This actually is pretty true. Before I joined Grepo waaaay back in 2010 I came from another game called Runescape. The story there is similar. The company, Jagex, was on the rise up until 2007. Then it made some very unpopular updates. The updates equivalent to WW, event spamming, and this random (but not really random) rolled into one. Of course when major changes come in a game you've invested so much time into, you're compelled to keep the faith and wait for it to change. You always have those who will quit in droves at the first bad update but that's not game breaking. However Runescape declined sharply to a point where the company reversed the updates four years later. But by then lots of damage had been done. But the community was rebuilding finally. Not too long after they give major updates to combat and everyone quits again. There's some world's with less than 100 people on those servers still which is insanely low. However, unlike Inno, they listen to their customers. They released old school severs so people could play those instead. Which in turn opened up more cash flow as tons of players came back. They also have polls before implementing ground breaking changes, or even small ones. If 75%% of the community votes yes, they're implemented.
That's pretty opposite of what Inno does. What happens here is a flood of bad updates come out and nothing gets addressed. In fact, unless a massive riot happens on the forums and sales go down Inno ignores it's community completely. I've already seen some of the results of that. The US server, once a pretty large player base, has died down a lot. won't be long before EN is hit with this problem I imagine. A player base can handle a lot, hell lots of people stuck through this game after some terrible updates like WW. Hell we all pretty much accept its not getting fixed. Inno wrote itself into a corner with no good way out. We get it. What isn't okay is they keep saying it coming when it's not. Instead of just saying that they have no realistic alternative and apologizing for the bad update. id totally accept being told that a world just needs to close and even though the update is bad it's also the only way that works.
Now bear in mind an MMORPG is way different from a war game. You need to constantly be releasing new content. Be it questions, dungeons, skills, items, and forms of combat. All while keeping the game balanced. You know what you need to do in a war game? Release new worlds, maybe add a new element to the game like a god or unit every two years. Sure the occasional event with overpowered units are fine when it was biannual it was pretty cool. Maybe filling months in between with less over powered events wouldn't hurt either. Human units and regular ship token wouldn't ruin the game. But holy hell, what's being done now? Well let me sum it up like this, I used to play other Grepolis worlds when I was waiting for my ideal ones. En92? I'd have been all over that. Now in playing the game I quit to play Grepolis more originally.
Most of all listen to your customers. If inno polled all its players about instant buy, gold trading, events, etc. I bet none of these ideas would have been released based on popularity. I think that's something that should be done for feed back in all honesty. Create a poll asking what direction players would prioritize the game then go from there. I think you'd find a lot happier customers this way. In fact I know it, I saw a practically dying game revive itself this way.
