I think for now I've just had enough of LW. The forums are basically dead, nothing sells without agressive advertising, WW encounters might as well be nonexistant for me, nevermind actual WWs.

I know discord is fairly active but I just don't find it fun to use. Everyone just types over each other so it's a jumbled mess of simultaneous conversations. So sue me, but I like slower paced single threads of conversation I can reread whenever I want.

'Oh, you had a convo on Lorwolf chat two days ago where you didn't ping each other? Too bad, you'll never find it now.'

An even somewhat busy Discord on mobile is awful and it wasn't much better when I had a pc.

Without big updates to this game (wolf release incentives, less ms sinks, more pebble genes/breeds) and a shift away from discord I think this game is not going to improve enough to keep me interested longterm.

Which on the whole, is really sad. This has potential, the art is good but for it to be stagnating already is genuinely a little upsetting. LW has/had a number of FR veterans detailing what could be improved since beta and it's just been largely ignored.

Edit: User worms has posted my frustrations in a much clearer manner on page 2. This is it here:

"The thing that has frustrated me most about LW is it had all sorts of information from other petsites available and it didn't use it. LW is a new petsite, but it is not an early one. Comparing it to 10-year old FR isn't that direct of a comparison, because it was new then, yes, but it was also rather early, as far as modern petsites go. FR has had all that time to figure out what works and what doesn't -- same with other ones, like Neopets, CS, etc. Not that any of them are perfect, but the best thing about these older petsites is that newer petsites can directly skip some of those hard-learned lessons by learning from and planning around problems those sites had.

There is a lot that could have been planned or implemented to make LW start off stronger than it did, and it didn't. There could have been more instructions, QOL tweaks could have already been implemented, moonstones could have been balanced better, referrals, something to curb wolf overpopulation, allowing us to delete forum posts, not limiting site activity just because you're not logged in (honestly I feel like this one hurts LW a lot more than it might realize), HUGE image filesizes, poor site optimization, something to give trinkets a use, pebble sinks, anything. Instead, the economy is out of wack, wolves are overpopulated, the flea market is the flea market, and the userbase is rather unhappy. Some of these things I'm willing to work with because I do know that they need time: forum revamps, messages revamps, new features, yeah, I get it, putting these things together can be a nightmare, and it can't happen overnight. I'm not asking LW to rush things out before they're ready. But things that I know could have been here from the start? Things that are absent because there was no foresight or lessons taken from other sites? I don't blame people for giving up on it, that really is frustrating. I don't want LW to be another FR, but I'd like if I didn't have to relive some of the avoidable frustration of early FR all over again.

That's why I think the game is stagnating hard. Veteran petsite players are watching it make the same blunders old petsites did despite all their warnings and all their suggestions, and new petsite players are finding out why those blunders were so annoying to deal with in the first place. I don't want LW to fail, but it should really have spent more time in beta, or at least changed more since beta.

(Somewhat unrelated, but I wanted to add that the achievements delay wasn't even posted to the front page, btw. So unless you looked for it, it makes it appear that LW hasn't had an update since July.)"

Honesty I agree with you there, I used to spend a lot of time on this site but it feels stagnant and no major changes have occurred to the site so im more of a "hop on do dailies and log off" player now

I was doing well for a while but the lack of ANY update for August, even a small one, made it easier to forget to log in and do anything.

I give some grace to the dev team as they are still small and LW is not at a place yet where I think it is fully supporting anyone income-wise, so they need to build up to a point of being full-time and that will take a while. I don't begrudge the dev team needing to be able to pay rent and have meals to fuel their brains for game coding work :) It is a marathon, not a sprint, and these things take time.

I am waiting to see what September update brings. The game is only a few months old but I do think August stalled a LOT of players. Daily play numbers went way down and even Discord suddenly got pretty quiet. My motivation to play does dip when there is nothing new to do. If there is no meaningful update in September I am afraid the downward spiral might speed up.

In other games I have sometimes wandered off for a couple of months and then come back to play a while, then wandered off again, then come back. I think it's pretty normal for online game play to be cyclical. During certain times when my workload IRL is bigger or it's the holidays or whatever, I will play less or not at all for a while, then check in and play again when things slow back down. Even when I've thought I was completely done, I will often come back months later to check in and see what's new.

as a brand new user coming from FR, i agree. FR is rich with detailed instructions on how exactly everything works, and LW was precisely the opposite...the instructions that exist do not cover most of the nuanced questions a new player has, and it's bad enough i was nearly deterred from the site completely, because the lack of good instructions made me feel too stupid to use a silly rainbow wolf game. any time i play now, i find myself wishing that the site was more like FR, because it feels like someone got halfway thru making a petsim and gave up, whereas FR feels fully polished and complete and planned.

@foxbunny That is really down to FR having 10 years to iron out the kinks and listen to player feedback. However...

As a 10 year veteran of FR, who persevered through the first cripplingly lag filled months on FR, the difference in these opening months is stark. It was a gamble whether you could even get on FR in the beginning, much less bond with a familiar or use the coliseum.

Yet, dragons were always in high demand, gems were easy (arguably easier than treasure) to get, the forums were bustling with activity all the time. It was fun and engaging in a way LW has never been to me, despite having an arguably rockier and much more problem filled start.

While FR has a model that can be copied, it still took it years to get where it is - things take time to be made...just because something is good after 10 years doesn't mean something new can just copy it and be just as good without that time to develop. Yeah this month was "dead" but clearly they needed this month to work on things so that next month we can have an update. No matter how much you ask for something, the team has to take that and then go through management then devs and then budgeting and then a timeline of work - it all takes time, its a long process. There's still more things to "do" here, whereas FR just has flash games; at least this site incorporates your wolves into your daily activities

And I've played FR since year one, and throughout the years I've only grown to dislike FR's direction, but I know it clearly is a successful site, but that took years to establish. I expect most of this first year to be stagnant while they work on things, yet they already plan to implement an achievement system soon; FR took 10 years to do that. This game has so much potential, even a few slow months won't change that. You're welcome to leave, but I doubt this site is going downhill

I just wanna hop in and point out that FR is a much larger site with a much larger team, and comparing the two sites is inherently going to put LW at a disadvantage bc it's much more indy/small in terms of its ability to update and fullfill requests!

obvi as players, if you're going to choose one or the other to spend your time on, go with whatever site makes you happier! not here to say your thoughts aren't valid or anything (LW has plenty of issues), but I think that there is an issue here that people coming in do think this is another FR and inevitably, yeah, it's gonna fall short by a long shot from that perspective!

The biggest issue, regardless of how long other successful sites took to get off the ground, is that the devs simply won't communicate.

I'm all for being patient with new devs or a small team. However I really begin to lose interest when the devs themselves barely say anything and barely make noticable changes. It makes it really hard for me to believe that the devs are deeply invested in getting the site into a better place, or that they're invested in the negative experience of their players.

I was in the crowd of assuming that we would get some of update this month besides telling us something was delayed. I even asked as much on the announcement topic and never got a response.

I wasn't around when FR first launched but I would be interested to know from those who were, if the level of communication was the same as LW.

Edit: That isn't to say that I would find it any less of a problem. It's just weird to say in some aspects that FR had years to learn from their mistakes and how we can't criticize LW for things FR already successfully does.

That's true in some aspects, obviously FR was not the site it is now at launch and took years to get there. But there are so many things that FR did wrong or were poorly received early on and I strongly believe that new and upcoming pet sites SHOULD look to FR to learn from early possible mistakes.

Like not communicating appropriately with your userbase and not having all purchased auctions have to be a claimable mail item...

I am interested in Lorwolf and I do believe that it has potentials.

Regarding communication, I do believe that such criticism is understandable; although I can somehow understand that the dev team may have a rough time irl (especially with the drama that happened pre launch)

If they have made upgradable things to rely on moonstones so they can earn money for maintaining LW then honestly? It is a very bad move; my advice? As an starter, rely on cheaper hosting providers if cost is a problem.

It was slightly disappointing to realize that Lorwolf uses Azure let alone Windows and .NET for the backend. I used to work for a few web hosting providers in past and I have seen providers where they provide good end servers for DIRT cheap. They could even install Windows (if the code can work, then for god's love move to Linux, it will remove a signifant cost from you guys!) on it and let the code run, you can even customize what things the server can use etc leaving them more freedom.

One more important thing is that they NEED to optimize this website. I have my internet drained over just visiting this website. They need to compile the images of wolves in backend, crop them etc then display to users (if this is a problem for the servers then as I previously mentioned, you may have lesser problems if you move to a different hosting provider)

The site is very, very new and while I understand that not having an update for August is disappointing they've already made big progress, informed us that there would be a delay and are hiring new team members. Gave us a general report on what is being worked on and they did tell us that things were delayed in August.

I remember when I joined Dappervolk, the missteps on that website were significantly worse then not updating people for a month.
Is still a lot less bad then almost a year full of broken promises. We only have one programmer and one main site artist, Flight rising main staff on board.

One of the problems I think whenever one of these new sites come out especially if currency exchange is allowed from one site to another is this moment where the honey moon period of the site being super brand new passes and the supporters decide to liquefy everything and leave.

As for the issue of chatting in the forums, It's a hit or miss. Having a discord does cause less members to be active on the forums for general chatting and I do like the engagement in chatting on site. Trying to be responsive instantly can be a bit daunting for me.

Either way, feel free to do what ever you think is best. But with a team this tiny there's bound to be bumps in the road.

Just popping by to say that things have been quiet while the Dev Team keep working away on background work, such as bug fixes.

As communicated in the Achievements Delay, the Dev Team look forward to sharing more information with you as we approach September. (September 1st is tomorrow!)

Your feedback, suggestions and bug reports are essential to the Dev Team, with the Site Staff regularly reading and organising our community's thoughts, hopes and frustrations.

With the Site Staff growing with the addition of Lorwolf's two new artists and coder, who came on board in June, the Dev Team aim to address concerns outlined in the Suggestions forums, but these will take time, and they are unable to give end dates for or reveal planned solutions that may change over the course of development. But be assured there's a lot of hustle and bustle going on behind closed doors.

The most significant resource the Dev Team needs now is time, and for the team's health, they must plan and prioritise accordingly to what is manageable without burning themselves out.

Thank you for your patience and understanding. We are monitoring this thread in the meantime.