There are currently 22 worlds with a total of 97 openings. In addition, there are 9 more worlds that will roll over in the next 5 days. In the last few weeks, worlds with 3 or less openings are filling within a month. However, worlds with 4 or more openings are making no progress at all in filling. A few of those have been sitting idle for several months.

How about reducing the total number of worlds by one (or more)? Here is what I propose:

Totally shut down the world with the most openings which is currently Field of Dreams with 13. This naturally may upset some of the 19 owners still in that world. As compensation, WIS would not only refund the season they currently have tied up in the world but also give each owner 1 additional free season. At a minimum, the 2 additional seasons should be an incentive for the owners to stay active in the other worlds they are in. Best case, some of the owners use the 2 additional seasons as reason to join another world.

WIS may balk at giving out 19 free seasons but a world sitting idle makes them no money at all. In the long run, having fewer worlds that fill quickly is better for the WIS bottom line than having several worlds sitting idle for long periods.

Update: 17 more worlds roll over in the next 10 days. WIS is going to have to do something soon or the situation will go from bad to worse to critical.

It does seem like mission impossible to fill these open spots.

Hypothetically, let’s say I have Atlanta in a dying world. How hard would it be to take my team, intact, and move it to an available franchise in a world with only a couple openings. It’s seems the worst part of closing a world a lot of times is losing your team. You would still lose history, but could at least keep your team. Just transfer all players and coaches under contract. Would that even be possible?

Posted by bekses6 on 7/10/2023 8:43:00 PM (view original):
Hypothetically, let’s say I have Atlanta in a dying world. How hard would it be to take my team, intact, and move it to an available franchise in a world with only a couple openings. It’s seems the worst part of closing a world a lot of times is losing your team. You would still lose history, but could at least keep your team. Just transfer all players and coaches under contract. Would that even be possible?

They have merged 2 dying worlds together to make 1 new world with the remaining owners keeping their current teams so moving 1 team may be possible.

I think this is probably a good idea in the long run....my thought was to re-do michaelarmy's World Rankings and use those to figure out which worlds to suggest closing

World merges do seem to help get things moving but adding users via marketing or incentives would be a better long term solution. Not sure if it would actually happen.

Posted by yumen442 on 8/5/2023 2:32:00 PM (view original):
World merges do seem to help get things moving but adding users via marketing or incentives would be a better long term solution. Not sure if it would actually happen.

I guess I should have clarified…my persona opinion is that these two things together (some world mergers and marketing) would be the best course of action going forward

if mergers could be conducted in such a way as not to destroy the history of the surviving franchises I think a lot more people would be in favor of doing them when they are necessary.

One of the best things about this game is the fact that hbd user career stats and the player career stats are retained. Once a world rolls over, it's gone. It's as if you're starting from scratch with the world. Agree with gorshar.

And how hard could it possibly be to archive the data?

retaining current owners should be priority #1 than marketing to increase new owners.

Will have more light to shed when bruinsfan911 and I finish updating the world rankings, but All the Way Mae and 7Mantle7 have a lot of openings (9 each), as does Curt Flood (5), and none of them are exactly competitive leagues.

As I'm cataloging worlds, on average there are 3 teams in 4 seasons that lose 110+, in Curt Flood there have been 15 teams! On the flip side, the worlds have averaged 4 teams winning 110+, but they've had 12 in the last 4 seasons. That explains why they have the largest (by a large margin) of run differential between the top 3 teams and the bottom 3. Nearly half the owners in the league also miss their division by more than 25 games - a World record 48 times, the world average is 32.

All the Way Mae has seen 34 teams turn over in 4 seasons, there's 32 owners in a given season (128 over the course of 4 seasons); that's more than a 25% turnover rate.

As someone who blogs for a world, I'd absolutely hate if they merged Cobbfather. I've done extensive backlogging of their history to cover it within the blog, not only for comps for fun to look back at records. So I completely understand being attached to your league for some of those members.

To clear up almost all the problems with HBD, let a world have the option to start the season without being filled, (like college basketball). In addition to that, have attendance. That would allow the owner to know how he or she is doing as a GM/Manager. And a game changing concept would have teams being able to generate money through tickets and televised games. Tickets would be for home games and tv would be for away games, (as in soccer). If the owner can't make a profit after 3 or more season, they're fired. That will force owners not to be bottom dwellers for several seasons in a row. That would solve type 2 tanking where owners try and get the best draft pick and keep a low payroll to make budget transfers so they can make 30 million dollar bids on IFA's.....No more mergers, no fudging seasons and fast rollovers every time. Can always have an AI run franchise replaced during the regular season.