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AndreC

So How 'Bout that 'Conomy

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I think the players should do the advertisements for him. Of course legitimatley and not all over every other games forums unless they permit it. Make videos, Sony Vegas the crap out of them, attract people, use any publicity you have yourself to attract people to wurm, it saves wurm some money, and ups the hype of the game some.

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Not sure videos of Wurm would attract anyone to be honest m8.

A few facebook ads would pull some folk in though I bet.

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I tend to agree with Darkmalice on this one. Rather than wasting time on creating a newbie server Rolf & the team need to be working to implement all those long awaited changes to the game & then everyone needs to do what they can to help promote it.

The whole deal with noobs having such a high quit rate could be handled by a community effort to simply be nicer & more helpful to new players without trying to recruit them for slave labor. I still remember begging in kchat repeatedly for someone to come kill a darn cave bug so I could get to my body right outside of FM. My first 24 hours was almost up before someone finally took pity on me & came to the rescue. That was almost the end of my Wurm career. If Vonwolf hadn't offered me a place to stay & to feed me until I could feed myself it would have been my last day in the game for sure. (No strings attached to that offer either btw.)

The area around the Howl & FM looks like a bomb hit it & I'm sure the starter areas on the other servers are no better. Would be short work for a group of experienced players on each server to bash some of the junk & replant the trees so at least players first impression of the game is a positive one. Trolls? What we can't kill them off now & then to make it easier on the noobs? I'll volunteer to help out on Indy. Anyone else?

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Replant the trees so the new folks can simply cut them down again? I'd love to see a GM run "tree deed" so new players can find non deeded trees as they start out. A few simple things like that would help imensely. As would the promised changes coming true :P

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The whole deal with noobs having such a high quit rate could be handled by a community effort to simply be nicer & more helpful to new players without trying to recruit them for slave labor. I still remember begging in kchat repeatedly for someone to come kill a darn cave bug so I could get to my body right outside of FM. My first 24 hours was almost up before someone finally took pity on me & came to the rescue. That was almost the end of my Wurm career. If Vonwolf hadn't offered me a place to stay & to feed me until I could feed myself it would have been my last day in the game for sure. (No strings attached to that offer either btw.)

The area around the Howl & FM looks like a bomb hit it & I'm sure the starter areas on the other servers are no better. Would be short work for a group of experienced players on each server to bash some of the junk & replant the trees so at least players first impression of the game is a positive one. Trolls? What we can't kill them off now & then to make it easier on the noobs? I'll volunteer to help out on Indy. Anyone else?

I agree that a lot of new players run into some "trolling" on kchat at times. Of course, all bullies use the excuse "ah we wuz just havin' a little fun" to excuse it. Some servers are milder than others. CA Help channel is usually better behaved it seems, plus more closely moderated, so maybe more push to encourage new players to check there first. IE, if you see a new player getting bullied a bit in kchat, maybe PM them and recommend they try CA Help (then also try to answer their first question or two there so they don;t feel they were sent to the Siberia of chats ..)  Many gaming forums have a "newbie corner" where new people can ask questions without fear of being teased or ridiculed for their questions, and in this game CA Help is the place for that.

I started a little place nearby FM, and one of the first things I did was take a big batch of saplings and replant trees nearby the starter area. Not a single one lasted to "Old" -- all of them were chopped down at Young/Mature by new players who either never bothered to read the tutorials and simply clicked through everything as fast as possible, or they didn't care -- it was a tree finally and by golly if they weren't going to have a whack at it ...

I think if Howl-GreenDog-Esert allowed tree cutting BUT also had a special superfast regrowth rate (like the tutorial does) it would help. Veteran players are not that likely to "raid": the trees for themselves simply because the location is really only convenient for new players. Just have to make sure no one uses the fast growth as an excuse to grind woodcutting "fall and let rot" sessions by vets.

On the other hand, "guaranteeing" a supply of trees near the start areas, really only encourages new players to keep piling up there, instead of heading out the road to better areas to settle. So all you end up with are even bigger slums than before, and even more rotting 1x1s. Newbie server has flaws for the same reason. If players are going to make it here, the ones that tend to stay are also the same ones that tend to be willing to hike to find a place for themselves. Maybe what the game could use is some friendly starter YouTube guides, other places besides the wiki. More guides out there, the better.

