Edited June 23, 2020 by Etherdrifter

[Jeston 316]

1 hour ago, Brash_Endeavors said:

So many good MMOs gone forever Asheron's Call, Dark Age of Camelot, Star Wars Galaxies, Anarchy Online, Chronicles of Spellborn, Tabula Rasa, City of Heroes. Probably 20 to 40 others. What would their players have been willing to accept, to have some of those last just a few years longer?

 

*edit: I guess Dark Age of Camolet is actually still around. I was kind of surprised after looking it up  It used to be called one of 'The Big Three' in MMOs. Thousands of players!  Now it is probably smaller than Wurm? Maybe not. But they both are still here and hey that is what counts.

 

  

 

 

Yeah there is not many real MMOs floating around anymore, more specifically sandbox which is nearly dead fully. 

[elentari 2,660]

Well, hope you're right. Guess either way we'll find out. Ultima online is still around. Obviously not as popular but surviving as well. And in mmo terms, that almost pleistocene age in 2020.

[Kelody 333]

2 hours ago, elentari said:

My biggest worry is that after the Steam launch, many from WO will go to steam

There is 1 major fallacy to this and many similar comments. The new server are WO servers. Population may shift from older servers to new ones, economies may fluctuate, but the new server is just as much a WO server as the freedom cluster. Any income to CC from new cluster is the same as income on older clusters.

 

Why do so many people view this as a WO vs Steam argument? Or an end to WO argument?

 

  

4 hours ago, zeeph said:

The pve damage should be raised by a huge amount.

Have you ever tried a priest nuke in solo combat? They may be expensive and have long timers, but they are quite effective.

Edited June 23, 2020 by Kelody

[zeeph 37]

11 minutes ago, Kelody said:

Have you ever tried a priest nuke in solo combat? They may be expensive and have long timers, but they are quite effective.

 

Priest nuke?

[Kelody 333]

Fire Pillar, ice pillar, fireheart...

[Maiya 490]

5 hours ago, zeeph said:

 

Why doing this split again, what was the thought about that?

 

 

Money...Money....Money....new money comes in since all playing there pay premium to be able to rais after 20 

[atazs 965]

Jackal wasn't seperate though was it? You could go there on your current character, and everything you did there, would in the end, contribute to your character when it was shut down. 

[atazs 965]

7 hours ago, elentari said:

WO sadly has had a history of no advertising to bring in new players. Pretty much the entire playerabse either heard about WO from a friend or just googled "interesting/good sandbox games".

 

There were mistakes made by management over the years. I won't delve into them, it's pointless now.  The steam launch is one last ditch effort to bring in new blood if WO is to survive. The reality is, if most people start on Steam, they will most likely remain there. I can't see WO having any sustainability plan, perhaps that is the intent of it. Just like  WU got the plug pulled , support wise, or how Epic was neglected for years, honestly I think the general unspoken plan is to launch Wurm on steam, WO will slowly bleed up players, then whatever accounts remain in WO will get transffered (copied) to the steam servers. At that point the market will be consolidated with average/a few high skills on the steam servers.

 

The impact of a few players from WO coming to steam will be minor at best. The market won't be affected that much.

In a way, it will consolidate the player base but first it will bleed out WO of players like WU did. That's just my general estimation of how things seem to be going. Might be wrong. Steam might be a failure. Who knows?

You seem to be confused.

 

There is no such thing as steam servers and there is no exclusive content on steam for anyone.

 

I will be playing on the new servers WITHOUT STEAM.

 

Edited June 23, 2020 by atazs

[Zaidonia 10]

hello zeeph,

i understand your concern about wurm online splitting. i also thought that the epic-cluster was such a bad thing, because there still was/is the chaos/wild server and so i found that these cluster wasnt needed. the same thing was with xanadu and the other islands. indie still had so much free space which wasnt used.

 

to be harsh with that: take a look around in the forum and you will see alot of threads about wanting new server!

 

about the fight-system: dont forget that wurm online is special in that. it isnt wow or another grinder where you level up for becoming stronger. here in wurm you have to grind the skill and raise it up for that. and that isnt an easy task.....

[Object 281]

On 6/23/2020 at 12:01 PM, atazs said:

You seem to be confused.

 

There is no such thing as steam servers and there is no exclusive content on steam for anyone.

 

I will be playing on the new servers WITHOUT STEAM.

