Retention Revisited

[Vellos]

Apologies, it's just over the last 1 month. My other data is 3 months, so I assumed this was as well.

Whatever the case, a month ago, BoM had 29 nobles. Now the statistics page says you have 30. When I took the data originally, it said you had 31.

As I said, the realm-by-realm numbers are much more difficult to deal with, as they often deal in smaller changes, and are shorter-term.

[Vellos]

In the interest of collecting as much data as possible, I went to an outside source. Alexa.com ranks sites based on numerous variables, including pageviews, traffic, time per user, etc. I have no idea how accurate its methodology is. But, assuming it is accurate, BM looks to be in a definite recovery.

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/battlemaster.org

In terms of "reach" (or % of internet users who visit BM), we've gone up 30% in the last 3 months... admittedly we're still well shy of our late 2010 peak on this chart (only goes back to autumn of 2010), but we're recovering from the low of this January.

In terms of pageviews, we've got a stark uptick. This I suspect is because of the forum. I am betting that Alexa measures the core as well, because around March/April, the pageviews spike tremendously, and pageviews/user spike even more, as does the average time spent on the site. All of this to me says that Alexa measures the forum, not just BM.

Even so, the rising reach would seem to indicate our audience is bigger than previously (though not at its best). Not sure why, but still interesting.

[egamma]

are war islands included in alexa?

[Vellos]

hmmm.... dunno actually. That could be it as well.

[psymann]

Haven't time to read the whole thread, but in case it helps to gather more tales of why people join, stay or leave, here are three from my experience:


1) Joined-and-left almost instantly

First time I joined battlemaster was in about 2005.

If I remember rightly, I joined the region of Venas on EC.  The first turn I spent trying to work out what I was meant to do - since there were no welcome messages within the first hour I was there, and there was no obvious reason to do any of the rather limited number of available actions, I did nothing, and thought I'd come back later to see what would happen.

When I came back less than a day but two turns later, a horde of monsters had moved into Venas (I assume from an adjacent region).  There was a battle, and given I was the only troop leader in the region, my unit was almost completely destroyed.  Then the following turn I had been hit again by the monsters.

So after one day - and by the second time I'd logged in - I had lost my entire troop of men to some random monsters that had sprung up without warning.  And there had only been a couple of scout reports during that day for me to read as well, and still no personal messages of welcome.  So my opinion at the time was:

"This game sucks.  First of all, nothing interesting has happened apart from one battle with monsters.  Second of all, that battle completely destroyed me.  Why would I want to play a game where I can lose my entire troop with no warning and with nothing I could do to prevent it?"

I left the game pretty much straight away.


2) Joined and stayed

Second time I joined was in 2007.  I was looking for another game to play, and once again was attracted by the description of it on the homepage.  It was only when I was half-way through the registration process that I suddenly realised this was the same game I'd played two years previously and hated.  But I figured I might as well complete the registration given I'd nearly completed it by then.

This time I joined Falasan on Atamara.

And this time my first day was completely different.  For a start, I spawned in Elroth, which was a busy thoroughfare between Barad Gardor and Barad Falas, so there were plenty of people there, and I didn't feel as if I was in the middle of nowhere, lost and vulnerable, as I had before.

I was then welcomed by a couple of players almost instantly.  Falasan was at war with Eston, and it was a busy war with almost constant fighting, and a battle every day.  It was only a day or so before I had a passable oath with Lord Kido of Elroth, and was placed in Falasan's main army.

Even before being put in the army, I'd been personally messaged by one or two of the other knights and told that I might be able to make myself useful in Belegmon, so I had some purpose right from the start, and some reason to do something straight away.

