The Future

[Dr_Vesalius]

Hi All.

Without wanting to step out of place or on the toes of Yotto et al, I am concerned about Kiwike continuing, and thought perhaps we should have an open debate about the future. Hopefully, not starting a troll or flame war either.


I think I turned up when the server "reboot" was quite fresh, which I think also happened to coincide with half-term in the UK for the younger people. There were normally always a handful of people on, with peak numbers of around 20.

However, since the opening week, for the last 1.5 weeks kiwike has been a ghost server. At most, I have seen two others on at the same time, but normally when I turn up there is no-one. It's like playing single player! I hang around for some time doing stuff - and I feel like its my own private world.

Clearly, this not sustainable and so I am asking the impertinent question of what's going to happen and / or be done about it.

Firstly, should I continue to invest time mining and building in this world? Or am I clocking up a lot of effort, only for the server to be turned off and the world and my creations lost? Does anyone here feel the server will continue?

Secondly, the question is WHY is the server so empty?

Obviously, diminishing numbers are self perpetuating. When someone logs on to find only 1 other, they log off straight away. This means that numbers do not generally build up during any session, and the place stays deserted.

What attracted me to Kiwike when I stumbled on it was that it was PvP, but with some sensible constraints on griefing, so it was not an anarchy server which would rapidly lead to rage quit. Whilst searching for a server, most seemed to be strictly PvE and no PvP, which begged the question to me - what was the point in playing online? So, KiWike seemed like a fun thing to try.

I was never convinced by the OP 'town' system and the forming of small groups of people - but I was sticking with it to see where it went. However, it seems that others do not know or care about Kiwike, and those that have discovered it do not like it enough to come back to it.

I wonder if the following is informative about where the server is going:
My wife's co-presenter teenage son is a MC addict (and following his school report will be curtailed a bit!). When I directed him towards Kiwike he was dismissive, because it wasn't proper "factions" - and towns as I described them were just too limiting to be of interest. Plus, it was also vanilla, so nothing special there either. So, he continues on other servers.

Perhaps changing features / vanilla-ness of the server should be debated if numbers are to be attracted??

At the moment, Kiwike is supposed to be controlled PvP. And in that regard it has failed atm - as there is never anyone on to talk to, let alone fight / stalk / raid etc.

Thoughts and comments are welcome.