You speak of multiple shards that host thousands of players. DAoC has only been able to populate one...
maybe you are new to the game or this is a typo, but daoc used to have 250,000 subscribers and multiple servers in USA and europe. France alone had like 4 servers I think.
not all of those 250k will come back but there is no doubt what the majority of people who ever played this game want ... they want vanilla daoc, OF. Population on Ywain is so low now that i dont see what broadsword have to lose by going for a full on classic server which will bring back 1000s of players.
I was speaking specifically about the shard community. I'm well aware of the population back in the early to mid 2000s (I'm from Hib Lancelot). My point is that DAoC isn't a popular game in the modern MMO world. The best classic experience has already been done and failed. I don't see a long term benefit of repeating what has already been done.
You speak of multiple shards that host thousands of players. DAoC has only been able to populate one...
maybe you are new to the game or this is a typo, but daoc used to have 250,000 subscribers and multiple servers in USA and europe. France alone had like 4 servers I think.
not all of those 250k will come back but there is no doubt what the majority of people who ever played this game want ... they want vanilla daoc, OF. Population on Ywain is so low now that i dont see what broadsword have to lose by going for a full on classic server which will bring back 1000s of players.
I was speaking specifically about the shard community. I'm well aware of the population back in the early to mid 2000s (I'm from Hib Lancelot). My point is that DAoC isn't a popular game in the modern MMO world. The best classic experience has already been done and failed. I don't see a long term benefit of repeating what has already been done.
The best classic experience has not been done and failed. The only real classic experience that has ever been was on live servers before ToA. Every try after that, both by live and freeshards, has been altered versions of that.
The margin of profit will be small for DAoC. It's nowhere near as popular as WoW. Even FFXI has a larger subscriber base than DAoC and they were released within a year of each other. You speak of multiple shards that host thousands of players. DAoC has only been able to populate one...While I think there will be a short term benefit with the release of a classic server, I don't see it as the right direction to keep the game going for multiple years to come.
I don't mean to be rude, but the basis of this argument you are presenting with your angle of debate has no merit. You have not provided any numbers or facts to support your opinion or claims, whereas I have on many multiple occasions. This latest claim of yours " DAoC has only been able to populate one..." can only refer to current Ywain, and the entire community knows how hard that server is failing - so not quite sure where you are going with that part of your argument, unless you are for some reason attempting to throw support towards the classic community?
Here are the facts:
"You speak of multiple shards that host thousands of players..." As Esel pointed out - "maybe you are new to the game or this is a typo, but daoc used to have 250,000 subscribers and multiple servers in USA and europe. France alone had like 4 servers I think.", AND, as I have previously alluded to and have pointed out on multiple occasions the numbers that the freeshard community has.
Just one shard alone that has been around for 13+ years, name ending in "gard", on their website, they display how many individual unique accounts that have been made there (61000+). The other major free shard, which has the bulk of the freehshard community right now, continuously, at the time of this post (USA central time zone, 2:00 PM 4/26/2021) has over 1300+ players (no bots allowed).
And as I pointed out in my latest response, the freeshard community has been demonstrating HOW to garner a LARGE community, keep them for years, and do it cheaply.
Some basic business economics for you, since you may not have taken any classes in school for it:
There are 3 major components to any business plan that is considered "Cost", or "Cost of doing business" for their overhead, and they are:
Physical property
Cost of service/product
Labor
Specifically in the DAOC world, it is the servers along with costs of where they are being hosted, labor for devs and gm's and other employees, and the service (game itself)
As I pointed out before, the physical and labor costs these days, and for the last decade or so are cheap. In fact so cheap that FREEshards are willing to eat up the nominal costs of producing the end product - the service (game).
So, puter, you are obviously a Ywain supporter, there are some questions that MUST be asked and if you had any credibility, you MUST answer them truthfully for which you have avoided, and have continued to avoid with baseless claims and arguments in return.
1. What numbers are you looking at that make you think that Live DAOC can NOT support more than 1 server/server type?
2. What budget numbers are you referring to, to come up with this insanely huge supposed cost of doing business that Live will NOT even contemplate putting out a different ruleset?
3. IF OUR arguments has at least some potential of merit, then why wouldn't it be prudent for an actual business to investigate the possibilities of putting alternate rulesets online?
4. IF OUR arguments has at least some potential or merit, AND Broadsword finally produces this "alternate" classic server, Then what would you Ywain players (whose population has gone down the toilet bowl), then what does YOUR Ywain server have to lose in this but being proven wrong?
5. IF YOUR argument is correct, AND Broadsword finally produces this "alternate" classic server, if for some reason Ywain loses its entire population, only to be added to the "alternate" classic server instead (opposite of what happened in the 2008 clustered self inflicted wounds fiasco era) because players want to play where there is a BIGGER community - then whose argument was actually correct?
6. IF YOUR argument is correct, AND Broadsword finally produces this "alternate" classic server, and some time afterward, Ywain makes a net gain in population over the few who are supposed absolute die-hard ywain's who left,
doesn't this help your initial concern of population drain to begin with?
You see puter, the problem with your concerns and your arguments, is that you are not thinking past your feelings.
Believe it or not, I actually do understand your concerns. I just don't support your position.
I understand that you have a fear of losing even more friends off of Ywain - especially given in the current context that most of them don't log in to play as much anymore -- Again, we all know this is happening with the rare exceptions of short termed "events" that once over, population goes back to drowning in the bottom of the toilet again.
Your fear that an alternate server could potentially drag more Ywain players away. That is a rightly founded, and in of itself, admits to the truth to OUR argument - that the mass majority of players do NOT like the Ywain ruleset and REFUSE to pay to play it!
So Why the hell not bring back a classic server and run it side by side with Ywain? Hell, I'd even support character copying of Classic characters that have hit 50 to be copied over to Ywain (not moved, just copied, but will have to deal with name changes potentially). Again, not a transfer, a COPY - so that players from Classic, if they choose to explore the Ywain community, can forgo the 2 hours it takes to hit 50 on Ywain, I know I am exaggerating the xp rate on Ywain, but you get my point, and start exploring the Ywain world.
So Why the hell not support this? This can ONLY help your cause (which is to keep the Ywain community alive, no?)
Once your fears have been addressed, which it appears they have been, one is forced to attack the concerns with LOGIC. LOGIC requires one to refer to resources and facts. You have displayed no logical argument, nor presented any facts. I am asking you now to stop thinking with your feelings. I assure you, you have nothing to lose, and will be at the very least, mildly surprised that OUR arguments FOR an "alternate" classic server can ONLY benefit EVERYONE involved, the freeshard non-subscribing community who refuses to pay for the service to play on Ywain, AND the current paying Ywain customers.
Post edited by LordGriffon on
"And that's the Bottom line. Cause Stone Cold Griff said so!".
I'll address your questions as concisely as possible.
1. What numbers are you looking at that make you think that Live DAOC can NOT support more than 1 server/server type?
- I never suggested Live couldn't run more than one server. However, I don't think they (Broadsword) could manage another server without introducing more staff which is completely reliant on the continued success of an additional server.
2. What budget numbers are you referring to, to come up with this insanely huge supposed cost of doing business that Live will NOT even contemplate putting out a different ruleset?
- The cost of hiring employees to manage another server. Peoples time is expensive and, for an old game like DAoC, will likely be difficult to find those who are willing to work with an older code base. Unless it's just sheer neglect, Broadsword has had a Software Engineer position on their website for at least 4+ years (http://broadsword.com/careers.html). Edit: Just to be clear on this point, the shard community does this for free. It's a hobby for those folks. Broadsword needs to pay their employees. So no, this part is not cheap.
3. IF OUR arguments has at least some potential of merit, then why wouldn't it be prudent for an actual business to investigate the possibilities of putting alternate rulesets online?
- I guarantee you that they (Broadsword) have investigated the pros/cons to releasing an alternate server otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion. The problem is the shard community and their (Broadsword) ability to compete with it.
4. IF OUR arguments has at least some potential or merit, AND Broadsword finally produces this "alternate" classic server, Then what would you Ywain players (whose population has gone down the toilet bowl), then what does YOUR Ywain server have to lose in this but being proven wrong?
- Being proven wrong is not an issue. I'm absolutely willing to concede that "classic" DAoC is more popular than Ywain is currently. However, the developers aren't looking to maximize profit. If they were, then the design choices made in the game would reflect that. It's been clear over the course of 7 years that Broadsword wants to move "forwards" and not "backwards" in terms of game development. While that may not be popular, it appears to be sustainable.
5. IF YOUR argument is correct, AND Broadsword finally produces this "alternate" classic server, if for some reason Ywain loses its entire population, only to be added to the "alternate" classic server instead (opposite of what happened in the 2008 clustered self inflicted wounds fiasco era) because players want to play where there is a BIGGER community - then whose argument was actually correct?
- It's highly unlikely Ywain will lose its entire population due to a classic server. However, much like what happened in January 2019 and January 2017, players will temporarily leave Ywain to play the classic server because it will feel new. Similar to an event killing particular zones, a new server will likely make Ywain feel dead for a brief period in time. The real question is will those left on Ywain stick it out for the population to rebound, as it usually does, or will they finally quit because a threshold has been reached? This part remains unclear.
6. IF YOUR argument is correct, AND Broadsword finally produces this "alternate" classic server, and some time afterward, Ywain makes a net gain in population over the few who are supposed absolute die-hard ywain's who left,
doesn't this help your initial concern of population drain to begin with?
- That is actually the whole point behind releasing an alternative server from Broadsword's perspective. They want Ywain to thrive which means they also want the new server to funnel players into Ywain, not drain it. That much has been made public based on their previous announcements. This is also why a progression server or seasonal server will work better toward this goal than a permanent classic server.
I've played DAoC since 2001 and experienced all the highs and lows whether it be population, patch setting, expansions, etc. I'm well aware of the shard community being around since the early 2000's. However, I'm also well aware of the fact that the shard community has always been smaller than Live until after Broadsword took over. Yet, the shard community hasn't grown either despite this disparity. Simply put, people have lost interest in DAoC as a whole. You cannot reason that another classic DAoC server, regardless of the development team, will somehow outperform what has already been done in the past decade. Where are all these players going to come from? The game is old enough that its player base is literally dying...I'd rather have new experiences while interest remains in DAoC than relive the past simply because of nostalgia.
I'll address your questions as concisely as possible.
1. What numbers are you looking at that make you think that Live DAOC can NOT support more than 1 server/server type?
- I never suggested Live couldn't run more than one server. However, I don't think they (Broadsword) could manage another server without introducing more staff which is completely reliant on the continued success of an additional server.
LordGriffon presented a possible way to keep the costs down in a previous post: "How many full time GM's does Broadsword want to hire to maintain this server? How about hiring some volunteer GM's that can do most tasks exception of gaining access to server controls. If something happens that the server needs a reset, then volunteer GM gets a hold of paid GM for them to make the call to do so...there are ways around these problems, and the freeshard community has proven it can be done cheaply."
I would gladly be a volunteer GM without getting paid, I believe more would be glad to do it for free as well.
2. What budget numbers are you referring to, to come up with this insanely huge supposed cost of doing business that Live will NOT even contemplate putting out a different ruleset?
- The cost of hiring employees to manage another server. Peoples time is expensive and, for an old game like DAoC, will likely be difficult to find those who are willing to work with an older code base. Unless it's just sheer neglect, Broadsword has had a Software Engineer position on their website for at least 4+ years (http://broadsword.com/careers.html). Edit: Just to be clear on this point, the shard community does this for free. It's a hobby for those folks. Broadsword needs to pay their employees. So no, this part is not cheap.
LordGriffon presented a possible way to keep the costs down in a previous post: "How many full time GM's does Broadsword want to hire to maintain this server? How about hiring some volunteer GM's that can do most tasks exception of gaining access to server controls. If something happens that the server needs a reset, then volunteer GM gets a hold of paid GM for them to make the call to do so...there are ways around these problems, and the freeshard community has proven it can be done cheaply."
I would gladly be a volunteer GM without getting paid, I believe more would be glad to do it for free as well.
3. IF OUR arguments has at least some potential of merit, then why wouldn't it be prudent for an actual business to investigate the possibilities of putting alternate rulesets online?
- I guarantee you that they (Broadsword) have investigated the pros/cons to releasing an alternate server otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion. The problem is the shard community and their (Broadsword) ability to compete with it.
BS probably have investigated and are probably investigating the pros/cons of an alternate ruleset server and the more information we can give them, on what we would like to see and why we would like to see it, the bigger the chance they will have to take the best possible decisions regarding such a server.
