Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Lineage 2 needs to go F2P.
First off I've played L2 for 4 years, I've done everything there was to do pre-Gracia content...It looks like L2 has settled down now after the Aion boom, I think recently L2 has gained some subscribers (probably people who learned the hard way how bad Aion is).
Anyway Aion is NCsofts new title, it's still holding out more subs than L2 is, which is why it's safe to take the risk with L2. I heard the game is already F2P in Russia with some limited cash shops that don't affect balance too much and it's doing well...But the most important reason - Private Servers. I've seen private servers with 100,000 player communities over the past few years, I see pserver voting sites with hundreds if not a thousand different private servers listed, no doubt there are/were millions and millions of people playing private L2 servers. If L2 was F2P, those private servers would have no reason to exist, except for the really customized ones. There would be a huge influx of a loyal private server following that would rush to retail if it went F2P, not to mention I think many old L2 players would go back. And I don't even need to mention all those F2P zombies that rush to every new free game that comes out...
It could have some donations/cash shop for all the decoration gear, pets and things like that, maybe you could pay $50 to get your quests done (subclass, noblesse, class transfer, etc...), pay like $5 for epic raid boss quest items and stuff like that...maybe even a cash shop for shadow gear (maybe add some shadow S grade)...As well of course leave the current donations for like name changes class > subclass swaps, server changes, gender, etc...
No doubt in my mind after seeing L2 and private servers (and how they make money and sustain themselves) that if L2 went F2P it would get an influx of hundreds of thousands if not millions in the first year as long as it was advertised properly. As well no doubt with donations like that it would make more money than it does now still pumping out expansions/content for free with just a monthly subscription.
The question is NCsoft smart enough to do it? After playing L2 since 2004, Tabula Rasa and Aion, which I waited for years, no doubt they aren't smart enough to do something like this.
Comments
I totaly agree with the idea. There are realy many players in privete servers that would like to play in oficial but don't wanna pay. Would be a great idea if NC do that.
I agree with this idea I think its great if they made it F2P because L2 is quite dead atm, and by dead I mean the game mechanics for the most part arent used, PVP is dominated by the same clans, Castles as well, everyone uses Radar etc... With an influx of new players and the Russian F2P model I think it would bring a lot more competition and I agree they would probably have to open new servers to accommodate all the people joining in.
The problem I see with this approach and that you forgot to mention is that private servers have ridiculous rates 50x, 75x, it might happen that ppl would actually play with the grind of XP, but it could also go the other way ( regardless it would increase population and in that you are right). With high five expansion and the decreasing of the XP needed tho this would be a great move.
Despite being a great idea, I seriously doubt this one is ever going to happen. Look at Lineage 1.Despite low amount of players this game is still P2P. So Lineage 2 will be following the same route in my opinion.
Russia already has a free to play server that is completely up to date. Why dosen't NA?
The russian servers are just licensed by NCSoft I believe it wasnt NC that actually released it they licensed the servers to be hosted by some third party company, they probably get a royalty and dont really care if it is F2P or P2P. It was a really good idea however came up with it, cause Russian gamers did really make a big chunk of the NA population and they are really keen on spending IRL cash for items and other services.
Russian Lineage 2 version is handled by a completely different company called "Innova", while the NA Lineage 2 is managed by NCWest. Innova bought a license from NCKorea to do this, so it's a totally different matter. NCKorea gives strict orders to NCWest and for as long as this game is a little bit profitable (as is Lineage 1), they'll continue using the P2P system. If the game becomes not profitable, NCKorea will have NCWest shutdown the NA version of Lineage 2. It's that simple.
I don't really think L2 is very profitable in NA/EU, it's been on a steady decline since '05-06 even if it has leveled out a bit. Hopefully they learn what's going on in Russia, look at DDOnline, they said they are making more money now with the game F2P than they ever did with P2P.
But like I said after playing L2 since 04, playing Tabula Rasa and Aion, it's pretty obvious NCfail aren't smart/bold enough to pull something like this off so it will never happen.
As well XP rates aren't so bad, I mean I would love to see rates boosted 2x or 3x (actually I just want to see the ridiculous lvl 78+ leveling curves changed), but I think it's alright the way it is, especially with Freya coming out, with recommendations now you're basically getting 2x bonus exp for the first 2 hours you log in with one of those items...On top of the vitality system and changes you may very well be getting 3x or 4x exp for the first hour or 2 of logging in. (IMO that should be a bit longer to like 4 hours).