A few players have recently started "Newbie Sanctuaries" not far from the start area -- deeded but undeveloped areas with permissive settings where new players are encourage to build a shack or chop trees -- and that may ultimately be the best route to go. Mayors can always clean up decayed/abandoned shacks from time to time. Not sure that Indy has anything like that yet, I have seen at least one place on Deli..

I actually started Wurm (and quit!) at least 3-4 times before it finally stuck. It was so hard! I kept coming back once a year or so, because I KNEW on paper this was the game I wanted to be playing, but at the time there was really no tutorial, and it literally took me like 5 hours to try to make a clay bowl (campfire kept going out and no trees nearby, I was too weak to haul log piles). I never did succeed at a casserole as the fire kept going out. Anyway I think the game has already magde HUGE improvements and just needs to keep monitoring the starter aspects. A LOT has already been accomplished.

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Replant the trees so the new folks can simply cut them down again? I'd love to see a GM run "tree deed" so new players can find non deeded trees as they start out. A few simple things like that would help imensely. As would the promised changes coming true :P

Dont need a GM for that.  when i lived by the howl that is exactly what i did.  I would harvest about 15 trees everyday and leave em an easy to get to spot.  I even would trade things new players would need for iron ribbons.  This is a sandbox game, we cant just sit back and hope gm's or devs do these things, we have to do them ourselves.  I actually would like to do something like that again on epic if there is some stronger spy alt prevention coding.

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Hi,

not wanting to attack you, but I guess you have some weak points.

A dedicated newbie server would only work if it had periodic wipes/resets, otherwise it would just become GV with people staying there indefinitely.

As we all know, GV was the end of all the game, and would have destroyed Wurm. Really?

Didn't Wurm run well for years with GV? Does it run this much better now? Didn't GV just grow a steady supply of growing up Freedom Premiums?

We got a huge Prem wave letting GV come to Freedom. How many of them are here, still?

Forget messing with the game (again), the focus should be on advertisement and implementation of features/graphics which are already planned or underway.

People need to see there has been improvements made in the visual department (whenever all this new shiny stuff gets put in) and have it shouted from the rooftops.

As I see, we get tons of changes. Many of them due to complaints from the PvP side. Changes, that don't add at all to the experience of the big paying PvE crowd, changes that mostly reduce heavily their gaming experience, and their readiness to pay for for this game.

We get bored with age-old nuisances still, horses getting invisible when hitched, ships, carts, horses vanishing in mine walls, unrepairable mine devastations due to a stupid change, the need to use a mallet to finish an unfinished mallet, all kinds of this crazy stuff.

Is there work about this? No. Instead of finally ironing out at least the most boring bugs ROLF chooses to add more unfinished stuff. Rare items like in WoW, cool. Got a rare campfire, I'm a pro now?

This game has a great potential, but would need some ppl more then ROLF's fan club alone. My dream:

  • ROLF would accept help, other coders that would help develop his baby. This might need the help of a bunch of lawyers. To make sure he's not robbed.
  • ROLF would finally agree to fork the code of PvP to the one of PvE. They just don't go together, and every time Rolf tries to help the PvP people he is losing quite some more PvE people. Even a small PvE team could do this much for the existence of Wurm ...

But, to be honest, my confidence for better times is close to zero. Rolf has a hard grip on his baby, and seems not to be able to realize where the money is. He's dreaming about exciting PvP, whereas it's obvious that the vast majority of his customers doesn't give a [whatever] of his ideas, and just continues digging, crafting, whatever.

Graphic news wouldn't do anything. Even proper animations wouldn't help. It's the way the game play is handled that decides about the acceptance by the players. Constant stupid nerfs, no time spent in ironing out old bugs, instead inventing new buggy features ->  End of game, sooner or later.

Have a good time!

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Didn't Wurm run well for years with GV?

No. The player numbers started to dwindle after the GV launch. It didn't take more than a few months for GV to become clogged up and overpopulated, which made it a terrible place to play in for both new and old players.

Does it run this much better now? Didn't GV just grow a steady supply of growing up Freedom Premiums?

