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OtLand Please do not bite the newcomers - Newcomers Welcome Policy

Dear Otland members,

For some time we have observed decreasing interest in OpenTibia world in general, Otland forum (as well as other OT-related community boards), Otserv/TFS servers and OpenTibia-hacking in general. It is obvious that Tibia is becoming less popular all the time and the community is expanding(?) slowly. We have few developers on whom OT world almost entirely depends on. Even they are sometimes retiring and there are no new contributors that would continue their efforts (although we always welcome, accept and appreciate new developers!).

However, the number of daily new user registrations is constantly growing (and these are not users we banned :cool:). The problem is what happens to the new users? I believe that the biggest obstackle to entering the OpenTibia world and our great community is the lack of sufficient information. You might notice that most of our users are those who first experienced Tibia some time ago already. There is no easy newcomer guide here. If you haven't heard of OpenTibia before, you'd probably have difficulties with starting up an OTS now. Still, new users can and do post questions on our support board (and other).

The problem is, some users disrespectfuly treat the newcomers and their obviously "newbie" questions. "RTFM", "LMGTFY" and "use the search function" are the most popular answers, often written by many users in one thread. It's obviously not helping much. There is also another frustrating problem with that. As Talaturen pointed out, when you actually search it, you will just find ~10 other thread on the same topic... with the same answers: "RTFM", "LMGTFY" and "use the search function". You can imagine what it leads to. This is also the kind of action that leads to closing the community. If Otland were a business, we would be very successful! This is called "raising barriers for market entry". But we are *NOT* a business and we do *NOT* want that. We want just the opposite.

Obviously, there are users that did not put any effort into looking for an answer and simply want it from us, best on an ornamented sheet of paper, first-class air mail delivered. In most cases you can tell between that type of users and the true newcomers. The first ones are usually "new" because we have already banned them many times. We will keep banning them for trolling our community, but we want to be open for the real new users.

Therefore, we want to introduce a sort of Newcomers Welcome Policy. "One of the most frequent criticisms of the open source community is lack of friendly support for newcomers." (Wikipedia) We want to eliminate that and hopefully let our community grow and increase interest in OpenTibia. It does not depend only on development of TFS, Otserv, OT tools like map editors and AAC scripts (although we know it does). Do not blame it on the developers of most popular examples of these types of software even if they abandoned their work. They have already done something. You CAN and you SHOULD do something too! You can be nice to the new people and don't bite them! You can also start developing your own stuff and share it with us :)

The Ubuntu Forums and LinuxQuestions.org have introduced "no RTFM" policies to promote a welcoming atmosphere already some time ago.
RTFM [and] "Go look on google" are two inappropriate responses to a question. If you don't know the answer or don't wish to help, please say nothing instead of brushing off someone's question. Politely showing someone how you searched or obtained the answer to a question is acceptable, even encouraged.

Ubuntu Forums said:
If you wish to remind a user to use search tools or other resources when they have asked a question you feel is basic or common, please be very polite. Any replies for help that contain language disrespectful towards the user asking the question, i.e. "STFU" or "RTFM" are unacceptable and will not be tolerated.
This is what we introduce as our forum rule as of now. It will be added to the Rules page soon. Basically, if you want to just write one of those unfriendly and unhelpful replies, please do not write anything. They are not nice and will be removed and if abused, all our general warning and punishment rules apply.

The most important message is above, but we are also concerned about shaping the community in a right way. We are a relatively small one and we cannot afford splitting into smaller ones (you can probably see what happened to new forums that tried to achieve that). This is why I want to make a side not about Tibia 8.60, private SVN access, "TFS 0.4", "r.3777" and anything connected to that. You know this version is not supported. It's not even released. And there are reasons for that. They are unstable, they do not work. You are having tons of problems with them, and that's understandable - they do not work (you got it now?). We did not invent the private subversion to make money, or make it difficult for your to obtain the latest version. We wanted to limit the amount of problems we knew you will have. Unfortunately, due to inactivity of development in the 0.3 branch, the development versions started to be widely used despite of the bugs (we understand that, how long could you wait!). Fortunately, this is over now. The 0.2 branch is much more advanced, there is a publically released 0.3.7 versions that is supported on our Support Board (as you know that private SVN versions are not!). We do not ban support for these old versions to piss you off. We cannot afford making another branch of a 2 years old piece of software just to fix the bugs that have already been fixed in the new versions of TFS. (This is where the splitting of our community and efforts would occur.) This is why we would like you to move on and use the newest versions of TFS. There are also new version of bots if you players really need to cheat and you want them too (the most popular reason for using 8.60 is that this is the last version that Elfbot/TibiaBot NG supports). And because all of you (old members) love the 8.60 versions so much, newcomers are convinced that it's for some reason better to use it, which is horribly wrong! They won't get any support and will not get anywhere.

