General decline in gameplay due to lag, bugs, and 'thin' content. (I mention this because I think it's rare that a great game you love suddenly experiences an 'exit event'.)
Final straw: class revamp that completely did away with the class I had enjoyed and played for years without so much as a single survey from Turbine as to what players wanted in a revamp. It was that class in name only afterward. I left after 6 plus years of regular play.
I am an older player. I leave for various reasons which are situational to the game. I enjoy a good mix of a battlefield/zonecarebear pvp (death doesn't mean you get looted and come back as a ghost with nothing- that sucks to me) and pve. I enjoy hanging with a guild and attempting to do a pve raid here and there but my game has to have a mix that's enjoyable or the game is dumped.
VARIETY/MYSTERY
I haven't seen an enjoyable yet frustrating game as dark age of Camelot in years. The "thing" was the enemy class that attacked you had a mix of 2 or 3 of your realms classes in 1, and you had that in a class of yours but in a tank/ranged/etc.
BOREDOM/IMBALANCE
Games these days cut and paste a "healer", "tank", "Mdps", "ranged" without a small imbalance from one realm to the other.
Dark Age did this the best but also fkd up too cause they didn't react very quickly to some of the pvp HUGE imbalances, i.e. banshees screaming thru tower walls, animst poping out shrooms in a courtyard and going afk while they kill everything or even some of the imbalances from Warhammer Online.
It was a lot of fun in the beginning and figuring out that a Magus mechanics were made slightly different in another named class of the enemies.
DEV REACTION TIME
Those 2 games were simply the devs didn't react to balance in a timely manner and I chose to not wait (after investing 6 years into daoc) another 1+ years on games that had become aged.
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
The other reason I leave is IF the customer support really sucks! (FFXIV *cough*) then Ill drop em even quicker. I have waited 16 days for a return on an item swap and counting. I feel that's bad business on their part. If you disagree that's fine, but in the end, Im making a payment to them (sub) and if I feel they lack early in the life of the game of cust support it wont get any better as time goes on.
In regards to the more outspoken mmo "vets", most of them seem to not really play mmos. Rather, they tolerate them, always looking for the last straw. Sometimes its a patch that "breaks" a must have feature on their list. Or its an overall design that they just can't take anymore. Then its off to the forums to let everyone know why this game fails.
I mean no disrespect to Mr. Miller, but I think that the reason why players quit MMORPGs has been made clear. Quite simply, they get bored. Specifically:
There are no variations in gameplay. You kill in the same way for the same purposes, over and over again.
The in-game world is completely static in nature. NPCs stand there lifelessly, every area is sectioned off for specific quests and those quests only, and the same enemies keep respawning in the same areas, even after you exit the area in question. Plus, the in-game world lacks any weather, ecosystems, and interactive detail in general.
Rare spawns are actually quite common and predictable.
Everyone is the same. Everyone has easy access to the same things, except beyond artificially drawn lines which are meant to keep people like raiders feeling like special snowflakes.
Character progression in PvE activities boils down to farming the exact same bosses, enemies, and/or currency in the same way over and over again.
PvP means nothing. You fight in contained instances which reset. Or, you fight over in-world objectives which have no practical value to the player.
The community there is a community in concept only. There is no reason for them to bond as comrades, so other people merely serve as a distraction and/or annoyances.
There's no existing alternatives to these problems, except things like FFA PvP, hardcore sandbox games, and so on. And many people do not like these alternatives as well, even though they are valid parts of the niche MMORPG market.
I could go on, but you get the point and this list is boring. /Getting mentally sleepy.
Frankly, sitting around and naming the same problems over and over again is not productive. What we need to do is sit down and invest the time in thinking about solutions. In fact, why not have a pinned thread in The Pub at MMORPG.com which is dedicated to brainstorming new ideas for the developers out there?
Waiting for:Citadel of Sorcery. Along the way, The Elder Scrolls Online (when it is F2P).
Keeping an eye on:www.play2crush.com (whatever is going on here).
When content is just grinding and dungeons next to impossible due to mechanics and lag. Left FFXIV at the end game due to this and the promotion of guild housing and all the features including recipes for it and then priced so NO one could buy one. The company crapped in their own nest. Stupid business move.
It's an interesting topic for an article, surely one that puts a dent into all the negativity surrounding the "I'm leaving this game" posts on official forums—people being so defensive when their preferred game of the month is criticised, granted heavily but nevertheless subjectively (i.e., to each one's own tastes). Even the sempiternal "this game sucks, period" has its value, so to speak, as it is an opinion among others. One terribly lacking in wording and substance, for sure, yet an opinion nevertheless, that all games will receive from at least someone; the problem being when too many 'someones' express such an opinion. That former customers won't even use a word to explain why a game is horrible means that, in their mind, anyone trying it would immediately know without needing further discourse. It's peremptory an opinion, incredibly harsh and borderline useless to improve the product, yet it says something.
Now, to the point of the article. The idea of the "exit event" is interesting I think, for a couple of reasons: 1) it's probably great for polishing, but… 2) focusing too much on these "events" themselves (single, identified moments in time) is probably much too narrow a vision for a whole game design.
I'll try to avoid a wall of text.
1) Kind of obvious, identifying most of these "exit events" is equivalent to assessing which parts (features, moments, etc.) of the game are bumps and lumps, rough patches, the proverbial roughness that breaks 'immersion', the fourth wall, suddenly prompting you to remember that this is a game you're playing and there's a whole world out there. The less you make that realisation when playing, the smoother the experience is, the less you'll even think of leaving to do something else. Less chances of hitting that straw that could break the camel's back.
