What do you think makes a private server "successful"?

I ask this question as someone who has been part of the Maplestory private server "community" (not sure if community is the best word to describe it, but oh well) for a few years now. While Royals is definitely one of my favorite servers, mainly due to all the friendly people I've met, I've tried other servers over the years to see what they offer. Most servers are marketed towards Maplers who prefer the old-school/pre-BB experience, and the only real thing that distinguishes them are the features they offer. Some have higher or lower EXP/Meso/Drop rates in order to make things more or less challenging, some make HP Washing "Optional", some rebalance classes, some offer custom content...you get the idea.

Anyway, this question popped into my head back when I was trying out a server called "AvalonMS". I remember having a few conversations with a streamer there who was currently in the process of trying to find a server to settle down with. This fella had hoped that Avalon would do well, but eventually ended up leaving due to the fact that he just couldn't see the server becoming successful and staying alive for more than a few months. I don't remember his exact words, but I think he said something along the lines of "Private Servers need to be run with at least a little bit of professionalism, like a business almost". And the owners of the server, as he put it, weren't very professional. One of their big issues was that they weren't transparent enough with the community in terms of what kind of content/updates they would do with their game. I actually tried looking around for their server just a minute ago, and they seemed to have disappeared off the face of the internet. No big surprise there.

So yeah, that got me wondering how some the private servers that have been around for a while stay successful. And when I say successful, I generally mean they can maintain a decently-sized active playerbase for an extended period of time. Which, if you think about it, is already hard enough as it is. Maplestory, in any form, whether it be the official game or the private servers, isn't a super popular MMO. The official game is no where near as popular as it was during its prime. And so, you would think that the subset of gamers/Maplers that prefer oldschool private servers over the official game is probably a pretty small demographic. Even Royals, the most popular server according to gtop100, fluctuates between 800-1000 online players (and even then, that number is inflated due to the number of people that multiclient).

Obviously we do have SOME successful servers like Royals and Legends, which have been around for years. And both of these servers hold a pretty large percentage of private server players. I mean hell, once you go past the 6th or 7th ranked server on gtop100, you start getting into the servers that have less than 100 active players. Not to mention the fact that the private server community is probably dwindling, since there are only so many people that have both played pre-BB Maple AND would prefer it over the modern versions. And eventually those people will probably move on with their lives and stop playing Maple entirely, since nostalgia will only keep a player around so long. I actually have to wonder how many more years we have before Maplestory Private Servers die off completely. I hope we at least have a little bit longer.

So with all this information in mind, how do you guys think a private server becomes long-lasting and successful like Royals, Legends, etc.? Is it the features? Is it how the server is administrated? How often the developers release updates? I'd like to have a discussion about this.

 

For bringing new players into the game initially, the driving force is likely nostalgia. Looking through the gtop list, 7-8 of the servers are older servers (v83 and before) with most being v62 and prior. This is stark contrast to ~2009 - 2010 when gms was much more alive -- high rate servers such as Rydah and Sexy were quite common because players were looking for a break from the grind required by gms.

For actually retaining players, you need a continuous gameplay loop that has rewards (that are time consuming to achieve) to motive players to keep playing over time. In high rate servers, this used to be in the form of rebirths, accumulating rare nx, and community goals. In low rate servers, these rewards exist in more traditional and defined forms -- leveling, and getting better gear are rewards that take considerable amounts of time and exist as long term goals that keep many players active. Additional rng modifiers (such as the godly system and chaos scrolling) allow for diminishing rewards that take increasing amounts of time investment, which is a great way to keep players that would have otherwise run out of target goals. For example, even a end-game player can still have reason to do things like CWKPQ or Krex, in that the godly modifier makes getting a perfect MoN / Krex ring very unlikely. New content releases also help achieve this by adding uncompleted goals for players who have achieved most of their goals.

Of course, outside of this are more mundane factors like server stability (ping and rollbacks).

 

I would say a staff team that is dedicated to do their job as professionally as they can to keep the server clean from hackers, abusers etc, is integral in keeping the playerbase. I doubt anyone would want to play in a server filled with cheaters.

Constant updates are great as it can give the community something to look forward to, keeping the game fresh.

Also, making the end game content not as easy to attain is great, making it feel like an achievement.

 

Anyone who has been around a few years should be able to speak to how much more stable the game is now and I think (besides everyone who reports problems, the other staff members who do coding stuff, etc), Kevin makes SO much of this possible and without him we'd still be in shit source with like 17 hour uptime on good days.

It's so small but I think a lot of people take that for granted.