How long do you think MA will survive?

Nothing lasts forever - this we know. If Rome could fall, then we all can. And if Sparta could fall, then we're pretty much fucked.

So how long do you think MA can survive? Are we already now seeing the doom of this company? Are we seeing any signs in prices dropping on different items? LA:s loosing worth? There has been a lot of speculations about the CLD's and MA/FPC/whatever (how am I honestly supposed to keep up with the names? huh?) creating a trust fund just in case they need to declare bankruptcy. This, of course, are nothing but speculations - but how serious should we take them?

One might call this forum a place where a lot of whine exists, but one might also call it a forum where many, many players are very displeased with the game they have dedicated years to and a shitload of money. How long will these players stay loyal to a company they believe have completely fucked them over?

There are reasons, however, to why we stay, and it's not just because of the money we have invested in our avatar. This game has potential and perhaps MA is working towards it. It's not impossible, however, that MA just takes all the money from CLD and declares bankruptcy, but on the other hand, EU doesn't really have any competition out there but is one of a kind in what it is, thus giving it huge potential with the different planets searching the globe for more idiots like us who'll pay to shoot pixels.

Personally, I'm not sure what will happen - but I guess none of us are. If I were to guess I'd say that if the different advertisement campaigns from MA and the planet partners were to fail, we would start seeing the end of days for Entropia Universe.

What do you believe is the future for MA and the planet partners? Are we going to see any planet vanish because of lack of funds? Is MA going to declare bankruptcy within five years? What do you think and why?

What do you believe is the future for MA and the planet partners? Are we going to see any planet vanish because of lack of funds? Is MA going to declare bankruptcy within five years? What do you think and why?

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DRUNK PERSPECTIVE. ma will survive, in the long term. they own no planets as of right now and there only istrest is to bring in more players. it doesn't matter what planet. MA will always profit as long as 1 player plays. keep that in mind.

darkmatter2222 said:

DRUNK PERSPECTIVE. ma will survive, in the long term. they own no planets as of right now and there only istrest is to bring in more players. it doesn't matter what planet. MA will always profit as long as 1 player plays. keep that in mind.

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This is why they say: don't drink and write!

Ask the CEO of Arkadia studios or CEO of Planet Cyrene investing years of development and large sums of money. With business plans extending into 2013 an beyond. This game is unique an no its not going anywhere.

How many threads have there been like this?

Also the Planet Cyrene group had said they were prepared to function with a small number of players in the first 6-12 months. Then advertising. Don't worry about doomsday theories, the sky isn't falling, just play and have fun!

Few Scars said:

Ask the CEO of Arkadia studios or CEO of Planet Cyrene investing years of development and large sums of money. With business plans extending into 2013 an beyond. This game is unique an no its not going anywhere.

How many threads have there been like this?

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Yes, well, I never started one of them, so this one is special!

I get your meaning, which is why I am not saying EU is doomed. Of course it would be great if it lasted for decades to come. It is unique, as you so wisely laid it out, and that's the advantage EU has at the moment considering the many seemingly unhappy players.

Few Scars said:

Also the Planet Cyrene group had said they were prepared to function with a small number of players in the first 6-12 months. Then advertising. Don't worry about doomsday theories, the sky isn't falling, just play and have fun!

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Good news! Of course I, too, want the game to hold. I have put down enough money to wish it so, but I am not the only one with these thoughts. Do you believe that all the players complaining about loot and missing game-systems will stay or will they have had enough soon? I see too many names in my friend list I haven't seen on-line in months.

the only reason to tier down a casino in Las Vegas is to build a bigger one

Parlog said:

the only reason to tier down a casino in Las Vegas is to build a bigger one

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I'm completely lost.

Psychopathic said:

Do you believe that all the players complaining about loot and missing game-systems will stay or will they have had enough soon? I see too many names in my friend list I haven't seen on-line in months.

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In my last 6 years player comes and goes and comes back. My friendlist is "more active" than years ago ..and no i deleted most of the unknown after the "freindlist-update"

And you see only a few ppl. of the universe in the forum, in real life ppl tend to complain but not to tell you they are happy. My loot isn't my best buddy - lol, but i still deposit to have fun and many ppl i know do the same.

m2p

One thing people do wich is wrong is to assume that just because prices are falling EU must be doomed.

This is wrong, there are several reasons for the prices to fall.

1. Prices were allowed to go far too high in the first place, this leaves plenty of room for prices to drop even lower, considering the pricing was based on future expectations of prices to rise rather than actual use of the item.

2. Its harder to break even of profit, when people are having a harder time selling their loot for any mu at all, they are less likely to buy UL gear for high prices.

