Closing Islands ?

[Poliorketes]

I don't know... I think the best way to close a island would be to progressively increasing the rogue spawns (x2 every week or something like that) and give some kind of reward to the 'survivors' every day (or week): Gold, Prestige, Honour, items, scrolls or any other thing.

In the end all the island would be destroyed by the monsters, but the nobles who resist more weeks before left the island would have some important advantages.

It would be a way to compensate the lost of their island, and make a kind of 'survival competition'.

Another idea nobody has said... Use the weather: The chosen island weather go immediately to 'severe drought' or 'endless winter'... Medieval Mad Max!  8) The 'civilization' will die not destroyed by monsters (at least not only) but destroyed by starvation!

Of course, surviving will receive rewards too.

[Gustav Kuriga]

Another idea nobody has said... Use the weather: The chosen island weather go immediately to 'severe drought' or 'endless winter'... Medieval Mad Max!  8) The 'civilization' will die not destroyed by monsters (at least not only) but destroyed by starvation!

Of course, surviving will receive rewards too.

Anyone who actually manages food in a region besides a rural region would disagree with you to a large degree. Drought would just cause any conflict to end and people would give up playing. The same goes for not allowing new characters on the island.

I think too many people are focusing solely on the roleplaying aspect when this is in fact a roleplaying strategy game, where fighting using game mechanics makes up a huge amount of the gameplay for many people (including me, as I hardly send out 'proper' roleplays). Denuding the ability of an island to gain additional characters while still leaving it open just leaves it in a drought of a different sort, that of players.

[Tiridia]

The idea to block immigration and new characters has some merit. The island is then in many ways "doomed", but will also gain a sense of special status and privilege. A continent of weary old farts, with distant hope of a curse being lifted one day.

Though it might stagnate too. But then you could always move out. Those valuing rp and pve might be the most inclined to stay to the end. And they could.

Easy to do and with minimal disruption.

[GoldPanda]

Closing an island (or islands) will just drive more players away.

[Chenier]

Anyone who actually manages food in a region besides a rural region would disagree with you to a large degree. Drought would just cause any conflict to end and people would give up playing. The same goes for not allowing new characters on the island.

I think too many people are focusing solely on the roleplaying aspect when this is in fact a roleplaying strategy game, where fighting using game mechanics makes up a huge amount of the gameplay for many people (including me, as I hardly send out 'proper' roleplays). Denuding the ability of an island to gain additional characters while still leaving it open just leaves it in a drought of a different sort, that of players.

If looting starving regions for food still allowed for the robbing of food (directly from the wealthy locals that aren't starving to death instead of the empty granaries), essentially allowing war to create food, it might serve as an incentive for realms to go to war to feed themselves. Though it's true that most of the time, when starving, one's reflex is to turn into a courtier and try to ease the stat drops rather than to march far away for a handful of bushels.

[Poliorketes]

If looting starving regions for food still allowed for the robbing of food (directly from the wealthy locals that aren't starving to death instead of the empty granaries), essentially allowing war to create food, it might serve as an incentive for realms to go to war to feed themselves. Though it's true that most of the time, when starving, one's reflex is to turn into a courtier and try to ease the stat drops rather than to march far away for a handful of bushels.

This would be an endless starving! In this case the 'try to ease the stats drops' will not work because you know all in the end is going to die!  :P The only way out would be to take the better 'grain' regions and try to defend them until the end... and loot grain from all your neighbours.

And if you give them a good reward, why would they giving up... Yes, in the end all nobles will left the island, but it's not the same leave it with nothing, than leave it with 50 scrolls, or 50.000 gold pieces... or any other reward!

PD. After said this, my personal opinion is to NOT close islands, but better the game and make it more fun, not smaller.

[Qyasogk]

If you close an island in game and let the characters immigrate to another island whether you want to call it the Cataclysm, Atlantis or whatever, you are giving people the chance to richly expand their characters. That's a good thing. Furthermore, if closing down the least active island consolidates the players into fewer islands that's a good thing (fewer empty realms). I'd rather have 4 bustling active islands to play on than 6 islands half empty.

[Foxglove]

The problem with that is that closing or freezing an island will lose players from the game. Some players only choose to play on one island and don't use their full playable character quota. Furthermore, some other players have such an attachment to certain islands that losing the ability to play on that island with see their interest in the game diminish (several players have said that on the forum - and that's not even taking into account the bulk of players who never post on the forum).

There's absolutely no guarantee that closing/freezing an island will increase player density elsewhere. Basically, it comes down to either finding a better idea or rolling the dice on the closure/freeze and hoping it has more of a positive impact than a negative one.

[Forbes Family]

I'm against closure/freezing, however let me play the devils advocate here.

looking at this situation - A Player only plays on one island and decides not to move his character to another and deletes his account instead

A. Is this a bad thing for the game?

B. If the loss of a few players whom only play on one island is deemed not bad for the game, would closing an island allow developers more resources (ie. time) to focus on other projects that could make the game more exciting and perhaps entice more players to the game in the long run.

C. If this is the case perhaps one should look at the island that has the most players that only play on that one island as the one to close?

[Indirik]

Closing an island will not free up development resources. Once an island is running, it really doesn't take any attention from the devs to keep it going. Barring the occasional db hiccup that causes a single-island problem, but that's very rare, and usually doesn't take much time to fix.

[pcw27]

C. If this is the case perhaps one should look at the island that has the most players that only play on that one island as the one to close?

Umm why? If an island is full of the sole characters of a lot of players that suggests that world is the most important to those players, that they care most about the stories going on there and that they have no established characters to fall back on. Therefore if you close that island a lot of players will just up and quit. If a lot of players are only using one character slot then we should find a way to encourage them to make more characters.

The ideal island to close is one with the highest population of inactive secondary characters that seem to exist mainly to gather gold to be funneled to more important characters.

[dustole]

This might be a bit extreme,  but choosing 1 island to close is rather unfair.  How do you decide?  What is the criteria for deciding? 


What if you simply closed down all islands and created 2 or 3 new islands?  The joys of exploration and creation will be available for everyone.  I am sure some back story could be thought up to make it believable.   That way no one island is singled out.  Maybe put 2 or 3 "exit points"  on each island.  Give everyone 1 month or two to fight over them.  When they open up, if you control an exit point then your realm gets to emigrate first to one of the new islands.  Eventually, everyone will be able to get off their islands and to the new islands.   Then after all the old islands are sunk you can open up new character creation on the new islands.    Or you could use it as a recruiting tool.   New accounts could create characters on the new islands much earlier than older accounts.  Older accounts would have to get to an "emigration"  point. 


As far as a back story goes, perhaps there is some sort of cataclysmic event on the battlemaster world and we discover old portals that lead to another plane of existence.   

By doing a complete wipe you could use that as an opportunity to enact any new map changes or ideas you would have for all the new islands.   Doughnut townslands like you have on Dwilight or perhaps there is a new, better, way to create maps that makes them easier to manipulate or edit.   I bet there would be more than a couple features that could be implemented on a whole new map set.   

[Wolfang]

Has been suggested already by myself and others, for example, closing two islands and opening one new one up (which is double the fun as new islands are more fun to explore/colonise/conquer).

But this has been shot down by tom already, so, yeah.

[Indirik]

No.
New.
Islands.

Please read this entire thread, or at the very least all of Tom's posts in it, before posting. Suggesting things that have been flat out refused is not helping.

[Wolfang]

But this has been shot down by tom already, so, yeah.