Taken like that, the "exit event" identification and use as information seems a valuable method. I don't think it helps much more than that though; it could even give false perceptions of the how's and why's of players behaviours, because it's terribly limited in scope.
2a) Indeed we're, at this point, awfully ignorant of what weighs on that particular camel's back in the first place. How that particular game is designed and how pieces of it interact together (or fail to do so). Sure, "crafting [may be] too tedious", "combat [may be] boring", and so on and so forth: but these are all relative aspects. You'd find a game A with a much tedious yet incredibly exciting crafting system, whereas in game B crafting could be much simpler yet bland thus totally boring. There's no universal measure of such elements of a whole (what is crafting? what is a 'good' combat system? is there only one answer to these questions?); only against the whole can you truly judge what's worth and what's subpar for your particular game, and beyond that compared to the industry in general—but remember not all games have identical design goals and approaches.
That's another way of saying that a game, or a movie, an album, a book—anything fictional and/or crafted, really—needs a vision, a grander scheme, a global direction that unifies elements and maintains their inner and outer coherence. That thing by which a maker can craft a whole object that bears coherence—making isn't just assembling parts; and cloned parts can resonate much differently when implemented into a different whole.
What you see, much too often in MMO design, is that everything is made (and thought of) so separately that the whole is more of a patchwork than a well-oiled mechanic. Each time the player goes from one aspect to the next (say, stops fighting to craft something), how everything ties into everything else will suddenly make the whole experience seem coherent, enough that you'd be willing to suspend disbelief a bit longer.
2b) And then there's an even bigger picture. What is the last game you've been playing consistently (several times a week, for hours), across many weeks, possibly even a year? I bet it hasn't happened much often in your gamer's life, and the few instances were probably with an MMO. This genre has such a retention power, compared to many other games (notably because: no definite end), that we sometimes fail to remember that any game (as any movie, book, etc.) will be put down at some point in his owner's life, because: other things exist.
No one questions why someone stopped playing Mass Effect X or Civilization Y, but with MMO's? "Oh really, you stopped? Why? What happened?"… as if there needed to be a reason entirely alien to the player itself; as if there needed to be problem, a negative event, something which explains why said player left—because, obviously, it couldn't just be another one of these players playing a game and then moving on to another game!… Really? :-)
I think we misinterpret the general pace (and subsequent retention patterns) of MMO's compared to other genres, particularly single-player games; and that this flawed approach of a fantasised "second life", or whatever exaggerated notion we surrounded virtual worlds with back in their beginnings, is what's driving a flawed analysis of what are nevertheless perfectly normal and rational consumer behaviours with any piece of media.
The perception we have of it also pertains to the business premise of the genre though, as since its beginnings, its very existence is subjected to a steady influx of income—permanent worlds, servers, need to be financed to keep on running. MMO's, as of today, are still pushing the boundaries of computing resources (including networks) on a more regular basis than other genres. Running an MMO, simply put, is sailing through risk constantly. This need to extract money from customers constantly, whether through subs or micro-transactions, is shaping the genre itself, as the retention factor is of prime importance.
Once you bought FIFA or Mariokart, EA or Nintendo doesn't care that you play it on a daily basis for months on end. You bought it, it should be enough for them that you've had enough fun to justify buying the next iteration. But MMO's don't really shape like that—iterations are more 'expansion packs' and 'patches', etc. They need you on several days a week, several weeks a month, several months a year (approx. 3 months/year is a sweet spot many MMO publishers only dream of).
The very business of MMO's revolves on a reciprocal tension from developers to players: the former need the latter to stay in the game, the latter needs the former to stay at it (making new content). The deal is thus quite simple, money for content, but in a much more intricate way (monthly basis) than in most other genres (once-per-iteration basis). This leads to changes in the very design of MMO's, sometimes innocuously, sometimes breaking the very integrity of the product (because: abusive time sinks, real-money translating to power unbalance in-game, etc). A strong argument in favour of subs versus cash shops, though subs come with expectations that seem impossible to fulfil these days, except for the best 2 or 3 titles—WoW, Rift come to mind, but how many failed at a subs model?
So to the question "why do players leave MMOs", I think the article is right in simply saying, basically "bad games" (or too many rough patches), or at least not good enough to hold players indefinitely. However this is just one reason, and probably not the most factoring. In the larger picture, I think the answer really is "other games". Better, newer, where your friends are at… Players will always leave MMO's, just as they always leave game X, Y or Z. Just as they don't read the same book, watch the same movie, or listen to the same album over and over again all their life.
The idea of rough patches, "exit events”, is interesting for in-depth analysis, of course; but beyond that, marketing metrics and vaguely theoretical takes (let's call these simple empirical observations), it doesn't say much and doesn't really help. Would you make a better album if you took Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon" or Radiohead's "OK Computer" and identified, metrics and polls helping, the "exit events", and tried to rework these?… It may help you when using parts of these albums (for background video music, various events, etc.), as you would probably use the 'best' parts and leave the "exit events". It's subjective, but metrics will give you a fair assumption of what most people react to positively and negatively. But does it help you make a good album? Probably not, unless yours is very much flawed to begin with (or incomplete, alpha stages etc). Then again, MMO's are cutting-edge video games, so maybe we're more in a time when WoW is Elvis Presley and we still have to go through the 60's and 70's to find more working formulas to rock online.
Great times ahead, I personally side with such optimism, especially considering unlike music, video games are still very much in their infancy. Yet even at that happy point, when we can hope to see released a few 'outstandingly great' MMO's every year or two, players will still hop from one to the next. Probably more so then than now. There's so much more involved in making these decisions that does not even pertain to games themselves that it would be much too optimistic to hope you can understand a player's behaviour simply by looking at, let alone only in, a particular game—or particular genre, media, anything.
