How come we have no red servers yet???
By
Accualt,
Posted on: 2005-11-01 20:08 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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I don't mind people not liking the game or its dev team, but this is really starting to smell like one of those times when someone has a personal problem and is grasping around for something to elevate it beyond that.
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Nail, meet hammer.
Seriously, the poster coming under fire is probably just some emo kid taking out his lovelorn frustrations on the game. Or something like that, I just really wanted to take a dig at emo while the joke was still slightly funny.
Oh, we're not making fun of emo kids anymore?
Oops.
I listen to My Chemical Romance because AFI got too mainstream, man.
/em cutterchic
Current Badge Hunter: Plot Device (Rad/Thermal/Dark) - 1,268 Xbox Live: Friggin Taser
King of Electricity, Lead Inmate running the Carl and Sons asylum, the "Man" behind the Establishment, Given Honor in Hat Form By Paragon City (Favorite Forum Poster 2006!), Master of Ceremonies of the Fair Use Law podcast
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If DOOM means never hitting 3 millions subs, then you win. Doom, it is.
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You all are so eager to jump to States' defense you completely miss the point of just about everything don't you?
Alright, one last try here. I could really care less if CoH has the same number of subscribers as WoW. What I do care about is the fact the devs seem so focused on a very narrow view of the game and their own interpretation of fun that it is driving many people from the game. What I do care about is the fact that the focus of the dev team is centered around making sure every number in their spreadsheets line up instead of keeping the game in line with the genre itself. What I do care about is the fact that every issue for the last year has been centered around reigning in playstyles that Jack doesn't think are fun instead of giving us more options in what style of play we want. I could go on and on, but about the only person still bothering with this thread that might be able to grasp that is Clint here.
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Wow, a post from States' that isn't condescending. Been a while since we'e seen that. Thanks.
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My point continues to be: ED and I5 haven't created a ghost town out of City of Heroes.
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And, you're right there. It started before that. Rounds about I4 is when I started to notice a significant increase in the number of people from friends lists and SG rosters that showed OFFLINE.
I5 and ED aren't the way to bring them back either. If you guys are perfectly content just doing enough to maintain your current numbers not much I can do to persuade you otherwise.
I can only hope I7 is BIG, because we sure as heck need it to be. I suspect though that PvP is going to have another round of large "tweaks" to powers and mechanincs coming our way.
Been almost two years now and no new Melee or Defense sets, no Skills, no power customization, no end game activities, no fixes for lots of stuff that has been broken since beta (damn disorient bugs), no weapon customization, only 1 Epic AT, no sprucing up of the old zones or missions or TF's, the list goes on and on.
That is the kind of stuff that is going to bring players back/keep them here. If indeed the numbers coming in are growing just imagine what your subscription numbers would be if you guys worked a bit more on keeping players rather than driving them off.
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According to MMOGchart.com (Sir Bruce's numbers), CoH's been losing people ever since release... which is normal. You always get a huge boost of people who want to play with something shiney and new, and then it fades. Of course, more recently it's been increasing in numbers... right about at the point your old buddies seemed to be going away.
While it's unfortunate you lost all your friends, your experience doesn't seem to match the overall trend... a trend I am a part of, since I picked this up around I4-I5, and I've persuaded several to join me around the same time.
As for the rest... well... you can always demand more. "CoH deserves better!"
But even if he'd fixed everyone of those things... we'd still have no arch enemies, no vehicles, no new pool sets, no "non-epic" new ATs, etc.
You can always demand more. It's a straw-man.
And no, I DON'T hope I7 is "huge." 1.6 gigs is MORE than enough for my bandwidth to choke on, thank you very much. I hope it's got some solid goodies (and I'm sure it will), but I also hope they can keep it in a sleeker, more swallowable package.
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I listen to My Chemical Romance because AFI got too mainstream, man.
/em cutterchic
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Hey look! I can tie subjects together!
Superheroes + Humorous emo jokes = http://emorangers2.ytmnd.com/
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Yep, here we are...sitting a blip above Toontown Online and lightyears away from WoW or Lineage. It's
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Just to compare: we haven't launched in Asia.
