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Why “Old-School” servers don’t really work

DonVic

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Hi Everyone! First of all, let me state that this is not a hate post against old-school servers.

I just came to a realization, I think I understood why these servers don’t do the trick, they never really fill me up with the same feelings as old Tibia used to do.

I’ve tried many, I’d say most of them, and some are incredibly well done, others are almost identical to how RL Tibia used to be, and others are complete messes, the thing is.. they never really fill me up, none of them. And I never really knew why until now.

Old RL Tibia was magical because it was new, it was unexplored, and it felt mysterious.

As we were younger and unexperienced with OTservs, we never really grasped on how Tibia worked, we didn’t know how clueless CipSoft is about their own game. Exploring Tibia felt magical, training for hours with slimes wasn’t so tedious because we knew the reward (higher skills) was worth it at the time, even wasting time in the depot spamming the Trade channel wasn’t a pain in the ass.

But now? We all know Tibia’s RL map, specially the old versions, we know that there are not really mysteries in Tibia, most of the so call “Misteriandos” are no more than bugs, CipSoft’s lazy solutions to problems, or just unfinished quests.

We now know how a server works so well, that we don’t really get impressed when a server manages to implement something new.

We think we crave spending hours rune making, being killed by a high lvl spamming Exevo Gran Mas Vis next to the Thais depot, but we don’t, we crave the novelty, we crave the exporing, the learning. That’s what made Tibia so special.

I’m not writing this to throw shit onto old-school servers, I just wanted to point something we most know but ignore, and maybe someone can find a way to make old-school servers as engaging as old Tibia was.

Have a good weekend, people, and happy Valentines.
(I fucking hate these hearts in the screen, annoying af, ffs).
 
You are absolutely right and I personally think nothing can replace or repeat that nostalgic feeling. People are stuck in the past and are desperately trying to revisit the old times where in reality like you're saying, what was great about it was the magical exploration feeling, being young, playing a cool game, interacting with people and finding things that were completely new to us. Not to mention that those old times were pretty much the beginning of gaming. Companies & people have ran out of ideas or just fail at executing them. Most things are driven by money and not the idea of trying to evolve & improve things sadly, this relates to a lot of things even in the real world.

These days majority of game communities are toxic to levels that are just disgusting. People dox others for their own benefit, people scam, hack accounts, botting & cheating is a big part too. Just pushes a lot of players away that would potentially be dedicated and loyal to a server. Another thing is "seasons". Even this community has gone down this route of having "seasons", battlepasses and all that nonsense just to make an extra coin. There are a lot of players who enjoy certain servers but do not commit since the server will reset in a bit of time, which for hardcore grinders is a big push away.

Anyways, went off topic slightly...

I just think it's a lazy mindset people have...oldschool data packs are very easy to configure and launch for the public. I've had couple of experiences where I helped with a small portion of mapping or balaning equipment in projects where the sole purpose of the launch was to make a quick coin whether the server would last or not. No real passion or dedication put into them.

Although there are plenty amazing projects that are in the oldschool style and really do try to create something amazing, they're just ain't for me and I feel like I'm not the only one in this boat.

My tip to everybody who's starting out and thinking of creating their own server:
Create something based on your own likings, something that if you found released for the public, you would actually play it yourself. Don't be driven by money and the idea of appealing to others, appeal to yourself first and people will catch on that you're passionate about what you're doing and jump on the ride with you. And I understand a lot of people might be into the whole oldschool era but it's like trying to hold onto an old spoon, that's rusty & dented just only because the meals you've had with it before were great. Get a new spoon, you're limiting the chances and possibilites just by trying to hold onto the past.

(You can turn the holiday effect off 😁 in settings)
 
That doesn't sound like the actual reason though.

Nostalgia comes afterwards. It's the feeling of booting up a game you used to play as a kid.
Being nostalgic about it won't get you hooked for years to come; that comes from something else.

Happy valentines day!
 
