A non-binding Freedom server non-premiums poll

[Guest Zaugurz]

I'm a Freedom player with 4 active premium accounts. If this change happens I will definitely cancel my 3 alts and use free labour n00bs.

I think it boils down to this:

If Golden Valley is such a bad showcase for the game, then fix Golden Valley (or make a Golden Valley 2 and make it 2x2 times as big). Moving newbies to Freedom just means you're moving the problem to where your paying customers are.

PS: Please don't take the result of this poll to be a certain display of the people on Freedom. There's nothing stopping non-Freedom players to select the "I live on Freedom choices".

Zaugurz

[Arson 19]

GV already serves the purpose of showcasing premium, it just doesn't allow for characters to see it there.

???  do you even see the inconsistancy in this argument.

seeing what you "cant" do is not a showcase for what actually CAN be done.

the visual difference between a 60 dirt slope and a 160 dirt slope is significant. The first time i ever used a 50QL tool and saw the change it made to my %'s

One good motivating factor for moving to Freedom is to carve out your own piece of land.

I see the flipside of this argument quite often.

People who have carved out a nice spot on GV, and would like to expand but lack the skills (due to the cap). Often however they dont WANT to give up what they have allready done to make the move, and would likely buy prem if they were able to keep the house etc that they allready made.

It CAN be done on Freedom currently, if someone is willing to pay to do it. It WILL be done more often if it can be done for free.

You CAN showcase premium on GV is you do what I already suggested, which is to allow premium players on GV. Remove the cap, allow settlements again, and bam: An already existing community now has what is needed without displacing paying members.

GV players that don't want to give up what they have can simply pay premium to protect it. You think if Freedom allows non-premium that GV is going to stick around? NO! GV players would lose their investment ANYWAY.

[Fathertime 23]

Freedom was to be prem only same as wild, GV was put in for non prem because of the ammount of griefing going on on JKH, a certain group crashed JKH and thats why it was put in, whats to stop them doing it again?....Nothing.....

I agree GV is a bad advertisement for wurm but distroying freedom with this is wrong, if Rolf wants Prem and Non Prem on the same server, shut GV down, open another server and give Prem players the option of playing with non prem people, not force it on them....

[Arson 19]

I'm a Freedom player with 4 active premium accounts. If this change happens I will definitely cancel my 3 alts and use free labour n00bs.

I think it boils down to this:

If Golden Valley is such a bad showcase for the game, then fix Golden Valley (or make a Golden Valley 2 and make it 2x2 times as big). Moving newbies to Freedom just means you're moving the problem to where your paying customers are.

PS: Please don't take the result of this poll to be a certain display of the people on Freedom. There's nothing stopping non-Freedom players to select the "I live on Freedom choices".

Zaugurz

As it is, if you trust the poll, 40% of players that identify as Freedom-playing do not want this change.

[Guest toltus]

it would be better if you didnt focus on the epic server  and focused on getting a enjoyable and workable combat system and maby some  charactor customization and revamp the new gamer expirence.

as far as bringing non premium over,, what would be their insintive  to go premium?  no skill cap?  not much of a incintive.

i think in 2 months i only have 1-2 skills over 20  and i play quite alot far more than any casual player.

why should they be able to come over here if we cant go to gv?

want to give them incintive?  wipe the gv map every month or two  some squatters have been there for a long time  with no intention of ever going premium  free up some of that database space  those players arnt making you any money so even if they leave its no loss.

[Elshar 1]

I've actually sponsored probably ~12 people over to Freedom in the past month. Of those, maybe 2-3 are still playing that I'm aware of. It helps, but not as much as I'd hoped. I think there's other aspects of wurm which are turning them off, but I would think retention would be higher if you could go premium AND stay with your buddies.

It CAN be done on Freedom currently, if someone is willing to pay to do it. It WILL be done more often if it can be done for free.

Removing the caps from GV would remove any incentive to get premium. I just personally don't see that being very good for wurm overall, do you?

You CAN showcase premium on GV is you do what I already suggested, which is to allow premium players on GV. Remove the cap, allow settlements again, and bam: An already existing community now has what is needed without displacing paying members.

