Gameplay Experience Feedback

[Torta]

Greetings, my beloved turtles!

It's been 3 blissful weeks since we launched our cozy little realm - and we hope you’re enjoying the rush and stress free gameplay!

However, we would like to talk to our playerbase and ask for your feedback on the current situation. We haven’t received any complaints, but the numbers speak for themselves:

Almost 8000 characters have been created, yet fewer than 500 have reached level 20.

We must ask — have we made things too slow?

During our advertising campaign we recorded 300,000 players interested in Vanilla, yet many players stopped playing within an hour, and several people have mentioned that the low rates and lack of cross-faction interaction as the reason for not wanting to play.

Although our goal here isn’t about having the greatest population, these numbers are indicative of a potential long term problem. Those who have stuck with us since the beginning; we won’t take any action if you don’t want us to.

However we must decide what to do next — what would you suggest as a possible solution?

Once we’ve settled on a solution, we’ll consider emailing those who stopped playing within a short timeframe and see if they’ll give us another chance.

After some internal discussion, here are some of the ideas we’d like to present:

• Normalized XP rates, for example, slightly increased rates for quest and/or kill XP

• Increased honor gain / reduced decay.

• Keep things the same as they are now!

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter, so please let us know as soon as possible!

[Gachiguru]

Normal XP rates with normal everything else. Make this the go-to PvE server.

[Maerchen]

Let us log back in please

[Feramos]

Grats on 3 weeks.
I'd suggest normalizing the xp rates in some way. This server has been presented to us with the idea of giving us a good questing experiencing, so we can get to know the story of every zone, without having the problem of outleveling it.
The bad point about this is, that for example, I played alliance. I have never had such a horrible questing experience between 30-45. The quests are too scarce, it's mostly orange quests left for me, and there's a lack of players in my level range.
I can see the appeal to some enjoying the lower rates.. No, I actually can't.
At this rate, leveling is just a pain after 40. I'd really love to see some upped xp rates.
Having quests that tell you to kill like 40 mobs (Rigger Cove in Tanaris) do not feel rewarding in the slightest. I killed 40 mobs and I got like 4-6% grind xp from that.
And if 30-45 is awful, I don't want to imagine 55-60.
'Tis my feedback.

[Pigglebee]

Well, the low numbers are explainable... RP is a niche market in the pserver community
PvE seems to be somewhat less popular
0.5 rate where most pservers have increased rates also serves a niche market.

And Northdale just opened up & potential Classic release dates basically got announced/leaked... All in all, not the best environment to open a niche server for a niche market with punishing xp rates ;-)

If you want more people, the solution isn't to dabble around with tweaks and just set xp rate back to 1 and advertize a lot on the various forums about how cool and vanilla we are.

My 2p.

[Hundread]

I'm honestly taking it slow, since I'm burning myself out doing factory work and anything else that might pop up. I don't mind the rates.

This additional challenge should stay as a warning to force people to group together, quest together, do professions together, probably even trade and auction.

You should check activity rates on those characters as well. Fair few might have came, tried and left what you are offering.

[Pocsfasz]

I like it how it is currently. The lower XP rate is somewhat the key factor what drew me in. I leveled in places where I have never had to before, which was a very unique experience. But I can see the point of other people, maybe the XP rates could be set to regular (or have an option for it) as soon as you reach lvl 30 or lvl 35

[Gerrard]

Greetings, dear developers.
Very glad to see that you want to improve the server. First of all, I would like to draw attention to a large number of bugs, ranging from ordinary mobs to tasks. It would not be bad for you to raise the level of experience gained for assignments in two. Increased the percentage of objects dropout for completing tasks and equipment items. It is a great desire that you communicate with the players more often, pay attention to their requests both in the game chat and on the forum. And most importantly, make a good advertisement for your server, otherwise everything will be empty without players.
Thanks for attention.

[Sinrek]

I like the pace. Perfect to me. Although I'd suggest to make an option in shell shop for those who want normal XP rates, since they are all so rushing to the end. Let'em buy it.

[Holykill]

Leveling is painfully slow. After level 30 it's difficult to find a group for dungeons or elite quests, so besides the slow rates, dungeon and group quests are also left undone. Same about PvP - couldn't find a single WSG after 10-19 bracket. I'd prefer 1-2x of normal experience so that we can get to 60 sooner, have active battlegrounds and go through end-game content.

