I am surprised this thread did not generate any discussion.  Maybe long time onwers are starting to get burned out on HBD and welcome a several week break between seasons for 1 or 2 of their teams. 

I think branch rickey is a good world.  Perhaps they could merge with the next private world with plenty of openings.

By any rational metric, Branch Rickey is one of the better worlds in HBD.  (Setting aside the one big problem of openings.)

No teams that win 100+ games season after season.

Rules that prevent tanking, so there are no terrible teams or teams with super stacked MinL.

Active World Chat without stress or silly arguments.

Open to all levels of experience as long as you can show you know baseball rules well and have done your HBD homework.

I spend a lot of hours looking over worlds before deciding which ones to join. I learned in this forum how easy it is for a world to get unbalanced & stay that way.  Branch Rickey is free from those problems.

And yet it sits with the most openings. Unless there was some incident that gave the world a bad name before I joined, it's hard to figure how the world got to where it is compared to other worlds that I wouldn't want any part of if I was paid to run a team.

If WIS made us an offer that included shutting or merging the world, I'm sure most of the current owners would consider it.  I guess the risk is some of us would say we'd rather just have our money back and sit back and see how HBD fares for the next year before dedicating time and money to a new team.

I don't see WIS doing any advertising for HBD. They're in the same down economy as the rest of us. Only solution to that is marketing, which WIS doesn't seem to be doing.

Unless WIS steps up, I suspect Branch Rickey is the sign of things to come. HBD probably can't continue to live & grow counting on existing customers to add more & more teams.  WIS don't seem to have a business plan to handle fewer customers.  Don't know if that should be closing worlds or merging worlds.  They're losing money every day every world isn't active.

I would suck if Branch Rickey is shut or merged (at least for me).  But WIS has to do what they have to do to keep HBD a viable business or they'll have to shut it down.

Tufft brings up an excellent point.  I've been searching for a site like this ever since Lanke's fantasy basketball took a haitus in the early 1990's.  I stumbled on this recently when doing a search on Lanke's early last spring.  As many hours as I spend pouring over sports sites each week, I don't recall ever seeing an ad for WhatIf Sports.  I would have to believe there's more middle-aged folks like me out there that still haven't stumbled upon this site yet.  I'm about the only sports geek in my office but there have to be more elsewhere.  WIS needs to be able to market to the fantasy sports enthusiast (I won't call anyone else a geek to avoid offending them) that wants to take their passion to the next level.

I would like to hear from WIS on the current openings, and what plan they have in place to get these worlds filled. If you look at various worlds chat, many are offering incentives and looking to swap owners, for lack of better terms. The customers of the site should not be responsible for having to offer incentives to others so they can get their next season started. Although I do commend their dedication to their world. When I joined, 3 or so years ago, I did find the site because of an advertisement, but have only seen one advertisment since (MLB trade rumours, I think). It is very frustrating as a commish of a world that is rolling in 3 days that I will have to contend with 130 odd openings in other worlds. For starters, they need to stop opening new worlds. Second, they need to either do some serious advertising or start combining/closing worlds that have poor owner retention, historically. Perhaps I am looking at this too simply, but regardless WIS needs to do something.

I don't believe WifS has ever guaranteed that they will fill your worlds.   Back in the day, when I played SLB, you could create a theme world and you had to fill it.  It was a business model that worked well, YOU had to make YOUR world attractive to other WifS' members or it wouldn't fill, so I don't know why they would change it up for HBD.

In fact, in their "season wrap-up" email, they're pretty clear:




Season 19 of World Cooperstown has completed.

The Cleveland Hurricanes (Crump123) defeated the Monterrey Hammerheads (felix817) in the World Series to take home this year's championship.

Don't forget to renew your team for the upcoming year, if you haven't done so already. You have until 3 days after the World Series to do so or else your franchise is exposed to other users.You may renew for next season via the Franchise Center page which is available from the dropdown at the top of every Hardball Dynasty page.

Worlds will rollover to the next season between 72 and 96 hours after the completion of the big league World Series.

As the Private World's creator, it's still up to you to invite other users to fill any vacated franchises.  This season has a new password: "Lou Casian".  You may distribute this password to friends or by using the Invite link available on the World Center page within the Private Worlds section.

Good luck in future seasons -- your Dynasty is what you make it!

Agreed, I have never read a statement from WIS saying they would guarantee any world would be filled. However, they have played a significant part in the current situation, and need to begin to rectify it, however that may be.

In the last week, 17 worlds have filled and been scheduled.   That is more than 2 per day.   You do have the odd world like BRickey but I don't think the situation is as dire as it's made out to be. 

Maybe it's not dire but there are 6 worlds that have been open (not filled) for more than 2 weeks. Boston Tea Party has been open for 85 days...Maybe that is the one they should shut down.  It would only take shutting down 1 world to free up the current log jam assuming a majority of those owners used their free season to join a different world.

Let's not assume that.  Let's assume the majority of those owners become disenchanted with WifS BECAUSE they shut down their world.  So, instead of adding a team in another world, they drop all but their most stable of worlds as a pre-emptive strike.    Now you have dozens of worlds losing owners.   You can't assume what someone else would do.   But I can't imagine anyone who just had a world shut down joining another world that struggles to fill.

There are several worlds that only need 1 or 2 owners to get next season started.  If half of the owners from the closed world joined those worlds, 5-6 would start immediately.  The other half may be upset but it is better for WIS in the long run to shut down 1 world if it helps get multiple other worlds out of limbo. 

The worlds that need 1-2 owners will fill soon without shutting down a world.

I'm not against closing down worlds.   Probably because I don't join worlds that need 8-12 owners every couple of seasons.   But, if I spent 8-15 seasons building a team, I'm not going to be very happy if WifS shuts me down.    I paid my $25 and, if I want to sit there until 2078 not playing, I should be allowed to do so.   Unfilled worlds harm no one.   Upsetting a handful of owners because someone "thinks" another handful will join a different world makes no sense. 

I think there are some owners who get frustrated by their team's performance and decide to drop, or they drop because they don't know if their world will fill, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

. As such, I think it would prove helpful to get owners to renew earlier in the process.  Instead fo the $$ for 4th place and any $10 credit, maybe wifs could give a discount ($5??)if you renew in your world prior to the all-star game.  One, it lets commissioners see early what kind of turnover they might have, and it would improve wifs cashflow.  There also becomes a little peer pressure as you see your division mates renewing.