Stats mm there somewhere...
Too be honest its mostly old players leaving that makes me sad. Who is going to remember North and south Darka with me or when Tom openly had characters playing along side us, or even when Loren beat me out of a banker election in Fontan or when Indirk came to darka or when Lavagina's sister killed Herumor.
But in with the new out with the old... only if we could improve retention of the new!
If we had some good data showing when and why players drop out, then we could try to think of a way to prevent them dropping out. I'd bet that there are some recognizable trends. For example, let's say newbies have an 80% chance of dropping out in the first month, but if they stay beyond a month, their likelihood goes down to 50%, or something like that. Then you can take a closer look at both groups and look for what the drop-outs have in common with each other and what sets them apart from the non-dropouts. You might find, for example, that newbies who received welcome messages from their realm-mates were more likely to stay in the game than those that didn't. And you could do a similar analysis of the old-timers. I know everybody has theories, so let's put them to good use.
P.S. There was a character called Lavagina???