It would also be nice to have a faction-shared world chat, mailbox and AH. In world chat we would at least be able to encourage others to join battlegrounds.

[Josefina]

My initial feedback is that I've really enjoyed playing all the zones. I've cleared the starting area in Dun Morogh and Elwyn Forest, then the secondary questing areas there and in Teldrassil. I'm nearly done with Thelsamaar, Westfall and Darkshore, and about to go through Wetlands, Redridge and Ashenvale. I'm currently level 21, so I generally outlevel most quests and can complete them with virtually no problem. So, in that regard I think that everything is going great with the original intent. It's been really cool to do quests I never even knew existed even though I began playing in 2005. However, if this becomes more problematic later on, maybe we can adjust the rates up for later on in leveling? IE, after 40 it goes to .75 or something? Not even sure if that's possible.

Second, I've never been on a server with a more overwhelmingly kind population. I've happily abandoned my pre-raid BiS rouge on Elysium for this community. I think that the rates strongly discourage griefers, louts, jerks, and hateful people, and I wouldn't want the server to suddenly be populated with the usual riff raff that get drawn to private servers. Again, maybe having the lowered rates for the first 30-40 levels would be a strong enough deterrent without impacting the ability of good players to join the community. Or maybe quests give 1.5 exp after 30, etc, so that leveling speed increases, but the focus still remains on questing our way through the game.

Maybe another solution is to increase rates in dungeons to encourage grouping for these as a way to level differently. Not crazy, just maybe make those XP rates normal and add XP to BGs to give people multiple ways to level.

Bottom line, this server lends itself to casual play and enjoying things other than grinding out fast leveling and getting to endgame as soon as possible. I'd really be sad to see that change too drastically and open the floodgates of toxicity that might follow.

[Kohhektop]

Good day!
I would normalize the experience, it is very good to raise online, and hence the economy of the server. While I was leveling up the character from 0 to 24, I met a lot of people who didn't like the small amount of experience per kill. It's really very slow.
The idea of sending messages sounds great!
You need more good advertising!
Everything else is fine!

[Kainnee]

I think one problem is indeed the low XP rate. It's not so much a problem in the first 20 levels but in the 40s it get's tedious.
I'd suggest to give players the choice to set their rates to "blizzlike" x1. Perhaps give some special - cosmetic turtle themed - reward to people who level all the way to 60 with x0.5 turtle speed.

[Pigglebee]

Progressive rates seems like a good idea actually. 0.5 up to lvl 25, 0.75 up to lvl 40 and then 1.
And extra xp for quests so you're inclined to do them.

The RP in front of the server type already acts as a community filter so I do not think the wrong crowd will be attracted suddenly.

[Sgtrussian]

While leveling both Alliance and Horde, I kept running into the same issue; That being, the fact that there was just never enough players to assist with a difficult quest. Which, I always solved with grinding the living Hell out of the current zone to level-up and gain a new spell to help me along the way. Unfortunately, with the low experience gain I could never make it to the necessary point of progression.

Though this might only be an issue for me, I think raising the experience count to higher, 'classic', or normal rate could be very beneficial for everyone involved. That's just me putting the two cents in. Everything else? Fantastic, rarely have I run into any bugs or game issues otherwise. Aside from the experience gain and player count on either faction did I ever find an issue.

You've really outdone yourselves, fellas.

[Talespinner]

Alright, I'll try to make this concise: The experience is excruciatingly painful right now as the highest level Alliance.

On day 1 I tried to roleplay with somebody before leaving Teldrassil: they stared at me for awhile and then walked away (might have been some issue with low levels being muted in chat channels). I then went to Loch Modan and waited for a dwarf with an MRP flag to hop in to town. I waited for a couple hours, and nobody came. Disheartened, I logged off early.

After that I decided to focus on PvE and catch up with the higher levels to help them do dungeons and such. It was a pretty fun time doing all the dungeons available.

