What will you do in this

[Mary Magdalene]

Going back to my topic: http://forum.ratemyserver.net/general-discussion/ro-private-server-these-days/

Most people pointed out that most players will only play if you gave them lots of freebies or OP freebie stuff enough to make them OP in their first day of playing on your server.

Now my question is, what will you do if your server's already been existing for like 5 months + now and your server's population is still less than 20, will you continue or not?

(Addition: You strictly don't give gpack, freebies and etc, but you have an automated freebies that's enough for them to start their game)

[TabooRo]

Honestly if the first version failed, chances are the second or third attempt will fail as well.

Servers need to open up with a bang because people these days either want a big populated server or a fun/unique/new server.

If your server went for 5 months and did not grow past 20, it means the server was boring and didn't have anything special..or maybe didn't get enough advertising.

There are thousands of private servers out there, 99% of them come out with the same exact settings and npcs as the other ones and then they wonder why their server did not grow...  downloading free npcs and throwing them into a server is not enough. Creating a good server takes effort, time and a lot of planning.

DIFFERENTIATION is key.   But even with godly unique scripts you still need a competent team that can continue developing, fix bugs, and PROMOTE the server. Too many servers implement events for a quick boost in population by sacrificing long term growth.

Example: first 100 players to log in get an exclusive freebie!  - congrats you just made everyone else feel like its a waste to join now and they are behind/less important than the rest... etc etc etc

[Perry the Platypus]

It really depends on the reason for starting/maintaining the server. If it's all about the money, or having a huge server, then at that point there's definitely something wrong - either you need to fix it with something significant enough to almost be a revamp or "rebirth" of the server, or you need to make a new server.

In my case it's never really been about the money, it's about the players. Having a large server is great and all, but my server's had its ups and downs with population, and the big thing for me has always been stability and reliability. If people don't like the server and they decide to leave, then I'll do what I can to make updates that spark interest again (so long as they fall in line with the server ideals), but the main goal is always that I want my existing players to know the server is sticking around for years, whether we're huge and "successful," or in the middle of a rough patch.

I know how frustrating it is to spend weeks/months server hopping to find a decent server, and then when you finally find one it shuts down within a month or gets filled with corruption. I went through that process myself, and it's something that I don't intend to let happen with my own server.


All that being said, if the server population did drop that far, I'd probably be open to ideas on something like a full rebranding or refresh of the server.

[Mary Magdalene]

Thanks for those opinions.

I'm asking this because this happened to me once and i wanna know what people will say about it, opened my server for like 9 months last year without any donations and i only had roughly 25 - 30 players that time until they all stopped logging in and i closed it for good.

Now I'm trying to do that special / unique stuff on my server that other servers don't have and i hope it won't be a failure this time.

EDIT: Overall newbies that joined my server are mostly " freebie-spoonfeed " type of player, i could say there's like a total of 100+ players that tried my server before but those who remained were most likely the thrill-finder type of players.

[Judgement]

ggRO had over 1k players at launch and grew up to 2k in about a week while having even less features than most servers (no donations, official kafra warps only, low rates).  There are still a large number of players who wouldn't mind playing servers without freebies and such.  They're just not willing to join every single server that pops up promising the classic RO experience because they know that these servers come and go.

I'd suggest trying to help out an existing server rather than making another server with some custom changes to the massive list of existing servers.  Unless you have a legit team or are some known GM and can advertise well you won't attract many players to the server most likely.  If you only care about having a server as some sort of small project and don't care about being successful though then feel free to do whatever you want.

Just remember that it takes a lot of effort to maintain a successful server.  When designing the server try to have a certain focus to it and be careful with trying to appeal to all the players.  Sometimes you can't make everyone happy, and sometimes you can even end up killing your server if you aren't aware of who your players are.

[Irreverence]

Unless you already have a designated player base from previous servers, that initial 'bang' as stated before is really important. getting folks hyped about your grand opening is a must, or else you'll just be stuck with 1-2 folks trickling in from time to time and getting bored due to a dwindling population. After you get the folks, you gotta keep 'em interested with regular updates and content addition, but most importantly, keep an ear open to suggestions and want for changes. Don't throw your whole business model out the window, but if the players want something a certain way, it is their server.

Start big, stay big. At ~5 months in, I'd abandon ship and try something new.

[Mary Magdalene]

Then i guess this new stuff coming to my re-opening will be a worth try to players.

Thank you