For me, I tend to leave MMO's and not come back when I have sunk in enough time/money to realize that the game I am playing is not the game that I had thought it would be- endgame content or not. Here's a list of MMO's I have left, and their various reasons.
Tera- Got it day one, and got bored with it a week later. It was just SO.... banal to me. The combat was sort of interesting, but everything else (including the Loli's) were just... no... to me. Also, I had cute hair for my avatar, but EVERY OUTFIT I FOUND put it up in a ponytail. WTF?
DCUO- Great game in terms of combat. Horrible games in terms of being Batman's lackey. You never get to speak with Batman face to face, because why should he deal with his lackey's directly? The only memorable thing in DC for me was running around the PvP version of the world- one of the only MMO's where I actually enjoyed the PvP. Meeting up with random people and going on a city-wide crime-busting spree was pretty sweet- one of the best memories in MMO's I have. The story, however... no me gusta.
Free Realms- Yes, I gave it a shot. I figured it would be a perfect way to break MMO monotony by having a casual MMO to play on the backside. Not so. Boring, easy minigames that only further added to the monotony.
AND last, but certainly not least-
Anarchy Online- I loved the idea of it. I loved that it was old, and was still around. I loved that it seemed you could build your character however you wanted. However, after a couple of months, and joining an Org that was dedicated to helping new players, the "honeymoon phase was over", as it were. Not only are you locked specifically to the class you choose (though you can still alot points to other stats available to other classes, which only mess you up more if you do), I found the politics of humans still involved. We had a member that joined the Org because they played for a while, and was happy to see an Org dedicated to the cause. However, this player did nothing but bitch and moan about AO and FC, and how they just didn't care. The Org leader tried to keep them in check a few times, but when it came time to buy our Org city, we were literally sucking up to this person because of their cash, instead of taking the time to earn the cash and learn the in's and out's of the economy. Also, we would go out on raids with the lower levels sitting behind doing, literally, nothing while the higher levels handled everything to get us Exp. It was literally log in, sit back, level up. We never did quest missions, never went around the world... it was a mess. I don't think I'd go back, even if they **finally** add the new Graphics Engine to it. Why add a new engine if you're never going to develop meaningful content for it?
Worst Online Communities: WoW/WoD(the OG MMO Trolls), DayZ/WarZ, SMITE/LoL/DOTA, EVE Online, APB "Im ready for All the comparisons I think its dumb and its embarrassing Im switching off No longer listening Ive had enough of persecution and conditioning Maybe its instinct- Were only animal" - Lily Allen, Sheezus
Let's see, I stopped playing DCUO after a few days because I just couldn't get into the feel of it. The combat felt clunky and i just felt disoriented.
STO: Played for a while, but when it became clear there was little point in doing anything short of the three most popular end-game TFs (Or possibly resource farming. Litterally farming. For those who don't know, you can take your thrice-decorated rear admiral and go mining! On an asteroid! For crystals!), my interest waned. Didn't help that support classes were neutered into uselessness.
City of Heroes: One day the servers shut down and they haven't been up since. =(
Everquest - played on bertoxx I had a 60 troll shadowknight & was well known. I simply got bored & at the time was between jobs. Didn't feel right playing a game while I should've been working so I quit. Ended up selling the account for 2000 u.s.d. The guild I helped create ended up being lead by a buncha morons which also turned me off.
Dark Ages of Camelot - Mythic nerfed the class I played. Made another got to 80, got geared... mythic nerfed that one. I quit. The community at least on the 2nd server I played that of lancelot was the douchiest I've ever encountered in any MMO. So mythic nerfs & douche community.
Star Wars Galaxies - It was a crap game. About it.
Everquest 2 - I bought this from the bargain bin it came with free month of play. I did just that & quit. Levelled a warlock to like 40ish. Didn't interest me at all.
Final Fantasy Online - Playstation quality graphics, language barrier, asian farmers monopolized spawn points in lowbie areas, items for level 10 were more expensive then highest level items, required to group post 30 and progress was hella slow.
Rift - Did the free trial until Guildwars 2 came out. Did not catch my interest.
World of Warcraft - I'd quit & return to wow a number of times. Most of the time simply due to boredom. The last... my account got hacked when I wasn't even playing or had the game installed. Blizzard told me to do all this crap. I was like... I'm not even playing you guys fix it. So they banned it.
Because They lost their job. And this my ignorant friends is the only reason. So get over it and stop your whining about games being not fun.
Two companies had performance evaluations this week, read first warning of who is going to be fired. Each company will let go of ~60K people, less those who take the hint and leave now.
Pardon any spelling errors
Konfess your cyns and some maybe forgiven Boy: Why can't I talk to Him? Mom: We don't talk to Priests. As if it could exist, without being payed for. F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing. Even telemarketers wouldn't think that. It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
"Developers love to look at metrics of defined exit events in order to prevent them from being exit events in the future."
I think this has led to many problems in MMO's as well as solutions. For example, if enough players say 'I just find travel takes too long.' The MMO company may decided to put in more travel points, make mounts faster or bring them in at an earlier level.
But this takes no account of the players who think travel is just right thank you. It may only be a minority of players who bring up an issue on leaving but their views are heard over the majority, a majority that is still playing the game!
Now after they make the travel quicker, many more players may leave or they may just put up with it. Having to put up with it going to be a reason to leave if it happens time and time again.
So I think collecting data about exit events can mask the real reason why people are leaving and makes the opinions of those who no longer intend to play far too important.
