Bringing back old players

[Tarax the Terrible]

Was a log on the Propaganda thread of one of Ares old pro BDA posts.
I sent him a link to the thread via email and got this reply...

"Ah, thanks for showing me this! Again, I've always stated that wizhood was a mistake. If my character could be reinstated as a mortal, I'd play."

*sigh*
Hard for old chars to start from scratch...
Lots of people try wizhood, an elite guild like the vamps etc as a last resort to try and break out of the funk their char is in.
Which usually results in them leaving a while afterwards when they realise it wasn't the fix they hoped.

Another thing I have seen a number of people do over the years is go nuts and intentionally kill their character a huge amount of times.
Running from sparkle church to the giants and seeing many of your corpses lying there sort of thing.
With the plan of getting lots of guild exp in a new guild.
Think Cherek did this before wizzing and I know another BDA who did after dying at Fael-Thas's chest but can't remember the name.
This is before recovery, so was setting yourself back months/years.
Wasn't much of a surprise when they stopped playing a few weeks later.

People get burned out is a fact of the Game.
Making it easier for them to return when they are ready to could help us get more players...
Someone who was once a titan being able to return as a titan would be a big plus.
Being able to restore to before an ill thought out wizard career would also be good.
Not asking for people to get free rides, just able to take back a few ill thought out decisions.

[gorboth]

Sadly, this is not a path we can easily take. However, we have corrected these problems for the future by instating death recovery and allowing people to wiz with a new character rather than sacrificing their main.

G.

[Tarax the Terrible]

I am glad things are better going forward.

What is the difficulty?
I guess every player has a file, and if say I die because of a bug and am restored, my file gets change back to a previous save.
If they could be changed by to a save before they wizzed all would be sweet right?
So is it that we did not keep the huge amount of backups?
Are there archived historical backups and someone could go back to the best fit?
If we could figure something out it might get us a few extra returning players.

I know that some have dewizzed in the past the policy was they go back to wandered or something with a chunk of quest exp.. So it was actually better for them in the long run. Not keen on that idea.

[petros]

There are problems with making a wizard into a mortal again, both from a technical point of view, and a social one.

Let me just illustrate the technical problem with one example. There are many such examples in standard wizard practices. Let's say your create a quest. And you want to know who's doing your quest. So you add code into the quest that triggers messages to your wiz character when people trigger quest events. Making a wizard into a mortal would mean that the mortal would now receive these messages too. To make an old wizard character into a mortal would involve scouring all the code in Genesis to remove these types of message notifiers. You may think, "Oh, that's not so difficult, just do a grep, etc" but the reality is that there are many wizardly benefits that a character can insert that can't be discovered simply by doing a grep (which incidentally still need to separate legitimate mortal entries vs non-legitimate wizard ones).

The social problem is something we've seen on not just out of game forums, but also when a player actively claims in the game that they were a wizard. A person who is known to have been a wizard has a bit more "authority" on game mechanics than others. Therefore, they can claim anything they want, even if it's not true. In the game, it puts other mortal players at a disadvantage to have to deal with this. The implications are far too many to be listed here, but I'm sure you can re-read old forums to get an idea of this history.

[Tarax the Terrible]

But also in reality a lot of people tried wizing and left without doing much of anything.
There is a risk.

But its no more than a current wiz with a mortal second poses.
They could cheat just as easily if not more so.

[gorboth]

This issue, Tarax, has been fully explored, and we arrived on the solution we intend to maintain years ago. There will be no reversal of wizard to mortal status with a single character. Sorry, but it is the way it must be. If you can't accept that, then accept that it is the way it *will* be.

G.

[Anahita]

As an "old" player recently returned, its almost like being a newbie again. Lots has changed, I had no idea how to get from one place to another, use my spells, etc. Its amazing what you forget over time, and intimidating to get back into it (my fingers remember more than my brain does!) Thankfully Hektor spent a few hours OOC with me to remind me what the heck I was doing. Not everyone has that.

Starting an alt as an "newly returned" person is much the same - I'm the nerdy kind who did the quests the hard way, and if I kept notes, great, if not, well, the thought of all the hours its going to take me to redo all that I've already done is daunting and makes me want to go back to WoW and Thottbot.

The maps are great and I'd love to see more of them. Those who take joy in discovery will still explore each area (or at least the "towns") but its nice to know I have a back-up if I get hopelessly lost (or frustrated!)

I'd like to see the link to this board displayed more prominently on the website, as old folks like me go back there to see if anythings changed, and a discussion board at least lends itself to nostalgia and lets you know who's still around or whats going on. I also really encourage you to breathe life back into the website itself, some of that stuff is *so old* it gives the impression that Gen itself is just as lifeless. An update every few months would be sufficient. Say, Christmas and the Summer Solstice?

[Laurel]

It is possible to create a new char and quest MOST quests within 1-2 months (and then rest within next 1-2months) ... or was the name and/or age of the old char soooooo important?

[Anahita]

Laurel, I’m not sure if you are responding to me or to the topic of people who wizzed their mains and now regret it. If you were responding to me, I never had a wizard, and yes, it is that important for me to bring Anahita back. The draw of Genesis is the fantastic RP and the relationships with people and all the history she’s built along the way.

I’ve no doubt that some people can spend hours grinding through quests in a matter of months, good for them, but based on your comments on other threads you seem to be talking about players who have quest notes, people to grind with, and by the way, are probably warrior class.

Not everybody fits into that category. Not everyone can/wants to devote the amount of time it would take to figuring quests, maps, commands, equipment and who has it, etc. to grow a hero in two months – especially when there are alternatives out there that don’t care if you play the whole game with a walkthrough and a map, when you can mail cash to yourself without it being “cheating,” and when there are more than 10 players in the game during the hours you can log in.

And not everyone can just pick up a pointy stick and go have fun, doing that would leave Anahita in a bloody pulp! I imagine it would be worse for MM or PoT – punishment or demotion for forgetting to curtsey properly, not remembering how to use your spells, or at the most basic level what the components are and how to find them and how they work. Help files in guilds are sometimes woefully sparse because they are written with the assumption that you already know something instead of that the reader is someone who hasn't even thought about the Zap Potion in 4 years.

I know not all of this is fixable, nor should it be. But perhaps doing some kind of thing where if you have a main who is (or has been) champion level, it’d be nice to get 1-2 designated alts who can have accelerated growth through X level. (Bonus: people register their alts.) Or, if you can track if someone has been gone a while give them some other kind of reward or incentive to stay – reduced brute, low death penalties, a “win” button…

And before people start naming names of people who will cheat and exploit that, my answer is yes, some will, but they are the same people who cheat and exploit everything anyway so why not do it for the “win” that would help great players come back?

[Tapakah]

Of twelve mortals currently online I see:
Anahita, Celephias, Ekkehard, Karpath, Varulg.

Almost half of the population are the comebacks!
Yay!

N.B. Recently Istrbitl and Cindy have been spotted.