Originally Posted by
Chocobits
I think you missed the crux of my point. The point is, SE allots $0 in advertising to bring in new players to this game. The only way people would even stumble upon this diamond in the rough is by word of mouth from present/former players. If the burden is left to us to advertise for SE, what do we have to tell our potential victims? Everything I just mentioned? Who would play if they read/heard/saw any of that? Nobody, that's who. Nobody in their correct brain.
The game is new player unfriendly and without a constant influx of new players, all you have left is exactly what we are seeing - a dwindling populace.
I'm not saying the game is not fun. Obviously I still play. But I've already seen the best and been given the opportunity to get hooked when the game was in its prime. I'm not fanboyish enough to say that other than the job/subjob system and the immersive storyline, the game isn't woefully behind the curve in all other aspects. Graphics, raids, large scale content, PVP, guild vs guild/world vs world, adequate direction for newbs and general questing, satisfactory reasoning behind grind quests.. and in almost no other game does randomized timer crush your dreams on a regular basis.. Also, most other games REWARD players for their time spent playing (or not playing, in the form of xp multipliers). The time sinks in this game reflect a strategy that by design was meant to keep only a small but dedicated playerbase hooked for years and vehemently cast aside the casualcore player, and a strategy that is now so dated that when that dinosaur MMO comes out, we all might actually get unearthed and cameo in the game. It's ironic that relics have become one of the most popular and most accessible forms of content in the game.. it's a symbol of what the game has become.
I still don't think it's too late to turn all that around, but it would require a complete reshaking of the game from the ground up.
TL;DR - Yes, the game is dying, and will continue to do so. Because no matter how many times you swap captains, you're still left with the same crew. A crew that might be a mighty swashbuckling force to be reckoned with in the offline single player RPG realm, but are woefully in over their heads in the MMO world.