A New Project

[Jamm1n]

Yo Danny, sadly the truth lies around what razor said. If this is a project you are working on your free time, id say knock yourself out with it. But I honestly think that you will be unsatisfied with the outcome. People will be hyped if you do this right, they will play for sure. Regardless, the reason why so many privates fail are two:

1) Too many options for people to choose from. You fell behind on server "koiscool" ? No problem, server "bestpvpko" is coming in a week!

2) People who play this game are mostly, for a lack of a better word, immature. Even if everything is working, they will find a reason to complain, and eventually, even though you started this with the best intentions, you will be considered greedy and a fraud.

In my opinion, there are better things to invest your time in.

[MrRapist]

In my opinion, there are better things to invest your time in.

Everything that needs to be said has just been said.

[Kallop]

Well.. When games launch, they feel great. Lot's of new stuff to explore, many new things to do. Especially games that are unique in a way that no other game has been are popular like this in the beginning. After a while, the game becomes more and more familiar, which might feel very nice after a lot of learning. But after you've played the game a while without learning anything new, you'll realize that the game needs new content and updates. These updates can't change the game too much because then it would ruin things for players, but they have to bring something new into the game. Okay, KO had many updates to keep players interested and I don't think they started losing players until after 'Moradon: The Resurrection' expansion. Obviously KO's best feature has been the PvP. PK has always been much fun in KO, especially when it didn't require that much skill to do and losing nps or losing a fight didn't feel like the end of the world. Those players who played through KE, ROFD and all the way to Chaos expansion, know the game pretty well by now. EXP is always the same crap and the events are decent I guess, but the reason ppl play the game is PK. Once PK started getting more and more predictable and easy, people started to get bored of the game simply because PK wasn't giving you the fun and satisfaction anymore.

This being said, there's nothing that can make KO a popular game anymore. It is simply too old and there's way too little other things to do besides PK. Many players always come back for the PK but they mainly play for a month or two and quit once again. Of course this ardream server could be fun for a while, but in the long run people will quit once they reach a certain point. If you manage to make a server with many side activities and the perfect rates for everything, maybe then you'll be able to build a long-lasting server. Sadly I have no idea what the perfect rates would be.

[Danny]

Good morning everyone,

I expected to hear a lot of pessimism about it, and of course, about my extensive writing, again I apologize for it, but I didn't plan on my writing, I just spilled my thoughts instead of compacting them... Anyway, I agree with pretty much every one of you.

-Jammin, I am doing this on my free time, it isn't "costing" me anything. It's not a sad thing to try and fail, I really have good intentions for everyone and if they want to spit on it, it's not my loss because I'm not spending money or valuable time.

-Aresian, I have no interest in "being rich off of KO", let's just say my life has drastically changed and I'm not 17.. Even if people were to infest the server and cause us to pay for larger hosting, we will make it so that all the PUS money earned goes straight to fund the game for all of you guys. I hardly will be playing.

-Lavie, thank you for your optimism, it was comforting to have an old friend feel interested in doing the same things as you. Even if we don't succeed in blocking away KOXP'ers, we will have active GM's who will be dedicated to helping whoever is in need & jailing/banning any cheaters killing you in PK or stealing your farming bosses.

-Razor, your opinion is really appreciated and we can all agree that it's almost impossible to have a server last as long as everyone wants it too, but the single most important aspect of any servers' lifetime, is not even 20% about how the server is designed, it's about how many people want to be involved in one place as opposed to the common dividing distribution that gradually murders a server. Look at USKO, is that shit considered "fun"? Everyone on +10's? Might as well play SexyKO for free rather than spending money to get pissed and sell out.

We are trying our best to build it in a way where EXP will be easy yet fun and PK based (so you can get in the game quicker), PK will be the good old days without crazy people with crazy items on average to low rates and farming will be a huge part in order to dominate, therefore making you have a larger clan. We also want to give different rewards for completing events. I would love to give more details, seriously, but I just need some more time to hear from my developer on whether we are ready for beta or not. The only thing I haven't established yet (due to not seeing the outcome of the first server), is we don't know if we should keep the server strictly on 59 basis and open new servers every half a year or so, or expand into a 70 server and keep one active server. That will all depend on the community.

