TMW's goal

[wushin]

That's the problem of TMW: No constant development team and no product owner with a consistent vision

This has always been a problem of governance and organization though vs. ability to actually accomplish something. As we have more then enough capable people to create a MMORPG, that's proven by the numerous variations made.

It's also a large amount of not being able to sell enough people on your vision and keep it going. I've talked to a large amount of the people involved in the game and none of you are very good salespeople. The project poorly managed most assets, including developers, forks and admins. To often, it trolled away or belittled help.

The only reason this game is anything is because a set of the developers and contributors actively sought the players help.

Let's say it correctly, No one has ever sold all of TMW community on a unique vision or if they have, never fulfilled it.

Which coincidentally and completely by accident ended up making a game with a vision of it's own. TMW is a game, it just needs work.

Each generation of developers has their own idea and carries the project into a different direction.

I agree and I seek to make this easier. I'm not at all sure how this is a bad idea in Open Source.

[meway]

I strongly agree with you wushin and appreciate the fact that your the current content director for tmw

[veryape]

To be honest, after reading thru this thread a second time from start to finish. I think it is rather obvious that different people have different goals and most see their goal as the project vision.

We don't have a product owner, sure, not in the same way as commercial software does, no-one ordered this project. The owner is the community, if the community doesn't want it, it is worthless.

I agree that it would be nice if we had a lot more developers and the project was able to structure things into small teams that all work on their respective part, like 2-3 teams making content, one team working on server development etc etc.

I actually think all of that is possible if we get better at communicating. If people that play the game knows that "oh we only need a few bushes and two new mobs for this new cool quest to be finished" they are more prone to help developing.

Same goes for server functionality etc, everyone knows MM is borked, no one knows why and how they could possibly help.

As a community game firmly believe that the project is successful if it can deliver what the community want. Sometimes they might get stuck in a loop of thinking (more hats! rares are what we need...), then we might need a dev to step in and point at possible directions.

Sometimes it feels like the biggest problem is that we don't have a project leader, a quality analyst, testers but only have a angry mob and developers. We need to bridge that gap and be able to communicate both ways for this project to run smoothly. As of now the developers have to kind of guess what the community wants, the community has to guess what the developers are working on. This is suboptimal and gets both the devs and the community frustrated in the long run.

Like the current situation, what is the thing with highest priority for the players? to get party and mm to work.
What is the highest priority for the devs? I don't really know and the players don't have a freaking clue.

[Len]

I (and I'm certain many others) contributed to that end, was it all for nothing?

Do you really feel so?
IMO every contributor can be proud of himself/herself to have made many people happy playing a nice "old school" 2D MMORPG, TMW, regardless of whether it's SoM-like or not.

I dislike the game play on eAthena immensely, and had hoped the Manaserv would offer deeper more action oriented game-play. I also found that TMW’s content had way too many systemic problems; of which fixing would require a commitment from the TMW’s developers, whom seemed largely opposed to carrying out said changes. I then thought that if new mechanics were being developed on Manaserv, I would just make all new content for it (circumvent the problem), as it would be more practical than trying to fix tmw’s content (this was WOA). Now it seems such efforts were in vain, and it has soured me to the idea of working with the TMW community at large. The only good thing is that I'm much more proficient at pixel art and game design in general and I did have fun working with many of you.

[wushin]

And thats I'll I'm looking to do is help make developers even if they go there own way. If you make 100 JRPG developers you get 100+ JRPGs eventually one of them has to be good. (Looks at Minecraft)

Just remember to stop back and help people make things better if they are trying. No matter how futile it may seem to you, to them it's a whole new world of fun and learning.

[meway]

I always talk about TMW when I'm discussing my new projects lol. Idk how but it always ends up coming up.

[Hello=)]

That's why I decided to quit TMW development and start my own project. I have my goal, and nobody argues with me about where the project is going, nobody demanding creative influence, no drama. I can just develop what I feel like. And should I ever decide that I need help, I will form a company, hire people to do it for me exactly the way I want it to be done and start monetizing my game.

Year passed... I randomly stumbled on this thread and got curious if that plan has worked.

Error establishing a database connection

It seems it isn't.

[nice]

madcamel, i cant believe thats your words:
As long as we can be welcoming and attractive to the next generation of developers and artists, TMW will continue to evolve. If we start brickwalling and blocking them out, TMW will die.

if you only would be like that!

u need listen wushin imo, im proud of him.

u need open again, with it find direction, dont loose the old school, dont hive with the rest.
like on a dark road, the path evolves and u will get somewhere, listen to players more!

crush:
Each generation of developers has their own idea and carries the project into a different direction.
toborn for example was here because this here was open for all. any input was welcome alike. u liked the game and felt u can do something and surely you werent rejected, an attitude that honored a lot and many left when seeing this changed.
be open again and take player input for full, they actually know what all did in sense of fun. listen!

[Ablu]

We developed Manaserv in parallel which was supposed to have more action-oriented gameplay. I did quite a lot of work to make it more SoM-like and got quite far. I had targetless combat, area damage, pushback and stun working pretty well. But then I got a job and had no more time to maintain that branch. Other people took over development and developed Manaserv in an entirely different direction.

Please note that Manaserv is now supporting nearly the full set of features you listed there. pushback might be a bit tricky though...

Generally we pushed Manaserv (we tend to say The Mana Server these days) to support a more action combat game engine and built http://www.sourceoftales.org/ on top of that.

Now development slowed down a bit, but I am still experimenting with server side stuff and plan to work on the client a bit more again after I finished this years exams.

I dislike the game play on eAthena immensely, and had hoped the Manaserv would offer deeper more action oriented game-play.

Feel free to try out Source of Tales. I am not saying that we in any way have a nicely working combat system (atm we only have meele and it is kind of buggy). But I guess you can understand the direction we went there. (Easiest way to try out is with the android client at the moment: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/or ... les.client).

As I said: There still is lot to do, but we have a goal

This might sound a bit like an advertising post... Please do not take it as such, we are still a bit away from being able to start advertising.

Regards,
Ablu

[wushin]

TMW's main goal is to create an innovative, free, and open source MMORPG.

Primary Directives

1. Maintain TMW continuity
2. Improve TMW's content
3. Reinforce TMW's perpetuity
4. Encourage TMW community

The best way to make a MMORPG is to create something that makes MMORPGs.

That something created won't be entirely code. It will need a community. It will need help and feedback. It will need artists, writers, developers, administrators, game masters, etc.

Therefore, foster an environment that creates a community of individuals looking to complete tasks to achieve our goal.

Make TMW easier to change and the easier it is for individuals to make changes.

As TMW could have as many goals as TMW has users.

TMW is for people to develop themselves
TMW is mature now, in many ways. TMW has the learned experience of 10+ years of operations. TMW has a wide set of skills individuals can learn from contributing to Being a Game Master to Being a Guild Leader to Translation Work to Programming and much more.

TMW is dead, long live TMW!
As a project/game matures, old people leave and new people join. A MMO has a life cycle and a software cycle. A MMO has social and programmatic problems. Everyone is here on a voluntary basis, free to come and go as they please. This is all a natural part of personal and project growth.

TMW is IRC with hats
One of the best compliments of this game. Users only sit in IRC because they enjoy the discussion and/or the people. IRC and TMW are both places people can come back to and feel some what the same continuity among the content and community. As much as everything changes, everything stays pretty much the same.

TMW is the community we make it.
TMW has become an entity dependent on the community of TMW users. A community TMW wants to help develop.