Why do oldschool servers not last?

[Achelexus]

Feels like oldschool servers (pre 8.0) are released every week, gather a lot of hype and hundreds of players on release, then slowly die over time. There are modern servers that have been up for years, but the only "alive" oldschool server I know of is Miracle which has only been up for 1-2 years, and has been on a decline lately.

My guess is that there's a fundamental design problem with pre-8.0 tibia. Perhaps it's a lack of end-game content, or problems with balancing (specially class balancing). Maybe it's an issue where players just join early to compete for the top level or server dominance, which means that once this competition is over, players quit en masse. Perhaps the game's design discourages players from joining when the server is already going, since oldschool Tibia is pretty bad in terms of being power abused by dominant players (or anyone higher level than you), so they'd rather wait for another server to release.

What do you think?

 

[Bloodbringer]

Tibia 7.4 only lasted for a few months during real tibia, quickly after getting new features and content as it upgraded to newer versions. People want to stick to the same features and content for years, it just doesn't work and gets boring quickly. Also there are some key flaws in those oldschool versions that are often ignored, specially related to high-level content or mechanics.
For example the fact that the only way to profit in these oldschool versions is by hunting weak creatures (such as minotaurs, etc) for long periods, with no challenges, its just a very bad game design overall in the long run, in my opinion, it eventually breaks unless the dev fixes it somehow or adds some extra content that is good enough.

In short: there is some fun and nostalgic aspect to these oldschool versions, but there are many flaws in the way it was designed and the lack of content will severely impact players retention in the long run.

I think the only thing that makes those servers to stay alive are the heavy RMT based community, where you can just buy resources with real life cash without having to invest the insane amount of time in the game that you'd normally have to. So the pair of people that want to enjoy the fun part quickly without the insane boring grind for months and people that want to make some money out of the game, makes it an alive market of people playing it. If it wasn't for the RMT, there would be no oldschool server alive today, because fundamentally the design is broken and gets boring quickly.

If you think about it thats the same reason Tibia is still alive today, its due to the Tibia Coin ecosystem and how you can just buy characters and progress easily, and then trade or sell for profit even. Now that we are adults, thats what mmorpgs have become for most.

 

[CastorFlynn]

This is happening across all versions. Apparently, the community is broken, thinking only about external profits from the sale of gold, items, and characters.

There is an expectation that the server will not last more than 1 month. These players, especially guild members, rush in the first and second week and start selling accounts and items, making good money and moving on to the next server that will open, whether it be old, baiak, version X or Y.

 

[Bloodbringer]

Its not the community, its the nature of mmorpg, given it is not played by kids anymore but rather by a more adult and older audience.

 

[Eiffel]

Tibia was designed in a different time with a different sentiment in the gaming world among the players.

Back then (98-2001) people who were tech savvy enough to be online and understand what a computer was capable of were incredibly niche. By the time the "big" versions of 7.1/7.4/7.6/8.0/8.6 came out, those systems that were enjoyed a few years prior were being ironed out. You have to remember, gaming "online" was new and nobody really knew how to do it. There was no guide, no design expectations. Likewise, players didn't really have any expectations. They accepted designs and gameplay that doesn't work today because the sentiment of gamers today has massively changed.

One of these big design changes is extremely low drop rates/grind. Even though most people on this forum were once okay with the immense grind that original Tibia was, they don't get that same excitement or enjoyment from it. We've been spoiled by games with more condensed gameplay loops, and with more instant gratification and not just in gaming.

Additionally, players have way more games they can spend their time on these days. Back then, that wasn't so much the case. We were willing to put up with more because there weren't that many options, and it also fed into the MMO aspect of people playing their "one" game. Every world felt like it's own community because people were "living" in that world, not really playing much else.

So the only thing that oldschool servers bring is a touch of nostalgia, but the playerbase that grew up with it are not in the same frame of mind or same age. They don't have a ton of time to dedicate to an OT, but they also don't like it when things are brand new because it also takes time and energy to learn new mechanics. And if they are unsure if they will enjoy something unfamiliar, they will abandon it because they don't want to risk their time on something that will bring them no enjoyment, especially when you can easily go play something else.

