On Player Spread, Hubs, and First Impressions

[Gremkarc]

Hi forumites, here begins a sputtering of thoughts I have had after playing (and very much enjoying!) Arelith over a period of roughly one month. None of my characters are as yet above level ten, so this feedback mostly concerns the early game from the perspective of a new player (where I'd guess player retention is most make-or-break) with no prior experience of NWN PWs. Everything I go on to say here should be processed with one thing in mind: I think Arelith is an immense achievement and I know not to take that for granted. All the same, as I rise in levels on multiple characters, I've begun to pick up a few concerns I'd love to provoke some construction discussion about. Here goes.

Player Population & Spread

Managing the game's population is I'd suppose an evergreen concern for the makers of Arelith, and I really want to focus on this in light of a few posts I've been reading in recent days.

I've been doing some research into player counts, and for that purpose, this thread has been golden; I only wish it was still being updated! The reason for my interest concerns how Arelith expands outwards month-on-month, with new areas and associated writs. Because my question here is, as the world is expanding, is the playerbase also?

Clearly from 2016 it has. In the January of that year, it was stated that 674 unique players had played Arelith in the preceding month. By July of the following year, 1020. November 2018, 1784, and in the September of 2021, 2121. So, since 2016, the player population, month-on-month, has almost tripled. I'm leaving out the EE launch months because clearly those aren't representative of the overall curve, even if EE in all likelihood did have a positive long-term impact on the population of the game.

Even so, what we see from January 2021 to September 2021 is a steady population of around 2,000 users a month, rising no higher than about 120 players. What's interesting to note here is that in this timespan, Guldorand was released, an entire new city with its own player-organised government system and gameplay opportunities. It was a significant expansion of the world, a new place for players to congregate, a northern counterpart to Cordor. Reading a recent thread about "Guldo starts", the point was raised that it was made in part to foster a new RP hub, a goal that, at least in that poster's opinion, has not been met. Various factors unknown to me are probably at player here, but I'm going to take an educated guess on one: if player numbers across the board aren't shooting up, but remaining stable, then introducing entirely new areas built for sophisticated roleplay runs the risk of spreading RP too thinly.

Which sounds like I'm calling Guldorand, a place I've only passed through on the way while using ferries, a mistake. I'd hate to do that because the city looks absolutely beautiful, and is clearly, in visuals and in atmosphere, a great backdrop for RP. I speak from experience in saying that, when there is a city in-game you think is so much more thematically interesting than the one used for RP (in my case, Orsinium over Wayrest, over on Elder Scrolls Online), you're going to do everything in your power to attract people to the cooler spot. But when that spot has barriers up (say, by being an additional purchase, or being a spot you'd only otherwise get to at a higher level), any big plans for are going to meet with a natural, circumstantial resistance.

To pick up on something a user said on the Discord, "I suspect there have been quite a few folks over the last two years or whatever who have thought "I got this great spot, I got the ideas to make it grow, and I got some plans to make it cool" only to realize all that means nothing without the people gathering".

And this has knock-on effects for how new players experience the world. Because even if the new hub doesn't catch fire as intended, there'll still always be a hardcore of players who, as mentioned, love the new setting far more than the original place and persevere to make it work. This still has effects on the original hub of Cordor, though, because it loses those pioneering players, and newbies like me just starting out in the game have a smaller pool of players to interact with. Inaccessible hubs, and Guldorand is surely one, are always going to start and continue with a disadvantage; very usually (and this happens in MMO RP as well) the strongest hub is the first city/major settlement that most new players first encounter.

To put it another way, 300 players (which, from what I've experienced, is about Arelith's peak per night) can only populate so much of the world; be they involving themselves in settlement politics, levelling, sailing, or RPing in public areas). As sacrilege as it might sound, sometimes it's better to gather players (or non-Skal surface dwellers) into one spot.

Admitting outright that I'm asking from a position of ignorance, what was the average activity level of Cordor at the time of Guldorand's development? Was Cordor overcrowded? Was the creation of a new city hub seen as a solution to space out RP and solve a housing/quarter shortage? Or was Guldorand made because it's the natural evolution of any virtual RPG world to expand in order to feed ravenous player appetites? One thing I'm certain of is that Guldorand cannot have been a blind decision.

It's just that... in a lite-MMO like this one (and I know, I'm already getting hunches after just a month's play) I can't help but feel that giving in one hand and taking away with the other isn't a bad thing? Might Guldo have been better as a replacement to Cordor, if it was so much more sophisticated in its design and quality of art? I'm guessing such a move would have been far too controversial, but if there is a mentality about (as has been suggested elsewhere) that roleplay starts at high levels, and everyone must rush through, adding a new mid/late-game city into the game feels sort of like an endorsement of that?

Advanced Starts

A comment on these, which I'm not going to turn into a suggestion. I know that in any RPG, the first few levels can be very dull and tedious if you've already gone through them a number of times. You don't yet have m/any options for builds, and the same dungeons have long lost their lustre.

But the thing tha changes each time, and on Arelith should theroetically lead the way, is roleplay. Roleplay is content; other player-characters are content. Even if the sewers/tin mine/whatever have been rinsed and rinses and rinsed, you're still getting something profoundly new out of it if you're going into those areas with new adventurers you've never met. At least, that's the case if you can find characters who haven't taken an advanced start token.

