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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Duii

Black Desert Online: Current and from Launch (6+ years) but I am fed up with the arsehat community and the BDO Devs and GM's that actively promote griefing of RP'ers. The Lack of any imagination in group content other than Sustained Knockbacks and cleaves from bosses is utterly boring. The degradation of the RP community by open griefing resulted in GM's stating, "That is not against terms of service" and Devs turning blind eyes to the results of thousands of RP'ers leaving so that the current unofficial RP Server (Kamasylvia 2) is void of open RP. If you Open rp, you become berated by lewd comments from griefers, and harassed in whispers. It's god awful now.

Gear progression is an endless RNGeezus nightmare
Items that were originally given in-game as an event are never again able to be gotten
Items that were EXPLOITED on masses in an unintended fashion BDO never removed from the game. Resulting in a privileged few People that have thousands of Cherry blossom trees in their homes. Giving unfair Housing advantages to those few early on in the game
A really crappy Black Spirit that they try to maintain as the basis of the central theme but is so entirely weak it's comical and always has been, however when you delve into the lore it has a ton of depth the devs cheapen by not rewriting the Black spirit portion of it, insist certain UI functions ( Enhancements of Gear) go through the Black Spirit menu ( Yes that is an opinion) In order to weakly support their central character and connection to the Player's character which they never have expanded upon as a method for deepening the connection of character to Black Spirit
Main Quest derived Weapon and Gear that drops off without ever being heard from again in lieu of Boss gear as opposed to through lines of the gear and weaponry being upgraded further and further Predominantly to get people to have to enhance new Gear items from PRI to Pen utilizing Crons stone that is melted from Costumes bought from the player shop with cash. This became an early "Pay to Win" strategy giving cash customers access to High-end gear from the beginning of the game
Crafting however is absolutely ingenious, best I have seen since Everquest II original Crafting system that made you work and think about how you had to go about accomplishing your crafting, but doesn't limit you in the crafting type you can do
ABSOLUTELY no real team content
Dungeons that are nothing more than WAVES of Mobs that are boring and insidiously moronic, with end bosses that can only knockback/stun/freeze for five seconds or more following up with massive cleaves, with a warning system that may or may not render on your screen...

Why Am I in BDO Still: Friends and it's the loveliest game out there. Can't do cartooney FF, Love the realism in BDO in the environment and the majestic heights of O'dylitta, and the beauty of Kamasylvia's forests, and Valencia's deserts.

Oh and the character Creator is second to none for making the avatar of your imagination though limited in scope it simply allows a depth of beauty you can't get in others and that.... is why I am interested in Ashes of Creation

The Secret World: 6 Years Both Iterations of the game (Original game was the best Reinvention of Spell casts that could have used a lot of love and care but was inventive and the Bosses were gear and Level appropriate)
Age of Conan: 2 YearsLoved my "Stygian" *itch Anna
Vanguard: year + Until it died an untimely death (One of the most inventive gear paths and RP Paths I have seen)
Lineage II: 1 Year
Everquest II: 1 year
WOW: 3 Years
Anarchy Online: 2 Year

annnnnnnnd sooooo many others.... Tera, Archage, The Skyrim Mmorpg, etc etc

I am currently actively talking to my BDO guild members about this game, as I am hoping it will pan out to be more RP friendly with great team content

Tearl Stoneheart

EQ1 from launch till EQ2 launch.
EQ2 launch till EQ Next (Landmark beta)...what a mistake. But we held out hope, made some neat things, etc.
Next/Landmark died and we tried to go back to EQ2. Guild progressed too much and we were too far behind, so we gave up.
Played ARK with my family...the kids loved it. Then they got older and bored. It was boring pretty early on anyway, but the family bit was fun.
Don't hate on me, but my wife and I have been playing New World and having a fun time, mostly with the gathering/processing/crafting. Though crafting is very "meh". There's no real community there either (for our age group)...so we're holding out for AoC. Played A1 and eagerly awaiting A2 and beyond! AoC will be our last MMO most likely.

Dygz

I want to be able to ever quest.
I abhor the End Game treadmill. Got burnt out of that with WoW: Cataclysm.
WoW: Shadowlands had a lot of appeal.
WoW: Dragonflight is the best MMORPG I've ever played. Been max level for a couple months - still plenty of quests for me to finish. I'm shocked by how much fishing I do. There are plenty of tasks for me to do that don't require me to kill stuff. I definitely feel like I am immersed in my race and class: Evoker.

