Silkroad died or not yet? Let's talk.

[Pr0x!]

Hi, how is u doin?

A player asked me why no server including Electus servers can live for at least a year and be active at the same time.

Creating silkroad online servers for 10 years+, doing it as a full time job for this time being, running all kinds of advertisements on social media platforms on daily basis x 10 years, being completely open and communicative with every single player on Discord allowed me to collect large amount of data and here is my honest answer about this very important question.



I think we should face the reality and take it as it is. I am not saying there is not a single server that is alive for a year or longer, probably there is. But we all know they are dead servers. Of course, there are people who choose to play in such servers and bot 24/7, do activities few hours per week. That's not what I mean. I'm talking about times when we spent at least 2-3 hours on PC playing the game every day. Is there a server like this that is online for 1 year +? Doubt it.

The reason why I am posting this is I want to hear from you too. My question to you is, are you going to accept what silkroad in 2023 really is and play it as it is (couple months and then take a break, couple months and then take a break), or are you going to blame every server and every admin that they cannot make a server that is alive for 5 years and fully active. If you pick the second option, let me remind you that only the players can keep the server active for years not admins... eg: we have 1 year uptime guarantee else full donation refund policy but people still quit after couple months. So what u think?

~Pr0x!

[LemonsWIP]

Originally Posted by Electus Online

Hi, how is u doin?

A player asked me why no server including Electus servers can live for at least a year and be active at the same time.

Creating silkroad online servers for 10 years+, doing it as a full time job for this time being, running all kinds of advertisements on social media platforms on daily basis x 10 years, being completely open and communicative with every single player on Discord allowed me to collect large amount of data and here is my honest answer about this very important question.



I think we should face the reality and take it as it is. I am not saying there is not a single server that is alive for a year or longer, probably there is. But we all know they are dead servers. Of course, there are people who choose to play in such servers and bot 24/7, do activities few hours per week. That's not what I mean. I'm talking about times when we spent at least 2-3 hours on PC playing the game every day. Is there a server like this that is online for 1 year +? Doubt it.

The reason why I am posting this is I want to hear from you too. My question to you is, are you going to accept what silkroad in 2023 really is and play it as it is (couple months and then take a break, couple months and then take a break), or are you going to blame every server and every admin that they cannot make a server that is alive for 5 years and fully active. If you pick the second option, let me remind you that only the players can keep the server active for years not admins... eg: we have 1 year uptime guarantee else full donation refund policy but people still quit after couple months. So what u think?

~Pr0x!

Yours answers is so basic , youre just talking from yours own side , for sure you cant keep the server online more than some months , because youre creating it via other logic , no small rates , players can get everything if they active and spend lot of donations in month , when youre done everything in the server in that months , sure the players leaving because its nothing more to whait or to do.

The servers creators whos would be very profesional , would do small rates , and do updates time to time , easy can handle population of players some years or more , but for sure its more easy to just create fast tiktok and take yours money , than take responsibility to long term things.

[bimbum*]

availability is the key,

however elitepvpers is the primary forum for private servers, it doesn't provides a solid policy for advertising servers.
wallah i know people that have over than 5 private servers that running under fake names... instead of solely discussing the reasons why players leave after a few weeks, it may be beneficial to decrease the number of private servers available.

[Expel]

@

Greetings pr0x.

I think from your point of view its understandable knowing that your server and like Sailor are the biggest names in all silkroad , but let's think about it

What made silkroad private servers community too ****** and not even worth it?

2 things

1- Deals with guilds , etc
2- Milking players every now and then

The concept right now is a money milking business , it's not passion anymore, server owners are just looking to make money in the fastest way possible

An owner would spend 200-300$ on their servers (Do deals and talk to the big guilds), then once they profited, they just shut it down, create a fake name and start another one.

It's just the way it goes. That's why I believe that the players and server owners destroyed silkroad itself

[ƛssman]

I agree with some points of your explanation, but also disagree about others. I don't think player age/responsibilities is a reason for a game to die. I've played and still play games where big parts of the community are 30 - 50 years old, have kids, family, jobs and they do play the **** out of (time consuming) games whenever they can. Gaming is a thing that many people do in their free time, so age is definitely not the problem here.

The question is what makes people leave Silkroad or better said, what makes them leave a specific server because most people simply switch to another server. Silkroad is getting older, many systems are outdated and many design decisions of Silkroad are simply bad or not working out anymore today. Many Silkroad servers are super identical and don't really offer anything new beside of events and QoL updates (which makes switching a server so convenient). I think there should be way more changes in the core gameplay, make grinding more appealing and challenging as it is a huge part of the game and seems to be not satisfying for most people (as they're botting the **** out of it). There should be incentive to grind rather than just getting stronger, offer resources to farm and other stuff.

Silkroad needs some fresh air and major changes are absolutely overdue, but it seems the community didn't understand that so far. Many servers owners are here for the quick money without any effort, many players didn't understand yet that they're playing a game which they obviously don't seem to enjoy anymore but they're still searching for the feeling they had back then. Updates and changes are necessary or else a game will get boring at some point.

I'm not saying everything is bad about Silkroad. It really has some very cool aspects, but I feel like almost every server is laying emphasis on the wrong aspects.

Yes, we will never have the Silkroad again that we had back then, but it's not doomed to be dead. How is a game supposed to suprising, new and have some feeling of mysticism when nothing changed for the last 10 years?

[NorseGodTyr]

the game is dead & Toxic
that why i closed my server and left the community

[COSTEXXL]

Is simple. Here are some examples:

1. Everyone who played SRO in the past moved on now.
2. People Have own family (kids and wife) and they don't spend much time in Silkroad anymore.
3. There aren't new people who want to learn about Silkroad anymore.
4. I was trying to teach some other friends and they said "I don't like it".
5. For example all my friends who played this game with me they don't play anymore.
6. My friends play now only casual games like League Of Legends or Games based on Battle Royale.
7. Before in the past the options was very few among MMORPG's. Now there are tons of New Games every Year.
8. Also some new MMORPG games have same problem. People get bored very fast and leave for stupid reasons such as "server is pay2win bla bla, I wait for "X" game, will be much better than this and so on. It's all about mentality.

I always see same people on Silkroad Community.

* I was playing Silkroad because you can play with Bot and Multiple Characters. Otherwise is not addictive to press 123 all the time. The Click On Target is so old for our Generation.
The sad part is Silkroad Players become very toxic and lead the game to a Dead End.

[dimkacool]

Originally Posted by Electus Online

Hi, how is u doin?

A player asked me why no server including Electus servers can live for at least a year and be active at the same time.

Creating silkroad online servers for 10 years+, doing it as a full time job for this time being, running all kinds of advertisements on social media platforms on daily basis x 10 years, being completely open and communicative with every single player on Discord allowed me to collect large amount of data and here is my honest answer about this very important question.



I think we should face the reality and take it as it is. I am not saying there is not a single server that is alive for a year or longer, probably there is. But we all know they are dead servers. Of course, there are people who choose to play in such servers and bot 24/7, do activities few hours per week. That's not what I mean. I'm talking about times when we spent at least 2-3 hours on PC playing the game every day. Is there a server like this that is online for 1 year +? Doubt it.

The reason why I am posting this is I want to hear from you too. My question to you is, are you going to accept what silkroad in 2023 really is and play it as it is (couple months and then take a break, couple months and then take a break), or are you going to blame every server and every admin that they cannot make a server that is alive for 5 years and fully active. If you pick the second option, let me remind you that only the players can keep the server active for years not admins... eg: we have 1 year uptime guarantee else full donation refund policy but people still quit after couple months. So what u think?

~Pr0x!

I rarely comment here anymore, but there's some things I highly disagree with, talking about the screenshot points you've made. Here's my little opinion about them.

1. This is true, but it has nothing to do with game "dying out". Silkroad is one of the least attention requiring games out there, thanks to bots. People playing this game love bots and you can literally be AFK for weeks if server uptime allows it. Also claiming that people start having responsibilities starting adulthood is... Biased? I actually have way more free time now, because there's less things I need to do, rather than a decade ago, when I was a teen. This is a highly subjective take.
2. I didn't see "everyone playing sro" during pandemic. It was as dead as it is now. Maybe it was different in your server, but then again, this is subjective then.
3. I don't even know what corrupted servers mean, but if you are meaning admins giving items to their friends or something similar, it happened over a decade ago in MySro already, it's not really a new thing.
4. New games are coming out, that is true, although I would argue that we should compare Silkroad to MMORPG genre games, and it is surprising how long have we been waiting for something truly worth attention. Current MMORPG genre is all about pay-to-win, even Silkroad in this scene looks like a cheap joke, some games try to milk thousands of euro's from your balance and it's perceived as a common thing (not likeable, but still common).
5. It's not hard to find a guild, active servers always recruit people on globals / discords. Problem is, the guilds that actively participate in FW want donators only, and the guilds that do not - don't do any activity at all except maybe item trading or carrying each other. Another problem is most people just bot until endgame, whilst a decade ago you could join a perfectly balanced CTF match at level 42. So, is it hard to find a guild? No. Is it hard to find a guild matching your expectations and activity requirements? Yes. I'd hardly join a pro-guild that only meets up once a week during FW too.
6. That is accurate, but that is a problem of servers, not players. They give too much things. Auto-equipment just sucks in my opinion, dropping a high-blue +2 item that you can instantly equip or even boost a bit was the way to go. EXP/Drop rates are overall too high. People still bot on x100 servers, but they start looking at previously precious things as rubbish now, because they get so much. I don't mind grinding for a rare sox drop for a week or two, it's how game was designed. Afterall, I'm not the one doing grinding, I just check a character for some goodies. The reward itself comes from starting out as a trash character and you just go through thousands of various loot drops to improve it and become a hero. That's why ARPG's now start to thrive, they work on exact same mechanic. Bet you won't find any ARPG's with auto-equipment button or bizarre rates, will you?

