Vetarnian wrote:But even niche MMO's need a minimal number of players to be functional, and from what I have seen here, <100 is far too small for a game of this scale.
62 players online right now I'd say is pretty good
for an Alpha. Especially one that's not being actively promoted and has an "everything will be reset" cloud hanging over it. Do you really believe an unfinished game that has so many acknowledged problems that the developers are still working on should be promoted? So what, we can have more whiney sods who whinge about everything not working and then RAGEQUIT? Remember, boats only came into this game a few months ago. About a month or so before that the entire map was reset. The last thing it needs is 200+ people whining about all the known bugs and an upcoming reset. All it needs if anything is a handful of testers, which are easily found from those already playing and however many else find the game through word of mouth.
Vetarnian wrote:And where you see an alpha, I suspect others merely see a free-to-play game with a lack of polish. It might be an alpha, but it's still offered for play to everyone.
Alpha state isn't about what it means to you. It's about what it means to the developers. In other words: It is not their intent to promote the game and seek hoardes of additional players at this point. If you'd noticed, the kin system only really became workable about a week ago and Village Claims are still in need of a desperate overhaul (you can't even kick people out of the village unless they're online and you're in a party with them or you're looking directly at them). It's not about the people. If you had your however many players online that you wanted right now, the system simply doesn't exist to allow for the intricate politics.
Vetarnian wrote:And, given the nature of MMO's, how many players will they get when they start demanding money for playing their game?
Considering the donate button didn't even exist until about a month ago, I think you're getting ahead of yourself. The game is in no state for that (hence the "Alpha" thing that gets thrown around). When it is, I'm sure it will have plenty more players.
Will Haven and Hearth remain free?jorb wrote:Even considering it feels presumptuous with the game being what it is. I'm glad so many people play and seemingly enjoy the game. Building it has been, and is, one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, and I love you all for being here.
Character Reset: The Word.jorb wrote:players are not my first concern at the moment. Don't get me wrong, having players is the thrill of a lifetime, but game development does not hinge on whether or not we have players at any given moment. We've been building this game for a year and a half without players. What matters to me is what the game is like when we, as all good things must come to an end at some point, do our last game update.
Enjoy what is here while it's here. Give feedback and whine to the devs about all the problems but don't expect things to be fixed overnight and don't expect the game to become a professional MMO anytime soon.
You want to make the comparison to Dwarf Fortress?
Sure. "Development [of Dwarf Fortress] started in October 2002, followed by the game's first public release in August 2006". I'm certain that in another 6 years time (8 years after development began) - assuming jorb and loftar care enough to keep at it - the game will have all the players you want and they'll easily rake in a couple of thousand in donations a month / sell out to Blizzard / whatever.
