What was the reason you left the MMORPG you played longest?

akabear

Thought for the day.. perhaps a dive into why long-term players leave and possible remedies?
(not a current MMO)

What was the longest you played a single MMO?
Why did you leave?
What might have kept you playing?

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Ludullu

L2 for ~12 years (on and off in the later half). Mostly played on private servers cause couldn't afford a sub in the early years and when the RU official servers came out being f2p I didn't have enough time to grind them super hardcore and that was the only way to stay at least somewhat on pace with the insane p2w players.

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.

Nerror

Not the longest played MMO, but I tried and quit WoW 3 times, starting at release up to pandaria I think it was. I quit because each time I got to the inane and boring gear treadmill that really is what the endgame is about mostly. Raiding for gear to get good enough gear to raid for even better gear, ad nauseam. I want my character to grow stronger, not the gear he wears. I am a big fan of horizontal character progression systems.

Gui10

Not enough organized group play in Runescape, and I figure I needed to other things with my life at that time.

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.

Hinotori

Eve online. I played it for 9 years and it got to the point where people were simply to organised which led to more and more time commitment on my part.

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.

Tyranthraxus

Continuously played StarWars: The Old Republic(SWTOR) the longest - though probably never again. Overall, Star Wars: Galaxies(SWG) - but only if you count SWG: Legends - between both the live game and the present emulator. Played SWTOR regularly until last year, with a few months' gaps. Prob about 8 years' worth total, the first 6 were non-stop/continual with no breaks.

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

Wandering Mist

I believe I've played WoW the longest total (I know, I'm ashamed haha). The reason I left was a few different reasons:

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.

Zainox

I used to play a lot of free to play MMO's. I was always in and out of those pretty quick. They just couldn't keep my interest.
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.

novercalis

Everquest and P99

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.

Gankez

mortal online.. got tired of the corrupt gms, lies from henrik, constant bugs and gameplay moving further and further into the trash... game coulda been good

JamesSunderland

What was the longest you played a single MMO?
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.

Depraved

who said i quit?

Sunboy

Dungeons and dragons Online was the longest and I quit because friends stopped playing and it was more fun going to work and be social.

Quit Vanilla Wow for same reasons and Classic WoW because of the whole Blizzard #FreeHongKong shitstorm.

Much love ❤️

daveywavey

ESO. They just turned it into a DMGDMGDMGDMG-fest, rather than having to actually plan and use your skills. Just became a basic run-through-your-rotation bore. All the new content was focused purely on the top tier DMGDMGDMGDMG-fest'ers. Some more accessible content for the non-Min-Max'ers would have been nice.

TheDarkSorcerer

Tbh... ABUSE. I still play Elder Scrolls Online. But the Zenimax team (top down, Rich Lambert, Matt Firor, Gina Bruno) has been incredibly abusive to the community. And it is beyond me they still have a job.

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.

Songcaller

I usually leave when the game has major revamps I don't like, goes free to play or another MMO captures my attention.

daveywavey

TheDarkSorcerer wrote: »

Tbh... ABUSE. I still play Elder Scrolls Online. But the Zenimax team (top down, Rich Lambert, Matt Firor, Gina Bruno) has been incredibly abusive to the community. And it is beyond me they still have a job.

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!

Nerror

Natasha wrote: »

Eve online. I played it for 9 years and it got to the point where people were simply to organised which led to more and more time commitment on my part.

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.

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.

Voxtrium

Nerror wrote: »

Natasha wrote: »

Eve online. I played it for 9 years and it got to the point where people were simply to organised which led to more and more time commitment on my part.

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.

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.

Percimes

Hmm, I think WoW held me the longest, but considering my group of friends was always jumping to new MMOs in the earlier days (from EQ to DAoC to Anarchy Online to this and then that...). WoW was the first one which created a big enough vacuum in our interest that we didn't look for alternatives, for a while at least. At the same time, it's the only MMO I've returned to, twice if we count Classic.

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.

Axarashi

I didn't quit... they quit :'( ! The servers were shut down... this happened to at least two of the MMORPGs I adored. At first they stopped updating the game, afterwards all types of hacks and bugs started to appear and, of course, it didn't last long before the servers were completely shut down. Both games are from the early 2000s and aren't the most well-known, so I guess their time has come.

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