I think goguen is correct in his post: "time is on our side. all the social media posts have people asking for a classic ruleset live server. all they need to do is make a paid beta test like other games have done in the past which will help them gauge interest and get a feel for the customer demand for the new server(s). my bet is that there are many people ready to come back to daoc classic. bird server proved it but they've got no monetary incentives to keep their population happy so they will make bad decisions and ruin the experience because they've got no skin in the game. if that server dies then they just go back to their day jobs so they ultimately do whatever they want with zero regard for how it affects the community or their players.
bird server is showing us the path towards success. do the opposite of what they did, stick to classic rule set and you will retain the core fanbase of that ruleset. only move forward with changes when absolutely necessary. other games have had a great amount of success from bringing back classic rule set servers. there's literally zero reason for classic daoc live to not exist right now. demand is there, customers are willing to pay and the community has been demanding it for several years."
4. IF OUR arguments has at least some potential or merit, AND Broadsword finally produces this "alternate" classic server, Then what would you Ywain players (whose population has gone down the toilet bowl), then what does YOUR Ywain server have to lose in this but being proven wrong?
- Being proven wrong is not an issue. I'm absolutely willing to concede that "classic" DAoC is more popular than Ywain is currently. However, the developers aren't looking to maximize profit. If they were, then the design choices made in the game would reflect that. It's been clear over the course of 7 years that Broadsword wants to move "forwards" and not "backwards" in terms of game development. While that may not be popular, it appears to be sustainable.
I am quite sure the developers are interested in maximizing profit and that they are looking for ways to do so.
5. IF YOUR argument is correct, AND Broadsword finally produces this "alternate" classic server, if for some reason Ywain loses its entire population, only to be added to the "alternate" classic server instead (opposite of what happened in the 2008 clustered self inflicted wounds fiasco era) because players want to play where there is a BIGGER community - then whose argument was actually correct?
- It's highly unlikely Ywain will lose its entire population due to a classic server. However, much like what happened in January 2019 and January 2017, players will temporarily leave Ywain to play the classic server because it will feel new. Similar to an event killing particular zones, a new server will likely make Ywain feel dead for a brief period in time. The real question is will those left on Ywain stick it out for the population to rebound, as it usually does, or will they finally quit because a threshold has been reached? This part remains unclear.
I don't think Ywain will lose it's entire population if a classic ruleset server was introduced, a small dip at the beginning would probably happen but after a while I think there would be an increase in population on Ywain. Having the classic ruleset would also give the players the choice to play on classic when they are bored of playing on Ywain and vice versa, events can be ran on both Ywain and the classic server.
6. IF YOUR argument is correct, AND Broadsword finally produces this "alternate" classic server, and some time afterward, Ywain makes a net gain in population over the few who are supposed absolute die-hard ywain's who left,
doesn't this help your initial concern of population drain to begin with?
- That is actually the whole point behind releasing an alternative server from Broadsword's perspective. They want Ywain to thrive which means they also want the new server to funnel players into Ywain, not drain it. That much has been made public based on their previous announcements. This is also why a progression server or seasonal server will work better toward this goal than a permanent classic server.
BS needs to choose the correcty way to draw people back to the game, I believe a classic server which doesn't force the players to move their characters to Ywain would have a greater success at doing this. I would not resubscribe for a progression or seasonal server. I would probably pop by and check Ywain out now and then when I have reactiavetd my accounts for a classic server. I think there are many that feel this way and I also believe a few of the players that will return for a classic server would find Ywain ruleset enjoyable and thus increase the Ywain server population.
I've played DAoC since 2001 and experienced all the highs and lows whether it be population, patch setting, expansions, etc. I'm well aware of the shard community being around since the early 2000's. However, I'm also well aware of the fact that the shard community has always been smaller than Live until after Broadsword took over. Yet, the shard community hasn't grown either despite this disparity. Simply put, people have lost interest in DAoC as a whole. You cannot reason that another classic DAoC server, regardless of the development team, will somehow outperform what has already been done in the past decade. Where are all these players going to come from? The game is old enough that its player base is literally dying...I'd rather have new experiences while interest remains in DAoC than relive the past simply because of nostalgia.
I think goguen is correct in his post: "time is on our side. all the social media posts have people asking for a classic ruleset live server. all they need to do is make a paid beta test like other games have done in the past which will help them gauge interest and get a feel for the customer demand for the new server(s). my bet is that there are many people ready to come back to daoc classic. bird server proved it but they've got no monetary incentives to keep their population happy so they will make bad decisions and ruin the experience because they've got no skin in the game. if that server dies then they just go back to their day jobs so they ultimately do whatever they want with zero regard for how it affects the community or their players.
bird server is showing us the path towards success. do the opposite of what they did, stick to classic rule set and you will retain the core fanbase of that ruleset. only move forward with changes when absolutely necessary. other games have had a great amount of success from bringing back classic rule set servers. there's literally zero reason for classic daoc live to not exist right now. demand is there, customers are willing to pay and the community has been demanding it for several years."
And as I said before noone has tried to do what we are asking for, the freeshards have made changes that wasn't wished for by the larger part of their server population and those changes have pushed their players away.
I'll address your questions as concisely as possible.
1. What numbers are you looking at that make you think that Live DAOC can NOT support more than 1 server/server type?
- I never suggested Live couldn't run more than one server. However, I don't think they (Broadsword) could manage another server without introducing more staff which is completely reliant on the continued success of an additional server.
2. What budget numbers are you referring to, to come up with this insanely huge supposed cost of doing business that Live will NOT even contemplate putting out a different ruleset?
- The cost of hiring employees to manage another server. Peoples time is expensive and, for an old game like DAoC, will likely be difficult to find those who are willing to work with an older code base. Unless it's just sheer neglect, Broadsword has had a Software Engineer position on their website for at least 4+ years (http://broadsword.com/careers.html). Edit: Just to be clear on this point, the shard community does this for free. It's a hobby for those folks. Broadsword needs to pay their employees. So no, this part is not cheap.
3. IF OUR arguments has at least some potential of merit, then why wouldn't it be prudent for an actual business to investigate the possibilities of putting alternate rulesets online?
- I guarantee you that they (Broadsword) have investigated the pros/cons to releasing an alternate server otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion. The problem is the shard community and their (Broadsword) ability to compete with it.
4. IF OUR arguments has at least some potential or merit, AND Broadsword finally produces this "alternate" classic server, Then what would you Ywain players (whose population has gone down the toilet bowl), then what does YOUR Ywain server have to lose in this but being proven wrong?
- Being proven wrong is not an issue. I'm absolutely willing to concede that "classic" DAoC is more popular than Ywain is currently. However, the developers aren't looking to maximize profit. If they were, then the design choices made in the game would reflect that. It's been clear over the course of 7 years that Broadsword wants to move "forwards" and not "backwards" in terms of game development. While that may not be popular, it appears to be sustainable.
5. IF YOUR argument is correct, AND Broadsword finally produces this "alternate" classic server, if for some reason Ywain loses its entire population, only to be added to the "alternate" classic server instead (opposite of what happened in the 2008 clustered self inflicted wounds fiasco era) because players want to play where there is a BIGGER community - then whose argument was actually correct?
- It's highly unlikely Ywain will lose its entire population due to a classic server. However, much like what happened in January 2019 and January 2017, players will temporarily leave Ywain to play the classic server because it will feel new. Similar to an event killing particular zones, a new server will likely make Ywain feel dead for a brief period in time. The real question is will those left on Ywain stick it out for the population to rebound, as it usually does, or will they finally quit because a threshold has been reached? This part remains unclear.
6. IF YOUR argument is correct, AND Broadsword finally produces this "alternate" classic server, and some time afterward, Ywain makes a net gain in population over the few who are supposed absolute die-hard ywain's who left,
doesn't this help your initial concern of population drain to begin with?
- That is actually the whole point behind releasing an alternative server from Broadsword's perspective. They want Ywain to thrive which means they also want the new server to funnel players into Ywain, not drain it. That much has been made public based on their previous announcements. This is also why a progression server or seasonal server will work better toward this goal than a permanent classic server.
I've played DAoC since 2001 and experienced all the highs and lows whether it be population, patch setting, expansions, etc. I'm well aware of the shard community being around since the early 2000's. However, I'm also well aware of the fact that the shard community has always been smaller than Live until after Broadsword took over. Yet, the shard community hasn't grown either despite this disparity. Simply put, people have lost interest in DAoC as a whole. You cannot reason that another classic DAoC server, regardless of the development team, will somehow outperform what has already been done in the past decade. Where are all these players going to come from? The game is old enough that its player base is literally dying...I'd rather have new experiences while interest remains in DAoC than relive the past simply because of nostalgia.
First off, TY Jorma for the support.
Now I am going to address specifically some of puter's continued arguments -
When I said this:
"1. What numbers are you looking at that make you think that Live DAOC can NOT support more than 1 server/server type?"
puter responded with:
"I never suggested Live couldn't run more than one server. However, I don't think they (Broadsword) could manage another server without introducing more staff which is completely reliant on the continued success of an additional server."
Guess what puter, looks like you have a short memory, cause all one has to do, and you should have recalled yourself since YOU actually did state this on the previous page of THIS thread this quote:
The margin of profit will be small for DAoC. It's nowhere near as popular as WoW. Even FFXI has a larger subscriber base than DAoC and they were released within a year of each other. You speak of multiple shards that host thousands of players. DAoC has only been able to populate one...While I think there will be a short term benefit with the release of a classic server, I don't see it as the right direction to keep the game going for multiple years to come.
So I made it bold for you to help you remember something that you did IN FACT say. I find it again interesting to note that even with this part of your response, you continue to make claims with no actual data to back it up. Guessing that your memory failed you on this cause you don't want to remember making unverified claims?
Next, when I said this:
"2. What budget numbers are you referring to, to come up with this insanely huge supposed cost of doing business that Live will NOT even contemplate putting out a different ruleset?"
puter said this in response:
"- The cost of hiring employees to manage another server. Peoples time is expensive and, for an old game like DAoC, will likely be difficult to find those who are willing to work with an older code base. Unless it's just sheer neglect, Broadsword has had a Software Engineer position on their website for at least 4+ years (http://broadsword.com/careers.html). Edit: Just to be clear on this point, the shard community does this for free. It's a hobby for those folks. Broadsword needs to pay their employees. So no, this part is not cheap."
I already explained how this is done cheaply, as demonstrated by the freeshard community, along with Jorma pointing this fact out as well. Either we are wrong, or there have been thousands of people on this planet experiencing the same mass hallucination effect when they have been sitting at their computers playing DAOC for free... or did I miss something here?
Let me explain this again with actual hard numbers for you since you can't seem to back up your claims of high labor costs - Lets go with some round numbers to guess actual subs as compared to active player base.
Lets say there are 1000 players on a server at any given time. Easy enough number to accomplish. There have been at least 2 freeshards to have managed to get at LEAST that amount, in 2 of those cases, at several points in sustained time for over a year, as high as 3000-5000. But lets just stick with 1000 to be fair, and should be easy enough for Live to be able to maintain that on a consistent day to day basis regardless of time of day or what day of week vrs. weekend.
Next lets consider how many others are paying to play on said server, or if it's a free one, how many others are not logged in at the time due to work/school/other time restrictions including sleep/chores/entertainment offline.
I think i would it be fair to say for every player on a server, there can be as many as 5-10 that would log on during that same 24 hour period. But let's just go with 5 to keep things simple.
So with 1000 players on, then it would be fair to assume there are at least 5000 active players that would log on during that particular day. How many others will log in that week, especially during the weekend when the majority of hard working citizens are off from their jobs? Lets be conservative here and consider that the population will double. Instead of 1000 players, that number jumps to 2000. Instead of 5000 being off line, it's more likely that there's 10000 offline for most of that week. That's right... 10,000. I am not making this number up. We've seen this population effect in near every online game that has ever existed and there is no arguing against it. In fact, I would propose that the paying offline community at any given time for any given community can be as high as 20X what the current online count is when we consider the part-time casuals who may only get on for just a couple hours on a Saturday afternoon/evening. But we are going to stick with 10,000 just for simple number argument sake.
Now lets do some math for you puter....
10,000 actual paying customers, giving the company $15/month sub fee for access to all content.
That is a whopping $150,000 for the month, and if we consider for the year, is a total of $1,800,000 / year of revenue.
Now lets total up the costs.
