I mean, this is decided. That's clear. But going forward, let's start with the example of someone who decides to play Aetolia or Lusternia. Those are still viable games, despite not being flagship. For now. But should a player use a large sum of retirement credits on one of those? Should they buy credits in any meaningful quantity? If I do either or both of those things (especially making additional purchases), why should I have any faith that the value of my "license" won't take another giant hit in a few years? What happens to the poor bastard who retired to Imperian from MKO*, and from Imperian to some other IRE? What should I be thinking when the trickle of retirees starts to become alarmingly river-like, knowing that that's a feature and not a bug.
What happens when Starmourn comes out and even Achaea has to fight for its place in the sun? Should you take a chance on Starmourn? Could even faithful old Achaea be relegated to "life support" someday if Starmourn proves to be wildly successful, or some new re-branded product comes out, and much of the company's top staff is shifted to work on -that- new project?
Over the years it's been discussed many times that IRE pretty much has to rely on whales as its bread and butter. Most "big" games draw people in differently. The attitude of their players is "this is fun, and I will keep paying a little bit as long as it is". Those games rely on a massive customer base. IRE games rely on whale-sized investments from customers who believe in your company (and in that specific game) enough to spend the kind of money people would faint over. Why should any whale, or potential whale have that kind of faith in IRE going forward? I can't imagine a good answer to that question because I don't think there is one.
What does make sense is that IRE thinks its players, knowing all of this, will continue to buy in regardless. I mean, I guess maybe they're right, because they're betting on it.
*(MKO was "100%" retirement, but even at 100% you still generally take some kind of hit - which I think would have been absolutely fine if some weren't ending up in the boat of needing to retire yet again)
Before anyone goes and starts trading in promo items. Please wait. Let me see if it is feasible to add that to retirement value for anything done after the 15th. I cannot promise until I look at the code a bit closer, but I will get back to you.
Most "big" games draw people in differently. The attitude of their players is "this is fun, and I will keep paying a little bit as long as it is".
Actually no, they don't. Most big games rely on an even smaller portion of players buying things in the game than we do. We have a pretty high rate of purchases by players compared to big games. Much more spread out among the game population. The only real exceptions are the few games that require a mandatory subscription to play, few of which are popular, for obvious reasons. The percentage of people that buy virtual goods in mainstream games tends to be in the 1-7% range.
Interestingly though, the world's biggest game right now - Fortnite - has a huge percent of people that have bought at least one thing - over 60% - and for a large percentage of players, that's the first game they've ever bought anything in. It's a massive outlier, and probably really frustrating to its competitors.
Could even faithful old Achaea be relegated to "life support" someday if Starmourn proves to be wildly successful, or some new re-branded product comes out, and much of the company's top staff is shifted to work on -that- new project?
Sure, of course it could, exactly like how World of Warcraft or Second Life or Fortnite or literally any game could be. There's no such thing as a game that can't be sunseted or shut down unless it's a single-player standalone game that requires no service from anyone to operate. If your bar is, "Any game I play must be guaranteed to last to infinity and the developer must pledge to spend X manhours a month on it until infinity", well, good luck, as no company in existence can promise that without deceiving you.
On this point really - the mountain of promo items all turning to dust in value is staggering.
The latest deck cards are a prime example of this. They are cool, yes.
But they are far too restrictive for items purchased in real money promotions.
If I got some, I can’t sell them to other players, can’t trade them in unless I acquire additional junk cards to ‘balance my deck. I understand that you don’t want overpowered decks. but the solution isn’t to simply create items and then if someone doesn’t want to use them, lock them into it.
Please have an option of at least trading them in card by card or as an entire deck for value because as they stand they are pretty useless
Most "big" games draw people in differently. The attitude of their players is "this is fun, and I will keep paying a little bit as long as it is".
Actually no, they don't. Most big games rely on an even smaller portion of players buying things in the game than we do. We have a pretty high rate of purchases by players compared to big games. Much more spread out among the game population. The only real exceptions are the few games that require a mandatory subscription to play, few of which are popular, for obvious reasons. The percentage of people that buy virtual goods in mainstream games tends to be in the 1-7% range.
Interestingly though, the world's biggest game right now - Fortnite - has a huge percent of people that have bought at least one thing - over 60% - and for a large percentage of players, that's the first game they've ever bought anything in. It's a massive outlier, and probably really frustrating to its competitors.
