One on One With The PromisedOne

Merchant Stalls of ETP

Every now and then, I go around interviewing some of the notable people within Exodus and Wurm itself. I want to talk to people that fascinate me and find out what makes them tick. In this issue, I interviewed Promisedone; the mayor of Exodus Trading Post. I recall a comment from someone on kchat that referenced him as the Walmart of Exodus. It was not meant to be a compliment. I decided to do my homework on him and was intrigued enough to interview him. Being a businessman in real life, I was intrigued by his model and wanted to pick his brain. Some of the answers are also answered by his second in command, Nerisrath.

ETP By The Numbers

• Averages 15+ customers on weekdays 25+ on weekends
• ETP does 20 – 30 silver on a weekly basis in gross sales
• 31×31 deed size with a 30 perimeter and an expansion coming soon.
• Seeds, CoC tools, and Floorboards sell well.  Least popular items include shields, fruit press, and woodscraps
• 9 unique players in the village excluding alts
• Promisedone has played Wurm since 2008. Played for a few months then took a long break and rejoined Wurm in Sept of 2011

Interview

Sooo….what’s up?

umm, well currently Sol

Landbridge and canal whoring. How do you feel about this heated debate? 

I agree everyone needs the ability to move freely, including new players who don’t have ships.  Chunnels seem to be the best option until bridges are implemented.  Land bridges are ok as long as they only cut off shallow areas where large ships are unable to access them anyways.  I always advise making a low water crossing in any land bridge.

What attracted you to Wurm? Why did you stay? 

New server!

You seem to be the hardest working man in Exodus right now. What’s up with that? 

I have no life, but enjoy virtual economy.

Ok, let’s cut the small talk. You and your ETP project have developed the nickname as The Walmart of Exodus. Walmart doesn’t have the greatest public image so this analogy isn’t flattering. What does that name mean to you?

Nerisrath – I feel it is both a compliment and a curse.  It means we have the ability to provide anything and everything you need at low prices in one place.  On the other hand it makes us appear to be a large profit profit whoring corporate entity with no regard to the community.  This is not true.  We try to keep the community in mind and have not undertaken large projects people did not want such as the highway to Esert.  ETP was designed to be a focal point for commerce within Exodus.

I recall in a private conversation between, that you used to play EVE Online; another MMO sandbox game. Similar to this game, you engaged in very industrial-like activities. What did you do there specifically? How has your experience there given you an advantage in this game?

In EvE I ran many corporations which were very profitable.  These ranged from small corporations designed to bring in profit form a specific activity to massive alliances with many corporations working on large projects.  I ran an IPO in EvE which lasted one year and everyone involved doubled their initial investment at the end.  I ran shops like the one I have in Wurm, but due to the size of EvE Online I could only specialize in things.  I did not have the ability to provide anything in the game.

With EVE, it is safe to say that you have to be pretty thick-skinned in that game to survive much less thrive. How do you feel about the sheltered carebear community in Wurm? Someone is always moaning and complaining to a GM about some so-called griefing tactic or crying foul. Do you think the game could grow more without interference from the GMs and truly evolve into a fantastic sandbox?

Well the rules are simple and I think the community could do with less GM involvement, however currently the tools do not exist for this to happen.  GMs need better in house tools to track down issues such as a horse going missing for no reason after a server crash or a altar just vanishing after an item is placed in it to sacrifice.  It all boils down to time and money and the back end of this game is very limited on that front.  There is a lot of room for it to grow and I think they are working very hard at it.  So overall the complaints and whining will continue until the method in which in game issues are handled is changed drastically.  Bottom line is if something should not be allowed to happen on a particular cluster then code it and GM workload will lessen.  There comes a point in any game where ongoing issues need to be resolved before additional content is released.  I’m not saying we are there, but that point exists and we are close to it.  This is already a great sandbox so lets work to make it better.

The public persona that is painted of ETP is that it’s meant to serve the community and especially the new players spawning from the Noob Ghetto. But at the end of the day, isn’t this all about making profits and lots of it?

Profit is always a concern in any business, but you don’t make any profit without the customer.  We tailor to the needs of our customer base and continue to provide items they ask for.  We chose to have low prices to keep our customers coming back when they could simply choose to go somewhere else.  Why sell one item at the maximum possible value when I can sell twenty of the same item quickly at a few copper less.  I am more interested in volume than maximizing profits.  We will continue to keep these concepts as time marches on.  One place any new player can easily get anything they need very cheaply will always be Exodus Trading Post.

Nerisrath – In addition to what Promised said it helps to understand how we spend our profits.  The majority of the money acquired goes into paying for deed expansions, deed upkeep, continued improvements to ETP as well as the purchase of large quantities of items purchased for resale to ETP customers at reduced prices.  the savings gain from these bulk purchases allows for our customers to get very cheap enchanted and high end items.

I heard Schiann just opened up Exo-mart near the Noob Ghetto. Looks like competition to ETP. How would you respond if they start taking away business from ETP?

Nerisrath – More power to em, that is how a free economy works.  I enjoy seeing other small markets succeed.

Why set up shop in Exodus? Why not Deliverance where the population is 2x-3x the size of Exo and will most likely stay that way due to them having more land mass amongst other dynamics.

Other markets are already established there and it was only logical to found a market in new territory.

Nerisrath – There was more need for what we provide in an underdeveloped community.

Next to my village, Sheriff, you’re one of the few villages that gravitate towards a voice communication platform.  Why is that? It even boggles my mind that there are villages on the PVP server that are “voiceless”. With Wurm introducing an ingame voice chat, do you hope more players will gravitate to the wonders of voice communication and its benefits? Or should we all take 10 minutes to type something that would take 30 seconds to respond to via voice-chat?

After playing other games and with us being IT guys voice comm is pretty much the standard these days.  Also as a business person it is the most effective way to communicate.

Nerisrath – Vocal communication can be the quickest way to get your point across and the tone of voice can convey a lot of meaning where types words cannot.  Also we would all rather take 10 sec to say something than spend 10 minutes typing it out.

20% discount to all Sheriff villagers, right?

10% and that is my final offer

Thanks for the interview.