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Inactivity as of late - Feedbacks!
#91
Just something I saw before, but I wanted to say it now.

WoW is a novel. I have to read daily to understand things I didn't before. Guys, when I came here I knew -nothing- about WoW's lore. At all. I learned over time. I learned from reading.

So short and sweet, whats the issue with people having to read custom lore to understand? People already have to do so to understand WoW in the first place. Personally I think we should have custom lore. Not huge things, but let one side win over the other in contested lands like Ashenvale/Barrens/the whole freaking world. Heck, let it shift back and forth. Look at Tol'Barad. Sometimes alliance controls, sometimes Horde controls. Why not do that with larger more important battles? The rise and fall of strongholds is a normal thing with war.

Let there be war.
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#92
(10-06-2013, 05:06 AM)SpartAl412 Wrote: I would recommend easing up on the level restriction and encouraging players to head out into the World and team up for quests and stuff. That's what I did a lot on Moonguard and I found all sorts of fun people who enjoyed mixing their RP with questing.

The problem with questing in an RP format is that no one can be sure of who did it.

Examplus and his merry band of goons set out to kill MacGuffin the Forsaken who is plaguing stuff. He is successful and he returns to the local inn, bragging about how he slew MacGuffin with only one swing. However, Kretnub walks up and smacks him around the face - he slew MacGuffin first, not him! And then another guy comes up to Kretnub and smacks him, for the same reason.

If we do "claims" on who does a quest, people might feel left out. It'd suck if Heroic Paladin #604 did all of the heroic-type quests, and you're left with "uh, bring me, like, 10 apples, or something". If we retcon them so that everyone is involved, we'd eventually turn Examplus' merry band into a Roman legion - just to kill ONE Forsaken!

And people might felt left out because of who is running the quest - if Heroic Paladin #604 dismisses a redeemed warlock who uses his evil for good because "herp de derp, you can't come, you're evil". And then they'd miss out on the opportunity to run the quest! And what if Heroic Paladin #604 makes a monopoly on all quests - because paladins are the archetype of quest-finishing peoples. They'd just make a small circle of people they run the quests with, and we'd be back with the problem we have now - no one wants to RP because of lack of participation, except in this case, not being able to participate.
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#93
(10-05-2013, 10:17 PM)Grakor456 Wrote: There's quite a few, actually.

In Ashenvale, Horde bombs Astranaar to destruction, Alliance meanwhile manages to put out all the fires and save the town. There's also the Warsong Lumber Camp there, which is rather important and either completely destroyed or saved depending on which side you're on. In Desolace, the Horde PC manages to single-handedly level the town of Nigel's Point, using some ancient magic ritual. The Horde questline manages to destroy one of its own posts in Stonetalon, thanks to Kromgar. There's a couple others, but several relatively major posts get wrecked in the canon storylines.

That all said...

Some of these can be addressed more easily than others. Astranaar is flat out said to be restored: ergo the Horde attack fails. Warsong is a bit iffier, but I don't see a problem in throwing the Horde a bone and having them undo or repel the attack on the lumber camp given the Alliance save Astranaar.

Other things still will just require staff discretion, or should just be ignored in favor of things more black and white. There are so many battlefields in Cata you couldn't hope to cover them all in Role Play, especially when not every player character is interested in conquest RP (such as myself, for the most part). There's plenty of things that DO have clear cut results to hold us over for the time being.

Conquest RP isn't the core of the playerbase's problems, but I highly doubt any single issue is. It is lots of several small problems that are slowly driving away small groups until nothing remains. They need to be addressed one by one.
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... as will your valiant hearts.
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#94
One thing I have noticed is the preconceived notion that people just won't enjoy rp with certain people. Several times I have been told I could not join an rp (or they wouldn't rp with certain ones of my characters) because of possible conflicts of personality. While I never want to make someone feel uncomfortable, conflict in RP (whether it will occur or not, and not to the extent of violence) shouldn't be a reason to not join or not allow someone to join. It helps develop characters where friendly conversations stops. Or even just not stereotyping characters or players. Trying something new (or doing with someone new) will not end the world;sometimes it might actually introduce you to new experiences that you enjoy.

An example of this could be when I introduced drug trips to players. People automatically assumed the worst would happen, when in reality it helped develop their characters in ways they didn't think of.

....I forgot where I was going with this... Don't knock it till you try it?

Edit: Because tablet typing fails.
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#95
(10-07-2013, 11:47 AM)Cressy Wrote: One thing I have noticed is the preconceived notion that people just won't enjoy rp with certain people. Several times I have been told I could not join an rp (or they wouldn't rp with certain ones of my characters) because of possible conflicts of personality. While I never want to make someone feel uncomfortable, conflict in RP (whether it will occur or not and not to the extent of violence) shouldn't be a reason to not join or not allow someone to join. It helps develop characters were friendly conversations stops. Or even just not stereotyping characters or players. Trying something new (or doing with someone new) will not end the world;sometimes it might actually introduce you to new experiences that you enjoy.

An example of this could be when I introduced drug trips to players. People automatically assumed the worst would happen, when in reality it helped develops their characters In ways they didn't think of.

....I forgot where I was going with this... Don't knock it till you try it?

That was you that gave Bellatrix that laced lollipop?

God I want your children. She was tripping some serious balls ovaries that day.
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#96
Probably. ;p. That is if it happened a while ago.
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#97
Well, I haven't been on due to RL issues. I hope to return in the future, however, when things have looked up.
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#98
Almost level 60...