But after these 3 weeks a lot of the community I'd played with has quit outright: only 1 person I did dungeons with at level 20 is continuing to play at level 40. I was forced to skip Razorfen Downs, Uldaman, and Zul'Farrak as there was simply not enough players to even attempt them. A good chunk of group quests either had to be done solo, with one other person, or abandoned entirely.

The only times I've done Battlegrounds are Day 1, and one day around level 30. I've queued every single day to no avail.

Much of these high-level players quit either because of server drama, or the looming threat of grinding out a whole level entirely to mobs. There was a sizable amount of players ahead of me at one point, but they've all quit.

Right now I've been grinding out mostly orange quests and accepting quests as soon as I reach the minimum level requirement. There's simply nothing else I can do besides do difficult quests or resign myself to the mob grind which nobody could find fun for more than an hour.

My professions are Tailoring and Enchanting, and consequently I've been hovering around the 10 gold mark ever since I hit level 40. I have not purchased a mount, nor will I be close until level 60. This wouldn't be so bad if the server had any form of economy and I could actually sell things on the AH, or got an Uldaman group so I wouldn't have to wait 10 levels to be able to get to the Enchanting trainer by myself.

And please, don't tell me I've been rushing. I've been clearing out caves and other points of interest in search of treasure, when there's no quests associated with them. I've been levelling as a Moonkin, which is far more expensive and incredibly slow. If I have to mob grind as a Moonkin, I'll likely be forced to have to sit and wait for spirit regen when I run oom: I won't make enough money to afford vendor water, and I've already sold my feral offset to make a little bit more money. I've done every dungeon I could before the alliance's high-end population tanked. I skipped low-level gray quests either to reserve them for doing them in a RP setting or because they'd be too faceroll. I can name 10 things I could have done to be far, far more efficient and faster, but I opted out of being efficient because I just want to have fun playing the game. I'm not rushing at all, I'm just playing the game.

Even if I get to be the server first Alliance character, I still won't get to do anything. The entire rest of the content is locked behind dungeons, I don't have gathering professions to abuse 0 competition for nodes, I'll be the only Alliance queueing for BGs, we won't have enough population to do AV ever, and it'll take about a month to get 5 people to do dungeons at max level. I was having fun in the first week of the server, but now that nearly everyone I'd added to friends has quit I'm practically playing this game entirely alone: the antithesis of Vanilla. Sure I can talk to people in World and stuff, but they're essentially not playing the same game as I am. I also detest carry runs, as they remove the problem-solving elements from the game and don't teach you anything (Yes, I would rather attempt to 4 man Deadmines than do it with a 60. The only case I'd take a carry run is I'm literally the only person on the server who needs Deadmines). So besides the 1 or 2 other people my level range, I'm playing this game almost entirely alone. The world is empty and dead.

Even if I get to 60, the only content available to me will be a select assortment of quests for money, and farming Rares in the open world day after day. It's essentially BFA world quests at that point.

While I was looking forward to trying to progress ZG and MC with only 20 people, I'm not enthused about it if it's going to take months before we can muster up even 10 people.

I tried to do roleplaying, and was setting up a story with Oakley before he quit the server too. I don't want to reroll Horde as I'll have to rewrite my entire character before I even took the first step with her. Right now, RP is the only thing that's going to keep me tied to the server for the foreseeable future. Once the Classic Demo period is over, I'll measure up the prospects and decide if I'm going to spearhead the RP movement on Alliance. But if I see that the roleplaying scene is dead or Classic's on the horizon, there is nothing left for me on this server besides a mind-numbing grind.

In order to address these issues, I would advise the administration to address the server drama in a formal manner that can lay skepticism to rest, or to have some feature that other players can get excited about. When I usually play there is less than 30 people online on Alliance, and it's simply impossible to properly play Vanilla in this atmosphere without a bigger playerbase.

[Xe]

Couldn't have said it any better than Tailspinner. Seems like once you get past 20ish, the population drops and there's no real chance of doing any group content, which is the heart and soul of WoW. I've been continuing to try to level my mage (Flips, level 30), but the number of players online has dropped substantially and just soloing everything isn't too much fun. Normalizing the leveling rate goes against what the server was presented as, but I think it's the right way to go.

[Obscurus]

Too early for feedback.
Some doesn't like the 0.5 taste, some love it, some just acquiring it. It's novel. Give time to the population to adjust itself.

