|
Eh. I could write an essay on the failure of classic and why.
Classic has been going down a very long downward spiral for awhile now since the NPC server era started what 4-5 years back.
The decision to rebuild classic for the NPC server era from the ground up was an awful idea in itself. Especially the serverside HD decision, so classic would be some sort of pinnacle of serverside hoopla, some pinnacle now.
By not relying on default HD, nearly nothing default could be used to develop, i.e. baddies, chests, etc. You also made it impossible to easily recycle all the old NPCs from pre NPC server into a usable form, all had to be rescripted to work with the custom HD and movement systems. Trust me, from experience, trying to bring back things from old classic is a pain in the ass. Why? Because it all has to be rehauled for the custom systems, if you can even do that, sometimes it has to be rebuilt from scratch.
So with that decision to make all those damn custom systems as well as rebuild the OW from nearly scratch, you've set yourself behind the other PWs(competition for players) by getting rid of content deemed old and inferior, needing a rehaul, BUT you've also made it so it is HARDER to develop for the server than other servers. So, now we've got classic working from behind, and at slower pace than everyone else, who gets to use those default systems, such as UN.
Throw in all the other problems that came about all the years, which further crippled classics comeback. The constant switching of LAT Admins for one. Each new LAT/Dev Admin that came in deemed the previous one inferior, and sought out to redo or destroy all the progress the previous admin achieved. That included redoing the custom HD and movement systems multiple times. I think I coined the phrase long ago that we had more movement system and HD system redos than quests released. Each system redo caused problems with all the content built around the former system, which required development resources to fix.
So now you have a lack of content, a difficulty to make content, and the content being released usually being a rehash of something already made. Limited resources being used to repave the same road instead of making new roads. A bit silly, no?
So that went on for years, forming this downward spiral. UN and Zodiac and pretty much a bunch of other servers made it to the top while classic lagged behind. That's how its been going, and how its continuing to go.
Where was the management to sever the spiral you ask? Nowhere. Storm, while good on the PR front, has close to no ability to manage a server. Simply put, he lets the developers and admins walk all over him. He is also one of the most indecisive admins I've seen, in order to get him to make a decision, if you're lucky, you would have to back him into a corner, for days. No decisions got made by the management, so classic was allowed to coast, the horrible and inactive admins left to do whatever they wanted.
Here we are today, years later, the effects of spiraling ever downward are now apparent to everyone. As the spiral continues, classic gets ever more hopeless to get a chance for a rebound. Why?
Community builds community, higher player count servers are going to get more newbies, noone wants to log onto an online game like graal to play with the same 2 people and 3 idling RCs.
Developers dont want to develop for someones dead server unless it's their own private PW that will never make it to hosted or classic tab, developers either go to high profile servers, or they start their own project. It isnt fun to develop unless
A)People are going to use what you make and enjoy it.
or
B)You get to develop things in your own vision.
Deving for classic offers neither.
So its kind of a catch 22, the deeper you go, the harder it is to get out.
All the odds are against Classic right now in every department.
It would take some sort of ridiculous combination of hype and change(think of it in terms of obama hype after bush, guess who bush is in classic's case), addicting content, and the failure on some part of the dominat servers now, only with that sort of combo in rapid succession, could classic see the top. |