Roadmap for the upcoming weeks [rolf latest blog entry]

[SwedishPhoenix 12]

we stand on horses (or your inside one of the larger variety animals) to ride them.

I wouldn't worry that much about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93W6mB0ZqCM

[Goldenflamer 7]

oh lol.

[Myst 1]

The relevant graph to the discussion is:

http://jenn001.game.wurmonline.com/mrtg/paying-year.png

The aggregate paying graph. Focusing on one or three servers misses a lot of data. Many of the subs/euros that were on Inde (your first graph) ended up on Deli/Exo when they started and both had large movements to Epic. Just showing one server in decline suggests a mass abandonment from the game in the fall which is not the case.

The issue is the decline from around Christmas to now - best explained (by others before) as alts and new accounts running out of their 1 or 2 months of premium. Currently it looks a lot like Epic might have been a bubble and total population is going to settle back to pre-epic levels (but now spread across too many servers which is bad.)

I find it kind of funny that Epic players sit and act resentful that time is being spent "on Freedom" when

[o]It's not being spent on just Freedom in the first place - it's being spent on not directly-pvp-aspects of the game that will benefit Epic as well.

[o]Development of the entire game has been at half speed for years to make Epic. Every time we've asked for a big undertaking to improve the game play, the answer has been "after epic is released"...and now epic is released.

Good Points Othob.

Another issue id like to state about looking at graphs though... I see alot of knee jerk "tweeks/nerfs" that appear to be graph related.  My Issue w/ that is, How do we know that the drop in numbers was actually due to what happened/changed today when most people that quit have some premium time left and or they let their sub dry out while playing or flat left and sub expired over time. 

Case in point, a semi close neighbor left when chaos merged with the freedom clusters.  I believe he said his sub lasted until feb or march so that wont actually reflect as a lost sub until then.  Yet he is gone for sure , his horses died off (still has a templar on his deed)  but no login since the merger.

So.. how are we knowing what people are actually leaving over in the first place and if its knee jerk "fix" is that fix actually causing a seperate leave session that wont show up for another 1-3 months that will appear as an exodus over something unrelated. 

Just to me, seems strange that alot of emphasis is being put on what the graph shows current and less on the actual reasonings for the leave (lag time on premium expiration in relation to the actual leave)

[qob 0]

I find it kind of funny that Epic players sit and act resentful that time is being spent "on Freedom" when

[o]It's not being spent on just Freedom in the first place - it's being spent on not directly-pvp-aspects of the game that will benefit Epic as well.

That is a mighty broad brush you are swinging there Othob. 

I am an Epic player and I am not resentful of Rolf spending time on things beyond direct pvp game play.

Please do not exacerbate the tendency to devolve into a us-vs-them discussion.

Also, those who were around at Freedom launch may recall a similar drop-off of subscribers who signed up for Freedom and then did not renew their accounts.  Many were deed holding alts, others simply came back to Wurm to give it a try and decided that Wurm was still not to their taste.

[Guest Malvado]

Well, I have a few ideas as to why numbers might be declining as well now :

*Villages on Epic has now more or less settled (those that have gotten strong enough) and alas due to certain aspects of the game it's not as easy anymore to get quick pvp or take people off guard.

*The quick pace off the new server also means that players will reach higher levels faster than before and that newcomers will encounter fierce resistance earlier than wild did, what took wild 2-3 years to achieve (a decline in players due to the elite players) is now achieved inn less time.

In my opinion servers needs to be kept fresh and have an overall goal when we are talking about pvp servers. The gods battle is not a bad idea, but people needs to feel they are even more part of it. Newcomers still needs to be adressed more and have a better survival rate against elites somehow. Not sure if that means that constantly targeting easy kills needs to be adressed ( like an overall negative CR hit and a larger chance for newbies to one hit kill you by a lucky shot).

[Othob Rithol 700]

adding a "some" for you, qob. Accidental generalization. My apologies.

[Karrde 339]

There is one thing that imho would help newcomers; though, its more something established players on Epic can do then the devs.

Increased fortifying and developing the starter deeds to be more newb friendly: towers, wells, signs, beds, ovens, forges, etc. On Serenity alone the vast majority of raider attacks are historically around Strongbox.

