EVE is an MMO like no other. A single shard and deep economic simulation are two of the most commonly cited reasons, but there is another.
At its heart EVE is a game made by the people that play it. The content may be created and provided by CCP but the true appeal of EVE is not in the game itself, but in the people that play it.
In EVE relationships matter, they are important. From the level of the individual up to the level of the big alliances and corporations and their diplomatic shenanigans. I’m willing to be that more people stay playing EVE because of the people they play with than the actual content provided by CCP.
This is why long term players are important in EVE. The longer you play the deeper the relationships you build, these relationships stand as an example of what it means to play EVE. You get to know the pilots you fly with/against, you know who to talk to for advice on certain game mechanics, you get to know who you can trust to go in with you on an investment.
Now, a discussion I had on twitter with @rulesaremyenemy and @fivechairs prompted this post. Rules put forward that EVE’s population is still growing. That may well be but player turnover can be quite high and still show growth, all growth indicates is an increase in CCP’s bank account. High player turnover is bad for EVE because it means a lot of players not hanging around to build the relationships essential to the games success. This leads to players not seeing that its worth building those relationships (because they don’t see the advantage of them) and then the whole thing falls apart. This leads to an EVE where there are no interpersonal relationships between the players, and the churn replaces the population completely in quite a short period of time, then EVE dies.
EVE dies because the new players have nothing to aspire to. They don’t see anyone else flying the big ships because no-one has been around long enough to train for them. They don’t see the characters who have made a name for themselves over a period of years and are respected or reviled by their friends and enemies repectively.
In a game which is based largely on your character’s reputation, which takes time to build, short termers have no opportunity to become as famous or notorious as some of the game’s well known figures (Sir Molle, The Mittani, Darius Johnson, Chribba, and Mynxee, to name but a few.
There are not only ephemeral reasons for why the long term player is someone CCP should be looking to cultivate, there are fairly solid business and gameplay reasons as well:
Long term players attract new players, and players attracted and ‘mentored’ by long term players are more likely to stay and become long term players themselves. This builds a guaranteed income stream for CCP, and gives them free word of mouth marketing to boot. Long term players also generally have more than one account.
Long term players keep the game’s economy running, they fly and manufacture the capital ships which take a long time to train for and need alot of resources to build.
Without long term players building relationships and social networks things like the BoB takedown, Guiding Hand Social Club heist and the recent U’K dissolution could not happen, and New Eden would be a much less interesting place to play.
Without long term players we wouldn’t have institutions such as EVE Uni, the CSM and a (currently sem-stalled) PvP/political/espionage game in 0.0.
EVE needs its long term players, and it needs to increase their numbers, in order to remain EVE. The public quitting of long term subscribers in the Zulu and ‘Vote for Me’ threadnaughts (who’s bright idea was that?) may hide a considerable number of long termers who simply quit in silent disgust, without announcing it to the world (though we can’t be certain, and CCP are hardly going to publish those numbers).
With the upcoming release of a variety of SF MMOs (SWTOR being the biggest) people will move elsewhere for their spacships and lasers fix. SWTOR may even be enough to tempt alot of older EVE players away as most of us got our start in science fiction from that franchise. There have been many tempting games which have lured us away over the years, but we have always returned to EVE. This time it could be different.
Speaking for myself as a fairly long term player, my main is from January 2004, I’m increasingly finding myself dissillusioned and losing faith in CCP. I’m thinking of cutting my losses and moving to another game. DDO and EQ2 have gone free to play, LOTRO is soon to follow, and World of Tanks looks promising. None of them are EVE though and I would like to see EVE continue to be the best SF MMO out there, the question is does CCP want the same thing?
If the answer is yes then they need to keep their long term players happy, they need to give them reasons to stay. If they don’t the churn will get worse and EVE will lose the thing that makes it great; a community that has developed and emerged over 7 years as being the driving force behind much of the game’s evolution and development. A community that has won awards (which should be a credit to the community, not to CCP). We are what make EVE what it is, we are what make EVE successful.
At the moment we feel ignored and marginalised. CCP value new blood over loyal customers, but that new blood will not stay if the general impression they get from us long termers is that EVE is broken and the massive fleet fights that it is marketed on are not possible. New players may be brought by word of mouth, but they can also be driven away.
CCP have a resource available to them that they are misusing. The marketing power of a loyal and passionate customer base is not to be sneezed at, and what’s more its free. CCP need to remember that.
M out
2 Comments
I agree with a lot of this. By far the sketchiest thing someone from CCP said in the CSM minutes was the part about “their research shows new customers blah blah blah…”.
I would like to add (unless I missed it in the post) is that older players can often fund multiple accounts through isk or buy them outright. An older player quitting has a multiplier effect and CCP will feel it in their bottom line.
However, there would be a positive feedback effect within the game if a chunk of old-timers went away. For one, there are many newer corps itching to get into 0.0 and establishing sovereignty. If older players dropping made the holding alliances weaker, you would see a lot more corps trying to make a name for themselves there.
The second, and I doubt this is by any sort of design, is that players dropping because of lag in huge fleet battles will make the game better for those who stay. Actually, I take that back. Maybe that's what CCP is thinking, too.
Many mmorpg's have struggled with the need for new players and keeping the vets happy. You outlined the difference between EVE and other games very well. EVE needs it's veteran players to ensure the game works, period. Without them, the culture of the game dies.
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