CRS am Ende?

[vonik]

Was hast denn geantwortet?

Das :

Dear CRS

I have just received your mail, stating among others :

We remain as committed to the future of WWII Online as ever. We are trying to get back to our roots and what our players want. We need your help to keep making WWII Online the greatest WWII MMO sim ever made.

As you have written me, I thought that it deserved a polite answer.
The short of it is : too late.

As this is too short and not knowing whether you really care about what former players think, I will expand a little.

What made WWIIOL special and gratified you with a relatively large and sustainable player basis for some 5 years was that the game was a large scale simulation with extreme focus on team gameplay and with a steep learning curve.
Yes it was a niche game and your player basis was NOT constituted of players looking for a first view arcade shooter.
Your typical player was a military history buff, many with deep technical knowledge about WWII weapons, tactics and material and a vast majority with ability and willingness to organise and lead complex coordinated operations.
The heart and lungs of the game were large Squads which not only recruited new players but provided the infrastructure for training, command and organisation.

It had been this Squad infrastructure which enabled you to survive the horrible release which, let us be honest, would have irreversibly killed any game other than WWIIOL.
Players like Deadlock, Dinker or Vasquez (to name only the 3 which impressed me most) were worth more than thousands of programmer hours because this kind of players provided EXACTLY what the crushing majority of players wanted - organised, well lead large scale operations.
If one participated once in a 100 Panzer strong column accompanied by infantry and guns (as opposed to driving alone and getting killed without seeing anything), one wanted more of the same.
Recruitment had been easy then because most new players were saying "Graphics are bad, there is sometimes lag but the overwhelming adrenalin rush when orders are given, the communication flows and the assault strikes, is more than worth to play."

I am not expressing here a personnal opinion.
I had founded what became one of the largest Squads in the game, the KGW which grew to more than 150 strong with Squad nights that gathered 70 players on bad days and around 100 on good days during some 8 years.
Through 10 years of active playing I did many polls both within the Squad and within the Axis side concerning motivations and interests of the players.
The comments above are of course my opinion but also the opinion of hundreds of long time players who sticked to the game for more than just a free trial.

Unfortunately during those 10 years you have never been interested in hearing what your player basis and its most representative part, the large Squad long time members, thought and wanted.
Obviously you had your "vision" what is legitimate but this vision failed.
The player numbers steadily shrank and then totally crashed around 2010.
All large Squads disappeared and with them the framework of recruitment,organisation and command which is vitally necessary for the game.
I have seen the KGW going from 150 active members to 0 (yes zero) within 6 months.
Despite my Gold Builder account which I still have, I stopped playing too.
When I log in from time to time, it is painfully clear why the game lost its interest.
In Euro prime time which used to be the highest pop, there is one active AO, generally no field command and at best 20-30 players who all play solo.
Yes the arcade shooter aspect is still there, one still dies fast but there is no more any feeling of accomplishment, organisation and large scale cooperation which were the trade mark and originality of WWIIOL.

The problem of low numbers, lack of field command and of large Squads impacts not only your economy and reduces development ressources.
More importantly it removes the foundationon which the WHOLE WWIIOL concept is build.
Of course I believe that I know why it happened that way but the frame of a forum post doesn't allow me to write a 10 page study
In any case I believe that this explains why I said "too late" in the beginning.

Yours sincerely

KGW CO (ret)

P.S
S! to you Sparre if you are still here