[Tissotx 217]

If there is a problem for Rolf to have diffrent game codes for Epic And Freedom.

I play on Freedom, and I would accept the Epic code to be used on freedom cluster if it would make it easier for Rolf to only program 1 code.

[Stormcrow 182]

I have played on Wild since my first day of play and even I know that for this game to grow Rolf needs to focus on its PvE aspects.

Stop focusing on PvP. PvP will not draw large subs. Once you have a larger player base and therefore more cash flow you can hire staff specifically dedicated to PvP aspects.

[thetreesaremine 0]

LOL, the game started off as PvP.

[Wox 1,477]

Later on when you will able to sit on horses you probably want be able to turn the camera 360 around, so that horse surfing circus stunt we have today maybe isn't that bad after all ;D

[Wulfgar 1,114]

Later on when you will able to sit on horses you probably want be able to turn the camera 360 around, so that horse surfing circus stunt we have today maybe isn't that bad after all ;D

Wurmians can turn their heads around full circle, I am sure of it.

[Arindor 27]

To me, the main objective is to get working on number 4 asap by starting to code multi storey buildings. This should make the game more interesting in many ways.

I'm not sure why the big push for multi-story buildings.  This seems hard to implement correctly (wurm has no "climb"), and it seems there is considerable potential for problems.  While I agree this should be a goal for wurm, I'd prefer to see this rolled out in smaller steps.  How about incorporating the following changes first, followed later by multi-story buildings?

• interior walls for houses - same kinds as we have now, but allow us to create rooms inside houses by adding walls on tile borders
  
• the ability to expand an existing house.  Planning can work same as current, but just extends the house under the same rules as the original planning.  If you expand the plan in a certain direction, the previous outside walls become interior walls, which can be may need to be bashed (as can be done now).
  
• allow walls in mines too, with the same wall options as house walls (solid, window, door, wood or stone).
  

I think just these changes will greatly increase the flexibility/playability of the current system, making it much more interesting, without the pain of having to deal with multiple stories and implement climbing.  Adding rooms to houses, along with the ability to modify existing houses, is going to keep players busy for quite some time remodeling!    And interior walls/rooms in mines will make underground adventuring/building much more interesting - I've been looking forward to the day where we can build dungeons in wurm!

Anyway, my 2c worth...

[Guest Malvado]

Arindor : You've got some good points there, although the main reason Rolf now is pushing for multi story buildings is basically that it's been a promise for 8 years now lol (since 2004 actually). It's quite possible that adding it will break the current maps and require a reset so he shouldnt be delaying it to much either.

I can understand Rolf's focus on getting new and exciting things in place, however for longeviety of the game for most players I think that there needs to be more changes to keep the game feeling fresh for most of the players.

[Amber 337]

As a player who has one foot out the door, shopping for a new game to play instead of Wurm here's my two cents worth.

Since I started playing all I've heard on Freedom is "after Epic". Now Epic has been out for awhile & still no attention at all has been payed to the Freedom servers. Years old bugs still haven't been fixed & promised improvements still haven't been made. To add insult to injury PvE players keep having things nerfed because someone on a PvP server has found a way to abuse it.

Rolf has stated that his dream is to build a PvP game & his actions/inactions have certainly backed that up. Since I love Wurm because it's NOT exactly like every other MMO out there I couldn't be sadder to see yet more talk about PvP this or PvP that once again being given priority over changes that would benefit the entire game. Frankly, if I wanted to play a game where everything revolves around PvP there are 100's of established games out there I can choose from. From my personal experience with ppl I know leaving Wurm that's exactly what's happening. The silent majority of players here who don't give a hoot about PvP are, like me, getting fed up with waiting for changes that never come because the devs are working on some PvP issue yet again.

[Wulfgar 1,114]

As a player who has one foot out the door, shopping for a new game to play instead of Wurm here's my two cents worth.

Since I started playing all I've heard on Freedom is "after Epic". Now Epic has been out for awhile & still no attention at all has been payed to the Freedom servers. Years old bugs still haven't been fixed & promised improvements still haven't been made. To add insult to injury PvE players keep having things nerfed because someone on a PvP server has found a way to abuse it.

