users online:

[Pali]

I wonder how many of these other MUDs with much larger pbases have many of the traits that have always kept many of us here - strictly enforced RP, everyone involved in PK, death being a potentially devastating setback, races and classes that must be applied and RPed for, etc. MMOs don't include these features for a very good reason - they do not appeal to a lot of gamers, and if your goal is to have as many gamers as possible playing, having such is counterproductive.

So. What is FL's goal? Is it to have as many players as possible? Is it to maintain the rather unique atmosphere and features that keep FL special in the eyes of many of us? Is it something else? It's hard to suggest a course of action when you don't know which direction we're trying to move in.

[Mindflayer]

Well, let's look at Carrion Fields. It was the 'grandfather' to Abandoned Realms and Forsaken Lands. It routinely has about 40-60+ players on average during peak times still to this day. It also has enforced RP and PK with full looting.

[Imoutgoodbye]

To be honest, I have looked at Carrion Fields while I was at school and couldn't do anything serious (hey, everyone looks at another woman now and then, don't get jealous on me, FL!) and I must say, they have a LARGE combination of races/classes (half-elf Anti-Paladin is an option) and looking through a few classes there are multiple skills/spells (comparing, say, a dark knight to an anti paladin) and cleave still has a chance to outright one-hit kill, no matter the condition of the target (leaving some to chance and not all to player knowledge versus player knowledge or as some would say "skill"). Danger is a fascinating element to it.

They have also added/removed/rematched some skills/spells to different classes, sometimes outright revamping a few classes. This to me is a coder/presentation issue. We can present the mud however we want outside it, but what's inside is what counts in the end.

I'd have to put some points towards massive replayability and insanely unique combinations of skills/spells that make all classes appear incredibly versatile.

[inscribed]

I haven't had a 50 here in a while, but I like knowing this place is still around for me whenever I do get the itch. The imm's are doing a great job keeping this place together. I have no idea how to grow the player base back to its old size, but as others have pointed out, once Viri left, the place fell relatively stagnant (not to dismiss the new areas and Imm-driven RP plots). I don't know if we have anyone on staff now that focuses on coding... I honestly don't even know who the current Imm's were before they turned staff... but there have been some coding projects mentioned here before that would help attract new players. With the popularity of Minecraft, having designated places in the world for players to build and design and destroy would be a great addition. I also seem to remember Crypticant mentioning something way back when, along the lines of AI controlled equivalents to player characters to fight with and interact with, which would be great for times when there are only one or two people on. Celerity's idea of selectable skills was great as well.

[tassinvegeta]

Sounds like you want to say a bit more MF?

[Sandbox]

Well' date=' let's look at Carrion Fields. It was the 'grandfather' to Abandoned Realms and Forsaken Lands. It routinely has about 40-60+ players on average during peak times still to this day. It also has enforced RP and PK with full looting.[/quote']

what does it have that we dont?

[The-Nameless]

About double the classes and races. A larger and visible imm staff (not knocking ours , we just do not have a huge imm prescence.) And with that large pbase alot of the ruthless nature of level 50. Fl is the most hostile environment i have ever existed in. I have never played a game with an insinuated objective was to make your opposition want to delete. Fl cannot prosper when you have very little free flowing rp and such a huge bonus for

being a scary pbase wrecking monster. Full looting someone after a good fight is a perfect example. If it was a good, fun pk then dont you want to do it again? Dont you guys like close fights. Dont you enjoy having opposition to battle with.

You cant kill lex luthor. If you do then who the hell is superman?

[f0xx]

Sounds like you want to say a bit more MF?

Aye, your post seems unfinished.

One certain difference we had back in the day, from what I could remember, is that we always had a few visible immortals on.

[Volgathras]

Imm presence is an issue. Finding administrators is a tough job, because we look at a range of abilities. Contrary to popular belief, it's not easy; we direct a cabal, follow individual plot lines, work on test for coding/balancing/building, discuss changes and reworks, think up new material, and police the forum. It demands a lot of time and patience. Lately, it's the policing that has had the strongest negative effect on the administration.

