Comments by "Immudzen" (@Immudzen) on "New World is in a DEATH SPIRAL" video.

I think this is why ESO survived. Even when the population was very low they could just keep making content for single player and small groups and slowly attract more people to the game. It kept the game viable even at a low population instead of having a death spiral.
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What this says to me is that an MMO that depends on PvP has a really hard path and if you have 3-way or more faction combat it gets even harder. The most successful is probably something like eve online but even that has a very small and stable player base. I think that for an MMO to work it needs a primary PvE component that can work completely separately from PvP and can work solo and small groups. It gives you a kind of floor to make the game viable where you have people that login and can do stuff. Part of how ESO has survived is you can play it like a single player game but still team up and do events if you want. Even Everquest 1 is still around and with just a few people you can do most content outside of raids and that helps stabilize the system.
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Because running an MMO has a lot more to do with making a good game than it does about server infrastructure. There are games that used to have an hour of downtime every single day because the server code was not that good and they still kept players for a long time because the game was fundamentally fun to play.
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