/Vote
This is a good idea. Id like to see how well it works in game but i think it could help
New Battlemaster/mall Area
Re: New Battlemaster/mall Area
I've been spending a long time looking around the world and trying to decide on a lot of things.
I don't want to move the mall. I know many people would be against me on this, but the mall is a symbol of Smolderforge. It's always been there, and everything is built around it. The way it's currently designed works very well together. All of my events, Hallow's End, Winter's Veil, etc. are designing around the specific zone. You cannot walk 10 feet out of it to be in PvP -- it's a completely isolated island far away from anything.
The problem is only that too many people are staying there all the time. It's like the limbo/queue/wait/socialize area for everything.
For those of you who would like to know a little history; Hyjal was created in response to PvPing on Quel'Danas back in 2008. When the idea for the zone was created, there were no quests. The idea was just a base, with guards, and you could PvP there. The idea was intially set for Azshara's Crater. When the time came to design the zone, however, the location was moved to the Nordrassil part of Hyjal.
Many months later, daily quests were added as one of many ways to continue earning badges. When you would die in Hyjal originally, you would respawn on top of your body and be forced to wait 30-seconds before you could resurrect. This made Hyjal not so much fun for too long. Once we ventured more into programming experiments, we learned how to hard-code in pseudo-graveyards and therefore made "graveyards" for Horde and Alliance in Hyjal. This caused the popularity of Hyjal to influx in great numbers as Hyjal was open 24/7. We saw great decrease in battleground participation and so we put a every-3-hour limitation to the opening of Hyjal. This causes it's popularity to drop, and battlegrounds thus rose.
This was before Smolderforge was peaking above probably 250 people. So we didn't always have that many people to participate in everything. We did a lot of experimenting then that didn't help the server at all. We tried moving queue locations to the faction cities once. Guess what it did? Causes BG performance to decrease yet again. We also once let all BGs just be opened, no rotation... This simply causes chain WSG, WSG, WSG, WSG, WSG, WSG. Never any other battlegrounds. That's why the rotations were reimplemented again.
Today I stepped back into Azshara Crater for the first time in many months. The zone is very large place. See video here. It consists of like 4 sections. 3 are linear, you travel North/South to get between them. Then off to the side, there is where the "horde" area is consisting of a Horde base.
This zone itself is bigger than Alterac Valley. Players would literally get lost within the zone, therefore defeating the purpose of a PvP area at all. I thought about maybe only making it the middle zone. But there's only an Alliance and Horde tower on each side... the only thing that could really function as "bases" if you call them. The zone itself proposes some ability to write content and quests for, but that takes a bit of time to do. Nothing could be too advanced either, escort quests, etc. would take too much time to script.
I will agree that Hyjal has long over done its stay, but the problem is we don't really have anything worthy to replace it with. Using a zone like Ungoro Crater would just be weird, aggroing level 50 mobs, running around in the swamp areas looking to kill people? Also, your information on Ungoro is incorrect. There was no waygate in TBC, that was added in Wrath. Also those bases were added in Cataclysm. The zone is pretty useless pre-Wrath.
Getting people out of the world for a reason in general is in many ways practically impossible on Smolderforge. To put it honestly and plainly. Think about it -- we're a funserver, instant 70, professions are offered to you with effort of doing quests/dailies(1 thing that gets you out of the mall), but other than that there is honestly no really other reason why people have a need or excuse to leave.
I have no intention of altering the fundamentals of Smolderforge currently. It would ruin the current server. I have always wanted to expand further than Smolderforge in general, but to do so requires massive amount of resources. Time, people, money, testing, etc, etc. We were considering looking into a TBC project for a while. A PvE server approach where you would do some leveling, and really work your way through raid progression.
However, we're still very busy on perfecting our core at the moment. We still have a bit of things on our timeline right now to be working on: MoveMaps, Multithreading performance, ProcSystem, more Warden checks, etc. Before we can even really begin to start looking into PvE content since that's not much of a primary focus of Smolderforge (sadly), PvP always has dominated. Once PvE is worked on on Smolderforge would a TBC project be possible to venture into since we would have the core, and the content ready to immediately start looking into.