Lower level imms are required by our rules to remain visible at all times while they're logged on, but as they gain rank their responsibilities change to where being wiz-invis is more conducive to performing our jobs properly. This includes watching PKs to make sure things work properly/fairly, catching cheaters, emergency coding/OLC, judging applicants (who react differently if they see us on the who list) and more.

We are around, but sometimes we can't go vis. I try when I have a moment to RP, and to allow people an opportunity to speak up if they have an issue or concern.

[electricsheep]

Horse-beating time.

How the heck do you expect people to find this server? Sheesh. This game is much more stable and deep than most others, but it simply doesn't exist outside of this community.

I've got the same problems you guys do on my servers regarding staff complaints, censorship complaints, and what-have you, but have no issue with getting players. You provide a free service, who wouldn't take it? Want to know why the servers you mentioned have players? Check their Alexa stats, or Google stalk their traffic stats. They exist, you do not.

1) Set up a simple but nice website. [FAIL]

2) Get people to the website through various methods. [FAIL]

3) Convert visitors from website to game. [FAIL]

4) Retain players in a community setting. [sUCCESS]

Am I losing my mind here, or is this blind common sense stuff?

I have earned my right to sit on this high horse, by the way. My live servers count at about 500ish live players at any moment and rising monthly. I am passed the point of being able to help beyond pointing at old threads that I wasted time posting and saying : "What is wrong with you. DO THIS!" There are step by step details and charts.

http://forum.theforsakenlands.org/showthread.php?t=28709

Why am I mad? I was going play play FL this summer with my cousin and staff, but we had to find something else instead.

You had your opportunities and you blew them. Please do not insinuate that we have not tried your methods and please do not rehash this old subject. Enjoy your server and any success you've had. I wish you the best of luck and am sorry you felt you had to find something else to do. -Elrozin

[f0xx]

I agree with sheep.

I miss the old site. I miss the old map. It was the single most cool thing on the site and the site had many visitors because of it. Now it's just a joke, and jibber's site probably has more visitors than the original site, and fairly so. It offers a lot of useful info.

[Mindflayer]

I agree with sheep.

Your stock with Aulian just sky-rocketed.

[Pali]

what [game features] does it have that we dont?

Bold added.

That's one of the important questions. Others include: what game features do we have that they don't? How have the operating histories of the muds differed? How does the behavior of pbase members differ, and how are disruptive elements in the pbase dealt with? How lucky is each pbase at having friends who have the interest and time to start playing, which helps keep numbers up over time as players leave? How many players are long-term players versus newer players rotating into a new game for each mud? It's entirely possible, given my limited information, that much as in our case a lot of the CF people still around have simply been there a long time and don't want to switch to a new game, and they just got luckier in terms of having more people able to keep going.

Upping the size of our pbase is not a question with a simple answer. I do not think any single action is going to suddenly see a major boost in our numbers (edit: if nothing else, even if traffic suddenly goes up from doing something like electricsheep suggests, many will leave soon because this game is not designed for the broad spectrum of the gaming community - it's designed for people looking for a fairly hardcore experience). I'm not trying to discourage anyone by saying this, but rather to encourage you to stick it out as we keep trying to come up with ideas - because the truth as I see it is that, even if it is going to happen, it will take a while. The only guaranteed thing is that if the people still here leave, the game truly will die, and we don't want that to happen.

[f0xx]

Upping the size of our pbase is not a question with a simple answer.

That's very true. I don't see how peope (like Kyz) come up and state a couple of minor things and say, "And this is why our mud is declining." The answer is much more complex than that.

[Pali]

That's very true. I don't see how peope (like Kyz) come up and state a couple of minor things and say' date=' "And this is why our mud is declining." The answer is much more complex than that.[/quote']

True, but that doesn't mean that he's right or wrong about it being a factor. While it may have been more politic for him to have inserted phrases like "this is one of several issues that I think are part of the problem" at points, and I think he was definitely wrong about the "if you don't like it, leave" mentality being promoted by the IMMs (by the pbase, on the other hand, is sometimes a different story), I don't think the responses he got from some were the most helpful either. Making posts that are simply personal attacks do absolutely nothing to help maintain a civil atmosphere for discussion.

