Server Population Going Down

[anarchy]

some people can't work.

[Modvlator]

I'm not making fun of anyone, What are you talking about?

[anarchy]

what are you talking about o.O

[Modvlator]

LOL Anarchy you pm me in the forum because I ignored you on the shard

[Modvlator]

I decided I'd post again maybe one day i'll be a Legendary Scribe like Anarchy

[silas]

I think its good that people donate for a shard. If you like something then help pay for it. I do not know the owner and I don't know what he does for living. Some shards Ive played on didn't have the money to stay up even tho its good including one last one I played before coming here. The owner isn't on due to lack of job and money irl with people having job problems and bills. Secondly I dont understand personally you talk about not being able to make much money on the shard but yet you got to find what makes better money. When I do nothing but hunt for the day/night I can make 800k-1 mill depending on what I do and how many are there as well. More people there then I get crappy days of 600k. Also donating money is cool for the fact that you get Eds quicker and I am one of those people that wants to hurry and get things quicker. So I donated. But the gold that I had went away really quickly due to prices of these items. So really all that ed's/gold people got can be gone just in minutes/hours/days. I got a friend that finishing her house in game and spent over 40 million on things. I just see this thread going south. I see a person that like on every shard we all played had before has some people that just has an issue about something.

[Reese]

This post is public right?
Like all players can see this....
Reason # 2 for Server Population Going Down the responses to the original post.
Looks like alot of mean people play here.

Bees should not be the #1 source of income.

New players should not be focused on things we or I took over a year to acquire. Your entire first week or less depending on your playing skills should be focused on raising skills and stats not searching for the coolest thing you can't afford.

Bees are fine if your not lazy. Run your little macros they still work. Just each time your macro clicks the potions YOU have to press red dots 2-5 times. Although I disagree with the price drop on "Honey" more work should equal more pay. The wax price has to drop to make the leashes affordable. Honey shouldn't have dropped much if any cause its useless. You only get 85 per hive per week and a half anyway.

Alot of the people that responded to this have been playing a long time, they played when EDs were 25k and 35k. So it didn't take you a long time to buy the EDs at those prices, guess Modvlator is really just asking to put yourself in their shoes. Understand that it takes 126 days to get the GoCs we got in 6 weeks or less. 25k up to 45k means its going to take just a little bit shy of twice as long to get that much gold for 1 relayer.

People "Want" to play this game they don't need to. If they "want" it bad enough they will do what it takes to acquire it. I just disagree on how long some items take to get. Doesn't matter about playtime on GoCs it is still going to take 504 hours to make 1.

Like all relationships this one will last untill your tired of putting up with the nonsense then you break up and move on.

[anarchy]

came in at 40k per eds. not that much of a different from 47k per eds. but

i get your point reese.

but

Hi all my post is mostly for Colibri but you are all welcome to peek in,

he wasn't asking any players to be in his shoes.

I noticed the server population started going down after the Bee Patch,

Why did it go down?

How a New Player would Love this Game if he want the benefits of BeeKeeping with the new System with the Time Sink it offer?

he's blaming the new bee system for any loss (if any) of population (see title of post).

especially when it can lead to injuries related to clicking over and over with your hand.

blaming a game for a rl injury...come on... like you said reese we want to play the game we don't have to play the game.

i do understand what you are saying though. sometimes we do take what was easier for granted even though things have gotten harder. i understand that.

[Phil the Fisher]

This is the sort of issue that makes me want to stay here (and brought me back after I took a UO respite to quest in RL). It's not the issue at hand, but rather:
1) The even response from the owner of the shard and the rest of the staff
2) The fact that posts like this are tolerated, even though they are critical

The evolution of a server implicitly includes change; change which is presumably driven by a desire to maintain an environment where challenge, fairness, reward, and fun are all balanced evenly for the largest percentage of players. That's how I interpret this bee nerf issue - that it was, ultimately, done in the best interest of this shard. Personally I'd much rather earn 33% less gold from my bees and still have Excelsior around and populated by interesting people than have instant gold, skills, and relayers, but have a shard only populated by newish players (because it no longer holds interest, challenge, or goals for veterans).

[Xcrjndi]

Phil the Fisher's fine points are agreeable on this front (speaking for myself, anyway).

So what if the economy takes a little dip? It's more realistic than bees always pumping out gold for minimalist clicking time.

[Larsa]

I

Bees should not be the #1 source of income.
New players should not be focused on things we or I took over a year to acquire. Your entire first week or less depending on your playing skills should be focused on raising skills and stats not searching for the coolest thing you can't afford.

I agree with this...totally. I was a new player once and I had to go through the grinding and the gold farming. Was it fun? Hell yeah! I became to know and adapt to Excelsior.... more than often now, there are a lot of players that want to learn to run before they can walk. There is way and that is to donate! I knew a player that used to play here and donated, within 2 weeks that player was almost demi-god. Well that player is gone now because I believe that person got bored. I have put 6-8 hours in the game, not that I cannot donate but I think of it as a challenge.

