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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
What was the reason you left the MMORPG you played longest?
akabear
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Thought for the day.. perhaps a dive into why long-term players leave and possible remedies?
(not a current MMO)
(not a current MMO)
- What was the longest you played a single MMO?
- Why did you leave?
- What might have kept you playing?
0
Comments
Stopped playing mainly because I pretty much played it all up and down in those 12 years. Due to how hated the later updates of the game were, most private servers had the early version of the game, so playing the same exact game for the hundredth time became boring after a while, even if the game itself was still fun.
So I guess, the main reason for me was the drastic shift in game's direction. With each update the game became more and more instanced and "daily login"ey, and the p2w aspects only grew in their greed. And now the game is literally an auto-play semi-mobile mess where you pretty much can't play w/o paying a shitton of money.
I can both afford to grind the game for a long time and pay the sub, so as long as Ashes doesn't become p2w - I think I'll stay playing for a very long time. There's the chance of the game's direction shifting drastically, but I feel like those kinds of changes are usually brought on by money problems, more so than purely by design decisions.
As for GW1, the game died. Even from the first class expansions (assassin, then dervish and paragon), the game was already dying. So just less fun overall.
Lessons learned from GW1 dying, my perspective:
Dont add new zones just to "add diversity to the game" For example, the game was originally set in an "european environment" both in architecture and in region, + baren war lands ofc. They then added a whole new a sort of egyptian theme and an asian theme, and adding new classses liek assqassin, dervish and paragon, which was really confusing, and took away from the game itself imho!
I would rather they had focused on improving the current game than just "adding regions and classes" that are going to disrupt the meta and move people from the core towns of activity. its like they do that to refresh the player base excitement and it feels like a gimick.
If I wanted combat I had to go to certain systems 60 odd jumps from where I lived. Which took 2 hours when you travel with a fleet.
It wasn't fun because everyone had just grouped up to the extent that the world was completely empty.
Ended up leaving SWTOR because of content-stagnation, developer-preferences having precedence over player-preferences, and the lack of in-game community tools. Story is fine, but it's akin to playing a console RPG; Once you've done it enough, it's just old and predictable. There were little-to-no tools for hosting in-game player events, and very few safe places in which to host them. The lead designer prefers people to be unable to use joysticks in their flight combat simulator - and any and all posts about joysticks on their forums is strictly forbidden; such threads are immediately removed, without notification. The 7.0 update was horrible and went live with only 1 month's testing, with the community voicing a lot of dissent - all which is constantly removed from the forums, ASAP. It's also an alts-heavy game, with relatively low guild member-limits. Discord is fine and all, but our community is large and sports 7 guilds; It's very, VERY hard to know who is online and offline, while in-game.
Innovation and community-tool improvement, as well as the freedom to voice dissent/dislike for things really would have made the experience a lot better. It kind of feels obvious to the players that you should have such tools, but SWTOR's devs are largely too busy playing WoW to notice - and very few decisions in SWTOR are made that dare to not perfectly mirror WoW's decisions. There's just so much more that could have been/could be done to make the game better, and it took years and years of disappointment before realizing and admitting to myself that SWTOR's devs will just never will do anything of the sort. Not being allowed to criticize is just an additional punch to my balls; Yours truly loves to bitch on forums.
All I can hope for is that WoW will/has implemented joysticks in Dragonflight - because then SWTOR would be certain to allow joysticks.
/Vent
1. The insane amount of daily/weekly grinding involved to do progression raiding.
2. Requiring a bunch of third party mods and simulation tools just to know which items to put on my character.
3. Borrowed power and power creep in general felt really bad.
At this point I don't think adding on any more systems or doing any kind of botched hotfixes will save WoW for me. What I'd love is for them to scratch current retail WoW and use all the experience they have gained over the decades to make a WoW 2 with a more solid foundation to grow from.
