dol servers and dol community

[Sadocan]

Hello @ all,

this is just a private request to all shard admins and the offizial dol team:

I'm now with dol as long as dol was playable and I noticed so many shards opening and closing and doing their own stuff spliting the current community into 2-3 "bigger" shards or frighten live- and ex-players to play on shards because of so many bugs and non working things. I realy understand that there're reasons why ppl host their own servers, realising their own visions but am I right that I'm the only one who's thinking that one supported shard with one development AND well selected features, like those the ppl with dol or the current players are interested in, will be more successfull and will fill the frontier like it was years ago?
In my optinion DAoC isn't a PvE game anymore (just play war/wow if you wanna do pve) thats why i never would add pve features to a DAoC Freeshard. PvE is just needed for the endgame daoc was made for. Just concentrate on the real EndGame: RvR. Giving players a good and equal Startupequipment without wasting their time doing PvE or farm BP while killing mobs will lead them to the finals and give them the possibility to do why they're playing a freeshard.

What I'd like to say:
Why play against each other, taking/attract players from an other server to his own, if we can manage one server, giving ppl what they want (maybe do what mythic can't/won't do: e.g. a real classic/origins server (-> VN Boards)). The main reason why no live-players or ex-player won't play shards is that there're so many bugs or a server isn't live-like as they know/knew DAoC. The other reason is that they won't spend time in playing on a shard who can be offline any day without a reason.

I know dol already tryed to set up a "live-like" server.. but why should someone play shard if they still can play on live? It's not because if the money!

I mean, no one benefits from many equal servers! It's just splitting the payers and the community..
Take a look at the daocportal: ~80 on Eden, ~450+ on Uth, ~150 on Yggdrasil, etc etc etc. Just imagine all these and hopefully new player will start playing together on one server!

In my opinion dol isn't a project anymore. It's simply the core ppl take to do start their own projects.

I'd like to know what you think about this!

With kind regards,
Sadocan

PS:
Just take the mistake you found

[Kakuri]

giving ppl what they want

That pretty much sums it up right there. Everyone wants something different. And yet so many people think they know what "everyone" wants. If anyone had figured it out, then there would be a bunch of servers listed in daoc portal with 0 players and all the players would be on the one that got it right. I guess there is no "one" right way.

[sooid]

The idea itself is good and we've already had this before somewhere in here. I think the whole thing is simply not viable due to several reasons, among them being rulesets and the admins themselves. Most of them are probably too proud of their project to merge or change it or don't want to lose the ability to do whatever they want.

Take Uthgard and Yggdrasil for example. They're actually pretty similar but while you would most probably not want your server to have Uthgard's leveling speed and rvr, they surely wouldn't want to apply I50, old frontiers and old realm abilities. Uthgard's admins are probably absolutely content with the current status of their server anyway, they could easily attract more players but wouldn't do so considering the fact that they seem to have 500+ players during their prime time.
Let's not even talk about Eden or Lifeflights since those servers have got a complete different ruleset and a merger would therefore be impossible unless you'd drastically change your own server.

But what I'd suggest in your case is to speak with the admins of Forged Worlds, Mortelune and Kingdoms Chronicles because these servers are clearly taking away players from each other for no apparent reason. Think Forged Worlds and Kingdoms Chronicles are pretty much classic-like as well, don't know about Mortelune though.

[Graveen]

In my optinion DAoC isn't a PvE game anymore (just play war/wow if you wanna do pve) thats why i never would add pve features to a DAoC Freeshard. PvE is just needed for the endgame daoc was made for. Just concentrate on the real EndGame: RvR. Giving players a good and equal Startupequipment without wasting their time doing PvE or farm BP while killing mobs will lead them to the finals and give them the possibility to do why they're playing a freeshard.

This is the first point i disagree. DAoC is RvR targetted, but the PvE is a part of the game.

The main reason why no live-players or ex-player won't play shards is that there're so many bugs or a server isn't live-like as they know/knew DAoC. The other reason is that they won't spend time in playing on a shard who can be offline any day without a reason.

This is a debate, but i see more reasons: events, gamechanges, community, etc....

In my opinion dol isn't a project anymore. It's simply the core ppl take to do start their own projects.

The DoL team is thanking you a lot for this comment. I don't really know how i should take it.

[Blues]

The one thing you`re right with is that there is indeed too much competition between the different shards and ppl involved in them. A Lot of admins behave like their server is the best and everything else just bs, also giving this feeling to their players. You are right, it would be great if more people would share their works and help each other. But helping should be encouraged, not forced.