I am not here to trash talk anybody or say why people are leaving but I believe that it might be the fact that some have RL issues, the weather is nice outside, some play PS3/Xbox or other online games, some wants to take a break, some are upset, etc....

You think bee nerf is a downer? If you have been here long enough you will have gone through the times when ED were 50K per, when Twisted Weald was a newbie playground then it was injected with steroids, when there was a major virus in the air and made your 25+ beehives sick, when there were more 4 x 58% weps, when umbris camp was every newbie ultimate goal.... and we were still hitting 225+ players steadily.

One has to adapt or move on... bees are not my bread and butter anymore since I can hunt tougher mobs. Don't look at the bees as your main source of income and if you do then learn how to live with the changes. Sometimes you don't need a lot of gold to attain the best gear in game. I have helped a lot of my guildies/players doing the GoC quest and I have handed them some average/good armor/wep/pets.

I don't think of UO as a racing competition, is not who gets to be ' God ' the fastest but what you make out of it. I look at myself one more year down the road and I will be bank sitting in Brit or in Trinsic. Peace!

[MKaros]

If wax was reduced to 5 gp tomorrow, I wouldn't care, and neither would most new players.

It's a nice source of income, but there are a lot of others, and they are almost all more profitable.

If new players are looking at those of us with 500+ HP decked out in relayers and thinking to themselves, "Wow, it'll take years to get that." they're not only wrong, but also pretty unrealistic with their expectations.

If the entire endgame here took months to master instead of potentially years, it'd be pretty boring, and we'd all have the same power levels, and a lot of people would lose their desire to play because they would have nothing to work towards.

[Trygg]

If life is so miserable for you here perhaps it is time to find a place that will make you happy.

I second this proposition!

One thing that should be pointed out; Some players take extended breaks from game, myself might go 3 months away from Excelsior, this does not indicate a depopulation because these sorts of people inevitably come back.

[Stanley Cleaner]

I have not seen the new bee system but from what I heard and read the only issue I see with it is the following:

New system that makes us click more ? I have color blind issues and I am sure I can find a work around that being said the person that makes a macro will find a way around it! So why punish the non script user! I am glad that staff is now looking into that.

That is all I see wrong with it! I lied! wax to make leases I don't like but oh well I can live with.

Price on items always change and there is nothing wrong with that. It sucks that we won't be able to make all the residual income from bees but it is still there thou!!

I am not gonna even talk about the other stuff that you guys have talked about..but will say this. Donations are up to the donator.

All that being Said back to topic lol ... I don't think Population decrease is due to the new bee system but just the normal "season" rotation if anything. All the years I been here I can say yes we have had an increase in population but I see a cycle of when people player more during the year than others. Get ready to see a lot more players soon with winter coming. See like me I am back!

[Viola]

Okay, I'm just gonna chime in right here. Let's be honest here, very honest, the server population is naturally dipping a bit right now because school is back in session and your teachers who play here and your students who play here are busy all day again. And the parents are busy getting their kids ready for school and off to school or helping them with homework after school, etc. and so on.

It's just a seasonal thing so I really wouldn't worry about it. Most of us who have been around for more than one year, like Stanley Cleaner and others, see this as the normal trend.

It's not because bees changed. And I really hope people get over the, "bees aren't fair for people who don't use scripts!" This game allows 3rd party programs because, again let's be very honest here, compared to most MMOs out there, UO has a sucktastic interface. I have empirical knowledge of top-end, champ devouring players on this shard who are UNABLE TO PLAY if their healing scripts or whatever critical survival script they need aren't working.

So, please don't be upset because of bee scripts. You need scripts to play this game. It's no fault of +Colibri or any of our staff. It's just the way the game is. I'm grateful that scripts are permitted here. Many of you wouldn't play at all if you couldn't get razor to work. Personally, I hate razor, but do I think people who use it are nasty cheaters who need to be nerfed? Nope! Expect people who abuse scavanger during GM grab all or hide 'n' seek events need to be punched in the eye.

If you want to be purist and refuse to run scripts or macro or razor or whatever, that's okay! But, then that is your choice and you cannot blame people who use them as ruining the game. You always have the option of downloading them.

There are still bee scripts on the forum in coding talk that will help you harvest and open the honeycomb gumps for you. It's really not that horrible and anyone who doesn't mind a little twitch-click action can handle it.

The only thing that sucks for me is people have been discouraged from having bees and I do bees and sell flowers. If no one wants to play with bees, then no one wants to buy my purdy flowers. And now I'm sad.

P.S. Buy Flowers! Many of your houses are ugly multi-story, featureless blocks and dirt lots. Or nasty, plain stone castles and towers just sitting there taking up space and being grey and ugly! You know who you are! You could use some flowers! ^_^ Just sayin'