[Feedback] Open letter to the Smolderforge team.

[TimberWoff]

I rarely visit this forum so a short introduction is due. My nickname is Timber, I play Restoration druid on both factions (Laikaboss horde) mostly with randoms as I never found a guild that stuck. I consider myself a mediocre player. I do okay on battlegrounds, torn to shreds at the arena. I've never played the retail version of the game. I've tried several private servers but never played beyond the Burning Crusade expansion. I’ve been around at Smolderforge since December 2010, with frequent breaks that often last several months.

I don't have a donor account and haven't spent any money on the game in general. I feel guilty for this but as a student it’s either go out or buy video games :) I'm sure some of you can relate. This however puts me in a position to comment on the quality of gameplay for non-donating players on the server.
With all that out of the way you are welcome to decide what my opinions are worth to you.

So, as my University workload came down I found some time to spend on the server. The changes I've seen so far is what made me break my habit and make an appearance here.

First thing that came to my attention is the new Transmog feature. It's amazing and I was very happy to find that it's not donor exclusive. This will go a long way in breaking the monotony of seeing same sets everywhere and get the server some extra well-deserved votes. In fact ever since stumbling upon this feature in Warhammer Online I've dreamed of having something like this in WoW. Little did I know it was actually coming to the only private server I'm playing on. In general a whole damn lot is accessible for everyone free of any charge. I’m sure the new players find this a welcome surprise when they first log in.

Sadly, you won't get the same impression if you stick around the forums for too long. I can only imagine how hard it might be to deal with an unappreciative community. The more you browse recent threads the more it feels like the same 10 people had to share one room for too long. Lack of diversity is a bane of all small communities. It turns forums stale very fast and lacking manners combined with poor attitude do little to improve the situation. Perhaps a fresh minimalistic forum would be a better setting for a healthy community.

But I digress. The web page definitely deserves having something said about it. It gets better every time I see it. It's sleek and functioning, voting is simple, streamlined and rewarding. The code is a bit messy, but that’s what happens when several people are working on it with different levels of motivation :)

If you are reading this far perhaps you would care for a little suggestion. I've noticed that objective based battlegrounds have always suffered from a common problem: lack of enthusiasm on the part of the players to complete said objectives.

The brand new custom open world PvP location also caught my eye and while it looks fresh and awesome it suffers from the same weakness that Hyjal did. It's so often feels one sided or even worse - empty. Perhaps having it as a battleground with equal teams would remedy this and be great fun in general. Mindless zerg clashes might get boring after a while, sure, but I think it would be a refreshing addition to the rotation.

I realize it’s likely that this has already been proposed or worse implemented and showed to be faulty during one of my “breaks” and I hope you will pardon me for not looking it up prior to posting.

Speaking of enthusiasm - for a private server you guys doing a fantastic job. I can't imagine the donor mall bringing in crazy numbers and I don't think someone is funding this out of their pockets for our collective benefit. Yet the server goes on, the connection quality is outstanding, the updates are released and the community is listened to. And not only the donor part of the community, mind you.

Thank you for the hard work - it has not gone unnoticed.

[Gandraman]

I rarely visit this forum so a short introduction is due. My nickname is Timber, I play Restoration druid on both factions (Laikaboss horde) mostly with randoms as I never found a guild that stuck. I consider myself a mediocre player. I do okay on battlegrounds, torn to shreds at the arena. I've never played the retail version of the game. I've tried several private servers but never played beyond the Burning Crusade expansion. I’ve been around at Smolderforge since December 2010, with frequent breaks that often last several months.

I don't have a donor account and haven't spent any money on the game in general. I feel guilty for this but as a student it’s either go out or buy video games :) I'm sure some of you can relate. This however puts me in a position to comment on the quality of gameplay for non-donating players on the server.
With all that out of the way you are welcome to decide what my opinions are worth to you.

So, as my University workload came down I found some time to spend on the server. The changes I've seen so far is what made me break my habit and make an appearance here.

First thing that came to my attention is the new Transmog feature. It's amazing and I was very happy to find that it's not donor exclusive. This will go a long way in breaking the monotony of seeing same sets everywhere and get the server some extra well-deserved votes. In fact ever since stumbling upon this feature in Warhammer Online I've dreamed of having something like this in WoW. Little did I know it was actually coming to the only private server I'm playing on. In general a whole damn lot is accessible for everyone free of any charge. I’m sure the new players find this a welcome surprise when they first log in.

Sadly, you won't get the same impression if you stick around the forums for too long. I can only imagine how hard it might be to deal with an unappreciative community. The more you browse recent threads the more it feels like the same 10 people had to share one room for too long. Lack of diversity is a bane of all small communities. It turns forums stale very fast and lacking manners combined with poor attitude do little to improve the situation. Perhaps a fresh minimalistic forum would be a better setting for a healthy community.

