Originally posted by Aerowyn

yea all these games will have dropoffs especially with how many of them are getting released and how similar so many are... just depends how big the drop off is.. you can see on that graph just how massive the AoC and WAR dropoffs were compared to other games.

Rift is really the interesting one.  AoC and WAR its easy to attribute their dropoffs due to poor quality.  But Rift was high quality.  While its dropoff isnt as severe as AoC and WAR, it currently has only 6 active (and 10 permanent low population) servers in the NA, down from 58 at launch.

I think a lot has to do with the 'game starts at endgame' mentatilty Trion has with it (which they have publicly stated thats how they feel).  People dont get sucked in along the way and lose the attachment.  Its also a non-immersive experience.  The way an atmosphere can suck you into a game is very underrated.  Its one of the reasons why TSW is refreshing, the atmosphere is amazing.

Originally posted by Isometrix

The only reason TERA is failing in my opinion is because of its pricing model. It asks full price + a subscription fee in a time where multiple triple-A MMOs are free to play or buy to play, when it cannot hold a candle to their quality. Your complaints are all valid, but they all become invalid when the game is free to play.

I'm pretty sure they know they released a product that won't hold peoples interest that long. I'd say they're just cashing out on the true fans, keep an eye on when those subscriptions start falling off and then go free to play. 

It's just not good enough to justify the cost.

In that case TSW and TOR are both doomed.

Originally posted by teakbois

Originally posted by Aerowyn

yea all these games will have dropoffs especially with how many of them are getting released and how similar so many are... just depends how big the drop off is.. you can see on that graph just how massive the AoC and WAR dropoffs were compared to other games.

Rift is really the interesting one.  AoC and WAR its easy to attribute their dropoffs due to poor quality.  But Rift was high quality.  While its dropoff isnt as severe as AoC and WAR, it currently has only 6 active (and 10 permanent low population) servers in the NA, down from 58 at launch.

I think a lot has to do with the 'game starts at endgame' mentatilty Trion has with it (which they have publicly stated thats how they feel).  People dont get sucked in along the way and lose the attachment.  Its also a non-immersive experience.  The way an atmosphere can suck you into a game is very underrated.  Its one of the reasons why TSW is refreshing, the atmosphere is amazing.

Rift is a great game but just too similar overall to all the other themepark clones put out in the past. Once you have done the basic gear grind raiding or PVP warzone gear grind once before it gets stale unless the game really has some fresh ideas to add into the mix.

few months ago i made a post about this game... and all ppl were bashing me! Now you see the results and it will get worse with the GW2 release...

Originally posted by PsyMike3d

few months ago i made a post about this game... and all ppl were bashing me! Now you see the results and it will get worse with the GW2 release...

Excuse me...Who are you?  Oh, one of a hundred people who have made a post about TERA?  Ok...What's your point?

Originally posted by Aerowyn

Rift is a great game but just too similar overall to all the other themepark clones put out in the past. Once you have done the basic gear grind raiding or PVP warzone gear grind once before it gets stale unless the game really has some fresh ideas to add into the mix.

If I listed the top 10 things I liked about Vanilla WoW, I dont think there would be more than 1 or 2 of them that made it into Rift.  Rift seemed to build there game around the WOTLK endgame model of WoW as a starting point and tweaked it from there.  Basing endgame around gear treadmill is a bad concept, as is strict raid tiering.

Trions actual coders though, they do fantastic work.  I would prepay on the spot if they announed a Trion MMORPG with someone like Raph Koster in charge.

Originally posted by PsyMike3d

few months ago i made a post about this game... and all ppl were bashing me! Now you see the results and it will get worse with the GW2 release...

Yep, because GW2 will defenatly not have huge drop offs a few months later /sarcasm

OP, i'm not playing TERA, but this is to be expected. It alwasy happens with any game. I myself wonder what can be done to stop it, if there is even a solution at all.

Originally posted by PsyMike3d

few months ago i made a post about this game... and all ppl were bashing me! Now you see the results and it will get worse with the GW2 release...

When Diablo 3 launched our server lost about 30% of its active players - literally.  Then four weeks after launch our server lost another 30-40% of its active players.  We are literally down to 1-2 active guilds who are running the end game instances (I'm in officer in one of them).  Each week we have players leaving for another server or leaving the game.  My friends list of 25+ players is empty every evening I log in.

When GW2 launches in two months...Tera will lose 50% of its active players left.

