Cross posted from http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard...readID=1494916
The Forum Fiasco of 2011 is an object lesson in the birth of the Bitter Eve Online Veteran; the ongoing evolution of Eve Online's core player base into a disenfranchised group of customers and ex-customers who have had their enthusiasm for EVE Online chiseled away one little piece at a time by a continuous chain of failure to deliver on customer expectations for product quality. It is the dawning awareness that CCP cannot be trusted to deliver on their product's potential that creates the Bitter Vet, and as indicated by the deafening silence from CCP's free advertising, publishing and public awareness arm of core customers, a great many new Bitter Veterans were born into the world last weekend.Originally Posted by Helicity Boson
EVE, like any game, needs a strong core usergroup which sticks around far beyond the typical retention timeline. Every service model game that focuses on being an immersive sandbox requires makers and shakers, just like CCP said at Fanfest during the discussions of the cases of EVE and Dust 514, and the commercial focus of Dust 514. Just the idea of letting core user groups develop a subscriber addiction curve into bitterness and disenfranchisement is anathema to the continuity of the product dynamic. Yes, customers and core users can be replaced, but at an ever increasing cost of acquisition and with a growing necessity to compensate for the loss of publicity trends and events that were formerly created by the core groups of users.
And it is becoming ever harder to trust you to do something about it; everywhere we look we see in the media more and more messages of incompetence, more and more about the huge gaps between what CCP presents and what it delivers. I am having an increasingly hard time convincing people to join EVE, because these disparities are what they see on the internet when they start looking at the game.
You are not the celebrity in this endeavor, CCP. EVE Online is the celebrity. Yes, we love and respect you for what you made. But Eve Online is at the point where your core community of customers and the image of the game on the internet are facing a serious challenge in perception. The reason why your core user groups are here is because they chose EVE Online as a mutually enjoyed rallying point; we did not choose the company as a rallying point. But, for the foreseeable future, we're stuck with you, CCP, until the game and intellectual property become fodder for an Electronic Arts buyout, which is something that has, unfortunately, already been on the table once . If we could get Eve Online away from your well earned reputation for incompetence and the inevitable Kiss of Death Buyout from Electronic Arts that will turn Eve Online into World of Warcraft in Space, we'd do it in a heartbeat.
But I am still here. Like many others, I haven't given up on the potential that EVE Online still has. I, like many others, haven't given up hope that EVE Online can become the all encompassing science fiction simulator that CCP wants the game to become. But with each passing year, each failure to deliver on expectations of basic competence, and each expansion's worth of continued neglect of the core dynamic that has kept the core customer base here, that glimmer of hope becomes dimmer and dimmer. Please, CCP; wake up before it's too late. Eve Online begins, and ends, with griefing people in internet spaceships.
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if we're going to keep going down the emo over it.
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