Nostalgia only gets you so far
Recreating that feeling of adventure, danger and community is crucial
If you are interested in taking a look at a project that is trying to do exactly that, I suggest you check out dura-online (links in my sig)

As per usual I am sure people will jump on this as an opportunity to attack the integrity of Dura and our mission, but you seem interested enough and I'd love for you to take a look and maybe even send some thoughts through to me in private if you like.
 
Make a good story and people will like it. Tibia still has the same potential for conveying a good story as it did when the game was originally released. People seem obsessed with conveying old stories in pursuit of nostalgia.. Chasing those old memories...
 
You can't bring back that original feeling, but I have tried to bring back a lot of old things from Tibia in my server.
 
Hi Everyone! First of all, let me state that this is not a hate post against old-school servers.

I just came to a realization, I think I understood why these servers don’t do the trick, they never really fill me up with the same feelings as old Tibia used to do.

I’ve tried many, I’d say most of them, and some are incredibly well done, others are almost identical to how RL Tibia used to be, and others are complete messes, the thing is.. they never really fill me up, none of them. And I never really knew why until now.

Old RL Tibia was magical because it was new, it was unexplored, and it felt mysterious.

As we were younger and unexperienced with OTservs, we never really grasped on how Tibia worked, we didn’t know how clueless CipSoft is about their own game. Exploring Tibia felt magical, training for hours with slimes wasn’t so tedious because we knew the reward (higher skills) was worth it at the time, even wasting time in the depot spamming the Trade channel wasn’t a pain in the ass.

But now? We all know Tibia’s RL map, specially the old versions, we know that there are not really mysteries in Tibia, most of the so call “Misteriandos” are no more than bugs, CipSoft’s lazy solutions to problems, or just unfinished quests.

We now know how a server works so well, that we don’t really get impressed when a server manages to implement something new.

We think we crave spending hours rune making, being killed by a high lvl spamming Exevo Gran Mas Vis next to the Thais depot, but we don’t, we crave the novelty, we crave the exporing, the learning. That’s what made Tibia so special.

I’m not writing this to throw shit onto old-school servers, I just wanted to point something we most know but ignore, and maybe someone can find a way to make old-school servers as engaging as old Tibia was.

Have a good weekend, people, and happy Valentines.
(I fucking hate these hearts in the screen, annoying af, ffs).
mmmmm... old tibs. how i miss those days and how i know youre so right.
 
Nostalgia is a very relative word. Everyone has something that they miss and a lot of people would like to come back to it. Unfortunately, no perfect OTS, or even the original Tibia server, if Cipsoft took steps to set up old servers, will never be what it was. Why? As we have grown up, our thinking and our perception of certain things with respect to time has changed, and although we think it might come back one day ... We are wrong. Once someone said wise words: "This knowledge of life spoils my taste for it", and it is the same here. Someone wrote in the previous post that we were so drawn to Tibia because we didn't know the game and we wanted to discover all its secrets. Today we know that a lot of things we just imagined in our head and in fact such a thing did not exist. There is a package with the original Tibia files on the forum, and if someone knows how to rummage, there are secrets. Second, the atmosphere. We didn't know the game then, so every help of the other player helped us discover something more than ourselves, so it used to be easier to make friends, because the other person helped us see more than we could do ourselves. And third, Gameplay. A great example in recent times was at least World of Warcraft Classic, where people were flabbergasted about the news that the old servers would be back. The game was almost the same as it was 15 years ago. But everything was different. Why? People's approach. Back in the day, people there also didn't know much about how to play, what to invest in, and how to create a strong hero. A few years ago, people played for fun, to explore the world, they experimented because they did not have a picture of what the game would look like at the end and what it should look like. Not long ago when these servers were online, everything was different. Everyone knew all the places, everyone knew what to invest in and what not, people learned how to play better and how it should be played. Hence, the players' approach has also changed. Once upon a time, to go somewhere to a party, nobody cared about what they had, only having fun and the will to discover were important. Today, at the end of the game, no one would take you if you didn't meet the conditions for playing correctly, because they knew that they would only waste time taking you. That's right here, people have learned the game, learned the secrets, the mechanics, and you won't see a mage beating rotworms anymore and a mage beating tombs or anything else with GFB because he knows there is the best exp and better profit there than there. We used to not care, we enjoyed the game as it is and despite our mistakes we were still happy to play ...
 