It just seems odd to me, the inclusion of those tokens. If the point of the award system is to encourage character turnover, so all areas of the game are populated, then giving an award to ensure that the first eight levels of, say, Cordor can be skipped seems counterintuitive. To a new player, especially one who's first dalliance with NWN is Arelith, these early levels constitute a not insignificant amount of time, and if they can't get help through in-game means (in-game, it's all about the luck of the draw, as to who you might come across) they're going to wipe and they're going to wipe often, if they try to solo. I'm not sure what percentage of rollers who use the level boosts is... but that percentage will directly correlate to the number of potential party members that new players, who are the least likely to be able to solo dungeons, have access to.

I know what the tokens are doing -- getting new characters and their jaded players to the good stuff quickly. But I do believe they're serving the existing playerbase at the expense of the individual who picks up Arelith and understands that they're going to have to find people in RP to group with.

The Cordor Experience

It's not like Arelith is an empty server at all; certainly not, with 300 players a night. And in Skal we find online D&D distilled to probably its purest form. Starting out in Skal as a new player is, if not completely smooth, then as intuitive as you could expect from ye olde NWN.

But Cordor isn't like that. You get off the boat, talk to the dockmaster, hear about easy money to be made with the Speedy Messenger service. You go into that building, talk, agree to take some parcels around... and then immediately you hit level 3 without having to deliver any. In fact, you can't. The "quest" doesn't work properly, and you just get an emote popping up telling you you've rushed around town and learned the lay of the land. Not a great first impression.

Next stop, then, is the tavern that was mentioned... the Nomad? So you go looking for that, and two screens later, you're there, looking for the one NPC in the city who'll give you quests/writs to do. He's right at the back, for some reason, and again, it's with the luck of the draw if you actually find other low level adventurers within the Nomad.

Why not do away with the Speedy office and the associated broken quest, and place the Registry Agent inside that first building instead? You could go inside, interact with them, and immediately hit level 3, ala Skal. Skal works as a pick-up group zone, I believe, because everything is so immediate to access. Cordor doesn't have to be like that, with all vendors and services in a small cluster, but I do think the first of the game's quests should be a doddle to find, if only because players would find it easier for new questers to bump into other new questers.

To place the agent into the Speedy building would be more elegant, with fewer zone transitions. Right now, to level as an inexperienced player in Cordor, it feels like you need a premade group.

By the time you get to Mayfields, it's even harder to find people, and it leads me to think that in some cases, it would be a good move to shift Registry Agents outside their taverns. Give them a little tent in town to operate out of, without any zone transitions.

Readability and Find Out Through Play

If my post is attempting to do anything, it's to reduce the amount of time a new inexperienced player spends with a writ in the log and no one to do it with. And I think what would really help here is more information about the locations of registry agents for new players. A wiki article would do it, but also, an item in your inventory, received on signing up with the Trackless Sea, which lists where other agents might be found around Arelith. If this came with a guide to level ranges too even better. Agent dialogue already offers this strictly OOC information, so I think there's a strong precedence for doing that.

This isn't really in the spirit of "find out through play", granted, though I have a hard time believing that the people who are grinding their seventh or eighth alt through the island of Arelith often stop to consider how their new character, ostensibly foreign to the setting, automatically knows where the agents are and where the best grinding spots can be found. Moreoever, as an organisation, the Trackless Sea is probably not going to hide from new sign-ups where the rest of their agents are, right? They're contractors. It profits them to disseminate information to as wide a field as possible.

Hiding critical game information from the player works in many cases, but Arelith's strength lie in the chance convergences between players. I'm not sure the current system of tying agents to taverns is really serving that.

Anyway, some TL:DR suggestions:

TL;DR suggestions

Update the City of Cordor's writ vendor's location from the Nomad to the Speedy Messenger office (the first building you come across as a new character)

Consider pulling registry agents outside of taverns, and into the town squares of each settlement

Add more information on the wiki, and in-game, on the locations and level ranges of each writ vendor

Give characters in the various surface-level starting zones (Cordor and the Earthkin areas) an easier means to pass back and forth between them

Give the option of a minor award that doesn't start players at level 8, but instead hastens levelling between 0-8, with the same sum of gold awarded at level 8.

Consider more reasons for players to check in with registry agents, or hang around them

What I Haven't Mentioned

Zone design, spell and feat changes, NPC dialogue, and the roleplaying community itself: all of which has been excellent.

[AstralUniverse]

That was an interesting read. Not much to say here, as I have no insight from the admins and devs in these topics.

I will say tho, that there's a channel on the official discord specifically designed for new character hook up. So you can hop in there and simply state your level and what writs you want to do or what agent you're standing next to, and often people will be happy to RP with you and go on writs together. This might help.

[Flower Power]

Just gonna comment on a few points.

Even so, what we see from January 2021 to September 2021 is a steady population of around 2,000 users a month, rising no higher than about 120 players. What's interesting to note here is that in this timespan, Guldorand was released, an entire new city with its own player-organised government system and gameplay opportunities. It was a significant expansion of the world, a new place for players to congregate, a northern counterpart to Cordor. Reading a recent thread about "Guldo starts", the point was raised that it was made in part to foster a new RP hub, a goal that, at least in that poster's opinion, has not been met.

