Did it work?

[1d20]

On a personal note, a mixture of work, university, poor health, social life and the VBU "not being my cup of tea", I've found myself more or less no longer interested in Illarion (the game itself, not the community!) - but that doesn't change the fact I was wondering; did the VBU work? Did it revive the game? Can we see some stats? I was curious if all that hard work yielded its fruits. I hope so in any case.

[Leon Demelii]

The stats are on the homepage, bro.

http://illarion.org/statistics/us_histo ... layers.php

[Ezor Edwickton]

Basically, No...

[Nitram]

The VBU did work as expected. It was accepted by the current community and we invested the last two months and solving bugs and improving the gameplay based on the community feedback. The amount of players prior and after the VBU remained at the same level, which is a success.

A increase of the player base was not expected yet as we did not start yet to promote the game. We wanted to fix the most annoying bugs before trying to get many new players. Else we won't be able to keep them.

Nitram

[Fooser]

If you follow regular patterns, then yes it worked. The technical/content aspects of the game have greatly improved. Every single game will always lose a sizable number of people after release. The way to growth for a game like Illarion is to slowly build up more dedicated players over a longer period of time, not try to pile on tons of people who don't really care in a short period of time.

From a roleplay perspective I can see how there are mixed reviews .. the lack of player initiative due to NPC leaders + players being split into 3-4 factions has made things a bit stale, but they could certainly ramp up the factional intrigue to cure some of that.

[Firefly]

but they could certainly ramp up the factional intrigue to cure some of that.

*cue foreshadowing and mysterious DUN DUN DUN music here*

[forty]

I would like to see player characters promoted to leadership positions to be able to form faction politics. That was a cool feature of some UO shards, that you could actually play the guy in charge and there were people ready to take your place if you let your guard down.

But from the responses of the staff team so far, that is not going to happen in Illarion.

[Salathe]

I don't care what anyone says. This is a great game now.

After about 4 hours of playing the VBU I looked back on the entirety of the game and all the epic events I was involved in, and they all felt so trivial. Telling such stories of how I killed nightmare or found usharas cure for the undead disease, just seem pointless. Most likely due to an amazing world which the dev team has created.

I'm gonna go ahead and sum up the *majority* of the last 7 years of illarion

-infinite loop of PKing
-political simulator
-political people abusing tax system
-mages abusing magic system
-ooc shit fests caused by the infinite loop of PKs

The very minor part of the last 7 years
-Amazing RP for the sake of RPing (most of which was done by a small group of players who only RPed with themselves)

I have an issue currently in illarion that NEVER once existed for me in the ~12 years I've been here. Today I logged on and I had a small shopping list of errands.
-Go to runewick and bring back some items from my depot there
-Organize my guilds armory
-craft 1 item that takes 30 seconds
-take screenshots of that armory and post it on the forums

I was ingame for four hours trying to accomplish that. I ran into people in runewick and rped a ton. Ran into friends in cadomyr which took up the majority of my time in the form of RP, and then organizing the armory actually took like 30-40 minutes because of bag lag. This now happens pretty much every day I get on. I was talking to Tyan (irenicus) and we agreed that we cant just jump into illarion when we have stuff to do, because we always get caught in roleplay and then there goes 4 hours of our life. I now have a list of requirements of things i have to do before logging on, because if i dont shower before i get on, then i don't shower until about 4-5PM when I have class.

Now, getting utterly distracted by RP happened pre vbu, but it never happened to me on a daily basis and I played alot and was not a narrow player who only RPed with select people, and it now happens with people i dont even play with. First time I met chester foolwit I ended up roleplaying with him for about an hour and a half. Anytime I go to visit Ufedhin, im there for about 30+ minutes when i only needed 5 potions. Now that we dont have that PK mentality that ruled this game for 7 years, everyone roleplays all the time, moreso than I ever saw pre-vbu.

In the end, I think the dev team did an amazing job on so many levels with this update =)

Edit:

I would like to see player characters promoted to leadership positions to be able to form faction politics. That was a cool feature of some UO shards, that you could actually play the guy in charge and there were people ready to take your place if you let your guard down.

But from the responses of the staff team so far, that is not going to happen in Illarion.

This has happened plenty in Illarion, and IMO it lead to way more negativity than it did positive. Leaders stole money and banned people throughout and in the end all that happened was endless PKs. This was successful in small towns that had a very very small membershipbase and pretty much was its own game for the players involved because they typically didnt RP with people outside of their group. I think the current system is amazing as long as GMs keep up their presence as leaders. Those small player groups who only RPed with themselves is the main driver for the current system since you could log on with 15 people online and not be able to find anyone since we had ~9 towns.

