Quote Originally Posted by Hasrat View Post
Counterpoint: Catering to established players will significantly stunt game growth by dismissing the needs of new players. Established players have already been "hooked." It doesn't matter how well you "take care" of them, the population will naturally diminish over time. Every online service knows this, and every online service knows they need to maintain a steady flow of new customers to replace the ones that naturally leave. And in recognizing the need for new customers, they must be ready to adapt to what new customers are looking for.
This argument doesn't make any logical sense. Yes, there will always exist churn inside of any given player base, but that does not mean you ignore the needs of established players as you need to cater to them to reduce the total number of players lost to churn. If too many established players start becoming dissatisfied, it results in new players not having positive interactions with the established player base, which will diminish the total number of new players who stick around to become established players. Subscription-based MMOs in particular can be heavily affected by this as the inability to maintain a stable player base will directly cause the game's revenues stream to be reduced.

This is particularly more evident for new players should they get to endgame, as a lot of content this expansion cycle has not done a good job at remaining evergreen during the expansion's life cycle. The only saving grace for new players is the ample amount of old content that is now able to be either completed solo or done in small groups they now can do without the MSQ looming over them.

With that being said, this game is not strictly subscription-based as far as revenue is concerned, and thus losses from churn can be offset to a fault via cash shop purchases, where there has been a relatively consistent release cycle of outfits and emotes.