[TERA PC & Console] En Masse is closing, but TERA lives on! We will continue to support TERA PC (NA) and TERA Console until service is transferred. Stay tuned for more information.
[TERA Console] The Grotto of Lost Souls update (v85) is now live! Read the patch notes here: https://bit.ly/TERACon_v85
[TERA PC] The 64-bit update (v97) is now live. Check out all the changes delivered on August 11 here: https://bit.ly/tera64_patchnotes
[TERA PC & CONSOLE] Summerfest Part 2: The Beach Bash is on from August 11 until September 1! Participate in event activities to earn tokens redeemable for costumes, consumables, mounts, and more! Details: https://bit.ly/tera_sf20
Comments
I never played Tera back then, but just hearing about the game like that sounds fun. If they brought a vanilla server back I'd probably jump right over to it and never look back.
I think one of the big reasons they would or wouldn't do it comes down to what they can include in the cash shop or not. Can they include all of those cash shop items like costume boxes and strongbox keys? A huge amount of time/money would have to go into getting a vanilla server up and running; but from a business standpoint, how would they recoup those losses? EME has to make money to keep running, so if there was an argument for why it would be not only good for players, but also profitable for EME to bring a vanilla server back, I'm sure they'd look into it.
Personally I think a vanilla server would draw back a lot of older players that left. The idea they could play Tera from back then, but not have to pay a subscription to play it now might appeal to them. And obviously once you have them back, there is always the good chance they'll spend money in the cash shop/elite status which is ideally what EME wants.
It's possible, but I don't think TERA's failure at original launch was really only because of the subscription fee. Obviously there's a lot of nostalgia for it from certain people on the forum, but TERA has always had major problems in all its patch versions. You'd be bringing back some good, but also a lot of bad.
Plus, there are some features from "vanilla TERA" that cannot work in a free-to-play game, like the vanarchy voting system. The fact each person had to have an active subscription to vote is what prevented widespread fraud. (Theoretically one person could buy the game multiple times and pay subscriptions for multiple accounts, but the odds of people doing so were extremely low. Not so with F2P.) This was one of the more unique/original aspects of the original TERA, but would probably have to be disabled if it went F2P (or they'd have to have much more stringent account controls somehow).
(Plus, people always talk about how BAMs took groups with such admiration/nostalgia, but keep in mind that, after the first month or so once the majority had leveled their characters, practically no one fought BAMs anymore. There weren't enough people in the open world at the right levels to form BAM parties after that. There were a few people who liked to solo them for the challenge, but that's less than 1%. Most players just completely avoided BAMs because it was a waste of their time. I still think they should have kept some of the old-tuned BAMs in the world as an option for people, but making them soloable was a very logical step to make that content useful again.)
Anyway, like I said in the past, everyone has to keep in mind that vanilla TERA was a massive flop to BHS, so I think it's going to be really hard to make the business case to do this. Not that there weren't good things about the original game, but BHS was much more successful after F2P and beyond. At this point, with the console release coming, I think they're going to want to keep trying to move forward, rather than backwards. (Even if some people like to argue that everything they've done since has actually been moving backwards from their point of view.)
Yeah, I know. I'm definitely not arguing that. That's practically the first major hurdle most companies have to overcome when doing something like this, and it's arguably the most time-consuming and expensive too.
Didn't know that. I didn't play Tera back then unfortunately (wish I did) but yeah I can see what that would also be a major issue. It would have to be removed or otherwise have some sort of other restriction applied to the voting system (like maybe one vote per account with a level-capped character to prevent people from making a ton of Lv 1 chars to vote with)
That is a good point, but I think that can quickly be rectified by making an incentive to fight BAMs at all levels. For example, make it so that a crafting/alchemy item you need can only be farmed from a specific kind of BAM, while another ingredient for let's say, a level-cap weapon, can be farmed from another one.
This won't fix the issue of finding groups to farm lower level BAMs because in order for that to work, you need a constant stream of players at that level looking to do that, and generally players leveling a second, third or more characters aren't going to focus so hard on that because they're just interested in getting to level cap as quickly as possible. However, putting a little focus on an incentive to form groups and kill BAMs for either materials or extra money would go a long way to resolving the issue, even if a slightly different approach needed to be taken at each new level/tier of BAMs.
Can't really argue that. You do make a lot of very good points. However I still think this would be a great chance to make a 'vanilla' server with the learned lessons of the past and make it something people would want to log in and play every day again. Would it be easy? Nope. Do I think EME/BHS would do it? Extremely unlikely. Do I think it would be profitable for them to do it still? Yes, very much so.
Honestly, they should consider doing things like this now, but the problem is they need to avoid anything "farmable" due to problems with bots in other markets. (Which, incidentally, is another of the underlying reasons that drove a lot of changes made since launch.) They'd probably have to do it something like the new Island of Dawn, but make a version of those same vanguard quests that are with harder BAMs designed for groups rather than individuals. But still, if they did this, it'd be another variation from Vanilla, so it wouldn't really be a vanilla server anymore.
In the end, if they could figure out the "lessons learned of the past" and "make it something people would want to log in and play every day again" they're better off just doing that to the current build. They've already reversed course on the difficulty of leveling dungeons in this next patch, so maybe there are other things that people like that could be re-implemented -- while avoiding the problems of before.
Our former producer once mused about the possibility of a "hard mode" server and wondered if anyone even would choose it if it existed. A lot of what people are pining for seems to really come down to that in the end.
they could work on that server while all the others are open and no disrupt anything. also with that server have flying mounts able to fly in all areas, remove the invisible barriers, and let us explore like we were hoping to be able to do when we first heard of flying mounts coming out. I know people will argue about feeding in alliance or ganking lowbies , but I believe it would be a huge hit. also make leveling a little harder. no bg avalible until 65. bring back mob and bam drops. remove avatar weapons. like someone else said....make it the hard mode server with everything tera had to offer in the past and up to now. I think that would save tera and bring it back to life in a huge way. have housing in the major cities like they were intended also. if nothing else for guild housing, and no guild limit on members either.
I already posted but nobody bothered to read it. It is possible to make fan-made vanilla tera server. All the files are there.
BHS would never provide their server side software to any entity they couldn't trust.
You'd also need permission to run a "fan" server from BHS unless you enjoy being sued.
You would have to demonstrate that it in no way impacts EME's business.
there's more but I think I will just leave it there.
Of course. But there have been plenty of fan made wow vanilla servers.