To add on to this, Silkroad isn't really dead yet and packs thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of players still to this day. It has decent graphics, I mean compare it to WoW, former looks like a crayon game for children. The problem is that there are no decent x1 servers out there, who would really know what the are doing. They only know why they are doing it, and it's mostly profit & quantities. There are so many servers that try to reinvent the wheel, disable a whole race in a game, script new events or even add new zones, just to make x50 rates and force people to leave just because you've decided to ruin primary game design.

I had a small itch to make a server like this myself, as I have some experience I've already managed to forget mostly though, but it's a pretty costly project. Good servers need money, but it shouldn't be gathered from selling damage/defense scrolls or other items that boost your stats just so you don't die all the time. Silkroad has it's design flaws regarding that, and private servers were the biggest opportunity to fix this, but they rather chose to exploit this for their own benefit, because "Oh look that's SRO it's like this everywhere". It shouldn't be, and I'm still here occasionally hopping through private server threads to see if there's anyone with balls to prove it. Yet to see one.

[LichKing :)]

Make a weapons drop low rate ( moon - or sun or sos )

[ByMnkn]

Hello to everyone from 2011,

I started this business in 2011, and back then my first game was open for about 1.5 years, and people were playing it purely for entertainment purposes.

Currently, even after just 1.5 months, the games are not being actively played.

In my opinion, this is largely due to those who didn't know how to code and simply bought a basic database to open a game.

In the past, making a game was a real achievement and required a lot of effort and hard work.

As time passed, even people who didn't know how to manage a game started getting into this business.

The audience at that time was relatively old, and now the focus is on financial gain.
What I see now is similar to the collapse of "Silkroad Online."

Games now only last for two weeks, and unfortunately, the culture of fun has disappeared.

This game was the biggest contributor to my development as a "Software Developer," and Silkroad Online will always hold a special place in my heart.

It's a shame that it didn't deserve to end this way, but it is an inevitable reality now.

[Mai_1337]

Oh boy, it's been a minute since I posted on e*pvp, nice to see some old familiar names above.

I believe SRO lost it's novelty a long long time ago, we(the community) play out of pure nostalgia.
Furthermore servers just repeat the same thing over and over at this point and from what I can gather most of the community just enjoys that fresh start of a server. That is why even if a name like "Electus" opens a new server with cap80 "RETRO" features which by the way cap80 retro means only chinese 2-3 available dresses no devil and much more outdated **** that no one in their right mind would play today.
So even if such a server is opened with great success in a week or two the next server pops up promising the same nostalgic feeling and people rush for that little dopamine hit of creating a lv1 char and getting 1st TG kill and so on. And from there on out it's just rinse and repeat.

The only server I see standing with some success even if the admin is the definition of ******* is Sailor.

Maybe those 2015 files can do something for the community. That's "IF" someone invests the time to actually do something with them.

Cheers!

[WickedNite.]

****, the graveyard blanket was kinda comfy to get out of ngl, but oh well.

The game is still great, great things can be made out of it, but what I can say for certain is that every innovation that you come up with, ends up questioning your entire existence, but not for the reason you think of, it's not because you've missed a tiny loophole in your thought process, nope not that.
The community that this game has been the nest of this whole time, they are the reason you will lose(or lost already, like me) every hope and faith you have in yourself to want to do something.
The community in this game is horrible, the cultures, the environment they're growing up in, it's all reflected into their behavior over here.

Have better games come out in the meantime? Absolutely, I've been playing Black Desert since 2017 and still going.

At the end of the day....there's nothing wrong with nostalgia or holding on to it, if it works and you keep making money out of it, it's whatever.

Now, back under my blanket.

