Where does the pathway lead Planetarion now?
As a reader of this post, you are probably involved in some way with the Planetarion community. Planetarion is evolving, things are changing and the community must stay informed.
Introducing jolt
Quote:
Originally posted by Zeus
As many of you know, the infamous gaming company Jolt now control the Planetarion game. Jolt, will handle all management of finances, payments marketing, etc and intend to seriously develop the game and community.
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Who are jolt?
They an independent online gaming network. The services they offer include:
- ISP Services (Leased Line, ADSL and Dialup)
- Gaming Tournaments (For 20+ Games)
- Dedicated and Public Gaming Servers (Numbering over 800)
Who runs jolt?
How many full time employees do you think it would take to run a large scale operation such as jolt? Perhaps 20, or even more?
They run it with 4 paid members of staff, and they are expected to:
- Manage 800 dedicated servers
- Run an ISP
- Organise Tournaments
These are the major tasks they have to struggle with. They also have to administrate the forums and website along with numerous other smaller errands.
Problems with jolt?
Put modestly, jolt is understaffed and now has the extra responsibility of Planetarion. Supporting Planetarion will seem like an inconvenience when they have too few staff to deal with the current provision of their services.
The services currently provided by jolt are profit making. The potential problem here is that Planetarion will be a low priority in relation
to existing services. Jolt need to be very careful.
Changes?
Things cannot be expected to remain the same; reliable sources will give you an insight to some possible changes.
Our Forums
After heated opposition to the amalgamation of Planetarion and jolt forums, it looks like the community won't have to share our lovely home with DF3.
This is good news, but our future is not certain. Senior members of the Planetarion team have brought three propositions forward.
1. Wiping of forums of all posts and users, requiring everyone to signup again. This would allow the forums to be reorganised, restructured and freshened up. It would be inconvenient, but not destructive to the community.
2. A shared set of rules or guidelines for the Planetarion forums and the jolt forums. Most of you have experienced the jolt forums; a joint set of rules could see our forums degrade to an appalling level. I think most users would like to see the Planetarion and jolt forums isolated from each other.
3. Forum accounts linked to in-game accounts. This idea seems to be supported by those who influence decisions in Planetarion, notably Zeus. This would be an extremely disappointing move. It would mean that users would essentially have to pay for an account. We would see a reset of forums users each round, unless a lifetime account was setup when an in-game account was created, something that would be a logistical nightmare. It looks like Zeus wants to get rid of the old community and start with something new.
The Game
The next round of Planetarion, known to some as round 9, or others as round 8b will be exactly the same as round 8/8a. No development work has been done since the start of the last round.
See
Jolt/PA - Paid Round - My 2 cents... by
DarkJedi for discussion on this issue.
A few things that we need to think about are:
1. Everyone who played the last round is well aware that it was the worst round ever, as the dropping user base has helped to indicate. To conduct another round based on the same code and stats is naive and insulting to the community. Some people have spent more time on their alliance websites than has been spent on the continued development of Planetarion.
2. People paid for a service last round, and the round was never completed. They deserve a refund or free account this coming round.
3. Development will apparently commence with the new round, but Planetarion now only has one accomplished programmer on their team. The proficient beta testers that have been kind enough to spend their time helping Planetarion have lost faith. Zeus has some stats up his sleeve that he'd like to see implemented, hopefully they are better than his spelling skills.
The Price
So we have an old version of Planetarion that needs desperate redevelopment before a new round starts, but the new owners are going to push ahead anyway?
According to our cost appraisals and information given by the former creators, Investment of approximately £10,000 needs to be taken to cover the costs of servers, software and connectivity to run Planetarion for a round. However, once this initial investment is made the servers, software etc. can be used in future rounds.
If Planetarion kept its user base at around the 6000 mark, then to break even then each account will cost approximately £1.66. But Planetarion claims it needs to charge over five times this amount to stay out of trouble. We aren’t talking megabucks here, but the value of what you get for your payment is hardly appealing.
Think about this:
1. With the purchase of a planet, you get to post on the Planetarion forums (If proposals are implemented). A lot of the forum regulars will never play the game again but still like posting there, what do you think they are going to do? Buy a planet so they can post on the forum, only to have to buy another planet in a month’s time when the round ends early? Or spend it on a lifetime membership to SomethingAwful's forums?
2. MMORPG are where it's at now! The appeal of smaller multiplayer games like Planetarion is in decline, especially when you consider the cost of games like
Eve Online and the forthcoming
Star Wars Galaxies which will be in the same price bracket than Planetarion.
3. We cannot forget to mention **********. A game written by an old Planetarion player in less time than it took to play a round, which currently has an even larger player base than Planetarion and is free. It has a thriving community, making it a promising alternative to Planetarion.
Summary
Planetarion is past it, technologically, socially and economically. The creators’ despise the people that make up the community and often those who volunteer their free time to help. The game engine is fundamentally flawed. The owners probably don’t have the resilience to run it properly and unless something drastic happens, doesn’t appear to be a viable product for anyone to sell.
This post is to provoke debate; the community needs to do something.
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