No-one seems to want to give anything up. Premiums on Freedom don't want to give up any land to lowly non-prems, and non-prems don't want to lose the hard work they are required to constantly dump into their place on GV. You do realize that decay, etc is increased, and the caps, and lack of high ql/enchanted tools makes it difficult to defend yourself adequately against anything stronger than the lower critters, right?

GV players that don't want to give up what they have can simply pay premium to protect it. You think if Freedom allows non-premium that GV is going to stick around? NO! GV players would lose their investment ANYWAY.

edit: Fixed borked quote tags.

[Arson 19]

I've actually sponsored probably ~12 people over to Freedom in the past month. Of those, maybe 2-3 are still playing that I'm aware of. It helps, but not as much as I'd hoped. I think there's other aspects of wurm which are turning them off, but I would think retention would be higher if you could go premium AND stay with your buddies.

It CAN be done on Freedom currently, if someone is willing to pay to do it. It WILL be done more often if it can be done for free.

Removing the caps from GV would remove any incentive to get premium. I just personally don't see that being very good for wurm overall, do you?

You CAN showcase premium on GV is you do what I already suggested, which is to allow premium players on GV. Remove the cap, allow settlements again, and bam: An already existing community now has what is needed without displacing paying members.

No-one seems to want to give anything up. Premiums on Freedom don't want to give up any land to lowly non-prems, and non-prems don't want to lose the hard work they are required to constantly dump into their place on GV. You do realize that decay, etc is increased, and the caps, and lack of high ql/enchanted tools makes it difficult to defend yourself adequately against anything stronger than the lower critters, right?

GV players that don't want to give up what they have can simply pay premium to protect it. You think if Freedom allows non-premium that GV is going to stick around? NO! GV players would lose their investment ANYWAY.

I've only suggested removing skillcaps on GV for PAYING members, not everyone. You're right, that would defeat the purpose otherwise.

Also, Freedom players pay money for the right to keep their land. Non-premium players on GV do not. You understand the difference here? Still, I believe that both players should be shown respect, so I do not suggest wiping GV and I do not suggesting allowing non-premium on Freedom. Allow premium on GV: Non-prem GV players are not harmed, Prem Freedom is not harmed, and GV players with large investment can be rewarded if they choose to pay.

I don't think Rolf's plan would be to allow non-premium on Freedom and maintain GV. That would be now you've upset paying members on Freedom, non-paying but long-standing members on GV, AND you've introduced more potential grief to your paying members. It's lose-lose-lose.

[Elshar 1]

I think that might work, but what reason would anyone ever have to leave GV at that point? Only thing I can think of is to get away from the constant nonsense drama. (I *still* don't know how the GMs over there put up with it, the most trivial things are blown up into full-on feuds over there!)

I've only suggested removing skillcaps on GV for PAYING members, not everyone. You're right, that would defeat the purpose otherwise.

[Guest toltus]

<It is a mess, and it isn't a good advertisement for the game.  It's like going up to a games dev for a level design job with a portfolio drawn in crayon.  It does not make people want to continue with the game.  GV is full of thieves...people that don't care about anyone else.>

I so totally agree with this,, GV IS a mess

the starting village NEEDS to be GM built  all neet and orderly and obviously a tutorial village  not some collection of a shanty town

and  the surounding terrain should be devided up into  personal building areas of like 9 or 16 tiles  and when a player comes into  GV they get a  tutorial token  that they can place on one of these building tiles   this will protect anything on the time just like a real token  but the token must be reset every 7 days or it poofs    this and  lockable carts will cure  many of the  bad experiances new players have on GV.

[Guest sent]

On Freedom and voted no.  I understand the real life economics behind the potential move, but suggest not upsetting actual paying customers.  Want to increase potential customer base, cut costs and grow?

 

1)   Make the entry server (GV) more noob friendly!  better signs, more robust tutorial.

2)   Initiate better marketing!  Don't have money to do so?  Commission or viral based then.

Business plan, 'attract and retain' new customers (marketing to get them in the door, better initial experience to retain them)... don't upset existing ones.

Also, I actually went premium to leave GV because the new players were much too intrusive and geografically destructive.

As for those saying that the move will increase sales for the existing prems... hello!  they have no money or are not willing to spend it, that is the whole point!