Originally posted by FredomSekerZ

Originally posted by PsyMike3d

few months ago i made a post about this game... and all ppl were bashing me! Now you see the results and it will get worse with the GW2 release...

Yep, because GW2 will defenatly not have huge drop offs a few months later /sarcasm

OP, i'm not playing TERA, but this is to be expected. It alwasy happens with any game. I myself wonder what can be done to stop it, if there is even a solution at all.

GW2 will of course have a drop off rate, but the issue is once most players leave an MMO they don't go back.  Everyone who has left Tera hasn't come back.  When players leave for GW2 they won't come back.  So, the bleeding continues.

It will stop once they put a F2p bandaid on it.

Originally posted by FireRunner

Originally posted by PsyMike3d

few months ago i made a post about this game... and all ppl were bashing me! Now you see the results and it will get worse with the GW2 release...

When Diablo 3 launched our server lost about 30% of its active players - literally.  Then four weeks after launch our server lost another 30-40% of its active players.  We are literally down to 1-2 active guilds who are running the end game instances (I'm in officer in one of them).  Each week we have players leaving for another server or leaving the game.  My friends list of 25+ players is empty every evening I log in.

When GW2 launches in two months...Tera will lose 50% of its active players left.

Originally posted by FredomSekerZ

Originally posted by PsyMike3d

few months ago i made a post about this game... and all ppl were bashing me! Now you see the results and it will get worse with the GW2 release...

Yep, because GW2 will defenatly not have huge drop offs a few months later /sarcasm

OP, i'm not playing TERA, but this is to be expected. It alwasy happens with any game. I myself wonder what can be done to stop it, if there is even a solution at all.

GW2 will of course have a drop off rate, but the issue is once most players leave an MMO they don't go back.  Everyone who has left Tera hasn't come back.  When players leave for GW2 they won't come back.  So, the bleeding continues.

I think some players will come back but I'm not sure if it will be enough to keep them. I personally feel that TERA's combat is the best at the moment but I can probably list a lot of issues that plague the end game.

Actually i saw it coming considering the features at launch:

- pointless owpvp (and the fanboys said "it's fine the players will just pvp like crazy because it's fun we don' t need objectives!)

- free ganking (1 player is happy 10 other players get frustrated)

- fast leveling grind, slow endgame grind (a killer combo)

- rng enchanting

- incredibly small pve endgame (wtf no raid?)

- no battlegrounds (a suicide)

This was the perfect plan for a trainwreck: so i'm not really surprised

Originally posted by silvermember

 

Aion a few years ago took a long time to hit level 50, i remember it taking me about 2 months to hit 50, after level 45 it took me pretty much a week to gain a level. How did that help the game? the answer is, it did not the sub dropped significantly. The point being, very few people enjoy grinding to level up, because most MMORPG are set up in such a way that pretty much make leveling a race to endgame. WoW created a MMO population were ENDGAME is the point of the game and until that attitude is removed from players, slowing leveling will always be perceived as bad. Anothing thing to add is tht in most games there really isn't any incentive to not rush to the end, because everything punishes you for staying as a low level.

This is a VERY good post.

Back in the early 2000'games could have a long leveling stage because there was almost no competition and the mmorpg genre was only starting. The players were of course more forgiving.

It's not that the games were more difficult... they were just more timeconsuming. And since there were very few options players had to accept the months of grind.

Nowadays we have options TONS of options.

You make a game that requires months to reach max level? People leaves in droves because they don't like to grind and there are so many new games out there to try!

So you must balance your leveling timing.... too slow is bad and too fast is bad too!

Tera was really too fast. The primes were at cap after 2-3 days, regular rushers after 1 week, normal players after 2-3 weeks. In one months even most of the slowest casual was 60.

And they suddenly were exposed to the hilariously small "endgame".

The last underlined sentence is quite interesting. Why players rush to endgame anyway? Because in a gear based game the "real game" starts at cap. Maybe it's stupid but that's how it works. And if you have content you can only play at cap of course players are going to rush.

And Tera had yet another issue on PVP servers: gankers. Since the game is a gankfest the players feel the need to rush to max level because they don't like the idea of being oneshotted in owpvp.

Anyway Tera is down to 4 servers in Korea and they are starting a F2P (max level 50) server today.

In Japan it's not even dead... it's rotting.

In Europe Frogster killed the game in 1 month. That was amazing. Tera already had its shortcoming as a game... having an horrible publisher like Frogster was really overkill.