Obviously, It's not very profitable, but at least the game earns enough money for NCKorea not to pull the plug. At the current state, Lineage 2 gets minimum investment, a very small support team and STILL earns some profit. One of the proofs for that would be the delays between the releases in Korea and in NA/EU. The gaps between them is constantly increasing and not because the translating team is lazy or whatever. It's because NCKorea gives a minimum amount of money for that. Converting this game to F2P would also require some investment (advertisements and other potential expenses) which NCKorea is reluctant to give.
The reasons behind that logic is quite simple. NCKorea has some other places to invest money to (their new toy AION for instance) and giving money for such a decision (which is unlikely to pay off) would be really stupid. I might be getting arguments that there are loads of private servers and so, however, the reality is quite different. Back in 2006, the privates were pretty much different, and there were many strong private servers with thousands of people. In addition to this, the servers felt pretty fresh because of the C4 PTS file leak. As a result, the private community was huge. Nowadays, there aren't any strong private communities (RPG-club and DEX are the only exceptions) so the potential gamer base which might be interested in F2P conversion is quite small and not worth the NCKorea investment.
You may say "Let's copy the Innova model". It might sound quite well in theory. On the other hand, that means that Innova and this potencial NCWest L2 F2P project would compete between themselves which is not what NCKorea wants. So it's another reason why Lineage 2 NA/EU will not go F2P any time soon.
How would they compete against each other? The Russian servers are limited to Russian IP addresses...They could just as easily block Russian IP's from the NA/EU servers. As well the Innova files have leaked, and that's why there are many private servers with Gracia files. As well 90% of what keeps them from "pulling the plug" is outside of NA/EU, only a small fraction of L2 (and L1) players are in NA/EU.
There are still many private servers with tons of players that hit server populations bigger than official L2 everyday, it's just they are always changing and the old faithful ones aren't as popular anymore. I find it hard to believe that making L2 free to play wouldn't be more profitable than the game in it's current state.
And this is just for the NA/EU L2, obviously the Asian clients that still have a million people playing don't need to change.
just like any other title that got shut down in the past. IF they cant make profit off it then they do not want ppl to play it. like Auto assault, hellgate, tabula rasa.
So many ppl have asked them to make it freeware but its theres so no.
Even though I still play I think it should go Free To Play now also. Maybe like something Everquest 2 is doing with a brand new server thats FTP and keep the existing servers for the people who want to stay Pay To Play.
Firstly, as far as other private servers is concerned, if you compared the names, the amount of money invested into them, the technical quality of those privates and the size of the community, you'd see that the numbers are nowhere as big as in 2005-2006.
Secondly, those leaked files are limited to one server (rpg-club) and in fact, not the whole RUOFF server files were leaked (only some part of it). The other servers (even dex, abyss) who claim to have them use some kind of russian extenders who are half-baked and are based on C4. So please.....
Thirdly, Innova Lineage2 is NOT LIMITED to russian IPs only. The initial official contract stated that Innova were certified to allow players not only from russia, but also from Commonwealth of Independent States. The IP block existed only during beta, however it was lifted soon after. Without some change to contract with NCKorea it wouldn't have happened as the law is the law and Innova follow all the procedures of law pretty well. I've met some polish and german people there (russian IP adresses?).
Fourth, the main argument against F2P for NCKorea is taking the risk and investing money to IMPLEMENT it. They do NOT want to take risks as they'd better take this minimum profit at the present than invest and burn some money.
Fifth, You said "I don't believe that this gonna be unprofitable and so." However, the majority of the private server crowd DOES NOT want to go to retail in any way. I'll ask this question. If F2P is so attarctive, then why russian giants (one of few by the way) like Abyss with 3.5k+ online and RPG-club (4.5k+ online) exist? They're successfully hiding underneath despite the extreme measures Innova is taking. It proves again that F2P will not attract private players to retail. Maybe some of them, but not the majority. NCKorea sees this and as a result, do not try this model.
Because most of those servers are filled with Euros outside of Russia.