The things that made the difference were:
- Personal messages of greeting
- Some sort of instruction about what I could do to be helpful so I had something to do


3) New character and bad experience 1 (one player hogging all positions)

I created a Bureaucrat in Suville.  I discovered that, unlike Falasan, I wasn't really involved in what was going on.  At the time, Caergoth and Suville were separating from Abington.  While in Abington for a few months at the start it was kind of ok, but after six months or so I then ended up in Suville, where one player was simultaneously both Ruler, Banker and Duchess of Suville, having already previously been both Banker and Duchess of Abington.  I think also had another character as a region lord in the same realm, so one player with four positions in a highly populated realm.  I felt very much that I was only there as a pawn to help this one player have fun running his own personal realm, so I walked the length of Atamara and joined Minas Ithil instead.  It was nicer there, though I did find it took a while having to start again building relationships in a new realm which was less good.

It was approximately 12 months before any of my three noble characters got any position of any kind (lord, marshal, whatever).  Meanwhile, other players (and the one in Suville, though the worst I saw, was by no means the only one) seemed to hold lots of positions in other places while me and others held none.  That really put me off.


4) New character and bad experience 2

Perdan, this time.  I created an angry, disobedient-but-just-polite-enough-to-get-away-with-it-most-of-the-time character.  Bit of a rebel, but a rebel that still knew how to keep within the social constraints of nobility.  Ish.

Problem this time was to do with the players themselves, and was twofold:

a) There seemed a core group of friends who held all the power in Perdan.  Their characters all seemed to magically pop up to defend the other characters, and while that might have been acceptable in-character, the same players out-of-character again all backed each other up on every point of discussion, and it all felt very cliquey.

b) They seemed to be awful at understanding IC/OOC differences.  I was trying to roleplay my character as a nasty piece of work, but he wasn't so stupidly disobedient to walk to up to nobles and insult them to their face, nor was he stupid enough to write rude letters to people.  I wanted to roleplay him as being unpleasant, so people knew what he was like, and wouldn't then be surprised at his later actions of mild disobediance and his harsh tone.  But I didn't want him just to be blatantly rude.  So I roleplayed him a few times in a monologue, talking to himself or to his captain privately, being rude about the various other nobles behind their backs.  Since most messages he'd got had been from the council, he was mostly rude about them.  But rude about them, not rude to them.

Then, lo and behold, no sooner had he said these things in private, but all the council knew about it, and were sending him letters telling him off for being rude.  The next RP I did described him as _thinking_ something unpleasant _in private_.  Yet still within minutes the council members knew what he'd thought, knew it was mean, and were telling him off.  Try as I might to explain to them that their OOC knowledge through my roleplay did not equal their characters' IC knowledge, I failed.  I was accused of using roleplays to be rude about another character without them being able to defend themselves, when all I was doing was roleplaying my character as the nasty piece of work he was.  If they'd left it a little longer, and had he actually had anything of any interest to do that he could have done in a disobedient way, they'd have had plenty of IC reason to be nasty back, but they weren't willing to wait and just took offence.

That, and the fact that they wrote letters and tagged them as "Roleplay", and generally mis-used the different message categories, identified to me that the main problem was that I was trying to play the game in a different way, that while it worked perfectly in Falasan, Abington, Suville, Minas Ithil (and still works now in my chars' current realms), for some reason the players in Perdan had their own way of playing the game and it was incompatible with mine.

So I had to leave Perdan to find somewhere better to play, and, just as having to leave Abington with my previous character, meant I had to start from square one again in terms of building up his personality in little RPs so that the other members of my realm knew what my character was like.  So - I was the one that had to leave and start again, whereas they just got to continue in their positions of high power and lost nothing from my departure.


5) Good experience with new character.

Eventually, I deleted the two characters above (keeping the one in Falasan), and created a new one on Dwilight.  In contrast to my previous experience, where it had taken 12 months to get any sort of position, and weeks if not months even to get onto a message group that had anything interesting going on to talk about, my Dwilight character was talked to as soon as he joined Morek.  He was made to feel welcome, was given a purpose in helping fight the monsters, and after a month or two, had a lordship position for a week before monsters took it off him, and was a Vice Marshal and then Marshal of the smaller army.

Good experiences here were much like those of Falasan - made to feel welcomed, and given a purpose.


