The Mana World Forums

Quality and quantity of content updates has gone up a lot in the past years, so that's definitely not to blame (Although it's about time the Thermin tileset gets finished).

LOL@Ali-G...Dude chill. This game is not in that big of a mess as you make it out to be. You tend to make mountains out of molehills. I highly doubt EVERY map has issues. Every graphic doesn't need work. There might be some typo's in scripts but if they work then it can't be that bad. Have you gone mad?!? Turn the game off for 2 years? There wouldn't be ANY players left by the time we turned it back on.

Over all I think that there's been a steady increase and loss of players. I still think there is a bigger playerbase then when I first came to the game years ago. We really shouldn't worry about it thou. I mean this is still very much a running Alpha/Beta project. I don't think we should worry about marketing for quite some time. (I'll have the Thermin tiles as done as soon as I can Crush.)

Crush wrote: Product success = Product quality * Product marketing

I was going to keep out of this. I was going to just not log in and just leave it alone, but you have left me no choice. (yes crush managed to troll me, again!!!)
Crush, you are wrong. Product success, long term, HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MARKETING. Now if you are talking a service, like cable or apple then you are still wrong, that is all marketing, your product can be crap. Trust me, I am in marketing.

Take the most best selling products ever, windows. One of the worst operating systems ever created and add on the fact they had some of the worst marketing ever, and it sold like pot at grateful dead concert.

The reason that the number have continuously drop on this server is simple. The lack of consistency. The gm's are a moody as hell. The admins some times go on benders and lose their minds. The trolls start pounding their shield and some idiot decides that "fill the blank behavior" is now illegal, because "it was a good idea".

You offer them a game, only to radically shift the playing rules. You still can not be a mage from day one, you can not be a tank any more, which means everyone is an archer. Compared to 2 years ago, when you could only be a tank. But all that can be swept under the carpet, because it is in "alpha". Which is a good excuse.

The only service and product you are offering here is a online 2d chat room with random death. For the longest time, I never sat in town, I never talked to people in town, I thought they where mostly crazy, then it became clear, after you have been shafted by enough updates and you have seen what there is to see, you sit in town, because if you do not, it is just a chat room with random death, not a 2d chat room with random death.

Your numbers will continue to drop. Your development team has, over the last 5 years, managed to alienate almost everyone that has ever played this game. I mean it really does seem that you guys could write a book called "How to lose friends and alienate people in 10 easy steps." The level of conducted from the admins, the developers, and the gm's will only cause the numbers to continue to drop. The re-balancing of the alpha game and the dramatic changes will also continue to reduce the numbers. You also have the "new server" which has never come lurking around in everyone minds, why get attached to this server when the new server is around the corner? They will just go off and play Skyrim until you get that project done.


At this point, playing this game is like dating a woman that has 7 kids from 6 different men, there might be a little baggage. Sure it is free, but the emotional and mental fees and charges start to make the total price of the game way to expensive for most of us. I know at least 20 people that have completely stopped playing in the last 6 months. Why? Because the emotional total from dealing with the people that back this game was just too much to take.

Rain

HOLY CRAP!!! DW, long time no see....

DarkWater wrote: I was going to keep out of this.

me thinks you failed on this one...

DarkWater wrote: I was going to just not log in and just leave it alone, but you have left me no choice. (yes crush managed to troll me, again!!!)
Crush, you are wrong. Product success, long term, HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MARKETING. Now if you are talking a service, like cable or apple then you are still wrong, that is all marketing, your product can be crap. Trust me, I am in marketing.

These are called monopolies.....I'm just saying....

DarkWater wrote: Take the most best selling products ever, windows. One of the worst operating systems ever created and add on the fact they had some of the worst marketing ever, and it sold like pot at grateful dead concert.

Well, windows WAS a monopoly....