Having different shards is not only good but necessary imho, this gives people the chance to develope new things, go new ways that wouldnt be possible on one big shard, developing a shard should be fun and that requires the freedom to do whatever you want to do.

DoL can be the source that you grab to do your own thing or it can be the project and you can become part of it, that is everyones private choice.

[Graveen]

I have a last comment about this: generally, the life of a freeshard is highly related to the motivation of the team.

This is a natural selection, and it is really visible for us. This requires work, motivation, and above all, overtime.

[Sadocan]

It's hard to motivate myself to go on spending time to my project if I know the players will jump to the next server just because it has 10x RP or just because it's a new server..

[Blues]

Well than you do have a problem, players do jump from server to server without thinking, following the mass or the most easy way.
I think if you really want to become a happy shard admin you have to do it for the sake of doing it, for yourself, not for the players, they will leave sooner or later (except for uthgard). But blame the players if they leave you, not the other shard guys.
It can't be a solution to remove other shards just to keep player count on one shard up.

[Dinberg]

Truth be told, I didn't join dolserver with the intention at all of even emulating DAoC - I used it to make my own game using the libraries of packets to the daoc client.

There is no secret formula, people play what they want to play - even that changes with time. One day I might feel like RvR, yet the next a bit of PvP takes my fancy. The more popular strategies by definition get the most players, but people are interested in different things!

[Aredhel]

One day I might feel like RvR, yet the next a bit of PvP takes my fancy.

Well at least that narrows it down a bit

[Dinberg]

Nah I'll be honest, I didnt want to admit I also like to PvE

[LifeFlight]

It would be a shame and utter mistake to eliminate the diversity that shards offer. Each one is different and each attracts different people.

This just sounds like a horrible idea through and through.

I agree that there should be more cross-server cooperation, but this is stifled but the few bad applies that decided to host a server. Having my personal connection DDOSed for 4 days straight was an incredibly jading experience, not to mention the various times when my server was DDOSed. But i'm trying to be more helpful now.

It's wrong to think of servers as "stealing" population. If someone is better than it will survive, I like the survival of the fittest analogy. If my server ever find it's self struggling to maintain a pop of 10+ I'll know it's time to either move on, or make some serious changes.

"It's hard to motivate myself to go on spending time to my project if I know the players will jump to the next server just because it has 10x RP or just because it's a new server.."

If your motivation is player population, you probably shouldn't do it. My motivation comes from a fundamental desire to code, script, and manage my websites; I've always loved doing these types of things and DOL enables me to bring them all together with one objective.

[BackTrack]

It's wrong to think of servers as "stealing" population. If someone is better than it will survive, I like the survival of the fittest analogy. If my server ever find it's self struggling to maintain a pop of 10+ I'll know it's time to either move on, or make some serious changes.

:O I can't agree more with that statement seeing some servers pointing the finger and spamming others for "Stealing" population.

[sooid]

:O I can't agree more with that statement seeing some servers pointing the finger and spamming others for "Stealing" population.

Well call it "taking away population" instead since that's actually the case. I mean, there's always gonna be one big server per servertype and currently that's Eden for RvR, Uthgard for PvE and Lifeflight's for PvP, which are a lot different from each other.

Of course there must be variety but where's the point in running multiple servers with similar ruleset and features? Just look at the servers that are listed, you'll see what I mean. Or look at Sadocan's Yggdrasil. Just died due to several reasons, among them being the relaunch of Eden. Yet someone else has recently announced a server which is pretty much like Yggdrasil except for the PvE component.

Same goes for five (!) more servers listed as I write this. I mean where's the point in running a PvE(-only) server when you could as well just merge it with a RvR or PvP server? Or a server with a certain ruleset in general when there's already a very similar one? So as I said before, I think most of the admins of smaller projects are either too proud of their achievement or, and that's the case imho, just unable to communicate in order to come to a compromise or unaware of the whole situtation.

Honestly, if I was to lead this project (not that I wanted to ofc), I'd coordinate the servers and I'd try to deal between the different parties running them. It can't be that hard to come to compromises that all people involved agree with. No offense to Graveen or any former Project Admin ofc, still doing a great job.

[LifeFlight]

A lot of the small server, as I understand it, are run basically for personal use with the chance of others logging on.

I think the idea of combining servers doesn't respect the base premise that each Admin has a distinct idea of what they want their server to be. Personally, I would never be able to work under, or along side another Admin. I'm way to stubborn when it comes to what I believe too be good for a server.

My advice to someone feeling their motivation undermined by the nature of shard-survival-of-the-fittest is to talk to an Admin of a server that they feel best fits what they want to work on. Sure it may not be your own personal project, but if you really just want to contribute and flex your coding or databasing skills it will work fine.