New Kronos I - Call of the Crusade

[shard]

The more I think about it, the more a merge between K1 and K2 stands out as the best possible option for the long-term health of the project.

When I started playing on Kronos back in the summer of 2015, I was really impressed by it's quality. The game staff were fast-acting (Gurky would appear within minutes to help you out if you had an issue), they were friendly, and were clearly passionate about the game and the community they had worked hard to build. Equally important to me was the fact that there was consistently no lag, which was a night and day difference coming from a place like Nostalrius, where it was practically unplayable during peak EU/China times every day. I enjoyed Kronos so much that I recommended it to all my friends from back in retail vanilla, and brought my imaginary Corecraft guild here to play (Risen on alliance).

Fast forward one year. In the current state of things, there's no way I would still recommend K1 to anyone new who's looking for a vanilla server to play on. I'm not going to waste anyone's time discussing what those problems are, since they're already well-documented, but I am going to point out something that's become more and more obvious to me over the last few months--something that it will be difficult for the staff to admit: opening K2 was a huge mistake, and its continued existence is threatening the long-term health of both K1, and the entire Kronos project.

It's pretty simple. One server = a unified community of players and staff. Two servers = divided community, one server ends up cannibalizing all the potential new players from the other, and the game staff effectively has its workload doubled, all while having to divide its attention between two distinct communities. It might have seemed like the best solution at the time to deal with all the Nost refugees, but the only thing opening a second server succeeded in doing was to significantly worsen the overall quality of product for both servers.

A merge needs to happen, and the sooner your team can come up with a plan of action, the better. My own recommendation: give K2 a 2-month war effort, followed by 1 month to progress in AQ, then merge. The K2 players who are truly loyal to the project will stay, and a unified Kronos will emerge, stronger than it ever has been. That's just one way it could be done. However you choose to do it, it needs to happen soon. The longer K2 remains in existence, the more likely you will lose not only the Nost bandwagon hoppers, but the Kronos vets who really do care, but have been frustrated for months now by the neglect, and feeling that we've become nothing more than an unwanted step-child. Once you lose those people--the ones who are your backbone on K1, the future of the entire Kronos project will be looking pretty grim...

 

[crimsonsage]

A few people have proposed 2-3 month long timelines for merging the servers. Sadly, I don't think that's going to work. A merge needs to happen in days or weeks, not months. K1 is a ghost town, and has been for about 6 weeks now. I would be surprised if the top raiding guilds on each faction are even able to fill their raids this week, after the announcement that we're dealing with.

 

[Slippy]

I don't even think they could do a shortened War Effort on K2. If everyone is about to leave then why would they start that grind? They may eventually complete a shortened War Effort but it will be too late. It's closing the door after the horse has bolted. Good luck getting people back.

Another thing is many of the people on K2 have experienced some of the War Effort before. They were doing it before they came to Kronos. What is missing is the opening event and the actual instances. A merge can fill in those blanks. Guilds on K2 have had a multi-server, year long road to AQ.

A good thing Kronos has going for it is they banned a lot of the Chinese that would bog down a larger server. They're all gonna be heading straight for the other project.

 

[Sarei]

I agree that waiting for a merge 3-4 months from now will be too late. By that time all Nostalrius players will be gone (most of K2 and quiet a lot of K1), people who are planning to roll on Crestfall will be gone (if it opens by then as it's planned) and the overall population will simply be way too small for server to be appealing even with Ahn'Qiraji and incoming Naxxramas.

On the other hand, if you merged the servers RIGHT NOW, sure some K2 players would instantly leave, but they would do it anyway when Nostalrius comes out and it's a fact, BUT there is a chance that sudden population increase for everyone would make some people who intended to leave - stay. It would instantly bring more PvP activity then on each server separately, same with PvE PuG content and it could be a turning point for many who are already gone in their minds.. With somewhat decent population like that and AQ/incoming Naxx, all this could actually end up somewhat okay for all of us.

There's simply no chance that more people would stick around in a long run if you merged the servers 4 months from now then today, even thought there would be some instant loss in that department if you did it now. Ofc, the worst thing you can do is not to merge at all, in that scenario K2 will be a ghost town with 300 players at peak time as soon as Nostalrius is out and K1 will meet the same fate, even thought it wouldn't happen over night like with K2, but rather soon over short period of time.