Rolf has stated that his dream is to build a PvP game & his actions/inactions have certainly backed that up. Since I love Wurm because it's NOT exactly like every other MMO out there I couldn't be sadder to see yet more talk about PvP this or PvP that once again being given priority over changes that would benefit the entire game. Frankly, if I wanted to play a game where everything revolves around PvP there are 100's of established games out there I can choose from. From my personal experience with ppl I know leaving Wurm that's exactly what's happening. The silent majority of players here who don't give a hoot about PvP are, like me, getting fed up with waiting for changes that never come because the devs are working on some PvP issue yet again.

QFT.

I had so many friends that I made in Wurm give up on Wurm because of the above.

I grow weary of this but lucky for Rolf Wurm is still the best game out there for me.

[belthize 438]

Since I started playing all I've heard on Freedom is "after Epic". Now Epic has been out for awhile & still no attention at all has been payed to the Freedom servers. Years old bugs still haven't been fixed & promised improvements still haven't been made. To add insult to injury PvE players keep having things nerfed because someone on a PvP server has found a way to abuse it.

It's only been out for 2.5 months.  Some of that time was spent fixing the inevitable bugs and to Rolf's credit there were very few.  Yes they existed but a lot less than most were predicting. 

It takes a lot more time to implement something than to conceptualize it.  Most suggestions are preceded by 'just do X'.  Granted it's been a long time for some improvements, like 2 story houses, but the time since epic release hasn't been long.

As far as the PvP players abusing stuff.  Just as many things have been nerfed on the PvP servers due to people on freedom abusing them.    It's difficult to support a code base that works for two different environments and using the us vs them approach isn't very effective.

[Trepida 0]

As a player who has one foot out the door, shopping for a new game to play instead of Wurm here's my two cents worth.

Since I started playing all I've heard on Freedom is "after Epic". Now Epic has been out for awhile & still no attention at all has been payed to the Freedom servers. Years old bugs still haven't been fixed & promised improvements still haven't been made. To add insult to injury PvE players keep having things nerfed because someone on a PvP server has found a way to abuse it.

Rolf has stated that his dream is to build a PvP game & his actions/inactions have certainly backed that up. Since I love Wurm because it's NOT exactly like every other MMO out there I couldn't be sadder to see yet more talk about PvP this or PvP that once again being given priority over changes that would benefit the entire game. Frankly, if I wanted to play a game where everything revolves around PvP there are 100's of established games out there I can choose from. From my personal experience with ppl I know leaving Wurm that's exactly what's happening. The silent majority of players here who don't give a hoot about PvP are, like me, getting fed up with waiting for changes that never come because the devs are working on some PvP issue yet again.

Thank you Amber.  I could not agree more. PvP is every where and I am sorry but Wurms short comeing can not compete with the big money players on the PvP game battle field.  To make matters worse PvP games require alot more time by a development team as they end up haveing to tweek and retweek and reretweek.....Infinity to try and balance the combat to make this side then that side happy.  On the other hand comunity players do not demand as much as they like to create not destroy.  They simply want to beable to build a place for them to meet and play and relax with friends from all over the world.  Wurm has that to a great degree it might be odd here and there but lets face it you can alter the world to a much greater degree, in WURM then any other game out there today.  One of the keys to keeping the communities alive is Females as they are far more sociable then us men.  There is one thing most Female players want in a game and that is the ability to dress up or down to make a look for themselfs.  The lack of this is ability is minor to men but for women it is hard from many of they to see past it.  In the end if you want WURM to grow and thrive you have to service your base and that in simple terms is not the PvP players.  Do not turn your back on those that have and still do support WURM for a Pipe dream of a PvP game that can compete with the big boys. 

   

One other point to make PvPers are more interested in combating others then spending months building a city or cannal.  How ever some of them find great joy in destruction of the months of hard work or others.  In the end why would players that want to Build a world (what WURM is Known for) want to do it in a PvP enviroment where someone can simply come along and kill you and take it all or just slash and burn it for fun, while you are logged out at work makeing a buck so you can pay for permium.

Ok sorry I am off my Soap Box.

