How many rooms are built on the mucklet?
How many people are in the town square?
The ratio of rooms to users is extremely high.
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Maybe if there were 500 users online the number of rooms built would be warranted. Maybe.
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And most are idling.
Fancy how you came to the same numbers! But also no, Sinder isnât the park alone. If you look at it over time then youâll realise the park houses about half the population of Sinder.
(The big orange is the park. The second largest is Foxhole)
My point is that some people like that âsolitaireâ. They love the writing.
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Yep, pretty much.
So itâs not untrue thereâs no sprawl. Thereâs sprawl.
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Iâve thought more about the points you made.
I absolutely agree with you there.
Another reason you miss is storytelling. Rooms arenât inherently only social. They can serve reasons other than gathering people around. Does it make sense that the Labyrinth is twenty-something rooms if they are mostly the same? As a social spot, surely not. But itâs not a maze if you canât get lost in there, isnât it?
This is one of the things the team looks at when we approve public builds. The standards are higher the closer to Sinder a new place is, generally relaxing outward. We donât want to discourage the new builders from building, and yet we want to maintain some level of quality.
Again, I think the place where our perspective differs is âhaving something to do.â If the only way we could use rooms was socialising, than the whole Obsidian Plateau would be useless. All its teleport codes would be useless. Heck, whoâd care about the alternative Sinder from a parallel universe? Everyone hangs out in the ârealâ Sinder.
But roaming Wolfery isnât only about being social. Surprisingly, some people just enjoy to⌠roam. To read bits of lore. To bring their friends on little expeditions.
Our original way to add interactivity was having room exits. We only had a single tool. Thus, all the secret go somethings commands for the ones who pay attention. The interaction via go.
Now that Acci is actively working on room scripts, I think the interactivity will become more casual, more accessible. And that means those people that enjoy coming to Wolfery for new bits of storytelling will enjoy it more. Those people who log in and message-erp from the hostel and never leave? Theyâre free to do so.
I want to reassure you that we, as a building team, are on a lookout for means to improve navigation. We also trim bits of the public world, at times. But we try to do that with some respect to the lore, even though thereâs no such thing as the official Rift lore.
If you have feedback on how to make the world more comfortable to use, we are always open to it. But we will push against the feedback of âwolfery is too big, remove all those empty roomsâ or âjust add teleports everywhere, no one caresâ, because we do, in fact, know that people care.
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When I say socializing, that includes storymaking. (Not telling, making.) Thatâs an interactive process, which requires being social. Thus, socializing.
My point is that there are room activites that do not require you to be social. Thus, room occupancy is a futile metric.
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Hi. Usually I donât tend to weigh in on matters like this but I felt I should put my thoughts onto this matter. Iâve been around for a little over 2 years and have watched Wolfery become what it is today. In this particular instance, Iâm only going to talk about The whole âUrban Sprawlâ matter. Iâve not really had enough experience with the moderation side of things for the most part since Iâve never had any issues on that side of things. I usually try to be a good egg. In any case, Iâll get to my thoughts on the âUrban Sprawlâ predicament.
Iâll be honest, I do think thereâs quite a high amount of public rooms in Wolfery but I donât think thatâs entirely bad. If someone takes a good look at the areas they can go to, itâs clear pretty much all of them have quite a degree of thought put into them. Sure, the quality varies depending on where you venture off to but with such a community-built platform, that tends to happen. With the amount of rooms, it might be a bit daunting to figure everything out but it just takes a few minutes of reading to get an understanding of what each area is about.
But, thatâs where Wolfery shines. The rooms all tell some form of story or are backdrops to whatever roleplay someone wants to do. Wolfery isnât a set stage with only a single theme to it. Not everyone is there solely to ERP in a modern setting. Thereâs folks who have themes that may partially conflict with Sinder and having these other areas, along with the ability to create more, allows for there to be places for those who donât wish to conform with the modern setting of Sinder. Alongside that, having the ability to make your own area allows people to create stories. As Shinyuu has brought up heavily, without the freedom to fill Wolfery with these rooms, people canât have the backdrop they want for whatever roleplay they want or the ability to share their world-building.
There are issues with this ideology. Being able to create anything and potentially place it in the public space allows for people to make VERY specific areas that most probably wonât go to. Not that many folk are going to go to The Labyrinth and if they do, itâll only be once or twice to experience the maze or to show someone the place. If your focus is solely on roleplaying and not exploring then that space may be considered wasted in your eyes. To the folks that enjoy exploration, itâs a nice location thatâs fun to go through! Being able to create anything from a backdrop for an RP, like Mirandaâs, or a place made for you to experience, like The Labyrinth, itâs really up to the individual to decide whether thatâs where they want to go or not.