You're absolutely right, I had somewhat revived those feelings when I started playing Albion, I liked the game enough to play it 2-3 hours straight but not so much as to start searching for information about it's systems over the internet. I was hooked by the process of exploring, learning, making a mistake - repeat.
I was terrified about the black zone and slowly started to get into the rhytm of unrestricted pvp. Then I started diving people and dying, a lot, but it felt rewarding nevertheless.
I ended up enjoying something I was terrified of, mainly because of fear as I didn't know how to handle those places.

The journey lasted for about a year and lost interest but the point is, I felt like I did back in the days of Tibia even if the game isn't remotely similar. It's about what sensations and emotions a game can make you feel, not the game itself.
 
Nostalgia is a very relative word. Everyone has something that they miss and a lot of people would like to come back to it. Unfortunately, no perfect OTS, or even the original Tibia server, if Cipsoft took steps to set up old servers, will never be what it was. Why? As we have grown up, our thinking and our perception of certain things with respect to time has changed, and although we think it might come back one day ... We are wrong. Once someone said wise words: "This knowledge of life spoils my taste for it", and it is the same here. Someone wrote in the previous post that we were so drawn to Tibia because we didn't know the game and we wanted to discover all its secrets. Today we know that a lot of things we just imagined in our head and in fact such a thing did not exist. There is a package with the original Tibia files on the forum, and if someone knows how to rummage, there are secrets. Second, the atmosphere. We didn't know the game then, so every help of the other player helped us discover something more than ourselves, so it used to be easier to make friends, because the other person helped us see more than we could do ourselves. And third, Gameplay. A great example in recent times was at least World of Warcraft Classic, where people were flabbergasted about the news that the old servers would be back. The game was almost the same as it was 15 years ago. But everything was different. Why? People's approach. Back in the day, people there also didn't know much about how to play, what to invest in, and how to create a strong hero. A few years ago, people played for fun, to explore the world, they experimented because they did not have a picture of what the game would look like at the end and what it should look like. Not long ago when these servers were online, everything was different. Everyone knew all the places, everyone knew what to invest in and what not, people learned how to play better and how it should be played. Hence, the players' approach has also changed. Once upon a time, to go somewhere to a party, nobody cared about what they had, only having fun and the will to discover were important. Today, at the end of the game, no one would take you if you didn't meet the conditions for playing correctly, because they knew that they would only waste time taking you. That's right here, people have learned the game, learned the secrets, the mechanics, and you won't see a mage beating rotworms anymore and a mage beating tombs or anything else with GFB because he knows there is the best exp and better profit there than there. We used to not care, we enjoyed the game as it is and despite our mistakes we were still happy to play ...

Are you the English Queen that you speak of yourself as "we"?
I don't understand, why people who actually play certain server(s), they usually can state their own individual reasons and describe their feelings ("I play because..."), while people who don't play, for whatever reason, they most often speak as if they were some voice of the nation ("we", "us", "everyone", "nobody").
This thread being great example. If you don't feel like playing, fine. If you don't find a joy anymore for mentioned reasons, it's understandable. But stop preaching and trying to speak for everyone. Oldschool servers may not "work" for you, but there's hundreds of people enjoying them (great part of OTS market). Of course it can't be exactly the same as 15 years ago, but still - there's hundreds of people enjoying it! Which is what you should start a debate "do oldschool servers work?" from, but you missed this fact completly.
That Big Lebowski's line four posts above hits the point.
 
