How do you *sell* Wyvern

[Yuiamu]

What are some of the most notable things about Wyvern. There's nothing I can say to get my friend to even look at it =( He just sees the word MUD and assumes it's the same thing as DnD,nothing else. I need to tell him what he's missing!

[felorn]

Originally Posted by Yuiamu

What are some of the most notable things about Wyvern. There's nothing I can say to get my friend to even look at it =( He just sees the word MUD and assumes it's the same thing as DnD,nothing else. I need to tell him what he's missing!

D&D is fun. *Thread Necromancy*

[igorith]

Maybe it would help if we knew what he didn't like about DnD. Personally, I LOVE DnD, and part of the reason I'm attracted to Wyvern is because its so much like it. But there are some notable differences like having to rely more on quick actions and having the speed of a computer than slow progression and having to wait on the DM to think.

[Dracco]

This is a very good subject.

I dislike D&D (I lack some creativity) but I like the structure/formula of it. I've enjoyed video games, such as Wyvern and Neverwinter Nights, that are based off the D&D structure though. I tend to play games that require faster reaction speeds too.

[Morgus]

I've tried to get my roommates into Wyvern before. I showed them all the appealing aspects and my characters and whatnot. But their love of MMORPGs (WoW, Diablo, LotRO) and large-scale fantasy games (Skyrim, Kingdoms of Amalur) is too deep. They require the most recent games with high quality graphics and immense amounts of things to do. Their standards are such that Skyrim is the falcon and Wyvern is, in comparison, a tiny flea not worth acknowledging. It's kind of sad, really.

But hey, at least they have good taste in video games. I'd rather they be like this than be a bunch of CoD and Madden bros.

[Jacksparow]

What's wrong with Madden?

[Iro]

I've given up trying to explain the appeal of this game to my friends. I just tell them that it's a fairly massive (exploration-wise) and addictive game with a lot of customization options, and I don't try to go into any further detail. That or I show them a screenshot, which usually makes them lose interest.

There are a few sort of barriers that people have to get past to become wyverneers, and that first one is looking past the game's face value, which is usually where most people wind up losing interest. The next is being willing/driven enough to learn about the game, since everything can be pretty overwhelming when you start out. I guess the next and last one is just getting out of those first 5 or so levels where fighting things is slow and somewhat monotonous. I'm honestly not willing to try and hold my friends' hands through the entire process.

I don't usually spread the word about Wyvern if I can help it. The playerbase was usually at an acceptable number and I'd feel bad for contributing to overpopulation/server lag. If I were going to try to "sell" Wyvern to a friend, I'd probably have to be sure they're into roguelikes/MUDs beforehand. It's usually pointless to try and get anyone else into the game.

[Arilou]

Originally Posted by Silico

and I'd feel bad for contributing to overpopulation/server lag.

I don't think that was something you had to worry about. The playerbase always corrected itself rather quickly to match the limits of the server. With a few exceptions where people briefly put up with server crashes and lag because they were excited to see the game after 15 months and heavy balance phases where the playerbase dwindled below our normal capacity, we usually averaged numbers just below the threshold where major problems would occur.

As that threshold became lower, things became rather daunting as we knew that no matter how much work we put into making the game more appealing, we'd never be able to get past that hurdle until Rhialto did something about the server. As you can see from this downtime, that is no easy task which, as an aside, is why the perfect time to work on such drastic changes was when the playerbase was limited to 20-30 players [during peek hours] as it had the least impact on things.

Certain people seemed to believe that all we needed to do was advertise the game more, but either a new player wouldn't stick around because they were unfortunate enough to experience server issues that made playing a hassle or old players would get fed up and leave to make room for them.

Anyway, one way to look at all of this is that if you did manage to get your friends hooked into the game, you'd have people you know to play with while some people you don't know at all/well would go off until the sunset or people who retire for different reasons wouldn't be replaced by unknown newcomers.

[felorn]

Actually I did try and sell it to a friend once... He did make a character and like the game (so he said), but he never made it above level 2 (if he even got pass 1).