Could even faithful old Achaea be relegated to "life support" someday if Starmourn proves to be wildly successful, or some new re-branded product comes out, and much of the company's top staff is shifted to work on -that- new project?
Sure, of course it could, exactly like how World of Warcraft or Second Life or Fortnite or literally any game could be. There's no such thing as a game that can't be sunseted or shut down unless it's a single-player standalone game that requires no service from anyone to operate. If your bar is, "Any game I play must be guaranteed to last to infinity and the developer must pledge to spend X manhours a month on it until infinity", well, good luck, as no company in existence can promise that without deceiving you.
"This is fun, and I will keep paying a little bit as long as it is" could look like a subscription, or it could look like the player buying some of the game's currency here and there - or even occasionally picking up a "perks" subscription. Importantly, the overall investment is almost always orders of magnitude lower than what any serious IRE customer pays. It can work in those games, even if the -portion- of players who spend real money is a small percentage of that game's population, because a small percentage of thousands of people, or tens of thousands, or more, allows that game to make money off of things that are closer to the cost of a burrito than a car.
All of this makes my point even stronger, which is why I am not really sure where you were trying to go with it, since your intent seemed to be a counterpoint. It's also what IRE has always argued - in short that "we occupy a small niche, and our games require extensive development and maintenance. That is why a fine text sword costs hundreds of dollars, and also why you need that text sword plus a long list of other items that cost at least that much to play seriously". And that's a different relationship than a game where I can throw a few dollars their way -if- I feel like it, and have full access to nearly all of the game's key content either way (which is the point you just made) - or it should be.
As for the last bit, when those companies "sunset" a game, it normally isn't even -partly- because WoW sent a goodly chunk of their top devs to go work on Blizzard's new game "SpaceWoW", and WoW barely got its code or story dusted off for several years.
Sad to see this, but as a long time player but not so much in the recent years I guess I see the point in the sunsetting. So many fun memories in this game that I will cherish for a long time at any rate. Thanks to anyone I've known over the years that happens to see this
I had a question about the membership credits. Should I be transfering those to one of my characters before the retire value lock down in case I want to retire at some point? I subscribed for quite a long time and forgot to cancel it at one point (lol) and just never needed them so never quite transferred them.
Or would they be added to the retirement value of a character as they were transferred? I get the feeling from the wording of the message this would not affect the retirement value of a character.
I haven't logged in for about 8 billion years, and I probably still won't, but I have a question!
It has felt to me like Imperian was neglected on the development/storyline front for quite a while, with events being few and far between. I also feel that this was the case with bug fixes/new features, which have been taking months and months. These things happened when the game was still a money-maker, albeit less than in the good old days. I guess my question is: what is the incentive for Iron Realms to really pay any attention at all to these things when we're not making money for the company? Will this stuff be even slower now? I can't see how it couldn't be...
P.S. Let me retire in full for free. I have given you so many dollars.
@Asai, I think you do want to transfer those membership credits to a char, yes. That's what I did, and as you'd expect, they bumped up the value of that char (but don't before that).
@Zerin, I mean, I think you're on the right track there Keep going to the logical conclusion(s).
For the reverse of the Great Promo Tradeoff - how will these items be produced in the future? Gone forever, or are we going to go smack a bean monster for beans or the great Pumpkin for Halloween-batch promos or etc?
Also still curious about what the diminishing returns for spawnwaves implies about their value.
Importantly, the overall investment is almost always orders of magnitude lower than what any serious IRE customer pays.
Again, that's just not true I'm afraid. You seem to be laboring under some misconceptions about the game industry. Serious customers of mobile games and graphical MMOs spend more. One guy famously spent US$2 million on the mobile game Modern War, for instance. Another guy dropped $16,000 on a single sword in the MMO Age of Wulin. Tons of examples like this, and I have multiple friends running games companies with similar stories.
You might find this instructive, though while it's 4 years old, so a bit out of date, it's mostly still true.
All of this makes my point even stronger, which is why I am not really sure where you were trying to go with it, since your intent seemed to be a counterpoint. It's also what IRE has always argued - in short that "we occupy a small niche, and our games require extensive development and maintenance. That is why a fine text sword costs hundreds of dollars
No, basing your point on an incorrect fact certainly doesn't make it stronger.
