An open question to GOA

[Raven]

Thats quite a good point actually. Casual players take much longer to explore the game, get various 50's get TOA sorted etc. The reason i quit was because there was nothing else to do but gain RPs, I had more 50s than i needed, had all the crafters, decent equipment on played toons etc. If the RVR was crap then i just logged off. Eventually as the pvp went down hill (not helped by the SOTG crap) i spent less and less time in-game.

Cant say i care now tbh, addiction is well and truly cured

 

[Shike]

r.o.f.l @ those thinking whinging and shit made the game die out.. you guys really dont have a clue do ya? Saying that is like saying that clueless zergers killed it too which just aint true. No particular playertype is responsible, only the ones creating the game and maintaining it can have such effects on a game like DAoC. By the stupid logic some people use here we could say thay CS should be dead and buried 1000000000 times over if you think whines and flames and whatnot kills games.

Mythic took too long to make some important changes, that and the fact that the game got older are the 2 major things that made it happen, not some fucking whiners on some forums you fucking idiots.

 

[Esselinithia]

I actually cant believe Cumbria is still there tbh, the most ive seen it hit is about 60 people in the last 3 months, hell , how do they manage to pulll anything off on that server. 60 people ffs , and if they havnt even got round to sorting cumbria yet , wether deletin it or clustering it with dyvet, what hope is there for ours . Not like theyd need to worry about the language difference for cumbria either as when daoc started there wasnt a spanish server all the spaniards rolled here on the english ones and theres plenty of spanish guilds here.

Dyvet and Cumbria is different in at least 3 things:

How population changes on the server
What the players think about it
And what the players seen before

A server where the population loss problems might be related to a single event, no persistent trend noticed, where people are used to a small "family" like server and community and might be happy with it. If they wouldn't be, they wouldn't play there since when cumbria started to see low pop, noone had old chars, and long term friendships there. CLustering it would mean: forcing them into a very different community. If the amount of accounts is enough to finance most of the costs, and other players are happy to have spanish support, why would GOA close the server, or change its language and merge its community with something different?

As you see we can't look for similar reasons about dyvet.

Disdain spoke attitude. That is another difference. And I think there is another big difference you should think about: Backgrounds for some players.

Generally speaking (not only about the two smaller servers, but about more successfull clusters and dyvet as well) there are some important differences between different groups of players:

Some of the current playerbase came from CS, UT and other FPS games where the community is fragmented, the game is highly competitive, and helping hand offered is usually exists only if your core team (the few important players in your clan) benefits from it.

Some other players came from roleplaying games, either tabletop (like D&D), or computer based (like Baldur's Gate, etc) or online (browser based games, Runescape, MUDs, other MMORPGs) and some might played with other games made by Mythic before. (Or games made by the two companies that merged to form Mythic)

Age (someone who is still in school and someone who works has different free days, and different amount of time to play)

Possible other hobbies (can influence how much time you play daoc, and what do you want from it)

Computer knowledge.

 

[Punishment]

Any update ?

Or are GOA crossing their Fingers that 1.88 Will bring players back ?

 

[Esselinithia]

If they have checked data about population problems, they seen the biggest drops look very simple: The server doesn't recover from the traditional low times.

When you see winter and summer low periods the game loses some players, like it did in every year, but people don't come back from this extended leave like they did before and they do elsewhere.

A few days before the next traditionally low period isn't the best time for the fix, and the time period where the game should recover from the low period can be more effective. BUT the key question: Will the population drop in the summer kill the community before that?

So GOA might need a long term solution in late August, that gets back a lot of people (at the time when players return to the game normally) with a fixed solution and a short term solution to make sure the community stay for summer.

 

[Imgormiel]

Dyvet and Cumbria is different in at least 3 things:

How population changes on the server
What the players think about it
And what the players seen before

A server where the population loss problems might be related to a single event, no persistent trend noticed, where people are used to a small "family" like server and community and might be happy with it. If they wouldn't be, they wouldn't play there since when cumbria started to see low pop, noone had old chars, and long term friendships there. CLustering it would mean: forcing them into a very different community. If the amount of accounts is enough to finance most of the costs, and other players are happy to have spanish support, why would GOA close the server, or change its language and merge its community with something different?

As you see we can't look for similar reasons about dyvet.

Disdain spoke attitude. That is another difference. And I think there is another big difference you should think about: Backgrounds for some players.