GV was only holding back a steady stream of players from entering the game by acting as an obstacle. Potential premium players had no incentive to become subscribers because GV only showcased the non-prem side of the game. In the eyes of a GV-player it was better to remain a non-prem on a non-prem server as opposed to having compete with premiums on a premium server. Forcing non-prems to live among premium players makes a subscription seem more attractive/necessary and discourages perpetual non-prem players from remaining, which nets Rolf more money. Hence the current/pre-GV situation is better for everyone.

We've been down the non-prem-exclusive server path before and it was a dead end.

We got a huge Prem wave letting GV come to Freedom. How many of them are here, still?

How many of those GV-players are left is irrelevant; the statistics made it clear that a lot of those players quickly bought premium after being transferred, which most of them would never had done unless they had been forced onto a premium server. Wurm could've had those subscribers much earlier had it not been for GV holding them back.

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Although helping new players out is divergent from the main topic, it is something I enjoy doing at times and they are what will obviously keep the game growing and help it survive with their additional financial contributions.

One of the many things I have done on Deliverance was to place a bulk storage bin in a public iron mine just off the Green Dog starter village. I dug about 300 peat and hauled it to this bin to stock it with fuel for them to use, as well as several 100's of wood scraps which could be used as kindling. I would go there weekly to check the fuel stock and clean up the mine a bit from debris scattered about the mine. All was working well before the change of the "convenience" of picking up bins was instituted.

Last week I went to check the bin and mine as usual, only to find all the bin contents had been taken out, dropped on the ground and the bin taken (stolen). It was clear that this bin was placed for new player use and stocked with fuel which otherwise was not available anywhere near the starter deed; but still some more experienced player could care less for those new players who would need this fuel to make their meager items from the iron vein and forge next to the fuel bin I placed there.

I pointed out this possible problem and negative resulting effect it would have on new players in a post here

http://wurmonline.com/forum/index.php?topic=71428.0

but the response was generally that people could care less if new players were impacted in a negative manner by this change as long as they could now get "free" bins by scavanging them up anywhere they were left unsecured. As of this post nothing has been done to enable off deed bins to be secured to the ground so that other people can safely place and stock them with materials for new players to use.

http://wurmonline.com/forum/index.php?topic=72768.0

The Green Dog starter deed has many mines on the east and west sides of it but has no fuel source available for new players to smelt the iron ore that they mine, so as to make nails, anvils, gate locks, sickles and other small tools. These are things they need to learn how to do in a safe environment of the starter deed which has spirit templars rushing to their defense as they learn how to play the game and survive within it.

A suggestion I made http://wurmonline.com/forum/index.php?topic=72769.0

is to have some small peat bogs (3x3?) installed in the NW, SW, NE, SE perimiters of Green Dog that newbies can dig for fuel for their forges, which will also give a "light" option when activated to act as a kindling as well. This could be easily implimented and would be a practical way to provide a proper fuel source for new players. Planting trees in the perimiter is worthless as they will be cut down even at the "young" stage just for a woodscrap to make (and possibly fail) a piece of kindling, which is even more worthless without further fuel for the forges.

These are just 2 examples of how little thought and concern is given to the new player experience, with which some small Dev efforts could make the game a more enjoyable experience for them and encourage them to continue playing the game.

I also have a deed nearby that is placed in such a way as to have free undeeded land behind it for new players to build a small homestead within some stone walled areas that they can complete with a few fences and gates. Shard and iron mines with forges are close by as well as having extra low QL logs (better than newbies can cut), vegtables which can be given out to plant, ect. This way a new player can still do their own thing to get acquainted with the game and not have to be part of a village under anyones direction.

After starting out in this area many players move on to other larger areas, join villages or even start their own deed. Some leave their small shacks there, never to be seen again but eventually they decay away and another new player comes along to settle down for a while and see what the game has to offer to them. Point being, with a little focus and effort from both the Dev's and other more experienced players, new players can be helped over the more frustrating aspects of the starting experience to continue on as longer term players.