That aside there are some exciting changes going on at work. Translation: There's lots of overtime to be captured.

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The true test of his choice lies forward.
— The story of the Silithian.


See life through shades of silver.
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#99
There're a number of issues at work here. A lot are snowball-like effects too. We're a niche community, as noted by quite a few people in the thread. As noted by Grakor, as well as various news sites, retail WoW has been in decline for a few years now, which means that CotH naturally won't have as many incoming new players as it used to.

In addition, CotH's peak demographic (judging by pure speculation of what I've seen on the forums - hopefully someone's got proper data?) is in the 16-24 agegroup, with the largest portion being university students. The server's activity peak was around 2009 I believe, though hopefully someone can correct me if that's wrong. That's four years ago now, so the majority of students from those days have likely graduated and are working full time. Hence, the peak demographic no longer has enough free time to Roleplay as much.

These two factors are just part of the reason, of course, as well as the majority of the reasons listed all throughout this thread. As noted by Maulbane, it's a simple fact that the rate of players drifting away has crept above the rate of newcomers over the last couple of years. This may go some way to explaining the 'sub-par' RP as noted by people above. Without veterans to emulate, how will the newer players improve?

It creates a kind of a catch-22 situation - People don't log on because there's nothing going on, and people don't want to start anything because there's no-one logging on.

There've been a couple of fix-all solutions presented above, namely the re-introduction of an IC economy, the rather controversial 'No-OOC', and the usual Custom Lore suggestion. Heck, I've got a couple myself (reintroduce bronze tokens - having to quest and raise money increases peoples' activity, and thus their likelihood to roleplay). However, the solution to a few complex problems isn't a single simple solution. There's more of a need for an attitude change.

In a single word - initiative. It's all well and good suggesting the GMs should create more events, but why would they feel justified in doing so if the players aren't showing up to RP anyway? The key is in everyone - the GMs, but more importantly, the players being more prepared to start roleplay, for whatever reason. In the week or so that I've been back, I've found that if there's no RP going on, there's no point in asking in the LFG channel. But if you start something and advertise it, people will join.

Again, this is relevant to GMs, but moreso to players. If the administration would like a more refined suggestion, I'd say that it'd be good to reward players who do this. Perhaps a commendation system of some sort. Or a forum specifically for praise. Even if there's no definite reward, it's good to still make people feel recognised for good RP, event organisation, or just being willing to take the initiative.

In my opinion, that's how you stop people from drifting off. And in turn, that's how you get the activity level of the server to rise again.
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tl;dr, CotH is a community, and if you care about it you should put some effort and energy into it, regardless if you're a Peon or a GM.
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... as will your valiant hearts.
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Hi. I'm not back due to my current situation. But I am peeking in. With that said...


Maybe a hard reset is required. A real hard one. A fresh start for everyone and their characters - this way even if they wind up pursuing the same rp and what not as last time, it can happen with a different spin.

Heck, maybe even go back as far as Vanilla. Serve up some old CotH nostalgia to lure people back who retired and then worry about the future with a fresh start.
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I'm not sure about others, but I know I'm not fond of the idea of a hard restart.
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A hard restart actually sounds super cool to me. Largely because it would be awesome to roleplay... well. Inexperienced characters again.

TBH, Warcraft Lore has become stuffed with so many events that there's no excuse for someone to be inexperienced. But post-Warcraft 3, everything's still shaken up, people aren't at eachother's throats...

... Man now I miss vanilla.

It could be a nice kick in the pants that CotH could use. But we'd have to revert to WotLK at least. Maybe if Kret could host dual servers, but that might be fragmenting the population.
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I also like the idea of a hard restart. My gears started turning right away and I can see a world of possibilities. Not to mention it'd be easier to combat the stagnancy, in my mind.

*rubs chin*

It's definitely something to consider.
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Now that I am at my computer, I can elaborate.

So, for those of you more active on other RP servers and wow retail, you may notice that it really isn't just CotH that is suffering this sudden drop in activity. Smaller WoW RP communities based in other mediums beside ingame RP have lost their momentum. WoW Retail RP is as Ugh as ever. Even Trollogue, with it's reputation, definitely has less people around than normal.

I am of the opinion that due to current trend in the Warcraft storyline (Blizzard failing 24/7 at telling a remotely decent story), and years of simply playing it, WoW RP in general is dying down due to burn out. Not just CotH.

If CotH really was to do anything exceptionally different from it's current formula and try for stuff like custom lore and ingame currencies and whos and whats its (Which wouldn't really happen anyway, since Kretol has made his stance on that stuff clear in the past), it would need to rebuild it's core membership first and then focus on luring in new players with new 'features' and what not.

I realize many people claim to loathe the idea of a 'Hard Reset' and I understand why. It sucks to build your sand castle and then get it stomped out. It sucks to destroy something you've created it. But a Hard Reset isn't the destruction of your character. It's a rebirth. It's a chance for you to remodel them and enjoy them in the same story, but with a new narrative. Don't think of it as deleting the save file in your game. Think of it as a "New Game+" option. Yes, the old game is gone, and all the development you had in it - but a lot of the experience carries over, and you can play the game from a new angle that way.

Of course, this is all just rambling on my end.

EDIT: Plus, I feel that basing the game out of Vanilla or at most, TBC (But ideally vanilla) would be good for us - Vanilla, for what it's worth, really did have a 'Wild West' sort of vibe to RP. I think that is something that can be taken advantage of.

And it's not like we wouldn't progress to future x-pacs all over again. The work on WotLK and Cata is already done for us.
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