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Rolf

A non-binding Freedom server non-premiums poll

Can we open the freedom server for non-premium accounts?  

164 members have voted

  1. 1. Can we open the freedom server for non-premium accounts?

    • I live on freedom and vote yes
      84
    • I live on freedom and vote no
      62
    • I don't live on freedom and vote yes
      53
    • I don't live on freedom and vote no
      10
    • Wut?
      4


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"Learn to love your shovel" ;)

It doesn't really matter how many times we reset the maps; New players will always find the "good" places taken no matter what the map looks like. It's just the way the game works when some people come early and some people arrive later, can't be helped.

My shovel is my best friend  ;D

But really, I wasnt expecting to come across an awsome place, especially one of the best. I dont mind digging down a slope either, but a near vertical mountain, thats my limit =P

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i'm gonna vote no. anyone who likes wurm will prem, GV or no. Letting non-prems onto freedom will mess it up and turn it into a pile of S. We all remember Newtown.

militant non-payers shouldn't get onto the paying servers.

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i'm gonna vote no. anyone who likes wurm will prem, GV or no. Letting non-prems onto freedom will mess it up and turn it into a pile of S. We all remember Newtown.

militant non-payers shouldn't get onto the paying servers.

+1

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please read this rolf...

I vote yes, however I would like to know why you ever took JK-home away in the first place?

  • You enabled pvp on jk-h
  • You disallowed new players to play on jk-h
  • You destroy JK-H because players wanted a pvp-free server
  • You created freedom as a pvp-free server without new players
  • Now you plan to allow free players to play on freedom

Now stop me if I'm wrong but you've turned a complete circle and ended up where you started?

Is this making sense to anybody?

Anyway, whether or not Rolf is pulling a "Rolf" doesn't matter, yes I do want for free players to be able to play on freedom. Thanks for reading.

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I'm all for free play on Freedom because it benefits the ecomomy (by creating demand for lower ql goods) and also adds to the vibrancy and variety of the server in general.  Plus it's nice to have noobs to help out.

In order of perference I see the options as:

Free accounts can come to Freedom after a while on GV or after getting to a certain level (20 in a characteristic, at least 10 in 2 or 3 skills, or 24 hours play, or something simple to just to filter out the total dross);

All free accounts can come to Freedom after a tutorial;

All free accounts come straight to Freedom (i.e. just like old JKHome).

Thanks for considering this.

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If it were possible to go premium without leaving behind my friends and village, I would do it. I voted yes.

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Voted yes although I dont play anymore. It was always fun when there were also non-premium accounts on JK-home :D

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please read this rolf...

I vote yes, however I would like to know why you ever took JK-home away in the first place?

  • You enabled pvp on jk-h
  • You disallowed new players to play on jk-h
  • You destroy JK-H because players wanted a pvp-free server
  • You created freedom as a pvp-free server without new players
  • Now you plan to allow free players to play on freedom

Now stop me if I'm wrong but you've turned a complete circle and ended up where you started?

Is this making sense to anybody?

Anyway, whether or not Rolf is pulling a "Rolf" doesn't matter, yes I do want for free players to be able to play on freedom. Thanks for reading.

The decision to enable PvP on Homeservers was the one bad decision, and had nothing to do with nonprems; It just resulted in non-prems being removed because they should not have access to PvP. The previous state was excellent, anything since has been part of the recovery process.

The game in its current state is currently much more capable of handling large numbers of newbies on the premium servers, so it's not really a loop.

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Will Freedom get a server upgrade, or will it have to be restarted daily because of item lag when player count doubles and item count triples? (Not many newbies clean up after themselves by burning scraps and log remnants)

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NOOO!

The GMs rarely can handle stuff as it is, no way in hell they shall be able to fix all the crazy stuff newbs will do. (4chan invasions, ect)

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i love how its"invasions"

over the 2 years i played wurm before they came, we had nothing similar to 4-chan.

1 event should not dictate how the game is run.

while i would definitely be against spawning new players direct to Freedom, a tutorial island that takes the place of GV with a decent set of missions to explain and familiarize them with the game, and some common sense limits added to the existing AoC mechanics would prevent most of the problems people are worried about.

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+1,

limiting the game due to fear of invasions (which are very rare) is somewhat stupid. You will end up losing potential players because of that, which means those invasions will have really done damage to wurm then while we should be taking advantage of them instead to get more players! There are also plenty of mechanics that could be added that can reduce the damage from invasions, like:

- login cap, if more then 300 players are online then no non-prems can logon, only prems can (300 being a random number I made up there, it could be higher or lower). This will stop lag from to many people being online like we had at the 4chan invasion, which as far as I noticed was the worst part of the invasion.