-Kallop, you sound like me in my head and then my mouth tries to show the greener side of what my head instructs, and like Razor, you're absolutely right! I wouldn't spend my free time in a server I think isn't perfect. It's a part of my personality to be a perfectionist, especially if I'm designing something that I know people will appreciate being doing right if they will spend their time there with their friends, looking for some memorable fun. I'm sure some people remember back before Ionia was released and I made a post to recruit Ardreamers in a clan named SuperHeroes, it was an amazing success -- we had 72 people, a full 2 clans, everybody had a blast, EVEN THO it only lasted one month. We didn't quit after one month because of us, we quit because cheating clans were making the server a pointless place for us to bust our asses just to be considered powerful enough to PK. +8's in the first week and +9's in the second week, meanwhile, all of us are rocking MD's+7. It's supposed to be the other way around! Us killing the chickens, lol. We all did an amazing job at farming and upgrading too, but you just can't compete legit vs cheats.

Listen, if the server is a flop, then there's nothing anyone can do about it and I'm not going to go crazy and spend money to advertise the shit out of it to try and revive it. It's just a project and I know people will play it, if you want to try it, you will have fun, I don't care if you play for a day, 3 months or a year, I know it will be fun and you don't have to make it your primary played account, that's the intention. After all, this is a forum rooted on this game and USKO isn't looking like it's helping this forum stay alive and these abundant Turkish private servers aren't really contributing to that either.

-bigdudle or anyone else making another private server, please don't let anyone stop you, I'm not and never will be looking to compete with any of you; I've said it a couple times and I'll say it a million more, this server will be designed for players to enjoy playing "on the side". If it doesn't cost us anything to host it, there will be no PUS, but if it does, there will be, it's as simple as you guys paying x amount divided by the players, in order to enjoy a nice and tight community.

-MyDestiny, I do need someone who can help us out perfecting everything, but the only reason why is because my developer and I are occasionally working on this, we can get it done on our own, it'll just take an extra month or so longer. No rush for us to get this going, it's not an investment.

[twostars]

The notion's great and all, but have you taken the incessant flooding (that's basically second nature to PSKO servers now) into consideration? I didn't really see any sort of acknowledgement of that in your posts, so I wasn't sure if you were aware of the current state of PSKO.
It can be quite expensive to deal with. ;_;

Edit:
Also, in regards to the OP (which I just re-read fully, as I may have skimmed after a couple of paragraphs the first time around), while I can't help you out in any sort of permanent arrangement (kind of busy with my own projects), do feel free to hit me up if you/your developer needs anything.

[Danny]

I'm not involved in the necessary pricing of what a server needs to upkeep stability, yet. If you have a ballpark understanding of what it costs averagely, I'd appreciate it via PM please. It will help with how to divide costs of items in PUS to see how cheap we can possibly make them.

[thom]

Good luck, you'll need it

everybody wants 70 cap servers it seems, not 59.

gogo osko, best farm server with yourko i guess.

[Danny]

Not going to argue with you thom, you're right, everyone wants a long term home when it comes to EXP and what not, but that requires a lot more "fully dedicated" players, in the 59 world however, everyone can just log in and play, therefore, I'm not competing with "OSKO" or "YourKO" whatsoever, it's a whole other league and I intend to keep it that way. The difference between them and this, is they have you glued to them for your money, I'll have you glued to this for your hours of boredom and for free. You won't "have to pay to play", it's only if you'd like to pay for scrolls with your wallet or with your time to buy them off of merchants via coin. So in that case, no, I don't need luck, but thank you anyway...

[FuriousKo]

some turkish servers will ddos any server over 100 people regardless to take down competition and to make their server look more stable. you will need at least 20gb ddos protection dedi you will probably want to test the dedi also to see if it is as strong as it really says it is cause some of them like to lie.

[razor]

I may have skimmed after a couple of paragraphs the first time around

Didn't we all?

I'll admit it lol

[thom]

I dont believe you wanna make a server and make 0 profit out of it, that doesnt make sense at all. You could care less about this already dead community and let life go on.