And SupremeL2, L2Dex, RPG Club, Roxy, etc...have all been very popular in 2007-2010...SupremeL2 had a community of 100k players and servers with 8000 ppl online...I think only in the last 12 months there has been a drop, but I cant confirm that because I havent played L2 in the past 12 months, and maybe thats the only reason I think it's unpopular, because I'm not playing it anymore
indeed? The majority of people in abyss are russian (85%+). As far as RPG-club is concerned only one server is popular among international players. Other are dominated by russians. Even their international servers are 50/50 I'd say. I've played there 2 months ago so the data is pretty acurate.
As far as the names are concerned - SL2 is the thing of the past as the project is over. That 8k people on celes played for about a month. Then a number dropped considerably (been there, done that). Back in 2006 there was L2X with 4 servers (~20k ppl at the peak times), L2paradise with 4 servers (15k ppl at peak times), L2DEX with a huge popularity and huge amount of money to change the server files (not a shadow that the dex is atm), Abyss (about equal number of players) and so on. L2X alone was bigger than SL2 and those servers had much more money, so their advancement was faster, reportedly L2P paid 10k+ $$ for the files. This info was confirmed later. L2X was taken down by FBi in 2006 and decline of the privates began.
The only current powers that are worth to mention are L2 abyss, RPG-club and L2Dex. That's it.
L2extreme lied about numbers, I knew some of the GM's I played Staris and Tempest, both servers had like 1 or 2 spots to level at lvl 60+, at best those servers were getting 1k online.
Abyss was also not very big, back in late '06-07 when they launched the USA server and L2extreme closed down it jumped from like 400ppl online to 2000 cap.
I mean right now all u need to do is look at a voting site and see all the top servers with players online. I mean sure there aren't any big priv server companies running multiple servers all popular, but there are still plenty of servers with thousands of players online, which is why I don't think anything has changed, it's just more spread out.
edit: I guess Abyss is more popular now than it was back then, I didn't realize.
Long time lurker. Sorry for being late to the party but couldn't hold myself from posting. Ilgauskas has some points here.
Abyss wasn't big? Their USA server was very small indeed. But their European x3 was 4k AT LEAST. I am not talking about their other servers. Before the leak of official C4 PTS L2X was pretty small, I agree. After that, they grew extraordinarily. And btw, why were they targeted by the FBI if they were so small?
Thousands of players? I never knew L2J supported that number. The main reason private community is dying is that the majority of privates are way behind in terms of quality of the servers. I seriously mean, those half-baked L2 OFF extenders (with gracia loading screen but with C4 PvP balance) DO SUCK. Ever worked with them? I worked in one of the private server communities so I know lots of inside things. By the way, when SL2 started to fall the majority either:
1. Left for RPG-club
2. Left for DEX
3. Quit (the biggest share of people)
That pretty sums up all the thread here. If the private community is so alive and kicking, then why are people leaving? They don't want to go to retail because they don't want to pay for the game with flawed game platform which allows cheating on such a scale.Even, if this game were F2P, it would still require for people to pay to be among elite (speaking about innova L2 off). That's what they don't want to do. As a result, they quit because they understand the hopelessness of the situation.
Hmm, lots of things I wanted to say, but I'll add up my own.
Firstly, when L2X was shut down FBI people claimed that there was about 50 000 active subscribers. No thoughts about forum accounts or any more info. Let's put it this way. Yes, the numbers of L2X are open for debate, but L2X invested money into development and bought those C4 files while they were expensive. SL2 always failed in development and monetary power to support the server.That alone makes L2X bigger than SL2.
As Kamur stated, don't confuse Abyss euro servers with abyss US server. Euro servers were very populated.
Thirdly, the majority of those privates advertising a huge amount of people in their server is an illusion. Go to the major cities, count the shops and you'll see the true server population which I'd roughly approximate about ~400. When I was in Teon a week ago (friend's account), there was 5x-6x more shops than in your advertised privates with "thousands of people". Teon with the shops contains about 2.4k people at peak times.
So the private situation changed, because there aren't many "big players" and smaller ones aren't worthy of player's attention (both from amount of players online and server support standpoint).
I played on Abyss x7 and the x3 Russian server was not much bigger than the x7, in fact it was smaller once the boom of L2X players had come over. I guess now since 2007 it has gained new servers (at that time there was only x3 EU and x7 USA) and many more players, but it was not so big back then.
