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[Melly]

I think the easiest way to handle this would be to make the monsters spread. It's realistic, since too many animals in one spot depletes sources of food. Just make monsters spread to more unpopulated areas when they're overpopulating a region. That should make sure the whole map is more-or-less populated.

[J. R. Hill]

Migration!

Also, I'm not sure about now but last time I played there were barely any scorpions.  I'm not sure how those reproduce but I got to level 20 only ever seeing two groups of scorpions (around a big mommy scorpion)

[Lon]

This game rocks!

I got on, ran around a bit.
Teamed up with a priest and another warrior, and we went around and killed just about everything (except Oryx, need about 8,000 more monster kills).  It was awesome.  We killed dragons, giant eyes, hordes of scorpions, fought the wood elves in the castle ruins in the forest, killed dozens of elvish pirates stealing there booty.  Even found a pirate dwarf fortress!  We ran around a lot in the northern forests and eventually made it to the very north easternmost (I think) part of the map (we saw the black border).

Lots of fun, nice work Rob and Alex!

[Wild Shadow]

Here is a map of the world about an hour after server start:



Here is a map of the world a couple hours after that:



The green dots are easy monsters.  Yellow, orange and red are harder ones.  White dots are the player spawn points, which rotate every five minutes, moving down the west coast.

As you can see, the "live world" of RotMG is not ideal yet.  But we're working on it!

Update: Another hour or two later:



Rob & Alex, Wild Shadow Studios

[SirNiko]

I feel like the player spawn points should be clustered together in the peninsula, so the general push is to move out from there into the wilderness. When I played, the lack of meaningful landmarks meant the easiest way to travel is to follow the coast/edge of screen and kill things that way.

Perhaps if the monsters had some sort of preference to move to underpopulated zones you would do better. When a zone is cleared, fresh monsters would actively migrate there.

-SirNiko

[rszrama]

I like Niko's idea... would give a feel of moving toward a goal as you progress in levels.  Also, I'm thinking if everyone starts in the same general area and you're trying to get new people to join a group or trade, you can easily describe where you are relative to "the starting area."  I'd love to come up with names for various regions, too... those maps are awesome!  Maybe even mention at the top of the play area when you're moving into a new region, so we can start to attach significance to parts of the world beyond "I'm in the North" or "Extreme Southeast."

[SirNiko]

Bouncing off what Rama said, the lack of landmarks would be a good point to address. Name each region and mark it off with certain x,y coords. When a player passes a region boundary, have a message pop up telling them they've moved from the Newbie Peninsula to the Jungle of Horrible Fevers. Assigning level values to each zone is a possibility, which would encourage players to start easy and work their way up, although risk-takers could skip directly to the deadlier zones to rack up XP faster.

-SirNiko

[Bleaker]

Helloes ~

My experiences so far:
First, I had to install Flash 10. No problem.
Then, character creation. Works.
Then, login. Tells me player limit has been reached. Unfortunate, so I wait (and leave the PC for some minutes).
Then, when I come back, I'm dead.

So I'd suggest that there be some manner of audio clue when login is finally successful.

Also, the game no longer works for me. The flash frame doesn't appear. Should I reinstall flash, or restart my PC?

[J. R. Hill]

I like the idea of having a universal spawn point, or maybe a spawn zone.  You can then combat the no-monsters problem by having a higher reproductive rate in that area for certain (easier?) monsters.  People can spread out from there in whichever direction they want.

Another way is just to throw out a seed monster every few minutes, or have an invincible non-attacking npc that just walks around and summons monsters when it feels lonely.  (Because I think that would be cool.)

I also agree with the no-landmarks remarks.  Aside from the occasional temple ruins the map feels really repetitive, I'd like to see some deserts or forest clearings or maybe some proper dungeons?  Just to get that exploration out there as another reason to keep playing when you hit the level cap.

[Mikademus]

In other news, we are aware of the "where are all the monsters?" problem and we are working hard to fix it.  We wanted to experiment with a world where monsters reproduce in organic groups instead of magically respawning WoW-style.  It's clear that we didn't get it completely right on the first try.