You're also wrong about our reasoning. All successful, long-term games require extensive develop and maintenance. There's nothing unique about that. What's unique about us is that we serve a very small niche. The market for MUDs is tiny and is not growing. As with any endeavor, the effort required doesn't scale with the size of your audience. World of Warcraft, for instance, certainly doesn't have the same staff to player ratio we do - it's much lower. We don't benefit from any economy of scale, unlike WoW, or Clash of Clans, or Fortnite, etc.
And ultimately, if you don't like what we charge, don't pay it. You're free to play or not to play. You're also free to retire or not to retire, precisely as you've always been.
As for the last bit, when those companies "sunset" a game, it normally isn't even -partly- because WoW sent a goodly chunk of their top devs to go work on Blizzard's new game "SpaceWoW", and WoW barely got its code or story dusted off for several years.
That is exactly how games companies of all sizes operate. Staff is moved on to new projects for many reasons, including that they're burned out on the current project, that the new project needs more resources, that the existing project is no longer supporting them, etc. For instance, I had dinner with Raph Koster (lead design on Ultima Online and Star Wars: Galaxies) a couple months ago, and one thing he said to me is that he prefers to leave a project as soon after it's released as possible, as that's not the part he enjoys working on.
Or how about we look at Shane Dabiri, producer on the original WoW? 3 years after it opened, he moved onto being Lead Producer at Blizzard for an unannounced project. This is how games companies work.
You're also simply wrong about Imperian not having its code "dusted off for several years." One glance at the code commit logs shows that's clear nonsense, and it's also disrespectful to the hard work the small staff puts in.
In any case, as you seem persistently interested in only complaining, often based on wildly incorrect assumptions, I'm going to ask you to stop doing it here, and email support@imperian.com if you wish to continue.
It has felt to me like Imperian was neglected on the development/storyline front for quite a while, with events being few and far between. I also feel that this was the case with bug fixes/new features, which have been taking months and months. These things happened when the game was still a money-maker, albeit less than in the good old days. I guess my question is: what is the incentive for Iron Realms to really pay any attention at all to these things when we're not making money for the company? Will this stuff be even slower now? I can't see how it couldn't be...
It's very hard for a staff of one paid person (and even then, Imperian was losing money) to do it all, and while there are a couple of heroic volunteers, they can't do it all. Going forward, the game is going to be run by community volunteers with Jeremy providing light oversight. We hope it brings in enough to cover the cost of the forums and game server/website hosting, but even if not, we'll just take that loss. It would have continued to have easily covered those, as they're less than $1000/month, but our biggest costs, by far, are personnel costs.
Will development be slower? Maybe? It mostly depends on how many other community volunteers can and want to productively help I think, and don't just bail when they realize that running a MUD is hard work.
TL;DR, the 1-7% figure doesn't apply to Imperian. Even with the news, the peak population I've seen is 30. I can name at least 8 people offhand who are still here specifically because they've spent over $1k on Imperian. In other words, about 25% of the game's current still-logging-in population are your '1-7%' figure.
TL;DR, the 1-7% figure doesn't apply to Imperian. Even with the news, the peak population I've seen is 30. I can name at least 8 people offhand who are still here specifically because they've spent over $1k on Imperian. In other words, about 25% of the game's current still-logging-in population are your '1-7%' figure.
Yes, that's my point - we have a much higher percentage of people who pay vs most mainstream games where it's almost entirely about the whales in the population, since most people never pay.
@Sarapis So you're saying that knowing that a larger percentage of your population buys quite heavily into your products, you "expected the behavior" of people retiring in droves (collapsing the game for the very people who most heavily buy into your game.) In other words, you knew that the actual value of things and the perceived value of them were not the same. (i.e. me having good faith that not only would you not close my game without warning and just "take" everything, but also that the game would not be allowed to crash to a point where it's literally unplayable for someone like me.)
Nothing about that is illegal; it's just unethical.
I don't particularly want to get into arguments with people, and my feelings about this are still very much mixed, but some things about the situation do irk me.