I don't know what you mean by SL2 failed in monetary power...I know the head developer of SL2 quite well, I played there since the beta up to shortly after Celes launch, the developer was even in my Aion clan, since for Aion he thought it would be best to join a guild from his community
. Anyway SL2 had (has) some of the best hardware available and best quality of gameplay with that amount of players online. I guess not having donations for the first x5 server was a mistake because they didn't make much money off that, but for the next 2 servers they made a ton of money, enough that they are still sitting on top of it. Yeah the development was slow, but that's to be expected when they use their own client emulator/files and not ripped/stolen ones.
I agree with the population thing, that's how I am judging L2x, by the town sizes. I played on Bartz from 04-07, I've played on SL2 with 5000+ on Aerith and Nanaki and 8000 online Celes...and I've been on a number of L2j servers with just hundreds of players. Bartz always felt the most populated, it probably was but it might just be my old OBT/Prelude nostalgia when I first started the game.
We all know the nature of L2 and its systems make the game indefinitely sustainable as long as there are players, you can look at a terrible game like DDO for example, for years it had 100k subscribers which dropped down to 25k or something like that. Recently the game went F2P, and it has more players than it every did before, as well they are making much more money off of it than they ever have before.
We can argue about the amount of people playing L2 private servers, but I don't think it's unreasonable to say that if L2 went F2P that the amount of players it has will skyrocket. Ignore L2 private players you still have old L2 players and the F2P community that zooms to every free game that releases.
Back in 2006, Abyss had some PvP servers as well. You forgot to count in those.
About those files. IIRC, Mccraben/Aderyn or whatever used those same leaked C4 PTS files with all their bugs and stuff (pvp balance, adena duping celes?). So about using files that are not stolen, it's all about PR stuff. In fact, ex- L2P team tried to write A TRUE EMULATOR of Lineage 2 server. That project was closed. It was the only effort to write an emulator (except L2J) and DO NOT rely on stolen L2Off files AT ALL.
Now, I'll tell you that DEX was always better than SL2 as they never allowed their servers to die down. It's quite the contrary what happened to aerith, nanaki and in the end, even celes. While DEX main flagship server is big even after all those years. That's what I mean by monetary power. They have some romanian telecommunication enterprises behind their back.
Amount of people playing on privates is not something we should continue discussing on, as it's quite far from our main topic. It's very reasonable to say that if L2 went F2P, the number of players online will jump up IN THE SHORT TERM. In the long run, most of those people might leave because they don't want to deal with fundamentally broken gameplay mechanics/engine which allows blatant cheating. NCKorea wants long term results, not the short term ones. So it's not worth the risk for them.
Those highrate abyss servers we're empty (like less than 100 people online) when I had played there...
As well for the SL2 code, I don't know like I said the lead dev was in my Aion clan for a few months on Aion official, and this is from the site:
Our servers run custom server software developed by Azure Gaming developers in private. We have a large collection of source code to prove it.
Our software tries to accurately emulate official servers as much as possible, and is constantly being updated to reflect retail changes.
We do not run L2J or other lousy emulators you find in the public domain. We do not run stolen files or copyrighted files. We did not purchase files that someone else created. Our software is made by us and we have control over it.
We have created our own special protection systems to protect from hackers, botters, cheaters, exploiters, and scammers. You won't find a more legitimate, honest, and clean server anywhere else.
Our server has a retail-like feel, retail-like skills, retail-like balance, retail-like mobs, and retail-like behavior. For all that it matters, playing here feels like playing the real game of Lineage II.
As for dex I don't know, I never heard good things there, most of the clans from Supreme came from Dex...I know Dex opened a new server in the last couple of years, everyone hopped on the bandwagon and jumped there only to leave a month or 2 later, the last bandwagon server I remember was RPG Club, but that was shortly after I stopped playing so I don't know what's going on now.
As for population I don't know, L2 in it's current NA/EU state is not a long term investment, it's getting worse all the time. Plus Freya XP rates with vitality and recommendations is basically a 3x-4x server that priv server players would be used to. Plus the support of an actual NCsoft staff and continued expansions/content updates, I don't know how you would think it wouldn't continue to succeed just looking at all the private servers that have lasted for years. L2.ru has been doing fine for 2 years now, and it only has a small demograph to attract.