My first main MMO was FF14 on release. I played that for a few years and really enjoyed it. But, the guild I was in got caught in a lot of server drama which then created petty drama within the guild, causing a lot of arguments and hate that followed us players daily, which ended with us disbanding the guild. This really left a sour taste for the game for me. I quit not long after and haven't really gone back.
I also played Warframe for a few years. I had nearly 3k hours in it, if I remember correctly. I really loved the game and only really left because over the years the gameplay just felt too same-y and got mind numbingly boring. I think it would had been better if I had friends to play the game with, but trying to find a group of people who just didn't want free stuff or to be carried turned out to be rather difficult lol.
I still hop on P99 from time to time, but lately been discouraged. Waiting for Green 2.0 to drop hopefully. I enjoy a lot of the niche zones but it's been hard to find groups to do certain zones that dont have ideal drops for most classes and how far away some of these spots are. Usually fresh starts - most of the go to zones cant handle over populations groups - so these niche zones will thrives once more and I'd like that.
I also did a long stint with WoW but mostly in private server - only enjoy vanilla and BC. The social aspect of the game died. Players dont interact with each others. P99 still gives me that - I'm just not incentives playing knowing the potential of green server merging to blue server may be happening and a new green server drops.
About 19 years, started during Lineage 2's KR Release in late 2003. then moved on to the NA's release in mid 2004, had some periods in and out of the game after 2012 when i left the official servers and mostly played on private servers thereafter and till this day.
Why did you leave?
I was outraged by how NCsoft's F2P and P2W ideals destroyed Lineage 2, it simple wasn't the game i once knew anymore, watching it's core game designs being demolished one by one was terrible.
What might have kept you playing?
Literally, not turning the game into F2P/P2W trash and maintaining its core game designs.
Aren't we all sinners?
Quit Vanilla Wow for same reasons and Classic WoW because of the whole Blizzard #FreeHongKong shitstorm.
Much love ❤️
Not only have the internal team talked badly about the community several times, especially the PvP community. That all we are doing is "boo-hoo", and "if we don't like it, then we should leave"...
The community behind ESO wants the best for the game, a game we've invested years and several thousand dollars into. But the Zenimax team doesn't want to listen. For weeks during every PTS cycle we've given our feedback, warning about sets and combat decisions that aren't healthy for the game. We are always ignored. It has now gotten to a point where the entire end game community has left the game and people's friend lists are gone due to constant poor decisions being made. And lies... THE LIES. The lies about performance fixes and server updates EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR. It's tiring.
But Zenimax doesn't care, they just care about new customers vs retaining the loyal ones. This has also been clear with them adding over-powered sets in new expansions to simply sell DLC's/Chapters. Once people have bought into them, they are nerfed to the ground, rinse and repeat. They also rely heavily on gambling boxes by locking exciting cosmetics, or pretty much all cosmetics behind gambling boxes. How this is legal to sell to minors playing this game is beyond me.
It's all sad and disappointing. Hence why i came here. Here i feel like my voice actually matters.
Vote with your feet. Walk away!
That is actually a small worry I have for Ashes long-term. I am sure things will be chaotic and fun at first, but 3 years down the line? I worry alliances will be set and stable and node sieges and castle sieges will be a rarity unless Intrepid adds systems that "forces" players to shake up the status quo. It could be via expansions, where new world bosses are seeded based on where there are no lvl 6 nodes, so players are forced to kill one and build another one up at a different place, causing much drama and conflict in the process.
Maybe, but ill be the one of the first in line to take down those alliances for no other reason than to cause a shakeup. Natasha mentioned EVE earlier and why it became boring, I would agree if AOC becomes a bunch of allies working together the game would dry up real quick, although I am inclined to believe that there is enough incentive for people to actually siege, so as long as the siege isn't so difficult that nobody ever does it, it'll be done. I would also like to note, the incentive in EVE for taking down an alliance is the same as the incentive for not, in fact its probably a negative overall relationship, whereas the one in AOC should at least net a brand new legendary boss that everyone wants. At the end of the day if they really need to incentivize the sieges because they aren't happening they can just drop the siege scroll values lower, or they can increase the available loot from the metro after.
