After reading the near constant amount of people complaining how the game is ruined for them due to bad apples but how a wipe of the servers would make them quit for good, I would like to believe I have come up with a decent compromise.
The Shangri-La world sets
Every region would have a new world set cluster based upon a name centered around a Utopian concept. These world sets would have several different restrictions and perks that do not exist elsewhere.
Restriction and Perks
- A new character can only be made for these world sets if from a fresh account
- Existing characters can only transfer to these servers if they have never been banned for botting, duping, and/or exploiting game mechanics. These characters will also have to pay a “Price” to transfer to these servers. The “Price” will also have a form of compensation. Many things about your character would also go untouched. I will outline this below.
- Any in game reports of botting, duping, and/or exploiting game mechanics from these servers will be fast tracked for resolution.
The “Price” for transferring an existing character.
- All of your gold, faction tokens, azoth, housing, gear, trading post buy/sale orders, inventories, and territory ownerships will be wiped clean.
- Your characters watermark progress will be reset to a number appropriate to your level. Say for example a lvl 60 would have 480 across the board. Just an example, I am sure the Devs could figure out what it should be
Compensation for paying the “Price”
- You will start with 1,000 azoth
- You will get a lump sum of gold equal to all the gold you have earned doing one time quests on your character.
- If your company owned a territory your Governor would also get a lump sum of gold determined by the amount of upgrades you left behind. This sum would be nowhere near enough to buy a settlement on the new servers though.
- You would get a lump some of Faction Tokens based upon your faction rank
- You would receive all the gear and inventory items you have earned from doing 1 time quests to date. For example if you had done the main story to its conclusion you would have all the gear, consumables, and orbs from it. Another example would be all the lvl 60 chests and 580 gs epic weapon depending on how far you progressed your epic weapon quests.
What your character keeps for the transfer.
- All of your quest progress
- All of your achievements, journal entries, schematics, and learned recipes.
- Your faction rank and reputation
- Your characters level and experience
- All of your territory standings
- All of your weapon mastery
- All of your trade skills
The last 2 I could see being a point of contention among a lot of people. Its easy to say that someone might have used exploited gear and/or gold to speed themselves along in the process of earning those. I also know that I have read and chatted with a lot of people that said if those were lost, that they would shelve the game for the time being or permanently. So while I could see those being wiped as part of the “Price”, it would also cause a lot of people to not want part of this Shangri-La process.
In conclusion I would like to thank everyone that takes the time to fully read and digest my idea before giving feedback and/or support to it. I realize that what I put forth would be a large undertaking by AGS to implement. At the same time its the best I could think of to even the playing field while keeping people that want things to be as fair as possible across the board.
Good Luck and Happy Hunting out there.