[Grim_Reefer]

Heres my thoughts,

Played this game for a very long time and love it to death. In my early years everything was so magical. There was awesome RP and larger than life characters (Irpel Brpel, Cariousus, etc.) and it was amazing to me. I thoroughly enjoyed it to a ridiculous extent. The magic fades as you get older and the game just turns into a grind.

I'm going to flat out say that the RP side of this game is laughable at best and will be laughable until the whole cabal CTF game is fixed. Why do Warmaster and Savant ALWAYS have to be at war? Can there not be a profound truce that rocks the history books of FL? I feel like there are just certain mentalities that have been deadlocked in this game and it has become a very red vs. blue type atmosphere. A pk-mud with a flimsy mask of RP being worn on its face.

You should be able to get just as much enjoyment from the game being a pure RP character as you should being a pure PK character. "But Grim, you start an RP plot and have books written about you and have a custom title." I am aware of that, but that is only true if there is a pbase to RP with. I want the GAME to react to my RP. I want quests, adventures, and the world to come alive and react to my player.

All the secrets and mysteries of Aabahran have been revealed, so what does that leave us with? Oh, rolling power combos and pking with this knowledge. You want to retain players? Make some SERIOUS updates with a SERIOUS staff if you want SERIOUS players. I hate the whole "it takes time blah blah." It has been over a DECADE since I've started playing and I haven't seen FL 4.0. What was the time span between the release of 1.0 and 2.0? It seems like after Virigoth left, the game started to die.

I don't know if its laziness, lack of interest, lack of time, or what. This game needs a kick in the *** with a project manager who has a vision for the future, not just tweaking little crap here and there to make people be like, "ooo, I will try that class out now because it has minor changes!". If its a time or money issue, then move the hell aside and let someone take the wheel who is willing to drive this damn thing to the glory land.

[Imoutgoodbye]

Careful, Grim. Someone might think you're candy coating all that rhetoric.

[jibber]

There's no point in continuing to discuss this topic. More bans are likely to come. Let's just all agree to disagree.

[Iyorvin]

Some things to note when I returned, in no particular order.

1. I don't think I even had my mud client installed, so once I did that I had to find the IP/Port. After googling Forsaken Lands I come to a HORRIBLE website. I say horrible with all the best intentions, but it really is quite poor. The first thing I noticed was the lack of updates on the website in over a year, some thing that I have ALWAYS remembered has been an issue.

2. I rolled my character and quickly noticed there were no more than six players on, which only shrank during my initial play. At this point I try to think about what I would do if I were a new player, obviously the guild quest line would be the most logical start. That barely gets you to lvl 5? Lvl 8 or so if you do the 5 levels in the academy? Then what? Where are the leveling ares? My 150 moves don't really allow me to explore that well, and without group mates to learn leveling areas with a new player is lost. As a veteran of the game, I quickly have a stone golem tank with a superior double attacking pet, and the damage out put from those pets exceeds almost any three man group I could have gotten. I manage to get to level twenty five before I even interact with anyone. Through multiple plays with a few different characters I have seen the same thing over and over. It has gotten to a point I have noticed that if you do get a group, you are not interesting in RP'ing, you want to utilize this group to it's fullest and get the maximum amount of time out of it you can before some one has to leave. This has created the 'grind'.

3. The training changes and minor quest fix has taken away the grind and helped other classes reach 50 where they normally wouldn't of been able to. Great work.

4. Once you hit 50 the small player base has created a poor negative attitude in game. I hate to say this but I have received only whining and complaints from anyone I have pk'ed. The RP interaction has came only from the single Herald I have seen. It almost seems that every action I take I have players threatening me in game with immortal retribution. I may be exaggerating this slightly, but not by much. I won't leave this as a flame, but say that I think it is bred because of close knit OOC groups and a small and tight community. Some times in the heat of things I think they forget that players can be new and/or returning. The returning players like myself get the biggest turn off from this.

