Will Cyrene really go live in the face of these other MMO's?

[Wistrel]

Bit OT but wasn't there talk of things like Cyrene artbook, movie, comic and what not at some stage? Still on the cards? Part of release? or later?

 

[unicorn]

i think it wont make a difference when a new planet arrives here for the number of players who choose to get new into eu.

big gameing companys like blizzard or arenanet have always the support of well known gaming magazines which promote the products in no time so there will always be better sales on such products than new participants on eu planets.

as long mindark wont reform the economy, lootdrop and professions behaviour to provide more possibilities inside to reduce the cost to play drastically by boosting the ingame market economy eu will always be a side product with a huge player fluctuation. its like that for years now so you can assume that the platform is not meant to be for people with normal income to enjoy the gameing.

theres way not enough entertaining content for longterm play to compete with the cost for the game on the usual 15 dollar a month mmorpg gameing market where you get the full entertainment for same price each month. you dont need 50k dollar to achieve to the endgame there and another 20k dollar to keep the endgame running. and someone who can depo 15 dollar a month max finds way more entertainment elsewhere then shooting a pew pew pew laser on a cornundacauda or trade around to have 5 ped plus in the end of the day.... that is the truth and that should be taken and worked on and not be put under some carpet until some player find out himself.

so i think the planets will rather share the existing playerbase but we wont see a growth at all.
if you paint your car from red to blue it wont have more horsepower nor will it drive more smoothly nor will it be able to take more passengers. it will just make you cheered up for some time as you are happy about the new color but after you have seen the color for some time again you will realise that the content is the same just look different.

you can advert like you want
people who tried the game already earlier will always say "ah ye that is the eu i once tried. seems they have new graphics but they still just say that they are different cause of the RCE. oh and the content and functions are still the same for years now, ah look the community inside the forums get even more aggressive in shorter time nowadays..."

new players who see the ads "RCE use the chance to get paid by playing a game...withdraw ingame currency into real money..." come in here and ask the usual question to others "how can i make money?" after they found out what possibilities they have without depositing and see the item prices they leave back to their usual mmorpg where they pay small fee but achieve something.

expectations you seed and what you really make to meet them is the A and O.

maybe some people see the new color and give it another try. they depo 20-40 dollar again, see its still drowning like it was before and leave. what remains is the depo which the company appreciated. so coloring the car from red to blue genereated income.

what did it bring for the universe? for players like you and me? does it even matter to anyone?

the platform holder got to want it for real. but its not there for over a decade now so I assume they are comfortable like it is and dont want it to be changed.

therefore the meassurement of eu against commercial boosted games like ME3 or Diablo3 can not be made from my point of view.

i dont know exactly how long the bosses of the platform holder need to their pension but have my best whishes like anyone ofc

 

[MindStar 9]

Bit OT but wasn't there talk of things like Cyrene artbook, movie, comic and what not at some stage? Still on the cards? Part of release? or later?

Cyrene will be promoted through many mediums, beginning with, but not limited to the Chronicles, which I believe will be published at the Cyrene website. It's part of the writing that I am involved with at the moment, but ... we have many projects in the pipeline, and all quite exciting, but details won't be available until later, sorry!

I can confirm however, that the writing team is hard at work, because Ed's creativity is limitless. I just don't know how that man could have any more room in the gray matter to be honest, but the community will definitely see the fruits of our labor ... it just won't happen all at once.

And now I'm going to try to get some rest ... it's incredibly difficult to go to sleep after a session with Ed. The fact that he's 12 hours ahead of me as well doesn't help either.

Just know that there are some exciting things coming, and I believe the wait will be worth it.

 

[Lykke TheNun]

I can only support what MindStar is already telling but also add, that Cyrene will be promoted in other ways than through ads on different game sites & articles You will discover it to be very new and refreshing, I'm sure ^^ (And I can't say more now of course )

 

[OZtwo]

And now I'm going to try to get some rest ... it's incredibly difficult to go to sleep after a session with Ed. The fact that he's 12 hours ahead of me as well doesn't help either.

