Gauging Interest

[Dragonboy]

It may be a bad example, simply because it brings up a whole new and diferent set of issues, but aside from that he nailed it 100% in my opinion.

From what I read from a multitude of people here I tend to agree.

[Raeshlavik]

Bad example. People are not bothered because of this, only because the Consigner happens to die...

True, true. I was more referring from a new user's point of view - you come from NT where it's all flowers and butterflies right into the gaping jaws of a 20 foot tall radioactive werewolf.

[Shian]

True, true. I was more referring from a new user's point of view - you come from NT where it's all flowers and butterflies right into the gaping jaws of a 20 foot tall radioactive werewolf.

That's Istaria for you. Seems there is no middle ground. Only extremes

[Xepher]

I honestly can't believe this discussion has started up again, in another thread. I am quite sick of all these attacks on Order, and the people who call it home. Every single time I see a new player come into DC, I see their questions answered, and many times even help being offered should it be needed. Either way, I wish the constant complaining would stop, especially in public forums where it can become detrimental to other's enjoyment of the game, like Nyoko, and is simply a headache to the rest. If you're not going to post something constructive about the issue, then LET.IT.DIE.

I could quote a bunch of things in here and respond to them, but I'm not going to waste the effort this time, the matter should be closed. If you don't like whats going on in Order, maybe you should consider being the person who DOES help new players instead of 'shun' them as we apparently do, and set an example for others, rather than turn up your nose in disgust, leave, and make multiple posts about how horrible our community is. Who seems to be acting 'holier than thou' now?

No, I will not deny that there are issues with DC, and that things can get rather hectic and dramatic in that channel, but all the same, those people are my online family of sorts, and I do not appreciate all this negativity aimed at us and the server we dwell in, and I am most definitely not alone in these feelings, or ones similar. I would love nothing more for Order to grow in population, and to be the happier place it was when I first joined, but all things take time, this is no exception. It will take time and subtle, gradual work for it to improve, and in my own case, I have stayed my hand and become much kinder and helpful to new players. If everyone does the same, and we stop getting rude new players mind you (Our behavior is not the only cause here), things can get better.

So as you can see, we are all VERY MUCH AWARE THAT THERE IS A PROBLEM HERE, so you can STOP reminding us now. Thank you and have a nice day.

[Shian]

*chuckes* Problem? You think there is a problem?

Really I have not seen a problem. Order's forum population is just naturally as fickle as a teenager and I've come to accept that fact. Just watch the posts go from month to month and it's effect in game.

"OMG too many blighted hatchies!" *blighted hatchies leave*

*month later*

"Hey I'm getting bored! Anyone wanna RP?" *RP starts up again*

"OMG too much drama! I'm quitting because I'm too serious of an RPer and people have been picking on me! 111" *further players leave*

*month later*

"OMG! Where'd everybody go? The channels are silent!" *players slowly start up RP again*

"OMG! There's a dead hatchie running around!/Trying to kill other hatchies! Think of the new players! 111 This madness needs to stop!"

Really, Order, stop listening to these forum hounds and just do whatever you *prefer* doing. I've only been playing for a couple of years, but by now I almost find it touching that the players of Order are willing to help out the forum posters with whatever it is they desire. Even when they get exactly what they want and complain about it a month later.

[Xepher]

*chuckes* Problem? You think there is a problem?

Really I have not seen a problem. Order's forum population is just naturally as fickle as a teenager and I've come to accept that fact. Just watch the posts go from month to month and it's effect in game.

"OMG too many blighted hatchies!" *blighted hatchies leave*

*month later*

"Hey I'm getting bored! Anyone wanna RP?" *RP starts up again*

"OMG too much drama! I'm quitting because I'm too serious of an RPer and people have been picking on me! 111" *further players leave*

*month later*

"OMG! Where'd everybody go? The channels are silent!" *players slowly start up RP again*

"OMG! There's a dead hatchie running around!/Trying to kill other hatchies! Think of the new players! 111 This madness needs to stop!"

Really, Order, stop listening to these forum hounds and just do whatever you *prefer* doing. I've only been playing for a couple of years, but by now I almost find it touching that the players of Order are willing to help out the forum posters with whatever it is they desire. Even when they get exactly what they want and complain about it a month later.