As I've mentioned before, this is all PR stuff. SL2 was exploited when celes was opened. Adena dupes were real (that's why the server was rollbacked). And despite mccraben/aderyn's claims, not everyone was punished and not all the duped adena was deleted. By the way, this adena duping thingy was one of the main bugs in those leaked C4 PTS files. As I'm quite into programming myself, I was among those players who tested the exploit (for educational purposes of course). Modified botting software also worked in SL2 (tested it myself), it took 3 months to do it successfully. This server is exploitable by using all the same things of other L2off servers. Try to exploit L2J servers with modified L2off botting/cheating software. Nothing will happen as that's the emulator and different methods are needed to do it. So this SL2 being unexploitable thingy is quite funny.
Moreover, I tell you again. L2J currently is the only true EMULATOR project. Guys from old paradise tried to create one from scratch (the worked continued for more than A YEAR and without results). This happened despite the amount of money invested into some development help. Other guys created another L2Emu project, but after a long work - it failed. What point am I trying to prove there? L2 emus are very very very difficult to write from scratch. Knowing how quickly SL2 was opened and launched, it speaks for itself that it's just another L2off extender. One more thing. If SL2 had a true emulator, it wouldn't have lagged so far behind in chronicles as all the emulators have a code which is adapted for further modification, so it's easy to implement retail server's features. You just need to know some accurate stats from retail. Just look at L2J builds. The reason they fail is the JAVA VM platform which gets unstable with a bigger amount of players.
However, there are some clans from supreme in the old dex server which has quite an amount of players without any wipe whatsoever (after running for so many years). To my knowledge though, most people quit the game.
Sorry for getting a little off-topic here though. We really should come back to it. I'm interested in one thing: How'd you imagine the main selling point if L2 was made F2P? As you'd need money to become "the factor" and I'm guaranteed that elite clans would have their cheating overlooked by the server staff. So, the competitive PvP isn't the main selling point. What is? The grind? Would be interested to hear your take on that.
P.S. The last time I had such an interesting forum discussion was quite some time ago. Thanks for keeping it reasonable and not making another win/lose forum battle as many people tend to do here.
Yes it has been a good discussion.
As for the selling point, first there has to be a way to make NCsoft money, and I think that's entirely possible without allowing high end gear to be sold in cash shops, or free enchants/augments to gear and things like that...
Some thoughts are basically a page out of SL2...Donate for quests, pay for subclass, noblesse, class transfers, etc...even pay for epic raid boss quest items. Secondly allow to buy full materials (weapon/armour parts S grade and below...perhaps S80), same for recipes....Perhaps even pay for enchant scrolls (non-blessed) as well. Also cash shops for Shadow A grade gear (maybe introduce shadow S grade too). Another thing is cash shops for consumables like CP pots, BSOES, BRes scrolls etc... things that won't really affect the game much (I'd leave out things like soulshots and other crafted items because that may throw off the economy too much, but still leave all the original ways of obtaining those things in the game of course. Also in Freya there are those items you can purchase that allow your boosted exp rate from recommendations to last longer, perhaps those can be sold too...It's important to have items like that that players new and old will always have a need for.
These are just some things I can think of off the top of my head, I also have pretty much 0 experience with L2 since Gracia was added, so I'm sure people can come up with some other suggestions that around going to affect the game balance so much.
As for the selling point to play L2, I don't know I would think it would just be the same game, there are also many people who likely played WoW or other games that heard of L2 but never really wanted to try it, this might be the reason for them to do it...L2 is becoming slightly more casual (or non-factor) friendly with things like territory wars now, Fort sieges are also not as intense as Castle sieges, there are a few instances, and now people can group up for instanced raids like Frintezza and the new Ice Queen Freya, to my knowledge clans can't cockblock you from doing them, so it's good for those that otherwise would never have the ability to try them.
I understand pretty well that Lineage 2 is getting some casual love and I think it's a pretty good thing. However, as you have already seen, NCKorea doesn't want to give money and effort to create their own effective F2P model. I think that profitable solution can be found but NCKorea realizes that effort and investment is not going to be worth the profits. By that, I don't mean that nobody is going to play Lineage 2. Seriously, people would and the increase in player numbers would rise exponentially. However, NCKorea thinks that they'd get more money by investing to games that are better adapted for the western audience (AION). Accept this fact, no matter how we like the game, Lineage 2 is game for a niche market in the western world. So I pretty much understand their logic.
