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The primary cause of 2K2's declining activity isn't anything to do with the economy, statistical inequality, corruption, kingdoms or lack of updates. I'll give short explanations as to why each of those isn't the reason, if you don't think the explanations are adequate, then object to them and I'll give more detail.
Economy - The value of the "core" items has not changed. Diamonds have remained fixed at 500 platinum coins, RoWs at 500 diamonds, Gold Keys and Event Coins at 20 diamonds, etc. There is no inflation. One could argue that there has been deflation in the values of semi-rare items, but that's because of loss of demand from a declining playerbase, so that's an effect of the decline, not a cause of it (furthermore, deflation is possibly desirable). Economic inequality also isn't the cause because many of the richest and oldest players quit or became inactive before or at the beginning of the decline, meaning that the decline occurred in (and we are currently in) a period of greater wealth equality than in the past.
Statistical inequality - See above. The rich oldbies were pretty much the guys with the good stats too.
Corruption - There have been no major changes in staff, and I see no reason to believe that the amount of corruption has increased or that corruption is having a greater effect on more players than in the past.
Kingdoms - Kingdoms have always been a sideshow, something far from being the first priority for the vast majority of their members, and the members who have, for the most part, stuck around are generally the people more "into" kingdoms and RPing. Although the absolute amount of kingdom activity has decreased, I would estimate that it has increased as a percentage of server activity (i.e. the percentage of players who wear their tag has increased, etc.)
Lack of Updates - The fact is, to a new player, each specific feature is new regardless of how long it's been on the server. Updates have been sparse for a long time without having an effect on the playercount. Besides, look at Zone. Even when new planets are added, people tend to prefer to stick to Iricia.
School/Vacation Cycle - I didn't list this at the beginning of the thread, but I'm including it because someone always seems to bring it up to explain any kind of activity decline. If the decline occurs during a school period, it's because people are in school and activity will pick up once a vacation season beings. If the decline occurs during a vacation season, it's because people are away from home and activity will pick up when school starts again. Both predictions have always been wrong.
The cause of 2K2's decline isn't any of these, but rather because it's core system has gotten "old". Not in terms of age but in terms of player experience with it. A player who plays 2K2 for the first time is more likely to have played another server or another game that uses 2K2's core system (exp, stats, etc.) than in the past, so 2K2 no longer has anything special to it aside from "gimmicks". Even if you magically doubled the amount of content on the server, you'd be lucky to get more than a two month activity spike out of it because you've really only doubled the amount of "gimmicks". Reviving 2K2 would require changing the server so drastically that it would no longer be 2K2, so it's better simply to create a new server. Therefore, any developmental energy being put into new features for 2K2 is a waste of time and should instead be put into developing a new server with a completely innovative core system. |