 

[NedStark]

I was going to comment but you stole my words Sarei. I fully agree with you.

Edit: take this little childish "drama" between perpxgodx, Novakayne and Ahlaundoh elsewhere.

 

[Chainsaw]

The whole problem now is that k1 players are nearly done with content and k2 players are at a stage, where a reroll on a server with a very overrated positive reputation does not hurt too much (vor aren't they even restoring the server to it's old state?).
IMO kronos is a fine server except for the missing regulations on multiboxing, but all the nost disciples see it differently.

Dear Chero, I hate to propose this, but IMO you should find a solution for both servers quickly to keep the population high enough for people to stay or consider working together with Nost staff to make the private server scene great again.

But yeah, we never know what happens next, maybe blizz releases legacy servers when nobody expects it.

 

[bl4ckc0d3r]

1. Reduce warlock summoning requirement back to lvl20. Old K1 guilds have insane advantage currently and it's just plain unfair.
2. Implement deserter for dropping the queue. Seriously is this really hard to do? Give me one good reason why this isn't a great positive change.
3. Spend a few weeks working on pathing. As already explained a few times in this thread it is just bad at the moment and root cause of a lot of pet issues as well. I can't see that it could be any worse if you temper with it.
4. Announce Naxxramas right now with release date of at least first wing in 2-3 months.
5. Merge the realms. What many others have said is true - vast majority of K2 and significant post-Nost-shutdown part of K1 will give the new Nost a try since they see it as holy grail of private vanilla servers. Only way that K2 and K1 will NOT lose a lot of population is if the new server turns out to be such a failure that not even high population makes up for it. And keep in mind that these people suffered insane lag in the past for the sake of population so it will take A LOT to make them give up on it.
   So knowing they would hop over the moment they get a decent chance, why do you care that some of them would complain and refuse the merge at the moment?
   Merging the realms would merge the PvP populations as well. If you think this isn't important, you need to understand that even just one additional simultaneous battleground makes a huge difference to people PvPing. In order to make this meaningful, you have to implement queue drop deserter first or it will end up being dodgefest and defeat the whole purpose.

And lastly:

Edit: take this little childish "drama" between perpxgodx, Novakayne and Ahlaundoh elsewhere.

 

[Sarei]

Also, I would like to point out something regarding the merge from my Feenix experience.

As most of you know, we had 3 servers there: Warsong, Emerald Dream and Al'Akir. At some point overall population on all 3 servers started to drop but it was still nice regardless. Most players started crying about the merge since we would have one really nice server but staff constantly kept on refusing to do so because servers had some differences including the timetable. Not too long after that, population on all 3 servers dropped severely and they finally decided to merge the servers but it was too little too late. Those who still played didn't care anymore because there was too little players to do anything even with all 3 servers merged and those who left before never came back. Soon after that they just killed their Vanilla servers.

Don't repeat this mistake. People may or may not be happy with the merge, but for a game like this you need population to keep it going. Even if someone doesn't agree with the merge, he will still log in to do stuff if he wants to play, but if there is noone to do stuff with people will just stop trying and quit..

 

[Chainsaw]

^ yeah, that is true.

 

[hakoon]

Yup.. Personnally, im very worried with the annoncement. I mean, I'm a Nost refugee, but I am not bound to Nost at all cost. All I want is a suitable server with good population based. Which means 2k+ online at a time.

Elysium releasing three damn servers, Kronos having 2 servers, Crestfall project incoming release, all those ''offers'' to the current ''vanilla wow market'' is really really bad for the whole vanilla community by the simple fact it split up the world wide vanilla community by 5 while it was 3 a year before! And the nost PVE server was low, 60% to 70% of the community was playing on pvp nost... Now this is obvious the fresh new Nost server will rack up at least 50% of the worldwide playerbase leaving a ghost server to the former pvp/pve Nost players who just want to resume where they were when it shut down (i would resume my lvl 41 warrior, but not in a ghost server!).

