My plans for Era

[cbk1994]

In the past weeks, Era's playercount has declined significantly. We are now usually behind at least one other server in the race for players, and we're not gaining any ground. School will be out soon for many, and with this I expect many players who have left will return, giving us a perfect opportunity to gain more players.

My ultimate goal as manager of Era is to see a reset; this is a very ambitious one, and I do not expect it to be completed in the near future. Instead, we will focus on fixing the current Era. In the recent past, the economy has been weak, but gangs have flourished. Now, even they are beginning to die. I recognize the importance of fixing both the rich gang experience on Era, as well as restoring economical balance.

My first project: I plan to disable the item trade window and centralize all trades in the mall. The mall will offer an option for selling your items for money through a database-type system allowing you to search all items for sale, sort them by price, and even sell offer-only items. There will be a second component for trading items for items in another part of the mall which will facilitate public trading.

The second project will be gangs. I will complete Sales' unfinished work on the gang system and release that as soon as possible. With this, gangs will be given a purpose, with points given individually to players and as a whole to gangs. Points will be able to be traded for certain perks, possibly including items, increased HP, and the like. We'll talk more on this later.

After this, I will focus on businesses and events. Era has a surprisingly small number of hostable events, and eventually all of them will be rescripted and automated. As for businesses, you can read more of my plan here.

These projects will help sustain Era while work is carried forward on the development server toward the new overworld, improved core scripting, and new features (such as additional jobs).

I would appreciate any and all criticisms and suggestions. I will also open up a more detailed discussion of each job as it is undertaken.

Thank you for your continued support of Era