When Aetolia was struggling, around 2007-2008, attention got shifted there and staff got shuffled around in order to improve Aetolia. This led to staff shifting away from Imperian, and this led to growth stalling - Imperian at that time would have around 100 players online at peak times. The five year plan got abandoned and Imperian never did recover to the activity levels it had at that time. If the five year plan had happened, Imperian would have been the first IRE with sailing, amongst other things!
So, that's what irks me - when Aetolia needed extra attention and work to reinvigorate it, it received that attention. The same was not done for Imperian when the situation was reversed. That's not cool, nor is it ok.
Imperian used to have a distinct niche amongst the IRE games - It was the one with the most relaxed PK rules and plenty of opportunities for conflict and drama. That niche was lost, partly due to rules elsewhere relaxing, but also because the population began shrinking. Retirement was, frankly, a horrible idea - It led to an almost entirely one-way flow of established, big name players to the larger games, to the detriment of Imperian in particular.
I feel like I may just be shouting at the clouds now, for all the good it will do, but it does feel like Imperian got shafted. It's especially irksome because Aetolia was rescued at the expense of Imperian, and then Imperian got left out in the cold when the situations ended up reversed.
EDIT: Quick edit for clarity. 2007 Aetolia was in a similar position to 2016/2017 Imperian. Shrinking playerbase, retention problems, lack of big updates. Aetolia was then rescued, so I'm confused as to why Imperian wasn't given the same help.
I had a question about the membership credits. Should I be transfering those to one of my characters before the retire value lock down in case I want to retire at some point? I subscribed for quite a long time and forgot to cancel it at one point (lol) and just never needed them so never quite transferred them.
Or would they be added to the retirement value of a character as they were transferred? I get the feeling from the wording of the message this would not affect the retirement value of a character.
If you are thinking of retiring the character and you want those credits out, I would transfer them to that character.
Membership credits are fine to leave on the game and apply to current or future characters after the lock.
You are correct, they will not be applied to that value should you add them after the lock.
It has felt to me like Imperian was neglected on the development/storyline front for quite a while, with events being few and far between. I also feel that this was the case with bug fixes/new features, which have been taking months and months. These things happened when the game was still a money-maker, albeit less than in the good old days. I guess my question is: what is the incentive for Iron Realms to really pay any attention at all to these things when we're not making money for the company? Will this stuff be even slower now? I can't see how it couldn't be...
P.P.S. Let me take my kangaroo.
I think Matt mentioned this above, but I have been the only paid person on Imperian for over two years now which is part of the reason for the slow down. Previously Elokia/Svorai was killing this on Imperian. We've had stuff in the meantime, but trying to keep events, new features, content, monthly promos, and more going in a one-man show is going to significantly slow things down.
What we are looking for in someone who would like to head up events and story. I will have more information on this soon and there will be a formal announcement in-game. While that postion will not revolve around adding tons of new features, it will focus on fun stuff happening in the game. In addition, Dec will continue helping on the game in the code department. With no real need to do monthly promos, he will be able to help more with features, bugs, etc.
For the reverse of the Great Promo Tradeoff - how will these items be produced in the future? Gone forever, or are we going to go smack a bean monster for beans or the great Pumpkin for Halloween-batch promos or etc?
Also still curious about what the diminishing returns for spawnwaves implies about their value.
There will be ways to earn gems, beans, and other promo items in the game. This will be done via spawnwave rewards, boss drops, special events, or other reward types. The content is there, we will just find new ways to reward it.
For the spawnwaves, you will get a set amount credits for the first 3 or 4 you complete per day, and then the amount you earned will go down. You will only be able to earn a certain number of credits via spawnwaves per day. Right now I wager most players will jump on, do a few spawnwaves, get their credits, and then work on one of the other ways to get credits. Achievements, kill bosses, quests, etc. Spawnwaves will most likely be the easiest way to get the bulk of your credits.
Ok, I really want my mechanical questions answered but I got my mechanical questions answered while writing this but hooold on.
"Ultimately, if you don't like what we charge, don't pay it. You're free to play or not to play."
Isn't this how we got here?
And then "no market" like IRE games haven't dived off the top 10 of tms except Achaea with the bronze medal, then floating some outliers from other games (like the 5th highest real money item auction lol) like people haven't dropped thousands and thousands in auctions (or Wyll in a gambling promo)? Telling us that "hey they did coding!" like we can't see that most of that time was forced onto promo BS that didn't address game issues?