I've played WoW from January 1st 2005 until the a few weeks after the release of the "honor" system. Not being level 60 went it came, yet still green and so worth mystery honor points", life on a PvP server became... unpleasant. The last straw was a fight against a player that went link dead after his first attack. I didn't even have enough mana to kill a non reacting character (had to finish the gnome warrior with my staff) and yet I was worth points for him...
Came back 2-3 months later once my friends had rerolled on PvE server and said it was much better. I then played until maybe 6 months before WotLK. Having no interest in raiding, having played most classes (2 lvl 70, 1 lvl 67, 1 lvl 60, 1 lvl 56 (first one on PvP server) and 2 in their 30th), having reached rank 10 in PvP on 2 characters and fed up with the daily quests in BC, I considered my time in WoW done.
Nostalgia called and I played Classic for six months, enough to try the classes I hadn't really done in Vanilla and to experience the Alliance side more. At the end I had a level 60 rogue, a level 45 priest and a 20-22 level hunter.
I leave you the pleasure of doing the math for the time.
Nearly 20 years...
Still playin'.
WoW, about 16 years. Played on a PVP server (Kel'thuzad) from release until 2020 with a breaks here and there.
server population and faction imbalance wasn't addressed and when it was it was too late.
blizzard killed the server community. flying mounts eliminated player interaction. You never saw anyone in the world anymore. Cross realm instances and BGs further killed off the community: sacrificed making friends and meeting people long term for quick queue pops.
Because of this, my in-game friends and RL friends stopped playing...and it was the community that kept me going.
Fostering a strong server community.
- I quited because of long queue times in Battlegrounds.
- They should have shown some love for PvP. PvP content was inexistant not considering that a lot of people enjoy PvP (this can be proved by checking the videos of PvP vs PvE official competitions)
I saw that today somehow it is fixed, but it is too late for me now. I was mad and I'm not going to forgive that lack of respect.
I quit due to the P2W, the cheaters/bots, and my guild leader leaving. I played on about a year after the guild leader left, but I did not re-form the friendships that I had in the guild.
Classic WoW- Played the hell out of it, left because people were being sweaty over easy content. Don't have time to get every buff and consumable every time Molten Core needs cleared. Was really just ruined due to over-efficiency neckbeards playing but not having fun. I played a lot of Twinking (low level min/max battleground brackets) which were a blast. Once BC came out I just let ti go due to needing to spend more time on real life projects. Definitely wouldve played all the way through classic WotLK if I had the time right now.
Age of Conan- Left to focus on WoW WotLK
Guild Wars- left it to go back to WoW
Guild Wars 2- I was a hardcore WvW player in a zergbusting guild. I and most others left when they switched up the stability buff mechanic.
New World- That was just a disaster with duping, bugs, and how the devs handled those situations in general. Left after a month or 2
Everquest- Left for WoW
Tera- Terable, the weird little girl animal things creeped me out.
Archage- Pay to win, joined it late and the land grabbing was lame as hell. The story was also really forgettable as well. So I left.
There are others but I would say these are the main ones
What would have kept me playing? Yeah, nah. It was a slippery slope and too far gone for any one thing to fix it I think.
Similarly... Everquest... at some point, the leveling and AA(alternate advancement experience) grind takes its toll.
There is a common factor, and that can generally be described as 'fear of missing out' or 'FOMO'. We see this used in P2W monetization strategies, but its evil face has other forms.
In these particular cases, a feeling is generated where you MUST log and grind(and grind, in this sense of the word, is used to describe an undesirable repetitious act), or you're screwed. It becomes very tiring and the only solution is to stop.
(not a current MMO)
What was the longest you played a single MMO? Asherons Call, ESO, WoW, then TERA in that order.
Why did you leave?
The most important thing in any game is my ability to express myself. So its Combat, Class Design, Race Design, and being able to look the way I want.
What might have kept you playing? Combat is huge to me, a lot off MMORPGs do not prioritize combat.