I would stay on K2 then leveling my nice lvl 35 warrior, but not if population crashes down!
I would then resume my lvl 52 on K1, but only if population raise up to it's previous states!

Yup, as I said, that announcement is really worrying me right now... more than when Nost closed down...

 

[Labathor]

I don't play on K2 and when K1 was in the War Effort I did start the grind for the AQ mount but scraped that cancerous grind on the 2nd day.

That being said, I agree with a server merge being high up on the priority list but the main issue I see is; if a server merge were to happen right now before K2 even gets to do the War Effort will voids out any chance of any K2 players from getting that mount in a blizzlike manner. As cancerous as the grind is, and as pointless as the mount is, it's still something that should be taken into consideration.

A few pages back some K2 players proposed the idea of a merge from K1 to K2 but deleting anything above T2 and limit what they can bring then starting the War Effort. Personally I'm speechless, I don't even know what to think or how to even reply to such an idea......

This is a situation were you'll never be able to please everyone, but can not be ignored and possibly might have to be addressed. For all we know Elysium could end up being a flop, I don't for see Valkyrie being able to keep up with the Nost standards or with already large target on their back from Blizzard and Gold Sellers. To add, no one knows if Crestfall will be successful or not and I find it a childish and silly "my dick is bigger than yours" competition between projects rather than communication, working together and planning to give those who love Classic the best experience possible. I think it's safe to say that Kronos currently has the upper hand PvE wise with AQ opened and Naxx on the horizon and talks of TBC appose to other fresh projects.

I will fully agree that doing nothing at all will only make matters worse, I'm aware that you care deeply about your project, its community and all Classic players as a whole (regardless of what project they support). Though showing signs of being desperate by making rash decision/s could deeply harm your project in the long run.
I'm not saying all Nost players are Fan Boyz, but you have to take into consideration that even though you've done what ever you could to accommodate them during the heartbreaking event Blizzard put them through, there are some that just don't give a fuck and want to see Kronos fail at any cost. So some of the post in this very thread could very well be "Ideas" from those individuals who want you to listen to them and do as much damage as possible to Kronos.

*EDIT*
Wanted to add that I think it's extremely stupid that we already have the community split into two servers, now with Valkyrie/Elysium planning to open up 3 more servers and Crestfall for sure 1 server maybe 2. As a big picture and Vanilla lovers all we're doing is splitting up the Vanilla community even more now than before. It's bad planning and horrible communication between projects leaders, if a project leaders was able to civilly communicate between each others then opening up a new project every 12 month passing on what one project succeeded at and bettering the future for Classic servers as a whole would be more ideal than what's currently going on with each project having to start from the ground up. If it really is all volunteer/non profit then there shouldn't be a need to compete for population.

I think it's great that Nost is passing on it's hard work (the core/data) to Elysium, but at the same time it's stupid we can't just all sit down and make Vanilla great as a big picture.

 

[crimsonsage]

https://www.twitch.tv/projectkronoswow

They said a VOD would be available. Typed these notes up while listening/asking questions.

1. There is no plan to merge the servers at this time. That could change in the future but no decision on merging the servers have been made. K2 players would not be able to experience all of the content they were looking forward to. They do not want to expedite the release of AQ40 on K2 because they think that they still need to get ZG, World Dragons, then War Effort.

2. They cannot easily move to a new host, because they own all of their hardware and it is co-located in the data center of their host. To move to a new host, they would have to shut down the server, physically remove the hardware, and physically move it to a new host. This is why it would take ~2 weeks to complete. With no guarantee that the lag would be fixed. Then they kept mentioning DDOS again.

3. They do not believe that the population has declined on either server at this time. They did not say what metric / date they were using to make that assessment. They also repeated multiple times that "there is no way to know what will happen when Nost launches".

4. They spent a lot of time talking about hypothetical things like "If they ever released a new server they would try to do it without a twinstar shop, so character trading couldn't happen." They continued to talk a lot about how it's up to the community to add ninjas to their friends list and track their name changes through it.

5. Possibly releasing Naxx in a nerfed state on the PTR, wing-by-wing, in "early 2017".

6. They have roughly 6 developers who split work between all of the TwinStar projects, some go inactive, others become active again, etc.