[Dregas 1]

False, lets look at the following:

1 month of premium + 5 silver costs 10 euro.

Make a new account, give it that 1 month and 5 silver deal. transfer silver and referall to main account where referall becomes 1 month of premium.

So now your main has 1 month of prem and 5 silver and you have a free account for 1 month, if you named it something random that cannot be traced to you then you can go ahead and annoy your neighbours a bit. Now the alt might get banned but it's not like that matters.

Apparently you have never heard of ip addresses.

[qob 0]

I live on Freedom and I voted Yes.

Freedom badly needs new blood and I'm prepared to put up with some inconvenience.

However, I would like it if premium players didn't create

their own stable of alts each owning a strategically placed homestead.

Hence, deed ownership should only be for premium players. 

ie. if you have a deed, you can't log in unless you are a paid up premium.

Thus, the go-it-alone free player will always be at risk of a premium player plunking down a deed near them.  If they want the security that an AOC provides, they should join a village.

[Traxx 14]

only benefit I can see it to make 5 alts so I can build 5 new HS"s.. so i voted no

[ShiroTenshi 0]

I live on freedom and Voted Yes.

Although i think the option to travel to freedom should be restricted until you have met a certain requirement or set of requirements.

For example:

-Completing the Tutorial.

       - Would make sure they already know how the basics work, and reduce the 'How do i cut down a tree?' spam we got in JK.

-Having at least 24 hours of ingame time.

       - I was stuck betwen 6, 12 or 24 hours. I chose 24  because its a decent amount of in game time (for a noobie) and even though at that time the noobie light will go away, it would make sure they were capable and interested enough (and probably able to make a lantern to replace noobie light).

-Having certain skills reach a certain level.

         - For example, Carpentry to 5 so they could at least make a 1x1 house once they get to freedom to store their stuff.

I personally think that having a set of goals that need to be met before being allowed to travel to freedom would weed out those more interested in grief and ruining other peoples games. I also agree with AOC changes that don't allow non prem to terraform, cut wood or mine.

[Evilvision 301]

Seems to me the only solution to make everybody happy is a second Freedom server and just dump GV. This way non-prem and prem can play together. Refine the AOC controls and only allow Prem players to travel between servers.

[ago 470]

2)   Initiate better marketing!  Don't have money to do so?  Commission or viral based then.

The incident that caused GV to be added was caused by viral marketing. Someone promoted Wurm on the 4chan /v/ board and the server just could not handle the massive amount of new players.

The first fix was a soft cap on the number of players. If that was reached non prem could not log in anymore.

The second was the creation of GV and the lockdown of JKH for non prem players.

It solved the immediate thread but also dried out the stream of new players to further populate the world in the long run.

Apparently you have never heard of ip addresses.

dynamic IP? proxy? And if you take the referral as a link then I'm paying the 10EUR to grief some player and falsely link another player with the referral to the grief.

BTW: When I started NT was a huge city. The actual village and the "suburbs" where players have build their homes. That was pretty impressive for a starter and far from a rotting mess. That came later with the AOC changes when nobody was able to repair their houses.

[Ironcore 0]

This is a hard decision because there are both negative and positive effects if this idea. first there will be more lag no doubt. The new players currently are turning GV into another NT because forests are bring destroyed. In the future new players will have to walk a hour or more for tree cuting. This I believe will cause problems for blacksmiths and carpentry veterans. With the forests declining less animal respawn will cause trouble for leather workers and hunters. If anything I think GV itself should be both prem and non-premium just make the map lots bigger. Plus as the new players see all of what the premium players can do they might be motivated to go premium. That's how I decided to go premium.

Advantages:

well you got your own slaves to do your grunt work.

non-prem will buy stuff from premium players for high price maybe

if I missed some advantages please add on.  I'm all for new players  

[Arson 19]

Seems to me the only solution to make everybody happy is a second Freedom server and just dump GV. This way non-prem and prem can play together. Refine the AOC controls and only allow Prem players to travel between servers.

GV currently has a strong community of players, even tough they don't pay, and many of them contribute to the positive experience that new Wurm players have. To ditch GV would be to eliminate this nurturing environment.

To me the best solution to is add an additional island to GV and enable premium accounts on GV for those that wish to pay. This would preserve the GV and Freedom communities. Players seeking premium play with a "fresh" start could choose to move Freedom if they wanted via the portal on GV.

