It's definitely concerning seeing less and less people on..... I guess i'm lucky that my closest friends are still playing. I can honestly say I spend more time on one of the many many alts I made than anything else right now so that I can keep myself stimulated. Merching, making a ratio toon, and even aiming to get twinks for every 5 levels (maybe that explains why I have 20+ toons) are the "games within the game" that I play mostly. I don't know why, but I started thinking back to PL, and with the obvious similarities, there are obvious differences that weren't implemented unfortunately. Why no boss gauntlets? I loved them in PL. I spent hours farming mats for crafting. You couldn't buy recipes (when I played at least, idk about now), so going custom was a show of either how much effort you put into grinding or how much gold you had. I never saw so many people "sparkling" or whatever from the set bonuses in PL as I do within days of an update in SL. When I first played PL, my initial thought was "it's a kids game." Idk if it was aimed more towards children or not, but that was my first impression. SL didn't give me that impression, it actuall seemed more geared towards an older crowd (the "juicers," space pirates, etc.) I feel the most challenging parts of PL are lacking in SL. Crafting quests were also dropped; having to kill 1000 aliens, while a little tedious, presented something else to do. I didn't even play Voleria through until I capped all my toons. Tbh, it's sad that capping as soon as possible was the first thing on my mind when the expansion came out, and it was my decision to play like that. I think that is what the general mentality of people playing now is. Update = grind to cap and get on leaderboards before everyone else. I actually like the Voleria stages; they aren't 100% linear, you have to go to different areas and get explosives/keys/batteries and bring them somewhere else, and the mines (how I hate them) make you do a little more than mash button. Voleria reminded me of Numa, which I loved. I may be wrong, but in PL, weren't there stages, or elite dungeons (shadow caves when first released) that you couldn't access until and unless you finished all stages of a campaign? I'm pretty sure I didn't get to shadow caves until fully completing AO3. Also, if I remember correctly, I couldn't play the second level of any stage until I beat the first, and so on. When I quit PL to play SL, I had 4 toons (1 end game for each class and a twink I was in the middle of gearing up) and I never had to find a "game within the game." I'd love to see an optional elite instance that ended with an hour boss fight that made you use utilize certain skills from each class in order to come out of it alive, and make the drops would be worth the effort.
Bod mentioned DL in his post. It seems like it was announced to be released right after I started playing SL (no bet for this apple user unfortunately). From my experience, most people don't have the time to put into PL and SL and chose one of the two. Now there is a third game coming out. On top of other things that people are unsatisfied with, I feel like seeing that a new game is going to be released soon is giving them the "why bother" attitude with SL right now. Why bother striving to cap and get the best of the best when in months there in going to be another game put out? People who already can't fit SL and PL into their spare time know they will have to make a choice which to play when DL is released, so if they are unsatisfied with SL as it is, that will tip the scale. What about next year then? Will there be another "Legend" game coming out then too?
I'll stop there, this post is long enough anyway, sorry and thanks for reading my concerns. After spending the weekend out of town and the beginning of this week preoccupied with other things, hopping in game after a 4 day break last night and seeing that my friends list had about 15% of the people logged in as usual got my brain rattling. This is all the opinion of man wondering were everyone has gone and what can be done to get them back.
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