Let's start with the software engineer position that you pointed out that Broadsword has had posted for 4+ years. I don't know what it hasn't been filled, but typically when they are open for extended periods of time, the primary issue causing the delay of interest from qualified prospects, is the compensation offered, or in your case, since you may not know what that is, it means how much the company is willing to pay primarily, and that's not including benefits.
If you were to go to Glassdoor's website and search what a typical Software Engineer makes, you'll see it's a little over $104,000 / year.
Next, lets start adding in GM's to maintain the server in game and monitor forums and websites.
Again, if you were to go to Glassdoor to look up Sys Ad's, then you'll find they make close to $75,000 / year.
Now lets find out the costs of the hardware hosting (meaning we don't have to buy the hardware, we are leasing it from someone else who is doing the hosting for us -- a common practice by many a free gaming community, as there is a HUGE free gaming community out there).
If you were to look up gaming hosting services, then you'll find all kinds of sites willing to do it cheap. One in particular is called Servermania. When searching the costs for a "dedicated" server - which is the type we need for a MMORPG with thousands of players on it concurrently, then we find we can get this:
2x Intel Xeon Silver 4210
20 x 2 .2 Ghz
64 GB
2 x 500 GB SSD
50 GB
Just for the low, low cost of $329 / month, or, for the year, right at $3950 / year (rounded up).
Let's continue with the math...
1,800,000 (revenue)
-104,000 (1 software engineer)
-750,000 (10 paid Sys Ad's)
-3950 (cost for hosting)
Total - 942,050
That's correct, That's a 52% profit margin. Most companies are pleased with just a 12% return. Here I just demonstrated how Broadsword can get more than a 4X return of profit than what most companies can ever hope for.
Both I and Jorma also pointed out that the freeshard community, the use volunteers to do the GM'ing. Why can't Broadsword do the same? I already gave an example on how they can do a hierarchical system of GM's to keep that cost low, as that labor cost by itself is where most of the cost for running a server will come from.
Take B.S.'s discord for example, at any given moment they have anywhere from 2-4 GM's listed. How many more GM's will Broadsword need to run a "alternate" classic server would be the biggest question at this point, but surely they don't need as many as 10. They probably will only need 3-4 more. And if more are needed, then why NOT farm out the help to UNpaid Volunteers that are allowed to help on a part time basis? Why can't Broadsword set up this system? I mean, think about it, 3-4 paid GM's who are in charge (who have access to everything) of the unpaid GM's (who don't have access to the back-end, meaning they can't do a server reset even by accident).
And puter, you also stated this:
"However, I'm also well aware of the fact that the shard community has always been smaller than Live until after Broadsword took over....Simply put, people have lost interest in DAoC as a whole. You cannot reason that another classic DAoC server...Where are all these players going to come from? The game is old enough that its player base is literally dying."
No. Your entire statement there is false with every sentence you made.
First of all, there have been times where the freeshard community (or "shard" community as you put it) has actually outperformed Live on numerous occasions with a much higher population base.
Next, you claim "people have lost interest in DAOC as a whole.." That is not true. If you took some time to investigate the freeshard community, you'd realize how foolish that statement you made really was.
Next, you asked "You cannot reason that another classic DAoC server...Where are all these players going to come from?"
I have already explained this on at least 3 other occasions in these forums of where these people are coming from. The freeshard community has sported at least 2 servers that have outperformed Live on multiple occasions. Currently one of them has on any given day, over 1000 players on it during prime time. The other has on the opening page of their website proudly displaying over 61,000 unique accounts. Reason why I said "Unique" is because they don't allow for bots.
That means, according to the numbers which are NOT in dispute, that I am on solid ground with my claim that there are 10's of thousands of people out there willing to subscribe for "alternate" classic server if Broadsword would return that service to us. And yes, ultimately, it is up to Broadsword to pursue this venture. But they would be losing out a great opportunity to make some serious money to pass this up. And in case you haven't noticed through your supposed claim of an illustrious long career in playing this game, the masses of players who USED to play DAOC were absolutely serious about not continuing to PAY for the service of Ywain. They wanted Classic with certain features, and when Broadsword (Then Mythic/EA) took that away, then those 10's of thousands of players voted in the ultimate poll. The poll of MONEY. They voted with their wallets and took their gaming interests elsewhere.
Finally, puter, you stated:
"The game is old enough that its player base is literally dying."
That is your opinion, I can respect that. But take this into consideration of old games STILL being played today:
From PCGamer games of note including:
Unreal World
Starcraft
Ultima Online
Now those games are older than DAOC, and in some cases as much as 5-10 years older, yet they are still able to make money.
Shall we consider games that are offline?
Monopoly (and all the variants)
Clue
Battleship
Scrabble
Stratego
Risk
Card games of all sorts.
Seriously puter, if we take your logic to its end, no game would exist past 20 years. I just literally rattled off several online still making money, and over a half dozen offline that are still making money. And no, none of those games are dying. puter, you really need to get out more dude.
Oh and next time you want to address anything that I say, and before you utter an opinion, you might want to consider doing a little more research.
"And that's the Bottom line. Cause Stone Cold Griff said so!".
1. Reading comprehension. I stated DAoC has only been able to populate one shard server at a time when the comparison was made with WoW shards.
2. If the profit margin is as potentially wide as you claim, then this server would have been up and running years ago. Yet, the bucket keeps getting kicked down the road. Why? Yes, the shard community can run this game cheaply because they literally donate their time. However, I don't see this happening on Live simply because EA owns the rights. BS operates within the limitations of the IP holders so it's very unlikely they can recruit volunteers to manage the game. I even recall Beib (aka Carol) having stated that before when players have offered up to help the development team in the official discord. Tag her if you want an official answer regarding this. Again, if this was a viable option, then it would have been done already.
Regarding shard community vs. Live population. You've ignored the statement I made that the shard community was smaller than Live pre-Broadsword. This implies that the shard community has outperformed Live in the past 7 years, which I attribute to Live having lost population rather than the shard community necessarily gaining population. You're literally citing two instances that occurred within the past 4 years. This falls within the 7 years of Broadsword being at the helm. We're arguing the same point lol.
I'm failing to understand why a "true" classic server will perform better on Live than it has on the shard community. If you're going to argue there are no "true" classic shards, then you will not be content with whatever Broadsword releases either. The 61,000 unique accounts also didn't stay on the classic server once its competitor opened up which is a far cry from classic DAoC. The shard community has clearly demonstrated that classic DAoC isn't what players want. Arguably, Live isn't what these players want either. The most recent shard is probably the closest we'll get to a ruleset that most players enjoy without including expansions after SI. Regardless, I don't see how Broadsword can compete with the shard community without doing something novel (aka progression/seasonal ruleset) OR issuing a cease and desist against the shards. It's a tall order and large assumption that the majority of shard players will start paying to play what they are already enjoying for free. The biggest exception will likely be multi-account users which the shard community vehemently opposes.
You're correct that a game's age doesn't dictate its sustainability. However, DAoC isn't a popular game and has no avenue to recruit new players into it. There's very little advertisement, no sponsorships, no leagues, no competitions, very few events, and a small batch of streamers with less than 100 viewers (the exception is the official DAoC stream which typically breaks 100). DAoC simply doesn't have the exposure it needs to keep the population from declining, regardless of what server is released. We'd all love to see multiple servers packed with 2-4k players again, but I highly doubt that will ever happen for DAoC without making an entirely new game.
Edit: I will also concede that the shard community has grown based on registered users throughout several servers. Can't display numbers here without getting modded (eventually) but waybackmachine is your friend if you want to look.
According to some people i know that play the other place, US Prime is better on live.
like Puter said, if BS really thought it would bring back so much revenue, it would have already been implemented.
Reality is it will have a large population for about 6 months and become a ghost town. Since it will be a progression server to push you to Ywain.
It seems like a few people are stuck in 2003 and what their game back. It has moved on. If you want to play, come play, If not, then don't.
Some of the things people would like to see is just ridiculous.
How will the alternate server work? I thought they would open it for like 6 months then push those toons to Ywain, wipe the server then start again or will it just stay open the entire time?
New player for all intent and purposes. Here is my feedback, which could revive this game
UI Scaling, the the elements are tiny, everyone is using modern resolutions, make the ui scale so we can see our ui elements
Map Scaling - I can't read the dots with out glasses/magnifying glass (that's how small the in game map is)
Item compare. Allow me to compare two items easily (full details)
Buff/Dot icons on the target so I can easily tell if they are ticking or not. Reading text combat tick updates in teh chat window is lame.
better indicators of when styles have hit (so I know I can do next in chain (Reading the text hoping I catch it is lame). rather hi-light the next icon in the chain and give an indicator in game HUD.
Battleground server merging/folding or something to gather all players across servers to a single battle ground (or something like that).
@LordGriffon
...because EA owns the rights. BS operates within the limitations of the IP holders so it's very unlikely they can recruit volunteers to manage the game. I even recall Beib (aka Carol) having stated that before when players have offered up to help the development team in the official discord. Tag her if you want an official answer regarding this. Again, if this was a viable option, then it would have been done already.
Have you examined the possibility of opening a classic server and keeping it a classic server without forcing the players on that server to move their characters to Ywain and/or Gaheris?
If it has been examined, and discarded as a way to increase net profit, what are the reasons behind discarding the idea?
LordGriffon presented some possible numbers for returning/new subscribers and costs for managing such a server (qouted below).
Lets say there are 1000 players on a server at any given time. Easy enough number to accomplish. There have been at least 2 freeshards to have managed to get at LEAST that amount, in 2 of those cases, at several points in sustained time for over a year, as high as 3000-5000. But lets just stick with 1000 to be fair, and should be easy enough for Live to be able to maintain that on a consistent day to day basis regardless of time of day or what day of week vrs. weekend.
Next lets consider how many others are paying to play on said server, or if it's a free one, how many others are not logged in at the time due to work/school/other time restrictions including sleep/chores/entertainment offline.
I think i would it be fair to say for every player on a server, there can be as many as 5-10 that would log on during that same 24 hour period. But let's just go with 5 to keep things simple.
So with 1000 players on, then it would be fair to assume there are at least 5000 active players that would log on during that particular day. How many others will log in that week, especially during the weekend when the majority of hard working citizens are off from their jobs? Lets be conservative here and consider that the population will double. Instead of 1000 players, that number jumps to 2000. Instead of 5000 being off line, it's more likely that there's 10000 offline for most of that week. That's right... 10,000. I am not making this number up. We've seen this population effect in near every online game that has ever existed and there is no arguing against it. In fact, I would propose that the paying offline community at any given time for any given community can be as high as 20X what the current online count is when we consider the part-time casuals who may only get on for just a couple hours on a Saturday afternoon/evening. But we are going to stick with 10,000 just for simple number argument sake.
Now lets do some math for you puter....10,000 actual paying customers, giving the company $15/month sub fee for access to all content.
That is a whopping $150,000 for the month, and if we consider for the year, is a total of $1,800,000 / year of revenue.
Now lets total up the costs.
Let's start with the software engineer position that you pointed out that Broadsword has had posted for 4+ years. I don't know what it hasn't been filled, but typically when they are open for extended periods of time, the primary issue causing the delay of interest from qualified prospects, is the compensation offered, or in your case, since you may not know what that is, it means how much the company is willing to pay primarily, and that's not including benefits.
If you were to go to Glassdoor's website and search what a typical Software Engineer makes, you'll see it's a little over $104,000 / year.
Next, lets start adding in GM's to maintain the server in game and monitor forums and websites.
Again, if you were to go to Glassdoor to look up Sys Ad's, then you'll find they make close to $75,000 / year.
Now lets find out the costs of the hardware hosting (meaning we don't have to buy the hardware, we are leasing it from someone else who is doing the hosting for us -- a common practice by many a free gaming community, as there is a HUGE free gaming community out there).
If you were to look up gaming hosting services, then you'll find all kinds of sites willing to do it cheap. One in particular is called Servermania. When searching the costs for a "dedicated" server - which is the type we need for a MMORPG with thousands of players on it concurrently, then we find we can get this:
2x Intel Xeon Silver 4210
20 x 2 .2 Ghz
64 GB
2 x 500 GB SSD
50 GB
Just for the low, low cost of $329 / month, or, for the year, right at $3950 / year (rounded up).
Let's continue with the math...
1,800,000 (revenue)
-104,000 (1 software engineer)
-750,000 (10 paid Sys Ad's)
-3950 (cost for hosting)
Total - 942,050
That's correct, That's a 52% profit margin. Most companies are pleased with just a 12% return. Here I just demonstrated how Broadsword can get more than a 4X return of profit than what most companies can ever hope for.