 

[jeanphilip]

why? because the lack of content playability and more. players already know all about it and it's mechanics, power abusing, botting, aimbotting and much more, also all it players base for areason just want to pk so they level till level 50-60 begin to pking and that discourage all lower level player ending in massive quit, lack of advertisment low playerbase

 

[earnestbrock]

Feels like oldschool servers (pre 8.0) are released every week, gather a lot of hype and hundreds of players on release, then slowly die over time. There are modern servers that have been up for years, but the only "alive" oldschool server I know of is Miracle which has only been up for 1-2 years, and has been on a decline lately.

My guess is that there's a fundamental design problem with pre-8.0 tibia. Perhaps it's a lack of end-game content, or problems with balancing (specially class balancing). Maybe it's an issue where players just join early to compete for the top level or server dominance, which means that once this competition is over, players quit en masse. Perhaps the game's design discourages players from joining when the server is already going, since oldschool Tibia is pretty bad in terms of being power abused by dominant players (or anyone higher level than you), so they'd rather wait for another server to release.

What do you think Eggy Car?

Oldschool Tibia is super fun at launch, but the lack of endgame and heavy power abuse usually kill servers fast. Modern servers survive longer because they add QoL and events—without that, the hype just fades.

 

[Recreant]

Feels like oldschool servers (pre 8.0) are released every week, gather a lot of hype and hundreds of players on release, then slowly die over time. There are modern servers that have been up for years, but the only "alive" oldschool server I know of is Miracle which has only been up for 1-2 years, and has been on a decline lately.

My guess is that there's a fundamental design problem with pre-8.0 tibia. Perhaps it's a lack of end-game content, or problems with balancing (specially class balancing). Maybe it's an issue where players just join early to compete for the top level or server dominance, which means that once this competition is over, players quit en masse. Perhaps the game's design discourages players from joining when the server is already going, since oldschool Tibia is pretty bad in terms of being power abused by dominant players (or anyone higher level than you), so they'd rather wait for another server to release.

What do you think?

It's quite complex.

First and foremost, the game is known through and through - people all know the meta tactics to rush levels fast and start preparing for upcoming "war" - every oldschool server basically has only 2 teams (sometimes 3 but in the end it's always 2) that join and play there to fight at the later stages of the server, depending on the server rates it can take a few days, sometimes weeks, sometimes months. The problem with that is, that the purpose of the server is only to grind fast to get to the pvp and war portion, once you get bored of pvp the server usually dies (this is accelerated because there's so many servers available that you are basically hard-wired to repeat this entire process every 2-4 weeks, because if you're late even a few days, people will hop to another server for a fresh start - be it for whatever reason, either they're losing the war or they lost motivation to keep grinding for levels and money to fight).

Secondly - the game itself lacks anything to do other than permamently grinding and pvping and you could make this argument for most MMORPG's - but Tibia's endgame content is insanely bland. If you compare it to objectively better games, like Oldschool Runescape - the grind doesn't end in Runescape either, but there's so much variety and so many flavours of the grind that it doesn't get boring and it can provide you with thousands of hours of gameplay even when you max your stats and gear, depending on the goal you set for yourself. In Tibia the only goal is "get higher level, get more money". That's why it falls flat on its face so fast - the exp rates are often very accelerated to accomodate for the player's lack of time (most of us are pushing 30, some of us even 40), so the lifetime of a server is expotentially decreased. Add the possibility of using multiclient to make runes and I should mention that most of servers do this because it takes a ton of time to level without it being allowed, and it's downfall is accelerated even further. Long story short, it's by design. And that design is better to a degree, because it attracts more players overall. More players = more money for the server owner. You could make an argument for server like Tibiantis, that it stands by itself for over 5 years now, but it is nowhere as active for the past 3 years as it was during first 2 years of its release, because the rates were original 7.4 tibia rates and it just took this long to level, so the amount of time needed to reach the PVP portion of the game was locked behind a large time sink of around a year or two. However, when people gained higher levels and 1 death on a level 170+ mage meant you just lost 200+ euro in real cash, including 10 hours of your free time, people just stopped playing the server because the cost outweighed the potential fun you could've had. People also played way safer than they would on a high-stage server, so it meant that fights were less frequent and people were extremely hard to kill in most scenarios, so no fun pvping.

