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Hots

Western freedom isles time?

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Without a doubt the biggest peaks of Wurms existence occured during the NFI+Steam release, hundreds and hundreds of deeds were created, silvers purchased and premium for many new accounts. With quite a bit of talk about how Wurm profits/pays for its continued development I'm surprised this hasn't been brought up too much.

When NFI hit many old wurm players returned and many discovered wurm for the first time through steam who likely quit not too long after due to the numerous problems that plagued the server launch+high populations, I dare say another fresh cluster would peak the interests of as many, if not more than last time. With some lessons having been learned it would go smoother as well.

 

This would no doubt create a huge cash flow for Wurm again because few can resist new lands to explore.
 

This plus more effort with store bought skins for items, might generate the profits the investors need to see to continue interest in Wurm.

The negatives obviously being the current situation with SFI+NFI and seperate clusters, ghost town servers, splitting the player base up even further, etc. which I'm curious to know how people would try to fix if there is a fix at all.

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Historically speaking, opening new clusters only brings a few players in the short term, but splinters the playerbase even more in the long run. It doesn't do much really. Look at SFI how it is right now. Or even Epic. Elevation had what, 3 resets by now? It brought a few players back but then it went back to 4-5 people online on average. And I'm not even gonna touch how NFI was launched, I think a lot of missed opportunities were there like reminding people that SFI had huge swathes of land to settle for new players. The fact that some players engaged in propaganda for new players like "I don't wanna go to SFI, the big bag meanies there have all the markett cornered and will charge me an arm and a leg for a horse..." -> despite the fact that NFI has prices 2x or 3x higher than SFI.

 

There is no fix for splintering the playerbase except adding individual server mechanics to every server to truly make them unique so they repopulate. Mechanics like improved fighting bonus on Deliverance, or improved mount speed on Xanadu (makes sense since it's just a large server), improved smithing bonus on Release, etc would basically add some more identity to each server and give people a reason to play on each or visit others.

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This game needs new servers and clusters as much as a monkey needs a tit on its back.

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+1 for new servers, since it's pretty much only way to get activity short term spike without too much effort. Right now it looks like all the current "effort" that being made is just being waste of time with negative impact or no impact.

43 minutes ago, Beewolf said:

This game needs new servers and clusters as much as a monkey needs a tit on its back.

I agree. But in my opnion, what this game needs is more players, fresh and relevant ideas and enthusiasthic developers. Currently there's no way we are getting more players any other way but quite the oposite.

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1 hour ago, Tor said:

I agree. But in my opnion, what this game needs is more players, fresh and relevant ideas and enthusiasthic developers. Currently there's no way we are getting more players any other way but quite the oposite.

not sure fresh servers would bring back as mutch players as when they released NFI, mostly becouse i think steam was the main reasons for that rather then fresh servers.

 

More servers would just mean more empty space.

My vote goes to blow up the old servers and make a new start with 4-5 new servers,

 

I also dont think theres many ways for wurm to increase the playerbase, people this days goes for more modern games.

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Is this a shitpost? Splitting the community even more for a short term gain in cash flow is terrible for the long term health of the game. The last thing the game needs is more servers, and that was true before NFI was a thing.

 

Besides, I'm still waiting for the eastern freedom isles VR exclusive cluster.

Edited by Merc

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Man, I'd love new servers to explore. 

 

fwiw it doesn't really split the community unless no new people come in, just like NFI didn't split the community, thousands of new players came to the server. 

 

If there's 50 people and you open a new island for them and 25 go over, that's splitting the community. If there's 50 people, you open a new island and another 50 come in, you have collectively added to the community. 

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What is be like Rolf let's first of all do worm Unlimited and make you cash grab then let's go ahead and do Steam and get another cash grab and then let's sell how to whatever chest for 300,000 bucks. Nah we have plenty of islands to explore plenty of space and these people whine about not coming to Xanadu there's tons of space up here and the lag is pretty much been taken care of to be honest.

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No.

 

Actually, no.

 

This will only speed up Wurm's demise.    

 

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On 5/31/2023 at 11:53 AM, Hots said:

Without a doubt the biggest peaks of Wurms existence occured during the NFI+Steam release, hundreds and hundreds of deeds were created, silvers purchased and premium for many new accounts. With quite a bit of talk about how Wurm profits/pays for its continued development I'm surprised this hasn't been brought up too much.