Guldorand's main problem with drawing in people, I'd argue, is the fact that Westcliff wasn't dropped into the ocean when the city dropped; Westcliff used to 'be' Guldorand - just a little logging community out in the sticks. Instead, Westcliff got some incredibly impressive new homes - and a substantial amount of the Guldorand playerbase just sort of kept sticking around Westcliff instead of migrating to the new city to focus on creating RP and interaction there.

Guldorand is doomed because its population base was split in half right out of the gate, and its never been forced to properly merge since. As long as that option remains, for as long as the Westcliff crowd form the majority of Guldorand's playerbase, the city will continue to feel dead and empty despite having a high population on the voting registry: because its playerbase just isn't actually making waves in the Guldorand part of Guldorand.

But Cordor isn't like that. You get off the boat, talk to the dockmaster, hear about easy money to be made with the Speedy Messenger service. You go into that building, talk, agree to take some parcels around... and then immediately you hit level 3 without having to deliver any. In fact, you can't. The "quest" doesn't work properly, and you just get an emote popping up telling you you've rushed around town and learned the lay of the land. Not a great first impression.

The quest isn't broken persay, it just completes automatically if you have a certain RPR or higher. For complete newcomers, it works perfectly fine; it's a time-saving thing for older players is all.

[-XXX-]

The Wells are offering an abysmal challenge/reward ratio when compared to the rest of the PvE content that Arelith has to offer.
Seeing how they are essentially the main and only dungeon on the Guldorand server, characters have little to no reason for hanging around there as they'd be probably better off looking for grind elswhere.

Another point would be the city layout. The more successful towns seem to be featuring a "bottleneck" space that forces characters to pass through. This appeals to the players who prefer the "loiterer" playstyle as they can easily find a convenient spot from which they can see most of what's going on in the town.
Guldorand does not seem to have such natural gathering space - even the main square seems enormous and can be easily avoided.

[TurningLeaf]

The writ system is neat but has an 'almost there' quality. In a p&p adventure the NPC would typically be looking to hire a group, not an individual. Maybe the group had to have a certain composition.

Anyways I like Guld but it does have a sort of pastiche feel. Sometimes fewer ingredients is more effective.

[Party in the forest at midnight]

Guldorand regularly has a lot of people on it these days. I have no idea how y'all can keep saying "nobody is in Guldorand" when the sparse few zones it has regularly have 20-30 people.

[msheeler]

Guldorand's main problem with drawing in people, I'd argue, is the fact that Westcliff wasn't dropped into the ocean when the city dropped; Westcliff used to 'be' Guldorand - just a little logging community out in the sticks. Instead, Westcliff got some incredibly impressive new homes - and a substantial amount of the Guldorand playerbase just sort of kept sticking around Westcliff instead of migrating to the new city to focus on creating RP and interaction there.

Of the original main Guldorand players no more than a dozen stayed in Westcliff, and most if not all of them have had times where they focused on RP in the city heavily. Also a dozen people do not make a server. Additionally I think it would have been rather harsh to simply pull the rug out from under the people that had heavily invested in RP there by simply removing the area.

Guldorand does have its own unique issues, but the fact that Westcliff remained in the game really is not one of them.

[Eyeliner]

Can you just accept that there are players who like advanced starts? I don't do it with every character but it's a nice thing occasionally. If I have a character who I have a definite plan with and know the faction they'll join it's nice to jump right in as a competent player. Other characters don't have a plan and I'll start them at 3 and bum around figuring it out. Options are always good, nobody wants to watch the same movie over.

[Gremkarc]

Can you just accept that there are players who like advanced starts? I don't do it with every character but it's a nice thing occasionally. If I have a character who I have a definite plan with and know the faction they'll join it's nice to jump right in as a competent player. Other characters don't have a plan and I'll start them at 3 and bum around figuring it out. Options are always good, nobody wants to watch the same movie over.

I definitely can, which is why I didn't actually suggest the removal of them; only the addition of an increased XP gain start. I personally don't really think advanced starts are good for new players, who miss out on potential party members (the movie isn't the same if the characters are different), but yes, I totally accept that there are people who like advanced starts. All the power to you!

[Floral Shoppe]

How many new players will have normal award and 20 RPR? I think the vast majority using advanced start (beyond that one promotion last year) will know exactly what they're doing. I just don't think it needs to be on the list of problems.

[Party in the forest at midnight]

The issue is Skal sends people to Guldorand too. I've had to help a lot of Skal players leave the city, showing them where the boat is and directing them to where to get writs on other places on the island. Some of the people I've helped have no idea where the other writ agents are. Everyone who plays in Guld regularly will probably encounter Skal characters looking for help leaving. With that said, with Skal's level being boosted to 18-19, it might help them transition into Guldorand content easier. It's too early to tell.

[Gremkarc]

How many new players will have normal award and 20 RPR? I think the vast majority using advanced start (beyond that one promotion last year) will know exactly what they're doing. I just don't think it needs to be on the list of problems.

Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear here, and, as Flower Power states, it would appear I had been -recommended by someone and had my 20RPR given to me before the first time I ever interacted with the Speedy Messenger quest giver; which would account for the quest auto-completing. I had been levelling a character on Skal, first, so perhaps I got -recommended there.

As for the use of advanced start, my concern isn't that new players are using it (they can't), but that established players are, and so new players aren't meeting them for RP-PVE. They potential party pool dwindles, and if it gets too small, that makes it difficult for new players to level up at all.

