Massively^™

The conventional wisdom in any service-driven industry is that it's far, far cheaper to retain an existing customer than to recruit a new one. This is especially true in the MMOG industry, where your business model is largely dependent on maintaining a long-term subscriber base. The concept also applies to transaction-driven and episodic games, where you need your customers to want to stick around and continue spending money. Box sales are great, but ultimately they're pretty useless except as an indicator of how many people actually bought the game -- returning players are the bread and butter of the MMO world.

In fact, that's exactly why companies are so interested in finding out why you're quitting their game. If they can fix issues that are making a lot of people quit, they can retain more customers and drive up their revenue. Surprisingly, Blizzard is the only company I know of which actually makes people fill out an exit survey in order to cancel a subscription. It's not that annoying and it gives them great information about how to make their game better for you (so if you're adamant on copying Blizzard, that's a good thing to copy). Unfortunately, Blizzard keeps notoriously quiet about their internal numbers like that. So why exactly do people quit MMOGs, and what can and should game companies be doing to keep you interested?

Do you all love this new site or what? We love it (we're biased, of course, but still), and one of the things we love most about it is that we've got a brand new, state-of-the-art commenting system. If you've ever commented on Joystiq, you'll probably have it all figured out already, but if not, here's a short guide to get you up and commenting (and moderating-- oh, the joys of comment moderation) with the best of them.

Your first comment

You've read something interesting, you've got an opinion on it, and you want to comment. Great! Click on the comments link below the post to go to the comment entry form, put in your name and email under "New Users" (your email is only used for verification-- we'll never spam you, ever, and the email is never shown publicly), look over the options listed and choose your preferences, and start typing. Then hit "Add your comments," and... your comment won't appear just yet.

We'll send you an email to verify that you are who you say you are, and then when that email shows up, you click a link inside it, and your comment will appear. There may be a short delay, but sit tight, it'll show up. Congrats! You made your first comment! But getting that email has another very important purpose, and that is that it will help you...