When I left GV to come to Freedom (Independence) as a premium player, I came alone and once I arrived I asked for no ones help, but that is just my way of doing things. I learned enough of the game on GV to feel secure enough to leave there and travel to the new huge server to make my own little homestead somewhere. I never really ventured far from the starter deed of Samling, as I found a very hilly spot to settle that I suppose others did not see as very desirable but over the years I have transformed it to a very liveable area that appeals to me as a beautiful homestead. Some are like myself in their independent nature but many others can use a helping hand in their initial journey into these strange and wondrous lands.

=Ayes=

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Hi,

The player numbers started to dwindle after the GV launch. It didn't take more than a few months for GV to become clogged up and overpopulated, which made it a terrible place to play in for both new and old players.

Really? I started on GV some weeks before the Bearageddon and the 4chan invasion, and I didn't have the impression of it being "clogged up and overpopulated" or "a terrible place to play". We had a lot of fun, and any other day a player of my south-coast area bought Premium and went to Freedom.

There was plenty of undisturbed wilderness - before settling at the coast I had got lost near Glitterdale, and had wandered the server for days, reaching the later New dawn area (was HotS then with "Don't build here, reserved area" signs, right?) as well as First Light.

After a longer pause time I came back, and moved to the west coast. This was in the months before the portals to Freedom was opened, and there was a lot more players on the server. But still there was wide areas of undisturbed wilderness, with maybe a little farm every now and then.

And even then, every day someone said "goodbye" in KChat, and went to Freedom.

GV was only holding back a steady stream of players from entering the game by acting as an obstacle. Potential premium players had no incentive to become subscribers because GV only showcased the non-prem side of the game. In the eyes of a GV-player it was better to remain a non-prem on a non-prem server as opposed to having compete with premiums on a premium server.

As mentioned above, I cannot agree. Freedom was "the big goal" for the most of us on GV, many of us went over, it was a constant stream. For sure, there was a lot of ppl, too, happily enjoying their F2P. But a lot of even these started dreaming of Freedom as soon as their skill reached the skill cap. Talking about Freedom was constant, and it was the ultimate goal for all those that had stayed longer but maybe a few weeks.

I became Premium maybe 2 months before the portals to Freedom was opened, and enjoyed a short time of happiness there, on a premium-only server with constant 150 - 250 players on line.

How many of those GV-players are left is irrelevant; the statistics made it clear that a lot of those players quickly bought premium after being transferred, which most of them would never had done unless they had been forced onto a premium server. Wurm could've had those subscribers much earlier had it not been for GV holding them back.

I became villager of Halcyon before the "Great Opening". It was a very well populated village these days, one of the oldest and biggest deeds on the server, to my knowledge. It was "insanely great" to be there. This was the best time in all of my Wurmian days.

Then the F2P's was allowed to Freedom, and in an instant we lost 3/4 of our premium players. The once most beautiful Halcyon area was made a shanty town in a few days, and the oak alley leading to the ramp to FM (that we had made in month's work) was chopped in a few hours.

For sure, lot's of the newcomers bought Premium, and deeded all over the place. Where are they now?

Do we have numbers how the whole Wurmian paying population developed?

I don't doubt your view at all, I just have another.

In my book we got a huge wave of new Premiums after the "Great Opening", first followed by a huge loss of long-time premiums not renewing due to the devastation of their game. And then, a second huge loss, when the initial Prem time of the newcomers ran out. For sure, new players still came & premmed, each of the new servers caused another initial wave, but in the end? Are we this much better then before?

I feel that we have lost a lot of former hard-core Wurmians, that have been paying for years before, in exchange for some new Premiums that dropped as quickly as they came. I've seen deeds planted in our area where we never ever even spotted the owner once, that fell apart as soon as the initial upkeep was used up.

And of all the many great Halcyon ppl I met when I came there, I'm the last one still logging in daily.

With the new servers, we should have a vast multiple of paying players compared to before the "Great Opening" - do we have this much really? Do we have as much players as the addition of whole Epic, Deli and Exo would require? I'm doubting this. But I'd be happy to see numbers about - I'm well aware that I might be wrong completely.

My ideas to rise the paying player numbers:

[list type=decimal]

[*]A beginner island in the Freedom cluster, with approbate monsters (not bigger then black bear, and all spawning young). But, other then GV, with Premiums, too. With a somewhat restricted way to plant deeds, to keep open areas for the F2P's. With the same high decay as on GV, just only off deed.