I dunno, I'm more likely to paypal Dec $25 than give IRE itself any more money, and blaming the downfall of Imperian on economic viability (read: "You peasants didn't pay enough taxes!") means even Starmourn is going to have a hard time getting me off of my money boycott. E: edited to 'money boycott' cause I sure haven't boycotted effort
So, that's what irks me - when Aetolia needed extra attention and work to reinvigorate it, it received that attention. The same was not done for Imperian when the situation was reversed. That's not cool, nor is it ok.
I hear what you're saying here, but it a bit off topic for this thread. I'll chat with you in game more about it. I'd like to keep this more to questions about the new system.
@Sarapis So you're saying that knowing that a larger percentage of your population buys quite heavily into your products, you "expected the behavior" of people retiring in droves (collapsing the game for the very people who most heavily buy into your game.) In other words, you knew that the actual value of things and the perceived value of them were not the same. (i.e. me having good faith that not only would you not close my game without warning and just "take" everything, but also that the game would not be allowed to crash to a point where it's literally unplayable for someone like me.)
@Sarapis it quits becoming a matter of choice when the world is intentionally left in shambles in order to instigate people moving to a different world at a hit on their character's value. The choices are: stay, be miserable in game you cannot play (lol), or leave and btw, thx for letting us have this half as a price for buying things in a game you can't play.
Edit: Oh and I do intend to stay, just because leaving 14k credits on the table is not and should not be my only viable "option" aside from moving to another of your games. Here's why:
Suppose I move to Aetolia. Aetolia falls on hard times. Now my originally 32k that became 14k has become 7k for my next move, even if Aetolia's 'fall' was a premeditated move on your part. I'm not playing that game. You already have my money; no one's asking for their money back. They're asking for a full transfer of products. I'd as soon quit playing all of your games entirely and never give you another dime, because at the moment you aren't trustworthy to me.
I think by now everyone knows I came from MKO and got "100%" retirement, but even still to this day I regret not fighting for my purchases that didn't get credit towards my retirement. I won't do that twice......so here goes nothing.
It seems odd from a business standpoint that a company would put funds into another MUD when a mud of their own is failing or at least not as productive as their other games. This I cannot understand why the company would not shuffle some pieces to fix this issue then focus on a new game unless we are strictly talking about a pure money making based scheme banking on the SCI-FI aspect. This view is more brutal and honest, but I just can't help but feel since it was acknowledged that "Imperian costs nothing to run" that it's just easier to sweep it towards the side and label it as a free game now. (Imagine if the people working on Starmourn would've been working on Imperian this whole time)-edit
I loved my character in MKO, and I had roughly 30k+ credits when I retired when the game shut down. I moved to Imperian on the basis that even though it wasn't as popular that the combat was still one of IRE's bests. I appreciated the fact that I could jump in and PVP with it being fun/engaging. With this being said, I can understand the frustrating in the 50% retirement value not being offered at a slightly higher rate given the change the game is going through. We as players should feel the need to voice our displeasure, and the company should appreciate those concerns.
I actually love the fact IRE has made the choice to make Imperian free. It is a great direction to take one of their games, and allows people the ease and flexibility to be able to compete in a "fair" and "free" playing field one that has been debated for a long time. Except, without offering a hard reset option for the "whales" to "get out" it won't really fix that issue and the "OG" players will still be considered "broken".
I held a lot of anger towards IRE and the credits I lost with the switch to MKO even at the 100% retirement rate. Auction artifacts don't factor in and a ton of other small odds and ends. This is money that people spend on not only the game they're playing then, but a game they want to play for the future. Imperian switching to "free" is and I repeat a great thing. The only issue is, it shouldn't pigeon hole players into sticking around that didn't "buy" into that type of game. Whales want to swim without the effort and if they have the money to throw to accomplish such, they should be able to continue that anywhere they play within IRE that isn't Imperian. My suggestion is to raise retirement value to all Imperian characters for 3 days at a 90-100%(preferred)-edit #2 retirement value.
I will leave with this: Since coming to Imperian, I have nothing but respect for how Jeremy has run Imperian. He is someone who I speak very fondly of when speaking to some of my older mud buddies that made fun of me for chosing to take my 30k credits to Imperian. This is not a shot at him, and I want to make that very clear. It's more of just an overview of the situation and how I feel it should improve.