If they leave early it's because the game was really low quality or just not their cup of tea, usually the former(DFOUW, Wizardry, Warhammer, the first FFXIV, etc)
If they leave at max level it's because the endgame is shallow and/or nonexistant.
Every MMO since WoW has made one of these two mistakes.
You left out a possibility. People who finish all the leveling content, and then leave because they just don't care about endgame, regardless of it's quality or quantity. There is a decent chance that group is far larger than those who leave because they tried the endgame and found it lacking.
That was me for SWToR.
Same here.
SWToR was wicked until I reached end game, rince and repeat for all caracters to see all the story lines then... done.
There is this concept that endgame has to be raided with a large number of players that I dont like.
How about some duo/trio instances with some really hardcore stuff to do. That would get me going.
One reason that I leave that I didn't see mentioned is after a major revision of some game mechanic and a reset of customization (points, skills, etc.). I then have to research the changes, figure out a new build, a new rotation, review options, all while trying to avoid making some semi-permanent choice that breaks my character.
A similar situation happens when I log into a game after a server merge and I have to rename my character, chose a new server, etc.
When faced with these situations, sometimes I put the energy into figuring out what is next, sometimes I just put it aside until I want to make the changes, and sometimes I just say "screw it" and leave for good.
That may sound silly/petty, but I usually play healers and I take my job seriously. I don't play with friends who rely on me being there for them so I can take my time to learn my class. I don't want to screw things up for a group (and ruin my reputation.) So I will sometimes take weeks after a major game mechanics change before agreeing to group with guildmates, PUGs, etc. until I can refine my game. I solo, and have an outside life, and so I am often way behind everyone else in doing new content.
Maybe my approach is wrong/ineffective, but that is just how I play.
Every MMO, just like every single player game, have a start and an end. And there is nothing wrong with this.
When a player thinks that he reached the end, he will leave. Every player have his idea about "the end": can be having reached maxmium level, can be having the best equipment, can be having explored all the world, can be not having more fun, can be having completed every achievement, and so on. Just like every other videogame.
Most of them don't offer anything new. Seasons? Good changing weather effects? Actual terraforming or housing? Decent crafting? Interesting classes and skills? Actual open worlds, in which you don't hit an invisible wall every two steps that prevents you from falling down a cliff or checking out a location that looked interesting? Nah.
Sure, some MMORPGs offer some decent stuff, but all of the new ones consist to 95% of boring old crap and 5% new stuff.
They are predictable boring time sinks, most of which only remotely enjoyable if you invest a lot of money into the pay2win shop.
Seriously, just when I hear a developer of a MMORPG that's about to be released describe their warriors "might strike" and "taunt" ability, and how their ranger/hunter/whatshisname has a loyal pet, I've already fallen half asleep. BOOOORING!
The new MMORPGs suck. People don't really communicate anymore, because everything is so fricking easy that no communication is necessary. Without communication or necessary teamplay, there is no difference between other players and more or less random AIs. What do I care whether the guy running past in the background is controlled by a human or AI? It's no difference to me. I could as well play a single player game, though that might have no subscription cost or bother me with a pay2win shop, and would most likely have a better story to boot.
Some of the games even automatically walk your character to the quest locations. I thought I was having a nightmare the first time I encountered a game like that.
Just look on the map and you know everything already. Without having played one of the recent MMORPGs for more than five minutes, you know that if you walk 50 steps to the west you will encounter an invisible wall. Where is the fun in that? I want to explore a world.
It's pretty tough to reinvent the wheel. Unless there's a competetive driving force for endgame there's no point in staying for most gamers. ELO system from League of Legends is needed to keep PvP'ers around.
I left FFXI because of their awful customer service and horrible in-game GM support. Got stuck in the choco stables in bastok and didn't hear from them for 3 weeks after opening a ticket. Couldn't even log on the character, it would give me an error after a long loading screen.
Most people leave mmo's after a month or two because once they reach endgame it's too similar to what they just left. Raiding and PvP are good endgames, but raiding can take up too much time for people that don't have enough time. If you like PvP it can be fun but not for you to play games for months, there's got to be some meat left when your done with that to keep you wanting to play. Dailies are a shallow form of content that makes you feel like you have to keep playing or you're going to miss out on rewards.
I would like to see daily adventures that sets you on a random quest to random places that's a series of chain events that leads to epic events and places. That would be cool could be random like solving murders or lead you to someones treasure that was lost or stolen. I want something different to do daily, I'm tired of logging in and doing the same thing everyday, send me to dungeons solving puzzles or something than kill / collect quests PLEASE!
For me, there are quite a few reasons why I quit MMOs:
1.) Leveing is a forgotten part of the game. WoW killed their own leveling experience by allowing a huge imbalance. Yes, low level characters are OP, but the novelty wears off.
2.) Features that are common in most MMOs do not exist. SWTOR suffered from this without a LFG style system. It was a real pain to find someone to fill a group. Of course, they focused too much on the leveling/story that the end-game suffered. TESO is missing a mini-map (and a way to actually keep playing if you have anything open).
3.) Imbalance in PvP. Most MMOs can't seem to balance out PvP. WoW has issues with some classes and specs being irrelevant in PvP. Rift also hasn't bothered with PvP balance when the PvE balance is close.
4.) Linear leveling/game play. I really dislike the linear leveling found in most MMOs. They create just enough content to level a character if they go from point A to point B, etc. WoW is starting to do this with expansions, as they cut out most of their alternate leveling zones. Rift is notorious for this for their questing, but allow another way to "grind" their levels (Rifts). SWTOR was like this to drive the major story arc.
