Are the days of our beloved private servers over?

[Liam]

Although this is a subject that has been brought to light many times now, let's dig a bit deeper.

Has anyone else noticed this? Is the community too divided?
Perhaps we're all much older now and don't have as much time or interest as we once did.
Maybe the toxic side of the English community has driven people away... A bit like video games where there are 'casuals' and there are 'pros'.

Is there anything we can do? Could there be a change that increases activity? Is it too far gone? Are people too afraid of change? Do friendship groups really run these servers?

The last 10 years of the original Habbo Hotel has no doubt had a big impact.

For me, it's about having fun in my free time, when I don't realise I need it the most. Personally, I don't care about how many are online but the majority do. Quality over quantity.

So many servers come and go; one might get lucky with a high usercount but quickly die. You can do as many changes as you like, be the most unique hotel, but nothing will make a difference. People don't appreciate it in this day and age. Even if there's a lot of entertainment, the overall population spends more time AFK. All of this encourages newcomers to get bored very fast, and it just becomes a vicious cycle.....

I'm very interested to hear what people have to think even if it may be obvious why things are different now, but please keep it on-topic and try to be positive!

Cheers.

 

[Puffin]

I mean it's not surprising at all, you get the same small group of extremely toxic people who drift from hotel-to-hotel, making it toxic on there just long enough to scare everyone way. You have the doxxers who everyone feels uncomfortable around but tolerate... then you have Hotel owners who feel like its necessary to attack another hotel because they think it's some kind of threat. Let's not forget the creeps who gaslight girls for their nudes! I'd say most of us are in our early to mid twenties at this point, if not a bit older but the shitshow that is English retros is literally a High School Drama.

I stopped caring about user counts a long time ago- I mean what of the quantity of users if the quality lacks? There are some really great people I've met through the years on hotels, friendships I could never replace. That, paired with the nostalgia of it all and the passion for the game I once had as a teenager are the only reasons I keep playing.

So honestly I'm cool with just being on a hotel with a small, tight knit community that becomes like a second family because I know , and have experienced first hand what being the "popular" hotel truly means.

 

[TheGeneral]

Everyone stuck with the same pile of shit. No innovation besides @Billsonnn nitro. (kudos btw! Should've sold it and made some $$ lmao).

Anyone with a good running hotel develops privately. Why contribute to a community that isn't appreciative anyways.

And this all reflect on activity on retros. Minimal effort just to earn some quick money by selling VIP / diamonds. People forgot why retros started at all? So you don't have to pay for anything and have all furniture / rares available

 

[Morohara]

Co-owned a hotel that went from 5-10 users to 40-50 users. (Youhab)

The community isn't divided, there just isn't really a place that makes users feel safe. "custom features" side of retros dont actually matter at all. We made people feel involved in the future of the retro such as the economy, discord features, catalog development. (We also talked to and engaged with users heavily)

Alot of hotels think that because they own it, it means that you decide how the hotel is operated or developed when it isn't the case its all down to the users which we focused on hence the stupidly quick growth. (Staff that caused drama or that were apart of drama were quickly removed.)

we dealt with the "toxic" people differently to other retros, we didn't take shit from anyone including the "doxers". Only one staff members information was leaked which was down to that staff member as she had told a well known doxer the information. (This also got dealt with as it stopped pretty quickly after the 2nd time.)

They can be revived but only really revived by a certain group of people, We grew the hotel very quickly and it could of carried on snowballing if it wasn't for internal decisions regarding me and the other owner.

Focusing on things like bringing the user into the development of the hotel allowing their input helps alot. Bringing in custom features. (We had custom mp3s, custom games developed by Puffin, and dealt with issues differently to other hotels.)

The custom eco also helped as we focused on a community that often gets ignored.

It all depends on the staff and the owners. We never advertised we just spread through word of mouth. We offered a community that was safe and aimed on the safety of users. (fully aware of the rumors regarding personal information being leaked which is absolute bullshit me nor Fred leaked any information it was all speculation and rumors.)

 

[RealCosis]

Co-owned a hotel that went from 5-10 users to 40-50 users. (Youhab.org)

The community isn't divided, there just isn't really a place that makes users feel safe. "custom features" side of retros dont actually matter at all. We made people feel involved in the future of the retro such as the economy, discord features, catalog development. (We also talked to and engaged with users heavily)

Alot of hotels think that because they own it, it means that you decide how the hotel is operated or developed when it isn't the case its all down to the users which we focused on hence the stupidly quick growth. (Staff that caused drama or that were apart of drama were quickly removed.)

we dealt with the "toxic" people differently to other retros, we didn't take shit from anyone including the "doxers". Only one staff members information was leaked which was down to that staff member as she had told a well known doxer the information. (This also got dealt with as it stopped pretty quickly after the 2nd time.)

They can be revived but only really revived by a certain group of people, We grew the hotel very quickly and it could of carried on snowballing if it wasn't for internal decisions regarding me and the other owner.