When Aetolia was struggling, around 2007-2008, attention got shifted there and staff got shuffled around in order to improve Aetolia. This led to staff shifting away from Imperian, and this led to growth stalling - Imperian at that time would have around 100 players online at peak times. The five year plan got abandoned and Imperian never did recover to the activity levels it had at that time. If the five year plan had happened, Imperian would have been the first IRE with sailing, amongst other things!
So, that's what irks me - when Aetolia needed extra attention and work to reinvigorate it, it received that attention. The same was not done for Imperian when the situation was reversed. That's not cool, nor is it ok.
Imperian used to have a distinct niche amongst the IRE games - It was the one with the most relaxed PK rules and plenty of opportunities for conflict and drama. That niche was lost, partly due to rules elsewhere relaxing, but also because the population began shrinking. Retirement was, frankly, a horrible idea - It led to an almost entirely one-way flow of established, big name players to the larger games, to the detriment of Imperian in particular.
I feel like I may just be shouting at the clouds now, for all the good it will do, but it does feel like Imperian got shafted. It's especially irksome because Aetolia was rescued at the expense of Imperian, and then Imperian got left out in the cold when the situations ended up reversed.
EDIT: Quick edit for clarity. 2007 Aetolia was in a similar position to 2016/2017 Imperian. Shrinking playerbase, retention problems, lack of big updates. Aetolia was then rescued, so I'm confused as to why Imperian wasn't given the same help.
It's really hard to have these discussions because you guys don't have the data.
Aetolia was not even remotely in a similar position in 2007 as Imperian in 2016/2017. Aetolia had approximately 2.5x as much player activity per day in 2007 as Imperian did in 2016 or 2017. Aetolia was also making far more money in 2016 or 2017, and wasn't (and isn't) losing money. Imperian has been losing money for years.
@Sarapis what constitutes it losing money? Jeremy is the only salaried staff here and he's the VP of IRE. He's point-blank said it costs nothing to run imperian, which I assume means it runs off of a shared server with Achaea. If the cost to run it is 0, and Jeremy's salary is fully covered (which it should be, since he's VP of the company and not producer of specifically Imperian), then Imperian wasn't losing anything. Imperian was just money.
I could be 100% wrong. But define "losing" money. I find it hard to believe that you're losing out on something that costs you nothing to run (or produce, for the last 2 years while Jeremy has been the only staff.)
Comments
What happens when Starmourn comes out and even Achaea has to fight for its place in the sun? Should you take a chance on Starmourn? Could even faithful old Achaea be relegated to "life support" someday if Starmourn proves to be wildly successful, or some new re-branded product comes out, and much of the company's top staff is shifted to work on -that- new project?
Over the years it's been discussed many times that IRE pretty much has to rely on whales as its bread and butter. Most "big" games draw people in differently. The attitude of their players is "this is fun, and I will keep paying a little bit as long as it is". Those games rely on a massive customer base. IRE games rely on whale-sized investments from customers who believe in your company (and in that specific game) enough to spend the kind of money people would faint over. Why should any whale, or potential whale have that kind of faith in IRE going forward? I can't imagine a good answer to that question because I don't think there is one.
What does make sense is that IRE thinks its players, knowing all of this, will continue to buy in regardless. I mean, I guess maybe they're right, because they're betting on it.
*(MKO was "100%" retirement, but even at 100% you still generally take some kind of hit - which I think would have been absolutely fine if some weren't ending up in the boat of needing to retire yet again)
Interestingly though, the world's biggest game right now - Fortnite - has a huge percent of people that have bought at least one thing - over 60% - and for a large percentage of players, that's the first game they've ever bought anything in. It's a massive outlier, and probably really frustrating to its competitors.
Sure, of course it could, exactly like how World of Warcraft or Second Life or Fortnite or literally any game could be. There's no such thing as a game that can't be sunseted or shut down unless it's a single-player standalone game that requires no service from anyone to operate. If your bar is, "Any game I play must be guaranteed to last to infinity and the developer must pledge to spend X manhours a month on it until infinity", well, good luck, as no company in existence can promise that without deceiving you.