Older players owe new players nothing, of course, and I'm not trying to guilt trip anyone. I just think it's something to bear in mind.

[Richrd]

Very well written post, OP. Hitting a lot of nails straight on the head there.

I personally find surface gameplay too thin and spread out. There's too many places that serve as hubs all across the surface world. Some bigger, some smaller.
Cordor, Mayfield Inn (aka. Arcane Tower), Bendir, the Heartwood Grove, Myon, Guldorand, Brogendenstein, that big castle up north of Brogendenstein (forgot it's name), Shibayad, Crow's Nest, the orcblood camp, the Radiant Heart, the Minmir Church and probably many more that I forgot to mention here.

When I returned to Arelith for a bit it was extremely difficult to find people around my level range to do writs with, to the point where I was really happy about going with a strong solo build. It allowed me to circumvent the lack of party members and instead just go for a lot of writs all by myself.

Compared to the Underdark where you have not even half the amount of hubs it just feels awful at times, even with the ridiculously high amount of players.

I know I might step on someone's toes by saying this but I sincerely believe Arelith could do with some cataclysmic event to not only shake the world up but also outright reduce the amount of hubs. Even on the most active of times I remember finding only few other players in the entirety of Guldorand.
The one big stir-up that caused players to show up and make Guldorand feel alive was one guy running for Chancellor in Guldorand after he previously robusted a dozen people on horseback. That of course brought forth all kinds of characters from all over the surface, even if they had nothing to do with the situation or Guldorand.

[Rei_Jin]

Guldorand is a beautiful city, and it has several challenges it faces in its current iteration, in my opinion.

For context I previously played a character who had a store and property in Guldorand from day 1, hour 1 of it being open, for 6 RL months.

These are in no particular order

1. The Guldorand advanced start is a trap, or at least, it was. It was changed recently to a higher level with more gold, so it *may* be better now… but previously, one would use it to bypass difficult early levels on some builds, and leave immediately. This is connected to number 2…

2. The Guldorand writ content is poorly aligned for risk vs reward and level. Put simply, the writs given in Guldorand are, for the most part, rubbish, as compared to what is elsewhere on the server. This may have changed in the last 12 months, and if so, someone else can share about it.

3. The Deep Wells were a beautiful idea, with poor risk vs reward, and no new content added AFAIK despite it being heralded as an ever growing nigh on infinite dungeon. We were told of elven relics being hidden, but none ever turned up (that we know of). No plots occurred that changed or challenged anything despite the potential (that I know of). In effect, it’s a hole to drop time and resources into if you don’t want to see them repaid. Folks do it once and move on.

4. The city design is beautiful, but it doesn’t work to foster connection. Recent minor improvements have been made, but more are needed. In short, it’s a city that works to funnel people to private or indoor spaces, which makes connecting with others more difficult, and can make a very busy server feel empty.

5. Political issues were generated in its creation and charter that ensure it is a volatile city, resulting in high levels of dissatisfaction from those who try to commit to political RP and city development. Cordor has a similar turnover of elected officials, but not as bad, and it has a much higher population; this indicates that something is not right.

6. The Guldorand server is tiny and contains little content as compared to Surface, Underdark, or Distant Shores. This means that when you log on and see a (comparatively) small number of folk logged in to Guldorand, but significant numbers elsewhere, you are biased towards going somewhere else. There are times I log in and see 0/255 in Guldorand, and no, I don’t mean right after reset.

7. There’s huge amounts of property and stores in Guldorand, but functionally no guild houses. This makes it very difficult for a group to function out of a shared space; unless they have a noble who secures the noble guildhouse, or are happy with one of the two guild houses with one separate quarter within them in the Freeport.

I know that efforts have been made to address some of these issues, and that said efforts may be ongoing (I’m not on staff, and don’t know what they are doing behind closed doors).

Closing Cordor wouldn’t fix the challenges Guldorand faces, not without significant further development of Guldorand and expansion.

In the early days I actually thought there could be a plot on the way to nuke Cordor, and connect all the surface settlements up in a similar way to how Andunor is set up, using Guldorand as the hub, but it didn’t happen, and I’m not sure that would fix anything in the short to medium term anyway.

There are ways to address all the challenges Guldorand has. But it’s not simple, nor is it easy, and every change will bring some backlash and risk destabilising things further, so the team is moving at the pace they are.

For myself, I don’t enjoy the way political settlement RP largely happens these days, so I opt out, but I do watch on from outside with interest because it impacts the rest of the server.

I’d love Guldorand to be healthy and vibrant.

Getting it there is the challenge, and I am one of many who feels like we sacrificed ourselves to try and be part of the solution without anything good to come from the attempt.

Fool me once…

[TurningLeaf]

Definitely have experienced "sweet there are over 20 people on Guld" only to log in and not see a soul.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

It's possible that things are spread out too thin on the surface. I would love to see Guldorand become the high level hub personally, and would have found a way to destroy Myon and brogendenstein along the way. Keep Cordor, but remove pc governments all together, and make it more neutral in design so evils and good guys could both start there alike. The vision of Guldorand, at least what i thought it was, was to make different sides have to work together instead of one government faction to rule them all. The biggest reason it has failed (and we can list quite a few smaller ones that tie in, but there are countless threads and even posts above me touching on that) is that no one has to do anything. If things don't go their way, just about every side can pull a cartman and say "screw you guys, I'm going home." The second biggest would be that folks have gone to the pvp well for solutions to political discourse already one too many times up there, and I think many are gun shy to get involved as a result.

