So if we take a look at Steam charts we can see that, since release on Steam in December 2015 the average number of players has fallen by over 50%, from over 4,000 in December to sitting at right around 1000 this past month (July 2016). Using third-party trackers we can find that there are a significant number of people who own the game (something like 30,000,depending on what service you use to look at the numbers). So the question becomes, why has the number of people actually playing been more than halved over the past few months?
In my humble opinion, the problem isn't PGI, or balance or whatever else the people on the forums will say. IMO the issue is those very same people. If you are playing a game for the first time, and every match you play has at least 1 or 2 people spamming allchat with how bad PGI is, how broken the game is, how ****** the design team's decisions are etc etc, will that be a game you want to play? Similarly, if you're in your trial mech trying to get the hang of combat and the flow of the game and you're bombarded with "You suck" "Trash" "Noob" "Learn the ******* maps" etc etc, is that a game you'd want to keep going with? The answer to both questions is of course, no. The playerbase has shrunk back down to what it was in beta days because I imagine literally 0 new players stay anymore.
I believe that the game would be thriving were it not for the incredible, LoL-level number of toxic members of the community that seem to have no desire in life other than to rant and scream endlessly about the flaws of a game that they inexplicably continue to play. Is PGI perfect? No, obviously. Are they a good dev team? Yes. It's not like we're dealing with EA games "lol you have to buy ammo refills for $2 apiece real money" or something.
tl;dr MWO is not dead, but new players aren't staying because toxic community drives them off. Stop being a **** and the game would be better.
Edit: Looking back, I'd definitely have to agree that in-game most people are great (save the guy that rushes in and blames his death on his "bad team") and it's more the forums where you find the toxicity
Edited by RagingOyster, 07 July 2016 - 07:01 PM.