Utopia blog 7th October

[clarey]

Have any of you really paused to think about what you guys are saying? :p

If - and if - you play for friends and with friends, the game being down doesn't mean you stop being friends. IM still works, IRC isn't going down, neither is MSN or ICQ or whatever newfangled messenger program you use to contact each other.

You may lose some players - those in your kingdom that have not communicated with you a single bit. Hey, if they cared enough about the game, they'll venture here, learn abit more and hopefully come back a better player rather than riding on the kingdom's coattails. Conversely, if they don't bother... then they were going to leave sooner or later.

When the game comes up - you can still get your friends to come back. Right now, the focus is on improving the code. I've had the opportunity to log in and play since Alpha and although the layout at the moment looks very visually unappealing, it was tons more unattractive at the start.

Thanks to Sean and Brian for taking the bug reports and layout design ideas on board. Yeah the expectations on you guys are heavy no doubt but please please please do your best in rolling out the code asap. OMAC hasn't done the best in pleasing the community, and it is unsurprising that the player confidence is shaky and as a result, the forums have really started to go downhill.

[VT2]

People only join the whining when they're at war.
If they're not at war, it really doesn't matter whether or not the game's up - I'll still be talking to my buddies or MSN.

[Yuri]

That's capitalism folks. OMAC buys out a good game only to take the name and dumps the old community that's not on board with whatever crappy game they try to draw us to.

WE AREN'T GOING TO PLAY UTOPIA KINGDOMS

[Pillz]

I always knew Clarey was stupid but wow, she took the cake this time.

If - and if - you play for friends and with friends, the game being down doesn't mean you stop being friends. IM still works, IRC isn't going down, neither is MSN or ICQ or whatever newfangled messenger program you use to contact each other.

You may lose some players - those in your kingdom that have not communicated with you a single bit. Hey, if they cared enough about the game, they'll venture here, learn abit more and hopefully come back a better player rather than riding on the kingdom's coattails. Conversely, if they don't bother... then they were going to leave sooner or later.

I hope you understand that the vast majority of players (we have what, 13k remaining?) are not extremely dedicated to this game or the community. They play it casually, for fun, and for the little interactions they make on MSN/AIM and in the ingame forums. Most of these players are not going to stick around when the game is offline for 2 or 3 weeks. They will leave, because they have no STRONG connection keeping them around while the game is offline.

You think that such players are no great loss - they obviously don't care a lot, and aren't very social. While I agree with you that we would be better off without that kind of player in the game at all, the fact remains that they are very much a neccessary thing. If even half of the casual players left the game, we would likely drop below 10,000 players. The game gets less and less enjoyable as time goes on. With such a massive drop in the ranks of the lower kingdoms, those remaining will have a hard time staying interested and will probably not stay for more then 1 or 2 ages.

On top of that, a substainsial amount of players from the mid & higher tier kingdoms will take this as an excuse to leave. You know as well as I do Clarey that the games IRC-active & mid-high tier player base loses a LOT of people each age - just imagine if they were all given 2-3 weeks off of the game now, how many might just decide at the end of that period that its time to retire?

With under 10,000 players we're limited to 400 kingdoms - maybe 450 because not all of them will be full kingdoms. Can you imagine playing with only 450 kingdoms? A 30% drop from the current age? While mid/top kingdoms will suffer a loss of players, their numbers will remain roughly what they are now. But ghettos? Almost all of those lost players will be from ghetto kingdoms. It will not be any fun for those kingdoms to play with such a small number left.

Nope. Sorry Clarey. You're very wrong.

Downtime = Exodus of players
Exodus = Stagnation
Stagnation = Disinterest
Disinterest = Mass retirements (but not enough to be an exodus)

OH BUT WAIT!!! ZOMG!!2!!11!1!one!11

What if everyone is right about OMAC being completely unable to transfer kingdoms together to the new server! I mean, it is very likely we are right, after all. Many of us predicted the downtime would lead to a change in the code base, and we also predicted the "downtime" (DHaran and I both said it, at least). It is almost garunteed they will be unable to transfer kingdoms properly to the new server.

I know for a fact that the people in mid & top kingdoms play for the people they are with, and you and I both know that while the majority will stick around through the downtime, if we come back to a reshuffle, we will leave. Almost all of us will leave.

Unless OMAC keep it to under 5 days of downtime and only 2 days of freeze time, and magically happen to have a properly working code base (yeah right), AND manged to transfer people correctly - the game is DEAD.


btw thats assuming they bring it back up at all =) Nationstates 2, anyone?

Oh and one more thing - by dead I dont mean next age. I mean by the end of next age. it will have lose so many players by then (failed kingdom transfer, stagnation, bug-ridden code) that OMAC will see no reason to keep it open any longer.

[Criticalmaster]

I worked long time to make a decent kd.this will totally screw it up.how will you tell everyone in the kd that its time to go back to the kd???that sounds like a bad acid trip.you already lost 1,000,s of players due to downtime and like they said above.this will make you lose twice as many more and destroy utopia.and hurt most kds no matter how many cheaters they have.and what screwed up the world days ago with the downtime was you guys adding that stupid Are you human to the site.you cant say it was hackers,only hackers are you guys adding stuff making it go down.

[Pillz]

yay for a forum multie.

[Dolgil]

Looking through the forums, I can find several post of "take the game down and fix it. Tell me when it's fixed and I'll come back" type. I highly doubt a 2 week hiatus will kill Utopia given all the past problems of even starting an age.

We are addicted. Once withdrawal hits, we will be back.

[Pillz]

Tell that to the 18,000 people who have left in the last 10 ages.

[Yuri]

Downtime = Exodus of players
Exodus = Stagnation
Stagnation = Disinterest
Disinterest = Mass retirements

Mass retirements = The path to the dark side?

[Magmalava]

Dead, dead, dead.
Everyone's leaving. We're not talking about new players, or 'casual' gamers, here - we're talking about people who've been here for at least five years.

No it isn't. Still plenty of folks staying. And it's no loss either there will be new people who shall be here for a longer period.

[clarey]

Only time will tell, but people are predictable to some extent. Just look at the number of HaLL oldschool players that came back this age.

If they truly want to return, they will. It's a problem you can't really hope to solve, so why do you care?

[Magmalava]

Mass retirements = The path to the dark side?

Indeed, if those people are that pessimistic then I hope they really leave. Fortunately there are plenty of people still optimistic, among which those working constructively with OMAC.

[Magmalava]

leave VT2 alone... he speaks the truth...

Does VT2 give you a bone if you sit up straight?

He knows nothing and does nothing.

[johnnyk]

Does VT2 give you a bone if you sit up straight?

He knows nothing and does nothing.

Hallelujah.
Well, he does something, he trolls and barks. I've asked Lydias to ban his ass for mass trolling but her extreme liberal views encourage anarchy on these boards, which ain't really good for none of the people that actually matter.

Oh well, I just recommend people ignore him.

[FooFighters]

Why won't OMAC react to the players i mean, get one of yall to atleast be open to our ideas.

It seems to me my kingdom isn't aware that wol will be taken down for several weeks or more. I will have to tell them and i have very dedicated players to the kingdom and to real life and being friends together. How can i possibly tell them we might not see eachother again, im sorry thats just plain stupid, i will assemble all the email adresses and i will be around for the new age as some others will be... but.. when the new code doesn't contain my total kingdom it will totally destroy my whole kingdom...

REACT TO US.