[Maerchen]

Normalized XP rates, for example, slightly increased rates for quest and/or kill XP

Maybe make it so gray mobs also give 0,5 instead of 0 xp? Should help with leveling and add incentive to do gray quests.

Increased honor gain / reduced decay.

You could lure in people by promoting the 1-9 PvP bracket some more. It's something other servers don't have. Add some low level turtle related rewards that help with early leveling. Wands, Weapons, maybe even a combat turtle pet trinket.

Keep things the same as they are now!

Wouldn't mind personally

[Maerchen]

I can't seem to edit/delete my post, so I'll have to post another one.

@Tailspinner: You crazy Moonkin

Right now I've been grinding out mostly orange quests and accepting quests as soon as I reach the minimum level requirement. There's simply nothing else I can do besides do difficult quests or resign myself to the mob grind which nobody could find fun for more than an hour.

I've also been grasping for new Quests as soon as they become available. From the 60 in my guild (hi Tav!) I heard that he got pretty close to cap like level 57~early 58 doing only solo content quests. After that it was a grindfest. If you factor in Groupcontent you should be able to hit cap without much of a grind.
Yes you'll have to wait a few weeks for people to catch up, but you could also level an alt while you are waiting. Surely you could come up with an interesting new character if you tried.

My professions are Tailoring and Enchanting, and consequently I've been hovering around the 10 gold mark ever since I hit level 40. I have not purchased a mount, nor will I be close until level 60. This wouldn't be so bad if the server had any form of economy and I could actually sell things on the AH, or got an Uldaman group so I wouldn't have to wait 10 levels to be able to get to the Enchanting trainer by myself.

Also Tailoring / Enchanting and while my Tailoring is fairly up to date (mainly due to gear and 250+ Quests I want to do) my Enchanting hasn't progressed since day one when I rushed for Greater Magic Wand. You will have more than enough time to level it at 60 so there is really no rush. Kinda regretting not dropping it for a gathering profession for all those uncontested nodes but what can you do. Mining/picking Flowers doesn't fit my character anyway.
Being a Warlock and not having to worry about a mount I sit on many hundreds of gold since the mid forties. I don't expect to be able to complete my epic mount quest but we'll see.

Even if I get to 60, the only content available to me will be a select assortment of quests for money, and farming Rares in the open world day after day. It's essentially BFA world quests at that point.

While I was looking forward to trying to progress ZG and MC with only 20 people, I'm not enthused about it if it's going to take months before we can muster up even 10 people.

I'll be bringing epic Raid content in the form of rampant Infernals to a town near you soon. Stay tuned and ready your forces.

[Wyke]

I am enjoying the lowered exp rates, and am slowly approaching 40 with no real issues. Have enjoyed being forced to travel and find obscure quests and levelling professions as I go.

My suggestion would be to revert kill exp to 0.8 xp. This will make the pain slightly easier on newer players but not take anything away from the existing players that have dont it the long way. Maybe offer a 2x exp potion in the shop that allows players to PURCHASE 1.6x exp if they wish make this work like a flask so lasts 2hrs and lasts through death, this way people can buy the exp in short boosts but not as a permanent 1-60 thing unless they are prepared to pay a large ammounty, but if so please make it so that its pretty prohibitive. I dont like shops, I dont like people paying to win and I dont like exp boosts, but that is my opinion on what will potentially help recruitment and retention even if I personally dont really approve.

[Talespinner]

One idea I've come up with for the leveling grind is to make repeatable quests give EXP. As many of these come into play around the levels where it starts to get grindy (Hippogryph Eggs, Blasted Lands quests, Zapper Fuel, Wastewander Pouches, Argent Dawn Scourgestones, Timbermaw, Salve via Hunting, etc.). You'd have to use some discretion to make sure people couldn't abuse the system by essentially turning gold into unending EXP (perhaps make quests that have tradeable items as the objective give EXP up to say 15 turn-ins, and 25 for Soulbound items that you only need to gather in the open world without fighting anything). It's not much more different than powering through mobs, but it helps to ease the grind and gives you a bit of help in the endgame by starting on your reputations.