Lastly, it's great to have conversations about bringing back players, bringing in new ones, and the overall betterment of the game, but the players themselves have to be ready for this. Those powerhouse pk'ers need to perhaps change up their attitude, log in with the thought of 'who can interact with', not just 'is there any one I can PK?' I'm not very good at explaining myself, but I hope my points were clear enough.

[Mister E]

I think this is a perfectly good topic and an important one. I must say I am surprised Kyz got banned for what he said but I suppose there was more to it than met our eyes according to Elrozin. Maybe when the ban is over Kyz will explain why he was banned.

Anyway, I think there are valid points scattered all over these forums about why the pbase is so small. I agree with Foxx in that the game is not declining, is has already declined, all that is left are a dozen or two vets who play on and off in cycles.

Pali also asks a good question, where is the game going and what is it trying to achieve? Imms have stated in the past that FL is not meant to be a MMO with hundreds of players, and that may be so, though I think the game would be more fun if there were an average of 30-50 players on at any given time. Is this possible for FL? I think it might be...

FL is NOT newbie friendly, period. There is a massive learning curve and the most important part of the game (for a newbie) is terribly designed. From rolling a char to writing a desc to getting to lvl 30 is where the majority are lost. In fact I bet most new players are gone before they reach level 2. Or they get dragged around the world at warp speed by some vet who uses them to rank up and are then hopelessly lost onec that person logs out. Sure any vet can train and pinn in ~30 hours depending on race/class but for a new player that would be impossible. I was hopelessly lost as a newbie but luckily I had MUD experience beforehand so I was able to figure it out. I also had help from the pbase, which averaged 30 players or more online in those days and I joined post Virigoth days.

FL is not going to steal other mudders. People are loyal to their muds. It takes time to learn the nuances and the map layouts and the item locations etc... And luckily we now have more of the latter two things available for less experienced players. To grow FL we need to draw in gamers from other markets who we think would take well to the game, this is where the whole creation process needs a major revamp. It HAS to be so bloody simple and interesting right off the start that players will WANT to get to 50 as soon as possible. Grim said it best, it's a grind and we all know it, and yes all vets can do the grind and some don't dislike it, but what new player in their right mind will want to go through that when they can play a different game.

Immortal visibility and interaction. This is a HUGE factor in the game in my opinion. I have heard several staff past and present say that they have to spend time invisible to the mortal eye in order to catch cheaters and see if people are RPing for the sake of it and not to impress some Imm. Well even though this is true (to a certain extent) I have bad news, it is a self fulfilling prophecy. If there were always at least one visible Immortal then people would be RPing more and cheating less, is that a bad thing? Who cares if they are only RPing to impress and Imm, that is more RP than I will get otherwise. RP needs rewards, even though I also believe in the art of RP and the wonderful feeling you get from a nice session, it is not going to improve the game to cling to that ideal. People PK because the reward is instantaneous, whether it be a win, a loot, or just the rush of the battle. Fewer people get off on RP and like Grim said "FL RP is a mask" over a PK game so if you want more RP you have to start rewarding it. Imms should constantly be RPing with the mortals, taking over mobs, helping them to delve deeper into their characters. Imms can already grant a nice reward that gives exp and random prof increases and that needs to be used much more liberally, same with title changes, custom items etc... RP is unfortunately not self rewarding but it is contageous when guided and encouraged. Since PK is the major game goal of course people are going to squirrel away and train with triggers and then powerlevel when they can. Rp pre 50 is a colossal waste of time, not because it has to be, but because the game makes it so.

Everything in FL takes too long. This is not any kind of knock at the staff, just a fact. Once again the vets understand this as they have been around long enough to see the game progress, the problem is they get apathetic and blindly defend the game instead of agreeing with much needed changes. The reason I dropped Otiorin was because of this. For months I had been posting on the prayer forum trying to get help with my RP and a restring idea, I was also given the go ahead to rebuild elemental canyon. The problem I encountered was a total lack of support from the staff. I was grateful to get the nod and excited about the project but I could not do it on my own. My character was decked, almost unkillable, a Leader of Watcher, but I was bored out of my skull, which leads me to my last point. Obtaining EQ and becoming unkillable is way too much of a focus in this game, what suffers because of this is sportsmanship, a sense of us all in it together for a better world (FL), and RP.