Oh, he's on the type to ask: what's Youtube? We have a Youtube channel? What's that?

http://www.youtube.com/planetcyrene

 

[Lykke TheNun]

Oh, he's on the type to ask: what's Youtube? We have a Youtube channel? What's that?

http://www.youtube.com/planetcyrene

The YouTube channel for Planet Cyrene is for the official videos only And they will come ...

 

[OZtwo]

The YouTube channel for Planet Cyrene is for the official videos only And they will come ...

Oh yeah, true true...can't have videos without a planet..ok, my bad. But still they could at least keep the storyline live and post development videos..that's what I was shooting at. Yes, there are some now, good idea to move them over to this channel??

 

[Lykke TheNun]

Oh yeah, true true...can't have videos without a planet..ok, my bad. But still they could at least keep the storyline live and post development videos..that's what I was shooting at. Yes, there are some now, good idea to move them over to this channel??

I do believe we moved the once which was there in here =)

Tum made a creature video the other day which was posted on the forum, but it wasn't from a specific Cyrene mob.

We will be updating our media library here with videos as they will be created and published. And we also hope (and know) creative people will make some awesome videos which, of course, are also very welcome in the library ^^

Ed Robles 3rd made a x-mas video - but as an unofficial holiday greetings to the community - and that is not posted in the official YouTube Planet Cyrene channel either.

 

[OZtwo]

Tum made a creature video the other day which was posted on the forum, but it wasn't from a specific Cyrene mob.

We will be updating our media library here with videos as they will be created and published. And we also hope (and know) creative people will make some awesome videos which, of course, are also very welcome in the library ^^

Ed Robles 3rd made a x-mas video - but as an unofficial holiday greetings to the community - and that is not posted in the official YouTube Planet Cyrene channel either.

Yeah, but any and all videos put on that empty but one video channel is good. But again, yeah, I see that will be a channel for all live Cyrene youtube videos and not development. But since there are, sorry, is a development video there now, be good just to update all. One video that should be there is the forum opening video..that was cool

 

[Svarog]

As someone who started his online gaming experience in the days of text-only MUDs, I'm sure that graphics doesn't matter, only the gameplay and the story do. The graphics may attract you for a while, but only the world's inner consistency will make you believe in it and come back again and again. And looking at all the efforts Cyrene people put into the project I wouldn't worry for it's future, even in the face of all those eye-candies

Woohoo, the first post! I see a lot of familiar names around, including some that I missed for a long time. So many awesome people in one place can't be wrong, can they?

 

[MindStar 9]

Svarog ... it's really great to see another veteran join our ranks in the wait for Cyrene to launch, and thank you very much for your perspective ... I agree wholeheartedly.

Game play and storyline are crucial to holding the attention of participants and keeping them coming back.
I believe Cyrene will be able to employ both quite nicely.

As a member of the Cyrene Writing Team, I can assure you that the Cyrene storyline is massive, and that's no exaggeration. We will be presenting that storyline in unique ways via many mediums, but inside the game itself, game play is very much driven by storyline, especially through quest lines and major events, not to mention the additional activities that will be taking place.

I'm about bursting at the seams in anticipation, and looking forward to meeting a lot of old friends, if only for a visit, but also looking forward to a new generation of players.

The clock is winding down and we will soon hear the trumpets.

 

[Xandra]

Hi,

big gameing companys like blizzard or arenanet have always the support of well known gaming magazines which promote the products in no time so there will always be better sales on such products than new participants on eu planets.

Well, this is a deal, always. Give them game sites & magazines the bread they feed on, ads, and they'll return the favor. Don't give 'em any crumbs, and they'll ignore you as long as possible, and if they can't avoid, they'll be hostile.
This is no rocket science.

It's quite cheap to book an ad every other month with these usually cheap, low-range publications (compared to serious advertising). But if you're too greedy to even spent this little money, well, then ...

as long mindark wont reform the economy, lootdrop and professions behaviour to provide more possibilities inside to reduce the cost to play drastically by boosting the ingame market economy eu will always be a side product with a huge player fluctuation.

