Only a Progression Server has a chance to make everyone content.
There is only one Ruleset that will satisfy all players and get the attention of the players who fall into the 'would come back if xyz." category.
That is the Progression Server that I and several others have been requesting for literal years.
Start in Classic. After a period of time, perhaps 3 months (picking 3 months as a standard number that was used to enormous success by Everquest, who pioneered the Timelocked Progression servers that have seen enormous financial revenue and returning players come back to their game again and again with each TLP server launched) or six months release the next expansion.
Do NOT stop at Shrouded Isles. The private servers have done the Classic+SI scene to death and there are already competitors for this content. What needs to happen is to continue progressing through the content. Release through Trials of Atlantis, Catacombs, Darkness Rising, Labyrinth of the Minotaur and so forth.
Implement content patches in the order were released: That MEANS doing it properly for things like leaving New Frontier Bridge Towers in until the appropriate time to remove them as happened in live. Going through the various patches that nerfed and buffed different classes. Yes, this means going through periods where Bainshees were overpowered, or Warlocks, or Valkyries, or Vampiir's, or whatever other classes.
Allow people to literally relive the glory days of when XYZ happened. Don't try and fix it and change it to be more balanced, just provide it as it was and the majority of people will be happy.
Everyone will ALWAYS have something to complain about. That is normal. That is life and that is how things simply are in video games. You cannot please everyone. But by providing a way to re-experience DAoC as it was, you are allowing the population who remembers how a thing was to go back and enjoy that thing again. Changing things and you will simply have people saying "This isn't how it was. I don't want to play this."
By having a model that progresses through the content, EVERYONE gets to play content they want and enjoy:
If you ONLY like Classic and Old Frontiers, you get to enjoy that first since it's the first content there was.
If you really enjoy Trials of Atlantis content you simply need to wait and you get to go through that.
If you enjoy the later game of Darkness RIsing or Labyrinth of the Minotaur, you get to enjoy that as well.
And the most common thing that will happen? People will stick around simply because this is the game we love and have loved for two decades.
Any other ruleset will never approach the success that the Progression Server provides and will harm the chances of people returning. I myself will not play another DAOC server unless Trials of Atlantis expansion will appear on it at some point. This is not a threat, simply a statement from someone who loved that period. I know there are many others who agree with me. I also know there are some that do not, but I challenge anyone to provide evidence that a Progression Server is not the best answer to give ALL players something to look forward to. It may not be what everyone (aside from myself) wants, but it is a damn good compromise for all involved.
And the best thing about it? It's RENEWABLE. Research from Everquest and now World of Warcraft PROVES that people like revisiting old content, and evidence from EQ shows players enjoy going back and restarting. Even the die hards who reach RR10+ would most likely enjoy the fresh start a recycling server would provide.
@beibhinn I read the latest Producers Letter. I saw the snippet stating work on the 'alternate rules server' continues. I'm posting this in the hopes that it makes a difference. You've known me for a long time and every year or couple of years I post something like this in the hopes it influences the right people. I'll keep on hoping.
Thanks for still being around.
That is the Progression Server that I and several others have been requesting for literal years.
Start in Classic. After a period of time, perhaps 3 months (picking 3 months as a standard number that was used to enormous success by Everquest, who pioneered the Timelocked Progression servers that have seen enormous financial revenue and returning players come back to their game again and again with each TLP server launched) or six months release the next expansion.
Do NOT stop at Shrouded Isles. The private servers have done the Classic+SI scene to death and there are already competitors for this content. What needs to happen is to continue progressing through the content. Release through Trials of Atlantis, Catacombs, Darkness Rising, Labyrinth of the Minotaur and so forth.
Implement content patches in the order were released: That MEANS doing it properly for things like leaving New Frontier Bridge Towers in until the appropriate time to remove them as happened in live. Going through the various patches that nerfed and buffed different classes. Yes, this means going through periods where Bainshees were overpowered, or Warlocks, or Valkyries, or Vampiir's, or whatever other classes.
Allow people to literally relive the glory days of when XYZ happened. Don't try and fix it and change it to be more balanced, just provide it as it was and the majority of people will be happy.
Everyone will ALWAYS have something to complain about. That is normal. That is life and that is how things simply are in video games. You cannot please everyone. But by providing a way to re-experience DAoC as it was, you are allowing the population who remembers how a thing was to go back and enjoy that thing again. Changing things and you will simply have people saying "This isn't how it was. I don't want to play this."
By having a model that progresses through the content, EVERYONE gets to play content they want and enjoy:
If you ONLY like Classic and Old Frontiers, you get to enjoy that first since it's the first content there was.
If you really enjoy Trials of Atlantis content you simply need to wait and you get to go through that.
