[MUD-Dev] MMORPGs & MUDs

[Koster]

From: Dave Rickey
> From: Koster, Raph <rkoster at soe.sony.com>

>> In other words, all the MMORPGs have found that as the game
>> grows, the percentage of new players who give up early rises.
 
> The thing is, you don't really have to worry about the player who
> rants and raves and gives all of his character's stuff away in a
> grand gesture before cancelling.  It's the ones that just softly
> slip away that really bleed your bottom line.  However, 90%+ of
> ongoing developer effort is focused on established players who say
> 'I'm going to quit if you don't put in something new to amuse me.'
> Rarely do we go back and say "What's our newbie experience like
> these days?"

UO has created a new tutorial and newbie experience with every
single expansion, so there at least there's some cognizance of the
issue. It IS very important to pay attention to this issue, and
arguably the current games do not do this enough.

You try to keep all customers, of course, but I believe that given a
choice between retaining existing customers and attracting new ones,
your primary loyalty and therefore effort should be towards keeping
existing customers.  It costs more to attract than to retain, for
one. For another, they are the ones you have the relationship with
and to whom you are providing a service--you owe them the attention,
that's what being a service means.

-Raph
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