When NFI hit many old wurm players returned and many discovered wurm for the first time through steam who likely quit not too long after due to the numerous problems that plagued the server launch+high populations, I dare say another fresh cluster would peak the interests of as many, if not more than last time. With some lessons having been learned it would go smoother as well.

 

This would no doubt create a huge cash flow for Wurm again because few can resist new lands to explore.
 

This plus more effort with store bought skins for items, might generate the profits the investors need to see to continue interest in Wurm.

The negatives obviously being the current situation with SFI+NFI and seperate clusters, ghost town servers, splitting the player base up even further, etc. which I'm curious to know how people would try to fix if there is a fix at all.

Explore EPIC

Tiles per player count seems healthy, nobody in local usually, you'll have a blast,

on top you get a few roads and plenty of shore spare to deed, take all the already terraformed land as bonus to not waste time doing the same.

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On 5/31/2023 at 11:37 PM, Archaed said:

Man, I'd love new servers to explore. 

 

fwiw it doesn't really split the community unless no new people come in, just like NFI didn't split the community, thousands of new players came to the server. 

 

If there's 50 people and you open a new island for them and 25 go over, that's splitting the community. If there's 50 people, you open a new island and another 50 come in, you have collectively added to the community. 

how many new people stayed in the game?

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-1. Adding new servers to increase playercounts is a cheap trick band-aid that works for a few months and then dies off again.

 

There are many ideas on this forum that would help to improve playercounts. For the new server vibe, I'd rather see something like jackal/challenge servers (or a variation on them) done again, meaning that you get to experience a new server and a fresh start for a while, but can always hop back through a portal to a (still populated) main cluster.

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On 5/31/2023 at 10:13 AM, elentari said:

adding individual server mechanics to every server to truly make them unique so they repopulate.

 

That what Epic was all about. And then they gave missions, tomes, curves, mobs and everything else there was unique on Epic to the freedom and literally killed Epic from 500-600 players at any time to 5-6.... 

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I'd really prefer to bring my old character(ATM mothballed) from Southern to Northern Freedom Isles.

How about crossing servers to attend SFI events from NFI. 

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A third freedom cluster shouldn't exist until NFI and SFI are united.  Until then, stop asking for new maps... you need to take more than 1 bite of an apple before you ask for a new one.

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I don't think new servers or clusters is the wat to go, as pointed out by others it will only bring players in the short term, spread them out further and they leave.

 

I think the ultimate goal should be to bring it onto a new game engine to freshen it all up but I doubt that is going to happen, not even sure if it is possible without starting from scratch.

 

Also allow SFI and NFI to be connected so both sides of the player base can travel across. Should never be cut of in this day an age, just shows how far behind in the times this game really is.

 

They should also advertise the game more, I don't play through Steam but I have never seen Wurm Online on the front pages or top of the page. Devs should be doing streams on Twitch doing monthly talks about it like it used to be but all we get is silence. Nobody knows about the game or what it's about really.

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More servers = a few new lively servers for a few months, then more dead empty servers where you roam for 1000 tiles without seeing a name in local. If that's your play style, maybe just play on a WU server with low pop.

 

For something that strives to be an MMO, these many servers are nuts...it just hurts the game for new people to come in and see no one around them. Wurm has the achievement of people "planning a house" at 30% on steam completion. That means 70% of people don't even plan a house. Most likely those players are quitting before that. Let's account for some alts and say only 50% of people plan a house. That's still a 50% player retention loss... it's huge for a game like wurm with such a small pop.

I could go on but it's just sad to see so many people just quit in their first few days because Wurm does a terrible job at actually engaging players from the get go. And the shameful part is thatt it's been this way for years.

 

Please no more servers, please no more pointless content like cartography or holy sites, please for the love of god improve the new player experience. Wurm isn't growing. At best it's stagnating for the moment but it's still slowly bleeding players either due to inflation, players dying IRL or just becoming disengaged with the content. Stuff like locking threads for discussions like the "canoe believe it" thread isn't helping either. Traders should be the last thing on the management's mindset when people can't even get into a month into wurm without quitting. Prioritize. No amount of marketing is gonna solve the issue of new players just not getting into wurm due to a bad tutorial and bad player experience from the first few hours into the game.

