Warmane's biggest enemy. How do we face it?

[Mercy]

Hype is not always good cause the more you hype it the more people would be dissapointed. I would use as an example goodie bags, something that was hyped and over hyped, and look what happened the feedback was ... I know this is a little off topic and no I AM NOT BASHING ANYONE so don't delete my post.

Lordaeron is intentionally being hyped, though. Goodie bags were just delayed because we had more important things to work on -- the community hyped that up on their own for the most part.

[Dethosis]

I'm their scapegoat more than anything. Half the things I get accused of I'm not even responsible for in any way. But it's ok. I'll be the villain because they need me to be.

the other half can be bad though. But you're a forum moderator you don't influence the gameplay, which is the most important part of a server imo, so I don't know why people wouldn't play because of a mod.

[Rokas1234]

I read only the first page of comments... I totally understand what you meant, once i played in a Lithuanian server which died when cata came out (they turned to cata and then back to wotlk and community dropped from 4k to 10)... i started playing WoW in 2009, joined molten in 2011, i was looking for servers in top100 and found molten in top and he was the only one that i believed in "x1, bug-free" and etc. (well it's not bug-free but it is lag-free).. When molten wiped, i felt like i will stop playing WoW, even tho from playing in a lot of servers i find this one the best.. My friend still played and i was mentally addicted to molten.

So i ventured to cata and then back to Ragnaros. Now I'm waiting for Lordaeron, my 2 years of work wiped in Lord.

Back to the topic starting comment about that server isn't in top100.. I think Molten/Warmane left top100 simply because admins dropped the vote and you can only collect points, the voting system wasn't what i liked to do mostly, but i just kept doing it because i was getting points and it was #worth it. I haven't checked top100 since i started playing in Molten so i dunno about the tops.. I hope the community won't go down!

FOR MOLTEN/WARMANE!

[Slywyn]

To be fair too much exposure can be a bad thing. The community's pretty big as it is. I used to mod for Toxic(way back in the TBC days), and everyone knows what happened to them.

(If you don't, they were among the large group of servers hit with DMCAs by Blizzard and taken out, in part because they were one of the biggest around)

The community is large enough that it can probably sustain/grow just based on it's own internal population. Advertising too much can just bring down the bad juju.

[osiris123]

Lordaeron is intentionally being hyped, though. Goodie bags were just delayed because we had more important things to work on -- the community hyped that up on their own for the most part.

Well you will see the more you hype it the more people won't appreciate it and will look it under a microscope and hold you responsible for even the silliest bug+ you have reviewers on you tube that look up for things like that (servers advertised as the best ever). A far as goodie bags i am not going in a detailed explanation... it was 60% the staff that hyped it when moltdown happened and the rest 40 % were the players(I still keep screenshots and link to certain posts made by the staff)

[Slywyn]

Well that's just a problem with PR in general. You want to get what you're doing out there(especially if you're excited about it), but it can be difficult not to put -too much- out there and get the hype train out of control. I think Bethesda probably handles it the best out of most of the main game companies that I'm aware of. They only release information when the thing's right around the corner, so the hype train doesn't really have time to go completely bonkers.

But they also have the luxury of doing that, they're big enough that they don't depend on the attention from the hype train to make money or generate interest in their products.

[Adunai]

I'm grateful we have a mod here that is mature enough to say the right things, no matter the crap he/she is given. I have seen some rude and mean posts on these forums and it is the job of the mods to handle things like that. One thing I have seen criticized about Molten/Warmane is that you get banned on the forums if you point out problems with the server. This is so completely and utterly false. You get banned for being a rude jerk who says mean or false things with only ill intentions, after being given warnings and not listening to those warnings.

That was the most touching case of public repentance I have ever seen on the Internets. That's the thing Warmane definitely succeeds in, demolishing any sign of resentment or discontent. No other server has reached this pinnacle of the staff's moral authority, I checked their forums and they are full of awful staff disrespect completely unheard of on Warmane (except for that sinner Dodgykebaab). Russians themselves call their "biggest" server "a circus" with no remorse or afterthought! O'Brien would be proud. Long live Warmane!

[FiveBoosters]

For reasons many of us know, Molten Wrath of the Lich King was nearly abandoned for 2 years. By the time of its 'abandonment' it was indeed the best Wrath of the Lich King experience with some respectful competition such as Gamer District.

Our Cataclysm is also one of the most competitive and in its own right the most complete Cataclysm realm, especially considering endgame content with some notable and respectable private servers such as Atlantiss also working to improve the quality for private server communities.

I could not agree more with you about how the halt in development and the poor decision to add more expansions cost Molten/Warmane its former indisputable leading position. IMHO and in-line with game reviewers, the private servers you mention are at the moment leading their expansions in terms of scripting quality second to none. As many other mentioned before, the strength of Warmane, when compared with these two alternatives, is the size and loyalty of its population.