[MamaDarkness 880]

I think multiple server code (aka broken) is not good and going to lead to all kinds of future difficulty.  The game is basically the same, don't see why it can't be the same code just enable or disable certain features on each server.  I can't see how I would want all this different code nightmare if I was doing it.  Trying to code jump every time doing specific things for each server will just slow down the whole development and lead to more bugs.  Focus on wurm as a whole would be much easier.

And for multi-story housing, I really hope it allows more flexibility.  Such as being able to connect a 2nd story part over empty ground.  So you can make entry gates for example with ground level on each side, and an open part that can be ridden through and put a fence gate if you wanted.  Interior partitions be nice.

And why limit it.  If design based on some skill formula, lets allow 3 story or 4 story etc.  just can't be as wide if going taller and lets not have pretend guard houses.  Make it more difficult to go taller vs a larger 2 story.  Or even add a corner tower onto a house.  Skills should be very difficult for multi-story housing though, even adding new ones if need.  Otherwise 1 story houses will be a distant memory and every house on the server will be multi.  Even to the point of needing higher skill or newer skill to attach / continue work on anything over the 1st story of the house.

[Tissotx 217]

What should it be to switch house floor?

a rope

a ladder

a straight stair

a circle stair

a portal

a jumping

i fell the options effects that amount of workspace it will steal from the house.

would be awesome if we also can place a mine entrence inside the house, like a basement.

[MamaDarkness 880]

lol, basements.  That is a good one, didn't think of that

[Othob Rithol 700]

Elements I'm hoping for:

[o]Overhanging 2nd levels

[o]Supported "outside" platforms connected to "inside" 2nd levels (eg ramparts)

[o]Spanning across multiple single level foundation buildings (eg gates, spanning bridges)

[o]Changing an existing building

[o]Internal Walls and Doors (bonus points for extra permissions on the door itself)

[o]Merging of Writs into one super building.

[Frack 34]

My two cents on this post:

Premium account numbers are sinking, and I think this is because of three or four reasons:

1. A lot of alt accounts are being scrapped

2. People are playing new other games such as Skyrim and SWTOR

3. Lack of PvP and unpolished missions on the Chaos and Epic servers

4. Lack of new stuff for the Freedom players

In my humble opinion the reason why premium account #'s are sinking is due to fundamentals, and not window trimmings:  The way this game is run, managed, administrated, and not how the game looks and what features it has. 

I'm talking about things like:

1) "Routine" server updates at all odd hours of the day and night - [who does a routine server update at 02:37:23 one day and then several days later at 05:05:00?]

-- Pick a time and do it at the SAME time every day or at some standard interval like all the other games out there - is that so hard to do with a network server?

2) Why does the UNstable client work better than the stable client?  For example: Tree cutting has serious bugs for over 6 months on the stable client, but works fine on the unstable one 

3) It seems like every time I find an enjoyable feature to the game, that feature gets changed or taken away?  [i can think of lots of examples, but this one gets the point across]  I built a whole 20+ x 20+ tile compound for breeding horses complete with buildings, stone walls, pens and the works only to get told that there were too many non aggressive animals on the server and there will be an indefinite moratorium on breeding - I know this got better eventually, but it really sucked for several months that I paid premium for.

4) There seems to be no safety net for when really bad code updates are released and crazy things happen  [like when strong aggressives started creating dropshafts in mines].  Weeks and sometimes months of player work gets trashed and there's nothing but a "woops - sorry" from the game staff - no 24 hr reset or anything to undo the mess created.  This sort of thing should never happen, (and if the test server was really used properly, it wouldn't) but when it does it should get fixed and not swept under the carpet.

And finally

5) If you think there's a problem with the game, you should take the time to discover it's cause before starting a whole new development effort.  Find out why players are quitting, don't guess.  Survey players who quit.  Ask active players what they DON'T like, and fix those issues first.  Then if time permits add things that players might like, AFTER code has been thoroughly tested.

Sure I'd like two story houses, but not at the expense of servers being updated at all hours of the day with bad code and weeks or months of my play effort getting trashed in the blink of an eye and no compensation for it - my time is valuable too.  The game has nice features, but the administration of it has some serious shortfalls.

I've been playing for about 14 months now.  My prem account is up at the end of spring, and unless fundamentals change I'm probably not going to renew.

[Xandra 353]

Hi,

Rolf: Premium account numbers are sinking, and I think this is because of [...]

