This should be a sign to everyone developers and players alike that first impressions matter a ■■■■-ton.
You can be the most responsive dev team ever, and this can even win back people if you’re good at it, but you never lose more people in this history of your games existence than its first month, and the goal is to simply retain as much as humanly possible.
In the MMO business, you are setting the pace and the tone for the entire games life, and if that month is a stinker, you may as well hit the damn drawing board all over again.
Tree had a textbook-level horrible opening, and even worse, to paying players. Tack on all the other egregious design decisions that will frustrate almost any player, and you have one of the most potent recipes for turning people away almost within a day of trying it out.
It’s really sad that Tree has to sort of be the modern day martyr to remind other companies (or IMC for their next swing) that what they’ve done here for the most part is unacceptable in this day and age.
Here’s hoping Tree gets the fixes it needs and that it’s not too late, because at this point it’s even possible the game won’t be financially in the green.