3. CLD´s , its become a popular thing to always compare before buying an item the peds you save owning it versus the peds you would gain from a similiar "investment" in CLD´s, this is on paper true , but people are missing an important thing here, ARE WE HERE TO MAKE MONEY, OR ARE WE HERE TO PLAY A GAME AND HAVE FUN?

try shooting a mob with your CLD´S , and they are really not that good as armor either.

I have faith in the EU plattform, if you would have asked me 1,5 years ago i would have answered differently, i think its a working model, in some aspects MA needs to be better at communicating what entropia is though.

Its not a casino, they provide a plattform where you are free to login, you then decide how to interact with the plattform, and the plattform will return you results differently , based on how you choose to interact.

Im sure EU will still be around in 10 years, for sure it will be a bit different than today, but then again today its not the same game as when i joined 2006, progress and evolution is hard to avoid.

cheers

ermik

Years ago, I thought the sky would fall next week. Now, I believe they might actually exist for quite a long time.
That's because they have shown survival skills, but also because I see good developments in terms of customer relations.
Things seem to be looking up.

Psychopathic said:

There are reasons, however, to why we stay, and it's not just because of the money we have invested in our avatar. This game has potential and perhaps MA is working towards it. It's not impossible, however, that MA just takes all the money from CLD and declares bankruptcy, but on the other hand, EU doesn't really have any competition out there but is one of a kind in what it is, thus giving it huge potential with the different planets searching the globe for more idiots like us who'll pay to shoot pixels.

Personally, I'm not sure what will happen - but I guess none of us are. If I were to guess I'd say that if the different advertisement campaigns from MA and the planet partners were to fail, we would start seeing the end of days for Entropia Universe.

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I've similar conerns... but I guess I'm more optimistic about the future of MA and EU.

However, I'm not so sure about calypso....
1. Moving the company main office to Mexico where bankruptcy laws are in favor of corporations,
2. CLD sale, and yet no advertisement by ma in the name of some concerned about new players issues (per Kim)
3. All the issues linked to beacons, sand king and hussk.


I hope these are only my speculations! The only bright light here is Kim. He is now heading Calypso... and being the son of the chairman I dont' think he'd like to head a company that is going to fail, and add a failure in his resume.

Overall I'm cautiously optimistic!

I think we will see EU quite a while around. The Cryengine Transition had a huge impact on the active playerbase it seems. I guess mainly due to the high system requirements. After that many systems were still missing and my guess is people though well let'S take a break and wait until most of it works again.

However i things changed due to old days. Items changed, formerly very high valued UL SIB became easier available. More land available for the same sized playerbase ( thus reduced returns on some LAs ). Less General Markup in Hunting Loots. People freeing up money to buy CLDs ... All that are factors which drove prices down on many items. For some items we will see this trend will continue, other maybe new released items will be expensive before they become cheaper again. Looking at very old threads here on forum i believe it's kinda the normal lifecycle.

Still some things should become more important imho. Tailoring needs an overhaul. The problem with hunting is, a lot of hunting materials are for tailoring. At the current state almost TT food. The value of items in EU is determined by several factors. On of them is availability. The other factor is the expectation behind the purchase of an item. People were able to profit big with maxed MM, IMK2 and such in the past. This seems not so easy anymore. So people are not willing to pay the same just to have a toy which allows you to pay more for their playtime. Mining Amps as an example for high level gear in a still profitable profession didn't go down that hard. Why ? Because it is easier to profit with an UL mining amp than with a maxed MM, thus the profit expectation is higher, thus the value remains more stable.

We will see changes in the future of EU. It seems quite some will occur this year and 2013. This will also cause some items to drop in value, other items might maintain it's value, other might raise due to the changes. It's hard to predict. But as always, some will profit with the changes, some won't ( most won't i guess ). Those who are capable to adapt will have an easier life than all others.

Well we are talking about a MMO which is around for a decade and under steady development. Mindark already survived some pretty hard crises , economic downturns, for over a decade now with a niche product. That's not bad. It shows not only potential, also the capability to turn potential into productivity. At least to a certain extend, considering the size of the company.

The playerbase seems to get an uptrend atm. During 2010 and most of 2011 the Entropia tracker showed less than 3000 active hunters most the time. ( After the teams were excluded ). Assuming hunting is the most active profession i conclude this is the closest approximation as state of the active playerbase ( note: the number is not equivalent to active players, but i think the correlation between the does not need further explanation ).
At the moment we are closing in to 4k ranks there. This is a plus of almost 30%. And this is without the big marketing campaigns which are promised to come during the next months.

