Shartaks Future

[Jalal]

It seems over the coming months we have lost many greats and this raises many questions. We know that currently there are 348 characters within the game but how many actually players are there? How many involve themselves in RP?

I was considering the island yesterday and in my opinion there are only 2 active centres, the hanged misfit and the spirit hut - am I wrong in this assumption? Can the game survive with this?

[Raffles]

In terms of RP, I think you can include York too.

[Milkchew]

That bar place in Durham is packed to an extent also.

[Jalal]

Raffles - aside from killing the Hierophant and Dooku what goes on in York?

Milkchew - I thought the bar was closed in Durham?

[Witch Hazel]

I go around and wail at people in York. There really is no rp here other then when I hypnotize someone to kill Heirophant and that's getting boring. They just kill each other here and really don't say much.

I hear natives took over Durham. Never been there so I could be wrong.

[Jalal]

We need to stimulate the island

Perhaps open the sacred space?
Create a powerful beast/monster for us to defeat?
Have an event created?

[Cobalt Manticore]

Raktam talks quietly amongst themselves while hunting the occasional hut-invading sociopath lol. It's a sad state of things when the Cobalt Manticore is One of the Few Closest Things to Pass for Royalty there, and he's out in the Jungles too much to man a ThroneRoom.

[Raffles]

I'd like to remind Mr Mantacore that I am the sole legitimate King of Raktam (and Rakmogak, for that matter).

[Dani]

Let's see...

im working on a York militia to make our beloved village fighting fit again. so far i have 2 recruits. i have separate duties for them to do instead of just sitting around killing foreigners like i do, and i have proving grounds set up to test their abilities and their yorkish honor. this is a york idea and all you foreigners should just hurry up and die already but the basic model might work for other villages. just dont ask us to run them for you.
--Hierophant


I am having a pow-wow for indian braves at wiksik reserve to boost trade and talk about killing the White Man and then we WILL kill the White Man because when an indian gives his word he...gives his word. oh and I am king now in case people didn't know. I got Anthor drunk and won it over a game of dice. Yes I am a very good diceplayer.
--Chief Joe

Arrr, I be headin' back from yon shipwreck ter me tavern in Raffi-gak wit' a couple o' me fella mateys in tow an' we be promisin' good rum fair beer an' plenny o' stories o' the sea told 'round the clock. Aye the Drunken Skull still be 'ere and doin' ok.
--Gorry Louie

Working on something special.
--Pawakan

Greetings lowly kuffars and angrizi dogs! I am 'working on something special' too. But I shall be done my patron's great ambition in a week, and then I shall go back to sleepy Durham and establish a schoolhouse there for all to learn my great wisdom (with appropriate cool quests and lots of words of course) and religious morals! For it is too late for me to be a statesman for my village once more because there are not enough stately men left in Durham. Thus Allah and Prophet Mo both recommend a madressa to train young men and veiled women to become the next generation's leaders. Ya walud!

OOC:

It sounds more industrious than it actually is. But I've got all my chips in, how about you?

I agree 100% with whitty/jalal. Admittedly, I've sounded the horn of doom and gloom before and Shartak soldiered on. I was clearly wrong then. But I do feel now that we've entered the 'twilight period' of the game (and I bet etherdrifter is cackling about the timing). I've felt that way ever since Bobby left, and many other good ones after him. I have no real idea what to do, because it's not my job. The game is dying mostly because of low population; people leave because of other reasons of course, but the reason they don't come back, I think, is because they see nothing to come back to...and low game population is the devs job to see to; we can't help much there.

So if they're not going to do anything--and i see no indication that they are or will work(ing) the problem--then we roleplayers can either quit or try to make the best of it. I've opted for the latter but that's hardly me being optimistic; I've got a long-term job coming up IRL that will make internet access sporadic at best. I've got about two months before it starts, so I'm just trying to light as much firecrackers as possible and hopefully one of them will go off. I'll be leaving our paradisical island anyway, the only question in my mind is, will there be anyone worth seeing//killing/roleplaying, or anything going on in general, to make it worthwhile juggling Shartak time with new priorities. Atm, signs point to no.

[Zeek]

i think maybe we need to organize some sort of membership drive or something to get some new blood into the game. i've seen several online communities die because they stopped bothering with new membership and just let the old timers drift away one by one.

[Killian]

Those are good points. By the way, the statistic is about 2.61 characters per player, though, I feel bad for well being of the 0.61s.