6) Quit completely

Went away for holiday for two weeks... when I came back I had a lot of catching up to do, and had slightly lost interest as a result of being away.  I'd also lost the positions I'd previously held.

In the end, trying to enthuse myself, I created a carefully thought-out roleplay that was sent in bits to the whole realm... and yet barely anyone replied.  At that point I figured I was spending far more effort in creating RPs that I thought would be nice for others, and very little time getting interesting replies back.  Only a couple of players in Falasan (who were excellent) and a couple in Dwilight were providing much of interest, and eventually I just decided it was all a bit too much effort for too little gain, so just stopped logging in.

And then had no interest to come back because I'd not bothered to pause my account, so the whole thing was deleted.


7) Rejoined after all

So now, 2011, three years after last playing, I come back, and I find many of the same issues as before:

My characters had almost no welcome messages from anyone.
- In Carelia, I had one welcome from the banker, one miserable 10%-of-a-small-region oath offer without even a note with it from a lord just after my estate, and one decent welcome-plus-oath-offer from one player (thanks, Revan).
- In Oritolon, I had only two welcomes - from two lords who also offered me an oath.  Thanks to those players (though actually, one of them was Revan again - I hadn't realised until I joined the realm that he was in both Carelia and Oritolon as well).

My character has no position of responsibility, yet sees others with more than one.
- In Carelia, the King is also the General.  Two positions for one character means no position for someone else.
- I do notice that that Suville player is still there as Duchess of Suville, so there's not been any change of Dukeship for Suville for years, then - and yet still, to my annoyance, in all that time hasn't found time to write (or get someone else to write) a description of the city.  And some of the rulers of realms have been so for two or three years.  So it still seems hard (whether or not it is hard, it seems it) to break into the positions of power.

My character has limited purpose
- In Carelia, this isn't a problem - there's a war to fight and my character was even given a special mission to undertake (just a shame that the game wouldn't let him place his militia, so this mission was impossible to achieve, but hey)
- In Oritolon though, there's "too much peace", so all my character can do is civil work.  He can't even do police work as he hasn't got enough honour to do that.  There is so little to do that he's just wandering around looking a bit lost most of the time.

My RPs are sometimes ignored
- In Carelia, I've sent a message three times now to the elder members of Magna Serpaensism.  Three times I've been completely ignored by all three of them.
- In Carelia, I contrived for my character to send out five messages to the wrong people, so that each character got a message that was inappropriate for them and/or made no sense.  Only two of the receipients gave me any reply to them at all.
- But to be fair, my RPs to both Ruler and Judge were responded to with good and mulitiple replies, so it's not all bad of course.
- I can cope with the fact my lowly knights have almost nothing of interest to do button-wise if they have something of interest to do RP-wise.  It's just a shame that there's not always much to do RP-wise either.


Conclusion:

Times I have been made to feel happy and have wanted to stay:
- When joining a realm, I have been sent personal messages of welcome that give me a little background info to the realm's current position.
- I have had a feeling of purpose: I can see why me being there is better than me not being there (other than just the fact my estate is useful).
- People respond to my RPs and continue them; other people post RPs I can respond to and continue
- Having plenty of messages to read that are not all kept secretly in senior message groups
- I have been able to see a chance that I might actually progress to have a position of importance for a while
- When I can get into the mindset that it is fun to write my own RPs and just read them to myself for my own amusement

Times I have been made to feel sad and have wanted to quit:
- Some players hogging positions of power...
- ...and there being so much less to do if you don't have a position of power.
- Not much turnover of those positions even if they're not hogging more than one per character
- All the RP being in secret message groups I'm not in
- Whole realms seemingly playing by a whole different set of RP rules than everyone else
- When I get into the mindset that it is fun to interact with other people, yet can't do so


Anyway, those are just my experiences, as someone who's joined three times now, and continues to waver between staying and quitting from one day to the next.

