Keeping You All In Game #MMORPG
stargrace 
Krystalle made an interesting point to me a few days ago about EVE Online – the PI (planetary interaction) that I had been doing on a daily basis is the games way of keeping me logging in every day. I hadn’t even made the connection until she said something, but she’s absolutely right. I set my extractors once a day so that they’re mining on 24 hour rotations. It’s easier then checking every few hours (another option) or every three days (the longest option). Sure, I also have to log in to update my training queue but that could be anywhere from a one day update to a 25+ day update. It doesn’t require you to log in every single day. If I want to take advantage of PI (which I do, the money is just too good to pass up) I need to make sure I’m constantly working on it.
Typically I am not a fan of daily events. I dislike being ‘forced’ to play a game every day when I am perhaps not in the mood for it. WoW has these quests in spades with a limit of 25 ‘daily’ quests that you can complete (per day). EQ2 also has daily quests for mission zones (which require a group) as well as weekly and daily crafting quests. LotRO has daily faction quests (specifically crafting factions). These little things that pull players into the games on a regular basis can some times be so small that we barely even notice ourselves doing it, but they’re there.
What I’d like to see is more inventive ways of (for lack of a better term) coercing your players to log in every day. Sure, daily quests are great but they’re starting to get very old. Being obligated to log in is not how you want your players to view your game. You want them to be excited. On the flip side I do think that these daily quests work because I feel bad if I miss a day and I try to make sure I get my ’rounds’ done and if they didn’t work I doubt we’d see so many of them. Festivals are another method of grabbing the attention of players and enticing them to log in, as well as live events. If you add too many of these they become meaningless and players will just ignore the festivals.
Does anyone else have other suggestions or ideas of how games can entice players to log in on a daily basis without it feeling like an obligation?