The latest deck cards are a prime example of this. They are cool, yes.
But they are far too restrictive for items purchased in real money promotions.
If I got some, I can’t sell them to other players, can’t trade them in unless I acquire additional junk cards to ‘balance my deck. I understand that you don’t want overpowered decks. but the solution isn’t to simply create items and then if someone doesn’t want to use them, lock them into it.
Please have an option of at least trading them in card by card or as an entire deck for value because as they stand they are pretty useless
All of this makes my point even stronger, which is why I am not really sure where you were trying to go with it, since your intent seemed to be a counterpoint. It's also what IRE has always argued - in short that "we occupy a small niche, and our games require extensive development and maintenance. That is why a fine text sword costs hundreds of dollars, and also why you need that text sword plus a long list of other items that cost at least that much to play seriously". And that's a different relationship than a game where I can throw a few dollars their way -if- I feel like it, and have full access to nearly all of the game's key content either way (which is the point you just made) - or it should be.
As for the last bit, when those companies "sunset" a game, it normally isn't even -partly- because WoW sent a goodly chunk of their top devs to go work on Blizzard's new game "SpaceWoW", and WoW barely got its code or story dusted off for several years.
Sad to see this, but as a long time player but not so much in the recent years I guess I see the point in the sunsetting. So many fun memories in this game that I will cherish for a long time at any rate. Thanks to anyone I've known over the years that happens to see this
I had a question about the membership credits. Should I be transfering those to one of my characters before the retire value lock down in case I want to retire at some point? I subscribed for quite a long time and forgot to cancel it at one point (lol) and just never needed them so never quite transferred them.
Or would they be added to the retirement value of a character as they were transferred? I get the feeling from the wording of the message this would not affect the retirement value of a character.
Thank you.
It has felt to me like Imperian was neglected on the development/storyline front for quite a while, with events being few and far between. I also feel that this was the case with bug fixes/new features, which have been taking months and months. These things happened when the game was still a money-maker, albeit less than in the good old days. I guess my question is: what is the incentive for Iron Realms to really pay any attention at all to these things when we're not making money for the company? Will this stuff be even slower now? I can't see how it couldn't be...
P.S. Let me retire in full for free. I have given you so many dollars.
P.P.S. Let me take my kangaroo.
@Zerin, I mean, I think you're on the right track there
Also still curious about what the diminishing returns for spawnwaves implies about their value.
Again, that's just not true I'm afraid. You seem to be laboring under some misconceptions about the game industry. Serious customers of mobile games and graphical MMOs spend more. One guy famously spent US$2 million on the mobile game Modern War, for instance. Another guy dropped $16,000 on a single sword in the MMO Age of Wulin. Tons of examples like this, and I have multiple friends running games companies with similar stories.
You might find this instructive, though while it's 4 years old, so a bit out of date, it's mostly still true.
"In a mobile monetization report released today, app testing firm Swrve found that in January, half of free-to-play games’ in-app purchases came from 0.15 percent of players. Only 1.5 percent of players of games in the Swrve network spent any money at all."
(https://www.recode.net/2014/2/26/11623998/a-long-tail-of-whales-half-of-mobile-games-money-comes-from-0-15) No, basing your point on an incorrect fact certainly doesn't make it stronger. You're also wrong about our reasoning. All successful, long-term games require extensive develop and maintenance. There's nothing unique about that. What's unique about us is that we serve a very small niche. The market for MUDs is tiny and is not growing. As with any endeavor, the effort required doesn't scale with the size of your audience. World of Warcraft, for instance, certainly doesn't have the same staff to player ratio we do - it's much lower. We don't benefit from any economy of scale, unlike WoW, or Clash of Clans, or Fortnite, etc. And ultimately, if you don't like what we charge, don't pay it. You're free to play or not to play. You're also free to retire or not to retire, precisely as you've always been.
That is exactly how games companies of all sizes operate. Staff is moved on to new projects for many reasons, including that they're burned out on the current project, that the new project needs more resources, that the existing project is no longer supporting them, etc. For instance, I had dinner with Raph Koster (lead design on Ultima Online and Star Wars: Galaxies) a couple months ago, and one thing he said to me is that he prefers to leave a project as soon after it's released as possible, as that's not the part he enjoys working on.