Lol.

Premium accounts numbers are sinking, this is actually astonishing news!

Nobody of us on the Freedom islands would have recognized the number of abandoned, and slowly decaying deeds in the neighborhood, for sure.

Nobody of us would have seen the more and more rising anger among many paying players, due to all these nerfs we had to suffer during the recent months.

Nobody ever would have neglected this, but maybe a Rolf, caught in his idea of Wurm being a PvP game.

Even a short reality check would show clearly that Wurm PvP is a fail, doesn't work, and only attracts a minuscule number of participants, that then, to equalize it, are very vocal and demand "balance changes" every time some other player kicks their butt.

And this hurts the game, the game that is payed by the overwhelming number of people not interested in the current PvP at all. The server stats speaks for themselves.

And this hurts Rolf's Burger budget, because every deed in the Freedom islands abandoned in anger means some more premiums less, and a deed upkeep less. Judging from our area on Independence, there's still some loss to come - at least 3 deeds that haven't been seen in ages (beneath the already disbanded ones), and will start to decay soon.

In his hunt to save Wild (futile, as we've seen)) and to bring up Epic (well, not really a big success, right?) Rolf has, for months now, neglected the majority of his paying customers, and more, he has hit them hard with the nerf stick over and over.

People do not like this.

It doesn't make me wonder that the prem rates are falling. The wide majority of prem players are PvE players, and we don't really enjoy all these nerfs over and over - as soon as someone on Wild or Epic finds a new possibility to exploit, our game play will be nerfed again. This, excuse the term, suxx.

And now we read:

"I'll throw a bone to them PvE underlings promising multi-story houses (as we'd have not much more important issues, permissions for instance). Hope they'll stay quiet for a while then, while I'll develop more code for my PvP mania, even if maybe 60 players at all will use it."

Sorry Rolf, you'll not get your game going keeping a reality distortion field like this.

Have a good time!

[Jekev 7]

Around the forums I have seen:

• People complaining that Rolf is spending too much time on Freedom.
  
• People complaining that Rolf is spending too much time on Epic.
  
• People complaining that Rolf is spending too much time on Wild.
  

Wherever they are present the members of the above groups are complaining about the lack of attention their server is getting while complaining about the other groups arguing the same thing for their own servers.

From the above facts I would say that Rolf is being pretty much balanced. When Rolf spends time trying to fix things on one server the other servers will suffer (for a time) by exclusion.

Occasionally Rolf will make a change on one server that will screw up another server. Such as Freedom code going into Epic (e.g. no stealing of boats) or Epic code going into Freedom (e.g. the mission-based monsters spawning). As these problems make people angry on both servers they quit and/or head to the forums to condemn the awfulness of the other server.

If both sides would unite to say that Rolf needs better measures to not cross the codes that would be constructive, but instead they prefer to try and convince people how the opposing server is a horrific waste of Rolfs time and resources and how their server is better and how it will always be this way.

And this hurts the game, the game that is payed by the overwhelming number of people not interested in the current PvP at all. The server stats speaks for themselves.

This is somewhat correct, right now it seems that most people are not on Epic or Wild because they are not interested in the current PvP. Keyword current.

Your post (alongside many of the other posts in this thread) preaches that Freedom players are quitting, and this may be the case, but Epic players are quitting faster. If we, as you suggest, look at the server stats, we may see people quitting on Freedom, but if we look at the Epic graphs we will see people are quitting there faster. If Rolf as you suggested dropped the PvP aspect of Wurm premium accounts would drop far further. The solution, as per usual is to continue to try and help both servers, not to drop the PvP aspect of Wurm and not to leave the PvE aspect rotting away in the background.

What Rolf is doing at the moment I feel is the right direction, he is putting code in place that will help to save Epic as well as adding features that people from Freedom have been asking for (alliance chat) and a feature (HotA) that I feel is a good direction to go in for encouraging people to get into in PvP both on the Freedom cluster and the Epic cluster. He is also removing the muddled code from both servers, removing the safe boats from Epic and the Epic creatures from Freedom.

I am not saying that HotA or alliances are perfected yet, and I would not claim that he has finished unmuddling all the code, but I feel that he is definitely moving in the right direction for all of the servers.