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On 6/3/2023 at 12:37 AM, Votip said:

how many new people stayed in the game?

 

Consider the fact that many many players during NFIs release were returning players that wished they could've 'been there from the start' and how many people were introduced to wurm through steam who struggled to grasp the game and by the time they did felt it was too late or they just gave up altogether due to the lag and other issues going on.

 

If Wurm ran a similar strong advertising campaign for new servers and anticipated the huge surge better who knows how many more might stick around.

 

In the end Wurm is still a better place to be now than before NFI and no one can deny what a cash grab 'WFI' would be. Everyone might say they hate the idea but these same people will no doubt jump on and dump years of premium on in an instant.

 

I would much rather WFI to satiate the investors behind wurm than other potential schemes, pay2win or flat out cost increases.

Edited by Hots
Typo
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45 minutes ago, Hots said:

 

Consider the fact that many many players during NFIs release were returning players that wished they could've 'been there from the start' and how many people were introduced to wurm through steam who struggled to grasp the game and by the time they did felt it was too late or they just gave up altogether due to the lag and other issues going on.

 

If Wurm ran a similar strong advertising campaign for new servers and anticipated the huge surge better who knows how many more might stick around.

 

In the end Wurm is still a better place to be now than before NFI and no one can deny what a cash grab 'WFI' would be. Everyone might say they hate the idea but these same people will no doubt jump on and dump years of premium on in an instant.

 

I would much rather WFI to satiate the investors behind wurm than other potential schemes, pay2win or flat out cost increases.

Where are they?

"Big value" on something with no value, it makes no difference if you're there at Day-One, if you wont be there at the last or through the whole development of the world as it ages.

 

Maybe you just want a Jackal server, no skill or item transfer, possibly achievement system and currency for some shop. Rest is temporary world, everybody gets to startover from scratch and in 6-18 months it gets wiped, remains off for 1-2 seasons and then restarts?

Wipers(anybody craving a fresh land rush and then to quit fast) will be having fun, people selling first few services and bulk will be having fun, devs wont have to maintain ghost servers(population 5), everybody's happy, is that the goal?

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5 minutes ago, Finnn said:

 is that the goal?

 

The goal I think would be to ensure funds for development can be acquired and we can enjoy more quality updates for years. Obviously the ideal scenario is something drastic changes that improves player retention but that's been the same issue since it all began. 

 

Who is to say how many people quit because of NFI issues, you had to wait several seconds before completing any action. Wurm vets were cheering because sleep bonus lasted so much longer, I don't think the new players thought much of it though.

 

As for 'where are they now?' I'm one of those who returned to Wurm due to NFI. Sunk loads of money and time into it and I'm still here. 

 

I'm curious how many people that are against the idea wouldn't still prem up and have fun all over again on another cluster. 

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For cash grabs the Jackal/

On 6/2/2023 at 5:23 PM, Docterchese said:

-1. Adding new servers to increase playercounts is a cheap trick band-aid that works for a few months and then dies off again.

 

There are many ideas on this forum that would help to improve playercounts. For the new server vibe, I'd rather see something like jackal/challenge servers (or a variation on them) done again, meaning that you get to experience a new server and a fresh start for a while, but can always hop back through a portal to a (still populated) main cluster.

 

I second that a temporary server like those two fun servers were would be a proper cash grab for the company especially if cleverly designed to include silver sinks (cleverly I mean that what does not make it an obvious pay2win scenario). And it could work without hurting the existing incomes. No one will give up their assets for a server that exists only for a few months.

Edited by Jaz
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Imagine a concept where the Freedom Isles is actually at war with another currently unknown nation located elsewhere on the world.

 

  • In a similar setup to Goblin camps numerous raid camps spring up from this new enemy.
  • Once a camp is defeated those with archeology skill can investigate and find clues as to where these invaders came from.
  • A collective progress bar that all players contribute to through their investigations eventually fills up and reveals the location, a portal is opened.
  • Players can travel through the portal, build temporary settlements/camps, fight their way through local NPC settlements. Investigate new resources and points of interest etc
  • There is a 1 month timer after which the enemies will push us back out of their lands.
  • Some loot/rewards specific to that raid (future raids would need different loot) can be brought back as trophies.
  • We're back to square 1 ready to repeat.
Edited by HawkHawk
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i tagged you in a topic you might be interested in @Hots(besides this tag)

Wurm needs unification not more clusters for permanent servers
What wurm needs is event servers that bring a rotating style of rule sets with them that when done right will bring people back to play for that style of gameplay and for others to join in as new players.

