How the F do you make a game run worse 20 years later? I mean it boggles the mind. How inept do you really have to be to falter on 20 year old tech when most of the problems back in the day were connectivity issues due to dial-up. Wow you have to seriously be a new class of screw up for this endeavor. If you can not handle doing your job, put out a server that is no chrono, one box. it is easy...you state that there are many playing...what are you doing with the cash?
They're packing more people into these servers than ever, changed to a cheaper hosting (not their choice, hosting is determined by Daybreak their "Publisher") Also it would be an insanely massive undertaking to "fix" the application back end to be able to handle connections in a stable manner. This may have been possible under SoE when they were more in control of their cash flow, but sony cut them loose for a quick buck to shore up all of their other failing brands.
LOL I saw this and thought for sure he would have commented by now further down. We need a Xoner bat signal!
I bet they only make a small profit. So 'all that cash' is going to fund overhead and operating costs. We don't know how much they make exactly, but it's not like they're making tens of millions. They probably made about 1 million on the new tlp launch. I'd bet that the entire company Darkpaw pulls in less than 5 million annually.
Profit is counted after all costs are included so if they make a small profit, that does not need to also cover operations and overhead... I expect that profit is being siphoned off by DPG to line the pockets of the investors.
There are probably at least 5 times as many concurrent players on Aradune as there ever was on a single server back in 1999.
Here's my theory. TLPs probably make enough in sales to break even over the early months and then become a financial decline statistic thereafter. The problem lies with the ability to consume a krono to play and this means that DarkPaw is losing quite a bit of money given that you can buy krono on 3rd party sites for about 66% off. The second is that they moved hosts with hope to reduce operating costs to help counter the ultimate loss from rogue transactions and population decline. TLPs should be solely subscription-based with the proper support channels to run them. No matter how you spin it, even with the spike in revenue at the early launch of a TLP - DarkPaw is at a serious disadvantage with these TLP servers. Live servers are another animal and have the luxury of expansion launches to help bolster revenue.
How the F do you go through 20 years of maturity but still act like an entitled brat making assumptions that in all likelihood simply aren't true. It boggles the mind. You should quit, that'll show them.
Sigh, 3rd party sites for Kronos is keeping this game afloat. it doesn't matter what the third party site sells a Krono for hell it could be .25 cents... The third party site still has to buy it from Darkpaw... Or even if they are flipping it, from some other 3rd party site it was originally purchased from Daybreak...