- Wed Mar 28, 2012 7:37 am
#86487
Though anecdotal, my own experience is that the map is becoming more crowded. When I began playing on Minerealm, I set up my headquarters at around Z = 1300 near the X axis; at the time (late last summer), this was out in the middle of nowhere. I could stand on top of the tower I built on a hill, set render distance to the maximum, and see no man-made structures other than the ones I had personally built. Gradually, a few other buildings started to go up--the frogroad was built along the X axis, a small town was assembled a few hundred blocks from my home, and a few other assorted houses were built. Even then, it wasn't very crowded, and when I eventually moved a little further out to Z = 1500 due to the relative flatness of the area, I was again far from any other settlements. When the public land wipe happened, there weren't any structures near me--the small town near my old home and the majority of the frogroad were wiped. But since that time, the pace of expansion really picked up--in the relatively short time since the wipe, the area around me has filled up more than it did in the long time that I played before the wipe.
However, this is only about 30% of the way to the world boundary. Although most realms at this distance and closer to spawn are owned, only about 8% of the map is listed as private in the rankings (with the caveat that this excludes unnamed private realms). It therefore seems that the regions closest to spawn are rapidly becoming more and more crowded, but the map overall is still not very well populated.
I've always liked the idea of a map expansion, so I voted yes in the poll. But if the only reason for suggesting the expansion is to make the world less crowded, then an expansion may not be the best solution. Since the middle of the map, in and around Spawn City, is the most densely populated area, an expansion would merely provide more space in the regions that have minimal crowding already. If you want to make things seem less crowded, a better solution would be to re-implement the multiple spawn points that we had a while back. Current players seeking less populated areas, as well as a random group of new players, would play in areas far from the sprawling middle of the map.
The Greymarch has ended.