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I don't know what the exact definition of "launch" is, but I know for a fact that Koreans play CoH on their server.
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And no, I DON'T hope I7 is "huge." 1.6 gigs is MORE than enough for my bandwidth to choke on, thank you very much.
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LOL I didn't mean big as in size, I meant big as in Blockbuster, as in spectacular. Something that will get the playerbase excited about an issue instead of fearing it and crying about nerfs, something that is rare around here since I3.
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I stand by my statement that he deleted a post and replaced it with another one, rewrote history so to speak 5th Column
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Can we take a poll of who cares? No? Nobody even cares about a poll of who cares about this little hatchet you're grinding away at?
Bummer. I guess actual lives will have to start up again.
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There's no market for CoH in China.
No Gold to farm. No loot to camp for.
Sorry, Jack, you'll be limited to actual fans, not 1.6 million GOLD farmers in some Shanghia sweatshop.
Blizzard encourages slave labor in communist countries, story at 11:00pm
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Just to let you know - there is more to asia than CHINA. I'm in KOREA. (Although, American.)
Statesman does have a point.
Some reference -
Here in KOREA there are a LOT of VIDEO GAME channels. Including local koreans who play game tournements on TV for hard money. Games are HUGE business here - and this is just KOREANS (who knows bout Japan, China, Singapore, Taiwan, etc, etc) - I can speak from first hand experience since I've lived here for a couple years only the few english speaking channels are BBC, Discovery, and AFN.
WoW and Lineage are HUGE here. There litterally is thousands of "cyber-caffes" in this country and they all push WoW and Lineage (as it seems).
Lineage of course since it's owned by NCSoft - a Korean company - is SUPERBIG here.
So you would think when Heroes comes "out" here it will be big right? Well MAYBE. Culturally the koreans have no (what we consider) superheros. Their comics are based on love stories and martial arts (similair to japan). So its a toss up how Heroes will pan out over here.
It could be a flop *OR* (I think if NC Soft gets behind it) - it could be pushed to the wide Korean audience - then TAKE OFF like Lineage and WoW.
Heck just yesterday I say a Statesman car commercial - so its begun. ;-)
We will see.
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Heck just yesterday I say a Statesman car commercial - so its begun. ;-)
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Wait, that acctualy happened? To the interweb my minions!
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I could go on and on, but about the only person still bothering with this thread that might be able to grasp that is Clint here.
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Nope, I can grasp it:
"Big Nozy don't like mean nerfs. So Big Nozy uses hyperbole and doomsaying for past 3 issues to feel like big man. All friends leave Nozy because his ego took all space on his own friendlist."
There, I even dumbed it down for us "lessers" on the forum who might not get the higher educated moral of this story.
You don't like nerfs = everyone must hate nerfs = the devs hate us because they have nerfs = the devs hate the players = the devs forced my friends to quit the game = the devs suck.
Of course, your linear thinking leaves out some gaping holes: what about the people who quit the game because it literally was too easy? What about the fact that CoH in issue 3 or 4 wasn't true to the genre it represents, where comic book heroes aren't allowed to spend 24 pages a month rounding up hundreds of enemies so another hero can one shot them all? What about all the people who quit the game when they powerleveled to 50 only to find that they skipped all the content that doesn't involve sitting in a Dreck or Wolf map and leveling? What about the defenders/controllers/blasters who were left out of the game simply because they didn't add as much as a herding tank or scrapper who can solo a mission conned for 3 people on invincible?
Current Badge Hunter: Plot Device (Rad/Thermal/Dark) - 1,268 Xbox Live: Friggin Taser
King of Electricity, Lead Inmate running the Carl and Sons asylum, the "Man" behind the Establishment, Given Honor in Hat Form By Paragon City (Favorite Forum Poster 2006!), Master of Ceremonies of the Fair Use Law podcast
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Heck just yesterday I say a Statesman car commercial - so its begun. ;-)
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Wait, that acctualy happened? To the interweb my minions!
