Room for Growth?

[Renati]

Hello Everyone,

Please take all of the following with a large dose (not just a grain) of salt. I'm new here but come from a gaming, and development background. What I've saw here is an inordinately large amount of passion by a playerbase with a (While still the best for this type of game from what I've seen), somewhat limited toolbox.

I understand that right now everything is simply BB forums with plugins. But my question is, what IF you built it into something more? Being able to have truly random and automated events, automatic pointing, breeding, etc. I admire and respect the admins and staff for currently handling the majority of the workload in regards to calculations, but I beg to ask, how will you handle it if you manage to get 100 more players, or 1000? At some point you have to think about the next step.

I think BQ is at a great catalyst point where you could really broaden your userbase, but in order to attract a broader population and handle that influx once you attract them, upgrades are necessary.

With all that said I am a developer, with an abundance of free time on my hands and I've been looking for a couple projects to sink myself into.

TLDR; I think that we could really do some neat stuff with basic PHP and SQL to make this game truly stand out, and attract/maintain a larger playerbase.


Thanks for hearing my .02

[kahzie]

While I cannot speak for the other officers or owners, I don't think our goal here is to "broaden our userbase". We've been handling our next steps fairly well for the past 15 years, and we add new moderators when we feel they are needed. We do not have a pointing system here (and therefore have no value assigned to players and treat everyone equally), the breeding system is actually a fun thing for us to do, and having events thought up by our creative players is (to me) far better than automated events.

Also, since your method of creating code appears to be stealing from our players, I'm going to go ahead and decline that offer on behalf of all the moderators here at Beqanna

[Sarah]

In addition to what Kahzie said (as a non-moderator, but long time player) - I think, and I think many others feel this way too - is that a part of BQ's appeal is the smaller feel. We know everyone. We can chat with them in the cbox and remember who they play. We are group of mainly 20-somethings with children and real jobs and real lives. This is our creative outlet and often our escape. If it were like every other BB Forum out there, it wouldn't be BQ.

Also - name another RPG that has lasted as long as us. Clearly we're dong ok. If change comes, it comes and we/they/everyone adapts. But it's not neccesary right now. Sorry if I overstepped my boundaries, Kahzie.

[Cassi]

Part of the joy of our events that happen is that they're user guided. I start quests and the quest is shaped by how people respond. People start raids or wars and alter as they go along. I don't want automation, as I think that takes away from what BQ is.
I don't know your experience with these types of games, but we're here to tell each other stories. We're not a SIM game, and we have zero aspirations in that area.

If automation is ever something our players ask for, then we will certainly look into it. However, the consensus seems to be that we like it the way it is - telling stories and building off one another. Having just joined, you may have missed that.

Beqanna has been a remarkably sustained RPG built off devoted players. We don't need, nor are we looking for, 100 or 100 new players.

[Kortnee]

And, for completeness sake, I'll throw in that Dianna and I have a lot of MySQL/PHP background and have - as time as evolved - created different databases to handle the unique needs of the game. Did you know about 8 years ago we manually added the members to an HTML sheet? Oh yeah. Then we had a .cgi database, then the mySQL database you see listed above.

[Calli]

All of this makes me want to say thank you guys, so much. All you officers and owners and everyone who has worked on this site at one point or another. :-D Clearly you've done a great job!