Khan Soriano
Beyond Divinity Inc
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Posted - 2008.10.15 17:54:00 -
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It must be really hard time for CCP, to "fix" this bug after 5-6 years. I can't say that I'm surprised but I do feel that it's the wrong thing to do right now.
Couple of reasons why they do it:
- CCP has to maintain itself - pay salaries, bonuses, office costs etc.
- Pay for the merger with White Wolf (they might as well be maintaining them too, don't know how's business in that area) - mergers COST, consultants, reorganization, all of it and it also takes time
- Maintain their TQ/Sing/etc. servers
- Maintain their China servers/support/whatever (I don't think that it pays for itself)
- Pay for development of their new MMO with White Wolf (I haven't heard anything about it being canceled so I assume its still in production)
- Pay for promotion (just look at all those banners on gamer sites)
- Despite paying for all the above, most of that was probably decided in the 'Golden age' when EVE was expanding their playerbase like crazy, their amount of subscriptions failed to increase in the same dramatic rate later on (look at how simultaneous users records were once beaten every week but later not so much)
- Global economy slowing down - Iceland going bankrupt doesn't have anything to do with CCP they get most of their money from overseas anyway (it might help them actually) but when people overseas start to look for a way to cut their monthly spending, paying for a MMO isn't high on the list
That's why killing ghost training happened, if you believe otherwise you are mistaken: "strain on the database"(too stupid to even dignify it with a comment), "unfair for paying customers"(it was "unfair" for 6 years but now it won't be? I am a paying customer and I was ghost training how is THAT unfair to me???).
Couple of reasons why doing it, can kick them in the nuts:
- People will still quit, stop paying for a while, get bored (ambulation anyone?) - now even more so because they don't have the ability to put off paying and then they might decide there is nothing to get back to
- People get angry when you take from them something they got accustomed to so these people will also quit
- You still have to pay the bills. So if this "fantastic" decisions were incorrect the situation will only get worse than before the crisis that created the need to make them
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