The problem with that is that with the average gamer killing everything on sight, I do'nt think there are any monsters left to reproduce.

The cool solution to this is to allow (or force) some players to become evil rangers: they protect the spawn points (or monster breeding grounds, or simply monsters) against the "normal" players. This solved three things at once: (1) you have someone protecting the monsters thus balancing the genocidal deserts left in the wake of normal gameplay; (2) you introduce the evil side in a very... ehrm... natural way; and (3) you solve the problem with no monsters or xp for leveling up after the server has been up for a while. Also, it'd be quite novel, which isn't a bad thing

[SirNiko]

or have an invincible non-attacking npc that just walks around and summons monsters when it feels lonely.  (Because I think that would be cool.)

I actually thought of this same idea. I would call it Maxwell's Demon and it'd wander about balancing out the monster population and opening microscopic doorways to let high energy particles pass through.

-SirNiko

[J. R. Hill]

One other thing I'd like to see is local (broadcast only to people in a certain range) and global chat channels.

[deathtotheweird]

you were also linked on here

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/01/12/realm-of-the-mad-god/

[Wild Shadow]

Earlier today we posted build 67 of Realm of the Mad God.  Play at:

http://assemblee.wildshadow.com/

New stuff in build 67:

• Characters are now saved across server and/or client restarts.  You should only lose a character at death.
• A bunch of behind-the-scenes fixes.

Thanks for playing!

Rob & Alex, Wild Shadow Studios

[ZarroTsu]

• Characters are now saved across server and/or client restarts.  You should only lose a character at death.

 

Damn, this makes me sad that I killed off my level 15 Knight earlier today; best armor and everything. Ah well, what's the fun of staying perma level 20? :[


Since I'm a total dork, I've copy/pasted a greek alphabet table over top of the map as a temporary means of identifying where (approximately) you are, should you have the map handy.


(Of course Eta, Tau and Upsilon are sort of inaccessible, but eh.)

 


EDIT:

Something Else I notice is a lack of a means to "start over", unless you take the time to suicide. Perhaps you could add a suicide key with a confirmation box, or something similar. (If it tends to spam the game, give it a 5 minute delay between uses or somesuch)

[Jackbnimble]

Interesting game, I would prefer I think a little less actual terrain I can't count the number of times I've gotten caught on a tree or rock and some area's are just swarmed with tree's and such.

You might want to increase the drop rate on rings a little bit as well, and possibly add lesser versions for low level monsters.

all in all a good game, nice job getting it running stably and consistently.  I'm curious what your plans are for adding new features, content, etc.

[Wild Shadow]

Hi folks!

[This post used to have a link to our new test server, but the test is over, and it was a success!  The main page at

http://assemblee.wildshadow.com/

now points to the new server.]

Thanks for helping us test!

Rob & Alex, Wild Shadow Studios

[Kazerad]

Was just trying this out. The premise is fun, but I feel like it is direly in need of some "quick chat" functions. Like, a button to hit to declare "Medic!", "Thanks!", or "Help!", perhaps showing a speech bubble with its tail pointing to your character

[Lon]

Was just trying this out. The premise is fun, but I feel like it is direly in need of some "quick chat" functions. Like, a button to hit to declare "Medic!", "Thanks!", or "Help!", perhaps showing a speech bubble with its tail pointing to your character

I agree, being able to shout out these three statements would be great.

[Wild Shadow]

Today we are happy to report that we have acquired a new server machine which is much faster than the old one.  We have upped the player limit accordingly -- it's currently at 40 but we hope to push it even higher.

We also implemented a new 'migration' algorithm, which should have low level monsters actively seeking out empty areas of the map to settle in.  Along with elimination of the inaccessible monster-filled islands, faster spawn point rotation, additional spawn points on the east coast, and reserved server slots for low-level monsters, the "where are the enemies?" problem should be much alleviated.  In fact, spawn areas may now be too dense with monsters.  Please let us know what you think about the monster densities now.  Play at:

http://assemblee.wildshadow.com/

As always, thank you SO MUCH for playing!

Rob & Alex, Wild Shadow Studios