Shartak is the game that the global player base deserves but doesn't need. It's not that Shartak lacks people, but people who lack the idea of Shartak.

If Shartak is dying, that's not really news. I'm saying this in a matter of fact way because the game developer has acknowledged that the game doesn't click with most people. Indeed, the game is 1. a graphical MUD, a breed of game phasing out because they don't have any spiffy graphics to entertain the easily amused, and 2. pelagic, a fairly rare setting for a game, and by its nature is introverted. It's no coincidence that Japan is the only nation with a declining population. Solitude is a quality that seems to engender high quality, clever, creative, rational  and wise people, but they soon drift away as quickly as they came. Why is that?

There might be an inoffensive analogy for this. Above the jungle's sky there are main sequence stars and there are dwarf stars. Some stars are masterful creations inspired from larger stars, but they aren't capable of sustaining life as well as others, and there is fewer life to pay homage to them. It would take a large campaign, several times more obnoxious than Evony's, to pool more players in, but even then they would gradually sift out because there's no overarching goal to give meaning to the player. If there was ever a time to strike while the iron is hot, it's already long past.

I'm not questioning the developers' integrity, but games usually have clear objectives to unify player efforts. There isn't much of that here; it's all up to the player. The island's already mapped and there is little mystery left to unveil. With a lofty goal for players to concentrate on, there would undoubtedly be more opportunities to build player networks, share information and techniques, and in general cooperate and compete. There's more that needs to be done; perhaps another game will inherit the spirit of Shartak.

I know how it sounds coming from me, but the only ingredient necessary is kindness. That's a language even the deaf blind and forgotten can understand.

[Jalal]

My fav online game is subspace continuum it used to have 15 gaming zones with different communities but one by one over the last decade these have closed due to lack of players.

The 3 that have survived have done so through organizing weekly tournaments and special events, every night duels are set up...there is none of that in Shartak so as we have seen slowly the player base dies...would a membership drive help? I am not so sure because if I was a new player now and I dropped into the wrong town I would most likely stop playing once my AP run out.

I have moaned about this before but how can the cannibals the most interesting class literally be dead in the water, aside from the bar it is a dead zone - Dani is spot on if we do not do something soon this will be the twilight of the game, and I think many of us are in his position when you start to weigh up should I make time for Shartak at work or whilst I am at home or just do something else?

Cobalt was right on about Raktam what a sad state of affairs...I went there yesterday and I could feel the tumbleweed blowing - are we going to do something or let Shartak die?

[Dani]

Good points from Killy. And good points from jalal. I suppose I might as well let the cat out of the bag

1. Pawakan's trying to get people together for a travelling carnival. The idea being that while it would be nice to have thriving village centers, they probably aren't going to happen, not in Wiksik, or York, or Durham, or anywhere that isn't already established. So the plan is to scoop up interesting roleplayers with not much else going on, and take them on a circuit from village to village, entertaining people wherever they most tend to congregate, with a variety of strange and delightful roleplays, both collaborative and individual. If people drop out, no problem, because we can always catch the eye of other souls who want to get in on it.

We stick around for a few days or a week, ask for handouts, pass along news from the other villages, then onto the next village, just enough to put some life back into each place we come across. No real sense of leadership; I'll probably be directing it initially but once we find our footing there'll always be a direction to take the clan, somewhere else, somewhere new. Give clan members the account name and password of the founder character, that way if he or she goes inactive everyone can keep updating the clan without hassling the devs for leadership changes. Not much chance for XP-gain or combat, it's purely for the stories we make and places to explore.

PM me if you're interested in that, and there's a get-together at the shipwreck temple whenever people can get there. Otherwise, hope to see you on the trail!

[Cobalt Manticore]

I'd like to remind Mr Mantacore that I am the sole legitimate King of Raktam (and Rakmogak, for that matter).

{Who's Mr Mant-A-core? lol}

Sounds like your Rulership will Have to be Contested then.

Also sounds like Mant and Scorpy still got some work to do yet.

As for Raktam

Cobalt was right on about Raktam what a sad state of affairs...I went there yesterday and I could feel the tumbleweed blowing - are we going to do something or let Shartak die?

I've had to modify my KillerHunter tactics somewhat. They're Hiding even Better now and admittedly we lack the army we used to have protecting the place, lol.

[Katie Calhoun]

It would be nice if some kind of groups could start building up their own town/villages. Not long ago, Wiksik was being taken over by the jungle but someone came in and cleared it all out. It looks a lot better now. Just that one move made the place more inviting.