Shifting slightly towards the overarching negatives of this ideology, this ability to populate the space with new stuff does come with the downside that there are places that arenât regularly visited. This creates the rooms that look empty at all times of the day. Unfortunately, apart from completely removing these areas, thereâs not much one could do about it. The fact is that people are usually going to congregate into one of two places:
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The places their friends/RP partners are located.
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Where the most people are.
As much work as one might put creatively into a project, it all comes down to whether or not people stay in your place for it to be popular. This is a social site that you canât really play alone. As such, people are going to tend to flock towards wherever the most people are located. You canât change that. Sure, you can vouch for an area and always occupy that one area but that doesnât mean itâll become a popular spot. People just want to be around people. Theoretically, if Sinder was removed, somewhere else would become the main hub of Wolfery and the same issue would occur with the majority of people in the public space being located in one area. If every account was limited to 10 rooms, there will still be this issue of urban sprawl filled with empty areas because thatâs how Wolfery works. You can cut out these areas and replace them with new areas but with enough time, the same issue will happen. No matter what, there will be empty areas just taking up space. These areas are a fundamental downside of Wolfery itself as a platform and no matter how much someone trims these places out, there will always be urban sprawl devoid of people or only a few areas to go that might not fit what youâre looking for.
Yet, without the ability to create these rooms that are doomed to be empty barring certain circumstances, there wouldnât be any real creativity here. People who donât want to make their own areas wouldnât be able to just go out to the empty fantasy desert and roleplay there if they wanted to.
To simplify my thoughts; Wolfery will always have empty rooms and urban sprawl devoid of population yet without the ability to create this urban sprawl, people wouldnât be able to express themselves and create areas for RPs or for enjoyment. Itâs all up to the player as to what they want to do. If they want to stick to the populated areas, they can. If they want to go out and create magnificent areas that wonât get much traffic? They can. Thatâs just how Wolfery works. Wolfery is a sandbox and itâs up to you on how you play. Sometimes, people just want to explore the works that other people have made. Sometimes, people just want to chat with other people.
Of course, these are just my opinions. I kinda feel like I just echoed some of whatâs already been said and wrote a little too much but hopefully, thereâs something worth reading here. 
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Many rooms arenât meaningfully used in a day, a week, or even longer. Thatâs OK as long as they donât have a real impact on other users - and for the most part, I donât see how that can be the case, since most are far off and usually itâs forms of active use that cause lag.
Many places you take others to for play, like the clothes shop in Woodford, the veterinarian on the Isle of Wing, or Takefumiâs ramen shop. Theyâre not intended as social hangouts; regular occupants would defeat their purpose unless theyâre instance rooms. If thereâs an issue, itâs that people often donât know they exist, which is what the various IC (descriptions, maps, newspapers) and OOC (area info, forums) methods of informing them are for.
Some of those single characters have a specific roleplaying purpose, i.e. they are there to staff a shop, tend bar or work the stables, and at times other than ~7AM UTC they may have company. They might also be enjoying themselves exploring, tweaking an area or a script - since you canât edit from elsewhere - or just idling somewhere to contact if people want.
Wolfery lacks a few things that provide environment aside from rooms and exits, e.g. looktraps/details, [fake] objects, containers, inventory, a library of scripts and uses of them. Some of these are coming, or can be worked around with profiles, but extra rooms help.
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Speaking personally, and not as a member of staff: This is an unreasonably myopic interpretation of my statement which deliberately ignores the preceding context to make a jab and, frankly, I am disappointed.
We have a forum category for discussing prospective features, and that would be the place to address this request.
Having a plenty of rooms does not in any way, shape or form put any sort of limit on that activity. Wolfery provides the opportunity to play for both types of preference.
Like many other social situations, you will actually have to go to where people are to find them. And you donât âshopâ for them like you do in a market, by going to a specific aisle to find them in their spot. Theyâll probably be out and about too.
So if you have an activity in mind that suits a particular area - find people interested in that, and take your play there with them. Do some recruitment, as it were.
Shrinking Wolferyâs grid isnât going to magically improve interactivity for social players by spreading the populace out more evenly in the rooms that remain available. There will always be a few hotspots. Only now you will probably end up with more people going to their personal rooms in order to play out scenes rather than out in the world, because they find it too crowded.
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Regarding âThe Sprawlâ
The mission statement in regards to world building, set in place by the site administrator/owner, was to embrace the idea of âeverybody being so creativeâ for the sake of 'beta testing the service through allowing users to engage with the system in order to find what we needed to consider for prioritization of development time.
Anybody with restrictive views on âwhat the world should beâ were to be encouraged to enjoy this realm while they wait, but eventually that theyâd be able to 'realm-administrate their own little realm, within the boundaries of liability reasonable for the service owner to allow realm-admins to engage in, and within the core philosophies of privacy established by the service developer/owner.