EU is a niche product caused by the RCE alone. A phat majority of possible gamers will smell a Ponzi scheme as soon as you introduce them, and run screaming. Been there, done that.

The true problems you're mentioning just add to this.
It's a difficult thing, taking away the "big gambling", replacing it with "more just loot distribution" (for instance) will not necessarily rise the companies numbers - they might win a bunch of casual gamers, but loose (even more of) a bunch of old & long time "big spenders". The results would have to be calculated.

Main problem IMHO is the RCE, loathed by very many ppl. Without it EU wouldn't be EU, but with it is a niche project per se.
Ppl slowly learn the benefits of micro paying, due to all these F2P's, but it already gets into a bad smell of greed caused by these.

My advice would be to split it - the planet platform thingy would greatly support this

1. Have planets where there's not more but a F2P thing, pay a bit for your ammo and gear, and start whacking them mobs on your way to the end-game instances. You'll not loot any TT value, such doesn't exist here. And your skills are halfed at least when visiting another, more RCE planet.
2. Have full RCE planets as we have now, for the current participants. Maybe with a better loot distribution, only one ATH a quarter, only one 5-digit HOF a day, but with more predictable loot for any player.

Think of it, couldn't this be beneficial for the game? Low-threshold entry planets, guiding ppl slowly to the more advanced RCE content?

Calypso, after the SEE deal crashed, would have been a perfect candidate for such. Too late, right.

And, anyways, this is just most hard core speculation. I might be wrong in most of my statements. Was just an idea, hope you enjoyed ...


Have a good time!

 

[unicorn]

Hi,

yes we are here inside a RCE that means players will come with that expectation inside. And after all Npc driven Quest and missions are done the player is on his own again to attend to activities inside the sandbox and survive. Thats for most the point of Logout forever.

i see it as a lack of universe wide old loot behavior which is not up to date anymore for me.

almost all type of mobs and no matter what level they are tend to give out the same or closely the same type of loot. (oil oil oil)

for me the loot and economy need a big reform i know as i hunted myself already several type of mobs.

hunting is by far the most popular profession and will ever be. that flush the market and crash the price i know and i know that the hidden rule is "everyone decide on his own what he does inside" but it be way more playable if all mobs would loot unique types of loot which all are needed in every days crafting for items everyone needs for daily activity.

that make the economy grow and reduce the cost per play to a level which a more larger group of player can afford and i bet we see an increase of playerbase.

but if newcommer are hunting first mobs and already have to compete against high level hunters who cycle 10000 peds of ammo on mobs on the loot market it reaches a very unbalanced point specially on the side "afford against market loot price" and the result is that if you dont get a big big big hof to nearly brake even is almost end of EU career for some. at least if you dont belong to the few people who depo 1k dollar each month for fun anyways...

i whish MA would look into that before they launch a high costly ad campaign which is paid from the player's planet deed money which will only lead to new player come in and go out again due to not match of expectations (RCE RCE RCE)

i can understand that it gets dissappointing at such point for most.

Also just out of date is for me the whole professions system. I find it nice that my Avatar gets skills from useing a Scanner but why can't People use all these scanning skills they gained for 10years now for anything??? Like identify items for others against peds?

Cause that would lead to a real cash Economy with professions usage and people will end up withdrawing^^ wuaaa dont say the bad w-word

See to a Real Cash Economy belongs possibilities to generate income via profession usage. And all must have the Chance to be able to do it. But if bankdeposits are what 90% of Players keeps going thats no RCE. If 90% of real World Companies would generate their income via money loan of their housebank what would happen to them after some time? They can't finance their existance anymore and quit. What do 8 of 10 new arrivals to EU do?

And if Someone want to Tell me that we got it Because Sweating is a Profession which generates income we better all Plug off our PCs from the Powersockets now^^ cause its Not Good to fall asleep infront of the pc^^


The Platform-holder must move if he wants more Stability instead of One risky move After the Other which Always require that the Same People make the pockets open.

Then you compete against Games from Blizzard and arenanet.