But yet you dont, you decide to make a server, that you ''barely'' will be playing, question : Why? for the community u say? the English community is dead. Turkish community is not. Spanish im not sure about.

Also you dont have to donate in osko or yourko to be above average, because its a fresh start for everybody, ofcourse if you got a grand to pay u will get the first shard+8... But its not required and definetly not needed at all in a farm server.

also fyi sexyko now have ~ 30 - 50 users btw. it died out.

also, no developer will do all this shit for free, thats for sure. so you will have to pay atleast him to do it, and for him to stay and monitor the server since u say no have no clue how to do it urself.

also it cost alot of money for good security i think.

still i wish it will work out, would be nice

[Danny]

I'm speaking with my dev at the moment and we're trying to sum up a feasible conclusion that will make everyone and their pockets happy, so far all I know is beta can be ready by tomorrow if we have someone to do tedious customizing quest work, which I already have laid out, just need it to be coded for my dev. As far as the under 100 bot-net risk, we are thinking of allowing limited stock of accounts who are dedicated to being the first players of the server, who are willing to pay for an extremely cheap premium and retardedly cheap scrolls, this way, we can upgrade to a higher security WITH those first payments and then move on up from there with a higher player base. If people weren't so roughnecked about making "their own server" and just trying to make it a money whore factor, then not only do we have a lower chance to exist long term, but so do they. Why don't we have 2-3 developers team up for one project that we can work on together? I already have most of it taken care of, but if we were 3-4 partners, dividing the bills after whatever is left from what people haven't paid via PUS, can be much cheaper than having to depend on 1 guy with little or no PUS. I know Sephiroth and twostars are already willing to assist, what about bigdudle or anyone else? Wanna merge? Just an idea... Seriously, I don't care whatsoever about making even a dime off of this, I just want a server I know everyone can enjoy casually and/or occasionally. If we grow and there is a high demand, we can raise level cap in the future, but our setup for this 59 world is really awesome the way it is, we won't need to raise for a really long ass time, if all goes as planned.

thom, the English community is not dead, trust me man. They are just extremely divided. There are still clans on Human & Orc side in various servers like Ares, Xig, Oly, Logos, Anatolia and then of course all the shitload of different private servers that those people are hopping every week to 2 months to get NP ranking and leave. I played OSKO, it was "too much" of the original KE build, requiring you to play a lot more than the average private server. I don't know about YourKO but SexyKO lasted for many years, even if it died out 2-3 years ago, they deserve applause.

I wish it will work out too, but even if it doesn't, I'll be happy we tried. Some optimism more often would be appreciated guys. Sorry again for writing with so much elucidation for you guys to handle. I was the first mod on ko4life to back up trustworthy people, it required me to write full explanations..

[MtnDew]

Danny, I agree with you. A level 59 cap server would be nice, but there's just to many private servers coming out and not enough population on this forum for the English server you want. People do lose dedication and stop playing. Your server at launch would have what 100 players max? Is it really worth all your time to put a server out there that will just be shut down in a few months, maybe a few weeks... -_-

[Danny]

As far as the English community being dead goes, I just mentioned above this post that people are just so divided and you can't blame them. Clans make their own forums nice and fancy, that they don't need the pessimistic immaturity found commonly around here. If you guys saw ko4life around 2007/8/9, you'd have to be totally ignorant to not be on these forums. People quit, people got too into babashopping and being the best and obtaining sharers, absolutely everything changed for the worst. We can't reverse the life of this forum much, but we can make whats left of us to have a place where we can all call a "2nd home". You can't know the results of your interests until you've tried, so yes, unfortunately, if it fails, so what, we lost a couple dollars, but if we succeeded, I helped the community obtain something it wanted since 2008'ish and I'd be really happy to know that there is a stable place for everyone including myself to play on our free time.

[mortal]

The english community is just dying, because of people having this negative attitude and not willing to try anything new. I think this could be a huge succes if people would give it a shot and developers wouldn't focus on making own servers. Of course there is always a risk that this will die very fast, but heck... atleast give it a go!