Originally posted by He Who Has No Name:

Not every game needs to be a MOBA pubfest with gamewide character progression that is centrally tracked and balanced for every server everywhere.

Valheim is a game about death, and overcoming it. Death is an experience best shared among friends... much like a dedicated Valheim server. Some gracious people may leave servers open to random people, but by and large, those you are playing with are supposed to be there because you know them.

This is what games used to be like before Web2 and the dark times - back when games looked and played the way Valheim is designed to look and play. And frankly, it made for better games.

Death is an experience best shared among friends... Hope you're not speaking from empirical experiences >:D While I can appreciate that the sentiment is personal, not everyone gets to experience death among friends. Or, more practically, not everyone gets to know someone who has a Valheim server where they can go crash a longboat into a serpent while everyone else aboard is taking a bathroom break and then have to explain why all their gear is gone.

Yes, it's a social thing. And along that same corollary, social things aren't necessary engraved in stone. It can simply mean whoever is there at the time.

Take a cruise trip, for example. Most of the people there don't know each other. But they share the social experience. They're there for that social experience. The social experience is the reason why they booked the ticket instead of watching some VR tourist vid. Or maybe they did that too, but they still booked the ticket. That's what the internet has done for gamers; you don't have to be banging their sister to play a multiplayer game with them. So why book a ticket on Valheim Advendures?

Again, I pose the question. How does Valheim progress beyond the very nordic, closed-off 10-person private server? Or does it? That's really the core of my question: does this get anywhere beyond some cliquey chums with a dork friend who knows how to host a server?