[Dovakin Ken Kapsalot]

I like that since coming back to the game, I tend to log on around the same times as a certain group of people, which really helps the depth of RP

There's usually at least one or two new people to meet too. But sometimes I log in, and theres just not much going on.

Granted I haven't left Cadomyr except to die or nearly die, though.

[Teflon]

I do not sign this. I have tried to hand plenty of possibilities to players where they could take leadership in Galmair. For instance, you have the possibility to take responsibility about Galmair's trade policy, its defence, its dipolomcy, its spirituell wellbeing etc. You can also become representive of your craft. Now, I added the role of quartermaster. And I even if you do not like any of this positions, i announced you could come up with your ideas or whatever you have in mind. And I do not know how often I have mentioned IG that it would be possible to have more than one person in charge for every position (I think this is necessary due to that we have players in different time zones and with different languages). Furthermore, each of the position-announcements says you can always apply. It is even possible to compete with Brunsberg about his position as left hand of the Don. You would just need to grow in the favour of the Don and make it better than Brunsberg.

So, there is the possibility to take responsibility and be a leader. Of course, the Don could always overrule you in Galmair. So whatever you do, you need to have in mind the Don and his few rules. And I do not think it is very difficult to act in favour of the Don. If you read some books about Galmair, his rule columns and listen to the Don, it should be easily become obvious what the Don likes and what he does not like. I have only "overruled" a decision of one of my fellows once until now. Actually, i did not really overrule him but let the Don complain about his decision. He changed his mind then but he still had the option to go with his first idea. He did not. In this case, however, it was not because I did not like his decision. I like how he interacts with the Don and tries to gain advantage. It was rather because I wanted to make it more challenging for him. So, I looked for an IG reason to challenge him and with the Don it is not so difficult to find one. In this regard, I like to stress you should not see the faction leaders as a limitation of your possibilities but as a challenge for your RP.

[Achae Eanstray]

There were some players ig for a short time then left but I wish to throw out a challenge to them.. This short time was when it all was new and there WAS a decrease in roleplay due to everyone getting used to new controls and the game. You ever run past a player with the "your burden too heavy" spam then realize when already past they actually said something, go back and they are gone? How about trying to stand in front of another player figuring out which controls to use? Yes, it is different but becoming easier now. There is more and more roleplay going on and less concentration on skilling. I hope the ones that did leave will decide to give it another try.

[forty]

Unfortunately, I think the players who have left the game right away, are probably not reading the forum.

[Farwin Battlebrook]

I played pre-VBU approx. 5 years ago. Saying that makes me feel old. But, the update has brought me back to playing on a regular basis. I'm usually on late on GMT-6 so I don't see as many players online, but the crafting and archery systems have been reworked enough to keep me intrigued. The people I have came across have been wonderful to RP with and have been very generous. I look to meeting more of you (again )!

[Tyan Masines]

You can't keep everyone in the Game, no matter how hard you try. We've met a player who seemed to be very interested in the game, commented ig and ooc that he had great fun and so on, but never showed up again.
Then again others who just came into the game more 'casual' stick around.

It's not always only the current players fault that people leave again, or the fault of client flaws, or what not. Sometimes people just reconsider and move on. I think a real 'trend' can not be determined by looking at then individuals, but maybe looking at 100, or 200. The big question is - in 100 new players, how many stay, and how many are you aiming at to stay?

[forty]

I would also like to bring up another point about, strictly speaking, active players. Roleplay for a good amount of people is like going to theatre, or movies. A once a week or less sort of activity.
Not something you do every day (because it gets boring otherwise, to be online every day without anything to say or talk about). In Illarion I have seen some extreme cases of addiction to roleplay, there are players here who appear to be playing every single day for over 6 hours a day. This seems to be considered a norm here, and a definition of active player.
This is probably not a very healthy definition. We should not expect to see a lot of players on every day. Some may pop up once a week to play a scene or quest, that's perfectly normal too. If you are looking only at the hardcore everyday-ers, then of course your numbers will be lower.

In my opinion, roleplay is quality over quantity. I'd rather play rare, but make scenes memorable, than play daily with nothing rich to contribute. I.e. if your character speaks the words "I am bored", and that's how you feel as a player, maybe it's time to log out and do something exciting in real life. So, Illarion's success from that perspective should be measured in fun level of the roleplay versus numeric capacity of roleplay going on.

Again, this is just a third opinion of a new player.

[Dovakin Ken Kapsalot]

Sometimes being bored and having mundane RP is more healthy then the exciting stuff.

How many people live super cool exciting lives?

[rakust dorenstkzul]

Having dull RP makes the fantastical RP more fantastical.

[Dovakin Ken Kapsalot]

Having dull RP makes the fantastical RP more fantastical.

+1

bad sex is better then n- oh no, wait..