But I digress. The web page definitely deserves having something said about it. It gets better every time I see it. It's sleek and functioning, voting is simple, streamlined and rewarding. The code is a bit messy, but that’s what happens when several people are working on it with different levels of motivation :)

If you are reading this far perhaps you would care for a little suggestion. I've noticed that objective based battlegrounds have always suffered from a common problem: lack of enthusiasm on the part of the players to complete said objectives.

The brand new custom open world PvP location also caught my eye and while it looks fresh and awesome it suffers from the same weakness that Hyjal did. It's so often feels one sided or even worse - empty. Perhaps having it as a battleground with equal teams would remedy this and be great fun in general. Mindless zerg clashes might get boring after a while, sure, but I think it would be a refreshing addition to the rotation.

I realize it’s likely that this has already been proposed or worse implemented and showed to be faulty during one of my “breaks” and I hope you will pardon me for not looking it up prior to posting.

Speaking of enthusiasm - for a private server you guys doing a fantastic job. I can't imagine the donor mall bringing in crazy numbers and I don't think someone is funding this out of their pockets for our collective benefit. Yet the server goes on, the connection quality is outstanding, the updates are released and the community is listened to. And not only the donor part of the community, mind you.

Thank you for the hard work - it has not gone unnoticed.

tltr

[Cube]

tltr

????

[Deems]

tltr

????

"I can't focus for a minute to read some text."

[Cube]

The brand new custom open world PvP location also caught my eye and while it looks fresh and awesome it suffers from the same weakness that Hyjal did. It's so often feels one sided or even worse - empty. Perhaps having it as a battleground with equal teams would remedy this and be great fun in general. Mindless zerg clashes might get boring after a while, sure, but I think it would be a refreshing addition to the rotation.

I agree with you here, at least at some points. The main problem I have with Azshara is that it's basically wsg with no objectives, which makes it suffer from the same weaknesses as wsg does around here. As you said, Hyjal suffered from the same problems, and Azshara was introduced to solve these, which it failed to do. In wsg, people rarely focus on flag capping, preferring to zerg midfield or dick around at the graveyards. This is exactly what happens in Azshara. Coupled with the imbalance that usually plagues the zone, as you pointed out, it makes it even worse. There are quests that try to spread the activity somewhat, but they're few, and usually not incentive enough to do so.

What I would love to see in an open pvp zone is to make it simulate the world pvp that many of us loved back in retail. Spontaneous skirmishing. Obviously you can't perfectly simulate this in a zone where people actually sign to pvp, but there's quite a few things that could be done to make it better.

I understand why a lot of people enjoy Azshara, since the same people enjoy midfield zerging and graveyard farming in bgs. We already have this around here, so it would be nice if Azshara offered us something different.

One thing that could be done, and that's been suggested before, is to have multiple graveyards. About three camps for each faction, guarded by npcs. When you die, you'll randomly resurrect in one of the mentioned camps, with portals around to make traveling between the camps easy, which would also counter a lot of the graveyard camping problems.

There's also a number of things one could do to spread people out around the zone. Azshara already offers quests, which is a good idea. But as said, there's too few of them around to really make a difference. A bigger zone, with more daily quests, and rewards that actually reward people who're already boj/honor capped would help. These rewards could be transmog tokens, say one or two per day. Another form of currency one could use to buy pvp transmog gear, such as the rank 14, season 1 and bg gear. This would obviously mean that this gear would have to be wiped from the current vendors, or the currency changed to whatever currency would be rewarded in Azshara.

Another thing that could be done is to have profession mats spawn around the zone. Flowers, ore veins, supply crates with cloth and leather for example. As it is now, these materials are free as long as you're exalted with sso/aldor/scryers, which would obviously have to be changed.

Pvp objectives, such as the ones found in Eastern Plaguelands or Hellfire Peninsula could also be something that would add a unique feel to the zone, and something to actually keep people in circulation.

You could also make the same transmog currency mentioned obtainable from the new Scarlet Citadel raid, or any other raid for that matter. Profession mats would also have to be obtainable from pve in some way, since it wouldn't really be fair to just have it obtainable from pvp.

There's a lot of things that could be done. It would mean more work, yes, and I'm not even sure if all of it is even possible to pull off. But imo, it would make the server better, so it might be worth the effort.

"I can't focus for a minute to read some text."

Oh, "too long tidn't read."

[Gandraman]

Oh, "too long tidn't read."

Fail ...
Nerd :P

[Cube]

Fail ...
Nerd :P

Irony ...
Nerd :D

[Gandraman]

Fail ...
Nerd :P

Irony ...
Nerd :D

Yep the irony... http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tltr
Cya nerdo. :*

[Cube]

Oh shit.

A much deserved /bow

[Imperium]

need a bigger zone for multiple GYs.

i vote rework silithus with new dailies, bigger objectives with bigger rewards.