Lack of Players?

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Comments

  • I decided to reach out to nuklearpower and see what their pricing is like these days. Given that they pitch themselves as helping out Blizzard, EA, Bethesda, etc though, I'm not hopeful.
  • rereading 8-bit theatre... so many comics....
  • I want to get some of my friends back. But...they like.. have families and kids now :-1: 



  • Produce a flyer for Achaea that people can print off and leave around their local areas. Comic-book shops, book-stores, college/uni campuses.
  • We had photo competitions I seem to remember, posing with photos of Gods in aptly named places around the world. That was quite cool. @Sarapis Do you see a point in time where the lack of new players will end up closing a MUD due to lack of financial viability? I think Achaea is the most populous of the IRE games (?) so unsure what the others are like from a user perspective if there are less players online, but without player retention it must be a concern. We can't rely on the Cain and Antonius's of this world to subsidise us all!

    (Party): Mezghar says, "Stop."
  • Achaea has been in decline for a while like since they started trying to modernize the game's face. Don't try putting blame on a game like Fallout. And I am one of the dissapointed. I haven't played for 5 years I think. You removed the nexus client, that surely must have pissed off/handicapped/burdened players who relied on nexus and had scripts of their own in it. You've changed the face of the webpage to this worse than mainstream appearance that really disgusts me. This trailer www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v_GvFXceb0 just bleh. I can't put my finger on whats wrong with that trailer, but it comes off too pretentious. You made so many changes to the game and introduced a lot of new mechanics in such a short time it was rather tiring to play and keep up with it all. And the ability to freely change classes/multiclassing, thats just a big no-no. Classes were like an identity, now its just be whatever you want. Change can be good and bad.  The feel of this game just isn't what it used to be.  And this isn't nostalgia, the game was better managed back in 2009ish.    
      For comparison on detrimental changes to a game, World of Warcraft vanilla(version 1.12) didn't have auto-grouping for dungeons, you had to meet with people and socialise and learn to play with eachother because dungeons were hard. Current WoW has the auto-grouping and dungeons are easy. It's short minded gaming with little player to player interaction. It caters to the masses, but the game isn't as good as it was. Subjective thinking.

    And I stumbled upon this game while browsing muds when I first learned of em. What got me to actually try it was the class page 
    https://web.archive.org/web/20080306031515/http://www.achaea.com/classes.php
    I wanted to be an apostate, occultist, or jester. I liked this class page and its what hooked me into actually playing. The current website looks like something I'd see linked on Kongregate, a gaming website.

    And I also wanted to eventually be a dragon! I think I was 6.8% of the way when I stopped playing https://web.archive.org/web/20080308103931/http://www.achaea.com/dragons.php

    And the game itself is executed perfectly. The color coding of rooms, people, messages, tells, was really nice. Makes it easy to quickly know what the text is about that it becomes natural to read. I loved the Romeo and Juliet guides and the land of Minia and the hi-jinks you'd get into as a new player making mistakes. And I loved this game for the clique like drama between players. I never got into that stuff, but I observed it. This was a game I told my brother maybe we'd play this when we're retired and old(with time on our hands).  I don't think I can say that anymore.
  • AerekAerek East Tennessee, USA
    You're brave to disagree, Blu, he clearly has a degree in this or something. Just look at the way he decries subjective thinking in a post filled with subjective personal anecdotes, and how effortlessly opinions are stated as facts and damning conclusions. These might seem like contradictions or fallacies to the small-minded, but it's obvious he has a level of higher understanding that most of us just can't comprehend.

    If only we'd had his well of wisdom sooner, the game might have been saved. :anguished: 
    -- Grounded in but one perspective, what we perceive is an exaggeration of the truth.
  • Aerek said:
    You're brave to disagree, Blu, he clearly has a degree in this or something. Just look at the way he decries subjective thinking in a post filled with subjective personal anecdotes, and how effortlessly opinions are stated as facts and damning conclusions. These might seem like contradictions or fallacies to the small-minded, but it's obvious he has a level of higher understanding that most of us just can't comprehend.

    If only we'd had his well of wisdom sooner, the game might have been saved. :anguished: 
    Is he decrying subjective thinking? I thought he meant that his view on WoW's decline, it catering to the masses, was his subjective opinion. His post seemed like 70% reasonable! Citing sources for some of his opinions, even.

