Quote:
Originally Posted by calaxa
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Storm,
I'm saying you misread the chart. EQ leveled off in 2001 with it's peak subscriber rate in 2004-2005. Look at the chart again. It basically held steady at 450K-500K sub during the years 2001-2005. This actually coincided with Sony press releases. After that, they kept their mouth shut as to how many subs they had. The dropoff didn't occur until 2005. You must have been looking at a different line. I played well into this era and perhaps many of you guys left but there were true newbs still entering into the fray. There were many boxxers appearing increasing the overall sub rate and many returning players to check out the new expansions. I dabbled in other MMOs during this time as well but kept my accounts on EQ one year after I left (accidentally actually as I had forgotten to cancel and paid the year in advance).
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You seem to only care when the active subscriptions go down, but not what the rate of active subscriptions is in a positive direction. The rate matters, not whether it's plus or minus. It's a sign of what's going on underneath. Unfortunately, we're not privy to the details, but this gives us hints. When the rate decreased, that was a sign that active subscriptions were going in a negative direction. What happened in 2001 and in the years that came after was a sign of bad things. A trend.
In mid 2001 and after, barely enough people were coming back from a break or buying the game to try it out to make up for people who were leaving or taking a break to make a positive gain. When you see the trend, you see that less and less people were coming back from a break or coming into the game for the first time. It was so small that for 2.5 years only 50,000 active subscribers were gained - a trickle compared to pre-2001 gains.
Between 2001 and 2004, it's hard to say whether new players or old players were coming into the game to replace those who left, but what we can say is that there were less and less of them.
Underlined that because it's the important part and ties into the thread.