There is also another problem I would like to discuss and I am sure you are already aware of that. During past few years Tibia has become deeply "commercialised business". Some or most(?) of you are trying to make money on it. There is a difference between getting donations (even for your work if players want to donate more than the cost of running the server) and making money on it, especially in case of Download'n'Run servers. OpenTibia community is supposed to be "open", Otserv and TFS are "free" (both meanings) software and the whole idea was once non-profit. We cannot force you to change it, but it will crash one day... You cannot keep selling pixels (yes, you are not accepting donations, you're just selling virtual stuff) in a 2D, 15 years old game forever! Especially when you don't add any value yourself (Download'n'Run). You have heard "rumours" (confirmed) that we might/will close the Marketplace board (which creation was controversial in the first place). We cannot control what you do but we won't make it easier for you to destroy the initial idea of opennes.

It's a community, be part of it and respect it. If it's free, it doesn't mean you own the place.

Please respect the newcomers.

Best Regards,
Don Daniello
- on behalf of the Otland Staff

(This was initially a piece of news about the forum rules change, but I used this moment to point out some additonal matters you should think about.)
 
3. Split the community? Yeah, I can agree. But how come OTland wont make 1 great stable distro that every made script and things will work for? Instead, you make different free versions, different paid versions with different functions aswells as bugs. Thats what I call a split community. Does Apple make like others with their phone? No. They stick with 1 version and update it. Guess what? They rule the market.
Kind Regards,
Eldin.

As far as I know, the dev team is working to get the 0.2 branch to be compatible with 0.3 datapacks.
 
If thats true, I'll be fapping all weekend. ;)

Kind Regards,
Eldin.
 
Does Apple make like others with their phone? No. They stick with 1 version and update it. Guess what? They rule the market.
If each of you paid ~$500 every year for one, new TFS version I am sure it would just work.

But I don't see how Apple is similar to Otland...
 
And the people woke up and attacks on whatever small note they can find, congratulations.
Can give ya another example if its to hard to understand my point, feel free to ask. :)

Kind Regards,
Eldin.

Edit: What you just wrote to "put me in place" (rofl) is exactly why this thread is needed and sadly got created.
 
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tibia need to advertise more <_< 13k online right now. On runescape it was 50k.

- - - Updated - - -

If each of you paid ~$500 every year for one, new TFS version I am sure it would just work.

But I don't see how Apple is similar to Otland...

create a massive tfs version and sell it every year :p
 
Everyone has been so lovely to me so far, I'm still considered a new comer
 
EldinWorld, +1 for your post one page ago, couldn't agree more.

As I reached the end of Dons post the final nail was slamed into my OT coffin.

I just want to add my 2 cents here, since I'm involved since 2005 with OTs (scripting, mapping, hosting) and this will be my "good bye" post.

8 years ago I was an 18 years old dude who loved to play games and eventually got interested in "how do you build a game?".
That's when I rememberd that I once found a forum called "OT F A N S" where people made those games, they programed and hacked like madmans so people playing the original CipSoft Crapshit didn't have to pay their hard earned money to play a freaking game.

I was so proud and moved by those men and women contributing their time and knowledge to create something for other people to enjoy, !FOR FUCKING FREE! and rise up against those greedy bastards stealing peoples money for nothing. It's the god damn 20th century, the WWW was the limitless fortress where ideas were forged with blood, tears, sweat and hard work.
It was the time when I became interested in LUA, C++, PHP, mapping my own piece and forge something together, for just one sake, to let people enjoy it FOR FREE!
There were also times when I got stuck with my capabilities, my knowledge was too little too less to solve some problems on my own.
That's when those men and women stepped up and guided me into the right direction, helped me out when I was in need of help.
I was so gratefull back then, I admired them for their knowledge but also respected them from the bottom of my heart for their contribution.
That was the time when I realized "I want to become like them!" and I worked my ass off to achieve this goal.
Working, scripting, mapping, sleeping, working, scripting, mapping, sleeping,.... I didn't want to waste any time and rise up to my idols.
I wanted to treat new people discovering the limitless potential of scripting and mapping with their blood and sweat like those men and women treated me, with respect.
They respected me for working as hard as them to keep going towards my goal, they respected me for learning everything I had to know in order take the next step, they respected me for contributing my tiny 20 line action script (it just moved a fucking stone forth and back).


But those men and women grew up. They became parents, moved on with their lifes, switched jobs / games, had to carry more responsibility and by the time "outgrew" Tibia and the OT community.


It was the time, when I stepped up a little bit and tried my best to help everyone who got interested in the OT community.
But as time passed, I found myself confronted with strange threads ... "Donation system!" "How to put a SMS shop up?" "Donation sword help! rep++"
Well, since donations are widely used to cover the expensive renting fees and to make sure that a server was kept up, I couldn't see anything bad happening.... little did I know.