If you enjoy the later game of Darkness RIsing or Labyrinth of the Minotaur, you get to enjoy that as well.
And the most common thing that will happen? People will stick around simply because this is the game we love and have loved for two decades.
Any other ruleset will never approach the success that the Progression Server provides and will harm the chances of people returning. I myself will not play another DAOC server unless Trials of Atlantis expansion will appear on it at some point. This is not a threat, simply a statement from someone who loved that period. I know there are many others who agree with me. I also know there are some that do not, but I challenge anyone to provide evidence that a Progression Server is not the best answer to give ALL players something to look forward to. It may not be what everyone (aside from myself) wants, but it is a damn good compromise for all involved.
And the best thing about it? It's RENEWABLE. Research from Everquest and now World of Warcraft PROVES that people like revisiting old content, and evidence from EQ shows players enjoy going back and restarting. Even the die hards who reach RR10+ would most likely enjoy the fresh start a recycling server would provide.
@beibhinn I read the latest Producers Letter. I saw the snippet stating work on the 'alternate rules server' continues. I'm posting this in the hopes that it makes a difference. You've known me for a long time and every year or couple of years I post something like this in the hopes it influences the right people. I'll keep on hoping.
Thanks for still being around.
Comments
Im one of those "classic+si guys" but i would be ok with something like that BUT it has to stop at the the latest expansion or something like that. Sry guys ywain sucks hard and you know it. I wont play this server if the ending is "broadsword patch lvl". No personal offense @broadsword staff. But forget it. I eather burn my money.
If you extend the time between expansions you will end up with an extremely long wait for Ywain players.
There are more than enough players who would return for a 3/6 month per expansion to make the server viable and profitable without current Ywain players.
And I think Broadsword is entirely capable of this. The public is not aware of what code and backups they have access to.
Outdated templates? Mate, the entire point of the game is to keep upgrading your character and continually rebuilding it and your templates. There is nothing wrong with this. Respeccing is part of the fun.
I agree and I do not play current Ywain, as it is simply not the game I enjoyed anymore. However, I could see it ending with the latest expansion and some added features like the Helmets they added and some of the longer campaigns for about a year, before resetting and going back to classic, with the characters being ported over to ywain so people could continue playing them there if they so chose.
That way nobody loses anything and it gives them a reason to keep Ywain going and the people who want to play there an influx of players at the end of each server reset cycle.
Da fly family - 4501 4502 4503 4504 4505 4506 4508 4509
Da spider family - 441 442 443 444 445 447
Ywain 1 Mid - Carlingford Hib - Tullamore Alb - Dalton
https://divoxutils.com/user-characters
Then I suppose it's a good thing that this is about a compromise that all players can live with and enjoy, rather than a magical perfect solution that doesn't exist!
And the Sith totally get a bad wrap, by the way.
Sounds like something a Sith would say.
Da fly family - 4501 4502 4503 4504 4505 4506 4508 4509
Da spider family - 441 442 443 444 445 447
Ywain 1 Mid - Carlingford Hib - Tullamore Alb - Dalton
https://divoxutils.com/user-characters
Hail Hydra!
Sure, they can do it in theory. The problem is time. "The public" is well aware of the speed at which Broadsword operates these days, and I'm not saying this to criticize Broadsword. It's just the reality of things. Progress is painfully slow.
Over the course of 20 years, sure. Again, time is the problem here. It's too much work too quickly. Casual players and RvR-oriented players will get frustrated.
Ywain will always have a population, and the model where a recycling server funnels new characters and players into a permanent server is the simplest solution.
Over the course of 20 years, sure. Again, time is the problem here. It's too much work too quickly. Casual players and RvR-oriented players will get frustrated.
And these people will have a home on Ywain, where they can play with likeminded players.
As someone who has played since originally DAOC, I can agree the UI is horribly outdated.
But your statement is qujite silly imo.
On that note, Have fun playing anything but a mid tank group for the first few months of the new server.
I think the idea is good, in a base sense ,but it would be nice to keep abilities in a more balanced sense and not changing so drastically.
Happily, I can point out that you're mistaken.
All the information we would need is already publicly available. The Internet Archive is a thing and I can bring up every single patch note and class change or mob tweak that's ever been published.
If this server was announced you can bet your house that there are people who would group together to plot the course of the changes and make them available to people.
Dark Age of Camelot had some amazing fan sites. Vision of Sages for all your Trials of Atlantis needs was an enormous repository of information on how to do artifact encounters, where to find them, what you'd need etc.
Allakhazam had the entire beastiary of the game listed along with most of their drops.
All this info is still out there. People would not be in the dark - the information would be all but thrown at them once players mapped out the changes. On top of that, there are those of us who already KNOW when in the history of the game X class got buffed or Y class got nerfed or Z happened.
