If destroyed realms lead to declining active player counts, they are bad for retention. End of story.
I believe this is partially true. But let's not forget that the creation of a
new realm upon the ruins of the old realm might undo the initial decline of activity, with most likely other (newer?) players taking up the roles of the previously active players that now left the continent because there is no room for them any longer.
Across all of BM, numbers of active and very active players are declining, despite strong registration growth. Some continents mimic this pattern. Some do not. We need to figure out WHERE we are losing players. The data indicate it is in Atamara, EC, and the Colonies, mostly.
For a few weeks, if not months, I have been pointing out that the mentor-system is very unrewarding. In Ibladesh (EC), we used to have a sharp increase of new nobles a while ago. I did my utter best to "educate" these nobles to make them stay, because we were in dire need of them. At a certain point we reached 100 nobles, so I figure it basically worked for a few weeks... now we're down to about 70-80 again. That is a massive loss. What I am trying to say is that while being a mentor I found it to be a very altruistic job, where the effort put into teaching new players the game is not properly reward because it is dependent on the new player itself rewarding the old player. This rarely happens in general (or am I just an exception?), and even when it does happen, you need more than one new player to reward you before you can do anything "fun" with it (the options aren't even that amazing). Not to mention that "education" can take up to 60 or even 100 days, and that most players by then already feel they know the game and don't see the need to reward their mentor any more.
I think there are several solutions to this. First would be an overhaul of the entire mentor system to make this type of game-play more competitive (compared to other classes). For starters, the class "mentor" can be removed or can be allowed as a third-class option, so it is no burden on the players who decide they actually want to work on keeping Battlemaster alive. Another option would be "force" new players into having a mentor - and maintaining contact with that mentor. I assume that now about 25% of the new players end up lost without a mentor and get auto-removed after two weeks. Probably 95% of them is just not interested in a text-based game. But that 5% might have become a real BM-player if they were probably guided.
Next to that the rewarding system for mentors still has to change. The battlemaster-community simply doesn't do enough to attract new players. I personally think that our devs (and Tom) are doing wonderful jobs, as well as some other players... but it should be more than that. Everybody should be aware of "retention" and should at least try to help out new players. A friendly and welcoming atmosphere is what keeps players here, even if they are initially not attracted to the type of game. I just recently experienced that myself, as I began playing a game I wasn't really attracted too, but it had a community so welcoming that I just wanted to hang around more.
I am still in favour of a rather small island where new players (only) can join, "guided" by a few experienced players that roam around in the realms (I picture this as the old War Islands) to teach them. Here new players can get used to the game, but also to things such as "being a lord", "being a council member" and many, many more aspects of the game. But I believe these ideas should fit in another thread where we can tackle the problem of a declining player base and the lack of mentor-rewarding goodies in the game itself.
That would require an explanation of why Dwilight, Beluaterra, and FEI draw in such a vastly higher number of new, active players.
I think these should be separated. I have never been on FEI before, so the only assumption I can make is that people are drawn there because it is an RP-heavy island. I know for myself that one day I will go there just for the RP-possibilities. Now Dwilight is a continent with many "unexplored" regions. Colonizing (read: the chance of making your own realm and write a little core history) is always attracting new players. Beluaterra had this kind of attraction back when it was still called "The New World" and was largely rogue. The fact that there are new realms being formed on Dwilight on a regular basis is what keeps players attracted to that continent. I believe however that, when it gets fully colonized, it will need to find something else to attract characters. But it is large enough to ensure many, many wars.
Beluattera might attract people because it is partially blighted ("This looks cool!") and because it had a mini-game set up around the invasion that created quite the buzz. Such things stimulate players to join these continents. Next to that an all-out war just broke out (with the exception of Melhed). Wars are always good.
What about destroyed realms could be unappealing? Hm, here's an idea: imagine a continent where one or two massive realms have never been taken down, never been defeated, despite sometimes vast alliances arranged against them. This/these realms are characterized by strong geographic advantages, very stable internal politics, and ruthless hegemony over their neighbors. They repeatedly destroy or dismember any realm near them that challenges their hegemony. They thus create constant drains on retention on their continents.
You just described EC.
My last suggestion is that a questionnaire is held: this would be able to give everyone clear and conclusive data and would allow us to tackle the problem more thoroughly. It is only by asking nearly every players that we can reveal what the "wants" and "dont's" are. The numbers given here by Vellos are very interesting and do show that there are some issues, but numbers rarely explain human behaviour: they only give an indication of it. Only by going out there and asking people how they feel about the game will give clearance.