According to these folks, there is indeed a problem. I don't particularly agree, but I at least acknowledge that Order is... as you say, fickle as a teenager and just like one, is prone to having tantrums.

Other than that, I've only seen loud-mouthed new players be 'chased away', or god-moders who refuse to stop even after we've told them that you don't do that in RP because its just plain rude.

Anyway, I'm going a bit off tangent here; you're so right, Shian. Spastic or not, Order rocks and if others don't like it, they can stay clear of it and keep their comments to themselves. I don't care if Chaos is 10 times better and nicer of a community, you never see Order players lavishly complaining about that shard, so how about extending the same respect for the sake of keeping peace?

[velveeta]

hmmmmm - well, i guess all i can say is that i am sorry leets have found my beloved game......

[Raeshlavik]

Well, I've sat here for a while, and penned several responses - but eventually came to the conclusion as Xeffer; it really isn't worth the effort. The discussion has been had, others with similar stories have come forward, and perhaps the issue at hand is a bit more visible. Contrary to Xeffer's opinion, everyone obviously did not know this was an issue, or thought it isolated...

In just this thread we're looking at 6 potential players (me, two friends, two people Teto knows, and one that Lov knows) that have left due to the vocal minority, and 8 if you count the other two Teto mentioned who left because there's no real population to speak of to have an economy because few ever stick around...

If we figure there are 100 active people on Order (a stretch from what I saw over a four month span), you just lost somewhere between six and eight percent of the population due to this issue; and thats only from what we've seen here - there are probably more who just never bothered to say anything.

A few aren't really going to care about this - they have their few friends they hang out with and the server population levels don't really impact them. The rest should probably see this as an issue.

My real epiphany on this is that the 'fix' for this issue isn't my problem; I am no longer a resident of Order. I've done all I can do, which is mention the issue... Think of it as a bug report on the new user experience of the server.

I also came to the conclusion that this situation, oddly enough, actually positively effects me - especially if it continues into the future. This is because Chaos will continue get 5-6 new players each evening, some will be refugees from Order, and perhaps a few of those each week will transition into long-term paying players and continue to fill the server with people. This will therefore keep the game going and, selfishly, making my land-owning efforts in-game worth while as the game will be around for a few more years.

Chaos, in general, tries quite hard to make our new user experience very upbeat and friendly, and have knowledgeable players very visible to the new folks - and oddly enough being friendly and visible works...

[Nambroth]

That's a bit silly. The experience on any server is incredibly situational and individualistic! There are folks that have felt burnt on Chaos and gone over to Order. There are those that didn't enjoy Order and went to Chaos. Same to a lesser extent with Blight. A person's choice on the server they play is their own and I can only hope that they enjoy their time there, regardless of which server they choose.

[Veruliyam]

Sorry. I can't sit here with a straight face and yell from the mountaintops that Chaos is better.

It's not.

It's different.

I've been on Order partially because I presumed something, reacted, and it led to what can only be in retrospect, a comedy of errors.

Looking back on it, it wasn't handled well by all parties involved, in my opinion.

Another reason is real-life issues has greatly curtailed my guildmates being able to play as often as I do on Chaos, and I wanted to work on my Order hatchie.

Aucapoma

Is Faffy 6 meters tall?

[LungTien Temeraire]

Chaos shard has his own good things, Order shard has anothers...
We can't speak about refugees, I think.

[Teto Frum]

Rae I'd say 100 active on order is a little off the mark, theres probably 25 to 30 active id guess in the guild I'm in alone. If anything Orders population is increasing currently not decreasing, we've welcomed three back in the past week and also added a couple new members(to our guild). New player has been busy with lots of requests and questions so I'm assuming they aren't alts or guilded but true new players. The NT connie issues have for the most part been addressed, but that is a constant balancing act of veterans providing essentials without stealing what little of the market might exist for new players craft wares.

Order is a true living and breathing community and like any community real or imaginary we have our disagreements, Chaos has had no less their share of problems, RP adds another element on order but it also adds another source of area for disagreement, the same way non RPers think our petty squabbles over it foolish, I can say we've also not had some of the problems a shard centred on getting it accomplished has, such as kill stealing and that sort, even when well populated, camping and kill stealing the source of most forum fights from Chaos Ive seen on here were not a problem.