7. Race/faction change is being worked on in part of a redesigned account management panel. ETA for release is 2017 and it's not decided yet if faction change will be allowed, but there are a lot of reservations about faction changes.

8. Some internal testing has begun on Naxx, but the expected release of Naxx on K1 would be around the same time as the launch of AQ40 on K2 (months, considering they don't have ZG or World Dragon yet).

9. All questions related to bugs (force logging in combat, warrior charge, pet pathing, etc.) were referred to the TwinStar bug tracker. These were GMs that we talked with, not developers.

 

[hakoon]

If some people exists (people who wants to see kronos fail at all cost) they are hurting themelves in the process imo. Like Labathor says, we are not even sure if the new projects will succeed. Kronos remain a solid server and community (at the current state) for those who just want to enjoy a classic vanilla experience. So hurting Kronos is hurting the whole vanilla community.

A merge is mandatory like many says, but im also unsure on the right process. We cannot limit K1 items or progress, that would be a non sense. I do think that bringing the whole population from K2 to K1 would be the best way. Those who are lvling prior to lvl 60 wont care much. Not everybody wants to be the first raid group to kill X boss. Most aren't tryhard hardcore player who runs after after that kind of achievement.

I've been playing wow for years and I never really went further than a couple of ZG bosses, first boss of MC and same thing in Naxx (don't even remember how i ended up in Naxx TBH).

what I enjoyed the most was leveling from 1 to 60, by running all those 5 men dungeons, then at lvl 60, running Strat, UBRS, scholo and such places for months. Then grinding BG honors for months as well. Then rerolling a new character from lvl 1 for the fun of trying out a new classe.

Player like me, is probably a good example of a majority of casual players. I couldnt care less of the AQ releasing State. As long as population is high enough that I can find the group i need for running that X dungeon, that population is high enough that I can live world PVP at a reasonable state, that it is high enough that i can find what i need on AH at a reasonable price, and also high enough that I can sell the items and materials I find and gather. That's all I care really. and im sure most casual players have the same opinions than I do.

As long as we dont feel lonely questing, looting dungeons, and etc. We will all be fine.

- - - Updated - - -

3. They do not believe that the population has declined on either server at this time. They did not say what metric / date they were using to make that assessment. They also repeated multiple times that "there is no way to know what will happen when Nost launches".

Are they out of their mind?? Kronos 1 is a ghost server plan and simple. Go start a lvl 1 character on any starting zone and you will see what I mean. Go quest on a lvl 50ish zone and you will see what I mean.

Go in Stormwind City, browsing the AH and you will see what I mean.

K1 is dying and is now at a severe state.

 

[insec]

How to improve your server:


fix warrior charge. fix the lag. merge the servers. increase boss hp by 300%. you're welcome.

 

[Ahlaundoh]

I'm not saying all Nost players are Fan Boyz, but you have to take into consideration that even though you've done what ever you could to accommodate them during the heartbreaking event Blizzard put them through, there are some that just don't give a fuck and want to see Kronos fail at any cost. So some of the post in this very thread could very well be "Ideas" from those individuals who want you to listen to them and do as much damage as possible to Kronos.

Wow... just wow..
I can't believe you actually believe this.

 

[Sarei]

Sure noone knows what will happen with new Nostalrius, whether it's going to turn out to be a flop or not, but I think it's a pretty safe bet to think that people who go there wont return. Now, staff can gamble and wait to see how is that going to end up before taking any action, but if Nostalrius succeed (pretty sure it will) not even merge will save this project, but if they did it now it would be a "safe call" with some instant loss but likely better outcome in the long run.

 

[galfior]

h
3. They do not believe that the population has declined on either server at this time. They did not say what metric / date they were using to make that assessment. They also repeated multiple times that "there is no way to know what will happen when Nost launches".

I am speechless...

 

[crimsonsage]

I am speechless...

Me too. I asked them to explain this :

The following guilds have disbanded in the past ~6 weeks : CORAL, ThunderCats, Serenity, Fierce, Eclipse.