Both I and Jorma also pointed out that the freeshard community, the use volunteers to do the GM'ing. Why can't Broadsword do the same? I already gave an example on how they can do a hierarchical system of GM's to keep that cost low, as that labor cost by itself is where most of the cost for running a server will come from.
Take B.S.'s discord for example, at any given moment they have anywhere from 2-4 GM's listed. How many more GM's will Broadsword need to run a "alternate" classic server would be the biggest question at this point, but surely they don't need as many as 10. They probably will only need 3-4 more. And if more are needed, then why NOT farm out the help to UNpaid Volunteers that are allowed to help on a part time basis? Why can't Broadsword set up this system? I mean, think about it, 3-4 paid GM's who are in charge (who have access to everything) of the unpaid GM's (who don't have access to the back-end, meaning they can't do a server reset even by accident).
@Jorma you think it is realistic that server costs would be 300$/month? Keep in my mind it would be hosted on Amazon servers, so quoting some random server hosting services is stupid. I tried doing a bit of research and saw a range from 300$ to multiple thousands of dollars per month.
Also, the whole basis for this to work is to have a free workforce? I'm sorry Indon't share your optimism. So you would have a structure where payed employees would do similar work tonfree enployees? I'm pretty that's not even legal.
Also, take into account that the new server, to have any kind of success, requires the code to be updated to a more modern version similar to what the other servers use and that allows them to come up with all these changes and modifications.
Not doing that upgrade and still launching it would be suicide. The new server would suck due to broken mechanics and bugs.
If it was that easy and an obvious cash grab, they would have done it already
@Shoke if you read what LordGriffon included in the costs you will see that the annual salary for 10 GMs was included, so the need for free workforce is not needed. I just asked Broadsword if they indeed are prohibited to recruit volunteer GMs as was suggested by puter.
I don't think 10 Sys Ad´s would be needed so take some of that money and add it to the server costs and the net profit would still be bigger.
Since the work with broken mechanics and bugs have already been coded it should not be that hard to add it to the new server, maybe that is something BS is working at as we speak.
@Shoke if you read carefully what I wrote in my post (four posts up) it was three questions to John and Carol where one was if they had discarded the idea of a permanent classic ruleset server and, if that is the case, what the reasons for discarding such a server is. If it's purely financial or if there are other things taken into consideration as well, in short why it has been found not to be a viable idea.
If they would answer this we would get a better idea on what is possible to see in the future.
@Jorma not sure if you are really expecting a clear answer from BS. Their current position is that
- the new server is still in process and they will share info when they are rdy to.
That's all they will share for the moment. When they will make that annoucement is unknown, considering that server was supposed to be announced officially last year.
@Jorma not sure if you are really expecting a clear answer from BS. Their current position is that
- the new server is still in process and they will share info when they are rdy to.
That's all they will share for the moment. When they will make that annoucement is unknown, considering that server was supposed to be announced officially last year.
@Shoke if you read carefully what I wrote in my post (four posts up) it was three questions to John and Carol where one was if they had discarded the idea of a permanent classic ruleset server and, if that is the case, what the reasons for discarding such a server is. If it's purely financial or if there are other things taken into consideration as well, in short why it has been found not to be a viable idea.
If they would answer this we would get a better idea on what is possible to see in the future.
From the first time Broadsword talked about the possibility of an alternate ruleset server, they have made it very clear that Ywain is their number one priority. First, make sure Ywain is in a healthy condition. THEN introduce a second server. They have struggled with the first part ever since(!) There never was a time to do what you ask. In hindsight you can say that the population was higher back then, so they should have launched a second server right away, but that was never the plan. The plan was to give Ywain a boost to increase the chances that it can survive the (initial) competition of a second server.
@Shoke if you read carefully what I wrote in my post (four posts up) it was three questions to John and Carol where one was if they had discarded the idea of a permanent classic ruleset server and, if that is the case, what the reasons for discarding such a server is. If it's purely financial or if there are other things taken into consideration as well, in short why it has been found not to be a viable idea.
If they would answer this we would get a better idea on what is possible to see in the future.
From the first time Broadsword talked about the possibility of an alternate ruleset server, they have made it very clear that Ywain is their number one priority. First, make sure Ywain is in a healthy condition. THEN introduce a second server. They have struggled with the first part ever since(!) There never was a time to do what you ask. In hindsight you can say that the population was higher back then, so they should have launched a second server right away, but that was never the plan. The plan was to give Ywain a boost to increase the chances that it can survive the (initial) competition of a second server.
So what you are saying here is that Broadsword will not launch a permanent classic ruleset server because that server would be more successful than Ywain is and that would be unacceptable?
I personally believe a successful classic ruleset server would benefit Ywain in the long run.
@Shoke if you read carefully what I wrote in my post (four posts up) it was three questions to John and Carol where one was if they had discarded the idea of a permanent classic ruleset server and, if that is the case, what the reasons for discarding such a server is. If it's purely financial or if there are other things taken into consideration as well, in short why it has been found not to be a viable idea.
If they would answer this we would get a better idea on what is possible to see in the future.
From the first time Broadsword talked about the possibility of an alternate ruleset server, they have made it very clear that Ywain is their number one priority. First, make sure Ywain is in a healthy condition. THEN introduce a second server. They have struggled with the first part ever since(!) There never was a time to do what you ask. In hindsight you can say that the population was higher back then, so they should have launched a second server right away, but that was never the plan. The plan was to give Ywain a boost to increase the chances that it can survive the (initial) competition of a second server.
So what you are saying here is that Broadsword will not launch a permanent classic ruleset server because that server would be more successful than Ywain is and that would be unacceptable?
I personally believe a successful classic ruleset server would benefit Ywain in the long run.
That is Broadsword's stance. Ywain players are more loyal to the game, and likewise Broadsword is more loyal to Ywain players. I don't care about Ywain, but I think it is reasonable to assume that many players will leave Ywain for a new server mainly for one reason: It will offer the increase in population that everyone is yearning for.
We will have to wait and see when the new server is released (if ever), but I think EC proved that the general interest in Ywain is low. Personally, I think Ywain will suffer in the short term, and a forced transfer will only revive Ywain to numbers we see today, thus forcing Broadsword to launch a new server again.
So far we have three theories as to why an classic ruleset server has not been implemented:
1. That Broadsword have researched the possibility and not found it economically viable.
2. That Broadsword have not researched the possibility to any large extent but deemed such an endeavor unsuccessful.
3. That Broadsword fears such a server to be more successful than Ywain and believes Ywain would fail to such a degree it would have to be closed down.
This is why I would like to hear from Broadsword what their view on this issue is.
You're assuming that it is possible to "research" what the outcome will be. I don't think this is possible. It will always be a gamble.
They DID do general surveys in early 2017 (not aimed at classic, just something different):
The recent survey was a huge success! We were heartened by both the number of respondents and the responses themselves. In short, there appears to be an appetite for some sort of alternative ruleset server. Our team is continuing to flesh out and iterate on the the best approach to deliver one that accomplishes the following goals:
- Closely meets the most-desired ruleset based on survey results.
- Can be released in a reasonable timeframe.
- Allows our team to continually develop and update the Live servers.
- Ensures the Live servers' remain engaging in the near term after the launch of an alternative ruleset server with the long-term aim of increasing their population.
We won't release an alternative ruleset server unless it can meet ALL of those goals. We will be doing a more targeted, follow-up survey in the coming weeks once we are confident in our plan. Until then, stay tuned!
You're assuming that it is possible to "research" what the outcome will be. I don't think this is possible. It will always be a gamble.
They DID do general surveys in early 2017 (not aimed at classic, just something different):
The recent survey was a huge success! We were heartened by both the number of respondents and the responses themselves. In short, there appears to be an appetite for some sort of alternative ruleset server. Our team is continuing to flesh out and iterate on the the best approach to deliver one that accomplishes the following goals:
- Closely meets the most-desired ruleset based on survey results.
- Can be released in a reasonable timeframe.
- Allows our team to continually develop and update the Live servers.
- Ensures the Live servers' remain engaging in the near term after the launch of an alternative ruleset server with the long-term aim of increasing their population.
We won't release an alternative ruleset server unless it can meet ALL of those goals. We will be doing a more targeted, follow-up survey in the coming weeks once we are confident in our plan. Until then, stay tuned!
I don't really think it is possible to make a research that will tell the absolute thruth, of course it will be a gamble to some extent. I don't think Broadsword have spent much time researching what a classic ruleset server could bring but I do sincerely hope the thought have crossed their mind. The number 2 theory is the one I consider to be closest to the thruth, but as all the theories mentioned above it is all speculation.
A survey will give an indication but the survey needs to reach as many potential new and returning subscribers as possible, I did not know of the survey when it was done so I didn't take part in it. I believe there are many more that have not taken part in the survey that, if they had known about it, would have given Broadsword a bigger opinion sample to base their decisions on.
Even the Origins server had more development at this point than the current proposed alternate server. Origins would have been an interesting "classic" server based on the alterations that Mythic was making (removal of Theurgist class and introduction of Valk class). Too bad it was discarded so the team could work on WAR which eventually failed. RIP.
The big part of this that everybody forgets is that this server would be ran by BS. A lot of the population that left blames BS (right or wrong) for the downfall of the game.
Did BS learn a few things in these rough first years, I think so. Did they prove that they can be proactive and manage a new server with the speed and agility of some other place? This is the biggest question to answer.
A classic ruleset is inherently boring. You need to keep pushing content to have any sort of longevity. The other server also had to make a bunch of changes to fix the blatant issues that are present in a classic/si ruleset server. There is a reason why we are on patch 1.127 and not still on 1.65.
When you look at the other place, it has essentially become a EU server. NA gameplay is really bad. On the other hand, Ywain EU time is quite bad, US is doing decent (could be way better).
That's the things that BS see and need to find solutions for. What kind of ruleset do they need to go with in order to hopefully please the EU and US crowds? What arenthe changes they need to.make in gameplay to.prevent some of the issues present in classic/si? How will they keep it interesting over time so ppl don't get bored with their 5 abilities?
Combine that with their initial 4 interrogations on how to make a new server that will benefit ywain in the short, mid and long term, and you have quite a puzzle.
In my mind, it is clear that a new server will kill Ywain, 100%. The new server, imo, will replace Ywain and let daoc live another couple years. However, you need to keep the loyal crowd happy because as much as ppl like to say freeshards are cool and have pop, they are mainly composed of unloyal customers that play for free. I wouldn't base my business decisions on a crowd that will ditch my product for the next shiny squirrel first chance they get.
1. That Broadsword have researched the possibility and not found it economically viable.
2. That Broadsword have not researched the possibility to any large extent but deemed such an endeavor unsuccessful.
3. That Broadsword fears such a server to be more successful than Ywain and believes Ywain would fail to such a degree it would have to be closed down and want to avoid that at any cost.
4. That Broadsword counts on the new server to be more successful than Ywain and eventually close Ywain down. The new server needs to make both current players and new/returning players happier with the new server than they are with Ywain.
Skip the conjecture entirely. There's no communication by the development team regarding progress on the server. At best, this is a carrot on a stick situation until Broadsword releases new information which we haven't had in several years.
Remove ML's maybe give healing classes group cure, power FoP and group port for free at 50 but no Speedwarps/traps etc.
Account wide quest credit for things like Curse/OW so you dont have to do them 20 times on each realm simular to new horse merchant but you dont have to give him the horse to "register" it.. if you have done it you can get the Bound Item on all your chars.
Keep leveling quick.
And a selfish want
Old style Necro's with the old mezz/root immune pets
Ooh and the Old necros were terrible in RvR everyone tells me so they won't mind them getting a 50% spirit debuff.. Oh yes they were gimped please do that.
Skip the conjecture entirely. There's no communication by the development team regarding progress on the server. At best, this is a carrot on a stick situation until Broadsword releases new information which we haven't had in several years.
^THIS
Where are you BROADSWORD? Please speak up about this new server.
Why gut Ywain for an “Alt server” they would split the current paying population which would cause Ywain to become a literal ghost town.
If you didn’t enjoy this new Alt sever then you’d just un sub and never look back at Live.
This logic confuses me. It's the same or similar logic that has been used for Runescape, Everquest, WoW Classic, etc, etc that launched classic/progression servers. There's one similar theme between every classic server from these old games that's the same, and that's the excuses made by the naysayers. It's crazy how similar every pre-classic server launch game's naysayers are.