[Fleugs]

Interesting. I've asked two new players, who I know that are active, to give me their first impressions about the game. I'll ask them, if they give them, that I can post them here for further discussion... if they answer, of course.

[Indirik]

b) They seemed to be awful at understanding IC/OOC differences.  I was trying to roleplay my character as a nasty piece of work, but he wasn't so stupidly disobedient to walk to up to nobles and insult them to their face, nor was he stupid enough to write rude letters to people.  I wanted to roleplay him as being unpleasant, so people knew what he was like, and wouldn't then be surprised at his later actions of mild disobediance and his harsh tone.  But I didn't want him just to be blatantly rude.  So I roleplayed him a few times in a monologue, talking to himself or to his captain privately, being rude about the various other nobles behind their backs.  Since most messages he'd got had been from the council, he was mostly rude about them.  But rude about them, not rude to them.

Then, lo and behold, no sooner had he said these things in private, but all the council knew about it, and were sending him letters telling him off for being rude.  The next RP I did described him as _thinking_ something unpleasant _in private_.  Yet still within minutes the council members knew what he'd thought, knew it was mean, and were telling him off.  Try as I might to explain to them that their OOC knowledge through my roleplay did not equal their characters' IC knowledge, I failed.  I was accused of using roleplays to be rude about another character without them being able to defend themselves, when all I was doing was roleplaying my character as the nasty piece of work he was.  If they'd left it a little longer, and had he actually had anything of any interest to do that he could have done in a disobedient way, they'd have had plenty of IC reason to be nasty back, but they weren't willing to wait and just took offence.

To be fair, this is a two-fold problem.

First, this has been a pervasive problem in the past, and not just in Perdan. (But there were some notable instances of it in Perdan, which is probably why they were so touchy about it. ("We", actually, as I was there at the time, though without a character/family name, there's no way I would remember you.)) People would send RPs about their character thinking something, or talking privately to someone about, with various insults or slanders about other characters, specifically so they could say them without reprisal. Even if this was not your intention to do this, it has been done in the past, and caused some problems.

Second, there are quite a few players in the game who will not consider the circumstances of an RP in determining whether or not what they read is something their characters know or not. Sometimes they don't care, and sometimes it's a mistake. But it happens a lot. Especially if the information is something against their character or one of their friends or political allies.

That, and the fact that they wrote letters and tagged them as "Roleplay", and generally mis-used the different message categories, identified to me that the main problem was that I was trying to play the game in a different way, that while it worked perfectly in Falasan, Abington, Suville, Minas Ithil (and still works now in my chars' current realms), for some reason the players in Perdan had their own way of playing the game and it was incompatible with mine.

Yeah, tagging of messages is a tough one. I remember all kinds of long arguments in Perdan over the proper use of message tagging. People who wrote all their messages as "roleplays" because they are always in character and "playing a role, so it's a roleplay", messages tagged as orders just to use the red paper to get people's attentions, etc. Ugh.

[Morningstar]

There's a little Gamist in all of us. Just depends on what draws you and what you consider your "levelups" and "endgame".

Here's my take, from about 5+ years experience in the past and then from my 1+ month returning.

Atamara- My first island. All time spent in Minas Ithil with 2 characters. Positions held- Judge, General, Lord.
Pros: Smaller regions make for faster travel time. Fairly decent income if the banker knew what they were doing (and later if duchies were set up right). Command structures seemed solid. Large, fairly frequent battles made for quick honor/prestige jumps. Few clan-ish behaviors noted. Frequent realm-wide RP opportunities due to frequent tournaments.
Cons: Realm hierarchy largely entrenched. When turnover occurs, tenure wins because longevity in realm means everything. Few opportunities for new council positions (Lots of Tyrannies/Monarchies in my time at least). Wars largely across the continent (regional wars tended to be putting down secession realms). Combat consists of refit/recruit/wait/repeat/march a week/fight/return. Few narrative RP interactions (unless they were silly and about tutus and badgers and pancakes).