Or how about we look at Shane Dabiri, producer on the original WoW? 3 years after it opened, he moved onto being Lead Producer at Blizzard for an unannounced project. This is how games companies work.
You're also simply wrong about Imperian not having its code "dusted off for several years." One glance at the code commit logs shows that's clear nonsense, and it's also disrespectful to the hard work the small staff puts in.
In any case, as you seem persistently interested in only complaining, often based on wildly incorrect assumptions, I'm going to ask you to stop doing it here, and email support@imperian.com if you wish to continue.
Will development be slower? Maybe? It mostly depends on how many other community volunteers can and want to productively help I think, and don't just bail when they realize that running a MUD is hard work.
When Aetolia was struggling, around 2007-2008, attention got shifted there and staff got shuffled around in order to improve Aetolia. This led to staff shifting away from Imperian, and this led to growth stalling - Imperian at that time would have around 100 players online at peak times. The five year plan got abandoned and Imperian never did recover to the activity levels it had at that time. If the five year plan had happened, Imperian would have been the first IRE with sailing, amongst other things!
So, that's what irks me - when Aetolia needed extra attention and work to reinvigorate it, it received that attention. The same was not done for Imperian when the situation was reversed. That's not cool, nor is it ok.
Imperian used to have a distinct niche amongst the IRE games - It was the one with the most relaxed PK rules and plenty of opportunities for conflict and drama. That niche was lost, partly due to rules elsewhere relaxing, but also because the population began shrinking. Retirement was, frankly, a horrible idea - It led to an almost entirely one-way flow of established, big name players to the larger games, to the detriment of Imperian in particular.
I feel like I may just be shouting at the clouds now, for all the good it will do, but it does feel like Imperian got shafted. It's especially irksome because Aetolia was rescued at the expense of Imperian, and then Imperian got left out in the cold when the situations ended up reversed.
EDIT: Quick edit for clarity. 2007 Aetolia was in a similar position to 2016/2017 Imperian. Shrinking playerbase, retention problems, lack of big updates. Aetolia was then rescued, so I'm confused as to why Imperian wasn't given the same help.
Membership credits are fine to leave on the game and apply to current or future characters after the lock.
You are correct, they will not be applied to that value should you add them after the lock.
I hope that makes it a bit more clear.
What we are looking for in someone who would like to head up events and story. I will have more information on this soon and there will be a formal announcement in-game. While that postion will not revolve around adding tons of new features, it will focus on fun stuff happening in the game. In addition, Dec will continue helping on the game in the code department. With no real need to do monthly promos, he will be able to help more with features, bugs, etc.
Good luck on the kangaroo.
When Aetolia was in a similar position, resources were shifted.
For the spawnwaves, you will get a set amount credits for the first 3 or 4 you complete per day, and then the amount you earned will go down. You will only be able to earn a certain number of credits via spawnwaves per day. Right now I wager most players will jump on, do a few spawnwaves, get their credits, and then work on one of the other ways to get credits. Achievements, kill bosses, quests, etc. Spawnwaves will most likely be the easiest way to get the bulk of your credits.
"Ultimately, if you don't like what we charge, don't pay it. You're free to play or not to play."
Isn't this how we got here?
And then "no market" like IRE games haven't dived off the top 10 of tms except Achaea with the bronze medal, then floating some outliers from other games (like the 5th highest real money item auction lol) like people haven't dropped thousands and thousands in auctions (or Wyll in a gambling promo)? Telling us that "hey they did coding!" like we can't see that most of that time was forced onto promo BS that didn't address game issues?
I dunno, I'm more likely to paypal Dec $25 than give IRE itself any more money, and blaming the downfall of Imperian on economic viability (read: "You peasants didn't pay enough taxes!") means even Starmourn is going to have a hard time getting me off of my money boycott. E: edited to 'money boycott' cause I sure haven't boycotted effort
It's really hard to have these discussions because you guys don't have the data.
Aetolia was not even remotely in a similar position in 2007 as Imperian in 2016/2017. Aetolia had approximately 2.5x as much player activity per day in 2007 as Imperian did in 2016 or 2017. Aetolia was also making far more money in 2016 or 2017, and wasn't (and isn't) losing money. Imperian has been losing money for years.
Why didn't Imperian get the same help before it got to the point it was in 2016?