45 replies to this topic

[seasack]

this is more than a game isnt it?

[Mysticalme]

Actually no, I didn't play by myself. I played 'back in the day' when there were a lot of players before it died. Back when there were no doublers, or uber potions, just the basics.

[Sadiablo]

Unfortunately, Gothador has turned into a post apocalyptic world with only about 15-20 survivors. Living in mud hunts, and with nothing to eat or drink but cactus juice and tree branches. 

 

There's no civilizations or populace.  It's the world after a nuclear holocaust.  It's like the story of the time machine, you would find only ruins of the cities there were with nothing but holograms and ghosts. 

The game was abandoned by the gods, and their followers died off as well.  Unless they make a re appearance and re shape the world, it's going to stay dead. 

[seasack]

actually , game play has changed very little for me since the games 'death' . except for not being hunted in pvp constantly and the lack of much SB and forum action , its pretty much the same game . i still have a ton of quests to do , and plenty of space and time to do it in , and it doesnt cost much to play in what now feels like my own personal game .

 

 

i might be inclined to say , 'im glad the game is dead' lol

and thanks to the cows for not pulling the plug

[OldPolarBear]

There might have been a time when player directed content was possible. If the main Cults could have mustered a united front. They could have influenced the development of the game. Might have given it more life/depth/diversity/community.

One idea I liked was different Cults (once they reached a certain size/level), "controlling" certain realms.

But this idea never even go off the ground, as no two Cults could agree on anything, and they wanted to be spoon-feed a load of ideas, without even giving the slightest commitment. Then if you did suggest something, you got, "who are they to suggest something without any support". It was pointless! HCS didn't abandon Gothador. The Cults made it possible for HCS to abandon Gothador.

Edited by BigGrim, 07 April 2015 - 10:01.
No swearing please.

[OldPolarBear]

<example 1>
You have the highest "cult level" in your realm.
Your cult bank gets a cut of all warps to that realm.
You get to set the cost of warping to your realm (within 0% to 500% of the normal rate).
If you want to put on your own special event, you make it free to warp there.
If you want to be "nasty" and there's an invasion in your realm, you can ramp this up to 500% and cash-in
</example>

HCS could do this, would mean adding a few bits of code here and there. But they would NEVER be pushed to do this, because the Cults only pick it apart...

"It should number of cult members, not level",
"It should be first cult to enter a new realm, controls it",
"It should be as a result of a quest",
"500% is way too much, the whole idea is rubbish!",
"not fair, not fair, not fair".

Could go on for pages on how the regular players of a game (who've invested time and money) can make it, IN TIME, a better, deeper game for everyone

[seasack]

that is the very first thing i have heard about cults controlling realms and the lack of unity between cults causing hcs to abandon this game lol
 
 
but i have only been playing since feb 2006 , so maybe i came in late
 
 
 
i always thought that it was a combination of many things , including but not limited to (and in no specific order of importance):
 
players desire for a more graphical type of game
players deciding that they were tired of multis and alts
players who think they paid more money believed they should get better treatment
players getting sb and forum and game banned because of scrapes with aforementioned players
players growing up and getting jobs and spouses and children
players who dont have jobs or spouses or computers in their basments
players who worked for their levels for years only to see their work blown away by doublers and buffs and equipment that made it easy to level like crazy . they left
 
 
so many other reasons , but in my opinion , it was the actions of a relatively few spoiled so & so's that infected the game as a whole and caused the cows to seek a new direction (a few times over now) and abandon a game
 
the same things are happening in the other games , i assure you

Edited by BigGrim, 07 April 2015 - 10:02.
No swearing thanks.

[OldPolarBear]

Think I, PolarBear, started back in early 2004. Saw a simple game with a lot of potential... but it never really went anywhere. Rather than adding depth to what they had, HCS just added a new creature... then other new creature... then a new realm...

The points you make, seasack, are all true. Basically, if you play favourites, those you help will get bored, as no real challenge, and the rest just get annoyed and leave.

 

P.s.

User based content is the future of MMOGs.

[seasack]

still , if the only thing they did was add a new realm and a new creature , even now id be excited lol

[marjin]

Maybe some players were ruining it for others, only in my view it was the cows themselve that really abandoned the game. Sure we complained when another quest came along in a new realm with new useless creatures with either horrible droprates or crap stats while the list of unsolved bugs kept growing. The cows that were capable of fixing bugs left to try to start new games like FS and Eldevin taking years to launch.

Only an apprentice programmer like Yago was left with no more knowledge than how to copy a realm with a quest (kill x creatures for a useless item) in it, fiddle a bit with numbers and make it life without any testing.  And of course asking a number of times what we would like to see implemented. And of course getting good and bad suggestions along with the requirement to look to the bugs first before creating more bugs and more of the same useless stuff while ignoring our suggestions.

Yes, we got 5th Tier, without the promised extras and ridiculous easy quests to get it.