East Continent- Time spent in Ubent, Fontan, Sirion, others (main account and Titan observer account). Positions held- none
Pros: Smaller regions make for faster travel time. Income tended to be fairly evenly distributed except for takeover units. Mostly efficient command structure. Fairly frequent battles provide honor/prestige jumps. Longstanding history (if you could find it).
Cons: Map shape makes war unsustainable North-South. Effective war only occurs East-West, else it's mostly sabre rattling. Realm hierarchy largely entrenched. Hard to learn details unless you make it into a special message group. Few opportunities to expand realms mean little opportunity to move up in position. Combat sometimes consisted of waiting a few weeks to decide where to march, marching a week, then fighting 1 day and going home. Few narrative RP interactions (roleplay here consists more of what you say than what you "do"). Often clan-like behavior from one or more groups.

Beluaterra- Time spent mostly in Melhed, though in others very early or later as an adventurer. Positions held- General, Lord
Pros: Best theme island.  Quasi-often "reset".  Characters must be immigrants, so are already at least partly established, both mechanically and in background.  "Island-wide" wars that shift slightly after every invasion and are not limited to North-South or East-West alliances. Constant opportunities for expanding realms, gaining new titles, and sometimes founding new realms. Semi-frequent battles in realms who desire war, plus invasions make for good honor/prestige growth.
Cons:- Character/realm death undesirable to some. Not being able to start on BT limits new character placement (and once a character drops they're often set and never end up moving to BT). Emigration limitations in general (coming and going).

West Island (Colonies)- Time spent in Outer Tilog, Assassins, and Giblot. Positions held- General, Lord
Pros: Best niche realms- Outer Tilog and at least formerly, Assassins. Narrative RP is encouraged due to less turns a day.
Cons: Not really a running storyline of any sort. Island mentality seems to be Seek-and-Destroy-a-Realm. I honestly couldn't even name all the other realms in the south, at any given point- there's just a lack of cohesiveness to the island in that regard. Oh, and the whole 1 turn per day thing is a real turnoff to many. High travel times plus the one turn sometimes means 5-6 days to go 3 regions. Low-ish income (though low player count somewhat counters this).

Far East Island- Time spent in Svunnetland, Arcachon, Taith Aenil (Greater Aenilia).  Positions held- Ruler, General, Banker, Judge, Duchess, Secession Leader, Successful Rebellion Leader, Marshal
Pros: Potential for great theme island. Realms with great history and background make immersion easier for some. Heavier RP environment leads to more politicking within realm, which leads to secessions/rebellions and more intrigue. There's always a tangible "bad guy" for every realm to gun for, given the RP attached to the actions. Always a war going on somewhere, but realms can withdraw and jump back in fairly easily.
Cons: Low to moderate income (this may be due to poor tax distribution- rich seem to stay rich and poor field 10-man units). Map shape makes war unsustainable North-South. East-West wars run rarely and usually end in one realm's destruction, assimilation, or surrender rather quickly. Lack of interaction from realm members seen as more problematic here, and growing.

Dwilight- Time spent in original Morek, Caerwyn. Positions held- General, Marshal
Pros: Constant room for expansion, new titles, new realms. Regional wars. Some monster invasions. Much of the continent still uninhabited/unexplored. SMA enforced so the ridiculousness that sometimes plagues other islands stays out.
Cons: Map too large to have real interaction with every realm.

So the way it plays out is that in MMO terms, Atamara and EC are PvP worlds where new characters are grunts and it takes lots of time to make a name for themselves. FEI flounders in potential as a RP-rich world, but has been watered down and lacks anything unique to draw/retain people. Colonies don't really know who or what they are, save a handful of unique realms in an otherwise dead island- and less turns per day don't help its cause. BT is a PvE world where the player can dabble in PvP if they want. Growth and opportunity are available, even if it means weathering another invasion to get your shot. Dwilight is a nice balance between PvE and PvP, with no ceiling on growth and opportunity.

