Funcom, time to end the debate. Server TOS

[CodeMage]

@LostBrythunian

This one can go get the forum post where they clarified this if you would like?

Continuing the discussion from Land Claim Abuse on Official Servers: Feedback/Discussion:

I’m not sure if you missed the post later in that thread where Umborls explained what the comment about official servers really meant, but I’ll reproduce the explanation here:

@Umborls

When I say the game is not developed with Official Servers in mind, I am specifically referring to the context of claim spam. It has often been suggested that we could just code restrictions into the game that would automatically prevent some of the problems we’re discussing here. But this is not how development of the game is being approached. This is because private servers and solo play are also considered.

If you look at all of the existing servers that are online, you’ll notice that there are far more private servers than official ones. This is all I was getting at when I say that Official Servers are a small part. There is a huge world of Conan Exiles out there that exists beyond the Official Servers. Players might be on these servers battling each other with webs of foundations in slow positional wars of attrition. Or they might be building a role playing world with detail that would blow you away. Why would we ruin their fun by imposing the same rules on them that we have for the Official Servers?

Official Servers are important to us and I hope that’s clear. Your feedback in this thread is invaluable to us and I appreciate all of you who are taking the time to tell us how you feel.

In other words, official servers are meant to be the “real game”, in the sense that they are how the devs imagine playing the game. They’re not just the “tutorial/noob zone”, they’re what devs envision and optimize for. Everyone is free to tweak and change the game as much as possible on their own servers, in single-player, or in co-op, with or without the help of mods, with or without their own admin rules.

The devs recognize that the number of private servers outstrips the number of official servers by a large margin, but that doesn’t change the purpose of the official servers, which is to experience the multiplayer aspect of the game the way devs envision it.

@LostBrythunian

You can look at the “shift to private servers” portion if you want the meat of it. But the whole thing as well is worth a read.

Again, let’s quote the “shift to private servers” bit here and look at it:

@Ignasi

The shift toward private servers and games and a more customized game experiences is expected to continue. But we also expect Conan Exiles to continue to grow. How exactly that will pan out over the next year and beyond is hard to predict.

On its face, it almost sounds like they want to get rid of official servers and have people go to private servers, right? But that completely ignores the whole context given in the “why?” section. I’m not going to reproduce that section in its entirety, but here’s what I consider to be the salient part:

@Ignasi

But official servers have their limitations. We have more than a thousand of them across the different platforms, regions, modes, and now maps. To keep this manageable we run all of them with default settings. Many players seek a different experience with regards to gathering and XP rates, purges, player limits, et al., and of course – on PC – one or more of the amazing mods the community has created.

Over the years, and even over the few months since Isle of Siptah launched, we have seen a continuous shift toward player-run servers and solo/co-op play. While activity in the game is higher than ever (outside of those crazy release months), several official servers see few players online during any given week.Less than a handful players on a server doesn’t provide the experience they were created for, especially when a server is essentially someone’s solo game. Hence why we will consolidate onto fewer servers.

That completely changes the meaning of the “shift to private servers” part, doesn’t it? Basically, it says “Many people don’t like our official servers and migrate to privates, which leaves the official servers underpopulated, and playing on a server with only a couple other players is not how we envision the game should be played.”

If anything, that bit confirms that the official servers aren’t a tutorial/noob zone, and are supposed to represent the devs’ vision of this game.

So why do they expect the “shift to private servers” to continue? I can think of a couple of explanations. The more idealistic one is that they understand that mods and settings provide a myriad of ways to play this game, and it’s quite natural that players will seek their own niche in that variety. The more jaded one is that they know official servers just can’t handle the game, due to performance problems and insufficient moderation capacity.

None of that changes the fact that the official servers are the “real game”, however unloved that experience might end up being.

@Capt_insano0

In other words pay to play

No more than Minecraft or Terraria.