Anyone know about how any players Istaria has? Are the numbers okay?

[medweasel]

Hello, I was just wondering if anyone has any idea on how many active subscriptions Istaria has? The world seems very empty on some days, especially Dalimond. I just went there for the first time since coming back and almost cried. No consigners, the Quartermaster is gone, and worse of all no one was there. It used to be one of the major hubs and I still have fond memories of trick or treating there and seeing all the people with masks and their little candy bags, hehehe. So many zones are empty and I feel awful. This is truly a wonderful game and I don't know why it hasn't garnered more people. Maybe people remember the past but I've been trying to get the word out that Istaria is getting better every day. Virtrium is doing a great job and they're the kind of company you want to run a mmo. The community is still the friendliest and nicest I've ever had the pleasure of knowing - even if some people are getting a bit carried away on Consigner prices - especially horde loot - It used to be that you sold all horde loot at 1/10th the horde cost - ie if something had a horde of 2000 then you sell it for 200. (But that's just my opinion - if people pay the prices then by all means go for it, it's not a bad thing just something I noticed is all)

Anyway I got off topic. Does Istaria have the numbers to support and maintain itself without the Dev's starving to death? Do they have other money making projects? I know they have the license for the game engine and I thought some other software so maybe they sell usage licenses on the side?

Maybe they should do in-game advertisements to boost revenue. I don't know I just don't ever want Istaria to close down. Well at least not in a long time. I think it's the best mmo ever made and no other mmo comes close to having the sheer land mass of this game or the varied cities, zones, geography. They truly pulled a miracle off making this game. I know it has it's share of glaring problems but what they managed to do is miraculous. I love the night sky and how BIG the game world is. I haven't even seen half of it and I love how it takes a while to run somewhere and I love the run speed increase on the roads and the crafting ,, I could go on and on. I just hope they have enough of us to help keep it going. Keep up the good work Virtrium. You'll get my 15 bucks every month

[medweasel]

Sorry for the overuse of smiley's I was having too good of a time using them. I wish there were more, hehehe : )

[RuneDragoon]

The reason why there is not a lot of advertisement right now is that they want to make sure a lot of the problems with the game are fixed. They fixed and Revamped T1... Released T6 content (Dralnok's Doom) and probably now will work on everything between.

[LOVWYRM]

lol- I love your posts- and your smilies, medweasel.

You surely are one of our kin

And do not worry about the numbers- we are doin`fine.
Enjoy your life here.
Join the various chat channels
we are more than you might guess

[Kulamata]

Sometime ago, in a different forum, one of the devs said that Istaria was in the black and subs were growing...

When Virtrium took over, their first priorities didn't all show up directly in the game; rebuilding the broken billing system, importing the Unity players who'd been lost in limbo, and fixing some bugs and exploits. Since then, some rebalancing, and the change in cargo disk speed (probably a lot more important than it sounds) and whatever I've forgotten, with a quiet period followed by the simultaneous completion of the "Dungeon" and Vista projects. The first changes seemed to be aimed at retention, the latter seem like a good basis for an expansion push when all loose ends are tied down. So I'd definitely expect a population pop in the fairly near future. Ever since Virtrium took over, I've admired what seemed to me to be their sensible and pragmatic priorities.

You didn't say which server you're on. As you may know, Chaos has more players, Order has the more refeened sorts dont'cha know...

[Vaz]

My god, it's full of emoticons!

Istaria is a niche game, and that generally entails a small playerbase. Couple that fact with its massive world and you have a very thinly spread population. Players clot at the lowest-level area and the highest-level areas - New Trismus, the Eastern Deadlands and Satyr isles, and the regions associated with Dralnok's Doom. Bristugo the travel hub and Aughundell the shopping mall are other gathering points. But ultimately the best way to get into contact with your fellow players and feel un-alone is to join chat channels and maybe a guild.

Virtrium has not released figures or even rough estimates of subscription quantity and peak concurrent users, but you can check how many players are currently logged into the server you're on by typing /who and, in the window that comes up, pressing the search button without selecting any filters. The list does not display more than 50, but on Order hitting that cap qualifies as a busy day; how often Chaos reaches 50+, I have no idea.

