Well as for the first question there has been very few new wizards at all in the last years so its pretty understandable not much "substantial content" has been created by new wizards. Lavellan is probably the latest exemple of a new wizard with good programming skills and much energy who has done alot of good work. Especially in terms of fixing stuff that was flawed, bugged, or not working as it should.Kas wrote:How many (new) wizards actually do manage to add substantional new gamecontent to the game? New domains? Brand new grinders? Several worth-todo quests, or guilds? What about analyzing and in practice modernize/revitalize the current old and possibly critically flawed gamemechanics (death, charactergrowth) that for some, is long since is out of bonds?
What separated the old eager wizards vs the current that could with ease create substantial content in a short period of time?
As for your second question. My guess is that they were young with lots of time on their hands, and a multiplayer text game was "new and cool". The entire concept of programming in general was still fairly "new" and coding for a text game was great way to learn. Also since the game had so much more players obviously the motivation was greater, and so was the help and support from other wizards. Even if you could not code there were people here who could help you. Now a new wizard more or less has to be able to code at a fairly high level, and preferably have knowledge of LPC, or be able to learn on their own. Which probably isnt so easy even if you have a fairly good understanding of programming in general.
Our current wizards are older with much less time, and its much smaller game, with less players and wizards. It's pretty understandable the activity and energy among wizards is considerably lower now, just as our playerbase is. But it would not take much really... one or two people with good coding skills, time and motivation and they could probably pull off alot in a short amount of time if they really wanted to.
But again, the key questions still needs to be answered before anyone does anything to change our core mechanics.
What is this game about, and who is it for?