So, my live sever game has been sharing and discussing information about other games since the 10-11:1 conversion of restoration spells to blueprints. Some have started playing other games.
Inno has made decisions that have resulted in players quitting, like nerfing the crystal lighthouse and wholesaler, but how my f/s is sharing information on other games is quite concerning. It reminds me of the demise of a facebook game, Castleville, where it seemed that my entire game network switched to play a game by a relatively unknown developer, Royal Story by Funplus, because of just getting fed up. Castleville was maxed at 26 million players and by 2013 people were so annoyed, hundreds of game players in my network deserted Castleville for royal story, and they were all strong gamers and just pulled all of their friends by recommending the game and a year and half later castleville announced it was shutting down, and Funplus ended up with close to a billion dollar buyout,
https://venturebeat.com/2014/08/19/...bsidiary-to-chinese-holding-company-for-960m/.
Gamers like their games, but from what I've seen, there is a breaking point.
Online games are far more expensive to maintain than a boxed game, but a boxed game is a comparison for value for players and when you can't see that players that spend $20-100/month are golden and fail to nurture that investment and instead try to exploit it and squeeze it for more, to a gross level of dissatisfaction in what players deem as value for their investment, well, fickle can come over night. I've seen it happen and I see a very strong under current of dissonance happening right now.