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Oh yes, its real. I think Hyundai makes the Statesman Car, lemme check....
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/cult...0585811000.htm
Nope - Daewoo makes it. All the older Korean men who wanna look rich drive around in that piece of crud.
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*sigh*
Let's see if I can lay this thing to rest.
At I5 - and now again with ED - some claim that the game is "dying" and that thousands of players are leaving. This isn't true. We're actually gaining customers. Not hundreds of thousands, but we're gaining nevertheless.
Then all of a sudden I read Armsman's post where he talks about our original launch subscription numbers - which isn't really the point. My entire response on this thread has been focused to I5 and ED reaction - so the more pertinent number to look at would be what our numbers were just previous to I5...not our numbers just after launch. Never did I make a claim that we have more subscribers now than we did last year. My point continues to be: ED and I5 haven't created a ghost town out of City of Heroes.
Unfortunately, I pointed to SirBruce's outdated chart instead of NCSoft's numbers. Frankly, SirBruce's is the one I go to - it lists the competition, so to speak. Or at least to a degree. As SirBruce will tell you, it's really difficult to get numbers out of publishers. NCSoft posts ours.
Why is WoW or Lineage doing so much better? Heck - they're great games. But they're also successful in the Asian market. Will we ever catch up to them. Dunno. The WoW guys have a bit of a track record on us...years of producing amazing games. Who ever heard of Cryptic before City of Heroes? There are LEGIONS of Blizzard fans - of course they'd play WoW! And it's a phenomenal game!
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States, I'd suggest you just either lock or ignore this thread. Don't bother replying to it anymore...it's evolved into another "ED Sucks" thread, and Lord knows we have enough of them. I'm not a proponent of ED, but still, this thread serves no purpose anymore.
CoH/CoV are great games, but it's a niche genre you've created, and it will never draw the same number of players as fantasy-based MMOs. Sad, but true. I think CoH/V is doing pretty well on their own, and if you keep up the good work on both games, the franchise could live on for years to come.
Just an FYI to everyone else, it's very rare for MMO subscribership to stay at its launch levels (maybe except for Lineage in Korea)...it's likely that CoH may never see the numbers it had back during its launch, and you know what? That's OK. It's a constant revolving door. People leave, obviously...but there are always new and returning players too.
Don't focus so much on the numbers, they'll take care of themselves if the game continues to improve.
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If DOOM means never hitting 3 millions subs, then you win. Doom, it is.
[/ QUOTE ] You all are so eager to jump to States' defense you completely miss the point of just about everything don't you?
Alright, one last try here. I could really care less if CoH has the same number of subscribers as WoW.
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I'm sorry if I lumped you in with armsman but the post I responded to had you stating:
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s that the only point in my post you feel needs addressed? *shrug* Okay, fine. If you think you can gain 3 million in Asia to catch up go for it.
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... which seemed to indicate that you had bought into armsman's argument that if a company isn't actively trying to achieve WoW marketshare then they are failing.
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What I do care about is the fact the devs seem so focused on a very narrow view of the game and their own interpretation of fun that it is driving many people from the game.
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That, I would agree, is a worthy, nuanced topic. The HO threads from last winter had moments when it addressed this in interesting, informative ways. I'm not sure that I agree with your conclusion, but for any game it is worthy topic of discussion. Unfortunately any time the phrase "driving many people from the game", it's a herculean effort to avoid getting bogged down in actual subscriber numbers that are affected by a variety of factors including what might be called "devs tinkering with existing gameplay".
This thread likely has passed the point of no return as far as a good esoteric discussion on what you'd really rather discuss. 
Next time, maybe?
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I stand by my statement that he deleted a post and replaced it with another one, rewrote history so to speak 5th Column
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Can we take a poll of who cares? No? Nobody even cares about a poll of who cares about this little hatchet you're grinding away at?
Bummer. I guess actual lives will have to start up again.
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Well obviously you cared enough to respond to this post and waste 3 minutes typeing. 