Finally, there is nothing wrong with going through the class cycle and letting each one have their time in the sun. I played Midgard almost exclusively for a long time. Did I hate our BG getting mowed down by a single Bainshee? Of course. Would I change it? No.
If you attempt to 'balance' things too much you get the current state of the game. Thousands of people don't play this any more simply because the game is the way it is. If we were able to make it the way it WAS and run through it again, we'd all come back. Simple as that.
Doing 8 hour ML raids only to miss steps and being unable to compete in RvR cuz Artifact mobs didnt spawn for 3 hours and someone would already be camping it etc..
Account credit for all of ToA(ML's, Artifact, drops), do it once on any char and you can buy it from BP merchants.
If it 3 months beween expansions F this S i'm out.
Without a refined UI and UX loop, there's little incentive for players to return.
'Current' DAoC rewards toxic playstyles.
An alterative server cannot fix the UI and UX issues. If users can't interact with the product in a rewarding and 'modern' way, there's little incentive for them to stay. The current server concept will be limited and ultimately filter back to Ywain. Until you resolve these core issues, you are only putting a Band-Aid on a deep wound.
DraenV says
DraenV also says
There is ZERO evidence that people would come back …. And most likely, when people found out what the game was Really like back in the nostalgia days, they would hate it as much as they did then.
What made DAoC great wasn’t just the game---it was the concatenation of people and the times and the game. People who were new to MMOs, people who had played lesser games, people who were excited to play the game …. People who didn’t have preconceptions, who were thrilled by all the great stuff the game offered---to people who had never played a serious MMO (maybe Diablo …..) When people discovered DAoC, it was so amazing by comparison, people accepted all the flaws and shortcomings and hardly noticed them.
Those days are over …
The players are more sophisticated. We have all seen, and tested, a dozen MMOs. We have played long enough and analyzed the games deeply enough that we know what we like and don’t like. We are impatient. We know what we like and what we want …. And it is different for each of us.
Back in the day we accepted whatever DAoC offered. Now we demand DAoC offer us what we desire.
When people replay what they recall as being such awesome periods of the game, they will find how much of the experience was what each of us brought, and not what the game brought.
We were happy playing with simpler toys then. Now we want more sophisticated toys. We cannot go back to playing with Legos.
And when we see how bad certain aspects of the game really were back in the day …..
When I started playing it was the old character models, and a plus-one bit of gear was amazing, drops were hideous but all anybody had (85% green armor was considered decent ) ....., and most classes couldn’t kill three yellow mobs in a row without sitting down and resting for four minutes to rejuvenate.
Back in the day, everyone Needed to PvE a lot just to get to 50. Nowadays most people want as little PvE as possible.
People were also a lot more willing to form casual XP groups---which was good, because it took Forever to gain levels. Camaraderie was much higher---people were much more forgiving of others’ shortcomings, and no one ever said you needed a certain level of gear to join a group.
All that has changed, obviously. Nowadays people don’t have patience for the players with less skill, less knowledge, or even bad templates. People have played so many games for so long, they simply do not want to revisit the days when no one was very good because everyone was new.
Lots of people wouldn't want horribly broken or unbalanced classes for three to six months, waiting for the nerfs and adjustments.
And this: Yes and ToA saw the largest single population drop of DAoC history. A huge number of people who wanted to RvR suddenly had to do long, large, intricate PvE raids, which often couldn’t be done in a single weekend (we all recall going linkdead at some crucial moment and not ever catching up with the raid.) Once the raids were over, everything had to be leveled, often by killing specific mobs ….. people hated it.
Six months of original ToA would likely have the same impact as the original---it would all but fatally cripple the game.
Lots of people don't find constant rebuilding templates, relearning abilities and remaking builds to be enjoyable. Lots of people disagree with the statement, A Lot so of players want to learn to play a specific toon and constantly improve it, not respec it and re-equip it endlessly.
DraenV might like the idea …. But one player does not a sever make.
The issue here is whether there are actually Any players who would live with, enjoy, and actually subscribe to this new server.
I don’t care what Everquest or WoW players have done, or what their experiences supposedly “prove.” Rather obviously, neither of those games is DAoC, and neither of those games is a three-way RVR-focused game. DAoC is, for good or ill. There is no actual evidence that time-locked progression servers are “The Answer” for whatever ails DAoC.
Maybe what ails DAoC is that it is a 20-year-old game which has been managed and mismanaged by a few different teams of people, all of whom were trying to make real-time decisions about both what the players said they wanted (and the players are often ignorant about the unintended consequences of their ideas) and what the game designers saw in their “visions.” The game and every expansion was rushed to market full of bugs, and a lot of the patches on patches on patches have led to spaghetti code that no one can unravel---again, unintended consequences. Change one small thing and some seemingly unrelated thing stops working.