I believe Entropia will be around for a very long time. It might ( and ought to i might add as a personal note ) we see changes in technologies, market will change. Old dogs will leave and make room for new people to come. Old dogs might come back and so on and so forth.

I believe the future is not as bad as we tend to draw it here sometimes on the forums.

Now before anyone totally gets lost in my wall of text i think i will stop lol.

BR

The sky is in fact falling.

Fortunately for most of us the sky is falling from My Little Pony land and landing somewhere between the realms of vanity and desire.

Sure, the My Little Ponies of us despair over the loss of fantasy, but fantasies are only good for Pegasus, Unicorns, Elves, and Fabio.

After all have spent their latent value, one must grab the towel of mystical wisdom and wipe off all residue of previous hope. Then one must dispose of all waste and start fresh.

Jennson said:

Now before anyone totally gets lost in my wall of text i think i will stop lol.

BR

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Not it all, I guess you've done a nice job in putting a realistic perspective

Magyar_Republic said:

Then one must dispose of all waste and start fresh.

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I'm not sure about your past... looks like you are playing this game for a long time.
Is this avatar a fresh start for you?

Keep your thoughts coming; they are most interesting to read and offers new perspectives.

ermik said:

3. CLD´s , its become a popular thing to always compare before buying an item the peds you save owning it versus the peds you would gain from a similiar "investment" in CLD´s, this is on paper true , but people are missing an important thing here, ARE WE HERE TO MAKE MONEY, OR ARE WE HERE TO PLAY A GAME AND HAVE FUN?

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-snipped-

Had to spread rep before giving it to you again but this is spot on Could not care less for deeds and still putting my peds into gear. Money can be made elsewhere, I'm here for the fun and the challenge!

On the topic, the sky was falling when I joined this game back in -04 -ish (left after a couple of months) and when I came back a year ago it was still falling but for some reason it was even better than back in -04. Go figure

Infinity01 said:

The only bright light here is Kim. He is now heading Calypso... and being the son of the chairman I dont' think he'd like to head a company that is going to fail, and add a failure in his resume.

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Well actually he is an artist for the Calypso team and that Sven guy is the CEO of AR Universe (check Bertha Bot threads for the thread about this).

However, I really do not believe Calypso will be shut down... it would be stupid of them to keep developing the planet at an increased rate if they simply wanted to shut it down putting it in Mexico probably rather has some tax/cost related reasons (for example, look up the fees and taxes for hiring people in Sweden, that you have to pay a lot extra for having people work nights or weekends, etc)

The sky doesn't necessarily need to fall, but we have to remember that EU is a part of this world; a world now experiencing economical difficulties.

K_rupT said:

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Don´t watch this picture without right music:


Anyway, I think EU will live for another "decade", with the power of love and no other serious RCE competition, Diablo 3 goes RCE-light with real auction, it´s maybe the future besides micro-transaction-MMOs.

We are curently in increasing No of participants moment. That is visible even on forum. Hard to say if thats only corection of generally downfall trend or new direction.
But it's easy to see that total number of participants is tiny compared to any other mmorpg or online casino ( whatever u think is truth, those numbers are small ). Number of participants remain tiny even 90% of old systems is back, even we are in CE2 now, and even avg PC can run it now ( what was not so obvious 2 years ago ), even 3 new planets are here.

So basicaly all thing we were hyperventilating 2 years ago, that they improve numbers of participants are here.
All we have now is foggy promiss of add campaign, and 2 new planets coming.

If we agree that players mean everything for business like this, 1 M accounts its obvious PR bulshit, and more of us is not addicted on fanboy - then i dont see bright future. If only heaviest gamblers, life fanboys, and casuals will remain we only see more and more price degradation. There will be no big sudden colapse, rather easy,slowly chiling down ( last one will turn light off )

Bancrupcy of MA with curent active playerbase will be at curent state COURT DRAMA. If Planet partners fade away one after another ( we see that already with abandoned NI ), same will be with participants. On the wery end few helpless fanboys and gamblers will be no threat to MA lawyer and EULA.


So WE NEED THAT GAME TO BE POPULAR, and we need more players....but we know that few years already and nothing was done to change that. Oldsystem back, New systems, CE2, new planets - thats all not working.

EU is tiny and costly game propeled by few K angry customers, frustrated more or less. I saw bussines on beter fundation faling.

Infinity01 said:

...
However, I'm not so sure about calypso....
1. Moving the company main office to Mexico where bankruptcy laws are in favor of corporations,
2. CLD sale, and yet no advertisement by ma in the name of some concerned about new players issues (per Kim)
3. All the issues linked to beacons, sand king and hussk.


I.....