Looking forward to next content and Hope its Not just another Quest at some Planet with sunglasses reward^^

 

[Xandra]

Hi,

yes we are here inside a RCE that means players will come with that expectation inside. And after all Npc driven Quest and missions are done the player is on his own again to attend to activities inside the sandbox and survive. Thats for most the point of Logout forever.
[...]
Also just out of date is for me the whole professions system. I find it nice that my Avatar gets skills from useing a Scanner but why can't People use all these scanning skills they gained for 10years now for anything??? Like identify items for others against peds? [...]

Very interesting post, thank you!

I'd like to talk a bit about the RCE in EU, your example with the scanner profession made a bell ring in my poor old brain:

I know another game that doesn't exactly name itself as RCE, but has quite similar functions. It works like this:

• You pay a small monthly fee, as long as you want to play unlimited. Should you run out of money, no problem, you'll become a "free" player with capped skills. Next month you might be able to pay again, you'll have back your old skills.
• This monthly fee can be paid with real cash or with in-game money.
• In-game money can be bought at the game shop (only game-time and game-money available here).
• Or you earn it providing services to other players. This game has a huge emphasis on crafting and building, so you could make tools to sell, or dig & pave roads for others, or grow vegetables for others that are used to make food. (There's much more you can do to make money ...)
• For a very small fee (1-time + monthly) you can "rent" land, to build your home/ village/ town. You can invite other players to join you, living on such a "deed" provides certain advantages.
• Selling avatars, items or in-game money for real cash is explicitly allowed, just there's no in-game function to do this - you're on your own there. Despite this it's very common that in-game money, more expensive items or avatars are sold for real cash.

In this game it's quite easy to earn the monthly costs for your own piece of land with the work of some hours. Determined players can pay for their game time this way, too, and it's not uncommon to have more then 1 avatar, each one skilled in different professions.
It's even possible to earn real cash (not much though), with enough time and dedication you can do this. There's close to no luck factor, no item-drops, it's alone the skill (of avatar + player) and the time spent that determines the outcome.

Now let's compare this to EU.

In EU luck is the determining factor. You put your stake on the table of your choice, hit the button, and get a result. This can be nothing, something in various amounts, or can even reach insane values.

Right, there's things like sweating, stone-/ fruit-walking, whatever - but there's close to no demand to it. You cannot pay any serious gaming with it.

The only thing in EU that isn't just "using a slot machine" is reselling, and we all know how beloved these people are. Recently offering taxi services has been revived, OK.

But the by far most prominent part is just hoping that this time finally it is the long desired "big loot" (Global, HoF, ATH), and after this, trying to sell your loot for a decent price.

Not this much real "Economy", right? But a lot of Cash involved, the more you're able to spent the better your chances not to bleed this much money ...


In my humble opinion this other cheap little indy game has much more economy, and you actually have a valid possibility to earn or save real cash. Even if it's written in Java, has ridiculous gfx, and is developed by a tiny team it has some hundred players on line at any given time, and some thousand accounts paying their monthly fees.

While EU is big (or tries to look like ...), shiny, expensive, and - well, it takes ages to sell your stuff, there's an insane offer for almost anything (compared to the demand), and the TT is still our best friend. But hey, who cares about economy when we're able to loot a real phat amount of real cash some day ...

Cannot help thinking about this evil word, starting with "C", and ending with "asino", that you'll hear quite soon when you introduce someone new to it - usually as famous last word.

See to a Real Cash Economy belongs possibilities to generate income via profession usage. And all must have the Chance to be able to do it. But if bankdeposits are what 90% of Players keeps going thats no RCE. If 90% of real World Companies would generate their income via money loan of their housebank what would happen to them after some time? They can't finance their existance anymore and quit. What do 8 of 10 new arrivals to EU do?

Quoted for truth.

Have a good time!

 

[unicorn]

Hi,



In EU luck is the determining factor. You put your stake on the table of your choice, hit the button, and get a result. This can be nothing, something in various amounts, or can even reach insane values.