- All non-prems who have never been prem before will have their buildings decay rapidly if they haven't used (been inside) the building for 1-2 weeks (this rapidly removes 1x1 newb shacks of people who have quit or moved to another area without destroying the building, buying prem once removes this penalty). Did hear they rapidly decay already if somebody hasn't logged in for 28 days.

- Option for AoC that makes it so that no-prems cannot do a thing, so they can't even dig or cut down trees.

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I think its ok with non-premiums on freedom, IF the reqs are raised and just not the tutorial.

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Absolutely a terrible terrible idea. If non-premium is allowed on Freedom, I will cancel all my alt accounts and just pay for one. I'd just use 10 non-premium accounts to do all my terraforming.

Also, it's easy to grief on Freedom in the form of terraforming, and since non-premium players have no investment in the game there's no motivation to respect the property currently occupied by others. Everything would become a malterraformed, sandy mess.

If you are looking to resolve issues of population, or to clean up GV, there are other alternatives. I am staunchly opposed to this idea and am every e-angry at the suggestion.

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its not about cleaning up GV in my mind.

Its about retaining more players and getting more players to go premium.

GV is absolutely not a good showcase for wurm.  Its billed as a trial server, but doesnt represent the game its supposedly a trial for.

I've said it before, and i'll say it again:

IMO the best advertisment for buying pemium, is living with, and being exposed to, premium players and what they can do. Watching something take shape and knowing that you could do something similar (or lets face it, we all have egos, do something better) with a small monetary investment would be much more likely to convince me to pay than simply hearing about it. actually, seeing WAS what convinced me to pay back when i was non-prem.

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Yes, BUT ONLY IF;

1. They spawn in GV first, and must play 24hrs there before using portals.

2. The former restrictions on making mine doors, destroying pavements etc are reinstalled.

3. AoC controls are tighter for deed owners (disallow woodcutting etc).

4. Only paying members can own deeds.

5. The Freedom server is upgraded to handle the increased item/player count.

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On GV there is no motivation to respect the land or work of others. Freedom will be no different if non-premium players come. If you want to showcase the power of premium, allow settlements on GV again. People payed to play there before, they'll do it again.

What's to stop someone and their 4 friends from dropping 10,000 dirts in the middle of Crystal Canal to piss off somebody on the internet? Don't underestimate the power of griefing. There's a major difference between the motivations of someone who is paying $15/mo to grief and someone that can do it for free.

Also, premium players would have less motivation to pay for their alts that they used to assist with tasks, and instead could create multiple alts they don't pay for at all. On the one hand this could make major projects take shape faster, but that means abandoned projects (which already exist) would expand as well.

GV already serves the purpose of showcasing premium, it just doesn't allow for characters to see it there. GV has a strong community and I'm willing to bet that there are people there that would pay premium to protect their work. One good motivating factor for moving to Freedom is to carve out your own piece of land. This motivation is lessened if a non-premium person already HAS their land developed on Freedom and going premium is difference between creating an AoC around it or not.

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I think it should be exactly the way it was in JKH. Free players and paid together, in (dis)harmony. Sure, it had it's share of problems, but it also had an equal share of benefits.

1) I think the stat cap is more than enough incentive to make people go premium, especially if concessions to help newbs live in GV are revoked. We don't need special AoC controls for Free accounts, nor do we need other restrictions. If they only want to pay 5s + 1.5s a month for a size 5 HS, why not let them? Silver isn't free, it comes from somewhere. Someone pays for it. Money makes the servers go, it should be obtained for wurm wherever possible, and newbs shouldn't be denied the ability to contribute, even if it's the equivalent of 1-2 euros a month.

2) I think tutorial would be nice, but it should be skippable upon going premium (So us vets don't have to grind through "stupid" tutorials just to get another alt), and should have nothing to do with timers. No 20-hour-long tutorial grindfests, no having to stick around in-game for days, no having to have a huge amount of stats/skills maxxed (At 20). Just a simple set of tutorials to expose new players to some of the basic game mechanics, and teach them how to find the information they are looking for easily. Then let them come over and be 'free'. :)

It worked fine on JKH. I lived right outside Aegis on JKH for over a year (North of Xbow farms on the map). I saw my fair share of newbies, and only once out of dozens did I find any of them actually try to pull anything, and even that was minor (They stole Shyel's cow after a fence fell - the horror.). But there were countless other newbies that came through my little part of the map that were friendly, helpful, courteous, and even knowledgeable. I don't let the experience with one bad newb ruin my view of new people I meet.