Endgame content is also just SD-ing warlocks, explo-ing behemoths or heros, or SD-ing demons, or GFB-ing tombs. Pick your poison. On a server like Medivia was back in 2016-2017 you had so much other stuff to do, you had factions to complete to enable you to enter new hunting grounds, you had addons, you had bosses, you had many custom quests - the content was there, but medivia killed itself by updating the graphics to a completely alien version of Tibia, for the sole purpose of calling it a separate game.

The only saving grace of oldschool version of Tibia (and i don't call any version over 7.72 oldschool becasuse of hotkeys being introduced to the game in 7.8) is it's pvp system. It's easily the most unique system out of all MMORPG's you might've played, and it rewards players that sunk time into practicing their aiming, their healing, their manafluiding, their ering switches and stoneskin switches - it mostly rewarded players who were better aimers than their opponent, because it meant that they'd drain the opposing mages mana faster and take him out of the fight faster, thus ensuring a victory in any fight. It also meant that they'd be able to kill your average, casual player with ease, thus accelerating their levelling process and making the less skilled player quit the server more often than not, because he was just farmed for supplies, essentially. It also drove down the playerbase, because the average war player was 2 tiers above a casual player in pvp, so your casual player was usually just plankton to be farmed on, and don't get me started how easy it was for top-tier pvpers to kill even average war players. But all of that went out of the window the moment hotkeys were introduced to the game, as it levelled the playing field and completely dumbed down the game into "who has more people usually wins", not "who has better players usually wins". That was the end of oldschool Tibia, at least for me.

Class balance isn't an issue in oldschool Tibia, the only vocation you could make this argument for is Druid, but in the hands of an extremely skilled pvper that vocation can be just as deadly as sorcerers to a single target because of his ability to slow down targets by paralyzing them. I would even say oldschool Tibia was extremely well balanced and it had counterplay to everything, allowing for skill expression on any vocation. Some would argue that sorcerers were not balanced, but let me tell you, having played oldschool servers only for almost 8 years now - if you had the correct 7.4 formulas and mechanics, the vocations were very balanced and did what they all were made to do. Knights were the tanks, paladins were the off-tanks, sorcerers were the DPS character and druids were the supports/debuffers.

 

[kay]

You could make an argument for server like Tibiantis, that it stands by itself for over 5 years now, but it is nowhere as active for the past 3 years as it was during first 2 years of its release

Actually, it's exactly the opposite. We've had more active players in the past 3 years than in the first 2 years after the release (on average).

 

[El Bringy]

Feels like oldschool servers (pre 8.0) are released every week, gather a lot of hype and hundreds of players on release, then slowly die over time. There are modern servers that have been up for years, but the only "alive" oldschool server I know of is Miracle which has only been up for 1-2 years, and has been on a decline lately.

My guess is that there's a fundamental design problem with pre-8.0 tibia. Perhaps it's a lack of end-game content, or problems with balancing (specially class balancing). Maybe it's an issue where players just join early to compete for the top level or server dominance, which means that once this competition is over, players quit en masse. Perhaps the game's design discourages players from joining when the server is already going, since oldschool Tibia is pretty bad in terms of being power abused by dominant players (or anyone higher level than you), so they'd rather wait for another server to release.

What do you think?

When everybody knows the content it becomes no fun without players engagement, if your game design doesn't promote (extra reward) the smart for doing smart tactics your server is nothing different, in exoria we focus on making the gameplay routes (all of them) visible to the development team, we have tactic concept where you go to hunt upgrading stones for equipment which doesn't reward you level wise but increases your strength in a different way, another there is custom spawns which just act as spawns nothing special, most customized old school servers just add systems without mechanical design by adding up the effect over time, finally balance at the kate stage because super mage because we live in rune maker mc era, so you gotta find a way to improve vocations to fit your design and doesn't introduce unfair gameplay.

Favor exploration with new content and hidden gems, make the game world interesting to play beside that players are interested in tibia mechanics.

I rarely see servers that are developed with game design/development concepts.