I think this is an old complaint that resurfaces through the shards general rotation of population. I do think though that currently Order is aware of some of its short comings and several have worked to address them constructively. People come and people go and they list a variety of reasons for it Orders problems are nothing destroying the shard in my eyes. I personally found Chaos no more helpful or ready to drop everything for a newbie, so much of this is just timing theres helpful people on all shards, and I'm sry probably jerks on them all too, no different than real life theres people thatll help you and folks that won't but theres no shortage of friendly helpful people on Order.

I'm happy and proud to call Order home and despite the odd black sheep glad to be part of the family that inhabits it.

[Veya]

Really?

We're really arguing about this again?

Can we just have the devs delete these threads? I'm really sick of you people lumping the entire server together because you had a few bad experiences. Who cares if there's roleplay in Dragon? Who cares if people are OOC? Let it be. Everyone. No wonder Order's population has dropped. Believe it or not, it's a roleplay server, and roleplay is going to happen. If you don't want to accept that, then there's the door. If I, as a serious roleplayer, can accept the extreme amounts of OOC going on everywhere, not just Dragon, then you can do it, too.

I am done sugar coating my responses to these. So bring it on.

[Frith-Rae]

actually it wasn't that we were arguging about it again..

This is actually an older thread than the other, more recent one. And someone resurrected it instead of posting in the other thread that was newer...

If that made sense.

And I hope the devs dont delete these threads. Sorry but I think it is a problem - enough so that I've even debated deleting my own account because the community has gone down the crapper or is just plain dead.

It needs to be discussed when its an issue. If you don't like it why do you come in here and read it when its clearly about the same thing?

I don't read forums and threads I don't care much about - so why come into a thread that clearly is active and tell everyone ELSE to be quiet and stop posting?

(you as in not anyone in particular but people who don't want to read about it in general)

[LOVWYRM]

only for the records:

I was called to Order by the friendly voices of the best roleplayers I ever met.
And I called my friends, they called their friends aso.
Other friendly voices assured us, that there is no need to rp on this shard
(cause lots of old Unity players were only part-time roleplayers or not able to rp in a foreign language).
So, over the years, we have a growing community, and I hope orign order players do agree, we melt into the existing communiy of order.
We still do our best to get more players, we (the non hard core roleplayers) take responsibilities for the good of our shard.
And- I dare to say- we are the mayority.

Usually we do not interfere in the affairs of the rps.
Our interests and intentions are not the same. Np.

But in the moment, when we see players (or even friends) leave, due to rp
circumstances, we speak up. As we did here.

As its not the first or second time, that I had to read, that if I do not like rp- or a certain kind of rp
I should leave,
I ask:
Who do you think you are to say so?

Order is the home of all of us.
If people leave because of rp- the roleplayers have to admit their responsibillity- and work on that. And take the criticism of the others.
As we (the non or semi rps) have the responsibility to care for those who want to leave, or even left for other reason (e.g.: Not enough hunters there, noone to talk to, noone to help build a plot aso).

This is our shard. We have to take good care of it- together!
We can only do that if we know about the probs, and dicuss those frankly.
Deleting this thread- well- lets say it polite^^
would not be the right solution.

[Dragonboy]

I personally found Chaos no more helpful or ready to drop everything for a newbie, so much of this is just timing theres helpful people on all shards, and I'm sry probably jerks on them all too, no different than real life theres people thatll help you and folks that won't but theres no shortage of friendly helpful people on Order.

I'm happy and proud to call Order home and despite the odd black sheep glad to be part of the family that inhabits it.

Off course there is a matter of timing, but the higher level residents of New Player Assistance channel do their best to keep the new players happy by helping them.
There are indeed players as well which come online when Maintenance is over and go offline when maintenance starts again without ever talking in Marketplace or Dragons. If those are the only guys online yeah then you are screwed, but most people in and outside of NPA are always glad to offer assistance, only we don’t always deal in instant gratification so you might have to focus your attention to some interesting trees or kill cows just outside NT town to keep yourself busy until someone has time and you cannot expect people to always drop everything just for you.

Personally however I believe that there is a difference between asking a question for directions and wanting it solved as well by asking/demanding that you bring them to the location or help them with the whole quest. I can understand that new players have no knowledge of their surroundings, but honestly neither did any of us when we first started and I refuse to guide every new players to every location that they might ever wish to go. Especially when I am determined to finish some lairshaping activities… When that is all finished and I have nothing else to do then I might just relax all day in NT guiding the Hatchlings or low level bipeds. The problem for me is that if I don’t set goals for my lairshaping nothing gets done and I would probably only be relaxing doing other out of game stuff.

