Well, I'm recently back from my last 3 week inactivity due to work, and Nostalrius is gone. I've read a lot about that on many sites, this forum, theirs, and other external sites. I've made myself an idea of what the current situation looks like, what good we can get from it and how to counter the bad, so here's a few suggestions that I hope will be taken in consideration, assuming I already totally trust our team anyway.
First of all, this is my standpoint about Nostalrius shutdown. If I'm right, we aren't even risking to see the same happen to us - and on top of that, TwinStar is nearly 10 year old where Nost only popped out of nothingness just a year ago.
The Good
Needless to say, the sudden burst in population. The only thing where Kronos was lacking is now fixed, and once we're through this storm and the dust is settled, we're gonna enjoy a realm where PvP will finally flourish too (I can see BGs pop around the clock now for never-seen-before brackets). Above all, as we're left with no competition, we can finally have the whole worldwide vanilla community under the same roof, something that could only be dreamed of since the golden age of ED!
The Bad (and possibly how to fix it)
Overpopulation (bringing lag and lack of resources in starting zones): keeping in mind vanilla standards for a packed retail realm - max. 2500 online players - I believe we can still safely push it to 3000/3500 and have it capped there. Beyond that, opening new realms (especially, and finally, a PvE one?) becomes a necessity. For now, shortening the spawn rates of mobs can do the trick for level 1-10 areas, maybe even 1-20. I believe that, if possible, the line should be drawn where we can have the previous, amazingly huge draw distance fully restored, while lagging the least.
Goldsellers: filters can go a very long way here, overburdening the culprits and relieving mods from most of the micromanagement. Aside from the fact I haven't noticed too much of it, given that they tend to post the same text over and over again, just add the most peculiar and recurrent portions of them to blacklisted words, like VV_VV_VV for example. That way, not only the goldsellers will have to create another account, they will also have to manually edit their macros all the time, every time.
Chat requirements: I see there's a current limitation of level 5 for Say and level 10 for General channels, while there's no level limit for whispers. To me, that makes little sense. In fact, it does more harm than good to most people (consider legit players are considerably higher in numbers than scammers and goldsellers). The way it is now, it is as if General channels didn't exist at all for 1-10 zones. Not very blizzlike, we must recognize that. Remove the level requirement to Say and General altogether: stopping the occasional goldspammer isn't worth totally hindering communications for the dozens (maybe hundreds) of legit players that dwell in the starting zones and have likely just joined the realm with the greatest enthusiasm. Maybe lowering it to level 3 or 5 for General would suffice, 10 is way too high. For whispers, on the other hand, a limit of 5 or 10 is probably needed. The current requirement of 10 for World sounds about right.
Nerfed /who: current settings even make the Census+ addon unuseful. That, disabling the homepage count, and the demise of Kronos-census left us with no mean to check realm numbers. I fully understand why you did that, as better safe than sorry... for the time being, at least (and even if, as I said, I don't really believe we're risking anything). But we could still get an official word from time to time - maybe on the IRC channel? - informing us on what the average numbers/daily peaks look like, just for the sake of curiosity... and considering that, finally, population isn't an issue anymore. That wouldn't resound too much.
That being said, I'd like to stress once again how confident I am that only good will come to us by this "forced merge", medium/long-term. I'm now going to throw a few hundreds EUR at you guys... hopefully that'll help you expand your infrastructure, should you decide to do so.
Oh and by the way, to all newcomers/returning/repentant players from Nost... welcome! Maybe now you've realized you can only tell a winning horse at the end of the race :tongue:
First of all, this is my standpoint about Nostalrius shutdown. If I'm right, we aren't even risking to see the same happen to us - and on top of that, TwinStar is nearly 10 year old where Nost only popped out of nothingness just a year ago.
The Good
Needless to say, the sudden burst in population. The only thing where Kronos was lacking is now fixed, and once we're through this storm and the dust is settled, we're gonna enjoy a realm where PvP will finally flourish too (I can see BGs pop around the clock now for never-seen-before brackets). Above all, as we're left with no competition, we can finally have the whole worldwide vanilla community under the same roof, something that could only be dreamed of since the golden age of ED!
The Bad (and possibly how to fix it)
Overpopulation (bringing lag and lack of resources in starting zones): keeping in mind vanilla standards for a packed retail realm - max. 2500 online players - I believe we can still safely push it to 3000/3500 and have it capped there. Beyond that, opening new realms (especially, and finally, a PvE one?) becomes a necessity. For now, shortening the spawn rates of mobs can do the trick for level 1-10 areas, maybe even 1-20. I believe that, if possible, the line should be drawn where we can have the previous, amazingly huge draw distance fully restored, while lagging the least.
Goldsellers: filters can go a very long way here, overburdening the culprits and relieving mods from most of the micromanagement. Aside from the fact I haven't noticed too much of it, given that they tend to post the same text over and over again, just add the most peculiar and recurrent portions of them to blacklisted words, like VV_VV_VV for example. That way, not only the goldsellers will have to create another account, they will also have to manually edit their macros all the time, every time.
Chat requirements: I see there's a current limitation of level 5 for Say and level 10 for General channels, while there's no level limit for whispers. To me, that makes little sense. In fact, it does more harm than good to most people (consider legit players are considerably higher in numbers than scammers and goldsellers). The way it is now, it is as if General channels didn't exist at all for 1-10 zones. Not very blizzlike, we must recognize that. Remove the level requirement to Say and General altogether: stopping the occasional goldspammer isn't worth totally hindering communications for the dozens (maybe hundreds) of legit players that dwell in the starting zones and have likely just joined the realm with the greatest enthusiasm. Maybe lowering it to level 3 or 5 for General would suffice, 10 is way too high. For whispers, on the other hand, a limit of 5 or 10 is probably needed. The current requirement of 10 for World sounds about right.
Nerfed /who: current settings even make the Census+ addon unuseful. That, disabling the homepage count, and the demise of Kronos-census left us with no mean to check realm numbers. I fully understand why you did that, as better safe than sorry... for the time being, at least (and even if, as I said, I don't really believe we're risking anything). But we could still get an official word from time to time - maybe on the IRC channel? - informing us on what the average numbers/daily peaks look like, just for the sake of curiosity... and considering that, finally, population isn't an issue anymore. That wouldn't resound too much.
That being said, I'd like to stress once again how confident I am that only good will come to us by this "forced merge", medium/long-term. I'm now going to throw a few hundreds EUR at you guys... hopefully that'll help you expand your infrastructure, should you decide to do so.
Oh and by the way, to all newcomers/returning/repentant players from Nost... welcome! Maybe now you've realized you can only tell a winning horse at the end of the race :tongue: