The Repopulation

Well I'm not a programmer and don't know much about game development, but I think MA is doing a few things very wrong. As an example take the Arkadia team and compare that to the Calypso team. The A-team can do so much more with the same or less people it is not even funny. it is only after Arkadia launched that Calypso started to do all sorts of stuff to keep the players happy (sneak previews, video, Facebook, twitter, etc.)

I also think MA made a few mistakes in the past, one of which was CryEnigne. That engine was not build for MMO's and caused a lot of issues in the past and still is. So, I'm guessing a lot of the work they are doing is working around CryEnigine issues.

One other thing is that MA is not doing anything when it comes to player retention, especially when it comes to new players. They seem to think that the only way to make money is to let everything cost money. They do not seem to understand that keeping people in game, even when it is with free activities, will in the long run make you more money instead of making everything cost money and people running away in 2 weeks never to be seen again.

There is a good analogy about that for multiple things IRL. One example is trains, here in Holland the amount of people using trains to get to their work every day was dropping, so the train company raised their prices to compensate for the drop in people, which in effect caused even less people to take the train.

Same with music, less people buy CD's so the record companies make less money. what they do is raise the prices so even more people started to download music from the web and even less CD's get sold.

There are more examples everywhere of this behavior.

My point is, if these games find a good way to keep players playing, even if at that moment that player does not spend any money, in the long run it will be better for them.

If a new company sets up their game well and have a good structure and clear plan, I think a very small company can do a lot of things. They do of course need some money to start it all off with, as you will not make much money in the beginning.