DAY 13 IN A ROW, KNIGHTS HAVE ENY IN PRIME TIME! IT RAN FOR OVER 4 HOURS.
You know what the nearly last half of the month looked like, or would if you actually looked at the stats.
Put yourself in the place of a player. How long is it before you conclude that the game design and ENY is faulty? How long is it before YOU decide that its just not worth it? That the developer for no real reason, is wedded to the past in an iron clad way.
This game once had THOUSANDS OF PLAYERS. The MMO WWII air combat genre once had nearly 100k players. Now ask yourself, where did they all go? Statistically they didn't all die. You offer in an ironclad way, the same game play that brought them here. Why on the green earth, do they not play now? Are the other games so enticing? I will humbly offer an idea. The blind intransigence that says that this game was perfect at a certain point and won't, CAN'T be changed in any meaningful way tells people that THIS is for sale and nothing else. It tells them, like this very particular incarnation or quit. Like THIS or go find something else. YOU tell them this. They choose WITH THEIR FEET and go somewhere else. The pretty new graphics don't bring them herding in. The hole left by AH is amply filled with re-runs. If that doesn't hurt then you really need to reexamine what you think.
Blind obstinacy is not an endearing trait in any individual, ever. Whether you can see it or not, people totally understand the "My way or the highway" manner in which this game is run in. I'm sure you don't talk to the people that have left but others do having made friendships that last for decades and will out last this game. You can watch your friends leave for years and pretty soon the reason that you were in the game has disappeared. The game play itself did not keep you here, THE PEOPLE DID!!!!
Nearly universally, the comment I hear back in trying to entice people to try it again is, "It's never going to change, HiTech is never going to change. HiTech will never listen. Why bother?"
I personally have found I can't even get them to enter the forum for this reason, even to find solutions for why the game isn't working for them. If you are looking for the reason why people leave and don't return, just think about that.
If this is what you intend then you are succeeding and please don't change. But if you want this game to grow, then really think about this. How much and how often and in how many different ways do you need to be told before it sinks in? If doing the same dang thing over and over brought you a game that is less than 1/10th the size it used to be, WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU? Seriously, it doesn't take a genius to figure it out. You are a smart guy doing some really incomprehensible things. WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU?
Why for the love of Pete are you married to ENY?
You will find that this will be true for anything that you have decided is part of what AH is. Sometimes the human body needs surgery to remain alive, to grow. A tree needs pruning to get bigger. A plant needs to be repotted into a bigger pot to grow. DO YOU SEE WHERE THIS IS GOING??
