In case anyone had a friend who was thinking about joining NWN:EE is like $10 now:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/704450/Neverwinter_Nights_Enhanced_Edition/

I've never played on any other server since way back in the v1 era of CoA and just trying my hand at some other servers right now and gaining some perspective on what it's like to be a new player. I will try and keep this concise:

CoA has always felt like a living, real world setting to me complete with political intrigue, secrets to discover and a stable of great top-tier RPers. It has always been dependent on the players to generate personalities, conflicts and develop the lore of the server. I last played a few months leading up to the end of Manzahar and have never ever in 15 years here met a better cast and been privy to such wildly entertaining stories than in those few months.

What happened? A lot of players left. Some wrapped their last epic character and retired from the game, moving on other things. I know a few who were disappointed in how things turned out over PvP and DM decisions on setting/events. A few were tired of some players constantly forcing them into actual fights and constantly being harassed. Some just felt like CoA wasn't going in a direction they cared about and it was easier to start over in a friendlier realm both personality wise and mechanically. Then the rest of us looked around and the people we liked playing with were gone.

Darlene's right; numbers matter. You can't attract new players with a 0 player count. Those of us who have been playing here aren't going to login at a 0 count to explore or quest; CoA is too dangerous to solo explore or quest and we've seen it all anyways. There is literally nothing to do solo here whether a new player or an old one.

Even with half a dozen players on, CoA isn't CoA really. How much conflict can you have with 10 players? How much political intrigue? I can get RP lite hack n slash stuff on much easier servers that I don't know very well and are more fun mechanically for that stuff. (I noticed back when NWN2 came out that the CoA playerbase didn't transition and didn't translate well to a server with 10 players on ToM, just not enough breadth of characters to support the depth of character we come to expect).

Looking at this is a new player would; CoA is confusing; layout-wise, where to get supplies, where quests are, etc. The new new player area is great but then you're thrown into an inn in an empty quarter. Without actual players around to show a new PC the ropes you're going to lose them. If they manage to find a quest, they'll probably die on it because the difficulty level is so far off from vanilla NWN and they'll log when that happens and likely not return.

Some options are:

If you could get 20 old players to come on and lay out what they'd like to do, DM stuff for them, have them set out into factions or lose groups based around some plot and see if that's fun for everyone. Like a bigger table top game. It would give new players something to see and take part in.

or

Remove everything broken or overly-complicated. Up rewards, increase drops on spawns in wild/dungeons, reduce xp loss, put all vendors in one place that's easy to find, point way to quest givers for 1- 6lvl quests*.; specifically list 1-6lvl quests in game, where they are and who the quest giver is. Get a few old players to hop on and play and quest with newbies and start building some groups and factions.

I'm not sure 20 players is enough spread over time zones to be interesting. I'm not sure there's 20 people who would commit to coming back. Asking for another design change is cruel of me- it's just that new players don't want to have to search an entire large area to find one person who sells healing kits, one person who sells just metal armor, etc. I'm not sure my suggestions are enough to make a dent in the issue.

I just don't know if I have it in me to try and come up with a new character, to run the same quests, to try and build something with so few people. I'd like to say I'd try because they players left are really great players.

But the first time I go and log in and no one else is around...

*yes I know lvl 6-10 or whatever. I'm not sure I liked the level range change.

Sorry to see you go Moosh. Was good to see another real old timer about. Thanks for the fun while we got to hang out.

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