What makes a good server?

[Tyhm]

So what makes good community?
A steady inflow of newbies, a steady inflow of oldbies, good player retention?
My theory is and was the evolution of newbies to oldbies, though admittedly I've never been good at retention. That was the whole point of quests - newbies go OO SOMETHING TO DO!, they do it, they get stuff, then they go "Huh, bored now. I think I'll go back to ___", and lo, there are more people there. Some newbies that need help with quests, some newbies who abandoned their questing status and need to be pwned.
Trouble is, on Classic, the crux was that the oldbies were only there to pick on the newbies. Well, not all of them were only there for that, but most of them were mostly there to PK newbies. Which means less newbies want to stay, particularly when there are other server options. Which means for each oldbie that leaves, there's one less total of the playercount. Which means eventually we wind up with like 10 people total. So we can crack down on PKing (more newbies, less oldbies), or we can encourage it (less newbies, more oldbies). Or you can work around it, which other servers have done to greater effect.

[bef]

Originally Posted by Tyhm

So what makes good community?
A steady inflow of newbies, a steady inflow of oldbies, good player retention?
My theory is and was the evolution of newbies to oldbies, though admittedly I've never been good at retention. That was the whole point of quests - newbies go OO SOMETHING TO DO!, they do it, they get stuff, then they go "Huh, bored now. I think I'll go back to ___", and lo, there are more people there. Some newbies that need help with quests, some newbies who abandoned their questing status and need to be pwned.
Trouble is, on Classic, the crux was that the oldbies were only there to pick on the newbies. Well, not all of them were only there for that, but most of them were mostly there to PK newbies. Which means less newbies want to stay, particularly when there are other server options. Which means for each oldbie that leaves, there's one less total of the playercount. Which means eventually we wind up with like 10 people total. So we can crack down on PKing (more newbies, less oldbies), or we can encourage it (less newbies, more oldbies). Or you can work around it, which other servers have done to greater effect.

Some really good points..
I would like to see more servers which encourage Oldbies to help Newbies or to give Oldbies less incentive to kill Newbies... Maybe a spar-like pking system where you gain less from killing somebody who is new as opposed to somebody who is old...
I suppose that would bring us back to using experience as opposed to kills deaths which would really suck because having how many kills and deaths you have staring you in the face is a really good aspect, encourages you to improve.

Going around in circles though atleast the thread is now back on topic :P