Wurm got a majority of players on NFI because it was front page of steam for a day but like diablo 3 they were severely misguided in how the server launch would go when accessing such a potential server base and well i told them before but they didnt listen then and behold 14.2% of players finished the tutorial, 5.2% killed any mob, 2.7% planned a building and 2.5% finished a house.

With an all time peak of 1226 and a 24 hour peak of 189 and average players of 118(and dropping since march again) and with a 58.8% rating and so many strongly worded negative reviews the chance of being able to pull in major new numbers with a new cluster launch is near 0 if anything it would just cause friction and worry.

Closing old servers like some newer people keep suggesting is a death sentence rolf did this to jk and mr home and wurm still hasn't recovered from it not even after the steam release we had similar numbers for a few months but now nope.

What wurm needs is a better early player experience but sadly the current dev team does not understand(this is a common thing in a lot of games and also in a lot of area's of IT) how to create a good early user experience that will make the player ENJOY the learning curve and in turn get hooked on the desire to find out more.

Idle games are a great example of this we have tens of thousands of them yet 5 popular ones(not counting cookie clicker) are adventure capitalist, realm grinder, a dark room, melvor idle and egg.inc.

AC plays in on the ease of use simple ui with fast reward and is generally a faster idle to progress through.
Realm grinder offers a easy at first but surprisingly deep and complex yet decently good laid out gameplay loop where the player progresses from what seems at first to be a cookie cutter idle copy of many others to a unique system that rewards the player with some really interesting mechanics that the deeper you dive the more amazing it becomes.
A dark room offers a story driven exploration idle game where the story makes you interested in wanting to explore the idle aspect more and more.
Melvor idle plays in on being a runescape idle game with some unique mechanics added to make the desire to grind more fun and plays in on the hype of rs to grow.
Egg, inc. is well chickens comedic idea decently fast paced and goofy upgrades that make it fun for a while.

Why might you say do i mention idle games and these 5 specifically?
Idle games are countless in existence in all types of flavors but so so so many of them suffer from a developer or dev team who does not grasp how to catch a user early on some go for a wide shotgun effect of "grab as many people as we can with flashy effects and hope a few stay" and it works but this is not for wurm.
Others create a story driven feeling where you get hooked on exploring the story but many have a clunky ui or slow progression that leads to days to explore small parts of the story and thus boredom.
Yet others go so far over the top pushing for inapp purchase that the game can not be played without paying and it kills itself on a dev's greed(gcg showing signs of wanting to push into this direction with their stakeholder letters)

There are many reasons why the untold thousands of idle games do not become popular or fade out of popularity within a month or less and a lot of these reasons apply to wurm too but the biggest one is this.

Where is the hook what does wurm really offer that gives a big enough incentive to get past the clunky ui and bad early start for the average person that would make it enjoyable enough to make them last a month atleast(real proper goal to strive for) where instead of 85.8% of players not getting past the tutorial the goal should be to get 85.8% of players past the first month(you will always try to achieve this but thats the point) aim for 10% per month then go further and further until you settle on a user experience where most players genuinely play it more then a week or 2 and it reaches flavor of the month status.

Next to that what do idle games do that wurm doesn't? Long term incentive that spending your next 10 years playing this game daily is a good decision and not a sign of an addict. The community and the game both scream "Join us its crack you cant escape once your hooked" and that isn't a good thing unless your name is world of warcraft and it is 14 november 2004 and there isn't anything else like it for the casual player with most other mmo's requiring a rocket scientist degree to understand or be unemployed to get anywhere.

We often talk about not making wurm faster as it ruins the idea of wurm but who in the year of 2023 wants to sit through a 39 second mining action 50 times in a row to destroy a cave wall when their friends are killing others in battle royale game modes or racing for high rank or murdering countless monsters to get to level 100 in the next big rpg or ruling worlds and galaxies in 4x games.