Less restrictions to them newbies, let 'em ride cows and hitch large carts again. They should have a use at all ...

Premium players could get a deed there, using it to produce bulk ware. Paying newbies for their work, and selling tools for them, in exchange.

This way newbies would get a good grip of the whole game, in a more friendly environment. Less rage-quits, more new Premiums. Deliverance would come to mind for this.

.

[*]Independence would be Prem-only then. No more fear that some fresh newbie locusts would eat up all the decorative trees in your perimeter, no more desperate newbies scared to death about all the "invincible" monster in the area, one big premium-only server, as we had in the past.

.

[*]Exodus as a mixed server, too, but without plantable deeds, and no building other then by GMs. A few fortified villages at the coast lines, with plenty of cheap inns and sufficient resources to maintain the gear, some basic highways, and a lot of most horrible monsters spawning very frequently. No spawn below aged, no spawn without "color", maybe even dragons and uniques?

A pure hardcore hunting/ fighting server. F2P's might earn some coin smelting iron, scouting the area, or acting as decoy.

.

[*]And some fitting solution for our PvP friends, as it seems to me they're not this happy. But this is beyond my scope.

I think such a change would rise the number of players again significantly, would rise the numbers of Premiums, too, would increase the economy and as such would benefit the game.

Elias, seems that we have a different view. I tried to explain mine now, nevertheless I accept yours. Would be great to have some long-term numbers to check our claims against, but I fear this hope is in vain.

Anyway, thx for your post! Have a good time!

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Do we have numbers how the whole Wurmian paying population developed?

Yes. Historic data of number of premium players back to the big F2P opening.

US1Sr.png

Opening Freedom to F2P was a financial success. Opening additional Freedom servers helped with the premium count too.

Current overall premium count

paying-year.png

Current premium count for all servers. The "golden valley/login" graph is the overall premium count. You can see the effects of deli, exodus and epic openings.

http://gotti.dnsalias.org/wurm/stats-year.php#paying

My ideas to rise the paying player numbers:

[list type=decimal]

[*]A beginner island in the Freedom cluster, with approbate monsters (not bigger then black bear, and all spawning young). But, other then GV, with Premiums, too. With a somewhat restricted way to plant deeds, to keep open areas for the F2P's. With the same high decay as on GV, just only off deed.

Less restrictions to them newbies, let 'em ride cows and hitch large carts again. They should have a use at all ...

Premium players could get a deed there, using it to produce bulk ware. Paying newbies for their work, and selling tools for them, in exchange.

This way newbies would get a good grip of the whole game, in a more friendly environment. Less rage-quits, more new Premiums. Deliverance would come to mind for this.

.

[*]Independence would be Prem-only then. No more fear that some fresh newbie locusts would eat up all the decorative trees in your perimeter, no more desperate newbies scared to death about all the "invincible" monster in the area, one big premium-only server, as we had in the past.

.

[*]Exodus as a mixed server, too, but without plantable deeds, and no building other then by GMs. A few fortified villages at the coast lines, with plenty of cheap inns and sufficient resources to maintain the gear, some basic highways, and a lot of most horrible monsters spawning very frequently. No spawn below aged, no spawn without "color", maybe even dragons and uniques?

A pure hardcore hunting/ fighting server. F2P's might earn some coin smelting iron, scouting the area, or acting as decoy.

.

[*]And some fitting solution for our PvP friends, as it seems to me they're not this happy. But this is beyond my scope.

I first started playing on the old JK Home server. After an "invasion" of 4chan players the server was brought to its knees by 120 simultanious player. The result of that invasion was the creation of the GV server  as a tutorial server. But despite your observations of GVers going premium the actual number of premium players went down. Many players on GV were comfortable with their situation. So overall there was no need to pay to leave the server and additionally leaving everything behind.

When Indy was opened to free to play the big upset was that the spawn point was moved. The deeds near the old spawn that elected to be near to help new players got shafted and and some  deeds that elected to be far away, like Halycon, got shafted too because they now were at the center of the madness.

You are essentially proposing the same thing again. A server where non prems settle down at first and once they go prem they have to leave their place behind. A world of decaying ruins again. In addition to that it would mess up the server for those that already live there. Just like it did for Halycon.

