*Noriin shyly gives the place a cautious gaze. Looks to her right, her left.. finally up then down and again peeks around. She hesitates for a moment and finally outers "H-hello? Anybody.. there?", unfortunately recieving not a reply but the sole sound of the wind blowing against the walls of the deserted town's houses...*
Ahh the good old PS folks, here we are! We have a fancily renamed Steel Blue, some bugs fixed and some new features added, a wide range of weapons and armors to use along with some few new animations and tools for the new crafts. Yep, we have some new stuff to do in-game! And hey, we better are given some because either way there is nothing else to do! And roleplaying being relegated to the plane of "anything else" in a game that is meant to mostly focus on roleplaying is hardly the direction I would expect such game to develop into.
I'm uncertain about what's the reason -if there is only one- for the actual situation of Planeshift, but I very doubt I'm the only one that has noticed that since 0.4 there is rarely anything happening at all anywhere, not at the plaza, not at Kada's, not at Brado's, not at the Gugrontid's tavern.. The last evening I checked those three taverns, three spots where characters ought to interact at (yep, not the players..) but guess what: nobody was there! That's when I do a /who, just in case I haven't noticed and I'm alone in the server but nope, definitely not. Over 190 players online, but I couldn't find anybody who is hanging out just for the sake of meeting other people.. and not roleplaying their characters only because they need to sell their chunks or to get a new sword to keep grinding a shortcut. Perhaps the fact that the world is pretty large for such a low amount of people would be point, let's face the truth.. 200 players aren't that many, the least when most of them are stuck in the same place.
You can call it introductions system, you can call it new features, guild houses, or you can call it greed and platinum mine. Whatever changes happened the last times seem to have pushed most of the players -away of PS or- to headlessly run around and out of Hydlaa, which was always the center of attention and where big events (obviously not talking about GM events here) used to happen or begin. But now we have a new center of the world in the Gugrontid, rather odd considering that it's just the krans' town. Was ever Ojaveda the main focus of the players, maybe BD? Don't think so. Something seems to be unbalanced here..
I've long been reading posts about how wrong hanging around Harns is and how poor is that all the roleplay happens there and whatnot. That makes me smile. Probably then it must be better now that there is nothing happening there at all, neither anywhere else! Am I the only one that needs 2 hours of running around to find somebody able and up to roleplay? I question now, was (yes, past form) it wrong to have a meeting point where most people able to play this game would gather and make the game alive? You'd say that would be rather usual that in a big city there would be such a place if not more, the tavern, the main plaza, the gardens, there are actually some pretty spots in town, enough for people to engage in interesting conversations without the need of searching desperately for each other.
It has been almost a month since Steel Blue came to us and the time of eagerly testing and trying everything that's new should already be gone, at least for people who used to like interacting with others IC. Desertion didn't seem to happen after other updates, in fact we used to gather around Harns to comment the play with each other and try some new stuff.. not even that this time. In my eyes and considering my experience these last weeks in-game, it seems clear that 90% of the current players do only care for making a heavier coinpurse and raising up their lvl counters. Not that I could dare complain about that (yepyep, everybody must enjoy the game their way, even if its endlessly hitting a shrotcut for 1000 tria chunks) but that would leave us with about 20 roleplayers online in the best time ranges.. And honestly, these 20 need to be meeting somewhere, it's sad that they are all running around trying to find another of those same 20 that can give them some entertainment. I don't mind if it's a tavern, a park, Harns, or the burial wells, but unless roleplayers organize, more and more will stop logging in.. I know a few that already did.. and I don't even play that much nowadays myself.
What has changed so much since 0.20 for everything feels this quiet now?
Do we have a way to make it better (if not revert to how it used to be) and bring some life to certain spots that ought to be populated?
Save the Child! We all love this piece of software and don't really want it to die as it is (was?)
He would never do it to you...
PS: The thread isn't in the complaint department because it's meant to start a civilized discussion on how to improve the current status, if all you have to do is to rant please use another thread ;)
