Realistically speaking, how many years do you think Tibia has left?

[Neverminder]

The real truth of it is that Tibia isn't going downhill at all. What is actually happening is your own mentality (and the rest of us, for that matter) is set on the current. Humans, as a species, do not like change. Therefore when things change, we are unhappy and we see it as bad. That results, overall, in us having the impression that the game is going downhill. That and the fact that no "new player" bothers to use the forum, I didn't use it in my first year of playing. This means that the forum is only used by us grumpy folk who think Tibia is going downhill 'cause it's changing... People used to say the same about Habbo Hotel when I was a kid. I used to make radio station websites for some friends who played it and all I saw was the members constantly complaining that the game was going downhill and how 1hc is no longer worth what it used to be worth. The thing is, even 7 years later (yes, I played it 7 years ago xD) the game is still going stronger than ever. There are 5000 people playing at 12:15am. On top of that, their revenue in the last quarter was up 19% on what it was through summer (normally it's the other way around, but this year the build up to Christmas, and the paedophile problem which Moshi Monsters has faced has led to a massive increase in users). Anyway, Tibia isn't really getting any worse, if anything it is getting better, we just can't accept that for the above reasons. Give it time, and you'll see the players increase.

No offence, but dafuq did I just read? D: Seriously, Habbo Hotel?! Honestly, I've never heard of it, just googled it and seems like it's worse than Tibia ... And if you said there were some pedophile issues, well fuck that lmao, even Tibia hasn't got that far for pedophiles stalking youngsters. >_>

Besides, it might be just reluctance towards big changes, but the fact is that Tibia IS dying game. Now maybe, but just MAYBE guys @CipSoft are yet to realize that OR they already realized it and they're just keeping it alive so they can milk the ones that pay for premium features some more and eventually they'll start closing empty servers 1 by 1.

I mean come on!!! I've seen better scripted/mapped/whatever Open Tibia Servers than 'real' Tibia. CipSoft has income over 7kk€ per year and there's no doubt about it that Tibia is their main source. Of course, 7kk€ ain't pure income, lots of that cash is used to maintain all the servers and stuff, but still ... It's slowly, but steadly dying. :|

There was even a proposal on proposal boards (tibia.com) about merging the servers (which was rated as 'high potential' by Community Mangers). ''I wonder why ...'' People are leaving and some servers are just plain DEAD! So what's the point of keeping them alive then? It sure costs damn much to keep them online 24/7 constantly.

Must be one of these two mentioned above: 1.) They have yet to realize it 2.) They've realized it already and they're just happy as things are right now financially.

Meh, I don't care that much really. Last time I logged on was like half a year ago and I've checked recently added things on an OT (shadowcores).

It'll be interesting to see how much income CipSoft had in 2012. Every year, every company in Germany has to publish their financial state, so we'll see how will things turn out. It might be even better than years before, but seriously I highly doubt that. Lots of people already canceled their subscriptions reading tibia.com forums, so we'll see.

[XtrmJosh]

No offence, but dafuq did I just read? D: Seriously, Habbo Hotel?! Honestly, I've never heard of it, just googled it and seems like it's worse than Tibia ... And if you said there were some pedophile issues, well fuck that lmao, even Tibia hasn't got that far for pedophiles stalking youngsters. >_>

Besides, it might be just reluctance towards big changes, but the fact is that Tibia IS dying game. Now maybe, but just MAYBE guys @CipSoft are yet to realize that OR they already realized it and they're just keeping it alive so they can milk the ones that pay for premium features some more and eventually they'll start closing empty servers 1 by 1.

I mean come on!!! I've seen better scripted/mapped/whatever Open Tibia Servers than 'real' Tibia. CipSoft has income over 7kk€ per year and there's no doubt about it that Tibia is their main source. Of course, 7kk€ ain't pure income, lots of that cash is used to maintain all the servers and stuff, but still ... It's slowly, but steadly dying. :|

There was even a proposal on proposal boards (tibia.com) about merging the servers (which was rated as 'high potential' by Community Mangers). ''I wonder why ...'' People are leaving and some servers are just plain DEAD! So what's the point of keeping them alive then? It sure costs damn much to keep them online 24/7 constantly.

Must be one of these two mentioned above: 1.) They have yet to realize it 2.) They've realized it already and they're just happy as things are right now financially.

Meh, I don't care that much really. Last time I logged on was like half a year ago and I've checked recently added things on an OT (shadowcores).

It'll be interesting to see how much income CipSoft had in 2012. Every year, every company in Germany has to publish their financial state, so we'll see how will things turn out. It might be even better than years before, but seriously I highly doubt that. Lots of people already canceled their subscriptions reading tibia.com forums, so we'll see.

If you review your own facts you'll realise that the proposal which had been marked as having potential was one to merge empty game worlds, and use the server space created to make new ones. The real problem, in line with my previous post, is that people don't like change. As characters become higher level'd, they become less liked. Not everyone can keep up & they feel threatened. The intention of making new servers is to give everyone a "clean start", so people can be equal again. Problem there is they can hardly block transfers to the new servers forever. Anyway, that completely obliterates any reasoning which can come from that factor.

CIP isn't a big company etc, they are pretty small. Realistically what is likely to happen is that they will be sold to a developer who will resell through Steam or something similar. Look at Runescape, for comparison. It basically is Tibia, with the flash client, in 3d, and with a few extras like crafting etc. CIP will most likely implement crafting in the next 2-3 years, and as for 3d, well, that's inevitable. Shit's already been leaked for a 3d client (and I don't mean the joking image CIP released in April 2011). The fact is, though, Runescape is doing well and that really is shit compared to Tibia.

As for my comparison to Habbo Hotel, that just demonstrates that the internet goes on. I worked on fansites for it 7 years ago, when I was 15. I played it for about 6 months before realising how much money could be extracted from fansite development and new ways to implement WMP elements connecting to a hosted shoutcast servers. The fact is though, Moshi Monsters is the new Habbo style game. It's aimed at the same market as Habbo, and they recently had a paedophile scare (some info leaked about a guy who is currently in prison for attempting to conduct child trafficing, using Moshi Monsters as a first point of contact). What happened then is that Habbo Hotel took a massive boost and became a lot more popular all of a sudden. The same will happen to Tibia, it will take its dives, but it is stable in primary structure, so as soon as one of the other MMORPGs out there fucks up, people will come back to good ol' Tibia.

[Neverminder]

Another aspect ... Has anyone ever seen any Tibia advertisement?! D: I haven't seen it anywhere. Even Tibia Gold selling sites are advertising through Google ads on tibia related websites.

I guess marketing is another flaw @CipSoft department.

[iMike]

We all should meet in Germany, delete our accounts one by one and party with the money of our future premium time.
I think that would be more fun than botting this shit day by day, anyways, Tibia is my addiction, better than drugs, etc.

[PappaJona]

The problem is probably that there is not so much new players(or is it? i have no clue) and first time i sat down playing tibia i was boored already in rook but when i came to main holy mooly now that's a game (that was ~8 years ago) and i think the flash client has a great ui which it needs but i hate flash and i will never trust it...the windows/linux client need a complete revamp with new graphic engine so i don't have that 50fps max with a relativly brand new computer..

Anyways i think it has many years ahead but the botters will overcome the real players of this old goodie

[BigBratti]

Lets be completely honest if tibia is falling it's cause they are making it more "Noob" friendly like lets be honest when I came back from my 1.5 year break I was turned off right away with that whole swap function it honestly does more harm then good. I personally use it to trap lvl 80-150 knights at the sam shop and i'm not at the receiving end of this horrible function and I still dislike it. The whole tibia 2 idea is good how ever every update i've seen since god knows when have been horrible and low lvl based so i don't see them doing anything exciting with a second game. If cipsoft was smart they would instead of updating they would take it a couple of years back like 7.9 I think that would be their best bet i would love to run around tibia 7.9 stylles with mounts i think it would be rather epic.

[Gonza]

Take the whole game back to 7.9? that would suck.
It would be nostalgic for a lot of people, but at most 2 worlds, not the whole game.
Tibia isn't that bad as far as graphics go, at least in my opinion. Besides, tibia is not a game you play for the scenery or graphics, it's about the gameplay and community (or used to be) the relationships you build with people, such as joining guilds etc, which in my opinion seem to be doing bad, PvP has been almost destroyed by CipSoft, and that's been happening for a few years now.
Same thing goes for the whole community aspect of the game, there's little to no community "feeling" left in it.

@XtrmJosh, I'd like to believe I'm not one to hate on changes, change can be good or bad, depending on what changes. For example in my opinion the graphics of the game are pretty good, even if outdated/bad compared to other games, and other features like for example mounts, even though people think it's just copying other games, I thought it was a good thing, and just other general small stuff they do that they don't often get credit for.
But you can't deny that the people over at CipSoft are going through something, what it is I don't know, they're probably just pleasing botters to keep their company afloat.

I see your point on there being no new players who use the forum, but I honestly have met VERY FEW people in the last 1.5 years who had recently started playing the game (I'm talking ingame here, no forums, not even the official forum for that matter)

And well, I honestly do see the game like it's going downhill, no new players (almost no new players, in my experience playing the game for years), very few updates please people, each and every day old players leaving, no sense of community, etc.
Whether the game is dying or not is subjective.

I don't know if these numbers mean anything to you guys, but the results were expected (I also don't know if this is a valid source for this type of information, even though it's google)
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#cat=0-8&q=tibia
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=tibia.com&cmpt=q

I hope what you said about it being sold to a developer or another company happens, I'd like to see what other developers do with the game, and more importantly if they listen to the community.

Recap: even though I said tibia was obviously dying, I now see that it's subjective, but it sure feels like it to me. I hope tibia gets sold to someone who listens a bit more to the players and they get rid of us botters.

[PunktG]

tibia going down ??
i read in last days that they do same profit like 2-3 years ago so amount of player go down but cip = cash

[Neverminder]

i read in last days that they do same profit like 2-3 years ago

Could you provide a source of that statement?

[Necktra]

5 years more, with Cipsoft.

And when thoose 5 years have past and if no other company bought up the game, we will have a new era with OT and a even stronger OT community will be brought up with new possibilities.