Also I simply don’t deal in instant gratification all the time or at least every time someone asks and yes I have things to do as well… Like 70% of my lair still needs to be build.
What I try to do however is give textual answers to questions that are asked. There are however questions that saddens me… For example a question from a dragon hatchling fresh from Skalkaar having done the tutorial quests (I hope) for crafting who is now residing in NT asks “How can I make bronze bars?�. However even those questions deserve an answer and are given…

While you are proud to be on Order, I am proud to be on Chaos and we both have to make the best of things at all times.

As a sidenote and more ontopic again I wonder why people don’t act against those self proclaimed kings of Dragon Channel. Name and Shame them big time would be an option, yell at them harder then they do against new players is another. This is not EVE online where people pay for an additional accounts for the sole purpose of posting on the forums in order to safely Name and Shame each other without getting retaliations. This is a PvE game so who cares if those self proclaimed kings of DC no longer talk to you, if they are annoying and ignored by enough people they might even stop the BS all together. Doing nothing or simply wanting to have these threads deleted does not solve the problem. (general message, not directed to any person in particular)

[Raeshlavik]

Rae I'd say 100 active on order is a little off the mark, theres probably 25 to 30 active id guess in the guild I'm in alone. If anything Orders population is increasing currently not decreasing, we've welcomed three back in the past week and also added a couple new members(to our guild). New player has been busy with lots of requests and questions so I'm assuming they aren't alts or guilded but true new players. The NT connie issues have for the most part been addressed, but that is a constant balancing act of veterans providing essentials without stealing what little of the market might exist for new players craft wares.

Excellent! No, really, I'm very happy to hear this. There's nothing quite like Order in the MMO world and even though I don't play there, I do enjoy reading the stories that are developed from there. Chaos might be the rough sketch that makes up the world, but Order is the colors that make it art.

Regarding the active user numbers, I'm glad I'm wrong. I took the average number of people in visible chat channels while I was on the server and multiplied by three, figuring a two-for-one ratio might be in the ballpark.

The comment wasn't about hard numbers though, it was merely to point out that when you've got a small group, loosing 6-8 of them isn't trivial - and I was attempting to get this into the thread before the "if you don't like it leave" post, so I didn't carefully research the numbers. My apologies.

Order is a true living and breathing community and like any community real or imaginary we have our disagreements, Chaos has had no less their share of problems, RP adds another element on order but it also adds another source of area for disagreement, the same way non RPers think our petty squabbles over it foolish, I can say we've also not had some of the problems a shard centred on getting it accomplished has, such as kill stealing and that sort, even when well populated, camping and kill stealing the source of most forum fights from Chaos Ive seen on here were not a problem.

I think the gumping over camping and kill stealing will be a good problem to have - as it stands now beings such as SoG and Thisleface only really serve to make hatchling trips to Draak more exciting for the ancient dragon or 120+ biped who is along for the ride.

(I jest - I'm simply not of a level to participate yet. )

I never really got that community feeling while I was on Order; then again I wasn't n+1 alt of someone who has essentially built the server. I believe your adventures as a truly new, no-name character illustrated the same.

I heard several times that joining a guild was the best option - my few forays into this were met with yawns at best. I continually got the impression that most people had seen new players depart so often that they simply couldn't get invested in "yet another player who was going to vanish somewhere between levels 20 and 30".

And I can understand this, really. I don't know of a good sign that a player is going to be here for the long term...

Aamer has a quest he gives new players to receive real guild membership (They have to give him a blighted weapon, two 100-unit stacks of two different processed resources, and a tell from someone they have assisted), which really seems to get them invested in the guild and they seem to stick around a bit longer. Might be something to look at for anyone worried that the new player they are 'gearing' will be little more than a row in a big database in Apache Junction in a few weeks...

[Hadrian Kross]

I like DragonRP, but to really get a better roleplay experience I think it takes being in the same zone as others...

Can someone please go over the channels available in-zone?

[Raptress]

Channels aren't zone based, so there aren't any "in-zone" channels to list, besides /say and such.

[Hadrian Kross]

so /say and /shout?