Focusing on things like bringing the user into the development of the hotel allowing their input helps alot. Bringing in custom features. (We had custom mp3s, custom games developed by Puffin, and dealt with issues differently to other hotels.)

The custom eco also helped as we focused on a community that often gets ignored.

It all depends on the staff and the owners. We never advertised we just spread through word of mouth. We offered a community that was safe and aimed on the safety of users. (fully aware of the rumors regarding personal information being leaked which is absolute bullshit me nor Fred leaked any information it was all speculation and rumors.)

I agree with morohara. This is the correct way to manage a retro

 

[Johno]

I came from running a hotel in 2012/2014 and had a good amount of users to break into the top 3 on "thehabbos" as it was, had a great staff team, a solid server, and personally took action on any threats towards staff or users from these "wannabe" idiots who join hotels to try and make them toxic.

There were a couple of brothers in the community at this time who made it their aim to scare mainly girls, using the old method of screen sharing on skype, ratting them, and trying to get them into sh!t but after a little research, we found these two were brothers, had a history of this type of sh!t and used to bully and blackmail them into doing what they wanted, during my research I found their parents owned a takeaway/restaurant. I had asked them a lot to just leave and leave the users alone but they would not, anyone they added on skype who did not do what they wanted got their internet booted (old skype resolver days). I found out they had been made threats to send pictures to a user's parents and school friends, so created a fake account, skype (signed in from a spare VPS) so even if they resolved it good luck and tricked them into falling for my own game as they always used Hidemyass VPN that has thousands of IP addresses and got one of them to take a selfie outside their parents takeaway, googled it and send a "question" via email in and got the IP of their actual takeaway business internet which used dedicated IP addresses, next time they started trying to intimidate one of the users with blackmail I sent them a message warning them to stop and what I had collected in research and they instead got mouthy and used the "i dare you" bs but suddenly they had an outage on the business internet on a Friday night at around 6pm (the busiest time) of people wanting takeaways, an hour later I had a message from their mother telling me they told her what was going on and they would not be using a computer for a long time and was sorry for the trouble and can we sort it. If i had been local she would have sent me a free supper

 

[Puffin]

Co-owned a hotel that went from 5-10 users to 40-50 users. (Youhab)

The community isn't divided, there just isn't really a place that makes users feel safe. "custom features" side of retros dont actually matter at all. We made people feel involved in the future of the retro such as the economy, discord features, catalog development. (We also talked to and engaged with users heavily)

Alot of hotels think that because they own it, it means that you decide how the hotel is operated or developed when it isn't the case its all down to the users which we focused on hence the stupidly quick growth. (Staff that caused drama or that were apart of drama were quickly removed.)

we dealt with the "toxic" people differently to other retros, we didn't take shit from anyone including the "doxers". Only one staff members information was leaked which was down to that staff member as she had told a well known doxer the information. (This also got dealt with as it stopped pretty quickly after the 2nd time.)

They can be revived but only really revived by a certain group of people, We grew the hotel very quickly and it could of carried on snowballing if it wasn't for internal decisions regarding me and the other owner.

Focusing on things like bringing the user into the development of the hotel allowing their input helps alot. Bringing in custom features. (We had custom mp3s, custom games developed by Puffin, and dealt with issues differently to other hotels.)

The custom eco also helped as we focused on a community that often gets ignored.

It all depends on the staff and the owners. We never advertised we just spread through word of mouth. We offered a community that was safe and aimed on the safety of users. (fully aware of the rumors regarding personal information being leaked which is absolute bullshit me nor Fred leaked any information it was all speculation and rumors.)

It's a shame Fred put the hotel in a Discord lockdown and banned everyone deemed 'toxic'
YouHab had a lot of potential and that just put the nail in the coffin :/
I played a lot of Hotels in between Hobo's closing and YouHab and I have to say that YouHab was the best managed hotel I've come across and these new hotel owners should be taking notes... just don't lockdown your hotel and require Discord verification lmao

 

[Morohara]

It's a shame Fred put the hotel in a Discord lockdown and banned everyone deemed 'toxic'
YouHab had a lot of potential and that just put the nail in the coffin :/
I played a lot of Hotels in between Hobo's closing and YouHab and I have to say that YouHab was the best managed hotel I've come across and these new hotel owners should be taking notes... just don't lockdown your hotel and require Discord verification lmao

Appreciate the kind words on the staff side of it, that was mainly me. The discord lockdown wasn't my idea i only wanted to lock certain channels inside of the discord that would require user verification. (this was after I had left.) Retros nowadays don't have the connection between staff and the users which was one of the old features that retros had back when @Johno ran his hence why retros were so big back then. If retros realised that one of the biggest things is clarity and non toxic staff members and staff that wouldn't just disagree and insult there users retros could potentially be revived.

 

[Joe]

"The good old days."

 

[Johno]

Appreciate the kind words on the staff side of it, that was mainly me. The discord lockdown wasn't my idea i only wanted to lock certain channels inside of the discord that would require user verification. (this was after I had left.) Retros nowadays don't have the connection between staff and the users which was one of the old features that retros had back when @Johno ran his hence why retros were so big back then. If retros realised that one of the biggest things is clarity and non toxic staff members and staff that wouldn't just disagree and insult there users retros could potentially be revived.

Most of my staff members gave me ideas but ran things like ROTW, left me to do the tech side and it worked well. Most staff did not understand the tech stuff but that was all good, they focused on the in-game keeping users happy and a fun community, I feel the trouble mainly started when retros started selling items, putting ads on the sites because then it went from a fun or learning project for most people into a business, when you bring money into something the fun goes and the ruthless attitude of "hurt my money" comes out so people started with hacking, ddossing and intimidating more.

If someone came to me, had a good tech understanding but did not have the finance to fund a good solid server on a decently protected setup I would think of partnering but would not look to earn from VIP or ads, just have it as a base for a laugh with people.

 

[webbanditten]

Another thing to consider is inclusion. The community at the moment has couple of "high performers" or "Rockstar developers" that are super toxic and doesn't seem to be inclusive of new Habbo enthusiasts joining. People need to respect each other, understand people are coming from different cultures, is on different levels of engineering skills. New comers also need to understand how to ask questions and show appreciation when other skilled engineers help them.
We are all here because we love Habbo in some way or another.

 

[lepos]

To keep it short, I feel like the dying wave is almost exclusive to the English community. Obviously other countries died out too but I still play Portuguese/Brazilian retros from time to time and even if they have the absolute shittest platform (dev wise), they still get hundreds of users and the AFK thing doesn't really happen, people just log off. English retros aren't fun, unless you're into drama.

 

[LeChris]

If hotels in the community learned marketing, I'm sure hotels would have far greater success vs pandering to the same group of < 100 people jumping hotel to hotel.

As for why the development community is dead, The real Habbo doesn't run ads anymore so the new generations are mostly unaware of Habbo or (rightfully) assume it's a super old game that won't be very fun. If there aren't new players, there won't be people very motivated to learn development.

Not to mention Builders Club made retros redundant so why look for them in the first place?

 

[Laynester]

If hotels in the community learned marketing, I'm sure hotels would have far greater success vs pandering to the same group of < 100 people jumping hotel to hotel.

As for why the development community is dead, The real Habbo doesn't run ads anymore so the new generations are mostly unaware of Habbo or (rightfully) assume it's a super old game that won't be very fun. If there aren't new players, there won't be people very motivated to learn development.

Not to mention Builders Club made retros redundant so why look for them in the first place?

@ the marketing thing, i truly believe if people advertised like hablush, with their own assets and custom logos and what not we would have a more attractive community, a lot of these hotels use copy pasted assets with these ugly ass logos and expect users to be attracted (not saying custom content is what makes a hotel, but it does help make your hotel look decent)

 

[InevitablyM]

Personally I've noticed in the last few years the retros have become more like small cliques of people only really focusing on each other vs building relationships with newer players. I've never run a retro, but I've been playing since the original classic habbo days and habbo just does not feel the same anymore.

 

[Roper]

Personally I've noticed in the last few years the retros have become more like small cliques of people only really focusing on each other vs building relationships with newer players. I've never run a retro, but I've been playing since the original classic habbo days and habbo just does not feel the same anymore.

I totally agree with this. This is the generation of the smart phone and social media. Habbo was an early social media site in its early days / prime. Generations change unfortunately.

 

[Bran]

Personally I've noticed in the last few years the retros have become more like small cliques of people only really focusing on each other vs building relationships with newer players. I've never run a retro, but I've been playing since the original classic habbo days and habbo just does not feel the same anymore.

that's unfortunately how hotel's have been for a very long time now

 

[TesoMayn]

Hopefully.

 

[Alpha92]

How could you make retro hotels business oriented?
Not VIP or Diamonds, something new.
Cryptos, NFTs, Networking, ..
This would give the retro community a big push.

I had an hotel and hosting back in 2012 and made good money for an 11 year old.
Now we have the possibilities of todays social media, with good content we can get the attention of millions.

 

[LeChris]

How could you make retro hotels business oriented?
Not VIP or Diamonds, something new.
Cryptos, NFTs, Networking, ..
This would give the retro community a big push.

I had an hotel and hosting back in 2012 and made good money for an 11 year old.
Now we have the possibilities of todays social media, with good content we can get the attention of millions.

When you were 11, Habbo still sold gift cards in stores and had millions of players. These days there's roughly 10,000 people in the entire community including habbo and retros.

NFTs and everything else don't offer value and retros don't survive long enough to create economies to encourage rares.

Most people who stay and play retros are also poor - why that is I'm not sure but link it to the idea vulnerable people are more likely to find habbo and stay in it

In short: There's no money to be made from the existing player base