[Sigi]

Really, we are only with 3. Using different names and such. You can imagine it's a lot of work pretending we are with more but we are doing the best we can.


I'm sorry you just missed us at Dali ..

[Shian]

Also keep in mind that "Player hubs" shift every so often.

Haven't been around (or paying attention) long enough to see Istaria's shifts, but it's fascinating to see it go on on many other games.

The current ones for Order I believe are Aug and Tazoon.

[Vaz]

The current ones for Order I believe are Aug and Tazoon.

Lagzoon, really? Interesting. I'd love to know why, just out of surprised curiosity.

[awdz]

tazoon is pretty and not nearly as laggy as it once was, for me anyway

[Shian]

Lagzoon, really? Interesting. I'd love to know why, just out of surprised curiosity.

Because I meant Bristugo not Tazoon...

[medweasel]

Thanks for the replies everyone. Somedays there seems to be alot of players and others there aren't. I was a bit surprised when I came back to see so many players playing. Also I liked seeing all the dragons. I can remember when there were more bipeds than dragons (or so it seemed to me) but now it seems like there's alot of dragons which is a good thing : )

I don't know. I'm just so happy they fixed it for vista. I had been making trial accounts for months to see if I could get the game to work. I had so many different accounts that I had to write Virtrium to see which one was my original. And the nice folks at Virtrium sent me a email within one day and even gave me a 14 day trial to make sure it worked ok and to delete some of my characters. I had like ten or twelve of them, hehehe. So I logged in and it worked great. Back in the old days my pc couldn't run Horizons very well and lag was awful. They had a ram leak and I would have to log out every 3 hours or so because it would slow to a crawl but I still played and still had fun. I bet I had 5 fps, hehehe. Now I have a decent pc and can almost run it all on high. After logging in and checking to see if it worked then deleting my characters I went ahead and got a gifted subscription right away. I wanted to pay them for their game and efforts and not wait till the end of the trial. I love this game, virtriums attitude and customer support and this community. I have some trouble because I'm not very social in mmo's. I'm trying to be but I have a hard time grouping and hardly ever guild. I don't know why, I guess it's easier to solo then I can take all the breaks I want or need. Pluls I have some medical conditions that cause me alot of pain so someday I just don't feel real well and it's hard to socialize.

Ok, I got way off topic. Thanks everyone, I appreciate all of your posts.

[Threxx]

FWIW, my first couple of days back have been a VERY pleasant surprise. A couple years ago when I first came back, things definitely looked empty. This time, my first character met four others in the tutorial zone alone, and NT has been bustling every time I've logged on.

For someone who has only had snapshots from two years ago and today, the improvement is obvious. Great job, Virtrium!

[Spirit]

FWIW, my first couple of days back have been a VERY pleasant surprise. A couple years ago when I first came back, things definitely looked empty. This time, my first character met four others in the tutorial zone alone, and NT has been bustling every time I've logged on.

For someone who has only had snapshots from two years ago and today, the improvement is obvious. Great job, Virtrium!

That's awesome to hear I hope the improvement continues.

Rakku

[Greenclaw1]

tazoon is pretty and not nearly as laggy as it once was, for me anyway

Yeah that was laggy back in the day, I currently play a MMO now where the average player built City is about 3 times the size of Tazoon, it's a hand crafted seamless world with sub continents bigger than than Istaria's world put together. 1000+ players can siege a player city defended by another 1000 players and the game engine the dev built from the ground up for this MMO can handle it pretty good. I'd hate to think what Istaria's engine would do if all the players went to Tazoon today, The Alchemy engine is a round peg in a square hole engine for creating MMO's with really.

[Sigi]

I'd hate to think what Istaria's engine would do if all the players went to Tazoon today,

Well, don't think about it then.

[Spirit]

I'd hate to think what Istaria's engine would do if all the players went to Tazoon today

The Doomsday Clock would hit midnight...

Rakku