[Rurarus]

Greetings,
I play Warlock on horde site, and my name is Morty. I'm the GM of the Russian Guild "Partisans". My people play together with me more than a year together, there was drama and other stuff, but we are sill together, we played on different servers, now we play here. How long it will be, i don't know. Well, but let's talk about the threat here.
There are few thinks I think people need to know about private servers, especially Vanilla servers.
Ok First of all. The only think about the server staff needs to care is only to fix bugs and making the server playable.
That's all, xp-rates are not the main issue. If I play here 1 month or 3 months to reach the max lvl, doesn't matter, only what matters so it is to have fun, because it's a game.

OK, other aspects what is important, then it's the kind of the server, this is a multinational server, so people play here from all around the world, and now the think is, everyone has a different language, timezone and culture. So it means, in order to play here, there need to be more people available at all. Because people are different, and have other views what is fun or what isn't. Also, people want to play with the people they like to play with, its normal and also right, Russians want to play with other Russians, Spanish with other Spanish, French want to play with French, and so on. Because culture binds people together, it's also a social game, to achieve something u need to be social.
So, second also very important think is, people will leave the server if they can't find a group to quest, or to go dungeons with, it's normal. So in order to find a group with other people, you need to be in a guild the people in there want to help you. Most International big guilds don't have this kind of community, because they are not for lvling, they are actually for raiding there. And don't tel me that tale of "lvling guilds" and "social guilds", in all multinational guilds, most of the relationships between the people there are formal, so it means, people don't gonna help you with your quest, because it's not in their interest right now, also the same think is with dungeons, and imagine you play a holy priest here or a warrior tank, its even hard to kill a non elite mob solo, so yes, who wants to play this way, OK, maybe you're a hunter who can solo it, but guess what, there is not a single raid with only hunters in it.
People will stay on server, if they will be "bound" to other people by informal relationships, so communication between peoples in the same guild is important. It makes actually fun. Also, the more different guilds are around, there more different people will likely stay here, because there will be more choice for people.

So in my eyes, this server will die. Sadly but true, people will leave, because no people are around. And the problem is, no one will help you either, (yes, maybe there are a few individuals who gonna help you, but this is a minority of the server population). New people will always show up, they gonna level to 10 or 15, and then, finish the game, because no other people are around, no guilds where you can ask for help. This is very depressing. No one wants to play like this.

Well, what maybe could help, is making a default guild. Everyone will be in there from lvl 1. Also, the people in there need to help other people with some elite quest, and getting parties together for dungeons. Maybe this gonna help. But it's just my opinion.

Sorry for bad English.

[Maerchen]

Hi Morty

people want to play with the people they like to play with, its normal and also right, Russians want to play with other Russians, Spanish with other Spanish, French want to play with French, and so on. Because culture binds people together, it's also a social game, to achieve something u need to be social.

I always wondered why there is a russian guild on every private server. I never understood that. Is English not liked/taught in school there? Your English is good so I don't think that's the reason. Why do you feel the need to split this small community even more by running a russian guild?

Not trying to be hostile, only curious.

[Rurarus]

Why do you feel the need to split this small community even more by running a russian guild?

Not trying to be hostile, only curious.

Which community, do you have a leader, do you have an agenda, do you have a culture?

[Glowek]

Normal rates is the right way to do. No game without players. Give existing players a compensation for their painful efforts. I loved the concept of the server but and don't want it die so quickly!

Rp/PvE is already a niche, don't make it even more strict...

[Josefina]

If possible, I am really in favor of progressive XP rates and increased XP for dungeons (ie, normal rates from the beginning). I think that will draw an additional player base without diluting it. Or have quests give full XP when grouped to encourage questing together, since there is already a leech to XP when grouped. Obviously this might lead to people trying to multibox, but with vigilance on the part of all players this could be avoided.

[Promethorn]

I've been playing a little bit each day after work so I haven't really gotten far, but from what I've experienced I'd say increasing the kill xp from .5x to .75x or even 1x would be fine. As others have said maybe have that be a toggle that people can set. Maybe give quests and dungeons an xp boost to still encourage that over grinding.

I don't think we need to try and attract a bunch of new players, but keep current players from getting frustrated and leaving. The niche style of this server is going to draw a certain kind of player and I think that's fine, we just don't want the small details to drive them off.