The boss said âlet them buildâ so with limited exception, we encouraged people to build orderly, whole-assed creations which had at least a minimal polish pass done to them. Anyone willing to build a region with a reasonable plan for linking it in was allowed to link in. Anyone willing to negotiate with another region owner was allowed to link up with that agreeable region owner, once the build team gave a thumbs up.
There were plenty of people who were frustrated by being told no, because they refused to communicate with other area owners or refused to finish describing their rooms, writing exit descriptions or area info fields or expected the build team to do all of the grammar work on a 50-100 room build. Pretty frustrating for the staff too obviously to have put a lot of time in making sure things are clearly communicated only to have users not really spend much effort looking around or simply asking where they can find something.
Thankfully, a large majority of the users did what was asked without complaint (for the most part) for the sake of making things presentable to any random user arriving with fresh eyes.
Sinder was intended to be kept limited to builds which did not include extreme/highly taboo tastes, in order to keep the starting town as a bit of a safe zone, so the rules were a bit more restrictive against making sure people looking to disregard the feelings of others in that specific area would be disinclined from harshing the vibe for entire rooms of people. This came with a lot of frustration because there were at least a couple highly particular people who saw the town as a great place to position themselves for the perception of reputation/clout/prestige despite not having any discernable interest in actually abiding the areaâs building rules. Self-interested building was not intended for Sinder, which is why historically it was difficult to get something linked in there unless it was clear it was built for the sake of the realm more than the sake of self - because it was intended to be an area for new users to safely explore.
Eventually it became clear there were a number of people who had no intention of getting their creation to a point of being âwholeâ, âpolishedâ or âwith clearly stated personalized rulesâ so I tried to implement an area over near Rift-Swept Reality called City of Yestermorrow, so people could be linked to the main map while trying to contain the predicted chaotic map sprawl into one place. The plan was objected to by a majority of the mod-staff, so it was shelved and unlinked just as swiftly as it was presented.
Sounds like we have an alternative to this area now?
Anyways, a brief history lesson.
â
If youâve got an issue with the sprawl, keep growing your ability to use the system and youâll be afforded an opportunity in the future to run the show your own way. Otherwise, unless things have changed, the build teamâs directive was to make sure anyone willing to make things look nice was encouraged to add to the Wolfery grid in a way that helps represent their interest in growing the world - as per what Accipiter wanted for the place.
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This feels like a good summary for the energy being brought forward from that direction in general frankly. Itâs clearly against the âbe nice, be clear, be respectfulâ to handle everyone as others do when theyâre tearing down strangers on social media sites.
I suppose thatâs what we ended up with, innit? We just keep it off the main map and reachable via a global teleport.
Yeah, the only reason I had it linked on the map at all was so a population count could be easily found in the available site tools and so there was âtechnicallyâ a way to get into the area which made at least some vague form of lore sense for the loose-fitting backstory of what the realm is. Figured a rift anomaly ground-zero was a great place for a largely lawless, self-governable by the rules, space to exist on the map.
What happens in Yestermorrow is contained to Yestermorrow. No linking to assets outside of Yestermorrow. Oldest presence in the room says what goes in the room.
Room owner can sweep whoever they need to if they need to establish authority through becoming âruler of the roomâ. If the room owner has the authority to get rid of you, it encourages users to âcommunicate and be niceâ or suffer the consequences of being swept and therefore having no claim to complain to staff - which makes resolving tickets related to room content authority easy to handle. Also lets users link to other people who they believe they would enjoy being linked to, so long as that person agrees and confirms the link - thus gives people their own ability to essentially vote through attendance and participation. shrug
Oh well, it wasnât wanted. ^^
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Because a non-trivial part of the OP was âthereâs too many rooms and itâs hard to get places, we should get rid of themâ, which was naturally objected to by those who a) build such regions and b) value exploring them.
Also I seem to recall we already had several threads of ârage against the moderatorsâ recently, rehashed in this one, so maybe people got tired of it. Plenty of the points were addressed within various of the posts.
If you type âmoderatorâ into the âAwakeâ search box in the app you should find those who are on. There is also âhelperâ, âadminâ, âbuilderâ and âtinkererâ (for the developer).
I canât speak for âyâallâ, having left Texas over a decade ago, but Iâve been on these forums for the last couple of months and I generally agree with the reason given for their suspension.
As a Taps user I might direct you to this thread, as an example of their overall activity. Any one piece could be someone having a bad day but the overall tone is⌠not constructive.
It was intended more as a joke at my own expense for having left, but I can see how it could be seen as otherwise, sorry about that.
As for Taps, you did bring it up, and first of the two. 
I was on there from 2004 to 2020. Anyway, the point was the needless stereotyping in the linked post, and the general antagonistic tone, characteristic of many of their other comments.