But the funny thing is, the only thing that happened with these games is it turned into MASSIVE success and re-vitalized the games along with having brought new players to play the live versions of the game that normally wouldn't have even tried the live version. SMH
I come from having played almost every iteration of the EQ TLPs and saw EQ's slowish but steady decline to extreme worry about the future of the live game until they took a leap of faith and released their first TLP Fippy Darkpaw so many years ago. They launched that TLP to extreme success, and now have been regularly launching new TLPs every 1-3 years and evolving and improving how they launch TLPs because of the extreme success and paying players it brought back to EQ. In fact, the recent TLPs have been sporting server populations of 10,000+ players and they've had to implement things like layered zones to handle the influx of player base for the past several iterations and despite that typically ends up needing to launch a second server to handle the load and still having queue times for the first couple weeks of a new TLP launch.
I also play on EQ current expansion servers, and am constantly meeting people that came to give the current game a try after getting a little bored on their respective TLP which is a nice distraction for them but because the live game is so different but yet still familiar being EQ to them so then they become players that switch between a TLP and the live game never actually leaving the game because once they get bored with a TLP, they switch to live, and vise versa.
This is what I see happening with DAOC as well. Every time I look at the current live state of DAOC, it's a little more grim every time and I've been watching on the side-lines for years hoping for a classic server so I can finally start giving broadsword my money again. I have a discord full of friends that also have been waiting for the same thing and excitedly talk about what we're going to play and do, and bicker over which faction to be etc for "when" the classic server gets launched.
What I'd ask is because over the years one would have a VERY hard time arguing that there hasn't been a slow attrition to the game in its current state, so why not give classic a real chance. Because what's happening now doesn't seem like growth to me. It seems like still a steady, albeit slow decline. When every other game has breathed massive new life into their game with classic launches giving a proof of concept of catering to nostalgiaholics, why not give it a chance?
Please consider what's being said here as a long-time fan of classic+SI DAOC and having spent several years on every iteration of EQ TLPs and have seen first hand the absolute massive potential a well done (not the half-baked classic servers tried in the past with DAOC) has. @John_Broadsword@Carol_Broadsword
The biggest risk with opening a "classic" server is it will directly compete with shards. No one has addressed that issue. The shard community has demonstrated it can out develope Live on a content and bug fixing basis for free. Client side changes are the only advantage Live has over shards, but those are few and far between due to the age of the game. Outside of multi-account users, who is the target player base for this alternate server? It's hard to fathom that a pay to play server with a nigh identical patch setting and worse bugs will outperform a free to play server that literally runs laps around what the current development team can do with its golden child.
I'm not privy to whether a strong shard community exists with EQ or Runescape, but I know it was decimated in WoW by Blizzard before they released their classic servers. EA hasn't made any indication that they plan to do the same which I think is necessary for a Live DAoC "classic' server to see any prolonged success. This is why I stress that whatever Broadsword releases as an alternate server has to be unique from what is currently offered for free. Right now, fans of the game are doing a better job maintaining it than the actual developers. This has to change.
Fun comparing Blizzard's ability to pump out a classic server compared to BS, same companies, same ressources.
Also, WoW just launched a new expansion, they keep building and pushing content into the main game. DAOC only "new" content are cyclic events that see small tweaks and some updates to the frontier dynamics.
Classic daoc would have a great launch. 2 years in, dead with ywain dead
It's a stretch saying that because wow classic was successful that daoc classic would be as successful on the long term.
The biggest risk with opening a "classic" server is it will directly compete with shards. No one has addressed that issue. The shard community has demonstrated it can out develope Live on a content and bug fixing basis for free. Client side changes are the only advantage Live has over shards, but those are few and far between due to the age of the game. Outside of multi-account users, who is the target player base for this alternate server? It's hard to fathom that a pay to play server with a nigh identical patch setting and worse bugs will outperform a free to play server that literally runs laps around what the current development team can do with its golden child.
I'm not privy to whether a strong shard community exists with EQ or Runescape, but I know it was decimated in WoW by Blizzard before they released their classic servers. EA hasn't made any indication that they plan to do the same which I think is necessary for a Live DAoC "classic' server to see any prolonged success. This is why I stress that whatever Broadsword releases as an alternate server has to be unique from what is currently offered for free. Right now, fans of the game are doing a better job maintaining it than the actual developers. This has to change.
Again, this is the same arguments as any other game I've seen when talks started of official classic servers. The same arguments on a broken record with just the name of the game being the only difference. Seen it time and time again, and have yet to see a game that launched a classic server that's actually been damaged further by having a genuine classic server being made. The only ones that continued to go down are ones that made half-baked ones, or only talked about it and never made it so the playerbase gave up on ever seeing what they wanted.
Also, to answer your question, yes actually EQ has a very strong freeshard or private server community of which actually one of them the company actually has even entered into a formal legal agreement with the owners of EQ and even allows talks of it on their forums now called Project 1999 on the official forums. You can fact check me if you'd like by doing a google search for everquest news update april 29th 2015 project 1999. EQ has had a strong private server community since before WoW was even around, but yet EQ found a way to make TLPs that have 10s of thousands of players frothing at the mouth for the next iteration of a TLP even though a lot of them are rinse/repeat of previous ones despite even allowing private servers to exist without worrying about legal action against them.
Again, please give this a chance since the current plan is still showing to be a slow demise with a continuing shrinking playerbase. The one thing we all have in common here is a love for a game neither side of us want to see go away, so I understand how precious and dear it is to keep DAOC alive. One method has been attempted with DAOC and continues with tweaking, events, ftp model introduced, etc but still continues to see a decline if after a small temporary bump in playerbase. So it's time to try what the other MMOs that are in a similar boat have tried to extreme success despite solid private servers.
It's just hard seeing what I do with EQ, and WoW, and hard to explain just how game-changing and massive success it's been for these other games out there to put forth effort into these what I like to call nostalgiaholic servers. I know WoW isn't the best example because they're owned by activision and still sport good numbers, but noone can deny that they were seeing some serious decline in numbers in recent years too until wow Classic. If it wasn't profitable they wouldn't be making TBC classic servers, guaranteed. Activision likes only massively profitable things, because well, it's activision.
But EQ was definitely in a strong decline before progression servers, but has seen a complete and utter turnaround to being really popular again. I want the same for DAOC. and I only want to see it happen with DAOC as well.
All three of those games have significantly larger player bases than DAoC though. There aren't multiple servers with thousands of players with both Live and shards combined. This game just isn't popular.
All three of those games have significantly larger player bases than DAoC though. There aren't multiple servers with thousands of players with both Live and shards combined. This game just isn't popular.
What does population have to do with whether or not this could breath life back into the game? Doesn't matter which game it is. Some with higher population like WoW, some with moderate (and it was low population before they started doing TLPs) like EQ, and some with low population like runescape. The one thing they all have in common though is a massive increase in playerbase after releasing classic servers. Same thing as a high likelyhood with DAOC.
I can see why others stopped arguing with you too. You just go out of your way to either deny it being even a possibility of success, or try to divert into topics that have nothing to do with the success of a classic server. Unless you secretly want DAOC to fail, and so will argue against this or divert offtopic with every opportunity.
Classic is a temporary pulse. It's never a sustained thing because of how monotonous the play is. With no progression, it'll die. People think classic is the way because of nostalgia and it's easier for casuals to get in to. The game as it is now is set up nicely for casuals to make a character and be RvR ready when 50 (mainly just zerging with the kings gear). With the BP system, getting a template together is also very casual friendly. Do you still have to do quest and raids? Yes, but you have to do that on the other place to be able to buy gear.
BS are in a difficult situation. I do not know whether they have the courage, inclination or even authority to make a new server. It would be a gamble, for now ... it may be that in the future it becomes more of a necessity.
Ywain is the "last stand" of DAOC is only in existence by virtue of the fact that all official servers (mordred, classic, euro etc.) apart from Gaheris have been pumped into the server whether they liked it or not. Population is lower than most servers were at the time of clustering or closure. Every couple of months I think to myself "surely the population cannot get any lower / action cannot get any worse than this" but it does. I think Ywain is a dying horse that has run its race and needs to be put out of its misery. But then again I'm not responsible for a business so what do I know. but I think a few golden years of classic daoc that may or may not work is preferable to the slow, painful death that we are witnessing on live.
What blows me away are all the "free servers out there" cutting into population numbers. As a consumer the thing that I'm concerned about with the free servers is that you have no idea of the integrity or ethics of the people behind them. Who knows if they are watching your traffic, or doing more than they should. There is no accountability (in my opinion at the moment). BS has the opportunity to differentiate by saying hey with us you have a company behind the product, business ethics, and recourse if something isn't right (support), etc. It is an opportunity for them to pull people back and grow this not let it wither. but to be real, since I came back the impression I get from BS is that they WANT it to die. its weird.
If they do a classic/si, they directly compete with a server that has a much more agile team and that pushes updates and events at 5x the speed of BS and that is entirely free. However, they can pull the plug or delete all your characters for no reason if they wanted to.
That server had to do so many changes to the game just to balance it and keep adding content and event to keep players playing it. So the ruleset is 100% NOT a big enough incentive to stay on a particular server.
If they do a different ruleset, like dragon patch as an example, then that will completely kill off ywain for good.
Again, if it was an easy call it would have been done. BS has no expansion or new fresh content in the pipeline to bring back players from classic back to ywain. It's basically where do the players like to play, and that is heavily driven by population numbers.
The progression server is probably the idea that makes the most sense, but probably the most difficult to pull off properly.
All three of those games have significantly larger player bases than DAoC though. There aren't multiple servers with thousands of players with both Live and shards combined. This game just isn't popular.
What does population have to do with whether or not this could breath life back into the game? Doesn't matter which game it is. Some with higher population like WoW, some with moderate (and it was low population before they started doing TLPs) like EQ, and some with low population like runescape. The one thing they all have in common though is a massive increase in playerbase after releasing classic servers. Same thing as a high likelyhood with DAOC.
I can see why others stopped arguing with you too. You just go out of your way to either deny it being even a possibility of success, or try to divert into topics that have nothing to do with the success of a classic server. Unless you secretly want DAOC to fail, and so will argue against this or divert offtopic with every opportunity.
I'm all for being proven wrong. But I'm going based on DAoC's history as a whole. Classic was tried before back in 2005. The population jump was...small. The shards have shown classic has more appeal than Ywain, but, as Shoke said, it's insufficient to keep players in the long run which is fundamentally the goal. Yes, popularity / population does matter because you NEED it to have multiple servers. DAoC has three active servers and only one is "healthy" (> 1k concurrent players) during EU prime. I'm indifferent if DAoC dies (officially). I'd much rather see a DAoC 2.0 than a rehashed server from an era that was boring to play. I suspect the vast majority of those who long for classic DAoC don't care about what makes the game unique. Talks of long grinds and PvE raids like the days gone by isn't original nor appealing. The RvR (PvP) mechanics in combination with the large class roster is what makes this game great. That hasn't changed, yet the game continues to lose players. Seems to me people like DAoC more for PvE than RvR.
What blows me away are all the "free servers out there" cutting into population numbers. As a consumer the thing that I'm concerned about with the free servers is that you have no idea of the integrity or ethics of the people behind them.
To be fair, you can say the same about the people playing them. I'm not trying to point fingers, but just generally speaking it is remarkable how many people have so little respect for the game (considering it probably is or used to be your favorite game of all time).
I think a home raid server could be pretty cool. Have the ability to raid into Alb, Hib or Mid leveling areas. Kind of like ArchAge where at certain times the zones go to war type deal. You change your leveling during those times and go to different areas not under attack, or you roll the dice and level on knowing you could be ko'd at any time. You could have secondary mile gates within the home realm where you have another chance to defend off the attackers and fix everything that was broken. Segmented areas where you would be safe until the horde of players reach that gate, so you still have time to run. Players could sound a horn at each of the gates letting players know there are enemies in the area and the horns would only work when enemy combatants are in the area so false alarms would not be possible.
You could move player housing into the segmented areas like settlements and give the opposing realm a chance to smash your house for gold based on the amount of items that has sold on that house or just use the random loot generator for items for that realm based on the player/group that did the most damage. Then when the raid is over you have to repair the house but it can be done very cheaply and easily.
During times when nobody is raiding your realm you could use NPC enemies attacking an area for players to form up and defend for awesome loot for that level of NPC for that area.
Comments
I was speaking specifically about the shard community. I'm well aware of the population back in the early to mid 2000s (I'm from Hib Lancelot). My point is that DAoC isn't a popular game in the modern MMO world. The best classic experience has already been done and failed. I don't see a long term benefit of repeating what has already been done.