[Wyke]

Here is an out of the box suggestion, make exp rates 1x rates from now, as there is a 60 already, and then grant every character that levels at that rate the higher rank of riding skill as compensation. Huge saving in terms of gold and more than enough compensation for those that level at 0.5x rates.

[Zulfurax]

So far ive only played a hunter to lvl 10, the leveling is just as you advertised, slow and relaxing, in a month or two enough people will be high level. My guildmates are having fun leveling slowly and growing together, maybe doing some dungeons together or some elite quests, and they are all around lvl 40, the content is there, you just need to have the patience to experience it, we even have new pleople in the mid 20s lvl range. They are having a blast and they know it takes time, it is a mistake to take Tavernia as an example of the leveling process.

A good thing would be to have some quests that encourage changing zones to lvl, this would give some more guidance as to where to go next to find quests that you can do and maybe make dungeons give some more XP as an alternative to mob grinding?

Thanks to all the Turtle WoW Staff this server is amazing and I hope you keep up communicating with us.

[Basileonardo]

I'm happy with the server as for the xp, I'm lvl 35 and I'm having fun, each level is an achievement, however I would like more people to play and it would be nice to take some action. A little more exp? well maybe, just a little, to me in particular I would like to have more interaction with the opposite faction.
I think you guys do a really good job: D I love the turtle theme and low stuff, keep it up

[Minigig]

I been playing since 2004 and private since 2009. My wife and I, plus my 4 children are here because of the advertised rates. I been highly enjoying this server and been having as much fun as I was in 2004.

with 1x rates this is just another server with no pop. I am not sure if we would stay for another 1x server.

I like some of the ideas above. Maybe a bit more quest xp and if you could get xp from professions and pvp that be nice to see. I also like the idea of the > 1 exp rate potion. Maybe have it in the store and maybe have it be a drop from quests in the level ranges were it would help the most. Even have it be a craftable thing that a 50+ char could make with enough mats.

I am open to tweaks to the this idea of a slow server. I am open to help in testing and bug reports and this journey to find a server that we all can enjoy.

[Dodge]

As the population goes down, maybe we should consider introducing some crossfaction interactions? I do not want make everything common, but on the other hand, some crossfaction things can be even explained in-game, for example: If neither side (ally/horde) is not strong enough alone to defeat a global threat like a raid boss, maybe allow them for that ocassion to work cooperate?

Regarding experience rates: 0.5 xp rate is what makes this server special, abandoning this low-rate idea would make our Turtle just another vanilla server - which in case upcoming Classic retail would be even worse for our population (probablty all regular vanilla servers will lose a lot ppl then). Thus I'm against increasing mob xp rates to 1.0 original rate, but...

Instead, I would suggest to add more, alternative ways to gain experience, other than killing mobs, such as:

- give XP for exploring areas - I've noticed there's in xp for this (is this a bug, or was it missing on vanilla?), instead, player could be rewarded a high amount of experience for exploring areas, to encourage traveling and exploration, let's say: total xp from all sub-areas of a zone should reward xp = 1 average level-up for this zone's level range - example: zone X is for lvl 20-30 and has 10 sub-zones -> each explored sub-zone should reward xp = 10% of 25 lvl-up range.

- give XP for professions - for example for each gather (like it works on newer expansions) but also for crafting (for example a small amount of exp for each skill up or for each item made), could also be applied to secondary skills like cooking

- give SMALL amount of XP for grey mobs - this should be a really low amount, but making it non-zero value could encourage ppl to do more low lvl quests

- give some more XP for certain quests, for a period of time - this could be related to some in-game RP events or something, like: "1.5 xp from all quests for Darnassus faction"

- make some quests repetable or reset them after some time - I'm not sure how this would work but maybe there's a potential here

[Aldrie]

The leveling is not that hard, i'm level 28 and had some problems because i can't find people to do quests but just a few of them, and the same for dungeons. I agree with some people who asks for crossfaction interaction, coz the server still have low players and that could help grouping all the comunnity, and yes, that's not blizzlike but it don't annoys me.
The exp rates are good in my opinion, but maybe increase a little the exp given by quests.

[Zodiacarg]

Normalized XP rates, for example, slightly increased rates for quest and/or kill XP<<< this