Player Wipe (PWipe)

[Hayato]

Just keep the house and perzes intact, and close off any exits from houses to the zones they're currently connected to so you don't have to remake them when you want to buy them again.  So many people only have houses nowadays because it was so easy to get tokens a while back, and owning a house doesn't have any real significance behind it anymore.

Ask yourself, do you really want to be a statistic on 4D, as one of several dozens of homeowners, or do you have what it takes to earn it back from a blank slate?

[Asmoday]

my vote regarding pwipe is NO for sure
i mean seriously , i worked my ass , havent slept in nights to get that gm and now you wanna erase it for?
we have this player issue anyway and now you wanna make all to lvl 1 , id say more will quit then imagined
at least i would for sure
and regarding clan pwipe , no again , all clans have their history , why would you do that?

[Virisin]

Either way GM is going to be removed so that's not really an arguing point. It's one of the crappiest most unbalancing and detrimental parts of our current system.

There is no proposed clan pwipe, not sure where you got that from. Clans will stay in the game, except perhaps Mordonosse if there is no active leader, and it shouldn't be hard for clans to re-enroll members.

And yeah, I agree with Hayato.

[Virisin]

Actually really surprised Britnoth voted 'yes but only if a pwipe came in after a huge change not before'. Grateful though. 

[horus]

Just to weigh on this issue as a player, and not as a decision maker, I currently have 46 remorts, have done all the major eq quests, and I think having a pwipe isnt as big a issue as you think. Once skill trees are in, the game play is so different that you wont appreciate it as much if you dont remake.

Its like joining WoW and someone gave you a spare high ranking character with uber eq and you have never played WoW before. The appreciation of WoW wont be the same unless you earned everything yourself.

And lets be totally honest with ourselves here, the game play on 4d is a huge grind. It really does not need to be stretched over 31 remorts before you reach GM - thats alot of very repetitive play. Alot of you oldbies dont realise how much of a grind it is because you went through certain periods where xp was easy to gain compared to now. And whats worse, at least my character can kill things quite quickly, I really feel for Sarias etc who cant solo Punt too easily and so has to grind at half speed.

So either way, I dont really care. I am quite neutral with this, but I think you will miss out on the appreciation of what will be implemented. And remember that sense of achievement the first time around you played 4d? You have totally lost that by now, so I dont see why you keep wanting to hang on. Seriously, thats why you have moved on elsewhere, and only come back because of the emotional/social pull of old friends and not because of the current game play.

So why not change it so that you are actually also back for the game play. I can only entertain you so much before you get sick of my rants, and so I hope the game play on 4d will entertain you during these times

[Xeriuth]

Sometimes it makes me cry thinking of giving up over 20billion gold, 11gold tokens, 71 remorts, 3 houses, lots of perzes, quite a few alts, mules, treasures galore.  But it'll be a fresh experience. And it really dosn't bother me. I can easily earn back everything I own. And in a fraction of the time I did it before. Why? Because the only advantage which I think is a huge advantage is knowing the game, knowing the world. Knowledge is power?
I think when ones says that they put a lot of time to get GM, isn't important. I mean didn't we all do that for our remorts, to a degree? I think if the change has merit and is a good change, and pwipe will set everyone on total equal footing, just do it anyways. We'll get some old players back, and the naysayers will leave. In the end we only gain from it, in that respect. And I don't have a problem with that. Especially if we start keeping all the new players that come and building a more solid player base.
I'm sure even people who would vote know would still stick around, because it'd be something new, fun, and exciting. But we shall see. This won't happen for a bit anyways, I wouldn't expect it to be anytime this year. Perhaps next

[Tocharaeh]

No, I just don't buy it. Houses (I don't even have one) have had a lot of effort put into them. More effort than questing in fact. I see no reason why people should lose their home. It certainly wouldn't unbalance a thing. I mean, what is the worst it could do...people store more junk inside? Big woop. Houses are a HUGE investment especially for those of us who are token poor and just barely managed to afford one.