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ad1. You sure of that ? Can u provide any source thats interesting ( why move it off sweden? )
Also Kim being family of chairman...nothing bad in that generally, but i saw already strange situations due such fact in few companies.


As for mentioned Caly bankrupcy - seems that we only move to other planet so no big deal, but A.G. Universe is still owned by MA so i still see bancrupcy of each as bancrupcy of both.

MA may survive in some small form to handle planet partners operation, but if not planet partners are screwed even more than regularparticipants

Psychopathic said:

How long do you think MA will survive?

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depends most other mmo's charge $15 ish a month subscription fees + $40 a xpac every 1.5+ years, I would think the avg mid level player deposits much more then that a month. enough to cover the loss from people who don't contribute or otherwise.

I think people are less willing to pump out tons of cash for items and we are seeing everything shrink. I am not at all concerned with the games future, we are fine =)

lol @ op thx for the lolz

This IQ test thing is a bit childish...don't you think?
Reminds me of the my daddy can beat up your daddy.

Nighthawk said:

Well actually he is an artist for the Calypso team and that Sven guy is the CEO of AR Universe (check Bertha Bot threads for the thread about this).

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Well, I was away for 7 days... so didnt' know that ... thinks for the info!

shoti said:

ad1. You sure of that ? Can u provide any source thats interesting ( why move it off sweden? )

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I read it somewhere in the internet that mexican bankruptcy laws favor debtors as opposed to creditors.........not sure what is in sweden... I said it could be one of the reason..

The other reasons could be the time zone. and cheaper over all cost in mexico!

Seeing as how some of the early MMO's are still around in one form or another. Ultima Online, Everquest etc, and Eu has been around for a decade, and imo has been continually growing and evolving the whole time. I also feel its only a fraction of the way it will grow into.

I could see our community being the first Virtual Reality MMO. If people will spend 45k peds on a spaceship, and 200 peds on a gold card to be shipped to them, how much would they pay for VR hardware, to be shipped? and with such hardware, would a company such as Amazon.com desire to build a multimedia planet that users could purchase things in a VR setting? Even with out VR the Cry2 engine opens up a whole bunch of options for planet developers that are currently not even being used.

I do worry that blizzard is throwing their hat into the RCE ring, with upcoming (never to be released) diablo 3's real cash auction house. Blizzard has a way of stealing the show sometimes...

As for people saying dropping prices are killing the game, I disagree. Dropping prices may be killing "your" profit, or your ability to profit doing the things your used to, but that's not a bad thing..since your making that profit from me, and other item users.

Falling item prices allow players to use more gear, hunt a variety of mobs, and find ways to enjoy the game they otherwise would not have done. Since loot return will not profit, and MU may not profit large, those same players will deposit more to play, because its fun. Deposited money goes to MA, MU goes to the seller. Losing ridiculous MU will make EU stronger imo.

Anyway games back up, so back to play. I Fully expect EU to be here for the next 10 years unless the US bans the internet or the myans win...but its dynamic

A perspective

Made a long ass post. Too much bla bla, so I'll try to keep it as compact as I can.

MA did 3 nice things in the 2010-2012.

Opened up the system to other companies, so they can churn out new content non stop. So EU won't die because of content shortage in the next years.

They introduced a revenue sharing system on the central planet - Brilliant move, good way to get some fresh real money in game, and deplete the "unconsumed holdings" part of their accounting books. As well this is a really nice move toward players who supported the game over the years.

They are developing a space component, which can turn out to be a goldmine, if done right.

These three aspects will keep the game floating for the next few years.

What MA needs to do:

Fix goddamn bugs please! This should be the number one priority. No game is bugless, but EU has been "half broken" somewhat since the beginning.

Please, for Pete's sake, try selling the game to customers, instead of relying on Guinness book of records and half assed sensationalist press releases to attract players.

MA needs to break the vicious circle that hunting seems to be stuck in: "Not enough input in hunting =not enough output from hunting = not enough input, because there is no output". Hunting is the core. Everything, that is wrong with it is the fundamental problem of everything else, thats going on lately, dwindling markups, investments getting shot, and bad vibes in general as a result.
If the "TT return VS TIME" factor is improved to a more casual level, hunting will experience a resurgence of trust, and that will be good for everyone in game,hunters, crafters, miners, traders pirates, etc.

Finally, keep making the whole EU experience more new player friendly. PE/EU has made STRIDES in that department, compared to 2005, but there is still a long way to go.

Of course EU is just as much affected as everyone else by the current climate of uncertainity and fear IRL. Of course they can go under, due to some financial institutions failing in the supposed upcoming "Financial Armageddon part 2".
Some guys can decide to wage a war, and then everything can go totally wrong, but that is a whole another topic for a different forum.