DarkWater wrote: The reason that the number have continuously drop on this server is simple. The lack of consistency. The gm's are a moody as hell. The admins some times go on benders and lose their minds. The trolls start pounding their shield and some idiot decides that "fill the blank behavior" is now illegal, because "it was a good idea".

You offer them a game, only to radically shift the playing rules. You still can not be a mage from day one, you can not be a tank any more, which means everyone is an archer. Compared to 2 years ago, when you could only be a tank. But all that can be swept under the carpet, because it is in "alpha". Which is a good excuse.

Preach on sister!

DarkWater wrote: The only service and product you are offering here is a online 2d chat room with random death. For the longest time, I never sat in town, I never talked to people in town, I thought they where mostly crazy, then it became clear, after you have been shafted by enough updates and you have seen what there is to see, you sit in town, because if you do not, it is just a chat room with random death, not a 2d chat room with random death.

Your numbers will continue to drop. Your development team has, over the last 5 years, managed to alienate almost everyone that has ever played this game. I mean it really does seem that you guys could write a book called "How to lose friends and alienate people in 10 easy steps." The level of conducted from the admins, the developers, and the gm's will only cause the numbers to continue to drop. The re-balancing of the alpha game and the dramatic changes will also continue to reduce the numbers. You also have the "new server" which has never come lurking around in everyone minds, why get attached to this server when the new server is around the corner? They will just go off and play Skyrim until you get that project done.

Right on!

DarkWater wrote: At this point, playing this game is like dating a woman that has 7 kids from 6 different men, there might be a little baggage. Sure it is free, but the emotional and mental fees and charges start to make the total price of the game way to expensive for most of us. I know at least 20 people that have completely stopped playing in the last 6 months. Why? Because the emotional total from dealing with the people that back this game was just too much to take.

Rain

ak, now I'll say that at the end of the day, its just a game. That said, I know it can be a frustrating game. The free nature has led to less strict oversight thtn would be found in a "professionally managed" game. Not sure I'd change that though....Just a few of the rough edges need to be dealt with.

Hope to see you in game again...

Dude

Funny, I was thinking Apple - not a monopoly, when they had Steve Jobs, (aka good marketing), they did well, regardless of the quality of their products or customer relations (among other things: they try to hide it, but they have a habit of deleting any bug report/feature request that exposes a shortcoming in one of their products).

And Windows had good marketing, just to a different target. Remember that people are the commodity first, consumers second.

I saw cable and I quit reading.....Marketing will bring people, but it wont keep them....only quaility will do that.

Dude wrote:only quaility will do that.

+1 FOR CONSISTENCY

hehe...

Ali-G wrote:

Dude wrote:only quaility will do that.

+1 FOR CONSISTENCY

hehe...

Game can be in good quality but if there is no marketing support or just any advertising about it, it won't do anything, and it's the problems of every dead forks and server from tmw (exept ufb).

Frost wrote:Nope, and don't bother reading the Development Weekly Summary thread in these forums either. The botters should leave this server to drown in its own filth while they move to Auldsbel Server.

Actually botting of any form has never been allowed on the Auldsbel server. I highly doubt people are leaving from the main server to join the Auldsbel server. Currently there's no reason anyone should switch from the main server to Auldsbel. Any custom content we wrote over the last year is gone for the moment - it's basically a clone of the main server that's a git update or two behind. Really the only reason to go over is for a "quiet" place to hang out.

All the GMs know there's no botting and botters will be banned there too!

DarkWater wrote:
I was going to keep out of this. I was going to just not log in and just leave it alone, but you have left me no choice.
Rain

i didn't want to re post the whole thing so forgive me for just using the start.

It was a good read Rain, but you seem to always miss the obvious when going for the jugular, the number is down, now that people can't log in using 6 alts on auto follow that was due to happen. Tada, nothing more.

And I will allow my self to be trolled on the moody gm part (well i guess i should include the admins and developers since you put us all in the same box). I am guessing you have never been a gm on tmw, or a developer on tmw or pray tell an admin. You haven't walked in those shoes, so having done none of that you still lash out. CONSTANTLY! You have the right to write anything here, but in my honest opinion it means nothing until you have walked in those shoes. Your actions/words are not making the game better, negativity never does.

