Originally posted by Ephemeral
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I think it's hard for us to see the big picture - we almost can't see the big picture because we've been involved with the game for too damn long. Changes that are radical to us are NOTHING to the new player. They don't know or care about the difference, so long as there's some fun to be had when they log on. I mean, I think.. I don't know, I'm not a new player..
Things I would consider we do are:
Kill SSC. We're relying on an out-dated, obsolete player database that we don't have root access to. We should inform everyone with cross-zone messaging informing them to visit a URL to register their playername because we're switching to a new, improved billing system.
Launch a sister zone for Trench Wars running on the ASSS server software. TW's current server is out-dated and obsolete. ASSS is the clear winner in comparison. The capabilities are endless. There's a lot more developers who can code in C and Python than those who can (or are willing to) program Java. We (twdev) had already created a clone of Trench Wars on a test ASSS server. Most of the bugs have already been worked out. There's no good reason we shouldn't switch. I understand the fear of a massive over-night switch and that's why I propose we launch a sister zone running on ASSS to host certain events utilizing new capabilities. We can host new games with never-seen-before features. There's also a method to setup (for example) ?go newEvent to direct the player to the sister zone without ever leaving game, and another convenient ?go tw link to get back to the main TW server.
Spend the donation money on something.
This can pay for new/better servers (servers which TWDev have complete access to). The current server, like everything else we rely on, is out-dated and obsolete.
This can pay for email campaigns with the massive amounts of player emails that we have on record from various Subspace forums. (already started this, see sendgrid.com)
This can pay for outsourced development, online advertising/marketing, ad-space in game magazines, anywhere.
We need an overhaul, and new attitude, new ideas.
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