Closing Continents

[Fuchs]

Just take the biggest map and change the names of the city's and regions and give them the old realms flags.

How many original realms were did the game start with?

[feyeleanor]

If closing islands will lose players, and we're not gaining new players, then how will this help?

[Indirik]

Re: Closing islands - Some islands have decayed past the point where they are no longer viable for play. The play experience on some islands has decayed to the point where it is detrimental to the game overall. The game needs action, strife, and conflict.

Continually allowing accounts to add more and more characters to shore up character counts is not helping. IMNSHO it has actually hurt more than it helped, for reasons enumerated in multiple other threads. Players have more characters than they can actively play, resulting in lots of zombie characters, and players with no ambition or drive to better their situation or position because they already have all the responsibility they want or can handle.

The hope is that improving the play experience of the game will allow us to retain more of the small number of people who join and try out the game.

Re: Opening new islands - Thee is no time or resources available to open new islands. Although community involvement can help in some instances, in essence crowdsourcing the work, it can only go so far. There is still a mountain of dev-only work that needs done, and extremely limited coder resources. We could, theoretically, simply dupe one island. I don't really know the full scope of effort involved in that, but there's no way it can be as simple as: 1) copy, 2) paste, 3) play. It also does not solve any of the significant issues that players have pointed out over the years with just about all of the maps.

In addition, we don't need a new, large island to hold everyone. EC is one of our smaller islands and it could easily hold one character from every active account without breaking a sweat. You wouldn't really start feeling the lack of elbow room until you hit somewhere around 600. If we could everyone to play one character on EC, then we would have a very active and dynamic game.

Re: Single character per island - We've done this on Dwilight for many years, and the resulting political landscape is much more dynamic than any other island. Players are much more engaged in their realms, without the problems of mules, drones, and political deadlock resulting from multiple characters per account. In short: If you're bringing in a second character for no other purpose than to add headcount to a depleted realm, you're not helping.

Re: How many original realms - I'm not sure. I think EC opened with 8? There is a page on the wiki about it. "Original realms" or something like that. The exact number was uncertain due to how long ago it was, some info lost during the Tiki>Wiki conversion, and lost players.



I hope all this makes sense. I'm in a bit of a hurry right now.

[daviceroy]

IMNSHO, with the recent changes, the only logical path is to sink all islands except a testing and a stable.  EC seems like an option for that, but in truth, this new "stable" needs to be shaken up.  Remove all current realms and allow all the things to be changed with the influx of new players.  We will lose a number of players doing this, but I don't see how with the current new policy implemented, we can do anything else to survive.  We should reduce characters to 2 and be done with it.

My guess is that a number of islands will now be completely unmanageable shortly.  It's time for the dev team to step up and implement changes like this immediately.  Do I want this?  No.  But the longer that it's talked about and nothing happens, the less effective it will be.  I am not trying to sound harsh, but this has been my experience in games.  Do it quick like a band-aid.

[Zakilevo]

Can't do changes that will require too much work. After all, we have volunteers not full time workers.

EC will probably not go anywhere because that is Tom's favourite island and he will rather see the game destroyed first before seeing that island gone.

Hopefully there will be some changes to EC to make it more viable. Maybe adding sea travel or changing Obsidian islands to be more viable would be nice.

We will definitely lose players that is for sure. But by doing this, the game will survive for maybe another 5 years. At the end, however, the game will die regardless. That is why people make sequels :o

[Naidraug]

Can't do changes that will require too much work. After all, we have volunteers not full time workers.

EC will probably not go anywhere because that is Tom's favourite island and he will rather see the game destroyed first before seeing that island gone.

Hopefully there will be some changes to EC to make it more viable. Maybe adding sea travel or changing Obsidian islands to be more viable would be nice.

one thing i would do, would be to reset the island. Instead of making everyone having to just settle inside a realm, it would be fun to reset it and see the new realms forming.

[Anaris]

That's no different from closing the EC and opening another island that has the same map. And for why we're not closing EC, see above re: "Tom's favourite island."

[Naidraug]

That's no different from closing the EC and opening another island that has the same map. And for why we're not closing EC, see above re: "Tom's favourite island."

Aside the fact that i don't see this as a pretty valid reason, I still believe it would be better and give a more fair change to players that lose their main island. Everyone also knows that people does not stick together and do a mass move to one realm(since that would also be considering as making a clan).

In the end closing the other islands and having players move to EC with no compensation or anything at all would just be a way to punish them and show that the history and work they did in other islands is basically useless.

[Anaris]

Aside the fact that i don't see this as a pretty valid reason, I still believe it would be better and give a more fair change to players that lose their main island. Everyone also knows that people does not stick together and do a mass move to one realm(since that would also be considering as making a clan).

In the end closing the other islands and having players move to EC with no compensation or anything at all would just be a way to punish them and show that the history and work they did in other islands is basically useless.

I'm sorry; it doesn't matter what you think would be better.

This is Tom's game, and that's one of his absolute do-not-cross lines.

The EC will not be reset.

[Zakilevo]

It is not like people want to see EC survive. It is what Tom wants. And when you are playing on his playground you follow his rules...

[Vita`]

I want to see the EC survive. And yes, for history. But also because geographically, its the most conducive to faster-paced wars between smaller realms. With the possible exception for Krimml, which would (ideally) have been located just a nudge southward cloesr to Akesh Temple. Other than that, there tends to be a pretty good distance of cities between each other on EI, imo.

[Indirik]

I love EC. It's had the most dynamic environment I've seen, with maybe the exception of some times on BT. And as Vita said, it's well arranged for some good wars. Enough cities to support more than a dozen realms.

[daviceroy]

Tom won't close EC.  That's fine.

Tom won't allow a reset of EC.  That's frustrating as it's forcing a bunch of players into a new island which will either completely alter it anyway *OR* will result in the forced players going "What's the point?"  Either a "soft" reset by nature or just throwing away players.  So, either he'll have to go away from his own words or he just doesn't care.

I'm confused as to what is really wanted with BM.  Is it just that Tom's ready for the game to expire and doesn't want to do things that will help?  If that's the case, that's fine.  It happens.  Admins move on.  We, as players, will find something else if that's what is wanted.

[Anaris]

The reason Tom doesn't want to close the EC is the history. A reset would destroy that history in exactly the same way.

A bunch of new people coming in all at once will shake up EC considerably, but it won't throw 14 years of history out the window.

[daviceroy]

Will we be allowed to create new realms in new lands or will we have to take from the current realms?

The first one would preserve history.

The second would appear to allow us to ruin the experience and history of EC.  Naturally, most players when forced out of their home islands will want to create something similar to what they had before.  They'll be frustrated and upset.  Some will want to just wreck havoc for being forced into a new scenario.

Will this be done at all though?  If we are going to do it, might as well do it soon.  That way players don't keep getting hit with bad news over and over again.  BM will take a hit from this change in the negative fashion.