That is why Dwilight and BT are doing better than the others. New players are joining and staying where they can have tangible proof of "winning" the game. That being- expansion/titles/achievements/honor/prestige. And in a relatively short amount of time.  Why are EC and Atamara dying? Old guard, longstanding regimes, and no good way for new characters to break through. The growth curve for power and influence is almost an inverse exponential curve.

And so when people invite their friends to play- even when said inviting player may have characters on Dwilight and Atamara- they'll always invite their friend to join them on Dwilight, not Atamara. The old worlds have little end-game and leveling up is not worth the time investment.

[Gustav Kuriga]

I do so hate comparisons to level based games.

[Morningstar]

I do so hate comparisons to level based games.

Hate it all you want. The comparison is there simply by virtue of it being what people are used to. It's how games have worked from the dawn of time. Not always character levels, but in absence of that, levels to beat and then move onto the next level. The ones that don't have no progression and lose playerbase. The ones that do then have to fight to have a believable and attainable endgame or it suffers the same losses.  Yet another reason why BT and Dwilight have the advantage over the others. Nobody's hit endgame on Dwilight- and won't at least until the whole continent is colonized. And BT gets an occasion reset by virtue of an invasion.

[Gustav Kuriga]

What a limited scope you have in games, then.

[Morningstar]

What a limited scope you have in games, then.

Thanks for the ad hominem. Really helps the conversation. Also doesn't disprove anything I said.  Keep your elitist attitude if you want, but don't do it in a thread talking about how to retain new players.  Seems a bit... out of place?

Face facts, you're drawing from primarily three different markets. One- the MMO crowd.  WoW put themselves in front by making the game easily accessible, lots of options, and lots of leveling to make you feel like you're accomplishing something. By the time advancement slows to a crawl, you're already hooked.  Two- the tabletop RPG crowd.  Similar feel here. Create a character and build story as you gain skills. Always a sense of moving forward and advancing.  And three- the FPS/RTS/turn-based strategy crowd. Give me a map, let me build my base/cities, let me wipe out my enemies. Game over, Load a new map.

Name me even three relatively well known games that you don't think follow the level/endgame ideas and I'll prove otherwise. That or I'll stand down.

[Kain]

Thanks for the ad hominem. Really helps the conversation. Also doesn't disprove anything I said.  Keep your elitist attitude if you want, but don't do it in a thread talking about how to retain new players.  Seems a bit... out of place?

Face facts, you're drawing from primarily three different markets. One- the MMO crowd.  WoW put themselves in front by making the game easily accessible, lots of options, and lots of leveling to make you feel like you're accomplishing something. By the time advancement slows to a crawl, you're already hooked.  Two- the tabletop RPG crowd.  Similar feel here. Create a character and build story as you gain skills. Always a sense of moving forward and advancing.  And three- the FPS/RTS/turn-based strategy crowd. Give me a map, let me build my base/cities, let me wipe out my enemies. Game over, Load a new map.

Name me even three relatively well known games that you don't think follow the level/endgame ideas and I'll prove otherwise. That or I'll stand down.

Morning star has a good point. You want to feel as you're getting somewhere. BM has a large spectrum of getting somewhere, and you can choose yourself what to focus on, kind of like real life. That is the coolest bit. You can chase fame if you want, family fortune, expansion for your realm, getting a lordship, getting a specific council position (often ruler), plan to create your own realm, dwelve into religion and make that region the dominant one, create your own religion, right a wrong by revenge (either against a realm or another character) and so on. Then you spice up the main objective with smaller semi-plans and great RP + all the unexpected stuff that you can react to.

[psymann]

Morning star has a good point. You want to feel as you're getting somewhere. BM has a large spectrum of getting somewhere, and you can choose yourself what to focus on, kind of like real life. That is the coolest bit. You can chase fame if you want, family fortune, expansion for your realm, getting a lordship, getting a specific council position (often ruler), plan to create your own realm, dwelve into religion and make that region the dominant one, create your own religion, right a wrong by revenge (either against a realm or another character) and so on. Then you spice up the main objective with smaller semi-plans and great RP + all the unexpected stuff that you can react to.