To pick up on something a user said on the Discord, "I suspect there have been quite a few folks over the last two years or whatever who have thought "I got this great spot, I got the ideas to make it grow, and I got some plans to make it cool" only to realize all that means nothing without the people gathering".

This was specifically about lower guldorand, and the potential to be a criminal hub for bad guys who don't dance with the dead or sell their souls to demons, while giving those sorts a place to blend in somewhat. It didn't really have to do with the politics of Guldorand, save maybe missed potential for a third axis to the elves/guldorand thing. I know this because the guy who wrote it is not only the most pleasant and kind hearted person in the community, he is also the wisest and most intelligent when it comes to these sorts of things.*






*Ok, maybe it was just me.

[Marsi]

There used to be *more* settlements and *more* meeting places when the server peaked at 80 players. I think we must have higher, MMO-ified standards of how populated a faction or place ought to be in order to be regarded as a valid political/social unit in the world. So I don't buy this apparently popular view that the Surface is spread too thin.

Arelith by design really does not need Cordor levels of PCs in every which place for a dynamic narrative to form. There have been factions and even settlements with often as few as five active players that have changed the game world. The more contemporary mega-faction/sitting government is the anomaly here, not the "dead" zones with "only" a handful of active players.

Admitting outright that I'm asking from a position of ignorance, what was the average activity level of Cordor at the time of Guldorand's development? Was Cordor overcrowded? Was the creation of a new city hub seen as a solution to space out RP and solve a housing/quarter shortage? Or was Guldorand made because it's the natural evolution of any virtual RPG world to expand in order to feed ravenous player appetites? One thing I'm certain of is that Guldorand cannot have been a blind decision.

It's just that... in a lite-MMO like this one (and I know, I'm already getting hunches after just a month's play) I can't help but feel that giving in one hand and taking away with the other isn't a bad thing? Might Guldo have been better as a replacement to Cordor, if it was so much more sophisticated in its design and quality of art? I'm guessing such a move would have been far too controversial, but if there is a mentality about (as has been suggested elsewhere) that roleplay starts at high levels, and everyone must rush through, adding a new mid/late-game city into the game feels sort of like an endorsement of that?

A "replacement" (though what the devs work on is more inspiration based than anything) is exactly what Guldorand was. Wharftown was a very popular settlement that was destroyed for narrative reasons shortly before EE was released. A couple years before that, Benwick, another somewhat popular quasi-settlement, was also removed. A lot of area around Westcliff (which was originally Guldorand) was consolidated.

I mean no offense but my read of your post is that you could be leaning a little too heavily on the opinions of people you've met on Discord.

Arelith is extremely cyclical -- sometimes those cycles take years -- and so it makes no sense to claim one place must be dead because it's bad/unnecessary content. At different times over the last decade I can say every single settlement has experienced its own years-long population decline, only to then become popular once more for highly arbitrary reasons. In the grand scheme of things Guldorand is super young.

The only thing that hasn't changed is that Arelith has jaded players, and those jaded players like to convince new players that content that disenfranchises them or that they think is lesser, is bad, is dead, etc. It takes a long time for players to shake those opinions about places, even when they become transparently untrue. I wouldn't attribute to inherently bad design what can be attributed to erratic and changeable population distribution.

[MissEvelyn]

There used to be *more* settlements and *more* meeting places when the server peaked at 80 players. I think we must have higher, MMO-ified standards of how populated a faction or place ought to be in order to be regarded as a valid political/social unit in the world. So I don't buy this apparently popular view that the Surface is spread too thin.

Arelith by design really does not need Cordor levels of PCs in every which place for a dynamic narrative to form. There have been factions and even settlements with often as few as five active players that have changed the game world. The more contemporary mega-faction/sitting government is the anomaly here, not the "dead" zones with "only" a handful of active players.

Admitting outright that I'm asking from a position of ignorance, what was the average activity level of Cordor at the time of Guldorand's development? Was Cordor overcrowded? Was the creation of a new city hub seen as a solution to space out RP and solve a housing/quarter shortage? Or was Guldorand made because it's the natural evolution of any virtual RPG world to expand in order to feed ravenous player appetites? One thing I'm certain of is that Guldorand cannot have been a blind decision.

It's just that... in a lite-MMO like this one (and I know, I'm already getting hunches after just a month's play) I can't help but feel that giving in one hand and taking away with the other isn't a bad thing? Might Guldo have been better as a replacement to Cordor, if it was so much more sophisticated in its design and quality of art? I'm guessing such a move would have been far too controversial, but if there is a mentality about (as has been suggested elsewhere) that roleplay starts at high levels, and everyone must rush through, adding a new mid/late-game city into the game feels sort of like an endorsement of that?

A "replacement" (though what the devs work on is more inspiration based than anything) is exactly what Guldorand was. Wharftown was a very popular settlement that was destroyed for narrative reasons shortly before EE was released. A couple years before that, Benwick, another somewhat popular quasi-settlement, was also removed. A lot of area around Westcliff (which was originally Guldorand) was consolidated.

