Appealing To New Players Once Again!!! Think About It!!!

[LordTone]

I think rohan seriously needs to start appealing to new players once again. Usally a "free to play" game draws one of two crowds.

*1 kids that doesn't have parents handing them lots of money to throw onto a video game.
*2 Players like me who is living on their own and have enough bills (house payment, light bill, tv, phone, internet, car insurance, food etc) and just doesn't have enough left over to put it all on a video game.

Without new players coming into the game your left with only doing content for the players who have everything or have a lot of real money to give away that will not always be there.

I would suggest coming up with new forge / crafted blueprints for weapons that could closely compete with upgrades, of course upgrades still be the strongest and a reason to upgrade to them but not a huge gap like it is now. So that new players can see if I spend a lot of time playing the game I feel rewarded for that and could compete with the people spending thousands of dollars. How it is now players that don't spend a lot of money on the game and instead spends there time playing the game (which to me is more valuable) doesn't really feel rewarded for doing it. They are not near the same level because of the money requirement.

I have always wanted and still to this day would love one single old school server where level cap is 99. I would even be happy to pay $10 a month just to play on that server. It would also open up the door to new players because jumping into rohan how it is now you either have to spend thousands of dollars to compete with other players or spend like five years of your life grinding everyday to even come close. With a level 99 cap server players could start playing there and once they want more content (new dungeons, new items etc) they could start on the current rohan with a bit of experience and rps. Just one single level 99 cap server also could bring in quite a bit of money. With many 15 day costumes that give small stat boost but not game breaking, 15 day mounts, level 7 skill enhancement stones, forge stones (which a lot of people bought back in the day), stat / skill reset stones and the list can go on and on. Players would have a really good class but see someone else do good with this class so they would actually create a new character and start all over again with a different build. They would buy all the items / costumes etc that they bought for one character for each of there new characters. If you could imagine that with alooooot of players like it used to be it was seriously bringing in a stable amount of money every month.



I really hope that some serious thought goes into thinking about this because (I never thought i would say this again)I really do want to play rohan again I really do cause I have been the past few days but it just cost way to much money to get anywhere for a free to play game. I am sure it pushes away many new players that are thinking about trying rohan out.




I edited to add this part.
If you look at this from a business point of view you are competing with a huge library of free to play games that offer a lot more in the field of "free". So what would new players start playing rohan for?

[PenguinJoe]

Something I have seen some outside servers do to draw players is offering them a daily participation points credit.

For each each day that an account is logged in, 50 points (ecash) is added to that account. It would have the following restrictions

1. Account must be logged in at least one hour.
2. Only applied once in a 24 hour period (for instance you log in at 8:00AM today stay till 9:00AM, then login the next day at 7:00AM and stay until 8:00AM, you do not get another points award. However of you log in at 7:00AM and stay till 9:00AM, you will get the second day's award of points.
3. Award is based on total account log in time for the 24-hr period. Log in at 8:00AM stay for 30 minutes, then log in at 5:00PM stay another 30 minutes, you will get your points.
4. Does not matter which characters on that account is used. The award is based on how long the ACCOUNT is used that day.

This has been very popular with those external servers at drawing not only new players (who usually start with nothing) and veteran players alike.

Tying it to the account reduces the possibility of abuse. Keeping the daily allotment low (50 points) reduces the attractiveness of using multiple clients to abuse the system. Encourages players to log in and play each day.

The value proposition to PWI is that it draws players by making it easier for them to afford playing. This makes the game more attractive. Using ecash rather than RPs keep the value of buying points since IM products are cheaper using RPs. It takes a lot more playing time to build up ecash to buy more premium items (350 ecash per week per acct).

[EaglePhoenix]

There's absolutely zero reason for anyone to go through the bother of

1) leveling from 1 to 99
2) farming twin sets


Sorry, I didn't read any of the above - but thought this might be an appropriate thread based on its title for that statement.

[RBNXD]

A level 99 cap server sounds very nice but it will only last as long as the Honeymoon state lasts which is when everyone is getting to 99. Once the top dogs get there you'll see the server dying fast because those top dogs will eat every single thing in their path.
It has been tried in the past with those pservers claiming to be 99 and then having hidden Heroic stuff. It just wont work buddy. The game needs to evolve and grow in content and difficulty.

