[MUD-Dev] Interesting EQ rant (very long quote)

[Dave Rickey]

-----Original Message-----
From: Matthew Mihaly <the_logos at achaea.com>
To: 'mud-dev at kanga.nu' <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Date: Monday, December 11, 2000 3:55 AM
Subject: RE: [MUD-Dev] Interesting EQ rant (very long quote)


>On Fri, 8 Dec 2000, Koster, Raph wrote:
>

>> As far as retention--well, I don't know what figures have been
>> announced, but I was floored (and frankly incredulous) when I first
>> heard the stats on how many users have ever quit EQ, how many of
>> the initial adopters are still playing, etc. Despite all the
>> impressions that are out there, I can tell you that basically, EQ
>> doesn't lose players. I don't mean on a month-to-month basis. I
>> mean, basically ever. The percentage of TOTAL users who have ever
>> quit the game is tiny. Now, how many of these folks are paying but
>> not playing, who knows. :)
>
> Interesting. Perhaps more people on this list (maybe myself
> included) should give up our unwarrantedly snobbish attitude towards
> Everquest. And if lots of folks are paying but not playing, great
> for Verant!  I can hardly think of a better situation for a large
> graphical mud.

Actually, I've seen nothing to indicate any sizable number of people
are paying and not playing in EQ.  Primetime peaks seem to be sticking
pretty close to the 20% mark.  It's not like UO, where anecdotal
evidence would indicate that many thousands of people are logging in
only to refresh their houses.

That doesn't mean that those 310,000 accounts don't have quite a lot
of hidden turnover, however.  When an account can fetch thousands and
individual items hundreds of dollars, that would tend to keep people
from simply writing off their accounts (and all the hours spent adding
value to them).  It would be impossible to determine how many of those
accounts are no longer being played by their original owners, but it
wouldn't surprise me to learn it was on the order of 100K.

--Dave Rickey

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