Even if L2 got the F2P conversion, one of the main things that might keep people from playing in retail is blatant hacking. If people hack in such a scale as they do currently, people will leave. This is another concern for NCKorea. Despite the fact, that live team is banning some of cheaters, they can't ban them all as the amount of cheats is increasing daily. No matter how much of a big live-support team would be, it would be very difficult for them to clean the game. The problem lies at the very foundations of the game. The core of the game is just a dream for a programmer, as you can cheat pretty easily. The game is too client-based. There are too many client-side action during the game which makes up for an excessive (and most of the time not needed) client-server connections.Those ones are easy to intercept (as they are pathetically protected) to cheat. Despite not liking WoW, that game has a platform which makes up to be quite a challenge to breach. By breaching, I mean gameplay hacks and not battle.net account hacks.
Anyway, this cheating problem is quite difficult to solve. When I was younger and not so much into programming I blamed only live-support team. Now? Seriously, their job is very hard to clean such a poorly-coded game. In order to succeed in F2P conversion, this problem should be at least partially solved. But as a techie, it's very difficult for me to think of the easy solution which wouldn't include rewriting the server-client data exchange system. That one would cost A LOT. What for? To make a successful conversion to F2P of a niche game in western world? I doubt NCKorea would give money for that.
Finally, I'd like to state that my love for the game hasn't dwindled in any way and I'd like this game converted to F2P as much as you do. I'd seriously come back if they did it. However, there are problems that would require solutions before making this game a really successful F2P project. Looking at how much time has passed and how many changes were done to the core, it seems that NCKorea took the easiest route. That's about it.
That's true, as per the hacking, I've always thought they just didn't want to ban botters, even with Luna when it went live I know people who botted like crazy, and people I knew who played there told me all the GM's were doing is banning the odd hero or member of a factor clan into scaring the playerbase that they were actually doing something...
TBH I don't think Aion is going to succeed in the Western/EU market either, it has it's grindy aspects which I hated more than L2, and now there are only 4 North American Aion servers...(1 Oceanic and 8 Euro). As well I think the view on how many Western MMO gamers is often inflated...Aside from WoW...L1, L2 and Aion are the only games out there with near or over 1 million subscribers (Although most in Asia, but that is the case with WoW too. EVE, LoTRO and EQ2 each have a couple hundred thousand NA/EU subscribers and that pretty much tops it off for all MMO's except maybe AoC...So how much success could you really expect to gain?
And back on the topics of bots, I think it is entirely possible for them to prevent it 100%...The same way they did it in Aion...All bot programs, especially those for L2 inject themselves into the game code. A few months after Aion launched, they developed software to detect modified packets, and they went on a banning spree, all of the popular botting sites for Aion where people payed $100 or so for their fancy scripted bots were filled with thousands of complaints...The only bots that continued working were those virtual keyboard ones, but those I doubt would be possible to use in L2, and the most you could use them for is just afk solo hunting, which would be 1000x better than the current state of botting. I know from experience that Aion zones went from being jam packed with bots, to literally being empty once those banning sprees started...They did a very good job at keeping the bots at bay, and I think the game has been clean ever since....But I guess that would involve rewriting the server-client data exchange system as you said, I'm unsure of the costs for that.
There are so many cheating stories in Luna. There was a constantly botting party bannned, but they were unbanned soon after. I don't guard GMs as I think that they aren't working at maximum efficiency. However, as I've mentioned before, it's difficult to clean such a coded game.
As far as botting and other kind of cheating are concerned, there is a solution. However, it'd require some serious changes at the core of the game ( I mean technical changes). They'd cost a lot, but the game engine wouldn't be exploited that much, destroying all the possibilities to use enchant or adena duping, l2radar, l2superman, l2control, invisibility exploit, player crashing exploit and so on. The point is that NCkorea doesn't want to spend money on such an old game. They did it on Aion though as it was newer and (to their imagination) had a potential to become a very popular game. I personally thing that AION will not succeed in the west either, but as we've all seen NCKorea actions are based on their own logic which sometimes is faulty. At least, we understand what they are thinking.
I know of the success of this game and I'm pretty happy about it. I wouldn't expect this game to become a top one but if some platform based problems were solved, a lot of veterans who quit the game would give it another shot. Numbers? Difficult to say, but it'd be safe to expect that the numbers would return to the peak ones during C5-CT0.