- Mon Sep 09, 2013 10:23 am
#174220
Everyone's going crazy to dive into this debate immediately and pick a side with some pre-defined cut-and-dried solution.
Calm the hell down and take some more time to think about the situation and consequences of all proposed solutions.
Total map wipe: New biomes+resources, but the last 2+ years of server history wiped out. (Also, to re-state for the millionth time, Intelli has clearly stated that there will never be another total map wipe. So there's that.) Also, many players choose this server for its stability and the guarantee of the safety of their builds, and will likely leave if that's jeapordized.
Public land wipe: New biomes+resources, -most- builds preserved, but builds on public realms lost, some areas of terrain further mangled, and biomes on preserved land change unpredictably (i.e., forests and grasslands may be changed to unsightly brown desert foliage tones, many areas become covered with snow while snow areas become rainy, etc.)
Wilderness-only wipe: New biomes+resources, though only in a less-accessible location, relatively small number of builds lost (which were not strongly expected to be protected anyway), rest of map preserved.
Secondary server: New biomes+resources and this server preserved, but potentially MASSIVELY expensive.
Secondary map on the same server: New biomes+resources and this map preserved, but potentially a lot of extra server load causing lag.
No change: Everything stays stable, but no new terrain/items. The server's content will gradually become more outdated with the absence of new resources.
Personally, I'm for either a wilderness-only or public land wipe. Both preserve the important parts of the current map while introducing the new content. Both, though, have upsides and downsides in relation to each other.
A wilderness wipe makes the new content difficult to access and means that new landscapes would be unable to be protected by purchasing, but also leaves the rest of the map fully intact. Furthermore, due to the limited area of the wilderness, it would probably be very difficult to find a seed from which to generate it that would include all the newer biomes within that area.
A public land wipe would, while still preserving owned builds, allow a huge area for the newer biomes to exist, make them relatively easy to access and make it possible for them to be protected by purchasing. It would also restore heavily mined-out ores and deforested areas. However, as mentioned above, the altered biome layout would have unpredictable effects in owned land, such as altered weather patterns and discolored foliage. Furthermore, this makes borders between old and new land look obviously messed up, though it should be noted that players do much worse damage to the look of the landscape all the time. A further issue may be that players (particularly large guilds) would covet and quickly purchase up new-biome areas, possibly hindering the accessibility of the land and its resources.
A secondary map on the same server may still be a viable option, pending an estimate (and possibly test) of how much load it would put on the server. If it would not cause noticeable lag, then this would be my strongly preferred option.
"Vanilla-ness" is not being taken into account here, as the majority of the server has expressed that staying extremely close to vanilla is not all that important, and the server is already (and has for most of its history been) not particularly vanilla.
As a final note, we should look further to the server's future beyond this update. Down the road there will undoubtedly be more major updates introducing additional new biomes and resources. We can't treat this as a one-time special event, we have to be aware that in time we'll be in the same situation again, and possibly again and again.
TL;DR there is no single cut-and-dried absolute best option, but the option that will be most all-around favorable can be settled on by cooling down and taking time to look at all the pros and cons. Much better to reach a solid decision later than a questionable decision now.
terrranova ur eyes thru our future thanx
