The Daily Grind: What's a good player retention level?
It's curious how the exact same data can be taken as brilliant news, confirming a game's enduring appeal, and terrible news, dooming the game to oblivion, depending upon who you ask. Take Age of Conan, for example. Not so long ago, we saw a video that confirmed AoC's current subscribers at around the 400,000 mark. With 800,000 boxes sold, that's around a 50% retention rate. Yay, we win at math.
But what's far less cut and dried is whether this figure is really bad, or really good. Everyone, it seems, has an opinion on the matter. It's worth observing here that you can't expect everyone who picks up a game to stick with it. If a game loses half its players every quarter, that's terrible; but if it keeps half of all players who buy it, that's a very different story.
So we're throwing the question open to the players: what do you think is a healthy retention level for an MMO, in terms of keeping players after their first free month? And while we're on the subject, has a game ever surprised you with its retentiveness? Have you ever tried to quit and gone back after a while?