Right, there's things like sweating, stone-/ fruit-walking, whatever - but there's close to no demand to it. You cannot pay any serious gaming with it.

The only thing in EU that isn't just "using a slot machine" is reselling, and we all know how beloved these people are. Recently offering taxi services has been revived, OK.

But the by far most prominent part is just hoping that this time finally it is the long desired "big loot" (Global, HoF, ATH), and after this, trying to sell your loot for a decent price.

Not this much real "Economy", right? But a lot of Cash involved, the more you're able to spent the better your chances not to bleed this much money ...


In my humble opinion this other cheap little indy game has much more economy, and you actually have a valid possibility to earn or save real cash. Even if it's written in Java, has ridiculous gfx, and is developed by a tiny team it has some hundred players on line at any given time, and some thousand accounts paying their monthly fees.

While EU is big (or tries to look like ...), shiny, expensive, and - well, it takes ages to sell your stuff, there's an insane offer for almost anything (compared to the demand), and the TT is still our best friend. But hey, who cares about economy when we're able to loot a real phat amount of real cash some day ...

Cannot help thinking about this evil word, starting with "C", and ending with "asino", that you'll hear quite soon when you introduce someone new to it - usually as famous last word.


Quoted for truth.

Have a good time!

Hello,

ye and thats what the majority of people think about it when you talk to them ingame.

Luck is a too big thing which all is about. Hit or hit not the big one.

That makes the RCE too much in the back even to such a point it is useless.

Even if you would ask if its worth the afford to participate in the RCE most will say "nah afford in comparision to growth is in no relation".

See in the country where I live (germany) there is a very strong detailed law scenery. For everything there are laws and they are very strict laws. There are even customer protection initiatives who are there for people who feel that a company dont match their performance with the expectations they seed in adverts.

So customers can get them on it and they have a deep look at companies on all kinds of markets.
There are laws in germany which forbid companies to make wrong picture of what their products are inside.
Even EU (european union) laws have these rules set.

So its not enough to make some argument inside which make someone say "yes yes we have sweating therefore we are a RCE and you can sell loot therefore we are a RCE"

If they be on it they would strongly take it beside and look if theres a real economy working inside.

The most working professions inside are professions which are officially none.

e.g.
- radiostations (are invented by players not the company and technically run outside the game via websites)
- tradeing (is no official profession as there are no tradeing skills of the avatar involved nor can you give reputation to someone after a deal)

- piloting (is no official profession as you dont get pilot skills after flying someone successfuly to a destination or while flying a aircraft. you only get skills when being attacked etc.)

See you can only produce constant growth if you attend to things not created as a ingame mechanic profession. That make the gameing professions inside out of the RCE environment.

No hunter in the real world economy environment would hunt animals with a constant loss while doing it. They would just stop doing it. Cause in a real world environment are no treatments in form of yellow swirlies. Same for mining and crafting.

And the times that skills are worth enough to chip them out to sell them for a equal or even profit are not anymore.
With cost for esi, implant inserter and the usual loss of skills while extracting them you never get back what you put in. Its enorm struggling. People who have been professional hunters profited because of selling skills back in the days and not loot. Loot sell was always just to get a small ped but was still minus always. they stopped it cause its not possible anymore.

I know its hard to offer a RCE to people to be able to create natural growth with it. Cause that involves to find methods of money flow into the company behind the platform from outside the playerbase. And every company or investor will ask a return ofc. None on the commercial world market will give money away without await of a return in form of more money after some time (financial investors) or a return in form of a service (practical usage of investment)

You can try to generate a income to your game with ingame adverts (need big player base otherwise not interesting for companies to advert inside your game)

We could test that. I invite every active player to my friendlist and I will see how many are online per day =)

You can try to find a very rich person who generates his money by other businesses and finds your idea of a online RCE nice and sponsors a huge sum of money so the company be able to let the money work on their bank to grow that much it can be handed to players.

That would involve to make Entropia Universe a form of charity organisation. Cause local IRS will be on players who genereate income big enough to live from it and you need to find one ofc who invests that much without asking anything back. (There are people in the world who could make that but convince them is the other thing =) )

There are not enough landareas for every player to own one =) what live the others from?

