As mentioned before: Variety

Being fantastic on one field isn't enough.

Better to be descent on several or all fields. (RP, pvp, pve, minigames, politics etc)

Overall is the game fun to play?

Yes...pay sub.

No....don't pay sub.

Interesting thread.

Of course one can only play older games for longer - after all nobody had the chance to play a "new" game for "longer" yet. :)

But it's a good question, just thinking about games where I know people that have played them for long years, it's a rare mixture. Just out of the top of my head: as diverse as WoW and Ryzom or as LotRO and EVE. For all of these games I've known people that played them for many years.

Now, what have WoW and Ryzom and LotRO and EVE in common? I couldn't tell.

Well, to get players to start playing is one, but to keep them around, i don't think "features", like housing or vanity, necessarily work. What i feel works is:

- Fun: Duh!

- Sandbox: Basically, a world that keeps changing because of player actions.

For themeparks that aren't like that, 1 or multyple of the following:

- Connection to the world: Making the players feel attached to their characters, their factions, the story and lore, and the general feel of the land tehir playing in. I actually think this is one of, along with others, reasons WOW is so sucessfull.

- Progression: Getting better gear, stats or cosmetic, or any level of progressive system to keep players hooked and making it harder to leave the game.

- Community: RL friends an people you get to know online. It really does work

- Very fast content update: Without player driven/created content, you must update it has fast has possible. Has long has there's fresh content, players may stay interested

- Fun, addictive gameplay: Very, very hard to pull off. By addictive gameplay, i mean the type of FPS, MOBA, etc that you just have pure fun. Unfortunatly, RPG have to focus less on pure gameplay in favor of world design, custimazation, and other elements.

What will encourage me to play/sub longer? Probably nothing could potentially make me stick with any game more than about a month.

Times have changed, and society is embracing change for better or worse... and quite literally gamers constantly want change regardless if its good or bad, just something new, ANYTHING. I'm not sure a single one feature or function could really hold the interest of generations to come who are constantly craving change. Social aspects to gaming always pull in some of the dynamics of human nature to allow for a constantly changing game.

I find it amusing though, how much the people here hate on "social games" that rely on having so many farmville friends or whatever, but have listed guilds, player housing, and raids (all socially motivated) as their must have feature list. Look at the direction Richard Garriott and SOE are going, maybe social is where its gonna be...

But back to the point, I don't care how many raids, guild houses, GvG, pvp, whatever you throw in a game, typically if you have already seen it before in a game, you won't be drawn in by a new game with the same gimmicks for more than 3 months. We are like zombies who crave change, CHAAAAAANGE....

Things that have been mentioned already, but for me it's:

- Vvariety of things to do, with housing a plus

- Tthe type of community playing

- Not overly end-game focused, with slower leveling

EQ2 had my sub for years until it became about daily quests, with long stays in SWG and DAOC before that.  These days LotRO has been providing my gaming fun for quite awhile.

Motivations vary from person to person, but mine are purpose, ownership, habit and hope.

Purpose: I need something to do that feels worth doing (some people call this "fun").

Ownership: I feel like I own something in the game (it's important to never read the legalese in the EULA as it will only spoil the mood)

Habit: *presses lever*

Hope: I need to feel the game has a future.  A developer heartbeat (that avoids using the word "soon"), some sort of priority list, the occassional expression of confidence that the game will be around forever and  that there will be other players there (even if I am a hermit, but that's another thread)

Group-centric play.

Regularly grouping creates better communities and causes you to become familiar with certain players..

So familiar...you begin to call them Friend.

I can't tell you how many lulls in gaming that I only stayed through because I enjoyed the people I was playing with, and further, enjoyed the community.

I made it through the last three months of TOC in WoW only because I genuinely enjoyed the friends I played with.

* that's not at all to say wow's grouping was good, just that the group I found was important to me. So I important that I continued to do raids I loathed.

Originally posted by KyleranRight off the top

Replay.  Encourage alt-itis, plenty of classes, races, piles of character slots, starting areas.

Not coincidentally, that means a lot of 'repeatable' options for player-designed content, too.

But we can assume that the "ultimate" MMO has every feature anyone's ever imagined.  Pile em on there, they all encourage players via variety, if nothing else.

The devil is in the details--you can't cram them all in at launch (but we'll never admit it, rawr!), what's going to wait?  Concentrate on "replay" before getting "play" right? Enormous error, as we've seen.

I'll go along with "social" (what others are trying to say when they err on 'group-centric').  Game's worn out for me, but I'll keep playing for years if the guild/friends are.

PvP and frequent content updates?

Originally posted by jazz.be

As mentioned before: Variety

Being fantastic on one field isn't enough.

Better to be descent on several or all fields. (RP, pvp, pve, minigames, politics etc)

Minigames should be used a lot more.  Not just characters doing fun ingame events but something as simple as card games in the local tavern.