NA Tera is bleeding? Well it's actually the place where Tera is doing best at the moment. 

For me what kills it is THE COMMUNITY... some of the worst chat I have ever seen. Think WOW barrens with lots of foul language and racism. I think I'm out on next sub up.

Originally posted by teakbois

Originally posted by FireRunner

 

1. Lack of basic guild features.  Guilds have no officer chat and that makes it hard for officers to communiate and coordinate.  

 

 

 

I wasnt aware of this.  A game thats 18 months old at this point without officer chat?  Even SWTOR launched with officer chat, didnt it?

When Aion launched didn't it take longer than the more recent (at the time) mmos to reach cap, and this was one of the many complaints?  Seems the companies can't win for losing.

Originally posted by jmcdermottuk

I'm not disagreeing with the OP but in regards to point 5.

 

Has there been any MMO in recent years that took someone 2-3 months to hit the level cap? I can't think of any. It seems to be a common failing in MMO's over the last 4 or 5 years that 2-3 weeks to max level is standard. I know not everyone agrees with this point of view and like getting to max level quickly but I think it's sad that all anyone thinks of these days is "endgame".

I don't think the real issue is how fast the leveling curve might be, but rather the same old raid / instance runs ad nauseum they keep shoving down our throats as if there couldn't possibly be any other type of end game or at least give us legitimate diverse paths for end game content.

Only lasted 2 weeks playing the game. Its just not my type of game but it should have launched as a Free To Play.

For all intents and purposes, the game IS F2P at this time, if you want it to be.  just bought a chronoscroll for 1750 I -kid-you-not (Dragonfall).  Of course someone must have bought that month - so long as that someone is not me, idc - but it literally took me two days of checking the ah on log in and log out to make that much gold.  The benefit is that there's no character limit, no inventory space limit, etc etc.

Now that I have the system running and 4 scrolls in the bank -  I'll probably move the sub money to try tsw for a month maybe two, see how that fares.

annnnnnnnnddddddd I told you all so.

Even after playing 2 hours of the beta i posted on the shortcomings of this game, which would lead to its eventual demise.

But oh no!, the combat system was just too amazing and the graphics so wonderful that they alone would carry this game on for the next 5 years. I plainly pointed out that the lack of endgame and the pointless opvp would doom Tera.

Look at everyone now, ' No endgame!, We want battlegrounds!, It's a gear grind!, We need a reason to pvp!'.  It was obvious from the start that all these things would be a problem, but due to the rose tinted glasses all fanboys wear no one was having any of it.

Also the cash shop and chronoscrolls. The game is pay to win. You can but a horse which you can use form level 1, so enhancing your xp speed over other players, which is clearly (by your own definition) pay to win. On an opvp server, reaching max level more quickly is a huge advantage.

As mentioned you can buy all your gear with gold. So just buy some gold/sell a chronoscroll and just buy all your equipment instead of those pesky dungeon runs where you arn't even guaranteed the item.

It was a recipe for disaster from the very beginning. How not make an MMO.

Originally posted by Teekay

annnnnnnnnddddddd I told you all so.

Even after playing 2 hours of the beta i posted on the shortcomings of this game, which would lead to its eventual demise.

But oh no!, the combat system was just too amazing and the graphics so wonderful that they alone would carry this game on for the next 5 years. I plainly pointed out that the lack of endgame and the pointless opvp would doom Tera.

Look at everyone now, ' No endgame!, We want battlegrounds!, It's a gear grind!, We need a reason to pvp!'.  It was obvious from the start that all these things would be a problem, but due to the rose tinted glasses all fanboys wear no one was having any of it.

Also the cash shop and chronoscrolls. The game is pay to win. You can but a horse which you can use form level 1, so enhancing your xp speed over other players, which is clearly (by your own definition) pay to win. On an opvp server, reaching max level more quickly is a huge advantage.

As mentioned you can buy all your gear with gold. So just buy some gold/sell a chronoscroll and just buy all your equipment instead of those pesky dungeon runs where you arn't even guaranteed the item.

 

It was a recipe for disaster from the very beginning. How not make an MMO.

The combat in TERA is still amazing and OWPVP is still fun.

I sold a Chrono Scroll and used the gold to enchant my gear only to fail every single time so those Pay to Win Chrono Scrolls sure worked for me.

The Vanarch Mount is faster than the cash shop one and I can use it at Level 1. Overall the game is okay. The PVE end game is definitely lacking big time.