I mean no offense but my read of your post is that you could be leaning a little too heavily on the opinions of people you've met on Discord.

Arelith is extremely cyclical -- sometimes those cycles take years -- and so it makes no sense to claim one place must be dead because it's bad/unnecessary content. At different times over the last decade I can say every single settlement has experienced its own years-long population decline, only to then become popular once more for highly arbitrary reasons. In the grand scheme of things Guldorand is super young.

The only thing that hasn't changed is that Arelith has jaded players, and those jaded players like to convince new players that content that disenfranchises them or that they think is lesser, is bad, is dead, etc. It takes a long time for players to shake those opinions about places, even when they become transparently untrue. I wouldn't attribute to inherently bad design what can be attributed to erratic and changeable population distribution.

This is just really amazingly said! +1

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

There used to be *more* settlements and *more* meeting places when the server peaked at 80 players. I think we must have higher, MMO-ified standards of how populated a faction or place ought to be in order to be regarded as a valid political/social unit in the world. So I don't buy this apparently popular view that the Surface is spread too thin.

Arelith by design really does not need Cordor levels of PCs in every which place for a dynamic narrative to form. There have been factions and even settlements with often as few as five active players that have changed the game world. The more contemporary mega-faction/sitting government is the anomaly here, not the "dead" zones with "only" a handful of active players.

Admitting outright that I'm asking from a position of ignorance, what was the average activity level of Cordor at the time of Guldorand's development? Was Cordor overcrowded? Was the creation of a new city hub seen as a solution to space out RP and solve a housing/quarter shortage? Or was Guldorand made because it's the natural evolution of any virtual RPG world to expand in order to feed ravenous player appetites? One thing I'm certain of is that Guldorand cannot have been a blind decision.

It's just that... in a lite-MMO like this one (and I know, I'm already getting hunches after just a month's play) I can't help but feel that giving in one hand and taking away with the other isn't a bad thing? Might Guldo have been better as a replacement to Cordor, if it was so much more sophisticated in its design and quality of art? I'm guessing such a move would have been far too controversial, but if there is a mentality about (as has been suggested elsewhere) that roleplay starts at high levels, and everyone must rush through, adding a new mid/late-game city into the game feels sort of like an endorsement of that?

A "replacement" (though what the devs work on is more inspiration based than anything) is exactly what Guldorand was. Wharftown was a very popular settlement that was destroyed for narrative reasons shortly before EE was released. A couple years before that, Benwick, another somewhat popular quasi-settlement, was also removed. A lot of area around Westcliff (which was originally Guldorand) was consolidated.

I mean no offense but my read of your post is that you could be leaning a little too heavily on the opinions of people you've met on Discord.

Arelith is extremely cyclical -- sometimes those cycles take years -- and so it makes no sense to claim one place must be dead because it's bad/unnecessary content. At different times over the last decade I can say every single settlement has experienced its own years-long population decline, only to then become popular once more for highly arbitrary reasons. In the grand scheme of things Guldorand is super young.

The only thing that hasn't changed is that Arelith has jaded players, and those jaded players like to convince new players that content that disenfranchises them or that they think is lesser, is bad, is dead, etc. It takes a long time for players to shake those opinions about places, even when they become transparently untrue. I wouldn't attribute to inherently bad design what can be attributed to erratic and changeable population distribution.

I would love to read how you think Guldorand, a city designed with three districts, works with 5 people.

As a side note, all this time I thought I was seeing the potential in guldorand and discussing ways to make it live up to that potential, so I'm a bit surprised to find that that makes me jaded. Just as I am sure that the OP who thought he was thinking for himself has just been mind controlled by the flayers of discord is shocked to find that out as well. I'm sure they appreciate the enlightenment you offered as much as I do.

[Gremkarc]

A "replacement" (though what the devs work on is more inspiration based than anything) is exactly what Guldorand was. Wharftown was a very popular settlement that was destroyed for narrative reasons shortly before EE was released. A couple years before that, Benwick, another somewhat popular quasi-settlement, was also removed. A lot of area around Westcliff (which was originally Guldorand) was consolidated.

I mean no offense but my read of your post is that you could be leaning a little too heavily on the opinions of people you've met on Discord.

Arelith is extremely cyclical -- sometimes those cycles take years -- and so it makes no sense to claim one place must be dead because it's bad/unnecessary content. At different times over the last decade I can say every single settlement has experienced its own years-long population decline, only to then become popular once more for highly arbitrary reasons. In the grand scheme of things Guldorand is super young.

The only thing that hasn't changed is that Arelith has jaded players, and those jaded players like to convince new players that content that disenfranchises them or that they think is lesser, is bad, is dead, etc. It takes a long time for players to shake those opinions about places, even when they become transparently untrue. I wouldn't attribute to inherently bad design what can be attributed to erratic and changeable population distribution.

It's not a "replacement to Cordor", though! My hunch, and maybe this was not clear through my text (it was a poorly structured opening post) was that Guldo, with its much higher fidelity, and with the improved craft that you get from more experienced devs, miiiight have served better in the role that Cordor fills now -- the "main" starting zone for surface-dwellers. The paradox of these types of games is that the stuff that is most suited to new players -- better graphics, better design -- might never be seen by them. I'm not saying Cordor is old hat, at all, and when you look at it and remember a mod team built it, it's amazing.