I'm only giving you one minute of my time. 
Belldandy - Protector Server
I find WoW to be equivalent to having a second job and Lineage II is just horrible.
So, no accounting for good taste.
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I stand by my statement that he deleted a post and replaced it with another one, rewrote history so to speak 5th Column
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Can we take a poll of who cares? No? Nobody even cares about a poll of who cares about this little hatchet you're grinding away at?
Bummer. I guess actual lives will have to start up again.
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Well obviously you cared enough to respond to this post and waste 3 minutes typeing.
I'm only giving you one minute of my time.
Belldandy - Protector Server
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Are you still calling for factual errors? I'm not sure how long it took me to type that post, but I'm pretty it took less than 3 minutes to imagine that bon mot and then type it.
I care like I care about any person in obvious psychological distress.
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I stand by my statement that he deleted a post and replaced it with another one, rewrote history so to speak 5th Column
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Can we take a poll of who cares? No? Nobody even cares about a poll of who cares about this little hatchet you're grinding away at?
Bummer. I guess actual lives will have to start up again.
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Well obviously you cared enough to respond to this post and waste 3 minutes typeing.
I'm only giving you one minute of my time.
Belldandy - Protector Server
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Are you still calling for factual errors? I'm not sure how long it took me to type that post, but I'm pretty it took less than 3 minutes to imagine that bon mot and then type it.
I care like I care about any person in obvious psychological distress.
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I'm so happy you care for me, Enough to help me make a Pyramid. Your the first one to ever do that. Thanks
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Why is WoW or Lineage doing so much better? Heck - they're great games. But they're also successful in the Asian market. Will we ever catch up to them. Dunno. The WoW guys have a bit of a track record on us...years of producing amazing games. Who ever heard of Cryptic before City of Heroes? There are LEGIONS of Blizzard fans - of course they'd play WoW! And it's a phenomenal game!
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I always thought of COH as being geared towards more of a niche audience (I never would have ventured into the MMOG market if it wasn't for COH), wether or not that niche becomes the norm remains to be seen. I tried WOW for awhile because it was new and shinny, but I still came back here, mostly because I realized I hated crafting and the fact that I still think Super heroes are where it's at.
Don't mess with Texas!
--moo
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Doesn't china have like a Billion people? whats 3 million of a billion?
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There's nothing like someone saying you're one in a million ... until you realize that means there's 1000 people just like you in China. And another 1000 in India.
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And no, I DON'T hope I7 is "huge." 1.6 gigs is MORE than enough for my bandwidth to choke on, thank you very much.
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LOL I didn't mean big as in size, I meant big as in Blockbuster, as in spectacular. Something that will get the playerbase excited about an issue instead of fearing it and crying about nerfs, something that is rare around here since I3.
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That 1.6 gigs wasn't I6, it was ALL of COV.
I thought CoH had launched/was due to launch in Korea - there is a separate site for them anyway (if you click on the flags at the top).
The MMORP market is a huge one and you certainly don't need the most subscribers to be successful.
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16 color monitors we had. 16, I tell you!
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I think you need to reword this - Moniters with JUST 16 colors.
The younger people might not understand, and think you are talking about 16 different moniters.
Orc&Pie No.53230 There is an orc, and somehow, he got a pie. And you are hungry.
www.repeat-offenders.net
Negaduck: I see you found the crumb. I knew you'd never notice the huge flag.
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*sigh*
Let's see if I can lay this thing to rest.
At I5 - and now again with ED - some claim that the game is "dying" and that thousands of players are leaving. This isn't true. We're actually gaining customers. Not hundreds of thousands, but we're gaining nevertheless.
Then all of a sudden I read Armsman's post where he talks about our original launch subscription numbers - which isn't really the point. My entire response on this thread has been focused to I5 and ED reaction - so the more pertinent number to look at would be what our numbers were just previous to I5...not our numbers just after launch. Never did I make a claim that we have more subscribers now than we did last year. My point continues to be: ED and I5 haven't created a ghost town out of City of Heroes.
