Help Make IPY A Better Place

[Khadesh]

I hear a lot of negative talk about how the population is dwindling, and IPY is on the verge of collapse or what not. Being a newer player myself, I can't really say for sure if this is true or not, but one thing I'd like all of you to consider is this:

If you really want the server to succeed and the community to flourish, why don't you all pitch in and help to build a better community, and recruit newer players? I have met a few very helpful people on the server so far like Tilly, Kati, Dubar, Rogen and a few others. But for the most part all I see are people acting selfishly, complaining about the state of things, but doing nothing to make things better.

What have you guys done this week to foster the community? I helped some guys farm scrolls, helped fight some PKs, wrote a guide to help new players farm, donated some gear to a new player, and released a review on reddit to help spread the word. What did the rest of you do? Killed some helpless newbs in despise or shame level 1? Complained about paladins, reds or golden lands? The community is only going to be as good as the players that make it up. So maybe, the server population wouldn't be sitting at 350, if more people were being constructive and fewer people were sitting around comlpaining about <insert fotm complaint here>. As the server is, the game is fun, it's playable, there's good pvp. Sure it's tough love for reds, but even reds are very playable at this time. I run into them on a daily basis and they always seem to find me when I have a bag full of 10k gold and just got DPed by a silver serpent at 30% health, but I've got no complaints about it.

[nub]

I couldn't agree more with the complaining.. it can bring bad vibes to any new player, I have been playing IPY since launch off and on, I can say that I have definitely haven't got in the amount of play time I have wanted, been way to busy. Although, whenever I do feel like logging on/looking at the forums, I just get turned off to even want to play the game because I look at the forums and all I see is so much negativity, about the population, etc. I understand there is probably a lot of frustration, but all you can do is wait and see what happens... All I am trying to get at is that negative posts, threads, etc. could turn away that one extra player, that WAS thinking about trying it out, but then decided to go elsewhere..

[Corrado]

I also agree.

Complaining about a lower-than-you-like population is hands down the worse way to increase it.

Tell your friends to come back. Post IPY on forums. Invite new people. Help newbies that you meet in game. Hang out in IRC and chat with players, both new and veteran.

Post constructive, helpful posts on the forums to encourage growth and participation.

[Leonardo Reyas]

But it's so much easier to bitch and complain and not do anything but expect others to spoon feed you free entertainment :O

[Alfie Garganey]

Dont get me wrong on this one, i did a lot to help ipy, a LOT more then most people do.

I wrote guides, advertised, managed a brazilian community, helped newbies, teached pvp and many other things.

Its time for updates and game fixes. Without updates and game fixes there`s not much a player can do.

[Degamra]

I hear a lot of negative talk about how the population is dwindling, and IPY is on the verge of collapse or what not. Being a newer player myself, I can't really say for sure if this is true or not, but one thing I'd like all of you to consider is this:

If you really want the server to succeed and the community to flourish, why don't you all pitch in and help to build a better community, and recruit newer players? I have met a few very helpful people on the server so far like Tilly, Kati, Dubar, Rogen and a few others. But for the most part all I see are people acting selfishly, complaining about the state of things, but doing nothing to make things better.

What have you guys done this week to foster the community? I helped some guys farm scrolls, helped fight some PKs, wrote a guide to help new players farm, donated some gear to a new player, and released a review on reddit to help spread the word. What did the rest of you do? Killed some helpless newbs in despise or shame level 1? Complained about paladins, reds or golden lands? The community is only going to be as good as the players that make it up. So maybe, the server population wouldn't be sitting at 350, if more people were being constructive and fewer people were sitting around comlpaining about <insert fotm complaint here>. As the server is, the game is fun, it's playable, there's good pvp. Sure it's tough love for reds, but even reds are very playable at this time. I run into them on a daily basis and they always seem to find me when I have a bag full of 10k gold and just got DPed by a silver serpent at 30% health, but I've got no complaints about it.

It's about 15% this.

Dont get me wrong on this one, i did a lot to help ipy, a LOT more then most people do.

I wrote guides, advertised, managed a brazilian community, helped newbies, teached pvp and many other things.

Its time for updates and game fixes. Without updates and game fixes there`s not much a player can do.

And 85% this.

Great shard, great staff but it takes both points.

[Eminem]

The well wishers make it seem so easy.. 'just advertise (for free), post on forums (for free)" etc - maybe people dont have the time, motivation or care enough to do so?

the remaining player base, including myself, still believe this shard can be great.

however, its no coincidence or just bad luck that the server got the way it is now.

Keeping players in the dark for months on end and saying little regarding the future of the server, while players see nothing new, results in loss of confidence.

Once the loss of confidence begins in combination of mismangement, lack of communication and not listening to player concerns - players stop playing (see: wasting their time) and it is very hard to gain their confidence back.

A domino effect begins.

All of this happened in what, a year of the server being open?

The staff has, in recent weeks, taken a better approach by discussing changes with players (whether or not they wanted them), running events, hiring staff, etc.

While I reaize that the staff here obviously have lives of their own and can't be coding and working on the server 24-7, there is a simple way to fix this: hire more staff to work on the server and generate auto events to bring the server together.

The extra staff was FINALLY hired after many months of mismanagement and there are talk of server generated events, however I'm afraid that this, as well as other recent measures, is a case of 'too little too late'.

Also, banning any player on the forums who spoke out as to the underlying truth of the servers mismangement further drove away confidence from the player base.

[OldCrow]

The best way to make IPY better is easy but it requires both players and staff.

If you're a player, then you need to log on and play while keeping accounts macroing so people think there's a lot of people playing when they randomly log on to see how it is.

If you're staff, patch things every week or two so players think it's an active server.

At the end of the day, the success of this server is in both staff and player hands. I know it's hard to be a staff member when everyone is blaming you for server failure while you try and balance having a real life and coding a server for an ancient video game but all of us are here because we love UO. We have to take the good and bad and all of us need to do our parts to make UO worth playing.