5.) Uninspired/poor dungeon design. Rift's Storm Legion dungeons seemed to be the worst for me. Boring bosses, lame strategies, and odd locations to put a lock on the fight. I remember one in particular was right down the middle of the room that made the fighting area smaller than most classes maximum range.
It just seems that every major MMO gets the basics right (combat, menus, action bars), but they have a brain-lapse on some other things that are completely basic in the landscape today (mini map, LFG systems, some challenging gameplay in the leveling, etc). I'd love it if, for once, a MMO actually had reasonable balance in PvP so you can play the way you want, not the way they want you to play. Not everybody wants to be a Resto Druid or a Chloro Mage.
Originally posted by SoulTrapOnSelf Played MMOs until level cap, not interested in raiding. Then go back to single player games and wait for either an MMO expansion or a new MMO. Rinse and repeat.
This is me 100%. Some of then not even to lvl cap. Everytime i think i've found the mmo for me it fails me because i've done the same thing in every game. Nothing new or creative has come out in a long time. If you Dev's are going to make the same thing over and over at least make interesting and fun.
Comments
LOTRO.
General decline in gameplay due to lag, bugs, and 'thin' content. (I mention this because I think it's rare that a great game you love suddenly experiences an 'exit event'.)
Final straw: class revamp that completely did away with the class I had enjoyed and played for years without so much as a single survey from Turbine as to what players wanted in a revamp. It was that class in name only afterward. I left after 6 plus years of regular play.
A GOOD MIX OF PVE/PVP
I am an older player. I leave for various reasons which are situational to the game. I enjoy a good mix of a battlefield/zonecarebear pvp (death doesn't mean you get looted and come back as a ghost with nothing- that sucks to me) and pve. I enjoy hanging with a guild and attempting to do a pve raid here and there but my game has to have a mix that's enjoyable or the game is dumped.
VARIETY/MYSTERY
I haven't seen an enjoyable yet frustrating game as dark age of Camelot in years. The "thing" was the enemy class that attacked you had a mix of 2 or 3 of your realms classes in 1, and you had that in a class of yours but in a tank/ranged/etc.
BOREDOM/IMBALANCE
Games these days cut and paste a "healer", "tank", "Mdps", "ranged" without a small imbalance from one realm to the other.
Dark Age did this the best but also fkd up too cause they didn't react very quickly to some of the pvp HUGE imbalances, i.e. banshees screaming thru tower walls, animst poping out shrooms in a courtyard and going afk while they kill everything or even some of the imbalances from Warhammer Online.
It was a lot of fun in the beginning and figuring out that a Magus mechanics were made slightly different in another named class of the enemies.
DEV REACTION TIME
Those 2 games were simply the devs didn't react to balance in a timely manner and I chose to not wait (after investing 6 years into daoc) another 1+ years on games that had become aged.
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
The other reason I leave is IF the customer support really sucks! (FFXIV *cough*) then Ill drop em even quicker. I have waited 16 days for a return on an item swap and counting. I feel that's bad business on their part. If you disagree that's fine, but in the end, Im making a payment to them (sub) and if I feel they lack early in the life of the game of cust support it wont get any better as time goes on.
For me , i stop play mmo from months beacuse i have life and friends
Addicted to mmo will make u stay front screen long time
Not healthy and will affect baddly to your life
Heh, this article isn't about "why" you quit.
It is about "how" you need to quit.
If you want the genera to get better, start filling out the surveys when you leave.
In regards to the more outspoken mmo "vets", most of them seem to not really play mmos. Rather, they tolerate them, always looking for the last straw. Sometimes its a patch that "breaks" a must have feature on their list. Or its an overall design that they just can't take anymore. Then its off to the forums to let everyone know why this game fails.
I mean no disrespect to Mr. Miller, but I think that the reason why players quit MMORPGs has been made clear. Quite simply, they get bored. Specifically:
Waiting for: Citadel of Sorcery. Along the way, The Elder Scrolls Online (when it is F2P).
Keeping an eye on: www.play2crush.com (whatever is going on here).
It's an interesting topic for an article, surely one that puts a dent into all the negativity surrounding the "I'm leaving this game" posts on official forums—people being so defensive when their preferred game of the month is criticised, granted heavily but nevertheless subjectively (i.e., to each one's own tastes). Even the sempiternal "this game sucks, period" has its value, so to speak, as it is an opinion among others. One terribly lacking in wording and substance, for sure, yet an opinion nevertheless, that all games will receive from at least someone; the problem being when too many 'someones' express such an opinion. That former customers won't even use a word to explain why a game is horrible means that, in their mind, anyone trying it would immediately know without needing further discourse. It's peremptory an opinion, incredibly harsh and borderline useless to improve the product, yet it says something.
Now, to the point of the article. The idea of the "exit event" is interesting I think, for a couple of reasons: 1) it's probably great for polishing, but… 2) focusing too much on these "events" themselves (single, identified moments in time) is probably much too narrow a vision for a whole game design.
I'll try to avoid a wall of text.
1) Kind of obvious, identifying most of these "exit events" is equivalent to assessing which parts (features, moments, etc.) of the game are bumps and lumps, rough patches, the proverbial roughness that breaks 'immersion', the fourth wall, suddenly prompting you to remember that this is a game you're playing and there's a whole world out there. The less you make that realisation when playing, the smoother the experience is, the less you'll even think of leaving to do something else. Less chances of hitting that straw that could break the camel's back.
Taken like that, the "exit event" identification and use as information seems a valuable method. I don't think it helps much more than that though; it could even give false perceptions of the how's and why's of players behaviours, because it's terribly limited in scope.