Also, put some real effort into making the starting experience for new players positive and informative. As it is right now new players get approximately 5 pop-up windows that teach them how to play the game, and find themselves in a starter village loaded with items on the ground they can't pick up (and can't figure out why not). Focus on having GMs or volunteers that STAY in this area to help out new players. That way, people can see those that are assisting them. Most of all, start a campaign to improve the wiki so that half the articles don't say "We think this is how it works". There's no excuse for the experienced playerbase to not be sure how certain mechanics work because the information isn't available.

[ZaZ213 21]

Attach the coast of GV to freedom, keeping the gv island itself, make it so that gv residents cannot cross server boarders while captaining a boat, only while they are passengers on a boat, thusly making it so that freedom residents have to come and offer to take them over to experience what premium is like, this keeps the 4chan raid problem to a minium as you still sandbox the smaller starter server to an extent and it doesnt really interupt premium player services if in case it does get flooded with new players. Also you should probably limit to the type of ship crossing to sailboats, that way server crossing doesnt take too long and also it limits the ability for one raider to buy prem and then transport all of his buddies over at once.

[Guest Zaugurz]

Rolf, here's some suggestions that would actually help give newcomers a better experience, instead of just passing the buck and aggravating the existing customers:

- Make a *much* better tutorial. Take a look at Age of Conan. The first 20 levels were insanely polished when they launched. It seriously looked they had spent half their budget on the first 12 hours people were spending in the game. Wurm has just about the *worst* newcomer experience of any online game I've seen since I started on MUDs 20 years ago. It's absolutely horrible! It's a disgrace to such a fine game like this. Please ask around you to hear what people think of the newbie experience or look at the many forum posts with suggestions on improving the newbie tutorials. Don't get fooled by the nice reviews this game has gotten - the reviewers were paid to push through the initial grievance in order to get the good parts of the game.

- Know your strengths. Looking at Wurm it's obvious you're a gifted and visionary game designer. It's also rather obvious that there's areas where Wurm is lacking, so consider delegating responsibilities to volunteers in the areas that aren't running so well. My guess is your time is better spent on coding new features and fixing bugs than it is trying to sort out the newbie issues yourself.

- Start making the newbie experience and customer conversion a #1 priority, if not for you personally then for volunteers you assign to the job.

- Assign at least one volunteer to be responsible for nothing but knowing exactly what happens when new players join the game. Make sure you track statistics on how long new players stay in the game, what they do, how far they get in the newbie tutorial etc.  Then after they haven't logged in for a week send them an email letting them know their avatar is missing them. In the same email include a questionnaire where they can rate everything about the game including the newbie experience and leave room for their comments. Basic, but kinda boring, marketing stuff. If this isn't your idea of fun then outsource it to volunteers.

- Make the game more newbie friendly overall. Not just the first hours, but the first 3-4 days of played time. This is a big area, so again it would make sense to out-source it. Get a couple of volunteers (could be the same as the newbie guide people) to gather suggestions on changes to the game to make it more newbie accessible. Have them make a prioritized list of 50+ suggestions, then you can pick and chose the ones you like.

- Make a mentor system. I know you (Rolf) have said you never bothered to look closely at A Tale in the Desert. I would suggest to check out at least the basics of how their newbie tutorial and mentor system works. Basically premium players volunteer time on the newbie island to help out newbies as part of a "test" (could be part of a skill, title or some other exclusive stuff here). While on the newbie island the premium player has limited GM powers available, such as teleport, but are restricted from doing anything to physically interfere with the server (use skills, pick up items etc.). The catch in the system is then that the mentor only gets rewarded if the newbie becomes premium. This means that successful mentors make sure to stay in touch with "their" newbies after they leave the newbie island in order to make sure they get the best possible experience. I believe the reason it works so well is because there's a personal relationship involved (so simply hoarding newbies on to a premium server wouldn't work nearly as well). Some of you reading this may think this is a terrible idea, but remember this is extremely successful in the only MMO that is remotely similar to Wurm (1 dev sandbox game, somewhat larger playerbase).

