Just logged in for the first time ever. Looks like a very cool little world. But the server screen said the player count was ZERO! This makes me sad. Does anyone still play? What's a good way for linking up with other players and learning the ropes?

I appreciate the help! I apologize if the topic Subject comes across as inflammatory -- that was not my intent, just a frank question. Much obliged!

And also, welcome!

Wow, forum warns me to answer this topic, because it's longer then 120 days that someone has posted here. But there are only 4 topics on forum main screen from this year and honestly there are only 2 topics out of announcements and from a player inside this 120 day range. So yeah game is currently dead. Or do all play in discord now? ;-) Don't understand me wrong. I know game development crew is still working and you all do an insane job. But a game without players is not a game. So yeah again, game is currently dead! This is more a kind of a game engine here and a demo server where you can login to see what the engine can do. Looks like this is also the reason there is no really game balancing here in game?

If you want new players you can do this like you currently try, with new video spoilers, new grafic for maps, new grafic for clients (3d, unity) but that don't help, if

1. game is to hard to learn for beginners
2. there is no real motivation for all the old players to come back
3. there is no one online on server except you?

We know there are still lots of players outside once falling in love to this game, so the spirit is there ...
But to get these players back, you need more then new game engine functionality and new grafics and new maps.

You need a new SAISON ... (*joking* or hm, perhaps not?)
A second server called saison 1?
All players start there clean?
Like a reset but not a reset? (for all the one, who wanna keep there hard worked char's)
All player who want, can start a saison run. There is one aspect in each rpg, that´s the thing to be no one to go to someone to go to yeah it's "heroman".
Of course you don't need that slow levelup speed on a saison run.
So it's "simply" a second server, some new good ideas and changes to game balance and a call back to all living players still have some love in heard for this game.
Later you can merge saison 1 server player and item data with mainserver.
Diablo 3 make this with a post system, sending all items to nonsaison account and merging the chars. ok we have problem on fixed closed and ranged combat typ, but that problem could be solved somehow.

But you really need players and players want to be part of the game. Who is the best to find bad balancing in game? Why game developers always mean, they can better adjust and balance a game by looking in datatables, then players spending days, weeks, month, years in game playing with this data? I have never unterstand this behavior of gamedevelopers. It must be a kind of ego thing. Ah yeah i found the anwser in an english translation example.

"A director is usually a person with a major ego problem."

Only one example: You have durability, but you have no durability in game!
I mean the engine can handle this, but no one in development team make some good durabilty to items?
It's starts always random from 80 to 89 on all items, also food and munition items?
This is really simple, stuff like iron have a very high durability, stuff like clothes have a very slow durabilty.

You developer always look more on engine functionalty and grafic and ignore the things which are important to players.

Game is more then engine, video and audio, its also data. A good game has a good engine, good video, good audio and good data.

Your game item durability data really sucks. So one more question. Do you want do make really a game here or is this more still a template and a beta scenario for another game later using this engine?

Another option is to keep multiply servers. Of course this is a monthly money investment. Dont't know if my virtuel linux server for 1€ monthly do the job. ;-)
There is another game outside i stupidly played nearly a year of my life. I don't call the name here. Don't want to make other players fall in this game. But they launch new servers for new "saisons", they call it worlds and let the old servers run, till players loose pleasure to play there. When there are no more players on server or only few players, they shut down the server. So players decide themselves by activity, when server goes down and the world ends.

So saison end can also depend on players. How they are still motivated to play there.