High-level non-combat hubs seem strange to me on principle, especially in a game in which, if level isn't strictly IC, then indirectly so. The Guldorand section of the "How to Get Started on Arelith" page specifically cites,

Extensive City
New Content
Massive dungeon
Dangerous setting
Player-run Government

as some of its features. Your contention that it would therefore only need five people to be considered to run properly makes me think of the court of Queeny in Blackadder II.

I feel that I've structured my post poorly, though, because discussion here is mostly focused on Guldorand, which is obviously a hot topic among the community, but I was just using it as an example of how vast new areas (and with three districts Guldo is certainly that) designed for roleplay are not always beneficial for a roleplay environment in which the numbers of people actively roleplaying is not not growing enough to warrant such expansion. Or, to put it another way, had Guldorand been a roaring success and everyone who could flock there did flock there, that would have been a disaster for the game's long-term health, re the intake of new players.

I most certainly haven't been hoodwinked by anything said on the Discord, though. I may have quoted a post from it, but I've also used the forums; and said quotes only correlated with hunches that I have already had. As you'll see from the rest of my opening post, I've been doing a lot of play around Cordor and Mayfields, and made observations about them. I don't really see how my following concrete suggestions...

Update the City of Cordor's writ vendor's location from the Nomad to the Speedy Messenger office (the first building you come across as a new character)

Consider pulling registry agents outside of taverns, and into the town squares of each settlement

Add more information on the wiki, and in-game, on the locations and level ranges of each writ vendor

Give characters in the various surface-level starting zones (Cordor and the Earthkin areas) an easier means to pass back and forth between them

Give the option of a minor award that doesn't start players at level 8, but instead hastens levelling between 0-8, with the same sum of gold awarded at level 8.

Consider more reasons for players to check in with registry agents, or hang around them

...really reflect the idea that I've been listening too much to the Wormtongues of the Discord server. None of these have anything to do with Guldorand and are practical solutions. I knew it wouldn't fly well, so I didn't include the suggestion of "allow only one writ to be held at a time", an idea that would have the the intended effect of creating more roleplay opportunities around writ vendors as people would have to visit them three times as often. But if I had mentioned this on the Discord, I'm sure as hell that I would have got shot down.

These are the observations of someone who sees a mite too much chaos in Skal, but in contrast finds Cordor to be really short of low-level questers. I assume they're there, and my suggestions pertain to bringing them out into the light. Really if my original post had a problem, it was tying the more "philosophical" point about player spread, to the issues I've been running into when trying to level without a premade group.

I'm sure they appreciate the enlightenment you offered as much as I do.

As a last point, I don't want this thread to become bad-natured, so please let's not be sarcastic and pithy with each other! I've delved into potentially controversial topics like Guldorand and Advanced Starts with the best of intentions, and I'm taking all responses in good faith too.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

It's not a controversial subject at all. Based on the 20 threads or so about this since guldorand opened the vast majority of the player base feels that the city is missing something. What that something is varies from person to person based on their perspective and their own personal preferences which can sometimes make what's actually wrong with the city hard to sort out, but the city was clearly designed to be a place where high level characters can politic that isn't just ruled by the latest government faction to win an election, and I doubt anyone can dispute that its fallen short of that goal so far. Calling everyone who tries to bring this stuff up in hopes of a brighter future jaded is, for lack of a better word, pretty frigging jaded.

Sorry for speaking for you though, I can see how you thought I was dragging you into a mud fight. But really Marsi is a fine person who usually says pretty insightful stuff, that post just wasn't that.

[Marsi]

I would love to read how you think Guldorand, a city designed with three districts, works with 5 people.

As a side note, all this time I thought I was seeing the potential in guldorand and discussing ways to make it live up to that potential, so I'm a bit surprised to find that that makes me jaded. Just as I am sure that the OP who thought he was thinking for himself has just been mind controlled by the flayers of discord is shocked to find that out as well. I'm sure they appreciate the enlightenment you offered as much as I do.

[...]

Calling everyone who tries to bring this stuff up in hopes of a brighter future jaded is, for lack of a better word, pretty frigging jaded.

Sorry for speaking for you though, I can see how you thought I was dragging you into a mud fight. But really Marsi is a fine person who usually says pretty insightful stuff, that post just wasn't that.

Nah I think my post is fine actually. A fairly benign and general observation about chilling out, giving things time, and hedging the opinions of people who hang out in Discord too much shouldn't strike a nerve like this unless you're giving it the worst faith read possible. It wasn't directed at you in any way, and the fact that you took it to be so, in such haste, says a lot. Go off though I guess.

It's not a "replacement to Cordor", though! My hunch, and maybe this was not clear through my text (it was a poorly structured opening post) was that Guldo, with its much higher fidelity, and with the improved craft that you get from more experienced devs, miiiight have served better in the role that Cordor fills now -- the "main" starting zone for surface-dwellers. The paradox of these types of games is that the stuff that is most suited to new players -- better graphics, better design -- might never be seen by them. I'm not saying Cordor is old hat, at all, and when you look at it and remember a mod team built it, it's amazing.