 

 and I'm sure there will be a ton of people looking forward to the advantages that come with having steam as the launcher instead of being at the mercy of the standalone client actually updating properly.

 

Do you have any idea how many people quit purely because they can't get it installed...

Edited June 24, 2020 by Object

[Ekcin 2,407]

46 minutes ago, Object said:

Do you have any idea how many people quit purely because they can't get it installed...

No. I have no idea how to manage not to get it installed, other than under <censored> accidential conditions of hard- and software I read about from time to time, and those can hit steam as well as their support forums demonstrate. I fail to see that it requires a master in CS to install, especially with the "new" (now not new anymore for quite a time) launcher.  Even the JNLP was no rocket science.

Edited June 24, 2020 by Ekcin

[TheTrickster 2,284]

It looks like this may be "drain" from the existing servers, but as there are only 2 new ones to pick from, it would seem that there will instead be a concentration of existing that choose to go over in addition to however many new players start.

[christopher 207]

2 things install is a pain and should be easyer , and ive asked around and people want the amazing real life grafics is what gets them in 

[Whane 156]

On 6/23/2020 at 1:30 AM, zeeph said:

Why doing this split again, what was the thought about that?

 

I can't answer for the Wurm staff but I get the impression that they did their homework, or already know from experience, (or both) that adding new servers often boosts the total population and renews buzz. This is necessary for increasing sales... which is necessary for keeping WO alive... which is necessary for you to be able to continue playing. 

[Cayce 235]

I always read that so many players playing on the current servers will hop over to the new servers once WO launches on Steam... and while I have seen some posts about it, it have not been that many 😮 On the contrary, there was a recent Thread were it looks like most people will stay on the current servers: 

Where do you all get the impression from that many current players will leave the "old" servers? I mean, I know that the forum is not representive, I'm just curious if it will really be that many experienced players joining (other than returning players).

[Brash_Endeavors 4,735]

 

 

1 hour ago, Cayce said:

I always read that so many players playing on the current servers will hop over to the new servers once WO launches on Steam... and while I have seen some posts about it, it have not been that many 😮 On the contrary, there was a recent Thread were it looks like most people will stay on the current servers: 

Where do you all get the impression from that many current players will leave the "old" servers? I mean, I know that the forum is not representive, I'm just curious if it will really be that many experienced players joining (other than returning players).

 

 

This is where you discover how misleading polls can look, depending on how the questions and answers are phrased.

 

Although 44.74% have vowed to stay only on the old servers, that looks like a majority simply because alternative answers got split across separate responses.

• 16.67% left Wurm years ago but are coming back for the new server.
• 14.04% currently play but are switching to the new server.
• 16.67% plan to play on both servers. (ie, they are at least rolling up a character on the new server)
• 7.89 gave a "funny"  response.

 

All told, disregarding the comedians, that means 47.38 percent of past and current players, intend to at least give the new server a try.  

 

Now, no one really knows who will stay on that new server, versus going back to their old characters, versus truly playing both.   A lot probably depends on what all their friends do. It may be 3-6 months for a clear pattern to settle. But in the meantime:  47.38 percent >  44.75 percent.   Most wurm players literally won't know what they will do longterm, until they see what everyone else does longterm.  

 

But in the short term, the poll you linked clearly shows:  MOST past and current Wurm players intend to at least give the new server a shot.  What happens after that is anyone's guess.

 

 

Edited June 25, 2020 by Brash_Endeavors

[Etherdrifter 2,518]

1 hour ago, Brash_Endeavors said:

 

All told, disregarding the comedians, that means 47.38 percent of past and current players, intend to at least give the new server a try.  

 

 

47.38 OF RESPONDANTS intend to at least give the new server a try.  Do not conflate the vocal minority of the forum (i.e. the respondants) with the rest of the wurm population.

[Jore 338]

21 minutes ago, Etherdrifter said:

47.38 OF RESPONDANTS intend to at least give the new server a try.  Do not conflate the vocal minority of the forum (i.e. the respondants) with the rest of the wurm population.

I mean it's just a poll. It goes without saying that it's not completely accurate, but the 100 some responses does give a general idea considering wurms current population lol. There's little reason for current players to not give the new servers a try; even if you don't stay, it's not like you lose anything. Join with some friends and screw around for a fun evening, then back to freedom.

Edited June 25, 2020 by Jore