Re: 14 DAYS
Reply #25 –
Nr 1 priority for any company, regardless of product, IS SALES.
Quality comes after that. Sales first. It brings in revenue (food for the business to survive at the very least, prefferably grow to keep up with competition).
In our days, there are so many new ways to reach out to gamers, I'm shocked none of them have been utilized. Ub3r needs a growth hacker more than an artist or other programmers atm.
MMOs are not regular games or products though, you need to keep people active while still getting more to even out the players who quit. Harder to do for huge projects as they need more employees than small-ish (indie) games.
If a game reaches a huge hype at release but is NOT ready (like RoA), people will quit quickly.
What is much more important now, that the game stays on bumping up the quality, adding features, doing events at bigger patch releases etc.
Only very few MMOs actually are able to do that or did in the past.
Losing the biggest part of the hype means most likely that those people won't ever come back. Obviously there are exceptions and it is possible that RoA will recover.
The "hype cycle"(pic below) is somewhat applicable, as so many things get overhyped nowadays and then called "dead geam" because they lost 80%+ of the players after the release.
The recovery is more important but also tough. It is easier if you have a set concept and realistic vision for many months after release.
DnD aims for the long run, which is very risky BUT could work out since the community now is tiny including the small hype.
If over time more and more people hear about the constant progression, good reviews etc, there might come more (theory, optimism....).
Call me stupid and whatnot because I find ub3r's strategy risky but also realistic. I am not expecting a big success but also not the doomsday like some say. Just a gaaame dont be mad!
Source with explanation