Narcogen
Gallente
IBO CORP
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Posted - 2008.10.14 12:05:00 -
[1]
 Originally by: Shen Li
Same-o. I was thinking about starting another alt for fun on a Trial account, Ghost-train him for a bit then activate the account for a month and transfer it.
But obviously that's no longer an option and I won't pay a third account just for that. So in my case the Ghost nerf lost 1-2 months subscriptions I might have paid otherwise :)
I am consistently amazed at the economic knowledge displayed by the players of a game that has such a vibrant economy.
For every account they lose that is ghost training, CCP loses X months of GTCs where for every fiscal year X < 12 (since otherwise there would be no point).
In fact it is more than likely significantly less than 12 or else the advantage gained by ghost training would be minimal.
So for the quantity of ghost trainers, there is a percentage that won't give up their gains to date and will convert to full accounts, and there is a percentage that are doing the ghost training because they have more accounts than they can afford to keep active, and they will let those characters lapse.
CCP has to have calculated that the value of X is such that even if a low percentage of ghost trainers convert, that the increased revenue generated by a small number of permanent accounts more than compensates for the lost revenue of ghost training accounts that are only active a small percentage of the time. In addition whatever system resources are consumed by those inactive ghost training accounts can be reclaimed at no cost, since they were generating minimal income anyway and will no longer be consuming resources.
CCP has presented the system resource issue as being primary, with gameplay fairness second, while largely ignoring the revenue issue. Revenue is clearly the primary issue here, and I think most of the pushback CCP are getting over this is related to that fact.
Still after five years I think CCP probably have a very good idea of how much revenue they will lose from ghost trainers, how much they will gain from the smaller percentage that activate their accounts and keep them activated to train, and how many will emoragequit. Yet people still insist that this will kill Eve, that CCP do not know what they are doing, and that this move will backfire.
Based on what, I wonder?
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