Add in the UI which is designed for 480x640 screens, add in the jaded player base …..
Currently DAoC is only enjoyable for an ever-shrinking subset of players, and it has to compete for new players with a number of actually new and modern games. Even the best suggestions---like the TLP server---is a blind hope to re-attract a fraction of the players who have moved on---to other games or past gaming altogether. The idea of rejuvenating DAoC, giving it enough appeal to actually attract new players …. does not exist.
The game is going to dwindle to nothing. Sorry.
Another thing---it appears that Broadsword’s budget allows for not quite enough staff to keep the current game running, and not too smoothly. How many people would have to subscribe to pay for the staff needed to implement all the old code? Does “the old code” even exist as such? Is there really a CD marked “DAoC at Patch 1.65” somewhere? Is it really possible for BS to strip out the corrections, the rebalancing, bug fixes, hot fixes, emergency nerfs ….. ?
How many people would be needed just to test the new version? And if the new version went live on a new server (who is paying for all this again?) how many problems would show up if indeed, a huge number of players did return? And how many of them would get fed up when they repeatedly complained about bugs which never got fixed (not to mention nerfs and hot fixes they forget were added, which they expect to see from the start, and the lack of which they would complain about endlessly?)
And until all those players actually subscribed …. How would BS pay for all this?
This was a long, coherent, and reasonably interesting thread---until I got here. I cannot help but call out some of the unquestioned assumptions though …. The main one being, that if Broadsword gave DraenV what s/he wanted, everyone else would like it so much they would pay for it.
Interesting reading, though.
A Progression server will kill off Ywain which has been paying the bills since yanno the super cluster...
https://divoxutils.com/users/user_2ZTPHy8tjVF9LWMgujSZfCY9Mos/characters
I see a lot of (unused) potential for realm pride in solo RvR. I say this because this is the playstyle I am interested in, and because relatively minor design changes can have a huge impact on solo action. Unfortunately, not many people (developers or players) understand how to design conflict, or why conflict is important. It is just assumed that conflict is always there because we are from different realms, or that players are the source of realm pride. There has to be something to take pride *in*. PvE objectives in RvR territory are not enough.
Well said (if a little chaotic). I think you made some good points. I just wish Broadsword would engage in these discussions (generally) so we could come to *some* conclusions. Not that we will ever achieve a general consensus about the new server, but I will never understand Broadsword's desire for secrecy.
back in the beginning the only way you could have "realm hopped" on the same server was to have multiple computers---and back then the internet bandwith from your "house" wasn.t the greatest---
once the servers were merged things started going south---population decreased and peeps started the i pay for
all three realm bla bla bla..... no more 4am relic raids and phone calls to defend....
You didn't need another computer to realm hop, just another account. I used to play with people who had a dedicated Hib, Alb, and Mid account strictly for this purpose. Mythic never prevented players from doing this. However, they did (and still do iirc) action players who were logged in multiple accounts on different realms at the same time. This is where multiple computers comes into play. The point is, "realm pride" was bypassed for simply another $15 (or $30) per month.
Betting on current non paying/playing customers to "come back", who also have another 2-3 free options; to pay the bills just doesn't make alot of sense. Especially for a 20 year old game.
I've been playing with some recently returning players from the "other server" and most of them haven't bothered to stick around. Population is so bad they're not even really even logging in much.
GL
https://divoxutils.com/users/user_2ZTPHy8tjVF9LWMgujSZfCY9Mos/characters
I would prefer a bolder and more ambitious solution, but given Broadsword track record it is unlikly that they will get things right in the first try, so it would make sense to ease into it.
https://forum.darkageofcamelot.com/discussion/3358/what-do-you-want-on-the-new-server-that-is-coming#latest
I would love to see as many people as possible voice their opinion in there, feel free to voice yours.
For me it was the change some of the Master Abilities had on the game, the effects some of the Artfact effects/uses had on the game, the stat bonuses, the ToA stats and weapons debuffing their own damage type. Getting hold of them was not a big problem but the way they changed the game wasn't something that I liked.
People want SI, people want Old Frontiers (at least, the majority of people playing on the servers that shall not be named do) - when it starts to deviate from that though, people lose interest.
I think TOA is ok, I really do, but it has to be incorporated in such a way, where TOA stats just don't exist.. artifacts can still exist, the /uses, the procs but not the TOA stats. The TOA stats just screw the game and balance because some abilities/styles simply scale far too greatly with modifiers and you find yourself playing whack-a-mole trying to balance it all.
Release Si/TOA and call it... Shrouded Atlantis *twilight zone music*... seriously though.. do it.