2a) Indeed we're, at this point, awfully ignorant of what weighs on that particular camel's back in the first place. How that particular game is designed and how pieces of it interact together (or fail to do so). Sure, "crafting [may be] too tedious", "combat [may be] boring", and so on and so forth: but these are all relative aspects. You'd find a game A with a much tedious yet incredibly exciting crafting system, whereas in game B crafting could be much simpler yet bland thus totally boring. There's no universal measure of such elements of a whole (what is crafting? what is a 'good' combat system? is there only one answer to these questions?); only against the whole can you truly judge what's worth and what's subpar for your particular game, and beyond that compared to the industry in general—but remember not all games have identical design goals and approaches.
That's another way of saying that a game, or a movie, an album, a book—anything fictional and/or crafted, really—needs a vision, a grander scheme, a global direction that unifies elements and maintains their inner and outer coherence. That thing by which a maker can craft a whole object that bears coherence—making isn't just assembling parts; and cloned parts can resonate much differently when implemented into a different whole.
What you see, much too often in MMO design, is that everything is made (and thought of) so separately that the whole is more of a patchwork than a well-oiled mechanic. Each time the player goes from one aspect to the next (say, stops fighting to craft something), how everything ties into everything else will suddenly make the whole experience seem coherent, enough that you'd be willing to suspend disbelief a bit longer.
2b) And then there's an even bigger picture. What is the last game you've been playing consistently (several times a week, for hours), across many weeks, possibly even a year? I bet it hasn't happened much often in your gamer's life, and the few instances were probably with an MMO. This genre has such a retention power, compared to many other games (notably because: no definite end), that we sometimes fail to remember that any game (as any movie, book, etc.) will be put down at some point in his owner's life, because: other things exist.
No one questions why someone stopped playing Mass Effect X or Civilization Y, but with MMO's? "Oh really, you stopped? Why? What happened?"… as if there needed to be a reason entirely alien to the player itself; as if there needed to be problem, a negative event, something which explains why said player left—because, obviously, it couldn't just be another one of these players playing a game and then moving on to another game!… Really? :-)
I think we misinterpret the general pace (and subsequent retention patterns) of MMO's compared to other genres, particularly single-player games; and that this flawed approach of a fantasised "second life", or whatever exaggerated notion we surrounded virtual worlds with back in their beginnings, is what's driving a flawed analysis of what are nevertheless perfectly normal and rational consumer behaviours with any piece of media.
The perception we have of it also pertains to the business premise of the genre though, as since its beginnings, its very existence is subjected to a steady influx of income—permanent worlds, servers, need to be financed to keep on running. MMO's, as of today, are still pushing the boundaries of computing resources (including networks) on a more regular basis than other genres. Running an MMO, simply put, is sailing through risk constantly. This need to extract money from customers constantly, whether through subs or micro-transactions, is shaping the genre itself, as the retention factor is of prime importance.
Once you bought FIFA or Mariokart, EA or Nintendo doesn't care that you play it on a daily basis for months on end. You bought it, it should be enough for them that you've had enough fun to justify buying the next iteration. But MMO's don't really shape like that—iterations are more 'expansion packs' and 'patches', etc. They need you on several days a week, several weeks a month, several months a year (approx. 3 months/year is a sweet spot many MMO publishers only dream of).
The very business of MMO's revolves on a reciprocal tension from developers to players: the former need the latter to stay in the game, the latter needs the former to stay at it (making new content). The deal is thus quite simple, money for content, but in a much more intricate way (monthly basis) than in most other genres (once-per-iteration basis). This leads to changes in the very design of MMO's, sometimes innocuously, sometimes breaking the very integrity of the product (because: abusive time sinks, real-money translating to power unbalance in-game, etc). A strong argument in favour of subs versus cash shops, though subs come with expectations that seem impossible to fulfil these days, except for the best 2 or 3 titles—WoW, Rift come to mind, but how many failed at a subs model?
So to the question "why do players leave MMOs", I think the article is right in simply saying, basically "bad games" (or too many rough patches), or at least not good enough to hold players indefinitely. However this is just one reason, and probably not the most factoring. In the larger picture, I think the answer really is "other games". Better, newer, where your friends are at… Players will always leave MMO's, just as they always leave game X, Y or Z. Just as they don't read the same book, watch the same movie, or listen to the same album over and over again all their life.
The idea of rough patches, "exit events”, is interesting for in-depth analysis, of course; but beyond that, marketing metrics and vaguely theoretical takes (let's call these simple empirical observations), it doesn't say much and doesn't really help. Would you make a better album if you took Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon" or Radiohead's "OK Computer" and identified, metrics and polls helping, the "exit events", and tried to rework these?… It may help you when using parts of these albums (for background video music, various events, etc.), as you would probably use the 'best' parts and leave the "exit events". It's subjective, but metrics will give you a fair assumption of what most people react to positively and negatively. But does it help you make a good album? Probably not, unless yours is very much flawed to begin with (or incomplete, alpha stages etc). Then again, MMO's are cutting-edge video games, so maybe we're more in a time when WoW is Elvis Presley and we still have to go through the 60's and 70's to find more working formulas to rock online.
Great times ahead, I personally side with such optimism, especially considering unlike music, video games are still very much in their infancy. Yet even at that happy point, when we can hope to see released a few 'outstandingly great' MMO's every year or two, players will still hop from one to the next. Probably more so then than now. There's so much more involved in making these decisions that does not even pertain to games themselves that it would be much too optimistic to hope you can understand a player's behaviour simply by looking at, let alone only in, a particular game—or particular genre, media, anything.
I leave because they are too similar to WoW-elf-are in that you are rewarded for trivial tasks such as going AFK or logging off the game.
I do not enjoy progressing my character but not playing it.
