Quote:
Originally Posted by stormlord
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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 years only 50,000 subscribers were gained - a mere trickle compared to pre-2001. 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.
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You're focused too much on growth rates. At some point, it will plateau and that's what the chart demonstrates. If you're only focused on rates, a movie has it's greatest growth on opening weekend and it's downhill from there. I wouldn't call that a failure of that particular movie. If it stays level, that's an anomoly. I would think an MMO having a plateau of 3 years is quite successful as that is sustained revenue. Believe me, 50K sub gain per year is still substantial revenue (not sure if it was $10 or $12 but assuming $10/month, that's 500K/month or 6 million/yr extra for no addition capacity neeeded?). SOE knew that EQ would peak and began development on their sequel during this cycle. It's probably the reason why SOE milked us with 2 expansions per year during this time adding an extra $50 per account. Another famous MMO decided to cancel their sequel and let their product stagnate and surprisingly, it still grew, reaching its peak around the same time as EQ.
I tried almost every single MMO during this era but after this, if an MMO was older than 6 months, I just would never go in. Why? I felt current players would have too much advantage over me. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way and it.
I understand the trend analysis you're trying to make but the growth rate is not an indicator of the quality of play or dissatisfaction of current subscriber base. The statistics merely show that EQ had met its saturation point and you would not attract any new players to this genre.