Saltycarrots

World of Warcraft, pretty much when they started introducing paid lvl boosts, overcame that and played on and off for a while but it got worse when they started with all the p2w, buying gold

novercalis

Tearl Stoneheart wrote: »

EQ1 from launch till EQ2 launch.
EQ2 launch till EQ Next (Landmark beta)...what a mistake. But we held out hope, made some neat things, etc.
Next/Landmark died and we tried to go back to EQ2. Guild progressed too much and we were too far behind, so we gave up.
Played ARK with my family...the kids loved it. Then they got older and bored. It was boring pretty early on anyway, but the family bit was fun.
Don't hate on me, but my wife and I have been playing New World and having a fun time, mostly with the gathering/processing/crafting. Though crafting is very "meh". There's no real community there either (for our age group)...so we're holding out for AoC. Played A1 and eagerly awaiting A2 and beyond! AoC will be our last MMO most likely.

just go to P99 - community still there

Chime

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

Guild Wars 2 for 9 years. Honestly I was just bored after so long, I stayed because of my friends but Discord helps because I can still talk to them and I moved onto other games.

unknown

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maouw

my Maplestory addiction began in 2005, I overdosed on it for about 8 years but eventually stopped logging in consistently from 2013 - haven't touched the game since 2021 - so that's ~16 years.

What killed it for me can be generalized to this: incremental QoL features/efficiency that came at the expense of eroding the imagination and fun of the game + disgusting levels of P2W.

If I had to boil it down to 3 fatal bullets it would be (ignoring P2W):

"Big Bang" update which revamped the design of the entire world - all the quirky, tedious, questionable and honestly useless corners of the world were replaced with standardized designs that were more efficient for grinding. This destroyed a lot of the character of the world and made everything a bit too clinical - has a huge impact on player mindset (there's not much to explore when everything is standardized)
The decision to favour solo grinding efficiency over group content - this one is fascinating: originally group content was king so players became so focused on group content that they stopped grinding altogether. In order to compensate, group content was nerfed and the exp/drop from grinding was increased to EXCEED group content. This design decision completely fragmented and undermined socialization in the community because players stopped participating in group content altogether. On realizing the mistake, they re-established group content with EXP advantage but put daily entry limits. This didn't help though, because it immediately turned the experience into a chore to "make sure you hit your cap everyday" and created a whole host of issues around syncing who in the guild played at what time so you could all hit your caps together - it was just a mess.
Homogenization of class identity - Originally, each class could do things that other classes could not (thieves had a double jump, mages could teleport, bowmen had crazy range, etc.) but today all classes can do everything: triple jumps with teleports and skills that hit things off your screen. This renders player choice meaningless. This is most obvious to me in new boss design in the game: most boss attacks deal %hp damage to players which means: stacking HP and defense has absolutely 0 impact in a boss fight, and thus warriors are no tankier than glass cannons. There are no roles, no dependencies, no alternatives, no creativity.

What drove these mistakes?
Player complaints that trade inefficient loitering for efficient standardization:
"travelling from A to B is such a pain, can I just tp there?" "why does this area exist? nobody grinds here." "I don't want to rely on anyone else, let me solo it."

The solution? I think you need a mix of both standardized methods with inefficient alternatives:

redesign high-density areas of the world, but keep inefficient areas of the world to provide contrast and character.
give players a reason to solo grind that is different to their reason to group up: e.g. grind for exp, quest for money, group up for exclusive materials - let these activites be driven by player NEED, rather than explicit quotas.
draw hard lines between classes. When you create exceptions to these rules, have an associated drawback that compensates the exception (e.g. if a warrior can teleport, add a brief period of vulnerability immediately following the teleport etc.)

Finally, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that:
the secret to adding meaning to a choice isn't in the benefits of the choice, but in the COST of the choice - the things that you forgo in pursuit of your objective.
(it explains why reversible choices are meaningless - there's no cost).

Dubb

akabear wrote: »

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?

The longest you played a single MMO= about 10 years[

I haven't left it yet

New content would have been nice, better maintenance would have helped a bit also.

Veeshan

Daily quests
and PvE was to easy and lacked open world pvp to keep it interesting
instanced pvp became repetative too

ariatras

I played many MMOs, but by far the one in which I have the most hours in World of Warcraft.
I left the game because of class homogenisation and because of the many systems added over the years that destroyed a server's community.

GetSvensoned

Just Amazon Gaming Studios things X)

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