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  • Independence would be Prem-only then. No more fear that some fresh newbie locusts would eat up all the decorative trees in your perimeter, no more desperate newbies scared to death about all the "invincible" monster in the area, one big premium-only server, as we had in the past.
    .

Rather than prem only, Only deed based development?

  • Exodus as a mixed server, too, but without plantable deeds, and no building other then by GMs. A few fortified villages at the coast lines, with plenty of cheap inns and sufficient resources to maintain the gear, some basic highways, and a lot of most horrible monsters spawning very frequently. No spawn below aged, no spawn without "color", maybe even dragons and uniques?
    A pure hardcore hunting/ fighting server. F2P's might earn some coin smelting iron, scouting the area, or acting as decoy.
    .

Who's going to refund everyone's deeds? If you're proposing that people's investments get tossed out, I propose yours first.

That's shameful.

  • And some fitting solution for our PvP friends, as it seems to me they're not this happy. But this is beyond my scope.

It's not a happy place on Chaos. A hybrid FFA/Controlled PvP environment would do a lot to boost numbers.

Currently nobody wants to come over. They're afraid of the lack of information/details.

Post wasn't intended to be a personal attack in anyways. I agreed/disagreed with various points and wanted to ask some questions.

No more fear that some fresh newbie locusts would eat up all the decorative trees in your perimeter trash the entire region surrounding the place you've sunk months worth of work in to

I've had this problem on Exodus. IMO - the problem does seem to be noob locust access to premium areas.

My idea : GV is still there. Let them go back. Let them sail/row to the good servers.

Don't trash Deli by making it the noob server, when there is a great one sitting unused.

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Rather than prem only, Only deed based development?

I'd love Indie as a prem-only server as we once had, would be a refuge, and a place where old players could be among itselves.

I think something like such couldn't be but beneficial.

Who's going to refund everyone's deeds? If you're proposing that people's investments get tossed out, I propose yours first.

That's shameful.

I agree that this is a problem. For sure a solution should be found for the current deed holders, on Deli as well as on Exo. But I guess an offer hard to resist would do the trick - a new, fresh deed writ + a drake set (for huge deeds), maybe?

Or something like this. For sure, ppl that have already "invested" in a place shouldn't get robbed, they should get a sufficient payout.

It's not a happy place on Chaos. A hybrid FFA/Controlled PvP environment would do a lot to boost numbers.

I'm usually a more PvP orientated player, but Wurm PvP doesn't attract me at all. I made quite some proposals, but we seem to have a special crowd here. May they decide themselves what they want.

What I want, as a basic thing: Separate code between PvE and PvP. The most important thing in all Wurm. 

My idea : GV is still there. Let them go back. Let them sail/row to the good servers.

I still have chars on GV, and I'd agree. But: GV is a mini server, doing the logins too, as well as having the tutorial. Quite often we have nasty lags, much more then on Freedom, and not at the same time.

GV would need a serious hardware update to work as an actual playable server, atm, I assume, it runs on a forgotten 486 somewhere below Rolf's desk ...

But: We have two chars on GV, at the west coast, with a nice large settlement & a lot of cool animals, besides our 4 deeds and our 5 Prems on Indie. We'd happily scrap our GV chars & belongings, would it be for a better Wurm. The more, if we would receive some "goodie" before we'd prem 'em too & go to Freedom.

And, even if I happily would take it, no Drake sets for the GV residents, should this server get scrapped. A sculpting wand, or a small chest of keeping would do, by far, IMHO.

Have fun!

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What I want, as a basic thing: Separate code between PvE and PvP. The most important thing in all Wurm. 

This would do a lot for maintaining premium accounts on the PVE servers. It's not enough to get new premiums, get them buying a few increments of 10s, keeping people in game creates a long lasting community, and economy.

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Hi,

This would do a lot for maintaining premium accounts on the PVE servers. It's not enough to get new premiums, get them buying a few increments of 10s, keeping people in game creates a long lasting community, and economy.

Fully agree. Even a tree-hugging carebear like me cannot but realize, due to conversations in game and posts in the forum, that the PvP people are all but happy with the current situation.

Something has to be done for them, they pay like we PvE'ers do. Unfortunately many of the recent changes for PvP had devastating side-effects for us carebears, not desired at all, and repelling even more ppl.