No, it's just not reasonable. You're forcing everyone to start over anyhow...having a house just means that they have just than many more tokens to earn later on that can go towards perzes, and/or a brand new mount. 

just wipe the insides of the houses so that no uber/moderate gear is left over. Forcing people to lose absolutely everything is complete crap, especially for those relics out there who might try and log on only to find out their own house has been flushed down the crapper. Mott certainly wouldn't be happy. Get her a new system, she'll come back. Get her a new system, and destroy her house, you'll never see her log in.

people aren't necessarily tied to their EQ. They're tied to their homes. I say leave the homes alone.

[Xeriuth]

If only homes and clans remain in tact I have no problem, we just think it sets those of us with houses or even multiple house on equal footing with those who don't. If the populus dosn't mind that aspect I'd be ok with it, but tokens, gold etc should be x'd. To have a fresh economy.

[Xeriuth]

One problem I can forsee though, with not keeping tokens and keeping houses, one can just make sure they spend all their tokens on their house before the change over, only because they know that the tokens will be wasted otherwise... What to do about that?

[kitolani]

   As a casual player with an actual affinity for real life, I oppose the idea of having my things obliterated. My character? Sure, wipe her out. She rolled really crappy stats at creation and should have been destroyed long ago. I have no objection to having to construct a custom skill set when the new system is implemented.
My mount, house, perzes, whatever? Psh, it took me years to collect the tokens to have those made, and I haven't grown bored enough of them to just say, " Yeah, let's all be equal. Just make all my past efforts obsolete." I haven't got all the time in the world to customize my character again, nor will I spend the time that can be much better spent doing something that's actually productive. If it ushers in another golden age of gaming, then so be it. I'll take one for the team, but I will be crestfallen. I have this unsettling suspicion, however, that a pwipe isn't going to reignite people's interest or ambition toward the lost art of mudding.
I voted yes nonetheless. Who knows what the future will bring?
  
This message has been edited to sound less bitchy. You're welcome.

[Virisin]

Toch, there are multiple people out there that abused lumberjacking and have a house after doing 0 quests. That is not 'a lot of effort'. Those people have removed the awesomeness of houses these days, I don't feel special having multiple houses, everyone has one. Keeping houses WOULD unbalance things, it would start us off with a broken economy, let me explain:

Ideally, there is a maximum number of tokens in the 4d economy that depends on the playerbase. Let's say the total potential tokens one player can gain from all the quests in 4d is 10 gold tokens, and we have a playerbase of 10 people. That gives us a potential maximum amount of gold tokens of 100. If we let all the oldbies come into the the game with houses, they have literally half the amount of things to spend the tokens on, so most oldbies will have 5 gold tokens spare with nothing to use them on. This means they'd be willing to sell them for a smaller amount of cash than someone who had 0 spare tokens which ends up dropping the price of tokens all round and low-and-behold, deflated token value.

This is all despite the fact that there are already inputs into that equation from newbies who gain a couple and then end up being exploited by oldbies like Once before leaving, and that imms sometimes give out tokens. Tokens are really, really, easy to get if you can do all the quests, that's the advantage we have over people that havn't done the quests.

Add to this the problems Xeriuth outlined which happened exactly like that on the old code switch-over. Everyone pooled tokens together and bought houses to have them save over to the new code.

I understand that tokens took a long time to gather, but they're all still out there and the only reason you can't go get them again currently is because you've already done the quests. In a new system, the quests will still be there and as will the tokens. If houses are saved over, what I see happening is people like Xeriuth and Hayato and many others who currently have over 10 gold tokens lying around will end up buying people houses in return for their tokens on the new code, which ends up screwing over the economy again.

I would be completely against a pwipe without a house wipe too, I don't want to just have all my experience removed, I hate levelling and I just think it's worth it to rebalance everything and set it all right again.

