Looking for other players from Moscow or Russia

[Agrajag]

Originally Posted by Crevan

Lol. Russians - lots and lots, "jew-migration" of 1976th and 1991th years. Also for your laws I can immigrate right now - full women line for 5 generations

So come and join us, we have cookies
(Well... Cookies are not the expertise of the local cuisine, but I dare you to find a good pita and a good hummus anywhere else. :P [matbucha too, and lots of other reasons for me not to leave the country :P])

[theenemy]

Ukranian guy right here. Don't know a word on ukranian but sure as hell speak russian

[Dragar]

my girlfriend is russian if that helps?

Seriously though, surely SP only players are a minority? I really don't find it at all enjoyable in SP mode

[Gandalf Parker]

Actually Solo players seem to be the majority.
The sales on the game are incredible. The games sold do seem to get played. The MP players tend to register in order to get into games. Soloists tend to lurk more just to get answers or download files, then leave. But if you look at any time at the statistics on the forum, there are 2 or 3 unregistered viewers at any time for each registered viewer.

Personally I still continue to enjoy solo play over mp play even after all these years (since mid 2001).

[Tifone]

I used to be an SP player and enjoyed it a lot, but must say even if it takes a lot of time to finish a game and can be frustrating at times, MP is all another thing... way more fun, expecially if you find good roleplayers. I used to ignore the lack of possible communication is SP with all those nations very different in mindset, traditions etc., but now I can't live without an Abysia threating me to burn my lands to ashes, noble Ermorians offering solemn treaties, pretentious Northners searching partners for advantageous deals.

[lch]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Actually Solo players seem to be the majority.
The sales on the game are incredible. The games sold do seem to get played. The MP players tend to register in order to get into games. Soloists tend to lurk more just to get answers or download files, then leave. But if you look at any time at the statistics on the forum, there are 2 or 3 unregistered viewers at any time for each registered viewer.

That calculation is a little too naive for my taste, assessing sold copies of the game as a direct value for the amount of SP game players. I wouldn't believe that even a game as longtime fascinating as Dom3 manages to get all the people to continue playing it continuously in single player instead of putting it to the shelf where all the other games tend to go after some time, too. It probably takes a special people to not grow bored over winning against the random and simple-minded AI for the nth time. The biggest appeal in starting a new game, to me, would be newly added content, a new nation, or to try out a new strategy in a MP game.

As for not-logged in visitors, it's no secret that a lot of them are probably robots - either spam bots, or indexing bots for search engines. There prolly is a fair share of lurkers as well, but I'd expect that there are people who don't log in unless they want to actually write a reply to some post, too. I know that I browse my favorite forums as an anonymous user without being logged in sometimes multiple times a day, but I only log in write once every week or second week.

[HoneyBadger]

I'm a mostly "solo" SP player. One of the things that puts me off of MP games is that it's too easy-atleast for me-to miss turns, even if they're set for 48 hours between turns. Another consideration is that SP is oftentimes more fun than MP. Yes, MP is social, but it's also highly competitive, which for me, sucks the fun out of the complexity and richness of the game, since there aren't that many "killer strategies" per Nation.

[Gandalf Parker]

Even a game as great as this one doesnt survive for this long on its own. It does take game variations, new maps, and mods to keep it lively. As far as I can tell thats the same for both the Solo or the MP players.

And by the way, most of the bots actually identify themselves as bots. And watching the activity screen tends to show the searching/lurkers fairly clearly. Even with the full-time registered campers on here the in-and-out search for answer lurkers tend to outnumber us 2-to1

[lch]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Even a game as great as this one doesnt survive for this long on its own. It does take game variations, new maps, and mods to keep it lively. As far as I can tell thats the same for both the Solo or the MP players.

Sure, but you can already see a lot of flux in the MP gaming crowd - over a timespan of one year and up, of course. Dom3 aside, most games I play have a range of about two weeks to two months before I find something new instead.

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

And by the way, most of the bots actually identify themselves as bots.

Those from the five or ten biggest search engines and their known IP ranges, maybe. There are lots and lots of spiders out there, from search engines you might have never heard about before like Baidu or projects like Archive.org. And I'd expect that the spambots and worms probing for security holes even outnumber the search engine bots by a good factor at any given time.

I expect that we got a couple of lurkers here that look up game information especially from those other gaming forums that play their own MP games without ever registering to the Shrapnel forums. I started like that, too.

[Lingchih]

I lurked for almost a year before I played my first Dom2 MP game.