Unfortunately, our eyes have been set to Pre-TBC as of late. We would have to work and 'perfect' a whole other core to venture into this project, which is why the proposed date is set far back. There seems to be a lot of people attempting to create TBC servers right now. laguna (failed and died), FlawlessWoW(failed and died), Relive-WoW (new, who knows where it will go, etc.) There's constantly people making their own "off-spin" versions of TBC servers currently and I simply don't have the time nor desire to try to start marketing a TBC server in this current massive amounts of "JoIN ReLuVV WoW NeW PE RFECT 100% BuGG FrE SeAVEr" stuff right now. I've always strongly despise of advertising on other servers, and currently that's the way these people are trying to "compete". I mean look at Relive-WoW, they completely RIPPED Q-Gaming's website. If that's the current community I would be having to go into, I don't want to.
There's a lot we could do, Pre-TBC, TBC, Wrath, etc. But the current Smolderforge just simply isn't going to be able to suit your desire or needs for much more than it already is. I hate to be completely honest with you, but funservers don't last long. I've tried as much as I can to make the "grind" longer and make things seem more valuable on the server, but in the end, it will all be over quickly. Luckily, man you of you find continuous enjoyment in PvP, arena, battlegrounds, etc. and that gives you much reason to stay; which is great. But, for many people they will eventually have no reason to stay. Servers like Last-WoW, as badly flawed as they are can retain so many of their users because they LOCK them in by making them level. It's an observed fact. Leveling servers will usually tend to be very successful once enough people have leveled since they will have put much time into their character and therefore not reroll, leave servers, or give up on easily. Then by having them leveling, raiding and much progression is possible where it is not on Smolderforge. Smolderforge was never build or designed to be one of these servers. Sorry to put it that way, but it's true. When created Smolderforge in early 2008 I had no idea that I would still be running it to this day. I would have no idea I would eventually reach a 1 million player creation mark, or have content to run out of providing, etc. This is why I want to look into other projects but since Smolderforge continues to run, much attention will continue to be devoted to it making other servers harder to focus and put attention into.
It is something that I look forward to very much one day. But if you know me, I like things to be really great and enjoyable. So the possibility of us expanding very large is going to be slow and long. Sure I could put a Pre-TBC, TBC, Wrath, Cata server online within a few hours. But they wouldn't be designed. I could bullshit them, but then they would suck. So designing has to be absolutely amazing to get people's desire and attention to come over to us, etc. Running one server is let alone enough work so opening more will be difficult to make good and balance them both.
This is the only REAL solution I have to give you, in a very long answer. Is expanding to other servers. The current Smolderforge will/can only do so much for you I'm afraid. I can continue to switch things around, offer more battlegrounds, offer more vanity items here and there, make more events, keep it really special in aspects. But eventually there will be that wall you reach, when it's all over. The progression stops. Many of you have donated for your way to the last gear set. Making progression, basically impossible for you. See the problem? There's no progression. There's no real gear, rep, mats farming, etc. No reason to really get out in the world.
I could continue on and on with my wisdom and philosophy of how server's work and don't work, etc. But I believe many of you have already had too much to read. Sorry about that...
tl;dr version: Impossible to be applied. Post is too long.
I don't want to move the mall. I know many people would be against me on this, but the mall is a symbol of Smolderforge. It's always been there, and everything is built around it. The way it's currently designed works very well together. All of my events, Hallow's End, Winter's Veil, etc. are designing around the specific zone. You cannot walk 10 feet out of it to be in PvP -- it's a completely isolated island far away from anything.
The problem is only that too many people are staying there all the time. It's like the limbo/queue/wait/socialize area for everything.
For those of you who would like to know a little history; Hyjal was created in response to PvPing on Quel'Danas back in 2008. When the idea for the zone was created, there were no quests. The idea was just a base, with guards, and you could PvP there. The idea was intially set for Azshara's Crater. When the time came to design the zone, however, the location was moved to the Nordrassil part of Hyjal.