I don't mean to be rude, but the basis of this argument you are presenting with your angle of debate has no merit. You have not provided any numbers or facts to support your opinion or claims, whereas I have on many multiple occasions. This latest claim of yours " DAoC has only been able to populate one..." can only refer to current Ywain, and the entire community knows how hard that server is failing - so not quite sure where you are going with that part of your argument, unless you are for some reason attempting to throw support towards the classic community?
Here are the facts:
"You speak of multiple shards that host thousands of players..." As Esel pointed out - "maybe you are new to the game or this is a typo, but daoc used to have 250,000 subscribers and multiple servers in USA and europe. France alone had like 4 servers I think.", AND, as I have previously alluded to and have pointed out on multiple occasions the numbers that the freeshard community has.
Just one shard alone that has been around for 13+ years, name ending in "gard", on their website, they display how many individual unique accounts that have been made there (61000+). The other major free shard, which has the bulk of the freehshard community right now, continuously, at the time of this post (USA central time zone, 2:00 PM 4/26/2021) has over 1300+ players (no bots allowed).
And as I pointed out in my latest response, the freeshard community has been demonstrating HOW to garner a LARGE community, keep them for years, and do it cheaply.
Some basic business economics for you, since you may not have taken any classes in school for it:
There are 3 major components to any business plan that is considered "Cost", or "Cost of doing business" for their overhead, and they are:
Physical property
Cost of service/product
Labor
Specifically in the DAOC world, it is the servers along with costs of where they are being hosted, labor for devs and gm's and other employees, and the service (game itself)
As I pointed out before, the physical and labor costs these days, and for the last decade or so are cheap. In fact so cheap that FREEshards are willing to eat up the nominal costs of producing the end product - the service (game).
So, puter, you are obviously a Ywain supporter, there are some questions that MUST be asked and if you had any credibility, you MUST answer them truthfully for which you have avoided, and have continued to avoid with baseless claims and arguments in return.
1. What numbers are you looking at that make you think that Live DAOC can NOT support more than 1 server/server type?
2. What budget numbers are you referring to, to come up with this insanely huge supposed cost of doing business that Live will NOT even contemplate putting out a different ruleset?
3. IF OUR arguments has at least some potential of merit, then why wouldn't it be prudent for an actual business to investigate the possibilities of putting alternate rulesets online?
4. IF OUR arguments has at least some potential or merit, AND Broadsword finally produces this "alternate" classic server, Then what would you Ywain players (whose population has gone down the toilet bowl), then what does YOUR Ywain server have to lose in this but being proven wrong?
5. IF YOUR argument is correct, AND Broadsword finally produces this "alternate" classic server, if for some reason Ywain loses its entire population, only to be added to the "alternate" classic server instead (opposite of what happened in the 2008 clustered self inflicted wounds fiasco era) because players want to play where there is a BIGGER community - then whose argument was actually correct?
6. IF YOUR argument is correct, AND Broadsword finally produces this "alternate" classic server, and some time afterward, Ywain makes a net gain in population over the few who are supposed absolute die-hard ywain's who left,
doesn't this help your initial concern of population drain to begin with?
You see puter, the problem with your concerns and your arguments, is that you are not thinking past your feelings.
Believe it or not, I actually do understand your concerns. I just don't support your position.
I understand that you have a fear of losing even more friends off of Ywain - especially given in the current context that most of them don't log in to play as much anymore -- Again, we all know this is happening with the rare exceptions of short termed "events" that once over, population goes back to drowning in the bottom of the toilet again.
Your fear that an alternate server could potentially drag more Ywain players away. That is a rightly founded, and in of itself, admits to the truth to OUR argument - that the mass majority of players do NOT like the Ywain ruleset and REFUSE to pay to play it!
So Why the hell not bring back a classic server and run it side by side with Ywain? Hell, I'd even support character copying of Classic characters that have hit 50 to be copied over to Ywain (not moved, just copied, but will have to deal with name changes potentially). Again, not a transfer, a COPY - so that players from Classic, if they choose to explore the Ywain community, can forgo the 2 hours it takes to hit 50 on Ywain, I know I am exaggerating the xp rate on Ywain, but you get my point, and start exploring the Ywain world.
So Why the hell not support this? This can ONLY help your cause (which is to keep the Ywain community alive, no?)
Once your fears have been addressed, which it appears they have been, one is forced to attack the concerns with LOGIC. LOGIC requires one to refer to resources and facts. You have displayed no logical argument, nor presented any facts. I am asking you now to stop thinking with your feelings. I assure you, you have nothing to lose, and will be at the very least, mildly surprised that OUR arguments FOR an "alternate" classic server can ONLY benefit EVERYONE involved, the freeshard non-subscribing community who refuses to pay for the service to play on Ywain, AND the current paying Ywain customers.
I'll address your questions as concisely as possible.
1. What numbers are you looking at that make you think that Live DAOC can NOT support more than 1 server/server type?
- I never suggested Live couldn't run more than one server. However, I don't think they (Broadsword) could manage another server without introducing more staff which is completely reliant on the continued success of an additional server.
2. What budget numbers are you referring to, to come up with this insanely huge supposed cost of doing business that Live will NOT even contemplate putting out a different ruleset?
- The cost of hiring employees to manage another server. Peoples time is expensive and, for an old game like DAoC, will likely be difficult to find those who are willing to work with an older code base. Unless it's just sheer neglect, Broadsword has had a Software Engineer position on their website for at least 4+ years (http://broadsword.com/careers.html). Edit: Just to be clear on this point, the shard community does this for free. It's a hobby for those folks. Broadsword needs to pay their employees. So no, this part is not cheap.
3. IF OUR arguments has at least some potential of merit, then why wouldn't it be prudent for an actual business to investigate the possibilities of putting alternate rulesets online?
- I guarantee you that they (Broadsword) have investigated the pros/cons to releasing an alternate server otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion. The problem is the shard community and their (Broadsword) ability to compete with it.
4. IF OUR arguments has at least some potential or merit, AND Broadsword finally produces this "alternate" classic server, Then what would you Ywain players (whose population has gone down the toilet bowl), then what does YOUR Ywain server have to lose in this but being proven wrong?
- Being proven wrong is not an issue. I'm absolutely willing to concede that "classic" DAoC is more popular than Ywain is currently. However, the developers aren't looking to maximize profit. If they were, then the design choices made in the game would reflect that. It's been clear over the course of 7 years that Broadsword wants to move "forwards" and not "backwards" in terms of game development. While that may not be popular, it appears to be sustainable.
5. IF YOUR argument is correct, AND Broadsword finally produces this "alternate" classic server, if for some reason Ywain loses its entire population, only to be added to the "alternate" classic server instead (opposite of what happened in the 2008 clustered self inflicted wounds fiasco era) because players want to play where there is a BIGGER community - then whose argument was actually correct?
- It's highly unlikely Ywain will lose its entire population due to a classic server. However, much like what happened in January 2019 and January 2017, players will temporarily leave Ywain to play the classic server because it will feel new. Similar to an event killing particular zones, a new server will likely make Ywain feel dead for a brief period in time. The real question is will those left on Ywain stick it out for the population to rebound, as it usually does, or will they finally quit because a threshold has been reached? This part remains unclear.
6. IF YOUR argument is correct, AND Broadsword finally produces this "alternate" classic server, and some time afterward, Ywain makes a net gain in population over the few who are supposed absolute die-hard ywain's who left,
doesn't this help your initial concern of population drain to begin with?
- That is actually the whole point behind releasing an alternative server from Broadsword's perspective. They want Ywain to thrive which means they also want the new server to funnel players into Ywain, not drain it. That much has been made public based on their previous announcements. This is also why a progression server or seasonal server will work better toward this goal than a permanent classic server.
I've played DAoC since 2001 and experienced all the highs and lows whether it be population, patch setting, expansions, etc. I'm well aware of the shard community being around since the early 2000's. However, I'm also well aware of the fact that the shard community has always been smaller than Live until after Broadsword took over. Yet, the shard community hasn't grown either despite this disparity. Simply put, people have lost interest in DAoC as a whole. You cannot reason that another classic DAoC server, regardless of the development team, will somehow outperform what has already been done in the past decade. Where are all these players going to come from? The game is old enough that its player base is literally dying...I'd rather have new experiences while interest remains in DAoC than relive the past simply because of nostalgia.
"How many full time GM's does Broadsword want to hire to maintain this server? How about hiring some volunteer GM's that can do most tasks exception of gaining access to server controls. If something happens that the server needs a reset, then volunteer GM gets a hold of paid GM for them to make the call to do so...there are ways around these problems, and the freeshard community has proven it can be done cheaply."
I would gladly be a volunteer GM without getting paid, I believe more would be glad to do it for free as well.
LordGriffon presented a possible way to keep the costs down in a previous post:
"How many full time GM's does Broadsword want to hire to maintain this server? How about hiring some volunteer GM's that can do most tasks exception of gaining access to server controls. If something happens that the server needs a reset, then volunteer GM gets a hold of paid GM for them to make the call to do so...there are ways around these problems, and the freeshard community has proven it can be done cheaply."
I would gladly be a volunteer GM without getting paid, I believe more would be glad to do it for free as well.
BS probably have investigated and are probably investigating the pros/cons of an alternate ruleset server and the more information we can give them, on what we would like to see and why we would like to see it, the bigger the chance they will have to take the best possible decisions regarding such a server.
I think goguen is correct in his post:
"time is on our side. all the social media posts have people asking for a classic ruleset live server. all they need to do is make a paid beta test like other games have done in the past which will help them gauge interest and get a feel for the customer demand for the new server(s). my bet is that there are many people ready to come back to daoc classic. bird server proved it but they've got no monetary incentives to keep their population happy so they will make bad decisions and ruin the experience because they've got no skin in the game. if that server dies then they just go back to their day jobs so they ultimately do whatever they want with zero regard for how it affects the community or their players.
bird server is showing us the path towards success. do the opposite of what they did, stick to classic rule set and you will retain the core fanbase of that ruleset. only move forward with changes when absolutely necessary. other games have had a great amount of success from bringing back classic rule set servers. there's literally zero reason for classic daoc live to not exist right now. demand is there, customers are willing to pay and the community has been demanding it for several years."
I am quite sure the developers are interested in maximizing profit and that they are looking for ways to do so.
I don't think Ywain will lose it's entire population if a classic ruleset server was introduced, a small dip at the beginning would probably happen but after a while I think there would be an increase in population on Ywain. Having the classic ruleset would also give the players the choice to play on classic when they are bored of playing on Ywain and vice versa, events can be ran on both Ywain and the classic server.
BS needs to choose the correcty way to draw people back to the game, I believe a classic server which doesn't force the players to move their characters to Ywain would have a greater success at doing this. I would not resubscribe for a progression or seasonal server. I would probably pop by and check Ywain out now and then when I have reactiavetd my accounts for a classic server. I think there are many that feel this way and I also believe a few of the players that will return for a classic server would find Ywain ruleset enjoyable and thus increase the Ywain server population.
I think goguen is correct in his post:
"time is on our side. all the social media posts have people asking for a classic ruleset live server. all they need to do is make a paid beta test like other games have done in the past which will help them gauge interest and get a feel for the customer demand for the new server(s). my bet is that there are many people ready to come back to daoc classic. bird server proved it but they've got no monetary incentives to keep their population happy so they will make bad decisions and ruin the experience because they've got no skin in the game. if that server dies then they just go back to their day jobs so they ultimately do whatever they want with zero regard for how it affects the community or their players.
bird server is showing us the path towards success. do the opposite of what they did, stick to classic rule set and you will retain the core fanbase of that ruleset. only move forward with changes when absolutely necessary. other games have had a great amount of success from bringing back classic rule set servers. there's literally zero reason for classic daoc live to not exist right now. demand is there, customers are willing to pay and the community has been demanding it for several years."
And as I said before noone has tried to do what we are asking for, the freeshards have made changes that wasn't wished for by the larger part of their server population and those changes have pushed their players away.
First off, TY Jorma for the support.
Now I am going to address specifically some of puter's continued arguments -
When I said this:
"1. What numbers are you looking at that make you think that Live DAOC can NOT support more than 1 server/server type?"
puter responded with:
"I never suggested Live couldn't run more than one server. However, I don't think they (Broadsword) could manage another server without introducing more staff which is completely reliant on the continued success of an additional server."