One singular thing that would keep anyone happy period, is this:

A Dynamic World

This would fulfill pretty much everyone's desires, as you allow for everyone to have the ability to change the world around them, and if done correctly, takes the focus of content development off the developers, and allows them to focus on new tools and abilities for their players, as well as more diversity.  You can even themepark it a bit, but at the end of the day when the dev-implemented quests are done, people are able to play through the world how they want to.

Originally posted by lifesbrink

One singular thing that would keep anyone happy period, is this:

 

A Dynamic World

 

This would fulfill pretty much everyone's desires, as you allow for everyone to have the ability to change the world around them, and if done correctly, takes the focus of content development off the developers, and allows them to focus on new tools and abilities for their players, as well as more diversity.  You can even themepark it a bit, but at the end of the day when the dev-implemented quests are done, people are able to play through the world how they want to.

Unfortunately, that's a disaster in the making unless done very, very carefully.  First off, it's not going to make a lot of people happy because a lot of people, like the pro-groupers and the pro-permadeathers, are only going to be happy if they can force their playstyle on everyone else.  Unless their playstyle and only their playstyle is allowed, they're miserable.

Secondly, I'm really not comfortable with everyone being able to "change the world".  Sure, if it's limited to very small, insignificant things, then fine.  Have a house.  Put stuff in it.  Craft some stuff and sell it.  Do whatever you want in your house.  But if you start allowing people to create whatever they want out in public areas, it's going to be a disaster.  It's one thing for the devs to create a single, focused view, but quite another to allow a thousand people to create a thousand different views.  If you have to police it, it's no less work than just letting the devs do it all.

A sense of community. Without it a MMO gets boring fast as it's the only thing that is unique to the genre. Unfortunately to bring it back would mean the end of many solo-centric game play features. If developers give players absolutely no reason to interact they won't and you end up with a shitty single player experience with other players running around.

Bren

The real question is why "encouring players to sub longer" matters at all.

Most MMOs are F2P and there is no subs anymore.

I also don't see any wrong to have players unsub when there is no more content, and re-sub when new content comes out.

There are plenty of MMOs (and other games out there), it is not like players will be bored without playing their chosen MMO.

Speak only for myself:

1. Player's economy  - instead of gather X amount of tokens and exchange for everything from NPC

2. Great crafting system (SWG...)

3. Open world and meaningful housing

4. "Climate" - aescethics, music, ambient - see old p2p (SoA) Lotro

5. pro-community and pro-sever-society build mechanics

6. variety in gameplay - valid gameplay as a PvE or PvP player, crafter, explorer / gatherer, trader, etc

7. Less automatization - like no AH, or very high fee or limited to less expensive stuff AH,    no auto-magic press-button & be in instance things

8. Harder open world gameplay and steeper learning curve - no faceroll like nowadays

9. Seamless, big gameworld

10. Devs that don't cave in and change whole game dramatically like it frequently happens after 1-2 years

11. No cash shop, other RMT + devs fighting botters & exploiters

-Basically less I am reminded I am playing a game and less whole experience feel like a game - longer I play. 

[ PRO-TIP = 'cinematic-like experience like in Swtor feel totally like a game and do NOT immerse me ]

More on-rails, game-like (press button and play PvE & PvP instances) experience - shorter I play usually.

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Imho it will be extremly hard to make mmorpg will huge playerbase than will also remain sub / playing-continuesly for really long peroids of time.  Strictly speaking about mmorpg, not about other mmos - which are unknown terrain for huge productions.

Mmorpg playerbase  - is becoming more and more fragmented, majority of it alrady played mmorpg in the past and have their tastes.  It will also stop growing or it will even get smaller - many ppl will go to play other types of mmos or just non-mmo lobby games like MOBA's, etc

Think devs should stop dreaming of millions of players subbed for long-years, at least when we take only NA + EU into account.

If they want long-term - then think realisically about max. 300-500 k subs longterm.

Making casual games 'for everbody' will end up 9/10 times like Swtor, War, AoC, etc

I was going to write a list, but #1 turned out to be such a pivotal concept, I'm going to leave it at that.

1. Emphasis on guilds for multiplayer gameplay.  By forcing (encouraging) guild activity it is more likely that players will develop in game relationships (not talking about dating, btw).  When such relationships exist and interaction is an everyday occurance, it becomes more difficult for a player to leave the game due to not wanting to be cut off from those relationships.

I played Knight Online the longest because it was my first mmorpg, so it was completely new kind of gameplay to me. I can only guess that WoW was first mmo for many players and was also the reason why they played it the longest.

So I will bet on innovation. You are interested for a long time if it is something like nothing before. If it is to similar it will get boring fast, who wants to repeat the same thing over and over.

Perhaps the question should have been phrased "what things encourge people to stay that don't discourage them from playing in the first place"?

(a few of the suggestions I see here as ways to encourage people to stay are on my personal quit-on-sight list)

Enjoyable

Friends/community

Purpose

multiple aspects of the game to play