Yep, agreed, having some feeling of progression, so that after a certain amount of time, you feel it was worth the effort.

But how long-term are all those goals that came to mind?

- Aiming for fame can be ok, but it is slow for people to get any at first (I've been back over a month now, and still on 0 fame).  And at higher levels particularly, actively aiming for more fame usually means powergaming to contrive any excuse to get your characters to do whatever it is they need to do for their next fame point.
- Family fortune can be ok, but it's not something new players can do much with early on.  You wealth drops with each new character, and takes ages to replenish.  And so many new nobles are offered a miserable oath offer, and take it for want of anything better, that they don't have much to put away.  Last time I played, it was a year before I had enough spare gold to seriously consider adding to my family wealth.
- Expansion for your realm you can't do as a new player.  After all, it's not really your realm to expand, you're merely a knight serving a lord.
- Getting a lordship is a common goal for new players.  But it can take months.  Last time it took me over a year with three characters before any of them got a lordship.  This time round, it's been over a month and even when my character was one of only two candidates in an election, and mine was the one from the right region, duchy, and with a claim, he didn't get it.  I imagine it may still be months before any of my characters find themselves with a position, just like last time.
- Getting a specific council position is even longer-term.  Last time, it took me over a year before one of my characters became Banker of Falasan.  And that was the only council position any of them got in the two years I played.
- Creating your own realm I don't think is possible unless you're a Duke and you split off to form your own realm.  And becoming a Duke seems even more unlikely than becoming a council member - the cities so infrequently change hands.
- Delve into religion is not possible as a new player because you can't be a priest until you have enough honour/time etc.  After a month playing, none of my characters can yet be priests.
- Creating your own religion is even less likely.  I believe you have to have a lordship position and/or be a priest to do that?  Certainly a new simple knight can't expect to be able to do that for months.
- Revenge sounds delightful, but you can't do that as a newbie either.  You can't revenge on them by stabbing them because you can't be an infiltrator without months of gaining honour and prestige.  You can't duel them because your swordmanship takes months to develop to a high enough level.  You can't revenge on a realm because you have no power in your own to gain support you'd need.

Some you missed out that is just about possible to do as a newbie, but only if others play along, which they often don't:
- Creating some roleplays that involve the realm and are memorable and engaging, and people say that they like
- Getting medals, which is often based on doing good roleplays and/or writing lots of good letters to people in the realm

In short - I agree that we mostly like to have our own personal goals.  My concern is that every one that you mentioned take months, probably years in the game to achieve.  There are precious few things you can achieve as a new player with a simple knight with 10 honour, 1 prestige, and an oath giving 25 gold per week.  And I think the frustration at playing every day for months and months and having such a minimal feeling of progression must be part of the reason we're losing players after three months or so.

Once the novelty wears off, and you realise you've gone nowhere in three months, and there's no particular indication you'll go anywhere in the next three months either, you might just sack it off as a bad game and go elsewhere.

[Vellos]

One- the MMO crowd.  WoW put themselves in front by making the game easily accessible, lots of options, and lots of leveling to make you feel like you're accomplishing something. By the time advancement slows to a crawl, you're already hooked.  Two- the tabletop RPG crowd.  Similar feel here. Create a character and build story as you gain skills. Always a sense of moving forward and advancing.  And three- the FPS/RTS/turn-based strategy crowd. Give me a map, let me build my base/cities, let me wipe out my enemies. Game over, Load a new map.

Name me even three relatively well known games that you don't think follow the level/endgame ideas and I'll prove otherwise. That or I'll stand down.

I will venture that this is how I play all of my characters. They all have a few specific, defined goals that I establish for myself prior to being started. I may shift and adjust those goals several times in the early stages of developing the characters, but not too much. I most enjoy the game when I feel I am approaching the accomplishment of those specific goals (which rarely correlate to things like "conquer X duchy" or "gain Z position").