- Replace the broken "referral" system with something that actually does what it's supposed to. Right now almost everyone use their referral to auction/sell it to the highest bidder or to give it to their main. You could start by making it a ban-able offense to sell referrals this way and make referrals into something non-tangible that isn't as tempting to shop around (i.e. see above).

- If you think GV has at least partially failed (and I know a lot would agree with that) then consider making a new newbie world. Make it larger and allow people to stay after they become paid. That way everyone gets happy and you get to impose whatever ruleset you'd like on this new server. It may mean you need to upgrade the GV server, but that should easily be offset by all the money you save from not losing half of Freedom premiums when people cancel all their alts.

Personally I'd love to volunteer my time on helping to make Wurm more newbie accessible and I'm sure you have other players that feel the same way. I *really* *really* like Wurm and I have told everyone I know about its virtues. Problem is that when most people download the client they run away screaming after trying the game briefly. A game as great as this one truly deserve a great newbie experience. Fix that and the paying subscribers will come (and stay).

Zaugurz

[Beanbag 239]

If I can stay on Freedom without paying premium, why would I keep paying it?

[Evilvision 301]

GV currently has a strong community of players, even tough they don't pay, and many of them contribute to the positive experience that new Wurm players have. To ditch GV would be to eliminate this nurturing environment.

How would this eliminate that? They would still not have to pay except do it on a server that has a much larger map and less of a decay rate. If its the mere fact they have to rebuild to continue playing free then so be it. It will be a hell of a lot easier to rebuild on a server that has lower decay rate then repair everything daily, be able to use better quality tools made by "paying" players, have guard towers to protect them and many other perks that they would never have as non paying customers on GV. If any of them decide to Prem up then they dont have to worry about being seperated from their non paying  friends.

[Arson 19]

GV currently has a strong community of players, even tough they don't pay, and many of them contribute to the positive experience that new Wurm players have. To ditch GV would be to eliminate this nurturing environment.

How would this eliminate that? They would still not have to pay except do it on a server that has a much larger map and less of a decay rate. If its the mere fact they have to rebuild to continue playing free then so be it. It will be a hell of a lot easier to rebuild on a server that has lower decay rate then repair everything daily, be able to use better quality tools made by "paying" players, have guard towers to protect them and many other perks that they would never have as non paying customers on GV. If any of them decide to Prem up then they dont have to worry about being seperated from their non paying  friends.

What makes you think that the current group of GV vets that provide this experience are going to suddenly move over to Freedom instead of quitting when their server is shut down and all their hard work goes away with it? And if GV is staying, then why do we need Freedom as the new playground?

Also, what's the motivation for current premium players to keep paying if they can play Freedom for free? Will Rolf not allow current premium players to go free? So does this mean that players that pay nothing get to stay on Freedom but paying players can't play for free? This creates all sorts of issues.

The real problem here is that Wurm Online does not provide an inviting experience for new players, and opening Freedom to non-premium playeres is only putting a band-aid on the issue. There's a giant elephant in the room here and only one person so far has touched on it. Let's talk about WHY new players aren't going premium.

[spellcast 983]

Guru has just said in freedom chat that the trip to freedom would require players to go through a new, different tutorial, hopefully a better one.

even if the trip to freedom DOESNT become a part of it, i hope that the tutorial still gets revamped, and a better mentoring system gets added.

I still believe however that simply seeing what is possible for a premium player and experiencing it is THE best solution to convincing new players to buy premium themselves.

[Beanbag 239]

The real problem here is that Wurm Online does not provide an inviting experience for new players, and opening Freedom to non-premium playeres is only putting a band-aid on the issue. There's a giant elephant in the room here and only one person so far has touched on it. Let's talk about WHY new players aren't going premium.

Wurm is and always will be a niche game. For many people Wurm is simply too "hard'. If this is addressed by making things "easier", it may draw in more newer players but would likely lose as many older players. Let me be clear on what I'm saying here, a game that is "too hard" is not enjoyable. "Too hard" is a subjective thing. Games that we can take up easily are always more fun, regardless of the actual difficulty of the game. Whether or not Wurm is "hard" to you, for many people it's a very steep learning curve. Add that to the relatively lacking visuals when compared to other paying MMOs (apples to oranges, I know), Wurm is really only attractive to the casual player when free.