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@kay but why are you attacking me? Look at your server, great and no doubt, a lot of things refined, and for sure there has never been a server that would make AI monsters, places, or all scripts work like yours. You have hardcore sever with 1x rates, completely mapped out like in old Tibia, this is great and a big plus for you for accuracy But look, you have almost 200,000 views (now a top brand that everyone knows) of your server, at the moment at 20.00 : 31 there are 300 players online. Do not think that you are attacking you, but tell me why these numbers here or on another forum because I also saw the Polish announcement, do not reflect your server? In my opinion, your server can be taken as a model of real Tibia at the moment, and yet these numbers for such a large amount of work are small? Simply put, one and the same, no matter if something is better or worse, people get bored. There were a lot of servers in front of you that were also very popular and are out. And it's not about PAY2WIN, but simply how much you can experience the same on other variants. I understand, you will tell me, but these are regular players, I care about the numbers, it's about the satisfaction of the game, but I mean, it's hard to keep people and try to make them feel nostalgic all the time doing the same. Or add new content (I'm not saying it's bad), but some people don't mind, because something from this old Tibia has already been modified added. Do not take it as an attack, because I wish you the best and your server because it deserves it, but I mean the fact itself.
 
@kay but why are you attacking me? Look at your server, great and no doubt, a lot of things refined, and for sure there has never been a server that would make AI monsters, places, or all scripts work like yours. You have hardcore sever with 1x rates, completely mapped out like in old Tibia, this is great and a big plus for you for accuracy But look, you have almost 200,000 views (now a top brand that everyone knows) of your server, at the moment at 20.00 : 31 there are 300 players online. Do not think that you are attacking you, but tell me why these numbers here or on another forum because I also saw the Polish announcement, do not reflect your server? In my opinion, your server can be taken as a model of real Tibia at the moment, and yet these numbers for such a large amount of work are small? Simply put, one and the same, no matter if something is better or worse, people get bored. There were a lot of servers in front of you that were also very popular and are out. And it's not about PAY2WIN, but simply how much you can experience the same on other variants. I understand, you will tell me, but these are regular players, I care about the numbers, it's about the satisfaction of the game, but I mean, it's hard to keep people and try to make them feel nostalgic all the time doing the same. Or add new content (I'm not saying it's bad), but some people don't mind, because something from this old Tibia has already been modified added. Do not take it as an attack, because I wish you the best and your server because it deserves it, but I mean the fact itself.
considering that total 7.x version playerbase all around the world is about 1k i'd say having 300 on your server is a damn impressive score, with deleting all the mcs/bots and having no spoofs on top of that
 
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@kay but why are you attacking me? Look at your server, great and no doubt, a lot of things refined, and for sure there has never been a server that would make AI monsters, places, or all scripts work like yours. You have hardcore sever with 1x rates, completely mapped out like in old Tibia, this is great and a big plus for you for accuracy But look, you have almost 200,000 views (now a top brand that everyone knows) of your server, at the moment at 20.00 : 31 there are 300 players online. Do not think that you are attacking you, but tell me why these numbers here or on another forum because I also saw the Polish announcement, do not reflect your server? In my opinion, your server can be taken as a model of real Tibia at the moment, and yet these numbers for such a large amount of work are small? Simply put, one and the same, no matter if something is better or worse, people get bored. There were a lot of servers in front of you that were also very popular and are out. And it's not about PAY2WIN, but simply how much you can experience the same on other variants. I understand, you will tell me, but these are regular players, I care about the numbers, it's about the satisfaction of the game, but I mean, it's hard to keep people and try to make them feel nostalgic all the time doing the same. Or add new content (I'm not saying it's bad), but some people don't mind, because something from this old Tibia has already been modified added. Do not take it as an attack, because I wish you the best and your server because it deserves it, but I mean the fact itself.
Again, what you're referring to as a "fact" is in fact merely your opinion, that's what you fail to understand here. It's not me attacking you. I have no problem accepting your opinion. I understand that you got bored and aren't hooked to old Tibia anymore and why. I'm all aware these servers aren't for everyone. Surprisingly, neither was old Tibia back in the days. Alot of people thought it was ugly and boring, pitty.
It's you who apparently can't stand that there are people who feel different about it. You were trying to speak for everyone, and when I pointed it out, you now feel the urge to prove you're the one in right by making these "dedot" implications. As if your opinion was more important than those 300.
You may think of your statement as a logical conclusion, but it's clearly based more on your personal feelings than actual facts.