    Wait, how sarcastic are you being? I'm too drunk to make sure I'm not responding to something that I misinterpreted in the first place.
    image
  • Aerek said:
    You're brave to disagree, Blu, he clearly has a degree in this or something. Just look at the way he decries subjective thinking in a post filled with subjective personal anecdotes, and how effortlessly opinions are stated as facts and damning conclusions. These might seem like contradictions or fallacies to the small-minded, but it's obvious he has a level of higher understanding that most of us just can't comprehend.

    If only we'd had his well of wisdom sooner, the game might have been saved. :anguished: 
    Woot!
  • I never knew muds,nor of em. I HEARD of those text games Zork?Zerk..?

    Stumbled onto Achaea googling FREE  and Mmorpg..two mayor selling points..

  • edited November 2015
    I don't even remember how I found Achaea.

    Used to play around on M*U*S*H (which on googling since I haven't checked it out in a while, google kindly informs me m*u*s*h is meter * u * s * Planck's constant  which is equal to 1.1002848 × 10-60 m3 kg2. amusing). Ended up here. How is a mystery, even to me.

    Though according to google it's related to Plank's constant.
    Current scripts: GoldTracker 1.2, mData 1.1
    Site: https://github.com/trevize-achaea/scripts/releases
    Thread: http://forums.achaea.com/discussion/4064/trevizes-scripts
    Latest update: 9/26/2015 better character name handling in GoldTracker, separation of script and settings, addition of gold report and gold distribute aliases.
  • edited November 2015
    Kinda funny you mentioned patch 1.12 for WoW. (I did play it then, FYI. Before you read my ending statement)


    Was released in Q3 (august specifically) of 2006. Note how it's not even close to when WoW's subs were at its peak? Your comparison is failing, mate. Believe what you want, a LOT of people will agree that Vanilla isn't close to as good as people 'remember' it as. Just go play on Nostalrius (most popular vanilla private server, and most bugfree) if you want proof of that.

  • Cynlael said:


    Was released in Q3 (august specifically) of 2006. Note how it's not even close to when WoW's subs were at its peak? Your comparison is failing, mate. Believe what you want, a LOT of people will agree that Vanilla isn't close to as good as people 'remember' it as. Just go play on Nostalrius (most popular vanilla private server, and most bugfree) if you want proof of that.
    A lot of people consistently remember the time they started playing a MUD/MMO as the best time in it ever. Everything was fresh and new to them then, and of course the game at the state it was when they started playing is why they started playing.

  • edited November 2015
    Yeah, I played EQ2 for a bit before WoW, and distinctly remember it being better (when comparing releases), might be why.  :p Won't deny that I stopped playing Achaea for a LONG time when WoW got better. But as with all MMOs, they start to fall short after time, so I started playing here again. Lo and behold, it had a ton of story and stuff I got to catch up on again :)

  • Sarapis said:
    Deufe said:
    Achaea has been in decline for a while like since they started trying to modernize the game's face. Don't try putting blame on a game like Fallout. And I am one of the dissapointed. I haven't played for 5 years I think. You removed the nexus client, that surely must have pissed off/handicapped/burdened players who relied on nexus and had scripts of their own in it. You've changed the face of the webpage to this worse than mainstream appearance that really disgusts me. This trailer www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v_GvFXceb0 just bleh. I can't put my finger on whats wrong with that trailer, but it comes off too pretentious. You made so many changes to the game and introduced a lot of new mechanics in such a short time it was rather tiring to play and keep up with it all. And the ability to freely change classes/multiclassing, thats just a big no-no. Classes were like an identity, now its just be whatever you want. Change can be good and bad.  The feel of this game just isn't what it used to be.  And this isn't nostalgia, the game was better managed back in 2009ish.    
      For comparison on detrimental changes to a game, World of Warcraft vanilla(version 1.12) didn't have auto-grouping for dungeons, you had to meet with people and socialise and learn to play with eachother because dungeons were hard. Current WoW has the auto-grouping and dungeons are easy. It's short minded gaming with little player to player interaction. It caters to the masses, but the game isn't as good as it was. Subjective thinking.

    And I stumbled upon this game while browsing muds when I first learned of em. What got me to actually try it was the class page 
    https://web.archive.org/web/20080306031515/http://www.achaea.com/classes.php
    I wanted to be an apostate, occultist, or jester. I liked this class page and its what hooked me into actually playing. The current website looks like something I'd see linked on Kongregate, a gaming website.