 

[Ehab00]

Feels like oldschool servers (pre 8.0) are released every week, gather a lot of hype and hundreds of players on release, then slowly die over time. There are modern servers that have been up for years, but the only "alive" oldschool server I know of is Miracle which has only been up for 1-2 years, and has been on a decline lately.

My guess is that there's a fundamental design problem with pre-8.0 tibia. Perhaps it's a lack of end-game content, or problems with balancing (specially class balancing). Maybe it's an issue where players just join early to compete for the top level or server dominance, which means that once this competition is over, players quit en masse. Perhaps the game's design discourages players from joining when the server is already going, since oldschool Tibia is pretty bad in terms of being power abused by dominant players (or anyone higher level than you), so they'd rather wait for another server to release.

What do you think?

I'm about to open one soon swev-v3.sytes.net

 

[leo18dff]

Tibia players are divided into "categories," so to speak...
There’s the audience that enjoys the pure 7.4 style, like Tibiantis, Tibiara, etc.
There’s also the audience that prefers 7.4 custom servers, like Exordion, Nostalrius, and so on.
And there’s the audience that enjoys 8.0 servers, both classic and custom.

Each type of server has its own "slice" of players, and it’s up to you to attract the right audience to your server.

Let me give you an example: the 7.4 old-school audience, in the style of Tibia-Old, aside from those who gave up due to lack of updates from the staff—if you added them all up—I’d say there would easily be over 500 players looking for that kind of base, eager to play... that server has been online for many years. I’m not advertising here, just giving an example of how I see things working. They are extremely passionate about the server. Some time ago I was on their Discord, analyzing the general conversations. Players there beg for the server to adapt to certain things, which shows that the community still dreams of a “perfect” OT of that kind. And across many other protocols, the same story repeats itself.

In other words, there are thousands of players who still enjoy a good 7.4–8.0, just waiting for something to launch that appeals to them.

 

[Nemphis]

Maybe not advertise your servers as old school 7.4 and expect a long server life. Make it for what it is, a short burst of happiness that will soon die, up until someone else makes a new one. Its all the same. All these developers wants to make the server rl map 7.4 with a zero to just a few custom stuff. Its like what people here say, its the rush to own the server and be the strongest, to take control. You can play real tibia for what it is and what OT is in its core. I remember the .. old days (im 35y/o and played real 7.4) of what OT was. You had to manually put monsters in the game in a xml file and you only had 1 floor to play with. Ill tell you that those days where more fun to play because it wasnt serious. Just fun game. Log in with 1/1 and hope you choose a character no1 is playing on.

But alas. Everything evolves. As it should. But did it? Technology did. Developers? Players? Yes, but in the wrong direction. Its not OT's fault. Its AAA-games in general with microtransactions. what ever.

You want players? I'd say old-school 7.4 could be very successful without the need to change too much. Just re-think the gameplay a bit. Doesnt need to be unique, just good. You have a thousand dead 7.4 servers to learn from. Can you alter the game loop without scaring players? Maybe enough time and effort has proven to leave 7.4 behind.

idk. im just rambling

 

[Night Wolf]

I don't have time to read all this wall of text but since your topic didn't flop entirely, I'll reward you with a piece of wisdom:
No one knows what old school or 7.4 was. Seriously.

People that try and please a vast audience of ignorant folks that never actually played or did but barely can remember, completely miss the point of what "old school" is supposed to mean.

Why many servers fail? Their entire concept is flawled...
"This pixel behaves exactly like the same pixel used to behave 20 years ago"
"yea? and why should I care? How can I even know if what you're saying is true lol?"

For your own sake, don't advertise your server as a 7.4 or old school. Just do your own thing, a game that is fun for you. Chances are it will be fun for thousands others.
You can close the topic now

 

[Terotrificy]

Because you don't have the same public anymore. Games nowadays are designed in a certain way for the vast of the public that wants everything instantly.
The public for 7.4 still exist but are a niche incompatible with the game phase (old guys, no time to invest but money to spend) and 7.4-7.6 back then lasted only a couple of years. You will eventually run out of content soon, plus fast exp rate, widely knowledge of the meta, etc accelerates the end.

