Shattered Kingdoms

I think this idea may have already been brought up in the past, but I think you should activate somthing like SpellBlade (I think that's what you called it) at a similar frequency to the Bonanzas.

Why:
Will give retired vets a chance to come back and tool around with a character without leveling. Gives newbies a chance to test out race/class combos in a low-risk way and to hone their PK skills. Overall I think it would help increase player counts (in combination with other strategies already being employed).

What:
Parallel world of SK that would be "born" and cease to exist after the course of one weekend. Everyone starting a character is immediately level 50. All combinations of classes and races allowd. Perhaps also allowed to choose a cabal at creation (I'm ambivalent on that one).

When:
Once every month or so. Lasts a weekend.

For the naysayers:
Yes, this would be primarily a PK-oriented weekend where you could test out your PK skills with no consequences to a long-term character. The roleplay aspect would be weaker over this period, but we already have plenty of events where PK is effectively "disabled" for all intents and purposes (e.g., tournament events where gods will curse/slay you if you attack) so doing something similar on the PK side seems fine with me.

Thoughts?

My problem is that all activity would virtually half for weekends at a time as no one would actually log on to the main server.

Make it only once every two months or reduce the time it lasts to just a day?

I don't think it's a good idea to try and increase interest in the game by changing it completely, then changing it right back.

I believe I read a post somewhere where Dulrik said he isn't bringing that version back online ever again.

It was only using the Spellblade domain name because that's the studio I was working for at the time. Spellblade has been out of business for almost 10 years now. Regardless, the situation of making the test server open to everyone, even for a weekend, isn't likely to happen again. Because I don't agree that it's a key to either retention or gaining new players.

If you want a chance to have people get better at PK it would be pretty awesome if the Imms came out with an Arena that people could fight in, and not worry about getting junk looted and getting their gear taken away.

You need a hero's help, but the coliseum in the empire is pretty much that.

Hrm, I don't think it's a good idea, neither for PK-honing nor giving a glimpse of how top-tier play is, simply because equipment and enchanting is so damned important - spell casters would pretty much be cream of the crop on a servers loaded with temporary characters. Spawning with top/middle-tier lewt would upset the balance the other way around.

What would be way more cool, is if you could load up past characters on a test server, with the loot they had at certain points during their existence. Impossible I'm sure, I doubt pfiles go back that far, but it's fun to think about.