The Way Forward

[Buffalkill]

Active characters is already 3 to begin with isn't it? So who cares.

I already made a suggestion ages ago, just raise noble cap to 3, either after 1 week or just immediately. Then people posted and the posts get worse and worse.

The player and character base has declined making the game less engaging. The devs are talking about freezing an island with the expectation that characters will migrate and increase the player density on the remaining islands. What I've suggested and several others too, is to tweak the active character limit rules to make it easier for those players that want to have more active characters to do so. There have also been some suggestions to improve the rate of retention and new player recruitment. Here are some of the ideas that have been put forward:

• Rather than char limit increasing +1 every 12 months, every 9 or 10 months instead.

• Offer a +1 to certain players on the condition that their character will be in a fledgling realm or island.

• Give out more medals

• Give a fame/honour/prestige boost to players who go to fledgling, or less desirable realms or islands.

• Offer incentives to players that bring in new players, such as increasing their char limit, medals, fame, honour or prestige

• Give new players more to do

• Allow new players to start with 3 nobles

• Allow new players to sign up with Hotmail addresses (for some reason Hotmail is on the sh_t list)

• Encourage existing players to become more engaged

• Do away with all the paranoid limits and restrictions

[egamma]

Medals discussion moved here:
http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,5052.0.html

[Tom]

Another way to address the low noble count

Our problem is not noble count. Our problem is player count.

I'm done discussing ideas to increase the number of characters per player. We've been over this two dozen times.

[Tom]

Before freezing an entire island, consider freezing individual realms, regions or duchies.

Over my dead body. There are already more than enough false rumours about the devs favouring certain realms or what-do-I-know bull!@#$. Freezing individual realms while leaving others on the same island unfrozen would make all the conspiracy theorists come out with "told you so" on their lips.

[Tom]

I think you might be surprised what efforts people will try to make when their favorite island is at stake.

Which is why the correct order is deciding upon an island first and THEN giving people an opportunity to save it by finding enough new players. As long as the threat is abstract, not much will happen.

[Tom]

One bright spark—truly, the jewel of humanity—even cares so much about the rights of Hotmail users that when he found that he was unable to sign up for BM with his Hotmail address, he signed up under a throwaway email and set up a crude denial of service attack against the game by causing an endless loop of Titan reports, which said, among other things, that our discrimination against Hotmail was "evil" and "racist."

And then he wondered (on IRC) why he was being IP-banned from the game.

And that is precisely why I won't allow hotmail. It's full of retards like that. There's a reason it was blocked once, you know? It's not like it has always been blocked, right from the go.

[Gustav Kuriga]

And I half the people I try to sign up on here are perfectly logical, sane beings, and have hotmail. When they find out it is blocked, half of them decide it just isn't worth it.

[Kai]

It might be worthwhile to at least trial allowing hotmails. You can get outlooks now though.

[Eduardo Almighty]

I have a Hotmail account... I like to use Skype and long ago I had to create another mail just to play BM... I cannot remember the password... it's a Yahoo mail that I never used and I still have just to log in in BM. I don't know why so much hate, since I use Hotmail as I use any other service on internet.

Just don't put everyone in the same basket.

[Penchant]

And that is precisely why I won't allow hotmail. It's full of retards like that. There's a reason it was blocked once, you know? It's not like it has always been blocked, right from the go.

Judging all by a few is a poor way to do things. What email they have shouldn't matter, but it does hurt BM blocking them. I am generally not going to make a new e-mail just for some website I have never used, I don't care how great my friend said it was.

[Geronus]

And that is precisely why I won't allow hotmail. It's full of retards like that. There's a reason it was blocked once, you know? It's not like it has always been blocked, right from the go.

Eh, as others said, it probably hurts us more than it helps. I mean, we're talking about doing drastic things like shutting down islands just to increase player density, so we're not exactly in a position to be picky about who we let sign up for the game, are we? At this point I can only imagine that it hurts more than it helps.

If you can see it in your heart to allow confessed multi-cheaters to return to the game after you've gone to the purportedly extensive trouble of catching them I'm sure you can give Hotmail users a chance. Even if they are using a benighted and horrible email service that belongs in some sort of forbidden land of justifiably forgotten technology.

[Buffalkill]

Judging all by a few is a poor way to do things. What email they have shouldn't matter, but it does hurt BM blocking them. I am generally not going to make a new e-mail just for some website I have never used, I don't care how great my friend said it was.

What if they have a @compuserve.net address?

[Tom]

Judging all by a few is a poor way to do things.

Why does nobody believe us when we say we have our reasons? This block is a decade old, you may be able to convince me that times have changed and a re-evaluation would be in order, but doubting that back when it was put in there was a long list of very, very good reasons for doing so is just insulting, uninformed and bad form. Also, strategically unwise.

[Wolfang]

And I half the people I try to sign up on here are perfectly logical, sane beings, and have hotmail. When they find out it is blocked, half of them decide it just isn't worth it.

This.

[vonGenf]

Also, strategically unwise.

I wish people wouldn't have to strategically think about the posts they make with good intentions to improve the game. The Forum is not a game. This is exactly the kind of sentiment that gets people to focus more on the forums when it should be a convivial place.

This being said, I am certain there were good reasons to block hotmail, if only to avoid spam. There's nothing easier then to get a gmail address. I have five, including one exclusively for BM.