let me go into a bit more depth on my hesitancy to wipe and why i'm proposing this fence-fuckin' idea.
first off, i have deleted all my characters and progress before and restarted from scratch, on several occasions. the reasons why are irrelevant, but i don't have very close ties to the stuff i've got from grinding. however, there are some who do have close ties, and a wipe would destroy their desire to play the game. and as far as i can tell, this is a significant portion of the population. i recall that polls put wipe/no wipe fair dead even in terms of popularity. wiping runs the risk of completely alienating this portion of the population. right now, losing a couple players isn't good, and losing a large chunk is definitely bad. even if you are a person who is pro-wipe, you gotta understand that others out there attribute lots of sentimental value to their hard-grinded equipment. i wouldn't really care if my equipment got reset, but i know that there are quite a few players who would. that's why i don't want to take the path of a full wipe. also chadz said there would be no wipes i can't go against his will, all praise chadz
so then why do this halfway idea if i don't like the idea of wiping? well, not wiping is a poor solution also. sadly, this game is almost a decade old, and a wipe could breathe life into it once more. right now, there just isn't much reason to grind, for most players, and wiping could restore that desire. others have gone into more detail, but that's some of the basic reasoning behind why a wipe is a good idea. and those reason are totally valid!
this is the issue, you have valid reasons on both sides, for wiping or against wiping. at the same time, you have reasons why doing one or the other would not be a good idea, and could seriously harm the mod population. fucked if you do, fucked if you don't. and that's why i'd proposed the solution that does both. before i explain why the player population split might not be too bad, i'm going to talk about my thoughts on testing out a wipe.
it's been proposed that we could do a test wipe, revert the database back if things go poorly. or we could massively increase the pace of grinding so that those with a lot of looms could get them back quickly. ideally, this should satisfy those against the wipe because they could get their equipment back quickly. however, i don't think this is the case. now, i could be entirely wrong, but to my understanding the opposition to wiping for most isn't born out of aversion to going through the grind again, it stems from not wanting to see all their hard work go to waste. and with this test wipe idea, even if it is reverted back, or even if rewards are high, these players will still lose all of their equipment, and see their hard work destroyed. there's no getting around this fact if a full wipe is implemented. as for reasons stated before, it's likely that losing this would be enough to lead them to quit.
given that there have been, what, 5 threads or so in the past week, this is a pretty heated topic to be sure. we've all sunk years into this game, and tend to have fairly entrenched opinions. if i were to choose one side and do it fully, there would be many, many upset players, some of which might leave. that's not a good course of action. and thus my fence fucking idea was born.
now, i don't think this idea would split player population. just because a player is anti-wipe does not necessarily mean that the player will be unwilling to play on a wiped server. i am having difficulty articulating this, so it would probably be best answered by someone who opposes wiping. (please someone anti-wipe let us know if you'd play on a wipe server)
essentially, even if this does split the population, with little influx of players, then these wipe servers can be shut down. (which is a argument for the test wipe) but, unlike the test wipe, no progress will be erased at all, players will just have the option of whether they want to experience the wipe or not
yes, it's not a perfect idea, there are issues with it, but i wholeheartedly believe that it's a better option than implementing a full wipe, or not wiping at all. the thing is, right now, we don't really know how many players would come back if a wipe happened. i think that this is a good way to test and see without causing any current players to quit
have fun reading that. it's very coherent
oh. besides the point, the wipe issue is the hot topic of the week, so i figured i'd actually reveal my plans and ideas for once to yall. implementation of this would be down the road a fair deal, and in the meantime i'll be looking into other options to spice up the mod. (that is once pseudonyms are fixed)