Personally, I have seen the game core of the WotLK competition you mention and the level of love for the details and rapid development is breathtaking [from NPCs animations to Wintergrasp]; however, they do have a terrible marketing strategy, which keeps its population rather low [roughly 1.5k peak] relative to the one of Warmane [roughly 7.5k peak - WotLK], and IMHO this factor makes them not to be a real threat to Warmane for the time-being. I do not know how is the situation with the CATA one you mention, aside of online reviews and a few minutes game-time, but they also seem to be having a relatively low population [roughly 1-1.5 peak]. It would be nice if you could merge with any of them and profit from your complementary features, but I guess this is purely wishful thinking from my part.

With Lordaeron we want to achieve quality on WotLK unmatched, possibly unmatched by other expansions as well (comparing to the classic and TBC private servers).

I'm confident with the improvement of the game core brought to Lordaeron and most importantly its reuse/porting to other expansions -I think this is the real game-changer- Warmane will be able to reclaim its throne among the private server communities.

I have a couple of suggestions about extra nice-to-have features, which may help to face the challenges ahead on the road back to the top:

Spoiler: Show

1) Make Lordaeron truly progressive. Instead of releasing content in time-boxes depending on a single release date, make the progress dependent on player achievements [similar to the approach of other server out there]. In this way, it does not matter when you start playing on the realm, but how far you asynchronously progress in it.

2) Stop adding expansions to the server until the existing game cores are in prime quality [95% working blizzlike]. Forget about WoD/Legion/Next expansion. I guess we agree on this one.

3) Implement cross-realm RDF/BG/Arena. I do not know the difficulty of making this possible; I am aware that a newly formed private mega-server comprehending an already existing family of servers, with claimed 200k users, are planning to do something alike starting on October 2015 [I doubt they would accomplish it any time soon - their game cores are rock bottom quality].

4) Implement adjustable/customizable realm rates 1-7x [except in Lordaeron of course]. Sorry to insist on this one so much, but I think could be a nice marketing tool to attract both hardcore and fast-leveling seekers to coexist in highly populated realms. Consider adding transmogrify NPCs to WotLK realms; just a nice custom/harmless ad-don to play around a bit more and it is a good gold sinkhole.

Thank you for letting me/us speak freely and keep up the EXCELLENT job you are making. I hope my feedback is taken with an open mind, as I want only the best for Warmane. I am looking forward to the time to come and what may it bring to Warmane's community [both staff and members]. All my best wishes!

[snakics]

And weird situation, while molten fixing useless pve, russians got working Wintergrasp and cross realm pvp.
I wanna play with Eu players, but when molten cares only about PVE, i think i can start learning russian.

[Sixtyninee]

And weird situation, while molten fixing useless pve, russians got working Wintergrasp and cross realm pvp.
I wanna play with Eu players, but when molten cares only about PVE, i think i can start learning russian.

It's not like anyone is forcing you to stay.

[mizara]

@snakics
but heres a thing> your responding to this forum and you know without thinking on it that youll get a reply:)

I spent past 5mnths trying servers waiting for Lordaeron so the proof is in the pudding for ME > the same *****es and complaints we see here, are present there as well... some things are better, some things are worse.
maybe you go to another server, and find that its perfect for you
...but in the end it wouldnt matter if you speak perfect russian (tryed that one btw) or english, good chance the reply you just posted would be left unanswered.
I saw many forum posts that never got past the OP stage...and many more times OP asks question, and responses are days or weeks apart if not months.
check it out for yourself look through the other server forums.

Forums on a WHOLE cannot compete with gameplay itself...but in the end you really must consider it to some degree,
the forums tend to speak on behalf of a servers community. (We are spoiled here, we have the best Mods, our devs interact etc)

OT I personally dont think Warmane is in danger from bashers on other servers...or in reddit post....point blank, even after our server FELL> we have kept #s here that prove contrary to bashers. We could of all left, why we didnt? what other server can say that?
All in All >Ive played many hours (too many) on Lord PTR > I sense a great wave of disturbance in the land of warmane bashing.
Lordaeron is NOT just the release of a 1x LK realm > Its the the cement trucks leaving after a new foundation has been poured.
And what does one do with a fresh new foundation? Well if your KaerWolf you build a badass house of warmane on it.
..but it cant be built in one day...
-let the bashers bash. It IS sometimes disheartening, Yes, disheartening to know how many sheep are truly among us.

[KittensForSale]

We are spoiled here, we have the best Mods,

Much mod, such sapphire, best world.

Warmane doesn't have any big enemy to face, just a "best wotlk" promise to keep and roll out to other wotlk realms in due course.