Guess what puter, looks like you have a short memory, cause all one has to do, and you should have recalled yourself since YOU actually did state this on the previous page of THIS thread this quote:
The margin of profit will be small for DAoC. It's nowhere near as popular as WoW. Even FFXI has a larger subscriber base than DAoC and they were released within a year of each other. You speak of multiple shards that host thousands of players. DAoC has only been able to populate one...While I think there will be a short term benefit with the release of a classic server, I don't see it as the right direction to keep the game going for multiple years to come.
So I made it bold for you to help you remember something that you did IN FACT say. I find it again interesting to note that even with this part of your response, you continue to make claims with no actual data to back it up. Guessing that your memory failed you on this cause you don't want to remember making unverified claims?
Next, when I said this:
"2. What budget numbers are you referring to, to come up with this insanely huge supposed cost of doing business that Live will NOT even contemplate putting out a different ruleset?"
puter said this in response:
"- The cost of hiring employees to manage another server. Peoples time is expensive and, for an old game like DAoC, will likely be difficult to find those who are willing to work with an older code base. Unless it's just sheer neglect, Broadsword has had a Software Engineer position on their website for at least 4+ years (http://broadsword.com/careers.html). Edit: Just to be clear on this point, the shard community does this for free. It's a hobby for those folks. Broadsword needs to pay their employees. So no, this part is not cheap."
I already explained how this is done cheaply, as demonstrated by the freeshard community, along with Jorma pointing this fact out as well. Either we are wrong, or there have been thousands of people on this planet experiencing the same mass hallucination effect when they have been sitting at their computers playing DAOC for free... or did I miss something here?
Let me explain this again with actual hard numbers for you since you can't seem to back up your claims of high labor costs - Lets go with some round numbers to guess actual subs as compared to active player base.
Lets say there are 1000 players on a server at any given time. Easy enough number to accomplish. There have been at least 2 freeshards to have managed to get at LEAST that amount, in 2 of those cases, at several points in sustained time for over a year, as high as 3000-5000. But lets just stick with 1000 to be fair, and should be easy enough for Live to be able to maintain that on a consistent day to day basis regardless of time of day or what day of week vrs. weekend.
Next lets consider how many others are paying to play on said server, or if it's a free one, how many others are not logged in at the time due to work/school/other time restrictions including sleep/chores/entertainment offline.
I think i would it be fair to say for every player on a server, there can be as many as 5-10 that would log on during that same 24 hour period. But let's just go with 5 to keep things simple.
So with 1000 players on, then it would be fair to assume there are at least 5000 active players that would log on during that particular day. How many others will log in that week, especially during the weekend when the majority of hard working citizens are off from their jobs? Lets be conservative here and consider that the population will double. Instead of 1000 players, that number jumps to 2000. Instead of 5000 being off line, it's more likely that there's 10000 offline for most of that week. That's right... 10,000. I am not making this number up. We've seen this population effect in near every online game that has ever existed and there is no arguing against it. In fact, I would propose that the paying offline community at any given time for any given community can be as high as 20X what the current online count is when we consider the part-time casuals who may only get on for just a couple hours on a Saturday afternoon/evening. But we are going to stick with 10,000 just for simple number argument sake.
Now lets do some math for you puter....
10,000 actual paying customers, giving the company $15/month sub fee for access to all content.
That is a whopping $150,000 for the month, and if we consider for the year, is a total of $1,800,000 / year of revenue.
Now lets total up the costs.
Let's start with the software engineer position that you pointed out that Broadsword has had posted for 4+ years. I don't know what it hasn't been filled, but typically when they are open for extended periods of time, the primary issue causing the delay of interest from qualified prospects, is the compensation offered, or in your case, since you may not know what that is, it means how much the company is willing to pay primarily, and that's not including benefits.
If you were to go to Glassdoor's website and search what a typical Software Engineer makes, you'll see it's a little over $104,000 / year.
Next, lets start adding in GM's to maintain the server in game and monitor forums and websites.
Again, if you were to go to Glassdoor to look up Sys Ad's, then you'll find they make close to $75,000 / year.
Now lets find out the costs of the hardware hosting (meaning we don't have to buy the hardware, we are leasing it from someone else who is doing the hosting for us -- a common practice by many a free gaming community, as there is a HUGE free gaming community out there).
If you were to look up gaming hosting services, then you'll find all kinds of sites willing to do it cheap. One in particular is called Servermania. When searching the costs for a "dedicated" server - which is the type we need for a MMORPG with thousands of players on it concurrently, then we find we can get this:
2x Intel Xeon Silver 4210
20 x 2 .2 Ghz
64 GB
2 x 500 GB SSD
50 GB
Just for the low, low cost of $329 / month, or, for the year, right at $3950 / year (rounded up).
Let's continue with the math...
1,800,000 (revenue)
-104,000 (1 software engineer)
-750,000 (10 paid Sys Ad's)
-3950 (cost for hosting)
Total - 942,050
That's correct, That's a 52% profit margin. Most companies are pleased with just a 12% return. Here I just demonstrated how Broadsword can get more than a 4X return of profit than what most companies can ever hope for.
Both I and Jorma also pointed out that the freeshard community, the use volunteers to do the GM'ing. Why can't Broadsword do the same? I already gave an example on how they can do a hierarchical system of GM's to keep that cost low, as that labor cost by itself is where most of the cost for running a server will come from.
Take B.S.'s discord for example, at any given moment they have anywhere from 2-4 GM's listed. How many more GM's will Broadsword need to run a "alternate" classic server would be the biggest question at this point, but surely they don't need as many as 10. They probably will only need 3-4 more. And if more are needed, then why NOT farm out the help to UNpaid Volunteers that are allowed to help on a part time basis? Why can't Broadsword set up this system? I mean, think about it, 3-4 paid GM's who are in charge (who have access to everything) of the unpaid GM's (who don't have access to the back-end, meaning they can't do a server reset even by accident).
And puter, you also stated this:
"However, I'm also well aware of the fact that the shard community has always been smaller than Live until after Broadsword took over....Simply put, people have lost interest in DAoC as a whole. You cannot reason that another classic DAoC server...Where are all these players going to come from? The game is old enough that its player base is literally dying."
No. Your entire statement there is false with every sentence you made.
First of all, there have been times where the freeshard community (or "shard" community as you put it) has actually outperformed Live on numerous occasions with a much higher population base.
Next, you claim "people have lost interest in DAOC as a whole.." That is not true. If you took some time to investigate the freeshard community, you'd realize how foolish that statement you made really was.
Next, you asked "You cannot reason that another classic DAoC server...Where are all these players going to come from?"
I have already explained this on at least 3 other occasions in these forums of where these people are coming from. The freeshard community has sported at least 2 servers that have outperformed Live on multiple occasions. Currently one of them has on any given day, over 1000 players on it during prime time. The other has on the opening page of their website proudly displaying over 61,000 unique accounts. Reason why I said "Unique" is because they don't allow for bots.
That means, according to the numbers which are NOT in dispute, that I am on solid ground with my claim that there are 10's of thousands of people out there willing to subscribe for "alternate" classic server if Broadsword would return that service to us. And yes, ultimately, it is up to Broadsword to pursue this venture. But they would be losing out a great opportunity to make some serious money to pass this up. And in case you haven't noticed through your supposed claim of an illustrious long career in playing this game, the masses of players who USED to play DAOC were absolutely serious about not continuing to PAY for the service of Ywain. They wanted Classic with certain features, and when Broadsword (Then Mythic/EA) took that away, then those 10's of thousands of players voted in the ultimate poll. The poll of MONEY. They voted with their wallets and took their gaming interests elsewhere.
Finally, puter, you stated:
"The game is old enough that its player base is literally dying."
That is your opinion, I can respect that. But take this into consideration of old games STILL being played today:
From PCGamer games of note including:
Unreal World
Starcraft
Ultima Online
Now those games are older than DAOC, and in some cases as much as 5-10 years older, yet they are still able to make money.
Shall we consider games that are offline?
Monopoly (and all the variants)
Clue
Battleship
Scrabble
Stratego
Risk
Card games of all sorts.
Seriously puter, if we take your logic to its end, no game would exist past 20 years. I just literally rattled off several online still making money, and over a half dozen offline that are still making money. And no, none of those games are dying. puter, you really need to get out more dude.
Oh and next time you want to address anything that I say, and before you utter an opinion, you might want to consider doing a little more research.
1. Reading comprehension. I stated DAoC has only been able to populate one shard server at a time when the comparison was made with WoW shards.
2. If the profit margin is as potentially wide as you claim, then this server would have been up and running years ago. Yet, the bucket keeps getting kicked down the road. Why? Yes, the shard community can run this game cheaply because they literally donate their time. However, I don't see this happening on Live simply because EA owns the rights. BS operates within the limitations of the IP holders so it's very unlikely they can recruit volunteers to manage the game. I even recall Beib (aka Carol) having stated that before when players have offered up to help the development team in the official discord. Tag her if you want an official answer regarding this. Again, if this was a viable option, then it would have been done already.
Regarding shard community vs. Live population. You've ignored the statement I made that the shard community was smaller than Live pre-Broadsword. This implies that the shard community has outperformed Live in the past 7 years, which I attribute to Live having lost population rather than the shard community necessarily gaining population. You're literally citing two instances that occurred within the past 4 years. This falls within the 7 years of Broadsword being at the helm. We're arguing the same point lol.
I'm failing to understand why a "true" classic server will perform better on Live than it has on the shard community. If you're going to argue there are no "true" classic shards, then you will not be content with whatever Broadsword releases either. The 61,000 unique accounts also didn't stay on the classic server once its competitor opened up which is a far cry from classic DAoC. The shard community has clearly demonstrated that classic DAoC isn't what players want. Arguably, Live isn't what these players want either. The most recent shard is probably the closest we'll get to a ruleset that most players enjoy without including expansions after SI. Regardless, I don't see how Broadsword can compete with the shard community without doing something novel (aka progression/seasonal ruleset) OR issuing a cease and desist against the shards. It's a tall order and large assumption that the majority of shard players will start paying to play what they are already enjoying for free. The biggest exception will likely be multi-account users which the shard community vehemently opposes.
You're correct that a game's age doesn't dictate its sustainability. However, DAoC isn't a popular game and has no avenue to recruit new players into it. There's very little advertisement, no sponsorships, no leagues, no competitions, very few events, and a small batch of streamers with less than 100 viewers (the exception is the official DAoC stream which typically breaks 100). DAoC simply doesn't have the exposure it needs to keep the population from declining, regardless of what server is released. We'd all love to see multiple servers packed with 2-4k players again, but I highly doubt that will ever happen for DAoC without making an entirely new game.
Edit: I will also concede that the shard community has grown based on registered users throughout several servers. Can't display numbers here without getting modded (eventually) but waybackmachine is your friend if you want to look.
like Puter said, if BS really thought it would bring back so much revenue, it would have already been implemented.
Reality is it will have a large population for about 6 months and become a ghost town. Since it will be a progression server to push you to Ywain.
It seems like a few people are stuck in 2003 and what their game back. It has moved on. If you want to play, come play, If not, then don't.
Some of the things people would like to see is just ridiculous.
Is it true as puter suggests (quoted below) that Broasdsword can't hire volunteer GM's?
Have you examined the possibility of opening a classic server and keeping it a classic server without forcing the players on that server to move their characters to Ywain and/or Gaheris?
If it has been examined, and discarded as a way to increase net profit, what are the reasons behind discarding the idea?
LordGriffon presented some possible numbers for returning/new subscribers and costs for managing such a server (qouted below).
Also, the whole basis for this to work is to have a free workforce? I'm sorry Indon't share your optimism. So you would have a structure where payed employees would do similar work tonfree enployees? I'm pretty that's not even legal.
Also, take into account that the new server, to have any kind of success, requires the code to be updated to a more modern version similar to what the other servers use and that allows them to come up with all these changes and modifications.
Not doing that upgrade and still launching it would be suicide. The new server would suck due to broken mechanics and bugs.
If it was that easy and an obvious cash grab, they would have done it already
I don't think 10 Sys Ad´s would be needed so take some of that money and add it to the server costs and the net profit would still be bigger.
Since the work with broken mechanics and bugs have already been coded it should not be that hard to add it to the new server, maybe that is something BS is working at as we speak.
If they would answer this we would get a better idea on what is possible to see in the future.
- the new server is still in process and they will share info when they are rdy to.
That's all they will share for the moment. When they will make that annoucement is unknown, considering that server was supposed to be announced officially last year.
From the first time Broadsword talked about the possibility of an alternate ruleset server, they have made it very clear that Ywain is their number one priority. First, make sure Ywain is in a healthy condition. THEN introduce a second server. They have struggled with the first part ever since(!) There never was a time to do what you ask. In hindsight you can say that the population was higher back then, so they should have launched a second server right away, but that was never the plan. The plan was to give Ywain a boost to increase the chances that it can survive the (initial) competition of a second server.
