Whats up guys, I'm really happy to see this post right now. Gives me hope. Figured I'd throw my hat in the ring on ideas.
I played WO from 2011, to 2015, WU from 2015 to WOsteam release. I knew better to go back to WO, I promised myself in 2015 I'd never go back. Just spent 2 weeks grinding in an 80 person village on Harmony, made some new friends, but I just can't play WO at all anymore. I can't live without the keybind mod and all the QOL improvements... I should have just assumed that WU life was going to continue as usual, some modders would eventually come in and do some dev work to keep WU moving forward. I'm dreaming here, but I hope I'm right. I have a feeling this is going to be a good opportunity for the active WU devs to capitalize on people like me, who thought that WU was given a death sentence, went to WO and remembered why we don't play WO anymore, and possibly end up with a larger net number of players with all the brand new people that came in with the WOsteam release.
I truly do believe you are going to get an influx of people coming back to WU in the coming months, I really do hope that you release a fresh PVE server of ANY kind so that I can come play.
That being said, for someone like me, you've done it all in the game, you've grinded virtually every skill, you've made castles, you've made harbors, you've made massive deeds, you've killed all the uniques, acquired virtually 99% of all the items in the game. Whats left? Starting over.
It was clear to me years ago that starting over is the most fun in Wurm, the economy bustles, people are playing long hours, people are trading, people are grinding to sell/trade, people are building new deeds, with new designs, vets don't have every single skill so that you don't have to rely on others, but the skill gain and gameplay is faster so that you can accomplish more, in less time, so it helps out the hardcore players advance, and gives the semi-casuals the ability to actually advance as well.
So here is my 2 cents on a new server in Sklo-land.
#1 - Recurring wipe PVE server, a normal server like Novus was, not connected in any way, and disappears after a predetermined amount of time so that the population doesn't keep thinning out with each new island added, we just keep moving to the newest server and the old one is gone.
#2 - I would love to dream about a recurring wipe PVP server as well, but without the ability to control client-side mods, PVP will never work IMO.
#3 - Permanent PVE server, a normal server like Novus was, not connected in any way, with either vanilla deed upkeep, or some fraction of vanilla deed upkeep so that maybe it will recycle some land a little more often than currently (don't get me wrong, I love not having to deal with upkeep, but I also miss pillaging old deeds, exploring the ruins of deeds and seeing what was left behind). Would also remove some overhead for the staff removing deeds, would enable deed expansion when your neighbor doesn't play anymore, would bring in more revenue for server costs. If people don't want deep upkeep, they still have Liberty and Novus to do it the old way.
#4 - Permanent PVE server with some custom systems (explained below)
-Custom Idea #1 - have a 'trader' like NPC that buys any and all items, have all items have a 'value', keep track of how many items of a specific type have been sold, and at what quality. The more a specific item is sold to the vendor, the less that vendor pays for the item, until it doesn't make sense anymore to sell that item. Then like once a month or something, these numbers reset, but don't reset all of them at the same time so that there isn't a 'rush' where everyone sells at once, have it be random somewhat. So maybe make it to where QL 1.0 logs give you like 1 iron for 10 of them, but QL 90.0 logs give 1 copper or something along these lines.
-Custom Idea #2 - custom item loot - something like a loot system when killing agressives, maybe random weapons/armor/tools with random enchantments on them, maybe custom enchantments that can only be gotten from killing monsters so that the normal priest/enchanting market isn't effected, maybe some kind of 'imbue' system that lets you get a special ability or enchant to put on the item of your choice. Another idea for loot is to have armor/weapons that have skills attached to them, so that you might have a leather sleeve of blacksmithing, which gives you like 1.0 blacksmithing when equipped
-Custom Idea #3 - Large no-build areas to prevent spawns from being eradicated on the main server, hopefully eliminating the need for a separate hunting server. (might able to use holy ground for this?) Maybe even just make these areas islands on the main map so that the nogumps or any other hard monsters can't get trained out of the area. Maybe even have multiple different islands on the main map that have different difficulties of monsters on them so that its not low level fighters having to deal with nogumps rampaging them. Maybe have one island have special uniques that aren't as difficult, that don't require a big group to kill, and don't give anywhere near as many resources as a normal unique has, giving small groups of friends the ability to go kill them instead of a ton of players show up and basically just way-lay the unique with shear numbers. Obviously still have the normal uniques with penning and everything, but give another end-game option for people.
-Custom Idea #4 - Maybe to create something fresh, remove/change all the old-world gods, create new gods and use different spell lists and affinities and stuff to switch it up a little.
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Custom Idea #5 - One of the recurring problems I see on servers is that eventually, given enough time (even with 1x/1x), hardcore players will have grinded up every single skill. I know this won't be a popular idea probably, but I'm just throwing it out there. Maybe have a system where you get to pick 20 skills, and thats the only ones your character can grind up. Obviously people like me who have 7+ steam ID's to run alts with before they figured out how we could run multiple clients on just one SteamID could get around this, but it would limit the number of people who did it. Because I realize that no matter what you do, we can use VPNs to circumvent any and all methods of preventing more than a certain amount of characters online the server at the same time, but it would at least limit it a little. I think this would keep the demand for commerce up higher rather than the only items being sold/bought being high-end endgame items.
I could type new ideas all day, if you ever want more, let me know.
Thanks for not giving up on your WU server, I'll be back full time when a fresh server releases, and I'm sure I'm not alone on this, we are just itching to give you money for server costs with a fresh place to play!
Thanks again for all the work you've done for WU over the years, cheers to another 5 years of awesomeness!
Archon
*edited number 3 from recurring wipe server to permanent server, fixed some typos, added some formatting and added explanations