>"Something about the way you operate, and I’m not really sure
>exactly what you’re doing or how to fix it because I’m totally
>uninvolved, drives away new staff members + mid level staff
>members (who the players love) and pisses them off. I’m sure
>you have reasons why, and I’m sure they are totally
>justifiable in every case, but that’s not the point. The point
>is your staff turnover is too high, and if you want to grow
>and to have fresh, unjaded, staff you have to do whatever it
>takes to change that while maintaining or even raising your
>standards of excellence. Period"
>
>I'll argue a point or two here. First off, mid-level imms
>typically leave because of real life. Heroimms leave because
>of burnout. It's like Cyradia said, there's a lot of stick
>with very little carrot, and some people don't get that when
>they heroimm. They go from constant interaction and the game
>side of the mud to the other side where it's just not as much
>fun. Especially at 51 and 52.

Okay, if you know what the problems are you put systems in place to overcome them. What the problems are doesn't matter, you are not special :), you just find out how to overcome them. I'm not talking about 100% retention, I'm talking about doing better than 1%. That's not too hard.

>Second - A lot of the falloff in the player base (just my
>opinion) is due to the same thing I said before. People
>getting sidetracked by real life. Ultimately we're not drawing
>the 14 year old crowd anymore because the graphical appeal of
>mmo's is larger to some extent. They don't remember the days
>of bbs and surfing the web with lynx. They don't imagine well,
>and to them it's just a lot of text. Play out a halo 3 fight
>next to a log of hunsobo for example. Obviously this doesn't
>apply to all of them.

There are millions of people playing MMO's right now. We only want maybe 200 or 300 of them. How many people are playing magic cards? D and D? Those are lower tech than CF. Of the millions of people doing similar things I'm sure we can capture .0001% of them. That's not a real agressive marketing goal, and totally achievable given the "niche" quality of CF. A bigger challenge is actually taking a company that has mass appeal and finding it a niche to thrive in. Niche nich niche, you always need a niche. CF already gots one.



>
>Third - I agree that some imm responses can seem harsh, but
>they're usually full of valid points. For every single one of
>these logs crying cuz the imm was "a total asshole" over some
>valid blah blah blah, there are 10 things the imm did well
>that could be argued the other way. People don't post the good
>stuff, it's boring to talk about.

Welcome to the world of customer service. See: you are not special.