Is a commercial entertainment product with a RCE a oxymoron? =)

One thing is sure. Advertising is a very sensible thing. Expectations and what you make to meet them really important =)

Greets,

 

[RexDameon]

one thing is for sure. People come dont enjoy themselves and leave. Those people are very very hard to get back to play. Doesn't matter if you show them some new fancy trailer or planet even they still wont come back after a quick check on the forums that loot is still so unbalanced and the other major problems. So i agree that MA needs to fix a LOT of things before we try to overtake WoW.

 

[Wistrel]

Woohoo, the first post! I see a lot of familiar names around, including some that I missed for a long time. So many awesome people in one place can't be wrong, can they?

Woo I remember you! I hope Cyrene will bring back some of the old folks from way back in the Entropia Pioneers Forum day.

 

[unicorn]

one thing is for sure. People come dont enjoy themselves and leave. Those people are very very hard to get back to play. Doesn't matter if you show them some new fancy trailer or planet even they still wont come back after a quick check on the forums that loot is still so unbalanced and the other major problems. So i agree that MA needs to fix a LOT of things before we try to overtake WoW.

definatley. the first impression is always the most important. most people are like that.

compete with commercial games is hard here.

what if Entropia Universe would be available per purchase only.

you would be able to buy it in stores next to the other games.

pay 50 euro for a boxset of entropia with DVD, some poster, handbook and some 100 ped on pedcard.

handbook is here the a and o why? cause when you sell computer software you have to give a handbook with the software which describes every function of the software detailed so the user can look up what the product offers on the side of functions and how to use them. you have to make a handbook cause that is the law. its not allowed to sell products which offer functions without handbook. if you do so the customer has the right to cancel and step back from the deal.

the money from the sales could fund what ingame costs do now and the cost per play could be reduced also. it would offer new possibilities on ingame content creation. that is needed then. you cant spend the money otherwise. as when a casual or dedicated online gamer buys a game for 50 bucks and finds no suitable or reasonable content inside you get very unhealthy reputation on the commercial gameing market and big and well known gameing magazines will just rate you in a way you will keep sitting on your cost you have from produceing the boxsets.

it will also be very very important to have the product bug free and running with excellent performance.

but it would be possible.

you could also make some rare collectors editions for 150 euro with some more items in the box. like small statues of creatures or so or you can put a virtual item within the collectors edition like a good UL gun or so.

and when you have it running finally what can you do?

make a player adverts player function inside. new players can enter the name of a avatar who pointed them to the game. the one who pointed him to the game gets 250 peds on his pedcard added as soon the new player deposited the total sum of 500 ped after game purchase.

all possible. the platform holder must want it. or not =)

greets

 

[Xandra]

Hi,

one thing is for sure. People come dont enjoy themselves and leave. Those people are very very hard to get back to play.

Not only this:
They'll tell all their friends what a crap this was, and that they should stay clear of it ...

Talk to gaming ppl out there that are not in EU, a lot of them has heard of EU already and usually not the best - they're lost already, because a friend has warned them. Maybe this is why many participants are stating that this is their first game at all? Because many gamers start running away already as soon as they hear the word "EU"?

So i agree that MA needs to fix a LOT of things before we try to overtake WoW.

Hehe, guess MA decided to patiently sit by the riverside. Sooner or later the corpse of WoW will come floating by ...

Advertising is a very sensible thing.

This is true, and I'm not sure if the ongoing ad campaign will hit it's goal. As mentioned above, every try-out leaving unhappily works as a repellent for his friends.