"The role that Cordor fills now" is the thing I'm speaking to. How things are *now* is highly changeable. There are as many years in the past decade as not that Cordor was the "hub". Regardless of its position as the literal starting zone, it used to have a bad reputation, and was regularly eclipsed by other settlements in importance and raw numbers. If anything, what is more "normal" for Arelith surface is a "binary star system" -- two counterpoised hubs -- which were nominally Cordor and Wharftown. Hence my point that Guldorand, in my view, was in fact a one in for one out. Wharftown was not a giant metropolis, in fact it had the opposite problem, where what was represented as a tiny fishing village kept developing these ludicrously imperial ambitions that the other, real, cities could often struggle to compete with.

I most certainly haven't been hoodwinked by anything said on the Discord, though. I may have quoted a post from it, but I've also used the forums; and said quotes only correlated with hunches that I have already had. As you'll see from the rest of my opening post, I've been doing a lot of play around Cordor and Mayfields, and made observations about them. I don't really see how my following concrete suggestions...

Fair enough, I walk that back. My reply has nothing to do with your other points which are fine, just nothing I have thoughts on. However much my point is caricatured as mind flayers/wormtongues there are absolutely older players who don't like certain parts of the module and make it their business to impress on new players that their personal gripes are in fact The Consensus, or that they're the fashionable opinion that said new players ought to adopt to fit in (even if they have no bearing on reality). A lot of people felt pretty sore about New Guldorand. A lot of people didn't like what was done to Wharftown either, or Benwick before it. I may have read too much in to your mention of what people on Discord have been saying. There are times you see these "Hey I'm New Player and welcome to my Fully Formed Opinion on Controversial Topic" posts, give away that they've been chatting with the peeps in their faction discord, and you kind of go -- ah -- I see where they're getting this. I should have posed what I was trying to say in more general terms.

I still think the rest of my post stands though.

Like Party in the Forest at Midnight, I find myself wondering what's driving this oft-posted "DAE think guldorand is dead?" opinion because it never seems that way to me, even as a timezone challenged player, and even if it were true of a certain point in time, it's not a fair way to assess a whole !new! settlement of roleplayers. This was the point of my post which was essentially that I don't think one month of playing is a long enough time to really tell what is and isn't good content. I don't even know if a year would be. Most settlements would fail the scrutiny heaped upon Guldorand.

All I'm trying to say is how the server seems to be architected to you in terms of player distribution is totally arbitrary and of the moment and has a lot less than you might think to do with objective principles of balanced populations or what makes sense. There is plenty of honest critique of Guldorand in this thread, I'm just challenging this unquestioned notion throughout the thread that Arelith ever had this coherent, planned layout that scaled to demand until Guldorand was released and tipped the scales, or that anywhere on the server actually needs zerglike numbers to be function and be valid.

[Sincra]

Guldorand's main problem with drawing in people, I'd argue, is the fact that Westcliff wasn't dropped into the ocean when the city dropped; Westcliff used to 'be' Guldorand - just a little logging community out in the sticks. Instead, Westcliff got some incredibly impressive new homes - and a substantial amount of the Guldorand playerbase just sort of kept sticking around Westcliff instead of migrating to the new city to focus on creating RP and interaction there.

Of the original main Guldorand players no more than a dozen stayed in Westcliff, and most if not all of them have had times where they focused on RP in the city heavily. Also a dozen people do not make a server. Additionally I think it would have been rather harsh to simply pull the rug out from under the people that had heavily invested in RP there by simply removing the area.

Guldorand does have its own unique issues, but the fact that Westcliff remained in the game really is not one of them.

This actually was an issue.
As someone that was present and active during the opening and following weeks and months there was significant pushback to keep Westcliff as an almost standalone element.
See: Giving it a seperate Mayoral role.

While it would have been harsh the quarters could have been moved to a closer locale, perhaps even just outside the gates at the back and front of the city on all that grass and empty ground.

[Spriggan Bride]

Everyone here was a new player once and we all figured it out. If you're trying a game like this out in 2022 you probably have a screw loose... I mean, you probably have some idea what you're getting into and you probably want to make it work. Because even if every idea here was enacted it would still be an alienating and opaque PW on an ancient game that very much shows its age.

So I'm not really worried about the new player experience so much especially when it comes to taking things away or making extra demands of existing players. New players still arrive at a steady pace and most who try it seem to stick around.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Nah I think my post is fine actually. A fairly benign and general observation about chilling out, giving things time, and hedging the opinions of people who hang out in Discord too much shouldn't strike a nerve like this unless you're giving it the worst faith read possible. It wasn't directed at you in any way, and the fact that you took it to be so, in such haste, says a lot. Go off though I guess.

What does it say besides the one quote he took from discord was written by me? Something I said a post above yours or so, where I explained that the quote was about lower guldorand and its potential and not guldorand as a whole? It was also part of a longer conversation about lower guldorand, which you can easily read in the guldorand tab of the main discord if you are interested. Or, you can just assume it was someone being jaded on discord, which is clearly the path you chose.

Mind you, it's pretty clear you didn't read that, or a decent part of the op for that matter at this point. You didn't offer any argument for why Guldorand is fine as is, only an assumption that because he quoted discord he must have had his head filled up with vitriol from discord users and therefore just needed to chill out and wait for guldorands moment to shine to roll around over the next few years. Which tells me you really had nothing to add save "discord sucks". You are entitled to your opinion, but since your post really didn't add anything to the actual topic save insulting folks who actively try to help improve things with ideas and honest conversations I don't see why you would think it was "fine actually". But hey, you do you, I'm not the forum police.