[Natalya B.]

I'm totally against pwipes. For the most part, I think it's stupid. If there's any "new" players playing this game, they've worked hard to get all their stuff recently gained taken away.

And the same goes for older players. I like the fact that I can still log in and keep playing because I know I have everything I need and have done the quests a billion times over to get those things.

Why purposely take away everything everyone has gained just so you can set everyone back to square one. It's bloody unfair on those that have worked hard to get what they have, including their perzs, the investment of time, and then to lose it all. Redoing quests over and over again isn't fun. It's not a motivation to come back and play just so you can re-get everything you already had before IMMs decided to delete everything...

I hate the idea of Pwipe, and I know I wouldn't be the only one. Work on other more active changes for the mud if you're trying to improve things, but don't go taking away stuff people have spent time working for. Let sleeping dogs lie...

I don't mind wiping actual toons per say, like setting everyone back to level 1. Whatever, thats cool with me. But the quest flags, the items, the wealth, the houses, the perzs, etc etc, wiping that stuff I dont agree with (like Kitolani said).

[Asmodeus]

let me first say i haven't voted yet... i'm on the fence, and since "on the fence" or "iffy" isnt an option, i currently abstain!

Why?  for a few reasons.  First, I am not one who abused the token thing... I worked hard for my tokens (and equipment) to buy a house and perzes.  Lynx and I had to buy the house together because we didn't have enough tokens.  And just giving up that stuff for all the hard work I've put in for years is an annoying thought.

"But Asmo, you can earn all the stuff back by doing quests," doesn't really convince me either.  The point of questing (to me anyway) is to explore, find hidden things, figure out the secrets of the world I'm in, and to earn something for putting the pieces together.  Yes, you go back and do those quests again if you hit a DT or whatever, but they're NEVER as much fun the 2nd or 3rd time around, you're just going through the motions (believe me, as someone who has hit plenty of DTs and spent a lot of time going back through quests for certain things).  Now if you throw a pwipe into it, and have to go back and do them ALL again, from the short every day quests to the large week-long quests... I don't know how much of that I'd want to do again, just because its not as fun anymore.  You might not remember at first what you're doing, but it'll come back.  If all the quests were different, that would be a different story, but i'm not going to pretend for a second that that's a plausible idea.

I do like the idea of everyone restarting on a level playing field, and how it would fit in with the new system, but obviously as you can see, I'm torn.  Hence Iffy/On the fence (not depends).

Convince me, i dare you 

[Virisin]

Natalya: To begin with, there are few new players in this game and most of the new players we get leave after about level 40 anyway. That's why we're making changes really, to try and keep new players with a better system. I do understand though that there are midbies out there who will be hit hard by this. People that havn't done all the quests, and havn't quite saved up enough tokens for houses yet, havn't got GM, but have stuck around. Britnoth and Sarias come to mind as midbie players, funnily enough both of them don't actually mind a pwipe. Maybe it's because they just trust our judgement (hah), I think it's more likely they're the ones actually playing the mud currently as opposed to us recall squatting oldbies, and realize that the mud is severely unbalanced and fucked at the moment and they'd love a pwipe to come with a rebalancing of the mud as well as a new system so they could show us who's boss.

The rest of your post I don't really understand, it seems to contradict itself. You apparently don't have time to redo everything again anymore and just enjoy coming on and being able to do one or two things here or there because you already have an established character, but then you say you're happy with a character wipe as long as you keep your house and your perzes and your quest flags. That strikes me as severely odd, the quests and things are the easiest things to redo, levelling on the other hand is boring and tedious and if you don't have all that much time, why the hell would you want to come on just to start levelling with what limited time you have? I don't mean to offend, and I could be wrong here but it seems to me that you're just suffering from nostalgia like Toch.