[PenguinJoe]

I can't see PWI created a 99-capped legacy server. There just isn't enough money in it to justify the cost of setting up and manning it on an ongoing basis. And, trust me on this, it is absolutely impossible to sell the idea to your executives when you only have fuzzy words like "possible", "may", should" or "could" when describing the financial benefits of creating it. Executives do NOT deal with "maybes" when budgeting for any project. Any project they do has to be backed up with real world tangible financial benefits.

Sounds cold, but I dare anyone here to go into a bank and ask for a loan with nothing to provide as security BUT with a play that might make enough money to pay it back in 1 year.

Be sure to let us all know what they say

[LordTone]

Apparently 99 cap appealed to new players and many others because when it was around that was the most populated this game has ever been. I guess there is more players playing the game now and joining every day than ever I guess this is the right path to take and keep doing updates and new content that last a few weeks just log in and you can see that.

I understand the people that are left have spent a small fortune on the game so only wants content for them and items for them rather than seeing the game have players again. I personally don't care about the money ive spent I would just rather start 100% fresh and actually have grinding spots completely packed full of players. It is a mmorpg after all not a single player game based on who can spend the most money.

Look at youtube and see what the game looked like you cant tell me people doesn't want that because if they didn't where the hell are they? I know what many are going to say its a outdated game that no one wants to play anymore etc etc. There are way older and craper looking games than this that has 100x the playerbase. Runescape for example once they did the eoc update around 75% of there players quit ( just like what happened to this game) so what did they do? They didn't say no one wants the old game anymore people only want these new graphics and gameplay. They came out with a oldschool server that was exactly like it was before 75% of the players quit and now look at it old school has more players than eoc. When a game is fun like this one out dated graphics do not matter in the slightest bit plus with old graphics that means more people can play it!

[aliencreature]

Bringing back the old server or creating a new server for the 99 cap is not really possible. Private servers have done this in the past and look where they are now? It's not really the 99 thing that attracted the players. Imo, what made Rohan unappealing to new players is the grind which involves leveling. Most of us dreaded the idea of going from 1 to 115+50. It's not really possible unless you're a player with dedication and money to spend on EXP seals and hunter kit. I hate leveling too. If I'm a new player and don't want to spend on buying character, I will definitely quit. The game is so hard and expensive which only means it will not attract a "Free and casual player." This game is only for the hardcore gamer and casual player who can actually spend. Aside from this, the balance patch didn't really balance anything. What ROHAN needs is a real fix not this half baked ones which made the players disappointed.

[RBNXD]

Don't forget that Epics and Upgrades had a very nasty part on the fall of those glorious days
I do remember them as Ahkma and Roha was full of lowbies 24/7

[LordTone]

You can't say a game will pass or fail based on private servers because you don't earn anything at all so it gets boring pretty fast.

World of Warcraft one of the most popular mmorpgs in the world look how many private servers failed. I know of only 1 that Succeeded so well that blizzard had to personally get involved to close it. You know what kind of private server it was? It was 100% the normal base game before any expansions or updates or anything. It was taking so many of there players they had to do something about it that's why so many youtubers got really mad at blizzard over it.

Don't believe me? Look up World of Warcraft Nostalrius Vanilla Private Server on youtube or anywhere. Even people like boogie2988 who has play wow alooot was mad about it.

Most people want the base game not ten thousand updates that inside each one is another year of grind or another $10.000 dollar paywall to get anywhere. You can make the current rohan 100% perfect where every single player says its perfect not one single flaw its not going to make anyone start playing the game again. I really believe even if you give every new character a free upgraded weapon deleveled to level 1 it still would not bring in any new players.

[LordTone]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzgPSjSFGgU


Even though hes playing francis does not mean he doesn't tell the truth.


Edited to add this:
People have asked for years for wow to get a vanilla server they wont do it so they lost a lot of players.
People have asked for years for rohan to get a vanilla 99 cap server they wont do it so they lost almost all their players.
People have asked for years for runescape to get a vanilla server they actually listened what happen more players came back than quit and still getting new players and making a crap load of money also.

At the end of the day its PWI's choice either just keep doing updates only for the biggest spenders or do something that all the players that quit wanted your call.