 

I still suspect one of the reasons they let this game wither away was the hope we would flock to the new games. Maybe some did . Only from me they will never get money on another of their games, especially as they are probably already moving resources away to the next game to be launched in time to come.

I will stay here until it is made impossible to play, after that the internet is large enough to find something without stunted cows messing it up.

[OnionGroove]

Restart Gothador from scratch. It was a great idea poorly executed.

 

Actually, it was well executed.  The issue is there are too many other games HCS has going on for Gothador to matter to them any more.

[seasack]

we have been talking about this for so long

[Sadiablo]

Spent a lot of time and money to play by yourself. That's rough.

 

That's the situation all existing players are in. We poured hundreds of dollars or more into this game to build it up, and to keep it alive. Not just by paying our subs either. By buying USP and paying for websites like The Guild of Wisdom's Book of Wisdom (just as an example) as a player resource since there was never anything implemented server side for that.  Basically, HCS put the game in front of us, said "here are the quests, have fun" and never gave us realm lists, quest databases or anything.

We have done everything ourselves since day one. The only thing we didn't do is create the game, but we keep it alive, research everything, develop places people can go to look for things that are never provided for in the game and contribute all the suggestions that would revamp the game and maybe breathe life back into it, that ultimately all get ignored.

 

Many of us either have, or know someone who has spent potentially thousands of real life dollars to help get this game up and running or keep it alive. That's on top of the 11+ years we have been playing and spending 20-40+hrs a week leveling up and doing events as a cult to help other players.  We've spent more time and attention on this game than the developers ever have, but sadly.. HCS seems to have the attention span of a humming bird with ADD. 

 

As soon as they got up to about 90,000 ACTIVE players, they went "Hmm ok, lets go do something else" and out came Fallen Sword,  they got a few players there then "Ah well, off to the next thing" and Sigmastorm came out. Rinse and repeat and you have today. 

Instead of maintaining anything that's been successful, as soon as it gets any margin of success they abandon it and move on to another project and leave everything else behind to rot. 

They've been so focused on IoS games and Android platform games and Eldevin  that they entirely forgot about gothador. 

 

Yes, I do understand the concept of "Lets see if we can duplicate that success on another project" but, there's a point where you have to stop putting out new stuff every few months that people could really care less about and go back and pay attention to the projects that even made you successful in the first place or kept you in business long enough to do all those other new projects.  And that's not happening. 

 

People have been asking, begging, venting for fixes to problems that have plagued gothador since the day it went live and they have all been ignored so that something new could be pushed out. That never leads to a successful situation either. Any good business people know that. Put out 1 solid product before moving on to something else, then if it comes up, fix what you have before you put out something new. Don't keep pushing out new stuff that's only half assed while you have a good thing wasting away.  That leaves a sore spot for a lot of ppl who feel neglected and like they've been wasting years and thousands of dollars on a product put out by people who could care less about it.  And if they don't care about it, it's hard for us to continue to care. 

[Svitlo]

Word.

[OnionGroove]

And if they don't care about it, it's hard for us to continue to care. 

 

I stopped coming here for "the game" a long time ago.  I come here because I still care about the nation of characters I've created, because it amuses me.  That, and I like some of the folks that are still playing.   

 

And Frank...I stayed because of Frank.  He made whatever my problems were seem far away, and made me laugh even when I didn't want to.

[seasack]

frank was pretty funny

[numenor]

Restart Gothador from scratch. It was a great idea poorly executed.

Hmmm.  That is truly a hit below the belt.  I may be late to this thread, and due to the new login procedures I have no idea what "name" it is going to claim I am, but I am "Numenor" and I've been playing since 2004.  For those of us who remember the "old days" with fondness, all the old invasions, PVPs, special characters/weapons/realms/abilities, it's an insult to all the hours and money we spend building these characters.  I still log on from time to time just to check things out and keep my characters alive.  I still can't believe it's been over 10 years since I started to play this game seriously.  It's been a long time and I miss it.  I hope everyone who is still in the game is doing well.  

 

I don't recognize many of the names in these forums, so I bet there's not a lot of us "old hands" left.  Anyway, hope everyone is doing well and glad to see the game hasn't been erased yet

[seasack]

you know what would be super cool ? if there was an AI program that could take old characters and make them say and do things that the old person running them would say and do . and then just release them into the game . kinda like gothador legends mode lol

[OnionGroove]

I don't recognize many of the names in these forums, so I bet there's not a lot of us "old hands" left.  Anyway, hope everyone is doing well and glad to see the game hasn't been erased yet

Heh...you likely don't recall me, but I remember Numenor.  I tend to remember folks with Tolkien-based names.     And I'm always grateful this game is still here.

[Debrutsid]

i wll read these ideas later, BUT reset gothador?  with all the hard work i have put into several of my very own chars?  i would quit.  unless everyone was free to reassign their level points.  (not only that but if a full reset happen and items wer lost you would lose what people have stayed.     anyway  i love this game.  man, who else tattoo'd themselves the game logo?
 
 
main points of this game:
fix 5th tier
fix 5th tier
fix fifth tier.