[MUD-Dev] MMORPGs & MUDs

[Michael Tresca]

Koster, Raph Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2002 6:58 PM

>> For my own curiosity, what's the average lifespan of a single
>> character (not player) on a MMORPG?  That is, how long does one
>> player play one character consistently before permanently
>> retiring them?

> I have no idea for a single character. The play patterns for
> players with multiple characters are something I should look into
> more. Do people tend to have a "favorite" and how much more play
> time does it get versus others? How many play multiples, and how
> many of those multiples are rarely played? Hmm.

> For players... A year, roughly. This is the average player. It's
> longer for some games and shorter for others, and has changed over
> time for some games and not for others. I can't go into further
> details than that.

>From http://www.gamespy.com/devdiary/january02/uo2/ regarding Ultima
Online's new player "lifespan."

  "In order to gain insight into the new player's challenges, we
  focused our exit survey research on why players
  left. Specifically, we focused on those players leaving early
  within the first month of play. We quickly realized that we were
  losing most of our new players within the first three play
  sessions due to a lack of clearly defined goals upon entry. "


Mike "Talien" Tresca
RetroMUD Administrator
http://www.retromud.org/talien

_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev