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Beginning with this topic, I want to first preface this post with a note of appreciation for Epsilon's server. A private server dedicated to roleplay and sandbox creation is something quite unique. I had not any experience with Roleplay Heaven's server before it was shut down and hearing Epsilon having both active moderation and active developments has shown a deep appreciation for a community that is passionate for an underappreciated community and activity that beckons creativity out of everyone. Whether for artistic vision for the written word or environmental storytelling and the like. I joined back in 2021 after the first patch launched for Shadowlands and Epsilon had really occupied my time where Retail WoW has failed to capture my attention. I've since quit retail using Epsilon as the medium to get that RP feeling that I had left behind. Epsilon has seen a lot of life since Retail's Shadowlands released with critical disappointment from all walks of WoW's roleplay communities. Phases born and died, people came and gone. There is a solid, consistent playerbase for a server. In the near three years I've been here. I've seen a lot of developments and situations in a very short amount of time that has really grasped my attention, but also stacked onto some of my concerns for the future of Epsilon since my arrival. I have built phases, created blueprints, hosted a public server both of my own creation and in a small team of others in various short intervals. There's a lot to offer that can really get people hooked to the server for as long as the community is strong, healthy, and thriving. But since 2023, I've begun to notice a lot of troublesome issues arise that I don't think has been quite so addressed. Issues that could be solved with development, issues that is purely a player problem, and other concerns that I don't think can be remedied without player engagement to help shift it. We will tackle just some the positive features of Epsilon has to offer first: ✓ Solid, easy to use building tools to create your own unique vision of Azeroth with custom Epsilon objects and pre-existing assets of World of Warcraft. Whether you make an island, a castle, a house, or even a simple bowl of soup. You can create whatever you want and inject it into the world. ✓ Unfettered access to GM tools allowing you to modify the world, objects, npcs, and even players that you have permissions to alter or interact with. ✓ Fast, responsive moderation team that don't take all that long to address problems that occur in Epsilon both in and out of the game. ✓ Incredibly friendly community that will happily give building advice, social engagement, lore discussion, and more. ✓ No needless monetary systems inside the game that prevents access or utilization of Epsilon's assets or features. ✓ Performance-friendly commands to help low grade PCs handle object dense phases and overall access into the server from all walks of PC qualities able to run World of Warcraft. ✓ Player-Driven communities within communities offering plentiful RP outlets that can suit many people's tastes to how they wish to roleplay. ✓ Wide access to Transmog/outfit creation and spell macro creation to make your own spells, attacks, and aura combinations. Allowing unique poses, animations, etc. ✓ Open support for custom patch content for models, texture changes, and more that can be downloaded individually. Sometimes it even is integrated into major content patches for Epsilon! This list can continue on and on. Epsilon has a lot, and I mean a lot of positive features that makes it hard to fully ignore this server. It's a solid place I've found to find roleplay in, or an activity to engage myself in should I simply desire to do so. Epsilon is really driven by your own personal initiative to see things done. With yearly activities such as the Stranglethorn Summer Beach Bash that has its own unique map, armors, and npc model patches to provide a high quality experience. People who desire to create a unique experience has plenty of tools to make their own world within this server with plenty of available tools to provide. I came up with nine things I liked with ease, But no custom content is truly without need of feedback over faults or difficulties one may come across. To tackle this can help people be aware of some of these hurdles. Some of the aspects of Epsilon I've found distasteful: New Player Unfriendly Experience. Newer players find Epsilon to be incredibly overwhelming without a guiding hand to help navigate and engage the server upon entrance. While an introduction has been made for new players; once they leave the tutorial area. They are tossed to the wolves and they either sink or swim. Much of the tools to build, create, and the like are all off the game on this site. On top of the command prompts needed to truly get around Epsilon, especially for people who've not utilized GM tools before. They can ask for help but they do need to learn the commands on how to speak to people in game; otherwise they need to utilize Discord to get assistance which can be jarring. Lack of Developer-Community Engagement. Unless you have paid for the server's Patreon, there's very little engagement with the team outside of moderation or occasional posts on Discord to be found. There has yet to be a community event or contest since December 5th, 2022. The Epsilon Youtube Channel is shared, but all under-development videos are strictly for Patreon members to get early teasers of content to come. The Epsilon Launcher is currently behind with a whole year, January 5th, 2023 since the last new development for Epsilon. This can be a very demoralizing thing to see. Leaving people to wonder just what to expect? Nothing to get people's attention or implore people's awareness. Such as the Rule Updates that came to Epsilon that would be very important to get people up to date. The NPC in the start zone is not enough to make people aware of this. Vague and Unclear Directions to supporting Epsilon / Joining the Patreon. As it is an active, developing custom server. I've