Very nice post.
For me, I tend to leave MMO's and not come back when I have sunk in enough time/money to realize that the game I am playing is not the game that I had thought it would be- endgame content or not. Here's a list of MMO's I have left, and their various reasons.
Tera- Got it day one, and got bored with it a week later. It was just SO.... banal to me. The combat was sort of interesting, but everything else (including the Loli's) were just... no... to me. Also, I had cute hair for my avatar, but EVERY OUTFIT I FOUND put it up in a ponytail. WTF?
DCUO- Great game in terms of combat. Horrible games in terms of being Batman's lackey. You never get to speak with Batman face to face, because why should he deal with his lackey's directly? The only memorable thing in DC for me was running around the PvP version of the world- one of the only MMO's where I actually enjoyed the PvP. Meeting up with random people and going on a city-wide crime-busting spree was pretty sweet- one of the best memories in MMO's I have. The story, however... no me gusta.
Free Realms- Yes, I gave it a shot. I figured it would be a perfect way to break MMO monotony by having a casual MMO to play on the backside. Not so. Boring, easy minigames that only further added to the monotony.
AND last, but certainly not least-
Anarchy Online- I loved the idea of it. I loved that it was old, and was still around. I loved that it seemed you could build your character however you wanted. However, after a couple of months, and joining an Org that was dedicated to helping new players, the "honeymoon phase was over", as it were. Not only are you locked specifically to the class you choose (though you can still alot points to other stats available to other classes, which only mess you up more if you do), I found the politics of humans still involved. We had a member that joined the Org because they played for a while, and was happy to see an Org dedicated to the cause. However, this player did nothing but bitch and moan about AO and FC, and how they just didn't care. The Org leader tried to keep them in check a few times, but when it came time to buy our Org city, we were literally sucking up to this person because of their cash, instead of taking the time to earn the cash and learn the in's and out's of the economy. Also, we would go out on raids with the lower levels sitting behind doing, literally, nothing while the higher levels handled everything to get us Exp. It was literally log in, sit back, level up. We never did quest missions, never went around the world... it was a mess. I don't think I'd go back, even if they **finally** add the new Graphics Engine to it. Why add a new engine if you're never going to develop meaningful content for it?
Loves: SMITE, WildStar, Project Zomboid, PSO2, DCUO,
Worst Online Communities: WoW/WoD(the OG MMO Trolls), DayZ/WarZ, SMITE/LoL/DOTA, EVE Online, APB
"Im ready for
All the comparisons
I think its dumb and its embarrassing
Im switching off
No longer listening
Ive had enough of persecution and conditioning
Maybe its instinct- Were only animal" - Lily Allen, Sheezus
Let's see, I stopped playing DCUO after a few days because I just couldn't get into the feel of it. The combat felt clunky and i just felt disoriented.
STO: Played for a while, but when it became clear there was little point in doing anything short of the three most popular end-game TFs (Or possibly resource farming. Litterally farming. For those who don't know, you can take your thrice-decorated rear admiral and go mining! On an asteroid! For crystals!), my interest waned. Didn't help that support classes were neutered into uselessness.
City of Heroes: One day the servers shut down and they haven't been up since. =(
I'll detail why I left each one;
Everquest - played on bertoxx I had a 60 troll shadowknight & was well known. I simply got bored & at the time was between jobs. Didn't feel right playing a game while I should've been working so I quit. Ended up selling the account for 2000 u.s.d. The guild I helped create ended up being lead by a buncha morons which also turned me off.
Dark Ages of Camelot - Mythic nerfed the class I played. Made another got to 80, got geared... mythic nerfed that one. I quit. The community at least on the 2nd server I played that of lancelot was the douchiest I've ever encountered in any MMO. So mythic nerfs & douche community.
Star Wars Galaxies - It was a crap game. About it.
Everquest 2 - I bought this from the bargain bin it came with free month of play. I did just that & quit. Levelled a warlock to like 40ish. Didn't interest me at all.
Final Fantasy Online - Playstation quality graphics, language barrier, asian farmers monopolized spawn points in lowbie areas, items for level 10 were more expensive then highest level items, required to group post 30 and progress was hella slow.
Rift - Did the free trial until Guildwars 2 came out. Did not catch my interest.
World of Warcraft - I'd quit & return to wow a number of times. Most of the time simply due to boredom. The last... my account got hacked when I wasn't even playing or had the game installed. Blizzard told me to do all this crap. I was like... I'm not even playing you guys fix it. So they banned it.
Because They lost their job. And this my ignorant friends is the only reason. So get over it and stop your whining about games being not fun.
Two companies had performance evaluations this week, read first warning of who is going to be fired. Each company will let go of ~60K people, less those who take the hint and leave now.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
I think this has led to many problems in MMO's as well as solutions. For example, if enough players say 'I just find travel takes too long.' The MMO company may decided to put in more travel points, make mounts faster or bring them in at an earlier level.
But this takes no account of the players who think travel is just right thank you. It may only be a minority of players who bring up an issue on leaving but their views are heard over the majority, a majority that is still playing the game!
Now after they make the travel quicker, many more players may leave or they may just put up with it. Having to put up with it going to be a reason to leave if it happens time and time again.
So I think collecting data about exit events can mask the real reason why people are leaving and makes the opinions of those who no longer intend to play far too important.
Same here.
SWToR was wicked until I reached end game, rince and repeat for all caracters to see all the story lines then... done.
There is this concept that endgame has to be raided with a large number of players that I dont like.
How about some duo/trio instances with some really hardcore stuff to do. That would get me going.
