CptLoRes

I imagine it would be very hard to continue to pretend to be community driven anything, if they did that.

That's corporate speak for "we don't have any successful products and a clear path going forwards, so we are desperately trying to find the next big thing.."

They spent 8 years on DU, and it is still FAR from finished. So we are talking something like 2028ish for the next one then?

Speaking of Metaverse/Web3/NFT/whatever and NQ, watch this video (long one, but worth it) and replace Decentraland with Novaquark.

I think we both understand each others point. But take the SSL example. When anyone can generate a Let's Encrypt certificate and put any kind of site behind it, what security does the certificate actually add? And again don't get me wrong, I understand very well why those certificates are needed for commercial sites to verify the site and prevent scams, man in the middle attacks etc, but what actual security is added by forcing everyone to use SSL on every site (even including internal ones if you don't want the browser to complain)? There is nothing preventing you from putting a scam site behind a SSL, so what justifies forcing the complexity on everyone?

It's not just code signing. It is the sum of all those bits like signing, SSL, 2FA, TPM, DRM etc. etc. that adds up costing time and money and adding lots of complexity and points of failure. And I am not saying I have a better solution, but it is strange that all those solutions somehow always ends up costing money and causing some kind of vendor type lock-in/walled garden scenario. Aka the security cartel..

So in short, yet another way that money exchange hands with the security cartel to ensure that "there is no accident" with your software.

none... And when they did wipe, they did not even do the one thing that was used as a reason for a wipe. Which was to change the planets to something much better then the original. The promise was "no wipe unless absolutely necessary" and that if they where forced to do a wipe, that they would make sure that players would not lose assets from the wipe. So no matter how you look at it, promises where broken.. And many players payed subscriptions with real money and put down A LOT of effort based on those promises made. And this was the moment where any respect I had left for NQ, was lost.

I generally agree about this "global statistic". But there is one major difference, and that is that DU is subscription based. Meaning that the ratio of 'inactive' players will be much lower, since there is no such thing as "taking a break" in DU without either loosing hard earned assets (the grin is real) or continue paying for a subscription that you don't actually use that much. And that is also why the wipe hit so hard (just like we tried to tell NQ that it would do), since it deleted players assets (quanta, constructs, tiles etc) which players had spent both real money and lots of time and effort to gain. Often based on a promise from NQ, that they would not lose them when the game released no less..

DU is just a remake of Landmark in space. And despite being older, Landmark in many ways had better voxel tools then DU. And to anyone wanting to say something like "but DU has single shard technology blablabla", it should be pretty clear by now that it never worked or scaled as planned.

I guess NQ is the PVE boss in this game..

But at least we got an definite answer to something for a change.

To me he looked more and more tired as worn out as time progressed. And I would not envy anyone being in a leader position at NQ. Or any other position at that company for that matter..

This is the only part I slightly disagree with in your post. And the reason is that NQ never even came close to finish the tools we need to make proper content. So all they really proved was that a game with subpar content creation tools, will fail when they are supposed to be a content creation game.. Duh! But I do agree that unless the players are given so much freedom that they could script fully interactive content (and we disregard all the potential exploit issues), then yes there must be some PVE elements to make a game fun and interesting for normal players. And this is part of the problem. It would appear that the only players NQ have been listening to, are certain PVP focused org players who have gotten a foot inside the door. And the interests of those hardcore org players does not even remotely represent the needs and wants of the majority of normal players in DU who has a life outside the game..