I personally believe a successful classic ruleset server would benefit Ywain in the long run.
That is Broadsword's stance. Ywain players are more loyal to the game, and likewise Broadsword is more loyal to Ywain players. I don't care about Ywain, but I think it is reasonable to assume that many players will leave Ywain for a new server mainly for one reason: It will offer the increase in population that everyone is yearning for.
We will have to wait and see when the new server is released (if ever), but I think EC proved that the general interest in Ywain is low. Personally, I think Ywain will suffer in the short term, and a forced transfer will only revive Ywain to numbers we see today, thus forcing Broadsword to launch a new server again.
1. That Broadsword have researched the possibility and not found it economically viable.
2. That Broadsword have not researched the possibility to any large extent but deemed such an endeavor unsuccessful.
3. That Broadsword fears such a server to be more successful than Ywain and believes Ywain would fail to such a degree it would have to be closed down.
This is why I would like to hear from Broadsword what their view on this issue is.
They DID do general surveys in early 2017 (not aimed at classic, just something different):
A survey will give an indication but the survey needs to reach as many potential new and returning subscribers as possible, I did not know of the survey when it was done so I didn't take part in it. I believe there are many more that have not taken part in the survey that, if they had known about it, would have given Broadsword a bigger opinion sample to base their decisions on.
Some advertising would be great.
The big part of this that everybody forgets is that this server would be ran by BS. A lot of the population that left blames BS (right or wrong) for the downfall of the game.
Did BS learn a few things in these rough first years, I think so. Did they prove that they can be proactive and manage a new server with the speed and agility of some other place? This is the biggest question to answer.
A classic ruleset is inherently boring. You need to keep pushing content to have any sort of longevity. The other server also had to make a bunch of changes to fix the blatant issues that are present in a classic/si ruleset server. There is a reason why we are on patch 1.127 and not still on 1.65.
When you look at the other place, it has essentially become a EU server. NA gameplay is really bad. On the other hand, Ywain EU time is quite bad, US is doing decent (could be way better).
That's the things that BS see and need to find solutions for. What kind of ruleset do they need to go with in order to hopefully please the EU and US crowds? What arenthe changes they need to.make in gameplay to.prevent some of the issues present in classic/si? How will they keep it interesting over time so ppl don't get bored with their 5 abilities?
Combine that with their initial 4 interrogations on how to make a new server that will benefit ywain in the short, mid and long term, and you have quite a puzzle.
In my mind, it is clear that a new server will kill Ywain, 100%. The new server, imo, will replace Ywain and let daoc live another couple years. However, you need to keep the loyal crowd happy because as much as ppl like to say freeshards are cool and have pop, they are mainly composed of unloyal customers that play for free. I wouldn't base my business decisions on a crowd that will ditch my product for the next shiny squirrel first chance they get.
1. That Broadsword have researched the possibility and not found it economically viable.
2. That Broadsword have not researched the possibility to any large extent but deemed such an endeavor unsuccessful.
3. That Broadsword fears such a server to be more successful than Ywain and believes Ywain would fail to such a degree it would have to be closed down and want to avoid that at any cost.
4. That Broadsword counts on the new server to be more successful than Ywain and eventually close Ywain down. The new server needs to make both current players and new/returning players happier with the new server than they are with Ywain.
More updates on the main website not in Discord.
Remove ML's maybe give healing classes group cure, power FoP and group port for free at 50 but no Speedwarps/traps etc.
Account wide quest credit for things like Curse/OW so you dont have to do them 20 times on each realm simular to new horse merchant but you dont have to give him the horse to "register" it.. if you have done it you can get the Bound Item on all your chars.
Keep leveling quick.
And a selfish want
Old style Necro's with the old mezz/root immune pets
Ooh and the Old necros were terrible in RvR everyone tells me so they won't mind them getting a 50% spirit debuff.. Oh yes they were gimped please do that.
^THIS
Where are you BROADSWORD? Please speak up about this new server.
If you didn’t enjoy this new Alt sever then you’d just un sub and never look back at Live.
https://divoxutils.com/users/user_2ZTPHy8tjVF9LWMgujSZfCY9Mos/characters
This logic confuses me. It's the same or similar logic that has been used for Runescape, Everquest, WoW Classic, etc, etc that launched classic/progression servers. There's one similar theme between every classic server from these old games that's the same, and that's the excuses made by the naysayers. It's crazy how similar every pre-classic server launch game's naysayers are.
But the funny thing is, the only thing that happened with these games is it turned into MASSIVE success and re-vitalized the games along with having brought new players to play the live versions of the game that normally wouldn't have even tried the live version. SMH
I come from having played almost every iteration of the EQ TLPs and saw EQ's slowish but steady decline to extreme worry about the future of the live game until they took a leap of faith and released their first TLP Fippy Darkpaw so many years ago. They launched that TLP to extreme success, and now have been regularly launching new TLPs every 1-3 years and evolving and improving how they launch TLPs because of the extreme success and paying players it brought back to EQ. In fact, the recent TLPs have been sporting server populations of 10,000+ players and they've had to implement things like layered zones to handle the influx of player base for the past several iterations and despite that typically ends up needing to launch a second server to handle the load and still having queue times for the first couple weeks of a new TLP launch.
I also play on EQ current expansion servers, and am constantly meeting people that came to give the current game a try after getting a little bored on their respective TLP which is a nice distraction for them but because the live game is so different but yet still familiar being EQ to them so then they become players that switch between a TLP and the live game never actually leaving the game because once they get bored with a TLP, they switch to live, and vise versa.
This is what I see happening with DAOC as well. Every time I look at the current live state of DAOC, it's a little more grim every time and I've been watching on the side-lines for years hoping for a classic server so I can finally start giving broadsword my money again. I have a discord full of friends that also have been waiting for the same thing and excitedly talk about what we're going to play and do, and bicker over which faction to be etc for "when" the classic server gets launched.
What I'd ask is because over the years one would have a VERY hard time arguing that there hasn't been a slow attrition to the game in its current state, so why not give classic a real chance. Because what's happening now doesn't seem like growth to me. It seems like still a steady, albeit slow decline. When every other game has breathed massive new life into their game with classic launches giving a proof of concept of catering to nostalgiaholics, why not give it a chance?
Please consider what's being said here as a long-time fan of classic+SI DAOC and having spent several years on every iteration of EQ TLPs and have seen first hand the absolute massive potential a well done (not the half-baked classic servers tried in the past with DAOC) has. @John_Broadsword @Carol_Broadsword
I'm not privy to whether a strong shard community exists with EQ or Runescape, but I know it was decimated in WoW by Blizzard before they released their classic servers. EA hasn't made any indication that they plan to do the same which I think is necessary for a Live DAoC "classic' server to see any prolonged success. This is why I stress that whatever Broadsword releases as an alternate server has to be unique from what is currently offered for free. Right now, fans of the game are doing a better job maintaining it than the actual developers. This has to change.
Also, WoW just launched a new expansion, they keep building and pushing content into the main game. DAOC only "new" content are cyclic events that see small tweaks and some updates to the frontier dynamics.
Classic daoc would have a great launch. 2 years in, dead with ywain dead
It's a stretch saying that because wow classic was successful that daoc classic would be as successful on the long term.
Again, this is the same arguments as any other game I've seen when talks started of official classic servers. The same arguments on a broken record with just the name of the game being the only difference. Seen it time and time again, and have yet to see a game that launched a classic server that's actually been damaged further by having a genuine classic server being made. The only ones that continued to go down are ones that made half-baked ones, or only talked about it and never made it so the playerbase gave up on ever seeing what they wanted.
Also, to answer your question, yes actually EQ has a very strong freeshard or private server community of which actually one of them the company actually has even entered into a formal legal agreement with the owners of EQ and even allows talks of it on their forums now called Project 1999 on the official forums. You can fact check me if you'd like by doing a google search for everquest news update april 29th 2015 project 1999. EQ has had a strong private server community since before WoW was even around, but yet EQ found a way to make TLPs that have 10s of thousands of players frothing at the mouth for the next iteration of a TLP even though a lot of them are rinse/repeat of previous ones despite even allowing private servers to exist without worrying about legal action against them.
Again, please give this a chance since the current plan is still showing to be a slow demise with a continuing shrinking playerbase. The one thing we all have in common here is a love for a game neither side of us want to see go away, so I understand how precious and dear it is to keep DAOC alive. One method has been attempted with DAOC and continues with tweaking, events, ftp model introduced, etc but still continues to see a decline if after a small temporary bump in playerbase. So it's time to try what the other MMOs that are in a similar boat have tried to extreme success despite solid private servers.
It's just hard seeing what I do with EQ, and WoW, and hard to explain just how game-changing and massive success it's been for these other games out there to put forth effort into these what I like to call nostalgiaholic servers. I know WoW isn't the best example because they're owned by activision and still sport good numbers, but noone can deny that they were seeing some serious decline in numbers in recent years too until wow Classic. If it wasn't profitable they wouldn't be making TBC classic servers, guaranteed. Activision likes only massively profitable things, because well, it's activision.
But EQ was definitely in a strong decline before progression servers, but has seen a complete and utter turnaround to being really popular again. I want the same for DAOC. and I only want to see it happen with DAOC as well.
What does population have to do with whether or not this could breath life back into the game? Doesn't matter which game it is. Some with higher population like WoW, some with moderate (and it was low population before they started doing TLPs) like EQ, and some with low population like runescape. The one thing they all have in common though is a massive increase in playerbase after releasing classic servers. Same thing as a high likelyhood with DAOC.
I can see why others stopped arguing with you too. You just go out of your way to either deny it being even a possibility of success, or try to divert into topics that have nothing to do with the success of a classic server. Unless you secretly want DAOC to fail, and so will argue against this or divert offtopic with every opportunity.
Ywain is the "last stand" of DAOC is only in existence by virtue of the fact that all official servers (mordred, classic, euro etc.) apart from Gaheris have been pumped into the server whether they liked it or not. Population is lower than most servers were at the time of clustering or closure. Every couple of months I think to myself "surely the population cannot get any lower / action cannot get any worse than this" but it does. I think Ywain is a dying horse that has run its race and needs to be put out of its misery. But then again I'm not responsible for a business so what do I know. but I think a few golden years of classic daoc that may or may not work is preferable to the slow, painful death that we are witnessing on live.
If they do a classic/si, they directly compete with a server that has a much more agile team and that pushes updates and events at 5x the speed of BS and that is entirely free. However, they can pull the plug or delete all your characters for no reason if they wanted to.
That server had to do so many changes to the game just to balance it and keep adding content and event to keep players playing it. So the ruleset is 100% NOT a big enough incentive to stay on a particular server.
If they do a different ruleset, like dragon patch as an example, then that will completely kill off ywain for good.
Again, if it was an easy call it would have been done. BS has no expansion or new fresh content in the pipeline to bring back players from classic back to ywain. It's basically where do the players like to play, and that is heavily driven by population numbers.
The progression server is probably the idea that makes the most sense, but probably the most difficult to pull off properly.
I'm all for being proven wrong. But I'm going based on DAoC's history as a whole. Classic was tried before back in 2005. The population jump was...small. The shards have shown classic has more appeal than Ywain, but, as Shoke said, it's insufficient to keep players in the long run which is fundamentally the goal. Yes, popularity / population does matter because you NEED it to have multiple servers. DAoC has three active servers and only one is "healthy" (> 1k concurrent players) during EU prime. I'm indifferent if DAoC dies (officially). I'd much rather see a DAoC 2.0 than a rehashed server from an era that was boring to play. I suspect the vast majority of those who long for classic DAoC don't care about what makes the game unique. Talks of long grinds and PvE raids like the days gone by isn't original nor appealing. The RvR (PvP) mechanics in combination with the large class roster is what makes this game great. That hasn't changed, yet the game continues to lose players. Seems to me people like DAoC more for PvE than RvR.
Edit: unless you're counting the bird lol
Hence why I said DAoC and not Live.
You could move player housing into the segmented areas like settlements and give the opposing realm a chance to smash your house for gold based on the amount of items that has sold on that house or just use the random loot generator for items for that realm based on the player/group that did the most damage. Then when the raid is over you have to repair the house but it can be done very cheaply and easily.
During times when nobody is raiding your realm you could use NPC enemies attacking an area for players to form up and defend for awesome loot for that level of NPC for that area.
Just some ideas rolling around in my head.
Broadsword Online Games