It's an age old problem, many games have been hurt by it, and many are still suffering:

It doesn't make any sense to share game mechanics for PvP and PvE.

PvP requires steady balancing, constant changes to keep the game play challenging, quick fixes, whatever.

But exactly this is what you'd want the least for PvE: We tree-huggers want a reliable environment, we strongly oppose game-breaking changes every other week, we want to grind in happiness.

It just doesn't go together.

At the moment the vast majority of money seems to be made with PvE income. So, from a financial point of view, they should be catered.

This would, on the other side, alienate our PvP friends. And be impossible such.

A code fork is the only method possible. A common base utilizing the graphics, models, textures and such, but different game mechanics for PvP and PvE. There is no other way.

Else always either PvP or PvE will be unhappy, and rage-quitting. And we don't want to loose any paying customer!

Other thing, @Ago:

Yes. Historic data of number of premium players back to the big F2P opening.

Thank you for this data! Sad that we don't have data before the "Great opening" :/

We all know that opening a new server will always attract people, and reactivate ppl that have quitted.

I see a heavy increase in the graphs, after every new server, as would be to expected. But I also see them lines going down again, after. And the graph doesn't tell about all of these long-time Wurmians that we have lost during the recent changes, they dwindle in the new premium numbers.

The game has become much bigger, and thus we have more paying players. Is this "more" in players corresponding to the new areas? Is it corresponding to the effort necessary to offer this?

We don't have data showing the number of premiums per qm of game area. Or numbers of premiums per $ spent on game costs.

In my perception we have lost many long time die-hard Wurmians, in exchange of some new 1-time Premiums. That come, and go, and come, and go.

In my small Indie world we are as lonely as never before. No really active other deeds in the local of our deeds anymore, no long-time relations anymore. Some ppl coming, deeding, leaving quickly, wash, rinse, repeat.

The whole Halcyon alliance today has just a fraction of the players then Halcyon once had as villagers - and it's still a whole lot of deeds. And we still have quite a lot of crazy cool, nice people - Halcyon still is the alliance you'd love to be in. But no comparison to the times before the "Grand opening". The game hasn't won since. It has lost appeal, instead, and a lot of die-hard Wurmians have been lost. Which I see as a sad fact.

My proposal about a new "entry-server" wasn't meant to recreate GV. We all know that it had flaws, and didn't do as well as it was intended. I just argue that it wasn't this bad at all, as I experienced it, anyways.

Analyzing what has gone wrong, identifying the weaknesses and finding better solutions for the weak points, while keeping the working parts - isn't it what would be desirable?

GV has worked for quite a while, and has done it's duty - Wurm is still alive today. It might not have been a perfect solution, but is this a reason to scrap it at all, with any advantages it had? Dunno.

I'd love to see a new entry server, where newcomers could experience the game without getting eaten by most invincible mobs - black bear young, yes, raging scorpion old, no.

I'd love to see more fresh players staying in the game, not leaving after having finished a single wall of their shack, because said old raging scorpion was camping their corpse.

I'd love to see this game becoming more successful, we'd all profit from. IMHO.

Have a good time!

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Yes. Historic data of number of premium players back to the big F2P opening.

US1Sr.png

Nice chart ;)

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Deli, exo, and all the elevation servers look like a cancerous parasitic leech on top of Freedom...

Which is a lazy lump sitting on Wild.

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I don't see how you could possibly claim "dwindling numbers" when the graph clearly state that the player count has increased and stayed steady ever since Freedom opened to prems. The number of premium players grew after the opening thanks to post-GV non-prems purchasing prem, and stayed strong as these players kept renewing their prem - There is literally no other plausible interpretation of this graph.

With regards to old premiums quitting, it's sad but not unnatural. You say that long-time premiums are getting replaced with fresh inexperienced premiums as if this was a genuinely bad thing, but what else could possibly be considered normal? Certainly not all old prems staying forever. No new players quitting isn't a realistic scenario either.