    And I also wanted to eventually be a dragon! I think I was 6.8% of the way when I stopped playing https://web.archive.org/web/20080308103931/http://www.achaea.com/dragons.php

    And the game itself is executed perfectly. The color coding of rooms, people, messages, tells, was really nice. Makes it easy to quickly know what the text is about that it becomes natural to read. I loved the Romeo and Juliet guides and the land of Minia and the hi-jinks you'd get into as a new player making mistakes. And I loved this game for the clique like drama between players. I never got into that stuff, but I observed it. This was a game I told my brother maybe we'd play this when we're retired and old(with time on our hands).  I don't think I can say that anymore.


    Your claim: "Achaea has been in decline awhile like since they started trying to modernize the game's face."

    Reality: Last year was our second best year ever in terms of revenue, and only barely behind 2006, which was the best year Achaea ever had. See below for what happened in the next few years.

    More Reality: The game's population peaked in 2004, and began to decline the month World of Warcraft came out. That's true for basically every large MUD that existed at the time. It is hard to overstate the extent of WoW's impact on MUDs. Many people left MUDs entirely for WoW and never came back. 



    Your claim: "The game was better managed in 2009".

    Reality: Sure, if your idea of good management is driving it into the ground. 2009 was so bad (following similar declines in 2007 and 2008) that I fired Achaea's producer at the end of it. 2009 was the low point in Achaea's history from my perspective. And again, last year was our second best year ever, so it's pretty difficult to take this seriously.



    We don't have to guess whether the new website is better than the last one. We know it is, because it converts people into trying the game a little better than the old one did. That's 90% of its purpose. The other 10% is to provide the interface for things like art/bard, web-based messages, etc.

    Nexus? We track what clients people use, and old Nexus was virtually unused by the time we killed it. New Nexus is far far more used, and we regularly get new players mailing saying they're giving Achaea a try specifically because of it. 

    I'm also not a huge fan of the video, but having it on the front page converts people slightly better than not having it. Future experiments will include putting different videos on the front to see if they convert better. You measure success, you don't just put a finger in the air and say, "Well I prefer blue."

    Ultimately, the problem with your analysis is that you're simply extrapolating what you personally like to the entire world, and that's only useful if we were building a game specifically for you.

    I do not dispute the facts as you present, Sarapis. However... I noticed the bolded and... while that's certainly easy to measure, I wish you had non-revenue evidence there, or similar.

    After all, while it's understandable that 'the bottom line' is the most important standard to most... it's not universal.
    Miin-aan baash kimini-sij-i-gan bitooyin sij-i-gan-i bukwayszhiigan = blueberry π
  • The bottom line is how we measure success because ultimately, it's what keeps Achaea alive with full-time paid staff. All the players in the world makes no difference at all without revenue. This is 2015, and we run text MUDs. Focus on revenue is why we're still standing and not just phoning it in while we get other jobs.
  • Sarapis said:
    The bottom line is how we measure success because ultimately, it's what keeps Achaea alive with full-time paid staff. All the players in the world makes no difference at all without revenue. This is 2015, and we run text MUDs. Focus on revenue is why we're still standing and not just phoning it in while we get other jobs.
    I am ambivalent about this. On one hand, not only do I agree with what I believe you mean by this, but I can think of an entire job-industry that is failing because the top priority of at least most of those who enter this industry (admittedly, as far as I know) is not the bottom line.

    On the other hand... this industry is nursing. In a perfect world (which I know we do not, have never, and will never have), this is not a line of work that should need to pay attention to money.
    Miin-aan baash kimini-sij-i-gan bitooyin sij-i-gan-i bukwayszhiigan = blueberry π
  • I started playing in 2006 or 7. My oldest guy is about 280 y/o ingame or so but I don't feel like doing the math. I still remember breaking out graph paper for that tiny little dragon orb maze in the old intro. Failing my first novice interview for not being able to find my way around Shallam, before ingame maps and autowalkers were a thing. Being emoted at for the first time in Minia. Getting stripped robbed constantly by Santar. Swearing revenge and my first mentor telling me be sure not to attack Santar or he will kill me and then spending an hour helping me make super basic anti-theft triggers. I remember when people in Ashtan all had ridiculous titles like.. Fantabulous <name> The Ace of Spades etc. Idolizing guys like Rangor and Sobriquet (memory is fuzzy on exact names) who where always blowing up the deathsights. Eventually realizing what was possible with coding when first getting vadi nexus..etc.

    My point is this, I still remember very fondly the first year I starting playing. The world seemed huge back then and alive with new faces and possibility. Now it seems small and cramped with the same faces and same places. Once you play a game for so long I think you eventually can't help but become bias on the state of the game. 