Generally speaking (not only about the two smaller servers, but about more successfull clusters and dyvet as well) there are some important differences between different groups of players:

Some of the current playerbase came from CS, UT and other FPS games where the community is fragmented, the game is highly competitive, and helping hand offered is usually exists only if your core team (the few important players in your clan) benefits from it.

Some other players came from roleplaying games, either tabletop (like D&D), or computer based (like Baldur's Gate, etc) or online (browser based games, Runescape, MUDs, other MMORPGs) and some might played with other games made by Mythic before. (Or games made by the two companies that merged to form Mythic)

Age (someone who is still in school and someone who works has different free days, and different amount of time to play)

Possible other hobbies (can influence how much time you play daoc, and what do you want from it)

Computer knowledge.

You forgot the meretricious Counter Stwike pop arseholes all of them anyways

 

[Dard]

Any update ?

Or are GOA crossing their Fingers that 1.88 Will bring players back ?

No news, apparently GoA are opening a coffee shop or somthing and all there resources are being poured into it .. its true .. i read it on FreddysHouse.

 

[IainC]

It's as I said earlier, we have a plan that we want to put into action but we're trying to make it work. If it doesn't work then we're going to fall back on to our backup plan. We could do the backup plan now but it would be extremely unpopular with you and with us so we are trying very hard to avoid it. The best solution isn't ready yet and so we can't announce it, if we had to say anything at the moment it would either be that there was no news at all or that we were going to implement our alternate plan.

We aren't ignoring the problem, we aren't pretending it will go away but we want to do it right and that means putting in the time to put in place a proper solution rather than a quick fix that will cause as many issues as it solves. If it was easy it would have been done already.

 

[Dard]

It's as I said earlier, we have a plan that we want to put into action but we're trying to make it work. If it doesn't work then we're going to fall back on to our backup plan. We could do the backup plan now but it would be extremely unpopular with you and with us so we are trying very hard to avoid it. The best solution isn't ready yet and so we can't announce it, if we had to say anything at the moment it would either be that there was no news at all or that we were going to implement our alternate plan.

We aren't ignoring the problem, we aren't pretending it will go away but we want to do it right and that means putting in the time to put in place a proper solution rather than a quick fix that will cause as many issues as it solves. If it was easy it would have been done already.

Then out of common courtesy to those who dont read all the bollocks posted on Freddyshouse .. why not mention it the news? you dont have to write an essay every week, just a footnote every now & then so the poor saps who pay you there cash every month dont feel too left out.

Its just a thought.

 

[Aiteal]

So if the prefered plan don't work out dyvet gets the 'backup plan'
I can appreciate not telling people what the preferd plan is incase it's not financially viable
Any harm in telling people what the backup plan is?

 

[scorge]

Then out of common courtesy to those who dont read all the bollocks posted on Freddyshouse .. why not mention it the news? you dont have to write an essay every week, just a footnote every now & then so the poor saps who pay you there cash every month dont feel too left out.

Its just a thought.

they cant fo that, people might think that there is something wrong with the dyvet population then....

 

[scorge]

It's as I said earlier, we have a plan that we want to put into action but we're trying to make it work. If it doesn't work then we're going to fall back on to our backup plan. We could do the backup plan now but it would be extremely unpopular with you and with us so we are trying very hard to avoid it. The best solution isn't ready yet and so we can't announce it, if we had to say anything at the moment it would either be that there was no news at all or that we were going to implement our alternate plan.

We aren't ignoring the problem, we aren't pretending it will go away but we want to do it right and that means putting in the time to put in place a proper solution rather than a quick fix that will cause as many issues as it solves. If it was easy it would have been done already.

bring out your dead, bring out your dead... nothing to see here move along.....

if we had to say anything at the moment it would either be that there was no news at all or that we were going to implement our alternate plan.

God forbid Goa tell anybody they made a mistake or changed there plans, god forbid there paying customers know where they stand....

News isn't really GOA's strong point is it Requiel.. damned if you do , damned if you dont... might as well do it then, your damned either way, but you cant can you? Goa have to think about there public image, cant have anything negative on the "official" website....

 

[Dard]

Goa have to think about there public image, cant have anything negative on the "official" website....

Another case of GoA & Mythic being miles apart then

The Camelot Herald

Low population problems? lets discuss it with all parties involved.

 

[Esselinithia]

But don't know if they would cluster or not.

 

[Ingafgrinn Macabre]

I thought this article of Sanya Weathers (Thomas) would be appropriate here:

Eating Bees » Blog Archive » Three Weeks