[Twinblades713]

I only wanna voice my support for the direction this thread has taken. Good reading.

[Elrozin]

There's no point in continuing to discuss this topic. More bans are likely to come. Let's just all agree to disagree.

There will not be any bans coming unless warnings were previously issued for certain forum violations.

Everyone is welcome to discuss as much as they desire in a civil manner without breaking forum rules.

Please don't attempt to end the discussion by casting aspirations upon the future. Thank you.

[Kyzarius]

Please point out where I was asked to take it to prayer, I cant seem to find this warning anywhere in the thread.

[Tantangel]

This reminds me a lot like work. You have the upper management that people seem to think do absolutely nothing sometimes when in reality they're the driving force behind the rest of Management. You have middle Management that you see around from time to time, but not very often and seem to be doing nothing as well unless it suits them. Then you have the lower Management that is seen most and seems to do the most work but in reality everyone of their job duties play an important part in the total working functions.

Now I didn't read everything that was posted here, but the ones I did everyone reminded me of a different person I've worked with at my job. And I can see the reasoning behind the frustration of some of you, but really it seems anymore that these same people cry woe is me and want to be the victim of everything.

Here's the facts of things though. This game isn't perfect and it never will be. People will find bugs and probably exploit them and you just need to deal with it like myself and others have in the past. Then what happens? We get mad and then it gets fixed. Maybe not right away, but it does eventually. Another thing is that people believe they deserve interaction with Imms on a daily basis. Who says you're not? Perhaps you are but in a passive sense. They could be watching your every move as has been stated. I play how I'm going to play and as such I don't expect interaction of any kind. Perhaps I do get direct interaction that's just a bonus in some cases.

There's tons of other facts and I wont be able to think of them all so I'll stop with that. As to why our Pbase is so low in comparison to the others?

-Have you seen the reviews on the websites for voting?

They're not exactly all great. I've written like 3 or so and they were positive. Then you have like three negative ones for every single one. That wont bring in new players. And the fact that we can't write anymore reviews for the game will also hinder anyone from wanting to play the game.

-Have you seen how negative people are after one bad experience?

I'm not innocent of this at all, including RL. I feel like I've been wronged I want to go out of my way to do wrong back to the other person. I'm not perfect and no Imm is perfect even if I really do go around telling everyone I work with I'm God and going to live forever. I do that mostly just to mess with people and see what their reaction is like.

-Lack of updates

Our last race was Ferals that was implemented and the last class was what, Lich? Then Merchant was the last Cabal. This is more of an issue as stated before that it's hard to find someone dedicated and not overwhelmed by RL.

There's plenty of others and not a single one contributes directly but all in conjunction with one another. If people started promoting rather than being so negative and people from outside actually saw this, that might play a much better image on us than the one we're painting with off topic posts. And if the Imms deem people a Cancer to the community and they're removed from it, it's probably better left unknown as to why they were removed unless they tell you themselves. I've noticed that the FB community is more negative than this one. My suggestion to you would be to get a Livejournal account and rather than flame openly, do so in your own little journal so that it's not publicized to everyone to see. We have a Prayer Forum to complain on, and perhaps we should open up a subsection for flaming specifically and only allow people to post in their and it would have to be approved to actually be seen. And perhaps only done by not being logged in. Then everything can be vented with little to no outbursts on here. It wont solve the problem, but perhaps relieve it.

[inscribed]

I've noticed that the FB community is more negative than this one.

Yeah, I noticed that as well. The posts there are largely just banned posters venting about how unfair and mean everyone is, while the chat is mostly just players trash talking other players. I'd recommend removing official association with it, if possible. It definitely paints the game and the community here in a negative light.