Think back to the beggining of this year, when we were growing and the expectation of death was at every corner. In the month of January I was seeing basically a new player everyday, this was until a merchant I killed in Brimstone complained of a legit death when he was macroing and mining.

In short,  Chris was online and this merchant told him how he was going to quit if he continued to be "power abused" this lead to a series of events where other new players supported him in order to have a safe path to higher levels in this enviroment.

And thus, Level Range PvP was implemented and since then the community growth has halted, now I can only wonder can this be a direct effect of that decision?

Not really, its just that January is when the gates kind of re-opened and it was advertised in some places, eventually the link/name gets burried and traffic slows. I still see new people its just that so few people STAY. I saw a guy log in yesterday and type /who and then signed off, assuming the game was empty probably.

 

Without the PvP range i'd of murdered just...everyone. I think one guy quit because i pked him for being stupid, he thought it was a 'bug' though.

Not enough players to support open pvp yet. Need updates then more advertising. Why did YOU leave? Thought you made a ranger

 

Long time, no see Khor.  My first time checking back with the FRO forums in a while, and I got to say I'm a little saddened.  As much as I had hoped the population would grow a bit, I can't say I'm all that surprised it hasn't after seeing comments like seph's above.

I remember what convinced me to leave (in no uncertain terms) was getting killed in town on my merchant.  I assume seph is talking about some other merchant he "legitly" killed in town because when he attacked me I was neither macroing nor mining.  I'm amazed that the good/neutral/evil faction still allows neutral players to be attacked in town.  Really amazed.  

I understand FRO is aiming for the "feel" and danger that was old school UO, but please don't kid yourself in regards to why players left UO.  It wasn't the advent of Trammel.  Players were simply tired of getting Pk'd when they had no desire to PVP.  They *tolerated* it up to that point because they had no other choice.  When Felucca came out and they had the ability to not be sheep fodder for the pvp wolves, they took it.  When EQ came out and they had the option not to focus on pvp, they took it!  It wasn't Trammel that made players leave, it was the lack of choice that kept them there in the first place.

So when I reminisce about the couple weeks I played my miner in FRO and read about others playing theirs, it does suck to hear that they are still unwilling sheep, even in town.  And when you see the players always leaving, maybe dig a little deeper and ask yourself, "why?".  FRO is great and provides tons of nostalgia factor, and I can even live with open world PVP.  But if a player literally is not even safe in town (yes, even while neutral faction), then I'm going to conservatively guess you're losing out on at least 3 out of 4 players that give FRO a try.

All the same, I hope the rules (whatever they may be or will become) get sorted out and FRO grows further.  I enjoyed my time messing with crafting and exploring what few areas I did, and I wish the game all the best.

First off, Sepharoth I am still online I have not dissapeared. I just have had less time to spend online with players than I did in the winter.

Secondly, PvP is a no-win situation except for perhaps one solution from my point of view. Once you introduce basic controls such as a level spread or any other kind of limiting mechanism, except maybe towns, someone will be unhappy. Because there is a set of people that want completely open pvp, a set that doesnt want pvp at all, and a set somewhere in the middle.

What happened to Gridley in town was a bug plain and simple. If you are in a walled city and were not-pre attacked outside of town in the last few minutes no one should be able to attack you. Town handeling of this logic still does need slightly tweaked. In fact fighting individuals that enter a walled city should probably just result in jailing the players that are fighting.

 

Aside from the bug, I plan to implement seperate servers for pvp and non-pvp players its the only way you know what you are getting yourself into ahead of time. I think this solution is the best as it produces seperate environments that cannot exist together seperately. Why havent I done it yet? well I was hoping more players would first join before I split then apart.

Not sure if i remember you Gridley, i've seen a lot of players come and go since Jaunary. Since the PvP Level limit, it has greatly dropped, i dont think any merchants have been killed in town or anywhere else. A few people who have joined have mentioned disliking the 'full loot' aspect and might not of stuck around to put that penalty into context. When people think about losing all their loot they think about OTHER mmo's and how they'd feel losing all that loot. 

 

Its still a fairly large world, you could spend all day seeking out to pk a single person and not find them. Those of us that do still play just kind of work together.