Your own source quotes 150k subscribers in February of 2000, and Renaissance was released in May. We all know how expansions push sales, so your figures match up perfectly with mine.
Not exactly. Let's not forget that in this universe, effect follows cause.
It's obvious that the gap between your figure (200k) and the one published by Stratics (150K) was bridged AFTER the expansion was released, which means that it brought in a much needed influx of new players, increasing the subscriber base by a large amount, which flies in the face of your argument that it destroyed the game.
Your figure of 70% of new players driven away can't be substantiated.
That's a nice five dollar word for "but you can't prove it", which is a cop-out, not an actual argument.
And that's not my figure, it's from the guy who took the risk and made the call.
There are other sources available, but since you don't seem inclined to dig information to "substantiate" even *your* arguments, I probably shouldn't expect a lot of fact-checking in this discussion.
Mythic never published copies sold, only number of subscriptions, therefore player retention cannot be verified. You're forgetting that Origin was the competition. It comes from a recent forum post in which he was justifying his decision to make Trammel PvE.
What kind of backwards logic is that?
Of course you can verify player retention. Can you name *any* other indicator that's more reliable than the number of active subscriptions?
Number of copies sold has absolutely no bearing on player retention.
Really reliable source, when you've got a dev with a checkered history being put to question about a nostalgic game.
Yeah, I expect you can appreciate my dillema.
As information source, a former employee beats the living crap out of random dudes on internet forums any day of the week.
You'll notice in his very thorough explanation, he states clearly that his efforts to stop the problem didn't work, caused the game to fail in the long run, and that if he had to do it again he'd do it differently.
That's not what he said at all, regarding his efforts and its effects. What he actually said is that they were losing players at an astonishing rate, and after the expansion, they doubled their subscriber base, so it was a very savvy move for the company.
How you can construe that as "it didn't work and made the game fail" is truly beyond me.
While he admitted that given the opportunity and knowing then what he knows now, he probably would tried a different solution, he also said that in the grand scheme of things, the players who complained the most against the change were just a very vocal minority of their player base.
And even if he had said the things you said he did, it wouldn't change in the least the fact that at the time, SOME change had to take place PRONTO in order to prevent that very vocal minority from destroying the game.
I find it funny that when his arguments don't further your case, he's a "dev with a checkered history", but when they fit, then his words are "a very thorough explanation". Cherry-picking is all fun and games but it doesn't really hide the holes in one's logical reasoning.
The argument that
"they changed it out of the blue and destroyed the game for no reason at all, just to **** with us" is silly.
First, because the player base doubled after the changes. For me, turning a bad situation around like that is the definition of sucess.
Second, because they're a company. They don't do stuff to be nice or evil. Every move they make is in the pursuit of PROFIT.
When the players' actions prevented the game from being profitable, changes had to be made. It's simple as that.
