Interesting article - Player Life Cycle on MMO

[Jorael]

The Psychology of MMO's - Player life cycle

Interesting read, even if the examples are taken from a game we all love to hate...

Another interesting aspect is that, although Entropia Universe is an MMO, its lifecycle is huge compared to these other games.

While every one of us eventually gets bored and tired, so far, EU has a special spark as an MMO, which is due to its direct link to real life cash.

I wonder how long would it take for players to get bored of EU if it ran on monopoly money....

 

[Lighterthief]

its a very interesting article

and i agree with it, we all change as we play. its interesting to look at the different stages. i've been thru most of those stages and its a fact that the eager enthusiastic fanboys of today will be the bitter pissed players in a few years, thats the way of teh cycle i guess

i dunno if the real cash economy separates us from other games from a timing pov, i know plenty of peeps who have played wow for over 3 years and a couple of ppl who have been into eve for a couple of years. thats not wildly different to ppl here playing 5 years etc, but as a ratio of active players/time played i am sure eu is much much higher than other games due to the much smaller playerbase

of course the big difference is how we are tied in, as all our items have real value its actualy a clever way of keeping ppl in the game. it certainly makes leaving eu harder(and longer) than other games imo. they just cancel a subscription and we have to launch a sales campaign so the higher skilled ur avatar gets the more u are "tied in"

overall i think the content updates are a massive plus for eu. of course vus are a lot less frequent than they used to be(we were once told 2 per month). but still there are generaly a lot more updates than ur average subscription game

the flip side is player retention, while eu tends to hold players longer its retention rate is shocking, mostly due to the inacurate marketing imo, i honestly think if eu was marketed for what it is, instead of what it could one day be, then ppl woulnt leave as fast... or at least they would know what they were letting themselves in for when they arrive at pa... but thats another issue for another day

i love ur last comment tho, about monopoly money
makes me think maybe its not just the player content i mentioned, i know when i play poker with real cash or with play money my style of play is totaly different. so playing eu with play cash would sound great but prolly become pretty boring pretty fast

 

[DeeDee]

Nik Yee do a great work and there are tons of interesting articles on his site.

the DAEDALUS PROJECT: MMORPG Research, Cyberculture, MMORPG Psychology

 

[Lighterthief]

wow there are some real cool articles on there

a few issues i thought were unique to here seem to be regular mmo phenomonon, guild lifecycles and ppls reasons for leaving. different game, different devs, same problems... i guess a lot of it is just life in mmo's

 

[BrianMik]

I wonder how long would it take for players to get bored of EU if it ran on monopoly money....

Instantly for me There was a poll about this a while back as well.
Don't see myself ever leaving, hope to see you all ingame decades down the road.

- Sarge...EU Lifer

 

[Sirhc]

Good post Jor.

I find myself going through the different aspects of what was written in that article.

Maybe I am a glutton for punishment but the grinding aspects have yet to bore me in EU but I don't camp to often unless on CP and I tend to both hunt and mine and dabble in crafting/tailoring so there are always options to advance in EU. I have lots of mini goals in EU but the biggest challenge is finding ways to play as long as possible on your deposits and I think that is constant and a big part of what makes RCE work. Even subscription based MMOs eventually boil down to some black market buying and selling.

I will have to admit I am a bit biased when it comes to EU. I have yet to find another MMO that has the elements, community, and growth potential that I see in EU. While my day to days in EU can become a bit of grind with nothing new and useful to loot. I do see potential areas where I can bridge my real life skills and EU and make some ped if I so choose. I am just not sure yet if that is what I want to do.

I took a few steps back about a year ago and really looked at MA and EU. I made some serious decisions about remaining a part of this RCE MMO and asked myself as I did a few years prior to joining PE "What is it that you can remember when you were a kid that made you happy?" Video games was in the top 5 on my list of things I enjoyed. Being part of a World wide community who like Sci Fi and videos games is awesome IMHO. Its like finding out your crazy half baked ideas are not just your own and there are others all over the world who will discuss and share their own. While I am not as entirely optimistic about things all the time I "get" the enthusiasm that Neverdie shows for EU and I can see where MA might be heading with EU and I can see myself still being a part of it, even if I am still grinding Hogglos hoping for a MOD ML

 

[Jorael]

Yeah, we all have our grinding thresholds.

In EU, the grind is much more bearable due to the nature of the reward. Also, since you need to inject cash in order to be able to grind, you look at it in a much more serious way.

Most people stop calling it a grind, and call it daily hunt or daily mining trip.

Because the difference between coming to town with an inventory full of "toy" armor parts or with a hof in your pocket is big.

The casino feeling is also present, since when hunts / trips go bad, you feel compeled to inject more money and try again, hoping for that one big loot to tip the scale back to positive.

Because in a fake money game, if you go out a few times, kill hundreds of mobs and don't get that special item you need.... You get bored, feel the grind, and leave.

There's a fine line between easy drops and ridiculous massive grind. If drops are too easy to get, you get bored since its not a challenge. If it takes too many kills, you get bored since it never drops, aka no reward feelings.

Personally, even in EU at times, i felt the grind. And to top the sucky feeling it is, i usually had people on the area getting the loots while i got none. which made me frustrated and angry.

Can't escape that i guess, its EU.