Unfortunately, I pointed to SirBruce's outdated chart instead of NCSoft's numbers. Frankly, SirBruce's is the one I go to - it lists the competition, so to speak. Or at least to a degree. As SirBruce will tell you, it's really difficult to get numbers out of publishers. NCSoft posts ours.
Why is WoW or Lineage doing so much better? Heck - they're great games. But they're also successful in the Asian market. Will we ever catch up to them. Dunno. The WoW guys have a bit of a track record on us...years of producing amazing games. Who ever heard of Cryptic before City of Heroes? There are LEGIONS of Blizzard fans - of course they'd play WoW! And it's a phenomenal game!
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I think whilst subscriptions might improve, the large number of dedicated gamers (who are the core gamers) has dipped and the number of casual gamers has increased, which would explain why people are finding it harder to form teams (Pre CoV, anyway). Many players seem torn between the natural enjoyment the game gives and the anger of seeing their characters gradually get weaker and weaker. But what you need to remember is that at one stage this game made people feel powerful, which is what brought them back time and time again. What occurs when you repeatedly dumb down abilities is a sense of apathy. People become nonplussed by the game. It becomes just 'something to pass the time' and not something you're itching to do. From my own perspective I used to love the feeling of coming home from work and logging in to kick butt, but now I come home and I watch TV and log in for about an hour before getting bored. This isn't anything you've done wrong necessarily, you've just changed the game mechanics to something I don't like and trying to work your changes into my gameplay is difficult and time consuming.
I don't know any other reason to give but in the times when I have been online for 4/5 hours, I have stood in PI with my toons calling for teams or sending /tells to people who aren't interested. I don't think all these changes have really helped morale or formed in people a sense of camaraderie and that's the sadest part. Teaming no longer feels like a team of champions but a team where you pitch in to carry out other peoples chores and who enjoys doing chores?
So statistically speaking you're not wrong, but statistics are usually branded about when the worst moments call for it. What they do not do is mask the ill feeling that all your changes have caused people to feel. However, do not misunderstand me, I wish no ill health to CoH. People may enjoy ED and may adapt better and that's fine, but imagine if you came into work one morning and got told your portfolio was being reduced and you spend most of your time on the outside looking in or sharing your role with several other people whom you find difficult to work with? When you stop enjoying what you do, but don't want to abandon what you've built, what do you do then?
Yeah, sorry went off topic a bit.
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Yep, here we are...sitting a blip above Toontown Online and lightyears away from WoW or Lineage. It's
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Just to compare: we haven't launched in Asia.
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Is that the only point in my post you feel needs addressed? *shrug* Okay, fine. If you think you can gain 3 million in Asia to catch up go for it.
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If the bar is set at trumping WoW in sub numbers, then this is a pointless exercise. It isn't happening - ever - for a variety of factors, some of which are beyond the control of the devs.
If DOOM means never hitting 3 millions subs, then you win. Doom, it is.
If the bar is a profitable, continuing gamespace, then you lose.
That's the factual separation of the nonsensical semantic argument here. In addition, it is a fact that NCSoft looks at the North American/Euro markets as test beds for product that they eventually want to publish in the most important market to the company: Asia. CoH is a comfortably profitable beta for the Asian market, and NCSoft is very much looking forward to CoH's release in Korea early next year. NCSoft is very happy that Cryptic was able to supply the publisher with it's only new shelf product globally for the fourth quarter, as other products slipped their window.
<ul type="square">[*]What this has to do enjoying/not enjoying the game is beyond me.[*]Why armsman feels that the devs are obligated to provide financial data about the game above NCSoft's legally-required obligations is beyond me.[*]Why armsman blames the devs entirely for the subscription drop last fall when EVERY other NorthAm/Euro-only MMO suffered the same drop and has yet to recover their pre-Fall 2004 numbers is beyond me.[/list]I don't mind people not liking the game or its dev team, but this is really starting to smell like one of those times when someone has a personal problem and is grasping around for something to elevate it beyond that.