Unfounded
"In December 1998, a programmer by the name of Daniel Brockhaus had created a small MMORPG titled Mercenaries of Astonia. It was only able to support up to 100 people at a time, and was not intended to be a commercial release; rather, it was to be a hobby project. Due to the growing popularity and Brockhaus wanting to expand, he decided to create a new game, titled Astonia III. Although servers were left online for Mercenaries of Astonia, players had started to gradually move to the new game. It supported better graphics, more gameplay elements, and an improved netcode to support hundreds of players in one server."
Whoever wrote this section was just winging it. I'm yet to see him ever explain his motivations. The results, though, suggested he simply wanted to monetise more than anything.
The maximum player-count of 100 sounds similarly unfounded. At one point player caps began to be imposed (with resulting queues), at something like 70 and / or then 40, due to server hardware or internet connection limitations and had nothing to do with the code.
And, Mercenaries of Astonia retained almost all of its playerbase. The two concurrent games were seen as separate entities and many had no interest in the new game. Some having tried it, some not. Astonia 3 was not considered an evolution to move on to, rather as a very different, new game. Mercenaries of Astonia's playerbase had to be given the boot to stop playing it, in 2003.
Stuntaneous (talk) 01:17, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
- I wrote it, and created this page for Astonia III. For the paragraph you quoted, I simply added only what I could find on the official websites and the sources I could find. More than likely, you are correct that Daniel wanted to make money off of it, but that has never been stated anywhere. I don't see anything else wrong with the paragraph. Whether players were forced/booted out of Mercs doesn't matter, because as stated, they gradually moved to the new game regardless whether they wanted to or not (although a good portion probably quit altogether). In regards to Daniel Brockhaus, Intent Software, and the Astonia name, indeed Astonia III was an evolution. Maybe not for a chunk of the player base, but for the official entities, it sure was. The page really needs a few more sources, but I tried the best I could with what I could find. Xanarki (talk) 23:28, 5 June 2022 (UTC)