What is the best way to handle world wipes?

[ramones]

I'm against world wipes. Just turn resources into spawnable/despawnable/depletable and u don't need a world wipe anymore, unless something goes wrong.

limited resources and when this resources are finished, increment the same resources in a random place (meanwhile decrement some zone, increment another ) ..

Thats what I ment, just not same q spawns, but random. Lets say that u never know what is highest q in the world, since every week (month, day?) new node can spawn somewhere and old ones are used up.

[windmaker]

Yeah but that sound hard to dev ...

[RedRabbit]

In my opinion it'd be cool to have a sort of natural
wipe. Periods of extreme danger that typically
result in the game world getting destroyed or
hugely changed by some super enemy(s). Maybe
not a wipe that's impossible to survive... but some
sort of near wipe that has demon mobs running
around hunting down all high level players and
most likely killing them unless they all band
together...

K yeah i dunno i'm just kinda day dreaming. When
you announce a wipe even i'd stop playing unless
there was an interesting incentive to continue...
(Like a massive demon, dragon, beast army thing
that you can fight against and get amazing things
but inevitably die)

[Ozzy123]

When you get too high stats fighting is boring becouse people pussy out too much thats why there will always be wipes you peacefull farmer noobs

[Massa]

Simple fix to a lot of problems, especially 'catching up'.

Either a decay timer on people, or remove Einherjar. Preferably both.

[Comodo]

No point in world restarts, even if you start late you can always catch up, I doubt any more than a few people study curios for more than a couple months, most main fighter chars stop at like 1k/1k or around there, and like others have said with trading you can easily catch up with top crop quality and what not, the only hard part is getting high quality animals but thats not that big of an advantage cause you can still make q100+ cheese with q10 cows and good quality tubs which isn't that much worse than the current top which is around q290, and you can always buy high quality armour if you need it.

[Eemerald]

I think new players who assume they will have equal footing to the top players if they all started at the same time is simply not true. I lived as a hermit in world 4, started same time as everyone else, and I was nowhere close to ever achieving what they did, nor did I want to. World 5 was similar, getting even remotely close to the top factions came very late in the world, and even then my chars weren't that developed. World 6 we planned better, we got further than most, we had a dedicated team of people to start the world, but again we weren't the top, and I knew people who far exceeded our chars and quality items who started later than us, because that's what they focused on. it really depends why you play, how you play, who you play with and how much time you have to play. when I could spend 10 hours a day on haven I was doing significantly better than when im spending 30 mins on it a day. So regardless of when you start in the world if you don't have the time, the support, people to work with etc you won't ever really get that far up. and not everyone wants to be top player on the server, plenty just want to build, create and use the game as release from real life.

[Kathdys]

I wonder if it would ever be feasible to implement natural disasters like earthquakes, floods, great storms and volcanos, as a way to demolish ruins and defunct villages, and rearrange the local terrain and resources in such a way that it would become a desirable place to recolonize. ...Definitely would be a major undertaking. I like the idea of appeasing the spirits so that something terrible doesn't happen, though.

[MagicManICT]

Short and simple:

What are the victory conditions?

Without those, what really is accomplished by wiping a world? if the resources are finite and running out, game design should focus on fixing the problem so a wipe isn't needed or should focus on one group or another "winning" before the resources are extensively depleted.

I think Jesus_Smith_Nandez put it best about players wanting to have a chance at getting to the top of the pile, but the reality is it's still the same group of players, or at least player type, getting to the top. Fact is they don't necessarily stay there. good play can make up for that "speed/power" differential if the game is founded on good mechanics and rules.

[Denkar]

Ideally, in my view, world wipes should not be necessary. The man-made structures would fully decay over time (even claims, everything) and the world resources would rejuvenate. If overpopulation becomes a problem, make it so new map grids are generated continuously as players explore them, so if you wanted you would be able to infinitely walk in any direction. Sure this would take a lot of resources but this is my ideal game after all. In practice, what Jorb and Loftar do now (add new grids as the world develops) works for me.
Of course, factions would get stronger and the quality of resources would keep going up without limit. But is this not what has happened throughout history? Empires rise and fall, the technology keeps advancing, and the world keeps turning. I think the game should reflect that.