Everyone who creates a thread or post about such a topic typically always has something in common - their "favorite/best" servers are always the first ones they've played. People are so often equating nostalgia with quality, while that's not really the case.
It's definitely not their fault. It's understandable to have such thoughts. Your first private servers are usually the most memorable ones. The drastic shift in quality, community, and just the overall experience from official servers to private servers is (usually) huge and gives you a false perception of how "good" a single project is/is not, while that's usually not the reality. As you get older & also continue to experience similar servers/systems over and over again, obviously you're not going to be as entertained or excited by these projects as you once were. We've been exposed to SRO for so long, it's just not all that exciting anymore. Nothing is fun forever
We get bored, we move on. That's simply our human nature.
Comparing from an objective standpoint in terms of quantifiable variables like player count, uptime, features, etc., many current projects are much much much better than the older projects that we so often idolize, praise, and consider "the best."
With that in mind, are we really able to blame admins/GMs for the state of SRO as we usually do? Obviously there are faults in every PSRO admin, but is it really as bad as the community likes to paint the picture as? Just some food for thought...
This was kinda off-topic, but I'd like to preface my comment with that stuff in mind.
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It's no secret that the community has truly turned into a shit-fest. Corruption is everywhere, guild masters and even most players taking money, cashback percentages, and server income percentages just for joining. Biggest joke ever. More servers are popping up each week, spreading the community farther and farther apart. System development has basically stagnated, nobody has come up with something major that's new and refreshing to the game content for a very long time now.
I could literally go on and on about what faults there are in both the player community and the admin community, but it's nothing that I haven't said before. I don't like repeating myself, and if I were to get into this stuff YET AGAIN, I'd be making another page-long comment, and I'm just not in the mood for that.
Instead, I'd like to offer a fresh and new perspective that I haven't really seen talked about
:
Never saw anyone posting from this perspective before, but I had a thought that a huge reason for the downfall of the community was actually due to
filter developers. No disrespect intended, they are just doing what they do best, and obviously it was not their intention. This is just my personal opinion.
But, think about it. Filters, at least in VSRO188, have become so advanced and standardized (offering the same features and procedures to use) and cheap, that everything has changed for server creators.
Back just 4-5 years ago, you needed a skilled developer & also a connection with a filter provider (filters were not so mainstream and advertised back then like they are now - most players didn't even know what a filter was
) in order to ensure stability. People used to be limited in their ability to create a competitive server by these two aspects alone.
But now? Now, literally anyone can open a server in 30 minutes by paying for a filter license. They face no risk of exploits, and they have access to a limitless number of features. Even events are built in to most filters now, so there's very little variation there either.
This has increased the number of servers popping up DRASTICALLY. What used to be 1-2 servers launching per week has EASILY turned into 5-6 servers launching weekly, just in the last 3 years or something.
This is also why you see less and less development and more and more "copy pasting" between servers. Filters provide EVERYTHING to you - features, events, etc. Everyone uses the same UIs, everyone uses the same event systems with only minor changes, and everyone has the same base system. There's basically no such thing as a "unique development" anymore - a feature you see will be available to another 500 servers in less than a month.
This decreases the variability between servers SO MUCH, which leads me back to my original comment -> you play the same system over and over again, people get bored, they leave the SRO community forever...
I'm not stupid, I'm not saying there was not copypasting content back 5 years ago too. Of course there was. But you can't honestly sit here and tell me that it was as drastic as it is now, can you? You can't. Systems might have been really similar, but they weren't identical and there was at least a DECENT amount of variation, even between servers with the "same systems."
Aaaaand of course, this makes it so easy for literally anyone to make a server. The most inexperienced and unqualified individuals have been making servers and getting away with it recently because of this shit. Guild masters use this fact as leverage against real server administrators, threatening to simply open their own server instead of joining an established brand if they don't get a payment. It's ridiculous and disgusting.
It was never like this 5~10 years ago. There was corruption, but it was not nearly as widespread. Guild masters then wouldn't take even 5% of what they are taking now. It's gone too far and it's one of the biggest factors contributing to the death of this scene.
And then, people play these servers brought by inexperienced owners and decide to leave the scene just because of how terrible the management was, giving them a terrible experience. It's a never-ending cycle that is leading to no new players in SRO, and the old players to keep leaving week by week.
I agree with Bk201, a new international official server with serious system changes & an actual dedicated company who cares about the future of the game could reunite the community and bring us some great "last memories" - but, doubt this will happen anytime soon, if ever. It's nice to dream though
.
Anyways, thank you for coming to my TED Talk, haha. No hate to filter developers, I love you guys (you know who you are already). That's just my thoughts as to a big reason which we seem to overlook.
In the end, SRO is an old game and it's expected for the community to die out. The original publishers don't care about this game and haven't for literally a decade. Why should the community? Most of the community are in their mid-late 20's now, moving on with their lives and don't have so much time to dedicate to gaming anymore. If they do, it's usually on new and more hyped games. It's time to accept the fact that SRO is pretty much doomed with no clear path of coming back.
Let's just try to enjoy the time we have left in servers that deserve our attention. Soon enough, SRO will be gone, and we will regret wasting so much time looking back and yearning for a better "now" - because in 5 years, we will most likely be talking about 2024 the way we are talking about 2018-2019 currently
Cheers.
