The gap is there by design -- if you think of it strategically, we simply cannot develop the content older players require. With or without this content they're trickling away and despite honest efforts to develop they never seem satisfied anyways. I'm totally invested in a new community of Facebook players.

The gap is there by design.. :oo:

Not very encouraging news for the community of tomorrow. You can't honestly believe that basing the future of this server off of the hopes that the old will retire is our best solution.

"Hello, welcome to Graal Kingdoms! Here's your free handicap! But don't worry, maybe one day the other 30-40 players will quit and level the playing-field"

Come on. Is that really what we're supposed to tell the new upcoming facebook population? How is this the plan for the new community; they're practically being set up for failure in a competitive environment.

If this really is the end all say all of GK's future plans, then for the sake of all future players-- at least make some sort of tiered PK structure where you can only fight against people in your tier (disabled in core/spar). Lvl 1-25, 26-50, 51-80, 80+. This would at least prevent them from being slaughtered, and they could decide to stop leveling to stay in their tier if they still felt like their gear was under-par. Maybe even assigning a "point value" to pieces of gear so people couldn't start over as a lvl 25 and wear end-game gear, cheating the system.

Would this anger the old community? Possibly, but obviously they're not being catered to anyways if the current plan revolves around their retirement.

Yeah the gap doesn't make it fair to new players but I'm pretty sure there pm ode to start. Even if we fixed the gap it doesn't solve the issue of the topic of the thread making these items be more used. The only way to get maps used is get players leveling outside of parties. GK would have a better future with a exp reset even if you don't reset items imo.

The assumption is that the community of tomorrow will rapidly grow beyond our currently community, which will dwindle as it has for years. Regardless, I feel comfortable assuming the next generation will greatly out number the current members.

The current members will hold very valuable gear, giving them a benefit in the new generation of players. It's not perfect but it's good enough in the interim.

But oldies won't dwindle as fast if the community flourishes. And it might even reverse decline of old players into an incline. It's something definately worth considering. I agree new players will probably out number old players tho its already been happening for years. Only a small fraction of players have been around since 2003.

There will be a subset of the new community which can make very convincing offers in order to purchase items from the existing community, regardless of their 'rate of decay'. This will allow the gear to trickle-down, as it normally has.

With the introduction of Nihil we should see fewer money based trades, so that has also been addressed.

Yeah the Nihil was a good thing for sure. There was way to much usd player to player before it and I haven't heard of it happening nearly as often now.

There's a big difference between not being capable of it and not knowing how to do it.
It really wouldn't. The server would have the same setup as before, and there would be little difference except a few players who have actually taken the time to earn things would have their earnings removed for no reason but to make players who haven't feel good for a day or two. History is bound to repeat itself.
If it's not supposed to be earnable, why have it to begin with?



And what's with this sudden shift in attitude glorifying newbies all of a sudden? I don't know when the last time was that you all were at a low level, but let me remind you that it sucks. A lot.

With a sudden wipe of everyone's progress and nerfing exp, you can say goodbye to all the conveniences you take for granted. That includes blessings, enchantments, weapon improvements, scroll writing, deadly maps, crypt runs, and so forth. If you want to be a newbie, there's a /reset command built into the game. Knock yourself out.

Thanks, that was insightful.

For the illusion of endless content. Many successful MMOs have similar models, where most people roughly end up "around" the same level because the leveling gets so repetitive that players tend to stop. But the option is always there for those select few who embrace the grind. (Maybe only resulting in a few levels more than the average population)

As Stephen's made clear, end-game content isn't the focus of future development. And with a dev team as small as theirs, I can't really blame them. I don't agree with their solution to the gap, but know that there's no easy viable solution to the problem given their current resources.

Yeah I don't agree with the gap either but focusing on beginning to mid game content I also feel is most important.