Everything else is an old story.
Greed, money, disrespect, stealing, cracking, DDoSing, flaming, trolling, botting ... BOOM!
What the fuck happend ... simple ... the next generation took over.


Why the hell am I writing this?
Those newcomers, dear Don, you want to put your hopes in and want to treat like maybe you were treated back in the days, politely and respectfull, DO NOT DESERVE IT!
I'll go even further and say that the "next generation" is full of lazy assholes with no respect for each other.
There are, ofcourse, exceptions! I do not want to throw everyone in the same pot, so don't feel offended if you, dear newcomer / old user / what ever, read this.

If you want to be treated with respect then treat others the same way.


To you, dear newcomer, if you ever happen to read this,

OpenTibia was created to free the world from those pay to play bastards.
If you want to earn money then get a fucking job!


BUT DO NOT TOUCH THE SACRED WORK OF THOSE HONORED MEN AND WOMEN WHO PUT THEIR ALL AND EVERYTHING IN, TO MAKE THIS WORLD A LITTLE BIT BETTER!


I cannot accept your new rule, OTLand, therefor I'll take my leave.

Just one last thing...
I'm aware that nothing will change with this rule, dear moderators, ... are you?
 
@Zyntax
I agree with what you wrote, but I don't understand what you do now...
You decided to leave because I wanted to encourage you (all of you) to be more helpful towards newcomers? And I of course meant those "good guys" that you distinguish from the "greedy ones". I didn't force you to do anything.
 
@Zyntax
I agree with what you wrote, but I don't understand what you do now...
You decided to leave because I wanted to encourage you (all of you) to be more helpful towards newcomers? And I of course meant those "good guys" that you distinguish from the "greedy ones". I didn't force you to do anything.

I lean back, take a nip of my beer and start to focus on new goals in my life, if you want to know it exactly ;)

Those good guys you're talking about, you can count them with one of your hands.
God be my witness, the ~5 guys/girls are in very good hands, they know how to play the game and already have their tutors, mentors and friends, experienced and respected members from OTLand.

The other 12.948,... let's call them "Leechers", got what they deserved, flames, trolls and disrespect.

I'd really like to start a revolte against that rule of yours and "fight" against MODs, Admins and the banishment system, but my time is over and I don't want to cause you any troubles, you're a nice guy after all ;)

If you still have something to say then let's take that to PMs.
 
With all due respect zyntax.. It's ppl like you that indirectly encourage leechers. No1 has the patience to get them through the transition of being spoonfed to learning. It may take a hell of a lot of time but 1 by 1 the community will begin to improve.

Nothing better than to begin at the top. They are not the problem it is us who lack the patience to help them properly that are the problem.
 
We all have lives, more important things to do and a lot of other 'adult stuff' that sucks. But it's pretty sad to just completely throw away what you have done, what gave you fun etc. Even if 'some' people are just immature brats that care only about money. My goal is to show that you can achieve something. That server can be great, give a lot of fun to players without need to milk them. Or their parents. Solving algorithmic problems is one of last things that give me happiness and let me forget about cruel reality. I have decided to leave this community behind few times already, but it attracts me anyway. Even if most of people can just spam, there are some guys that simply have to be respected. And they are many. Old ones, new ones...
 
Most of the OT community was formed few years ago, staying in the game till now. At the start everyone did everything for free, because they still had their hands in their pants watching internet porn and doing maths homework - today people grew up and their responsibilities grew up too leading to the need of money. And this is why most of the servers are based on cash. Simple as that, if there won't be new young people coming most of the servers are just gonna be money-makers, not fun-makers.

@down - possibly

#kos
 
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not really
new people, about 13 yo are coming into OT
and THEY want to make money
and they want to make money by downloading and hosting ready servers

and thats the problem

spotting a unicorn.
oh, you made my day
 
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Most of the OT community was formed few years ago, staying in the game till now. At the start everyone did everything for free, because they still had their hands in their pants watching internet porn and doing maths homework - today people grew up and their responsibilities grew up too leading to the need of money. And this is why most of the servers are based on cash. Simple as that, if there won't be new young people coming most of the servers are just gonna be money-makers, not fun-makers.

#kos

Lol I'm still doing everything for people for free, I'm in this community since day when they updated tibia to 7.6
Even if I release something awesome nobody would really care till they notice how much money they can make on that data, what makes me sad.
I still remember times when only 20% of servers or less had dedicated server and 100% uptime, finding a server with sms shop was like spotting a unicorn.
Today it's impossible to find good classic fun server as these ones between 7.6 and 8.2 without all these shitty events, because everyone who is still in otservers wants money

I'm not even sure if players still would appreciate server with "classic fun" as in beginning. 11 years changed this community.
 
No one plays servers with less than 99% uptime anymore. Most servers were home hosted during after school til morning times.. That's what's changed, everyone wants dedicated, no one wants a half hosted server anymore
 
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