Thursday, June 23, 2005

Life as a guinea pig (part 2)

So, what is life like on the Test server? It's a lot like moving to a small town out on the frontier.

First off, it's a tiny population when compared to one of the production servers. Peak population for us is 100 people online. Compare that with a few hundred or thousand players being online at the same time on a live server.

That has a few implications:

- Everyone will know your name after a few weeks, for good or for ill.

- Self-sufficiency (a.k.a. soloing/duoing) is a key skill.

- Your first week on the server, and how you treat others, will determine whether you are accepted or shunned.

Secondly, while players aren't church-mouse poor, there's a very different dynamic here then on Live. The generally accepted rule-of-thumb is that you won't get static for selling goods at 2x-3x over sell-back, but trying to charge 10x-20x sell-back will get you lambasted. Resellers and speculators are especially reviled in such a small community.

There's a lot of barter, giving stuff away, trading for raws. Some folks here refuse to put goods on the broker. It's very common to be given gear, equipment, spells, etc. and all you have to do is to "play it forward" down the road. I take a middle road. Guildies get goods for free, or for cost, or for raws, but I also sell some goods on the broker to make a bit of coin.

Third, self-sufficiency is a big plus. I'd say at least 1/3 of the population on Test do crafting, but it's still not enough to meet demands at the higher levels. Which means there is a huge demand for crafted goods at all levels, and existing crafters are generally swamped with work. If you can make your own sub-combines, you're much more likely to get a crafter to make the finished goods. Especially if you offer them more subcomponents then are required and they can use the extras to make other items.

Much like living in a frontier town, in order to be a productive member of the community, you need to have a sideskill that you can barter for other items.

Lastly, living on Test can be a bit like living in a tourist town. When the live servers are down, we get a lot of tourist traffic, where production players who are bored, invade the newbie zones and play for a few hours. Needless to say, the locals (regular players) tend to become a bit standoffish during those times.

Labels: 2005

posted by Wuphon's at 1:06 PM (0 comments)