Quote Originally Posted by rodarin View Post
nice try.

Look around these forums, complete ghost towns, go look at facebook or twitter or whatever other means of communication they use. No one really cares. Thats because...no one really cares. There arent enough people left to care. I was here in 2006, and have seen this game become what it has today. It isnt like this is a shock or anything but each new era brings a new disappointed segment of people who play this game.

The problem is they, like nearly all other MMOs are resigned to placating those with diminished attention spans. They, demanding instant gratification, dictate where the development budget goes. The free-to-play concept has gotten them nowhere near the return on investment they had planned. There is no brand loyalty, only the 'hawtness' of the next game. If Turbine doesn't expect its player base to be brand-loyal, why should we expect them to be loyal in return? With so many new fiduciary responsibilities to WB now, they have to cut dev costs to the bare bone. They want a Cadillac of a game for their dev dollars but we discover they spend only a Pinto's worth on their hosting provider.


The greater problem in general is that with so many other things to choose to play at this point, people choose to lower their expectations when they should instead be complaining. If we didn't complain, we'd find the next patch is written in two-bit color. How many times have you gone through a drive-thru and asked for your cheeseburger to be plain only to find it with pickles on it? Do they expect you to really waste the gas to drive all the way back and ask for your 0.99 burger to be replaced? Hardly. The volume business model builds in waste costs like those and your experience is simply factored in to be hardly statistically relevant. It's only when they complain that you start to see change. We have to represent something more than ad-hoc / anecdotal experiences.