Many months later, daily quests were added as one of many ways to continue earning badges. When you would die in Hyjal originally, you would respawn on top of your body and be forced to wait 30-seconds before you could resurrect. This made Hyjal not so much fun for too long. Once we ventured more into programming experiments, we learned how to hard-code in pseudo-graveyards and therefore made "graveyards" for Horde and Alliance in Hyjal. This caused the popularity of Hyjal to influx in great numbers as Hyjal was open 24/7. We saw great decrease in battleground participation and so we put a every-3-hour limitation to the opening of Hyjal. This causes it's popularity to drop, and battlegrounds thus rose.
This was before Smolderforge was peaking above probably 250 people. So we didn't always have that many people to participate in everything. We did a lot of experimenting then that didn't help the server at all. We tried moving queue locations to the faction cities once. Guess what it did? Causes BG performance to decrease yet again. We also once let all BGs just be opened, no rotation... This simply causes chain WSG, WSG, WSG, WSG, WSG, WSG. Never any other battlegrounds. That's why the rotations were reimplemented again.
Today I stepped back into Azshara Crater for the first time in many months. The zone is very large place. See video here. It consists of like 4 sections. 3 are linear, you travel North/South to get between them. Then off to the side, there is where the "horde" area is consisting of a Horde base.
This zone itself is bigger than Alterac Valley. Players would literally get lost within the zone, therefore defeating the purpose of a PvP area at all. I thought about maybe only making it the middle zone. But there's only an Alliance and Horde tower on each side... the only thing that could really function as "bases" if you call them. The zone itself proposes some ability to write content and quests for, but that takes a bit of time to do. Nothing could be too advanced either, escort quests, etc. would take too much time to script.
I will agree that Hyjal has long over done its stay, but the problem is we don't really have anything worthy to replace it with. Using a zone like Ungoro Crater would just be weird, aggroing level 50 mobs, running around in the swamp areas looking to kill people? Also, your information on Ungoro is incorrect. There was no waygate in TBC, that was added in Wrath. Also those bases were added in Cataclysm. The zone is pretty useless pre-Wrath.
Getting people out of the world for a reason in general is in many ways practically impossible on Smolderforge. To put it honestly and plainly. Think about it -- we're a funserver, instant 70, professions are offered to you with effort of doing quests/dailies(1 thing that gets you out of the mall), but other than that there is honestly no really other reason why people have a need or excuse to leave.
I have no intention of altering the fundamentals of Smolderforge currently. It would ruin the current server. I have always wanted to expand further than Smolderforge in general, but to do so requires massive amount of resources. Time, people, money, testing, etc, etc. We were considering looking into a TBC project for a while. A PvE server approach where you would do some leveling, and really work your way through raid progression.
However, we're still very busy on perfecting our core at the moment. We still have a bit of things on our timeline right now to be working on: MoveMaps, Multithreading performance, ProcSystem, more Warden checks, etc. Before we can even really begin to start looking into PvE content since that's not much of a primary focus of Smolderforge (sadly), PvP always has dominated. Once PvE is worked on on Smolderforge would a TBC project be possible to venture into since we would have the core, and the content ready to immediately start looking into.
Unfortunately, our eyes have been set to Pre-TBC as of late. We would have to work and 'perfect' a whole other core to venture into this project, which is why the proposed date is set far back. There seems to be a lot of people attempting to create TBC servers right now. laguna (failed and died), FlawlessWoW(failed and died), Relive-WoW (new, who knows where it will go, etc.) There's constantly people making their own "off-spin" versions of TBC servers currently and I simply don't have the time nor desire to try to start marketing a TBC server in this current massive amounts of "JoIN ReLuVV WoW NeW PE RFECT 100% BuGG FrE SeAVEr" stuff right now. I've always strongly despise of advertising on other servers, and currently that's the way these people are trying to "compete". I mean look at Relive-WoW, they completely RIPPED Q-Gaming's website. If that's the current community I would be having to go into, I don't want to.