 

[Morrison]

Pay to win. (Premium features).
The most killer Boats for premium

 

[chucky91]

Dude, this is very variable. Its difficult to maintain a moderate player base. This applies to any game, even if its bringing new and exciting content. I just think an old-school server not need to be easy for a player to "beat the game" quickly.
I also think there needs to be a capitalist cycle in the game these days, where players can trade with real currency, and this is becoming increasingly common and can even sustain the server until the decline in online players slowly subsides.

"Paytowin" can even exist, as long as it dont' greatly influence the player status, just an unlock, but time is what determines progression.
Even if there is no Paytwin, anything a player can buy from another player would also be an advantage, so there nothing wrong with a server having a pay for consumable items.

As long as there not too much content on the panel, like Tibia global: i not played since 2018 and i dont feel like going back (i no longer have the reflexes for those Boeing panels).

 

[JeiDi]

Adding endgame content (tibia-like vertical progression content, so next exp spots) to a protocol with an infinite linear spells scaling...

There's a reason why Cipsoft has changed formulae.

 

[Recreant]

Actually, it's exactly the opposite. We've had more active players in the past 3 years than in the first 2 years after the release (on average).

everything is possible when you lie and count relogging bedmakers as unique players

usual gm moody stuff

 

[kay]

everything is possible when you lie and count relogging bedmakers as unique players

usual gm moody stuff

I didn't even say anything about what indicators I use to measure it, and you didn't care to ask. Yet, you went straight to call me a liar, just because what I said didn't fit your narrative. This shows that you don't care about verifying your thesis against the facts. You simply want to believe it and have others believe it too, regardless of whether it's true or not.

No, I don't count bedmakers as unique players. But even if I did, it would be leveled by the fact that bedmakers were a thing in the earlier years too.

In fact, they were a thing even more back then. You might think that since leveling those chars up takes some time, there will likely be more and more of them over time. But in reality, their number is limited by bed availability, and we already reached that limit in the first months. The largest bedmage "farms" were created at the beginning, only 7-8 months after launch not a single house with a bed remained vacant. This was the time when the number of bedmages in use was the highest ever. We later introduced more restrictive rules for owning houses, guilds, and guildhouses (there were big news about that, which I'm sure you can easily find), which reduced the overall number of bedmages in use. Today, more players have such chars, but on a much much smaller scale (i.e. they are more dispersed), and the total number is slightly lower than before, which we can tell by the number of used/free beds.

Now, this is the average daily online peak in the following years:

Year 1: 173
Year 2: 274
Year 3: 231
Year 4: 490
Year 5: 249

Currently, we are in year 6, and yesterday's online peak was 275. All that data is publicly available for anyone to see, collected since the server's start.

The first year was by far the worst, and it reflects in everything, online numbers, unique players, sold premium etc. Because you were playing at the time, and not anymore, you think (or want to believe) that was when the server was most active, but it's exactly the opposite. It's not even a question, cause we are not talking about a 5% difference here, but more like 50%. So, I don't have to manipulate any data to say this, it's simply the truth, whether you like it or not.

It's also worth to add that:

• In the early months, the ratio of a daily peak to the overall population is higher, because during this time individual players spend more time in game on average, due to the ongoing rat race, so the accumulation in a given hour is higher. After a few years, this race is gone, and the gameplay becomes more relaxed and casual, so you need a larger population of active players to make an equal peak.
• The percentage of cheaters on the online list/counter back then was also higher than it is now. We were committed to eliminating cheaters from the very beginning, but initially our tools weren't as advanced and effective as they became over the years, while players were much more willing to cheat when the server was new. Today we're way closer to a "100% unique player only" online list than in the beginning.

So in reality, the differences (when we talk about the actual population of unique active players) is even greater in favor of the later years than the cited data indicate.

Inb4: "it's all Venezuelan makers!!!" - this is not true either. The contribution of Venezuelan players to the online peak is also lower nowadays than it used to be years ago. Yesterday it was no more than 15% (42/275), where in the past years it used to be 20~% or more in certain periods.

To sum it up, you are not a discussion partner here, but an open shittalker. Clearly not interested in facts, but in spreading lies about certain servers. It's the height of irony that you called me a liar upfront without any basis.