And there's a lot of possibilities for a newbie to become unhappy rather quickly:

• Much too easy to burn quite some money in a very short time. A typical first deposit might be ~ 250 PED, with ~ 100 PED for a set of beginner gear (armor, weapons, mining tools, refiner, FAP ...). Remaining ~150 PED to spent, this is enough for a weeks afternoons of hunting and mining.
  A game of chance now - but chances are quite high that our newbie will end with a lot of small stacks of lots of various stuff, all ways to small to even think of selling it. And chances are quite high that, when selling all of this stuff to the TT, our newbie will have to realize that of his 150 PED just 50 remained.
  2 days more, and the initial deposit will be gone.
  250 PED deposit is about 2 months fee of WoW. In EU our newbie will easily blow this up in just 1.5 weeks.
  .
• A good chance to get annoyed rather quickly - especially on calypso there's a high possibility to get scammed, or to meet people that are less then nice, in the newbie areas.
  There's no GM's, there's no behavior control but of the players themselves, any problems need to get escalated to support, and this often takes days and days of waiting. To get a prefab, meaningless answer finally.
  And without using a 3rd-party tool, the newbie cannot even provide a screenshot ...
  .
• Besides sweating and stone/ fruit walking, there's nothing a newbie can do when out of money. Well, chatting ...
  Once there must have been the possibility to act as a living decoy, to earn some money, but this is from this long ago that even I haven't seen it anymore.

This are points that make any marketing efforts futile currently, IMHO.


There'd have to be some basic changes to the game to cater for a bigger audience, besides the few fearless hard cores, and the gamblers. Just a few ideas:

• Real crafting. What we have now is as close to a one-armed bandit as even possible.
  Refiners could be replaced by a time-consuming smelting progress for instance - this way you could hire a newbie to do it for you, and pay her the additional value created by this. Ammo could be made from sweat and other ingredients, then sold to the TT where it'd be available then to buy - no more ammo out of the blue skies. The TT would pay variable rates dependent of the availability of ammo.
  .
• To work as a real RCE there'd be need for additional money influx. Monthly fees would cause an uproar, so maybe advertising?
  MA has RL data of us, so why not location based ads? Operate an Ad Screen, watch an ad suited for you, 10 PEC's for you, 10 PEC's for MA?
  Or sponsored loot? "Avatar 'BigBelly' NamNam killled a creature (Snablesnot male Guardian) worth 50 PED. Loot sponsored by 'BurgerGrilly Toronto', including a 20 PED voucher for '20 days of all-you-can-eat'!"?
  
  We had something like this in past, unfortunately MA, megalomaniac as usual, choose the MS-owned Massive.Inc, where they was ignored because they was ways too small.
  But there's demand for ad services like this, in various dimensions. Your local pizza dealer might pay to get a view from you, not much, but he'd certainly pay for a qualified view.
  And bigger companies might pay too, any marketing droid will kiss your toes for qualified, targeted contacts that MA easily could provide.
  
  For sure this would need some work, an API suited for the ad agencies, and attractive conditions.
  .
• A more even loot curve. Loot should not swing between "nearly nothing" and "a lot", it should be between "70%" and "125%" normally, with any bigger loots only paid from an ad money pool, or from sponsored loots.
  The current possible lowest returns do nothing but repell people.
  There should still be the awesome ATH's we know - they just should be very rare, "All time high" as it's spelled. But they shouldn't be paid from the small participants pocket anymore.

I think this way EU could become a better game, enjoyed by a greater number of participants, this way more attractive and profitable, so getting even more participants - you see, a vicious circle. This circle has to be started, sooner or later.
Atm we're in the completely diametrical circle, low number of participants, weak economy, try-out's leaving fast, even less participants - this circle has to get broken.

IMHO.

Disclaimer: Raw ideas, will contain mistakes, for sure. Hope you get the idea.

Have a good time!

 

[malasuerte]

• 
  MA has RL data of us, so why not location based ads? Operate an Ad Screen, watch an ad suited for you, 10 PEC's for you, 10 PEC's for MA?
  Or sponsored loot? "Avatar 'BigBelly' NamNam killled a creature (Snablesnot male Guardian) worth 50 PED. Loot sponsored by 'BurgerGrilly Toronto', including a 20 PED voucher for '20 days of all-you-can-eat'!"?

Screens linked to google adsense, with the option to disable them if you dont want them. hmmm, it could be good. not sure about it.