I read an article a long time ago saying some scientific/tech words people use to describe things really make no sense, and one that came up was "Quantum Leap", since a change in the quantum state is one of the smallest changes possible but the phrase invariably is used more like "Lightyear".
When it comes to MMORPG (though any online stuff works), exponential seems to be the word of choice here. There is obviously exponential as in 'exponential growth', which probably just means 'a lot of people will play this game'. But how much is exponential? If I started with 100K subs does that mean I should expect 1 million after an year and 10 million after 2 years? That'd be exponential growth and not even WoW has that. I don't think even WoW's population will look exponential if you plot it out if you keep the region fixed (WoW makes big advances in sub numbers when they launch in a new region).
And on the other end you got exponential loss. Well, exponential decay, despite its name, isn't necessarily very fast. Uranium goes through exponential decay and you'll be waiting for a very long time to see any noticeable loss of Uranium. A game that loses 1% of the population every month would still have 36% of its original population after 8 years and only WoW have the possibility to even dream of such longevity (most games don't even last that long, and if they do they certainly lost way more that from the peak). Even if we assume the base loss is an appreciable rate, exponential decay is still not that bad because it means the loss never accelerates, and measured in absolute terms the loss slows down over time. This is completely contrary to the death spiral model for MMORPGs that failed. Usually it's more like you hear 20% of the people leave so you figured the game is doomed and then everyone bails and now the game is dead.
I'd say if your game isn't clearly growing, losing players at an 'exponential' rate is actually a pretty good thing.
When it comes to MMORPG (though any online stuff works), exponential seems to be the word of choice here. There is obviously exponential as in 'exponential growth', which probably just means 'a lot of people will play this game'. But how much is exponential? If I started with 100K subs does that mean I should expect 1 million after an year and 10 million after 2 years? That'd be exponential growth and not even WoW has that. I don't think even WoW's population will look exponential if you plot it out if you keep the region fixed (WoW makes big advances in sub numbers when they launch in a new region).
And on the other end you got exponential loss. Well, exponential decay, despite its name, isn't necessarily very fast. Uranium goes through exponential decay and you'll be waiting for a very long time to see any noticeable loss of Uranium. A game that loses 1% of the population every month would still have 36% of its original population after 8 years and only WoW have the possibility to even dream of such longevity (most games don't even last that long, and if they do they certainly lost way more that from the peak). Even if we assume the base loss is an appreciable rate, exponential decay is still not that bad because it means the loss never accelerates, and measured in absolute terms the loss slows down over time. This is completely contrary to the death spiral model for MMORPGs that failed. Usually it's more like you hear 20% of the people leave so you figured the game is doomed and then everyone bails and now the game is dead.
I'd say if your game isn't clearly growing, losing players at an 'exponential' rate is actually a pretty good thing.