[ZiCo*]

Originally Posted by Electus Online

Hi, how is u doin?

A player asked me why no server including Electus servers can live for at least a year and be active at the same time.

Creating silkroad online servers for 10 years+, doing it as a full time job for this time being, running all kinds of advertisements on social media platforms on daily basis x 10 years, being completely open and communicative with every single player on Discord allowed me to collect large amount of data and here is my honest answer about this very important question.



I think we should face the reality and take it as it is. I am not saying there is not a single server that is alive for a year or longer, probably there is. But we all know they are dead servers. Of course, there are people who choose to play in such servers and bot 24/7, do activities few hours per week. That's not what I mean. I'm talking about times when we spent at least 2-3 hours on PC playing the game every day. Is there a server like this that is online for 1 year +? Doubt it.

The reason why I am posting this is I want to hear from you too. My question to you is, are you going to accept what silkroad in 2023 really is and play it as it is (couple months and then take a break, couple months and then take a break), or are you going to blame every server and every admin that they cannot make a server that is alive for 5 years and fully active. If you pick the second option, let me remind you that only the players can keep the server active for years not admins... eg: we have 1 year uptime guarantee else full donation refund policy but people still quit after couple months. So what u think?

~Pr0x!

That's totally true but you can add the latest innovation from some server owners who felt the urge to pay guilds/unions instead of normal advertising and working on there server game [play which drastically ruined the community!

Lack of innovation in most of the servers as I noticed. (and this but that can be fixed)

I had p-servers for different games in addition to SRO with pretty decent amount of players in everyone of them. players are there to enjoy the game , mean while at sro there's a segment that plays in the highest paying server.

I joined sro shit back in 2006 as a kid starting missing around shit with old esro( emulator) team. then joined the team with a friend that's still in the community and we both did because we enjoyed it.

Head GM/managing server for xsense (diamond) spent a lot of time and it was all for free because I enjoyed doing this!

When Diamond start dying because xsense had some real life issues.
then helped creating a server named AtomixRO ( I made it happen but still didnt make money)

bottom line here I never thought to do this for money, in first place. Money came in as an addition. but in some years it turned to a greedy business as everything around us do lately.

[LemonsWIP]

Also whats point to create the threads like this ? its so depresing reading all the **** will be write on the comments , because for sure 90% comments will be negative how the game is ruined down , do you guys ( electus or any other active private servers ) need to get confirm that silkroad is dead and only way to enjoy is yours ( 2 weeks season best donator servers , like you do ) ?

[Elemiu]

Imho, the biggest issue relates to the point:
'People used to play with their team/friends. Now it's hard to find that [...]'

It's totally your fault (you and other serv owners), in past years you gave priority to listen only the biggest guilds, care about their needs and totally ignoring voices of single, random players and their perspective. Just all about short term profit money.

Example Sailor -> 1 or 2 (?) year ago.
Opening of new serv. I don't remember but let's say 3k+ players.
Free2Play? Ye sure -> magic pops -> full eq of pandoras and ms -> 3/4x faster exp than for normal players. Is it all? Ofc not
Spawn of mobs were definitely too small for all spots. But where admins reacted? Only for players who were aiming to be top100 at highest lvl spots.
Meanwhile there were hundreds of casual players that were trying to kill karras, penos etc. -> 3 players vs 1 mob.
And big suprise that they started to leave

There used to be bunch of 50-100 players who at start organizes themselves buying high amount of silks, covering serv economy and dominates activites and becoming self called voice of server which basically destroyes the others pleasure gaming. And you pretending that it's okei, server is fair because ACTIVITES MATTERS and bla bla. Ye sure:
> Be random guy without donator guild standing behind you
> organize whole day to make activites where you 90% get slapped of them
> finally coins collected to get for example sun weapon
> still you mean sh1t because you don't want to spend $$$ to make it +10

You had nothing to offer to random guys over those years and only repeating that 'you can find the big build' (great advice). Therefore community drastically got reduced, there were just left only some survivors of those guilds that you were fawning all over that time, plus some nostalgic players. Good job.


Plus I love when you introduce serv with 'NEW FEATURES!!!1!' and I see:
'item stats comparsion'
'item link'
'survival arena'
etc.
which we had been watching over last 10 or more years.

Maybe I don't know invest some time for real investigation of chn and eu skill balance instead? I'd love to play glavier or bowman with all pallete of skills (for example heuskal combo, frost nova or ice nuke) that are usefull and gives us hundreds of new skill combination and scenario instead of doing stupid 'shadow/ice temple' or pokemon pets skins. Nah, but it's better to make wiz/warrior/roque/spear serv again.