Asmo: You are such an indecisive fuck, (still love you). I know you're not one of the ones that abused anything, as far as tokens go, no one really did. Lumberjacking was a legitimate way of gaining tokens for a while and you can't really call people taking advantage of the way things work when they're not bugged at all 'abuse', but the fact remains that a lot of houses were gained that way and they took away from the value my own house had. Everyone seems to have a house these days, you're the odd one out if you don't have one, it's not special anymore. I honestly believe that you're remembering how hard it is to get tokens and a house the first time round, and not thinking about how easy it will be a second time around.

[Natalya B.]

Well. Idealy I don't particularly want a pwipe at all (obviously). I'm all for changes and such - I wasn't arguing making additions and putting in new changes and ideas to improve the MUD - I apologise if that came across as such. It's early morning, I wasn't really in the mood to sit down and write out a long drawn-out post about the topic.

Guess now I kinda have to, to some extent.

Ok. First. You not understanding why I'd be content with compromising on a pwipe whilst keeping belongings/flags etc? Because levelling - to me - means absolutely nothing. I can chill here, watch TV shows on my second monitor, and occasionally look over on the other screen whilst moving around automatically and hitting enter on "kill all". It doesn't bother me at all. In fact, I'd almost go to the length to say I enjoy levelling. (Not entirely sure why that is, but.. yeah).

The quests and such however? Does take time. I started playing 4d when I was 12 or 13. I'm now 23 years old. Yes I've had a few breaks over the past 10 years or so, but end of the day, I've done most of the quests a fair amount, through various deletions and pwipes in the past. Also more to the point I attempt to redo quests often so I remember how I got the item to begin with (and then take notes heh). In fact, that's one thing I want to do now. I've got a fair amount of notes on most of the quests, but there's some I still need to redo.

And when you're starting out from nothing, when all you want to do, after so long of being on the game, is pop in, say hi, maybe do some grinding for the hell of it, or even some PVP/PKing fun, to know that after all that effort, I'm going to log in, have everything gone, and I've got to start from square one again? *Personally*? Screw that! To do certain quests, you need to level up, get better gears, do everything by yourself all over again. I'm not one to group with people and join forces and speed through things, I try to do everything alone. And for gods sake, all I want to do is login and have some fun, not have to struggle up doing quest after quest and level after level just so I can get everything back just so I can be halfway decent JUST so I can login and have some fun.

It's not motivational for me, at all. I've just started playing again and I have my own personal reasons for motivation, because there's still areas of which I can improve my character. There's still PVP opportunities, and people I'd like to see dead (xD). That's all I'm playing for currently.

Pwipe everything, take everything away, and I'm back at square one with absolutely nothing, no gear, no ability? Screw that, it's not worth the time to go do everything all over again. Like I said, I'm more than happy to grind when I have the time, and improve my toon that way, but redoing everything all over again? Maybe it takes you less than 5 minutes to get your full set of equipment back, but it's certainly not that quick for me.

This is a game. I want to pop on and enjoy what I've built up over the years, and have some fun, when I have the time. Even grind for levels. Wipe everything, and it's just not worth it. Not again.

Try some customer service for once. Look at some other bloody solutions rather than just putting everyone back to 0 in every way possible. Taking everything away from everyone, free game or not, is rediculous in my opinnion.

There. Is this post any better, now that I'm not rushing through it because I'm tired? -.-'

Edit: Also, I guess I have to admit, to an extent? I'm proud of what I have. The equips I've managed to get. I like that I can log in and still have everything I've done. Taking all that away just seems to cheapen the experience. I know it's just a game, but even the scandal bullshit with Once annoyed me enough. All I wanted to do was be left alone in the clan i was part of that I based my character around, and he had to go mess with that for absolutely no reason at all. Couldn't just leave me be, no, had to go demote me, then kick me out of vampires, then take CL - when he's not even active himself, and he's tier 1 with a bloody star next to his name and no equipment or anything  . My point is, that ticked me off enough, and now you're talking about removing absolutely everything? Baaahhhh.