Okay, here's what's up. I'm going to start, sponsor and track this entire thing. I'm going to participate in this entire thing. I want everyone to participate in this thing.

So what is this 'thing' I'm going on about?

A contest... of sorts.

It's no secret that the DL player base has fallen in recent years. Sure, it's fluctuated, but there are many DL veterans, like myself, that remember the days of 15-30 players on at any given time, all having a blast. For some reason or another (and those reasons are debatable), the online player average has dropped to about 5-10.

We want to get those big numbers back! We ALL do, not just the staff! Think about it...

What do you do now? You log in, you hack a few mobs, you get some experience. You wait to go on a quest and you make it to avatar. Lather, rinse, repeat. That or you come on, smash some mobs, get some cool stuff (maybe) and log back out. Or you just sit at the fountain and talk.

What did we do before? We went on raids. We had 10 people all storming the gates of Hell (literally) and ganging up on Minos, Arrizzani and The Butcher. We had 15 people raiding Asgard, bringing Odin, Tyr and Hermod to their knees. We had arenas with 20 players, a handful of mobs and loads of fun. We had players and staff alike all having a blast together. We had players who would RP without the use of some flag or the allure of MPPs, just to do it.

And it's dwindled to a shadow of its former self.

So. How do we get it back?

What I am going to do is challenge each and everyone one of you to not only get players to come to DL, but to figure out how to get that same life back. Let's not focus on new game features or zones to get players back, but instead let's focus on other ways to do this.

Let's make DL the shining star again. We used to be in the top 5 to top 10 in the polls, now we're down somewhere off the front page. Let's reclaim our spotlight.

My suggestion is to get a rank of some staff members who's sole purpose is to play DL... no building. no coding. no logging in for 20mins then switching to an ALT for the rest of the day.

Just play DL. Do what they wanna do (with players of course). Start up a war, start up small quests for quest items, contests OOC, etc.

We really do need staff members that will simply roleplay. One of the problems is that inevitably it turns into exactly what you describe, they want to be able to have "small quests for items" or "be able to give out prizes for contests". These things can quickly become problematic for a number of reasons (some of which should be obvious so I won't go into them here). What we really need is someone to create story lines and flavor, not prizes. The story/RP should be the prize. There is simply too much focus which leads to the thinking -- I don't want to do that because my character will not directly benefit. The benefit should be to the player, not the character -- the benefit is having fun, not your character getting the uber sword of everybody slaying or an additional strength point.

Best regards,

--Nezmar

Well i didn't mean just those event in particular..(quest, prizes, etc). I was just kinda throwing those out as examples. Trying to explain a staff member who has the power to do these if wanted or needed.

Point taken, yes i started the Kandaria war and have slacked off on it, so it is now time for me to finish where i started and also make some more fun rps, i can promise within the next few weeks i will have some fun new story lines for you all to have fun with.

Thanks.

Qutin

Go here http://www.mudconnect.com/discuss/discu ... 3845#23845 and create a log in name and
reply to the message or even create a new one. It's thought this will really help maybe bring in some new players. If we can get a whole handful of people replying or posting about DL, maybe it really will. I made the first reply, please everyone else do the same.