Whatever old perpetual premiums we had must've been replaced with new perpetual premiums (not "one-timers" like you claim), otherwise we would have a significant dip in the green area around the first few months since the opening.  You keep mentioning Halcyon getting drained of players after the opening of the server to non-prems, but have you considered that this might just be simply because people get bored and move on? Villages rise and fall all the time; just because all your friends quit it doesn't mean there's something wrong with the game. You may be confusing your sentimental value with what's valuable to Rolf.

There's probably a lot of things that can be done to help the experience of new players whilst still not messing up that of existing ones, but any solution involving locking newbies up on a server with a population dominated by their own kind will lead to ruin. The current all-mixed server isn't the ultimate solution but it's the least bad one.

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How to fix the economy?

- Visible armor

- Player Customization

- Multistorey buildings

right?

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How to fix the economy?

- Visible armor

- Player Customization

- Multistorey buildings

right?

Yes.

More stuff for appearance pls

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This is the best I could find: Players online from Indy from the opening until Oct 2009. (from http://wurmonline.com/forum/index.php?topic=25627.0)

59672-ICUOZBL.png

This is the graph from Mar 2011 to Apr 2012.

wurm-year.png

About 18 months are missing including the time in Nov 2010 when the server opened for f2p players.

One thing thats obvious: Even with the hype of the new server in Jun 2009, the number of players online was still below the number of premium players online half a year after f2p was allowed. At the end of 2009 it was at about half what it's now. Even with players scattered over 2 additional freedom server and 4 epic servers.

I'm pretty sure everybody who's had an eye on the server graphs over the last years can assure you that opening GV was a big mistake in regards to premium numbers and closing GV finally helped overcome

Found a graph in googles cache: Premium players on Indy Oct 2010 - Nov 2011

images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRlYnMGaZHWIKM9diRS19SbqAeS4_NDGvDBdPPG_oVcbEBZZyTpCg

You can see the impact of the f2p opening in Nov 2010 and the decline after Deli and Exodus opened in Sep 2011. The spike in Oct 2011 is an data error from the epic accounts.

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I'm actually surprised there isn't a housing market in Wurm, at least to my knowledge.

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Wurm is too mobile to have a housing market. Homes dont last like they should, mainly due to the 'midevil' construction base of them. Else we'd have sprawling streets, kind neighbors, the pedo down the street, cars, all that jazz.

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How to fix the economy?

- Visible armor

- Player Customization

- Multistorey buildings

right?

Yup.

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What I want, as a basic thing: Separate code between PvE and PvP. The most important thing in all Wurm.

I have to chime in on this point and give a reality check as someone who has been a project manager for some very large projects:  Going to separate code between the two types of server would exponentially increase the workload for the developers and exponentially increase the number of bugs.

Or, it would mean that one branch was basically never touched again by the developers.

Now, I am not specifically criticizing the poster who made this comment.  This kind of idea based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how to maintain such a project is very common.  I've even seen it from people who worked in the software industry and really should have known better.

Think about a program like Wurm or any other MMO with it's massive number of lines of code.  We all know that a small tweak can cause unintended side effects.  In the industry, it's well known that even a small tweak can requires many hours of testing and can still let a bug get through.

Now think about adding the complication of a second fork.  Rolf adds a new feature or makes a change to an existing one.  He now has to incorporate that into two different massive sets of code and get them to run successfully.  Then the testers have to pour through both forked games.  Then the players get to do the live testing on the server.

Every little problem becomes magnified and multiplied because every addition is now interacting with two different pieces of software.  What works with one may not work with the other, and may, in fact, break the other completely.  Even a simple setting change could have far reaching unintended consequences.  (Do you really believe Rolf intended to make it impossible to make leather with a recent patch?  Something got tweaked and that bug is the trickled-down result.)

There are some things that Rolf can do to allow for differences between the two types of servers.  We already see this in basic things like whether you can PVP on different servers, whether you can be F2P or premium only, and the speed of skill gain.  These are a setting difference.  The code is absolutely no different between the two; it's a data value that changes and so adjusts how the program reacts.

However, these may be very limited because they require going back and adding checks throughout the code to see if something is true or not for a server.  If you miss even one, something won't work right.  (Which is a good way for exploits to get into the game.)

TL;DR: Forking PVP and PVE into two different code bases would be like Rolf and crew trying to maintain both Word and Excel at the same time and apply the same changes to both.  It will overload them and kill the game.

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