Personally, if I did not work on the server, I'd be playing myself. Why? Because I like this game. I mostly like that it's more community-oriented. The fact that it involves alot of planning, diplomacy, relations with other players, guilds and so on (role playing) rather than just mindless grinding with no depth. I also like that it's serious and harsh when it comes to dying. I like its mechanics too. There're many people who play just for the old pvp system, because they like it. Others may play just to chill and hang out with friends. So yes, there are things about this game that people may like, other than "just nostalgia". But even if it were nostalgia, then what? It's just a freaking game, you don't need any other reason than just feeling like playing it. And like with any game, I got bored many times, it's natural, but then I just move on to play something else, and come back after time if I feel like playing again.

But there has to be that group of people who after quitting, instead of moving on, will spend their time preaching to infect other players with their own boredom.
I observed this kind of tendency (choice-supportive bias) when people who quit the server were constantly looking for reasons why it's not worth to play (regardless of the actual reason they quit) only to come back weeks/months later and like it again.

Besides, if you think 300 players online is too low to tell old-school servers may work (and Tibiantis isn't the only one), then you clearly have a false image about OTS market in general. What did you expect? 50k online like real Tibia back in the days? Anything about oldschool servers should be related to OTS scale, because these are still OTS. That being said, show me now which OT servers DO work or ever did?

To make it short and clear: state your opinion as your own, describe your feelings as your own, not everyone's, and I'm not going to question it at all.
 
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@kay but why are you attacking me? Look at your server, great and no doubt, a lot of things refined, and for sure there has never been a server that would make AI monsters, places, or all scripts work like yours. You have hardcore sever with 1x rates, completely mapped out like in old Tibia, this is great and a big plus for you for accuracy But look, you have almost 200,000 views (now a top brand that everyone knows) of your server, at the moment at 20.00 : 31 there are 300 players online. Do not think that you are attacking you, but tell me why these numbers here or on another forum because I also saw the Polish announcement, do not reflect your server? In my opinion, your server can be taken as a model of real Tibia at the moment, and yet these numbers for such a large amount of work are small? Simply put, one and the same, no matter if something is better or worse, people get bored. There were a lot of servers in front of you that were also very popular and are out. And it's not about PAY2WIN, but simply how much you can experience the same on other variants. I understand, you will tell me, but these are regular players, I care about the numbers, it's about the satisfaction of the game, but I mean, it's hard to keep people and try to make them feel nostalgic all the time doing the same. Or add new content (I'm not saying it's bad), but some people don't mind, because something from this old Tibia has already been modified added. Do not take it as an attack, because I wish you the best and your server because it deserves it, but I mean the fact itself.
300 is a big number. Xinn's service and spoofers have spawned a false narrative around the online count. 'dedot' mentality. I remember a time when it didn't exist, before the spoofMaster() (if you get this reference then you came from otfans :) ) decided to go hard for 10 years with yellow banners.

50 players on 7.4 cipsoft map is a good amount. 100 is decent. 150-200+ I would consider a 'packed' server. I remember a time when 50 players meant you had a packed server to kill, now people consider it 'low'... sad to see.

What makes old school engaging, at least in my experience is simply.. having fun. Find me a game that matches the adrenaline hit of looting boh off someone in PVP in 7.4. if I kill someone on a pvpe and loot boh, I'm going to get nearly that same hit I did back in 2006... killing a stocked rs on 7.4... oooh man...

Im playing New World right now, and I keep having this rotating thought of 'man I wish this was more like Old School Tibia with PvP and loot' xD I call it the 'Tibia curse' with my friends. Theres just nothing like it to date after all these years...
 
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