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What's to stop anyone from doing that? Premium or non, anyone can dig up 10k dirts and drop them on the ground. Guess who's going to be better at doing this? The guy with 90 digging and a high ql shovel, and a cog full of rafts? Or the newbie with 20 skill and a 20ql (effective) shovel with a rowboat?

I still will never understand what all the hate against non-premium + new peoples is for.

What's to stop someone and their 4 friends from dropping 10,000 dirts in the middle of Crystal Canal to  off somebody on the internet? Don't underestimate the power of griefing. There's a major difference between the motivations of someone who is paying $15/mo to grief and someone that can do it for free.

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I voted yes, though I'd like to see premium player-controlled homestead AoC increased against non-premiums.

I'd rather not have a froob living five tiles away from my HS without my consent.

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What's to stop anyone from doing that? Premium or non, anyone can dig up 10k dirts and drop them on the ground. Guess who's going to be better at doing this? The guy with 90 digging and a high ql shovel, and a cog full of rafts? Or the newbie with 20 skill and a 20ql (effective) shovel with a rowboat?

I still will never understand what all the hate against non-premium + new peoples is for.

What's to stop someone and their 4 friends from dropping 10,000 dirts in the middle of Crystal Canal to  off somebody on the internet? Don't underestimate the power of griefing. There's a major difference between the motivations of someone who is paying $15/mo to grief and someone that can do it for free.

I already pointed this out. Paying premiums players have far less motivation to grief their neighbors because they have a strong investment in the game that could easily be ruined in return. FREE players, on the other hand, have nothing to lose by ruining a couple months work in a few short days. It can, and has been done. Look at what happened on GV when the wall-saw bug occurred. Non-paying players that live on GV lost months of valuable work of items in a single night, and they don't even pay! Ask Enki all about it.

I don't hate non-premium players, but when you're talking about a game where people PAY for land that can be enroached upon by others that don't you're going to create some animosity. Imagine if you lived in a neighborhood where you paid $300,000 for your house, and the city wants to plan Section 8 government housing 2 blocks from you? The affects would be similiar if you could equate it to a game. People pay and have worked on Freedom for what they have created. To devalue this is a huge slap in the face.

What's the reasoning for allowing non-premium players on Freedom? To increase population? To add more premium-paying players? If this is the goal, let's discuss solutions that don't include exposing your paying customers to griefing from players that cannot be punished in a meaningful way.

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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.

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I have voted NO, and my reasons for this are both as a player and as a GM.

Paying players should not have to put up with the endless rubbish you get in chat, let alone the amount of griefing that can be done by non prem accounts. I have seen enough groups of player join this game with no intention of paying for it, just purely to upset the game as a whole when they dont get their way. I really hope this is a joke.......if its not then for me this will be the end of freedom, i went to freedom to live and enjoy the game while helping others. I personally do not want so spend the money i do on my alts for some non paying player to come along and ruin something i have created and spent time on ( let alone the money )

Yet again we were told this would never happen, and yet again it seems Rolf has changed his mind, maybe im getting a bit fed up with things being changed when promises have been made, but i for one if this comes in will not be paying for any more prem on my alts and will just carry on as GM for as long as i can put up with it.

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What's to stop anyone from doing that? Premium or non, anyone can dig up 10k dirts and drop them on the ground. Guess who's going to be better at doing this? The guy with 90 digging and a high ql shovel, and a cog full of rafts? Or the newbie with 20 skill and a 20ql (effective) shovel with a rowboat?

I still will never understand what all the hate against non-premium + new peoples is for.

What's to stop someone and their 4 friends from dropping 10,000 dirts in the middle of Crystal Canal to  off somebody on the internet? Don't underestimate the power of griefing. There's a major difference between the motivations of someone who is paying $15/mo to grief and someone that can do it for free.

I already pointed this out. Paying premiums players have far less motivation to grief their neighbors because they have a strong investment in the game that could easily be ruined in return.

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.

Paying players should not have to put up with the endless rubbish you get in chat

Make kingdom chat premium only, add a help chat thing for the non prems so they can ask questions that the prems can answer there. Solves the non-prems messing up kingdom chat problem

Yet again we were told this would never happen

Quote where Rolf said that please, I don't remember ever reading something along those lines.

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