One of the biggest reasons I am a huge proponent of the F2PV$ (Free to play, virtual currency) model is that it is much easier to lure back your customers. They can return at any time with little or no barrier to entry (possibly just the download of a patch or a re-download of your client). If your customer is doing some everyday activity and suddenly it reminds them of something that happened in your game, they can go home that night and login. They don’t have to decide about renewing a subscription or forking over money just to see “how things are going.”
Subscription MMOs often run various promotions and events to try and lure people back. Sometimes they are called re-activation weekends. Often these events coincide with other special events like double XP (note this), new content, special events, etc.
A few days ago I received an email from LOTRO trying to convince me to return. Among the amazing incentives were:
- 5% bonus xp.
- Free stable master travel.
- Collect tokens from defeated monsters and trade them in for special rewards.
- Play your old characters.
- Play LOTRO for $9.99 a month
Lets break that down a bit. #4 and #5 are kinda stupid to even list there. #4 is freakin’ obvious, and #5 is the same price everyone pays…. yipee. #2 is functionally irrelevant. Even as a lowbie I never even paid attention to stable master travel. #3 is vague, and might be interesting, but most likely the rewards are meh or silly.
So the big lure, and the thing they listed FIRST, is the “whopping” 5% bonus XP.
Who is the idiot marketing buffoon who came up with this idea and rammed it home?
Who in the heck is going to give a crap about 5% bonus XP?
I cannot remember the last time I saw a major MMO have an xp related event that was not 50% or more bonus XP. The common bonus is DOUBLE XP (+100%).
Does anyone know someone at Turbine they can ask about this? Because this has to be one of the most laughable MMO promotions I’ve ever read.
But to make this more than mocking LOTRO’s promotion, let us also discuss the larger issue:
- How important do you think it is, and how much focus should be put on, luring back former customers at an MMO?
- What methods do you think are likely to be most effective at doing so?
“I cannot remember the last time I saw a major MMO have an xp related event that was not 50% or more bonus XP.”
DDO (heh, Turbine again) often had successful +25% XP events in the past, when it was a subscription MMO. I agree that anything below that bar is too small to be anything meaningful. I’ll probably play LOTRO this weekend, but that because I miss the game and not because anything lured me in.
#2 isn’t a super perk, but it is a perk if it includes “swift travel” from stable masters (basically a teleport vs. physically riding a horse the whole way). I recall when I played LotRO, having swift travel free for a weekend was definitely nice (using it to travel to distant points is usually expensive).
Bribing people back is only going to effect the people who want to come back, you’ll just have to wait for the burn out to heal for the rest. A huge revarnish job (Cataclysm) might be the most effective means of reaching the fence setters.
I think a small sane client like Guild Wars uses does the most to reduce the effect of inertia. Installing World of Warcraft is like ripping a bone out of your forearm.
Magic the Gathering Online uses the “bulk install” design option as well; downloading thousands of card images you might never see. In addition to a external exe for patching the client. In addition to the worst patching reliability I’ve ever seen: “Object reference not set to an instance of an object”. Over a dozen lengthy patch attempts.
MTGO client 3 will have lasted from 2-3 years until they get their new one ready (and note, #3 was supposed to be their shiny awesome ultimate vision of the game). And until that’s launched, I am not going even attempt to play it.
That’s a good point about how the burden to install or patch a game can be a barrier to re-entry. That’s actually a huge one for me with WoW, because not only will I have to do an install, but I will have to install tons of patches (often via torrent – so I’m also having to provide upload traffic for OTHER people) and tons of UI mods just to get a good basic UI.
I’ve seen re-activation weekends and bonus-xp weekends have a HUGELY beneficial effect on player usage. We have used them on Threshold and they have been very effective at getting a lot of people online and often attracting players to return who have not played in a long while.
I remember when I played City of Heroes their double-xp/prestige weekends were pretty good about that also. I re-subscribed at least once as a result of such an event.
A cataclysm type event is definitely a good way to get people back as well, as it creates a situation where everyone is on about the same footing. Since the whole world is new to everyone, it makes people who return feel like they are not “so far behind.” But something like cataclysm is a pretty huge undertaking that is not really doable without an expansion pack sized budget at a minimum.