Secrets of Asherah Forum

I figured I should probably show my face here as well, after quite some time!
It's very nice that you guys... after all this time, are still here to support us

It's true me and Asherah have still been in touch... a lot. We both really WANT to bring the game back online, but for reasons Ash mentioned earlier... It's just... Very difficult
Asherah and me have discussed all of these options over the past few months, but we're both really different in these things and haven't found any solution that we both support and we both feel would bring Asherah back in a stable and reliable way.

We've considered the crowdsourcing option the longest... But the problem is...
Asherah is a small community, and even though the size of it has changed a lot over the years... It's always been relatively small... Crowdsourcing would mean we'd have to step outside of our community, and promote an idea for a game (or a project a LOT of people get really excited about)
This is a very tough thing to manage for a team as small as what we have... Especially considering that we're not specialized into game design... We're more focussed on our community!

So... Back to the real issue... We'd need about $120 every month to keep the game running 24/7...
Ofcourse that's not absolutely necessary at this point, but it's something we'd like to offer in the future...

Any money we could make out of advertising would help take some pressure off, but at this point... there's just too few of us to be interesting for advertising companies...
Our low number of current players also means that Asherah doesn't necessarily have to be online 24/7 at this point. The last time we where online we had certain "peak" moments with 8-12 players online, and a lot of times in which just... noone logged in...
We could look into the option of going online for 1-2 hours a day... an "Asherah hour" if you will... This would drastically cut our costs for now and allow us to go back online... partially... I'm interested in what you guys think about this idea

However, If we want to be able to stay online, we're going to need a lot of help from you guys... Because with just me and Asherah (And me being occupied with a master's study), it's tough to manage a game, make it grow, help new players and fix problems (of all kinds)

The donation thing would also be my ideal solution to the problem, but I don't believe that it'll be a permanent solution... We're dealing with monthly costs, and the best way to manage monthly costs is... With monthly revenue...
If we're still going towards bringing Asherah back, I'd personally like to see if we can adjust the game to support some kind of "Subscription"
Players would pay a monthly fee, and unlock some small extra's, like some new areas, a different chat color in broadcast and some other minor things... Not really game breaking, but nice enough...
If we could get 20-25 players on a monthly subscription at just $5 a month... we'd be out of trouble permanently, and we could keep hosting this game for a loooooonnnnggg time in the future

But yeah, I'd also like to hear what you guys are thinking about these ideas... Considering that I'm just throwing my thoughts on this board
It's good to still hear from you guys, and with support like this from our community... it's impossible to just let Asherah disappear
Thanks!

Hello!

Okay, So first of all... We're glad to announce that we're going to launch a new client verrryyy soon! The client is already finished, but for us to change versions we'd have to take Asherah offline for a short time! We'll keep you guys up to date on the status here and also post a link for download on both the forums and the website when it's done.

So! What's new?
We've added a bunch of tiles to the maps and also added some new items... Most items are seasonal, so we can give you guys some nice surprises for Valentine's Day and Easter! We've made minor adjustments to the monsters, which turned into bigger adjustments for the strongest monster types. We reduced their hitpoints, because we felt some monsters where just too durable!
We also reduced the damage dealt by bows a little, to encourage melee combat and magic more.
We'll be looking into these changes and how it's affecting your games in order to see wether more change is necessary in the future!
We also fixed the broken buttons for the forums and the website and made some minor changes to the client overal.

We're going to be looking into the option of releasing a new client monthly, so players can give their suggestions for new clients and we can see if it's possible to make improvements on a regular basis!

For this client... we'd really like to thank NoGravity for supplying us with a lot of sprites that have been implemented! The new client has a very nice little fireplace that has been sprited by him, and some other thing... but you'll see the sprites yourself soon enough

This is not the only exciting news we have for you guys!

We've also started working on a new project. We really like what Asherah has turned into, but next to Asherah we want to run a game in which the making of choices becomes more important. In Asherah you can do everything you want, without any restrictions... Like magic, archery or becoming a fighter. This new project would force players to actually make choices towards what they want their character to develop like! The main tool we'd be using for that is the attribute system. Every time a player levels up he chooses which attributes he wants to increase, which determine what he'll become good at. (see screenshot)

For now this is all I'd like to reveal about this new project. We hope a project like this will give Asherans more choice for gaming with us and being a part of this excellent community. This project is something that wouldn't be launched any time soon, but we thought we'd share a little sneak peak with you guys... We're currently aiming at launching an alpha version in March, where you guys could actually walk around in a small physical world. But... That's pretty far from now, and we'll keep you up to date about it until then...
Since we're starting this new project from scratch, we'd really appreciate any help you guys could potentially offer. We're very interested to see if you guys can come up with good lore (storyline) for this new project, or send us some sprites that could improve the game!
It would be really nice if this was a game designed by our community, rather than something thought up by two people!
So far we're thinking of having new players start in a newly build Raventhorp. But from here on the players will make a different choice (or have several different choices), which means the rest of the world won't be the same! Maybe you guys can fill out the rest?

We'd really like to know what your thoughts are on both this new project as well as improving Asherah! With a new client coming out every month, and a new game coming out hopefully this summer, we surely could use your suggestions to improve ourselves!

Feel free to talk to me ingame, leave personal messages over this forum or simply reply here!

*edit*  I just found out you have to be logged into the forums to view the screenshot