There's a lot we could do, Pre-TBC, TBC, Wrath, etc. But the current Smolderforge just simply isn't going to be able to suit your desire or needs for much more than it already is. I hate to be completely honest with you, but funservers don't last long. I've tried as much as I can to make the "grind" longer and make things seem more valuable on the server, but in the end, it will all be over quickly. Luckily, man you of you find continuous enjoyment in PvP, arena, battlegrounds, etc. and that gives you much reason to stay; which is great. But, for many people they will eventually have no reason to stay. Servers like Last-WoW, as badly flawed as they are can retain so many of their users because they LOCK them in by making them level. It's an observed fact. Leveling servers will usually tend to be very successful once enough people have leveled since they will have put much time into their character and therefore not reroll, leave servers, or give up on easily. Then by having them leveling, raiding and much progression is possible where it is not on Smolderforge. Smolderforge was never build or designed to be one of these servers. Sorry to put it that way, but it's true. When created Smolderforge in early 2008 I had no idea that I would still be running it to this day. I would have no idea I would eventually reach a 1 million player creation mark, or have content to run out of providing, etc. This is why I want to look into other projects but since Smolderforge continues to run, much attention will continue to be devoted to it making other servers harder to focus and put attention into.
It is something that I look forward to very much one day. But if you know me, I like things to be really great and enjoyable. So the possibility of us expanding very large is going to be slow and long. Sure I could put a Pre-TBC, TBC, Wrath, Cata server online within a few hours. But they wouldn't be designed. I could bullshit them, but then they would suck. So designing has to be absolutely amazing to get people's desire and attention to come over to us, etc. Running one server is let alone enough work so opening more will be difficult to make good and balance them both.
This is the only REAL solution I have to give you, in a very long answer. Is expanding to other servers. The current Smolderforge will/can only do so much for you I'm afraid. I can continue to switch things around, offer more battlegrounds, offer more vanity items here and there, make more events, keep it really special in aspects. But eventually there will be that wall you reach, when it's all over. The progression stops. Many of you have donated for your way to the last gear set. Making progression, basically impossible for you. See the problem? There's no progression. There's no real gear, rep, mats farming, etc. No reason to really get out in the world.
I could continue on and on with my wisdom and philosophy of how server's work and don't work, etc. But I believe many of you have already had too much to read. Sorry about that...
tl;dr version: Impossible to be applied. Post is too long.
Administrator - Project Lead / Server Management / Core Development
Re: New Battlemaster/mall Area
Oh, I did forget to mention that in December when I'm on break I plan to finally move our database off this really, really old MaNGOS one onto a OregonDatabase one. It will take me many, many days to move all our shit over. But once we do, we'll have better stuff. The world will be spawned again, etc.
Administrator - Project Lead / Server Management / Core Development
Re: New Battlemaster/mall Area
Your devotion to this server is amazing. It must be such a big part of your life after so many years of running it. I love this server and so many other people do, it's just a few of us old-timers who are lookin' for something new. There is no other private server like this one. <3
Just clone Darkgroom a few times, then work on a super secret project. :D
Just clone Darkgroom a few times, then work on a super secret project. :D
Arthur C. Clarke - "Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."
-
Firstaidkit
- Donor
- Posts: 2015
Re: New Battlemaster/mall Area
Quoted for truth!Xaru wrote:Your devotion to this server is amazing. It must be such a big part of your life after so many years of running it. I love this server and so many other people do, it's just a few of us old-timers who are lookin' for something new. There is no other private server like this one. <3
And Henhouse now that I read your awesome wall of text I completely understand why it wouldn't be possible to expand so much. Thank you for the explanation!
If it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you..
Follow me at http://twitch.tv/firstaidkitsmolderforge for PvP and good music!
Follow me at http://twitch.tv/firstaidkitsmolderforge for PvP and good music!
Re: New Battlemaster/mall Area
i remember back in 2008, where just getting into a BG was special - now it's kinda normal XD.... it's funny flashing back and remember witnessing everything henhouse said.You're a hell of a good admin henhouse, and a damn good guy to. What you posted has brought a slight realization on many servers.
MVP - Most Valuable Poster (account switched from Sailown234)
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