Ok @GodWille I feel you, but please read this suggestion:
First of all, great work on everything so far, I know people are dicks and you are not perfect either, but you generally do good job, so kudos!
You obviously have one of the best, if not THE best server out there, but you have the longevity problem like most of the servers nowadays.
Maybe it suits you, you earn more cash in short spurts, but listen to this…
I'll give you the rough and as short as a possible suggestion in order to make something unique and amazing, this is similar to what I do for a living, I mean business consulting and analysis, and I am pretty decent at it, so I am not speaking out of my ass completely. I am basing this all on a few points that I think are true and I will list then below.
First what you need to do is rebrand yourself to Eltoh, Kasteria, Askara, Tibara whatever, similar to Medivia, and create one universal, let's say for the sake of the example you use “Elothivia”, you make a single website Elothivia.com.
Now what you need to do is make a long-lasting, slow-paced, kind of hardcore server that should last “forever.
Now, this is my first point I am basing everything on, is that I believe that 8.0 has a huge player base and no servers to play (other than yours) and that we could all use one long-lasting server. While there are several 7.4 hardcore servers, that retro tibia takes way to much time and is unnecessarily hard and inconvenient, in a sense you need rune makers if you want to exp on a mage, no wands, low damage in knight and paladins weapons and there is not much to collect ( ie outfits, mounts) no quest to go on, etc. While on 8.0 there is always something to do (no hate towards retro players, just making my point).
Also bonus point is that on the current client there are no cave bots.
But very important you will need to take this server into your own direction in order to make it interesting, more on that later.
To make it as hardcore and slow-paced as possible, giving players that have more time to play their advantages but also people that have to work their own advantages, so the rough and as short as possible suggestion is:
1. Make it slow-paced, so low EXP rates starting from like 2.5x and finish on like 1.2-1.3 on like level 50 and that would be final stage. Since that would be to hard for casual players you add 2h green stamina so people who can only play a few hours a day can compete and stay relevant if the final exp rate is 1.2 with 50% green stamina they get around 1.8 which almost as on Kasteria now.
2. Also make team hunts with 4 people grant extra %, but not op, we don’t want the people abusing it either, like 10-20-40% depending on the different vocations.
3. Make loot rate really low, as low as possible, like, 1.2x as well, it all adds up to the next few points so please continue reading.
4. Remake the task system, and split it into 3 NPCs, gold, NPCs, items. By items I mean addon items, hard tasks like, kill 300 green djinns for 15 GCP, kill 500 giant spiders for 20 GSS, make them repeatable but with like 24-48h cooldown. Also, rare items like dragon claw/soul stone should be obtainable thru task but extremely hard, like kill 5k dls in order to kill Demodras (similar to rl tibia), and in order for this to work you need to remake SHOP as well (see point 5). Gold tasks should be made a lot harder than on Kasteria, instead of killing 200 frosts for 100k, it should be like 500 frosts for 50k and these tasks should be used to cover some expanses of hunt not to make insane profits. The experience tasks should follow the same route. Some Mounts should also be added to Items tasks.
5. Remake the donation shop, leave Premium Tune as is, I wouldn’t mind paying 6-7 euros each month playing something I enjoy (so if you have 300-400 active players you earn 2-3k on just tunes each month and shit ton on other donstions) but make everything else way more expensive. Like djinns should be 150-200 points, all retro outfits 2-3x of the current price, and addon items should be like 5x more expensive so it’s even more rewarding to do outfits in the game. This would also keep the economy of the server alive since people would be looting then buying/selling all the addon items, and people with lots of money would still donate, etc, you get the point.
6. Some mounts should be obtainable in a game similar to rl tibia, so people can collect them, and others would still donate for the cool ones.
7. Remove trainers and auto relog on this server, make people earn skills an magic level, etc while being exposed to PKS. You can double the time for an idle kick from 15 to 30 mins in order to make it a bit easier to skill and rune make without any bots.
8. Either make conjured runes 1x or leave them at 2x but make them cost 50% more mana or soul in order to not make it too op.
This all would make server way more fun to play and levels would be controlled more since you wouldn’t have that much cash to pg to begin with and making a 100 level here would be decent acomplishment while making 200 should take some sweet ass time…
9. Add buy/sell char platform for premium points from the start, more money for you and oportunity for people that don't have time to buy chars and skip boring early levels, and later on, oportunity for people to buy decent chars and play/war with their friends if they didnt start the ot on time.
There are a million more suggestions I could write but I will keep them like this, for now, you can get the base idea.
As I mentioned above you would need to update this server all the time in order to make it more interesting to play and so the players have something to look forward to.
You already have some cool concepts and things for players to do with warzones, inq, and ruthless, quest.
You should keep updating it frequently but like big updates could be every 2-3 months while smaller could be every 1-2-3 weeks.
By bigger updates I mean like completely new hunting grounds, sometimes even cites new monsters, cool items, game mechanics, etc.
By smaller ones I mean new mount here and there, new outfit sometimes, smaller hunting grounds like the mother of scarab lair u added, bug fixes, contests, small items, adjusments, etc.
Since this would be a low rate/hardcore server you could do 50% or double exp /loot weekends often in order to engage players more and give people that are freer over the weekend chance to catch up.
YOU Should NEVER change core mechanics of 8.0 like exhaust for healing and damaging spells, mana potions, uhs etc, but you could and should take inspiration from rl tibia because while they usually fuck up, they do some things great too, like Avalanche and Thunderstorm runes are cool and would be great addition while strong, great, ultra mega Giga potions are garbage…
That can apply to hunting places and cities as well, for example Farmine is meh, but lizard city is cool concept and fun place to exp… Same goes for some new quests and items, like killing 6666 demons to do Demon Oak is fucking cool and hard, but some other quests are meh.
And with this server you don't care about the war teams and they time playing, you have your core players base they keep on playing and paying for Premium, and the war teams will come and go when they see that the server is long-lasting, same with new players, etc.
And then finally, after all, you still can lunch Kasteria/Askara or whatever, under the same brand and size as the new world (low/medium/high rates, whatever) few times a year, where again you would grab some quick cash and make war teams come and go… You can save Kasteria as it is now and run it, or use these hardcore servers updates. You could even keep donation points over account so people from hardcore servers can spend them there or another way around.
This way everyone would be happy, people would have the long term server and war teams would have these short-lasting servers to war it out and do their dick measuring contest.
Imagine having wars, real wars on this server because your 2 guilds are in conflict for spawns all the time, and cash is tight so you have to be smart about it on lower levels, then again conflict arises year later when you all are 200-300+ levels over the new update spawns and you battle it out again, that would be fucking dope.
I already spoke to my SWE friends and they would suck a dick in order to play this ot…