For us the players who have a voice we are used to the timers of old the text based gameplay loop of older mmo's which have now all faded away the days of MUD's are long since gone yet wurm clings to its linage like superglue between your fingers by the time you notice its too late.
Most gamers out there do not want to invest a week time to even get anything resembling a small homestead made when games like sons of the forest let you do it in hours and provide a nice horror experience, where fallout 4 with some mods offers a building experience where 20 hours feels like too little time as you are having too much fun.

And no increasing action time on its own does not make the game better(looking at you WU) or increasing experience but what would is a better flow of actions, away with individual actions for resource gathering and hello action timers that run till no stamina, tile/inventory full, object they were interacting with is gone for resource gathering/processing and improving of items and building.

A wurm where if you have 20 planks in your inventory and the stamina to attach all 20 then 1 action is enough to make a wall even if the speed is similar as before makes it feel a lot better, a wurm where you do not have to rely on hotkeys or mouse macro's to quickly mine/dig or play a piano to speed improve items would go a long way to bring wurm into a more present day setup.


And that is the key that a lot of these idle games do well they automate the tedious parts quickly going away form individual clicking a fire in a dark room to someone doing it for you and the game suddenly becomes more enjoyable BUT many idle games(just like wurm) do this either too late or not at all or require stupid things(like in app purchase)
You want more players? Bring wurm from 2004 era to 2023 first with its core keep the pace or adjust it ever so slightly but make it less of a right click to do all actions mess.

The biggest complaint i heard from people from all walks of gaming when they tried out wurm was "how can you stand having to right click or press all those different keybinds and remember them all this reminds me of my wow days and i do not like it" wurm's ui and interaction with the world is what is holding it back the most and i heard whispers about something potentially being underway to make it maybe easier but honestly wurm needs a BIG change in how we interact with the world not a "oh we are redoing the ui" and then backpaddling to give it just a coat of paint and some more keybinds to press.
You want more players and make them last? Make the core of the game better not new content not event servers, they are all for players who are already hooked but to hook more players you want people who tried out building games and loved minecraft then went to explore and found other games and enjoyed those too as they were more grindy but still didnt quite scratch that itch that when they come to wurm they see a logical progression of semi grind to hard grind with a good ui and good gameplay vs hard grind with shitty ui and shitty interaction that turns even the grindiest of people away.

Anyway TLDR take some inspiration from how other grindy games like popular rpg idle's handle their games and adapt wurm's clicky mess and make actions last until the whole idea is done eg chop tree actually chop until its cut down from a player perspective even if you do multiple actions server side(this can be sold as multiple stages of cutting a tree down) and rename damage on things like trees to progression and so on make the game more 2023 less 2003.

Edit: Just to add for some more on it

The idea being like this
1 action to start a queue that will go until a certain condition is met for example 1. running out of stamina 2. damaging the item(when imping or missing an item on toolbelt) 3. tile full 4. inventory full 5. object destroyed(eg tree meteor so on) 

Basically we expand the level design(look how many switched from flatten to level when that was added as it just made so much more sense for the game) to other actions as this will make it easier for players as one can use the logic of "So because my skill is low i have a hard time hitting the rock hard enough with my pickaxe and on the right spot to be able to break of a 20kg piece which is needed to make progression on this cave wall more further along so i spend more time breaking of tiny pieces then big chunks and as my skill increases i get better at finding these weak points and thus can break of chunks faster"

Edited by wipeout
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On 5/31/2023 at 3:35 AM, Beewolf said:

This game needs new servers and clusters as much as a monkey needs a tit on its back.

umm   my wife likes to say  useless as ##### on a bull.   but then i say  that would give the mom a break. so extra ##### on a monkey's back would give the front ones a break... lol

 

but ya very bad idea. we don't need more servers. we need to merge.   maybe after a merge. they could think of making a new one that will never ever merge stated from the beginning. and maybe neat ruleset to it. like better epic skill curve. or more aggressive mobs.. no deed server, wild creature decaying buildings.  or max deed sizes .  ect.  who knows. 

 

But first  NFI and SFI need that chance to merge the player base as half the players on an each cluster same with half the deed count is on each cluster. 3 servers vs 7 servers.  it is time to combine soon.   

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