A Smed, out of context, quote

First of all EQ 2 is growing quite well and is doing great as a business. SWG wasn't in that condition.

"There's a reason that we did this. The story … is kind of getting lost here…the game was losing subscribers. We had to make this game more accessible to a wider audience or eventually we would not have a business,"

And:

What actully happens is called "Market Research". This involves multiple focus groups (not like putting up a web poll.. actually a 3rd-party company with a one-way mirrored room where dev people can watch how people react to the game.. then they ask those people a number of questions). In addition to this surveying the existing userbase via volunteer surveys (which was done before and after the NGE btw). Those focus groups also included different populations including existing users.

This is Totally Retared (TM). If that's what happened I'm not surprised of the total clusterfuck. And, again, you deserve every little bit of it.

Polls, surveys, outside consulting. If this is the trend, it may be as well the tomb of the genre.

What a total waste of money and resources. Mmorpgs need competent authors with a sincere passion. Not hamster experiments.