The only new guild that has formed is KairoS, and this is only on the Alliance side of things.

I asked the question twice and it never got answered.

They said that the who command is INTENTIONALLY obscured so that census addon doesn't work, and that Gurky is the only GM who can even see real population numbers. This is done because they believe population numbers contributed to the demise of Nostalrius.



Honestly it was a great QA session and they did a really good job answering things as best as possible. With that said, I think their stance on a lot of issues are fundamentally flawed and will continue to contribute to the demise of Kronos.

 

[galfior]

I really find it amazing that they consider the population hasn t drop at all lately especially with all leveling areas empty, people playing over and over again against the same premade and no world pvp at all (at least on K1).
Even without Nostalrius return it should be done...
They even considered doing that 7x event for 2 months again because of it and now everything is fine... As i said i am speechless...

I really encourage people to share the poll for merge on both K1 and K2 on horde and alliance side.
https://forum.twinstar.cz/showthread.php/115948-Merge-K1-and-K2
Perhaps when we hit 1k votes, they will actually listen.

 

[zork]

Maybe I'm alone, maybe I'm not but: I'm a k2 player not going nost, however a merge too soon will likely make me quit.
A merge in the future could be acceptable but then 1. disallow multiboxing other than for trade (summoning alts shouldnt be a thing at all, had enough of it on feenix) 2. the difference in economy between k1 and k2 is an issue. I do know it's possible to cap the amount of gold per character, feenix did so when they ported their old vanilla characters to the tbc server.

Edit: my guild on k2 that consist of many ex-nost players will stay here until further notice. the guys don't have much faith in valkyrie

 

[Vanillacoke]

The only thing that Q&A did was make me lose faith in Kronos.

It's really Feenix all over again, they're gonna wait it out until the last second when it's already too late.

Some of the stuff they talked about was really nice, but it has absolutely 0 relevance if there isn't enough people on the server to begin with. Population is the number one issue here and they seem to think it's fine...

 

[kalleas2]

I'd be ok if I'd could move my K1 char to k2 and wipe all gear and give me some sort of starting greens.

 

[linxz]

Who in their right mind would play on a server hosted under the valkyrie name. Have fun raiding BWL for 7 years.

 

[Comrade14]

1. There is no plan to merge the servers at this time. That could change in the future but no decision on merging the servers have been made. K2 players would not be able to experience all of the content they were looking forward to. They do not want to expedite the release of AQ40 on K2 because they think that they still need to get ZG, World Dragons, then War Effort.

Pretty stupid for them to not be considering a merge since they created this thread asking the community what they want and most posts are in favor of both servers merging, even people that were against it before are saying merge.

 

[steelyglint]

K1 player here.

Well first of all , it is quite dishonest to blame separate server decision on Kronos staff alone while there is a 1000 pages thread cheering for it. It was actually a collective mistake imo.

Second, yes dear Kronos team, we totally share the following (that you can't write as plainly for obvious reasons) :

K1 is dotted to death. K2 Pyro inc, besides hoping for a 1% resist chance, the only question is hit or crit ?
I encourage you to consider the possible outcomes and plan ahead , for instance if the pyro crits you will :

- have to prepare for a downward spirale since the "omg 60% of my raid went to XXX might as well go there" will wipe many guilds on K2
- have to reconsider the K2 AQ40 war effort since the 300 pop left there will not make it unnerfed and will actually get even more discouraged (on K1 with its realtively decent pop it was already quite demotivating)
- will have a pvp on K2 as bad as K1 meaning even more people quitting

While it is entirely your decision since you invested so much energy and dedication to the servers , my personal opinion since you kindly asked for it is :

Merge K1 and K2 , that way instead of dying each separately , they can fight back and actually have a chance at winning (yes I think they can together) or worse case give a good damn fight that will be much longer and is enjoyable and decent.

I can understand you will wait and see , but you should set yourself a milestone and a deadline for that decision , cause as Sarei highlighted if that decision comes in 2 months you can be 100% sure that K1 will be dead by then, I already personnaly know at least 10 players (out of the 100 maybe I know) that quit K1 for the exact same reason : they feel it will be dead by first days of 2017.