while haven will always hold a special spot with me it truly is a sack of **** compared to salem, i started playing again the day before yesterday so i can kill a bunch of newbs during the temporary population boost (blame burginghams cry post for inspiring me)
game is dated and old compared to salem, with a top end rig and a rare moment of low ping the game is still super choppy.
haven is as a rule rocking a 3+ second lag delay, sometimes far worse. the rubberbanding achieved through normal gameplay is enough to induce seizures, in spite of the lag being "fixed" months ago.
combat system is absolutely laughable compared to salems more twitch/skill based version. end game in haven or a few days after launch once folks had swords if you move you die basically. that coupled with the whole tedious micromanagement of speed/defense/attack/initiative where you literally stand there for 15 minutes trading moves to get through your opponents defense bar until one of you gets hit with a 10 seconds lag spike or a half dozen backup zergs arrive.
the new(er) curiosity system prevents solo's or small groups from advancing at even half the rate of a large zerg group, previously during the days of bucket grinding you could still powergame more than the other guys and stay with the curve that way. now everyone is in the same boat of dragging ass waiting for their curios to finish while the zergs spawn 200 fishing bots to gather plaice/perch and dump it all into one guy so he can find edelweiss etc within the first 2 days, same with bears and strength, because of this zergs have mid range steel already.
havens node system is retarded, if you dont find high quality (in salem the equivalent would be a 50%+ mine) water/clay/dirt you are *****, again caters to zergs and without high end resources you are not going to do ****.
everyone has a palisade up within 2 days of starting since it takes as much time to build as a stick fence in salem, everyone will have a brick wall in 2 months. this means you have to build a ram (aka waste claim) and hope nobody destroys it for 24h if you want to attack/raid anyones base at all, the new lose a hit point for every scents crap is ridiculous as well. it takes hours to regen hp with low purity cotton/leeches.
bugs out the ass, duping bugs, wall breaking bugs, wall ujumping bugs, combat bugs, teleporting bugs, russians crashing the server when things dont go their way. it never ends.
i could go on, but there is no point. suffice to say playing haven for a few days then hopping into salem is sort of like the eyebleach effect one recieves when first gazing upon.........

and after.,,,,,,,,,