That's my 2 cents, i am outta here

So..." Is it me or the amount of players is going down lately?" well first of all a new player has to FIND us and then SEARCH our main page for the account creation button, a commercial game would have that on TOP, because they want your business, without that all else fails.

I mean the easiest part should be to find us, create an account, and install our game.

Secondly I appreciate hearing honest critique of the game and game rules.
Without quoting large blocks of text, there is much valid thought in this thread.

prsm wrote: i didn't want to re post the whole thing so forgive me for just using the start.

It was a good read Rain, but you seem to always miss the obvious when going for the jugular, the number is down, now that people can't log in using 6 alts on auto follow that was due to happen. Tada, nothing more.

Nnnnot really. When I, never multiboxing (but sometimes manaplus following) go to GY with mage (vulnerable and slow) or warrior (low leveling), and I see no one's there. I give up and die back to town (because a warr's exp would be just a joke, and mage... would exp pretty good, but it's still a waste of ore without second person bonus).
OK. I am back in town. No one's here besides 4144 and some other AFK people.
I will come back later, I think.
I came back. Hurray, more people. One guy is roleplaying defecating on everyone. One is stirring sh*t to fulfill sadomasochistic
tendencies, and not even in cute trolly mrwho way. Someone's making racist jokes in front of a black player.
Oh, GM is here too! Now everything will be fine!
Erm, not really. Poor GM only can warn and warn and warn. All trolls are sitting on his lap. It seems like his presence itself aggravates every troll. All he can do is @hugo away to search for less intelligent botters (because smart botters are able to monitor their bots). Every ban that isn't for the botter will bring a long discussion on forums, when GM has to explain himself to trolls, like they were his bosses. Trolling is not even challenging here. Even no lenient @kicks, or fatherly kind few hours long @bans...
And that's why we all will leave or become, good or evil, trolls. GMs will be trolls. Botters will be trolls. Newbs will be trolls. Kind helpful players will be trolls. PKers will be trolls. Devs will be trolls. Horny teenagers will be trolls. Grinders will be trolls. Businessmen will be trolls. 8-year-old girls will be trolls. Casual players will be trolls.
Or maybe it already happened?

o11c wrote:It's all the missing bots

Bots are mostly still here and do static botting instead of moving one. Number of real new players has diminished for some months now. My estimation comes from the number of help requests concerning the lower intermediate level quests.

Ali-G wrote:You want more players? Then take care of the consistency of the game for at leas 2 years. Developers only care about adding new things to the game... WAKE UP GUYS! This game is currently a complete mess! Every map has issues. Every graphics needs to be updated and cleaned up. Every script has a typo. But guess what, it seems nobody cares about that except me.

My thought (which of course will not be applied): Turn the game off for 2 years giving time to developers to review everything, update it from A to Z.

I'm not surprised that people are making other servers, independently from The Mana World. I'm not appreciated by all developers because, damn, I'm nearly the only one that thinks about consistency! I guess I'll follow my own way soon too. I'm constantly doing commits resolving some problems and what do I get for doing that? Answer: rejections of my work! I will need to talk to Wombat in person about that since it would be a shame to continue alone on my own direction.

EDIT: And according to me, the rebalance will never happen, people don't care about consistency enough.

Best regards,
Ali-G

In my opinion: fire all devs with overdimensioned ego even if they can do good job, and try to find some with the modesty and realism that an ambitious project requires.

salmondine wrote:I mean the easiest part should be to find us, create an account, and install our game.

Forumwarz does that in a very interesting way, by the way. Starting to play the game doesn't even require registration. There is a registration after the tutorial, but it is fluently integrated into the game itself.

(Note that the game - and even the tutorial - is NSFW) http://www.forumwarz.com/