    One thing is for sure though. It used to take a lot more work to get into the game. Now it is comparatively much easier. Some of the things I mentioned above were exciting for me but off putting for others. I actually feel alot more comfortable recommending people who see me playing at work to try it out. With the new website and play now approach its a lot easier to pick up and go. I would prefer not having to put in your email at creation. That will turn me off of something I am only slightly curious about more often than not.

  • I don't really have nostalgia for the game from 'back in the day'. But then, I had several false starts in the game between first discovering it in 2001 and actually getting into it with a character in 2005 because it took that long for me to understand that roleplaying happened and it was more than just a text-based rat-murdering simulator. And then several more years before really settling on anything that I really enjoyed. I kinda miss the constant influx of new characters that happened around the peak popularity of the game, but I still see many newbies come into the game every day with the Newbie channel turned on. I enjoy the way the game has evolved, even if it isn't quite the 'transpose Lusternia's game systems onto Achaea but keep the class/house seperation' that I've been wishing for for years.
  • I certainly prefer the Achaea of today to the one when I first started in 2004, I don't think I'd still be playing if it hadn't improved so much.

  • Szanthax said:
    I was playing DragonRealms and was looking for a free game when aol started charging for it. Found another game (that changed names after some cult killed themselves and shared a similar name...my mom asked me if they were related lol). I then found Achaea. 

    @Szanthax was that Dragon's Gate?
  • Only thing that was better about old achaea as compared to now was worldwide cataclysm. Bring that back, and we'll truly have the best game ever made
  • Tekk said:
    Szanthax said:
    I was playing DragonRealms and was looking for a free game when aol started charging for it. Found another game (that changed names after some cult killed themselves and shared a similar name...my mom asked me if they were related lol). I then found Achaea. 

    @Szanthax was that Dragon's Gate?
    I was thinking possibly Moongate which changed to Materia Magica in the later 90's if I recall. 
  • Sarapis said:
    I decided to reach out to nuklearpower and see what their pricing is like these days. Given that they pitch themselves as helping out Blizzard, EA, Bethesda, etc though, I'm not hopeful.
    Damn it. Turns out the comic ended in 2010. ;)
  • Sultani said:
    Tekk said:
    Szanthax said:
    I was playing DragonRealms and was looking for a free game when aol started charging for it. Found another game (that changed names after some cult killed themselves and shared a similar name...my mom asked me if they were related lol). I then found Achaea. 

    @Szanthax was that Dragon's Gate?
    I was thinking possibly Moongate which changed to Materia Magica in the later 90's if I recall. 
    @Tekk
    @Sultani wins :pleased: 



  • Greys said:
    Yeah during X-mas break Mhaldor raids non-stop.
    Can we have one Logosmas that Mhaldor doesn't ruin? It's like the city that personifies the grinch.... @Sartan Any ideas on ungrinchifying your city?
    (Blades of Valour): He just has that Synbios Swagger enough said.
    (Blades of Valour): Draekar says: "Synbios if sunbeams sparkle off that I'll kill you where you stand."

    (Party) Halos says, "Disbar?"
    (Party) Draekar says, "You know here we have disbar."
    (Party) Draekar says, "And over there we have datbar."

  • On a more on topic note....

    I can say the guilds and the era they were in were a special time (my first introduction to achaea).
    On the pro-side you had more people and it seemed like there were many more events and deity initiated things that were not as automated in those days. Nostalgically speaking there was more synergy and role play. You didn't just raid the cities because you felt like it there were reasons to do so.

    On the con-side I spent over 100 years as a HR 3 because I couldn't pass the basic defense test. I had so much trouble understanding coding to begin with (now I'm much better but it took getting zmud and spending a solid year with it and the entirety of my houses combat team tutors just to get the basics down). I spent at least another year getting to be passable at basics of combat. 3 RL years is a long commitment for anything like a game. So I will say all the improvements for novices and things like that have been beneficial.

    You have to pick your battles as a game. I think Achaea picked correctly to focus on the development of more novice friendly initiatives. That being said I still miss some of the old interactions on a regular basis but there has to be a balance.
    (Blades of Valour): He just has that Synbios Swagger enough said.
    (Blades of Valour): Draekar says: "Synbios if sunbeams sparkle off that I'll kill you where you stand."

    (Party) Halos says, "Disbar?"
    (Party) Draekar says, "You know here we have disbar."
    (Party) Draekar says, "And over there we have datbar."
  • Man I started playing at about the same time and people definitely raided because they felt like it.  How can you possibly say they didn't when Jarik was terrorizing Hashan for sport? Nostalgia is nice but let's not let it cloud the actual realities of things.
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