One reason that I leave that I didn't see mentioned is after a major revision of some game mechanic and a reset of customization (points, skills, etc.). I then have to research the changes, figure out a new build, a new rotation, review options, all while trying to avoid making some semi-permanent choice that breaks my character.
A similar situation happens when I log into a game after a server merge and I have to rename my character, chose a new server, etc.
When faced with these situations, sometimes I put the energy into figuring out what is next, sometimes I just put it aside until I want to make the changes, and sometimes I just say "screw it" and leave for good.
That may sound silly/petty, but I usually play healers and I take my job seriously. I don't play with friends who rely on me being there for them so I can take my time to learn my class. I don't want to screw things up for a group (and ruin my reputation.) So I will sometimes take weeks after a major game mechanics change before agreeing to group with guildmates, PUGs, etc. until I can refine my game. I solo, and have an outside life, and so I am often way behind everyone else in doing new content.
Maybe my approach is wrong/ineffective, but that is just how I play.
Every MMO, just like every single player game, have a start and an end. And there is nothing wrong with this.
When a player thinks that he reached the end, he will leave. Every player have his idea about "the end": can be having reached maxmium level, can be having the best equipment, can be having explored all the world, can be not having more fun, can be having completed every achievement, and so on. Just like every other videogame.
The new MMORPGs suck, that's why.
Most of them don't offer anything new. Seasons? Good changing weather effects? Actual terraforming or housing? Decent crafting? Interesting classes and skills? Actual open worlds, in which you don't hit an invisible wall every two steps that prevents you from falling down a cliff or checking out a location that looked interesting? Nah.
Sure, some MMORPGs offer some decent stuff, but all of the new ones consist to 95% of boring old crap and 5% new stuff.
They are predictable boring time sinks, most of which only remotely enjoyable if you invest a lot of money into the pay2win shop.
Seriously, just when I hear a developer of a MMORPG that's about to be released describe their warriors "might strike" and "taunt" ability, and how their ranger/hunter/whatshisname has a loyal pet, I've already fallen half asleep. BOOOORING!
The new MMORPGs suck. People don't really communicate anymore, because everything is so fricking easy that no communication is necessary. Without communication or necessary teamplay, there is no difference between other players and more or less random AIs. What do I care whether the guy running past in the background is controlled by a human or AI? It's no difference to me. I could as well play a single player game, though that might have no subscription cost or bother me with a pay2win shop, and would most likely have a better story to boot.
Some of the games even automatically walk your character to the quest locations. I thought I was having a nightmare the first time I encountered a game like that.
Just look on the map and you know everything already. Without having played one of the recent MMORPGs for more than five minutes, you know that if you walk 50 steps to the west you will encounter an invisible wall. Where is the fun in that? I want to explore a world.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
Main Game: Eldevin (Plat0nic)
2nd Game: Path of Exile (Platonic Hate)
I left FFXI because of their awful customer service and horrible in-game GM support. Got stuck in the choco stables in bastok and didn't hear from them for 3 weeks after opening a ticket. Couldn't even log on the character, it would give me an error after a long loading screen.
Most people leave mmo's after a month or two because once they reach endgame it's too similar to what they just left. Raiding and PvP are good endgames, but raiding can take up too much time for people that don't have enough time. If you like PvP it can be fun but not for you to play games for months, there's got to be some meat left when your done with that to keep you wanting to play. Dailies are a shallow form of content that makes you feel like you have to keep playing or you're going to miss out on rewards.
I would like to see daily adventures that sets you on a random quest to random places that's a series of chain events that leads to epic events and places. That would be cool could be random like solving murders or lead you to someones treasure that was lost or stolen. I want something different to do daily, I'm tired of logging in and doing the same thing everyday, send me to dungeons solving puzzles or something than kill / collect quests PLEASE!
For me, there are quite a few reasons why I quit MMOs:
1.) Leveing is a forgotten part of the game. WoW killed their own leveling experience by allowing a huge imbalance. Yes, low level characters are OP, but the novelty wears off.
2.) Features that are common in most MMOs do not exist. SWTOR suffered from this without a LFG style system. It was a real pain to find someone to fill a group. Of course, they focused too much on the leveling/story that the end-game suffered. TESO is missing a mini-map (and a way to actually keep playing if you have anything open).
3.) Imbalance in PvP. Most MMOs can't seem to balance out PvP. WoW has issues with some classes and specs being irrelevant in PvP. Rift also hasn't bothered with PvP balance when the PvE balance is close.
4.) Linear leveling/game play. I really dislike the linear leveling found in most MMOs. They create just enough content to level a character if they go from point A to point B, etc. WoW is starting to do this with expansions, as they cut out most of their alternate leveling zones. Rift is notorious for this for their questing, but allow another way to "grind" their levels (Rifts). SWTOR was like this to drive the major story arc.
5.) Uninspired/poor dungeon design. Rift's Storm Legion dungeons seemed to be the worst for me. Boring bosses, lame strategies, and odd locations to put a lock on the fight. I remember one in particular was right down the middle of the room that made the fighting area smaller than most classes maximum range.
It just seems that every major MMO gets the basics right (combat, menus, action bars), but they have a brain-lapse on some other things that are completely basic in the landscape today (mini map, LFG systems, some challenging gameplay in the leveling, etc). I'd love it if, for once, a MMO actually had reasonable balance in PvP so you can play the way you want, not the way they want you to play. Not everybody wants to be a Resto Druid or a Chloro Mage.
This is me 100%. Some of then not even to lvl cap. Everytime i think i've found the mmo for me it fails me because i've done the same thing in every game. Nothing new or creative has come out in a long time. If you Dev's are going to make the same thing over and over at least make interesting and fun.