come to discover there is no easy means to help support the development of Epsilon. There is a Patreon integration that allows people to donate to the further development. But neither the Discord, nor this website has clear directions on how to get involved. Not even the launcher to the server. Many people would like to help donate to keep the lights on and the server running strong! This lack of option to help support this custom server directly hinders the server from speeding new developments along. Lack of Phase Support for public phases. Phases in Epsilon have lifespans, and many creative public phases fizzle out as soon as they begin. With only the Epsilon addon and .ph overview to see who is currently hosting for an open community. Epsilon does not allow guests of phases to see how many people are in a phase, forcing them to join and hope to find people. Without knowledge of how many people are in a phase, people will often join a phase, run around to see who's in it and if there's a lack of people... they'll leave. This is the common cause of public phase closures as nobody is willing to hang out in a low-populated phase for whatever reason. Higher population dense locations Like the Stormwind or Silvermoon Phases that has a consistent player volume easily garner more and more attention and grow. As one has a reliable source of people to connect with. New Phases are taking shots in the dark to hope and garner a form of consistent audience and engagement. Phases hosted by teams are more likely to succeed, while also further demoralizing people who lack a group of likeminded people creating a phase to open. Ambitious people on their own may open a phase for a month and then close it due to very few people joining, or being engaged long enough to justify the time requirement. This leads to people closing their phases, or whitelisting it to an insular group of friends rather than engaging with the whole. No "In-Character" Start Zone This relates to the new player experience mostly, but the Starting zone for Epsilon is the easiest way to meet people. It is an out of character area where people typically hang out. Undoubtedly you'll find 40-50 people at most given days hanging out. Either chatting, waiting, killing time and the like. It's easy to connect to people but now the question to ask.. where do you go from there? This is a ripe opportunity to offer Developer-endorsed or even developer-created zones to become official roleplay spaces that can allow people to quickly jump into a roleplay scene. Offering a place to go for new players to begin their experience in Epsilon. Whether it's something simple such as Goldshire and Razor Hill, or a unique tavern for anyone to hop into. Something to test the scene and explore about for roleplay avenues. Lack of Future Development Insight Epsilon does sometimes offer video clips of features to come to Epsilon. Shadowlands has been a heavily anticipated update that has been hard at work. But many, many people DO NOT KNOW at what stage the future is at. While this is a small team and it's no easy feat to get it out into a stable, reliable condition. People wonder what is to come and the radio silence is very disheartening. The last "big" announcement for Shadowlands' Epsilon integration was on 08/04/2023 which provided a feature teaser of Phase Light Editing on the Discord Announcements. Arcanum saw an update on 10/20/2023 but very little else has been officially seen outside of players leaking future customizations through unlisted video. Bifurcated Player Interests This is more of a community/player issue than a development issue that the team can fix. One can easily find that Epsilon's community heavily skews Alliance with a heavy emphasis with Humans and Blood Elves easily making up a majority portion of the played races. This leads into a heavy leaning towards phase creation with those themes in mind. And thus the activity of the current Epsilon populace being found in phases themed around those races. There is also a notorious locked phase that has a concerningly high population that is more active than most phases readily available to the public. With the lack of engagement and options for public phases, this lack of diverse creativity lends itself to these things becoming more glaring. Epsilon feels like the world is at your fingertips, but you're easily stunted due to the active populace not really interested in the niche and less popular races, themes, and aspects. Epsilon provides the tools for custom macros and spells, but less and less phases actually provide a space for such. It's all too common to find the roleplay scenes available not really catering to people who desire more than Human-themed buildings or elven settings. It's grand that, as of writing this post; Fourth War Kalimdor offers that scene for combat and warfront Roleplay. But they are one out of an active 8 open to the public for people to join into. These are the glaring issues I came across, with some of the sentiment shared among the less vocal people who have noticed similar patterns. Epsilon has provided a wonderful space unlike any other private server seen yet that is currently active. I'd love for Epsilon to thrive and grow with more people and custom content, and I've no intentions to quit now. I want to avoid the burnout for myself and plenty others who impatiently await the release of Shadowlands and the assured player surge that will bring. But while we wait, I do want to address these concerns of mine and also compile possible feedback others may share, or criticisms of the points I have raised. Perhaps developments could be made to reignite the community's creativity as well as lure them out of the insular groups and have a long list of open phases once more like I had once seen back when I joined. When we had hit our record high of 1000+ people in December of 2021.

I am looking for updated modeling tools for blender, cuz looks like all the sites that used to host those, are dead, or close to dead. So if you have any advice, or an archive for blender 2.77 or 2.80. I would be eternally greatful. <3