I agree with everyone who mentioned how everyone was complaining for change and how the game is dying or was never updated...
And yet the moment we try to please the vast majority now people want to go back to complaining. Sometimes I feel like people just come up with things to have a reason to complain honestly. It's really silly.
EMPTY Last Cave? EMPTY Atlantis? EMPTY Sky's Rim? EMPTY Ascension Island? EMPTY Cape of Distant Worlds? EMPTY Temple of Dreams?
^ Thank you. This is exactly what I was thinking. As a staff member for Feral Heart I've spent a great amount of time in game at numerous different hours, days, and times of the year... For the last year or so (probably more than that) it has been quite apparent that most of the maps outside of Fluorite, Ficho, and Bonfire were dead zones.
I recall when Ascension used to be a busy hub of anime fandoms and roleplays. Remember all the Hetalia roleplays? It all died. At any hour I'm lucky if I saw even one or two people on that map.
South Pole use to be very busy with a number of people grouped up and sitting close to the Lonely Cave portal entrance. Then there we scattered groups amongst the snowy hills. That all died too. On several occasions I went online and South Pole was a literal waste land with no one on the map.
Specially Atlantis and Last Cave. South Pole had many members at once but the map didn't have many things that made it special, yes, it was Kovu's creation, but i don't know why so many attachment to it? literally just a cave and many mountains of the same texture.
Exactly. It was literally just a height map with a bunch of the same round bumps just randomly scattered around and a snow texture slapped on to it... I can guarantee that it wasn't hard to make at all and that little to no actual effort went into that map to actually make it look or feel like a real snowing environment. We intend on actually giving the community an enjoyable and thoughtful version of these maps.
Last Cave rarely ever had anyone in it just like Atlantis. Those maps were well known to be the maps where people ran to to try to get away in private to most often roleplay inappropriate things or buttswing on each other. And when there were normal roleplayers there, at most it was like three people on the entire map...
Skyrim used to be a hub of dragon roleplayers and just many friends hanging out together and that died too. Lucky if you saw three people there.
Cape had died substantially too. There used to be tons of people sitting up in the tip of the hill chatting away and goofing off, and in the last year or so that was all gone. The TEC group that used to chill there on the rocks was gone. Most of the Spanish roleplayers had substantially decreased. Cape was on its brink as well.
Fluorite Plains was barely alive itself, most people were gathered by the Cape portal, or Stone Bridge. If you ran out anywhere else most dens were unoccupied if not by just one or two people. There were sporadic few people still clinging on out there roleplaying but it was nothing like Feral Heart's early days. The L/J island lion roleplays were a rare sight now. N/Z used to be a huge hub of activity and hang out and that was dead.
To me Bonfire and Ficho were the last true surviving hubs of Feral Heart activity and even there I was seeing the changes occurring.
Truth is interests in the same old stale maps dies at some point after several years of no updates. The maps barely had room for imagination with the amount of dead space in them. We are trying to start fresh and give the maps a little more life and depth to help spur the imagination and interests again to fuel roleplays etc. We're also trying to provide something to look forward to in updates from a game that has long been abandoned and not updated yet alone fixed. Memories of old times will not be enough to keep an ever changing community alive and thriving. Memories are highly valued but the overall function and quality of the game, it's server, and community takes priority before sentimental value. The game will simply become nothing but a memory if users do not support changes that keep the game up and running hopefully for more years to come. We all have great memories of the old FH and that will never change... It's those memories of FH that make wanting to keep FH alive and thriving soo much more important. I do hope users can understand this. Change may hurt or feel weird at first but in due time things will eventually become the norm again as people find their places in the new world and pave the path to new memories.