I have less and less to say, so I’ll keep making other speak:

Darniaq:
The realplay value for those who want replay value.

That’s another thing I think veterans miss. We want a perpually replayable experience befitting of the $14.95/mo. Others don’t feel they need to arbitrarily extend their enjoyment of a game just because they’ve provided credit card information. The newer gamers are growing up in the Content On Demand era where people jump from one experience to another because they want to. This isn’t even about having game loyalty because the very idea of loyalty is old skool. Putting up with a crappy code base, buggy experience, and unresponsive development staff is yesterday’s news, interesting anecdotes from the folks who’ve been there to the folks who wonder why we bothered.

The old days are gone, and with them their concepts. Some will try to tap that well. WoW meanwhile was almost specifically designed for the expected length of an account, which was six months. Here it is 10 months and people wonder why they’re bored.

They’re bored because they weren’t expected to play past six months :)

I believe this ties back with the old threads discussing the instancing. About how games hit various obstacles and are now going back to a territory where they know better what to deliver and how. At less risk.

EDIT – I also updated/reblogged/archived another comment from Darniaq about SOE here. One stab here and another there :)