It's about time to add Coil story mode, isn't it ?

[Airikay]

MMO usually fail when they catter to hard to once side of the player base totally ignoring the other or when they never decide what to do. And I have high doubts a MMO would fail because of "no rewarding end game" alone. there are MMOs without any relevant endgame and still going.

You really should look at the rise and decline of WoW. The highest growth of subscription rates for WoW was during original vanilla and BC when in fact most of the content was closed off to 99%. Even though it was closed, it kind of kept a goal. With WoTLK it peaked around Ulduar which was basically the birth of normal and heroic. Through the rest of WoTLK sub's stayed about constant and with Cataclysm it started to nose dive as they streamlined all the content. If a game doesn't have a certain amount of difficulty it has no replay value and becomes one of those one day games instead of something that needs to be continuously worked on. With no endgame, not only will raiders lose interest but also most everyone else that doesn't use the game as just a chat service. With no substance every server except Balmung will be a ghost town.

[Souljacker]

with Cataclysm it started to nose dive as they streamlined all the content. If a game doesn't have a certain amount of difficulty it has no replay value and becomes one of those one day games instead of something that needs to be continuously worked on.

I think you are an interesting historian. Cataclysm lost subs because they adopted a model of severe difficulty for all levels of content, including entry level. It blocked many casual players from any progress. They also had a weak storyline, and not enough *new* zones. Overall it wasn't one of their better xpacs, but it certainly didn't decline because people found it to be too *easy*. I agree that by the time we got WoTLK (though that was my favorite xpac) and Cata their "glory days" were largely over, but those "glory days" were also at the dawn of the mmo, when many of our generation were young and had a lot of time to throw ourselves into masochistic hobbies. The new generation just isn't the same. It's not new anymore. There's more choice. But, I do still think that SE has some things to learn from Bliz. They've managed to hold onto a massive playerbase for a very long time. They are doing something right.

I guess we will just see what happens next month. That game still manages to boast a playerbase several times the size of this one, and they do it with only one platform.