I started playing this game almost a year ago. I was amazed at how much potential it had... and it still does. While it is a "free" game, and many of the site's users do not spend $$, I'm sure we all realize that the main purpose for those running this site is making money. And I will never begrudge anyone from making a profit on a well-conceived and well run business. But for the vast majority of us users, the most important aspect is enjoyment of the game.
My guess is that most of the games played are ranked 9 hole stroke games with other people. And I have to say that it is VERY difficult to enjoy such a game when up to 90% of the time I am playing the last hole by myself because everyone else decided to quit. And this is made worse by the fact that many times the person who decides to quit is next to shoot, so the screen locks up and everyone else remaining has no choice but to quit the game themselves instead of waiting around for eternity. To be fair WGT has done a few things to try and discourage quitting... i.e. giving experience points for finishing a round, changing the equation for calculating one's average, etc. But there are other ways to do this, many suggestions have been made via this forum section and I hope some of the better ones will be considered.
It is also not fun playing the same courses over, and Over, and OVER again. I know it takes a lot of programming hours to make a course ready to be played. But we need more than we have. This is why scores have gotten ridiculously low. Those of us who play alot know every contour and slope of every green and fairway. Obviously it takes $$ to program more courses so this is my suggestion. Only certain courses are "free." Make other courses "premium" courses where one pays a few credits to play. This will also discourage quitting. And it will help pay for the costs of creating more courses.
Also, please... PLEASE develope a driving range and practice green. To me this is simply a common courtesy and a very easy thing to do for us users. And it would help the bottom line of those running the site if you were smart... let us use different equipment and balls on these practice areas so we can see the benefit. I guarantee more premium equipment will be sold. But mostly it is a neccesary tool for us players. One last improvement would be a simple chat room. It would be very easy to set up and would be an important way for us, as players, to find others to play with, among other things. There should be 1 main chat room for all users who are online, and there should be 1 for each country club so members can get in games together.
Tournaments could, and in most cases should, be handled differently. Especially ready-goes. First of all there are too many, and secondly, they should not be multi- tiered. Amateurs should be competing against legends, etc. My suggestion is to offer one, and only ONE, RG at any given time amongst the different tiers. Once 50 players have signed up, a new RG at a different course would then be available. This way the competition is fair, and it would be more conducive to implementing more courses into the scheme.
Please understand that I am not complaining, per se. This is by far the best option on the web for playing computer golf. There are so many great directions this site could go... the concept of country clubs was great. Creating more tiers made the playing field a little more even. There have been very good improvements, and I am sure there will be more in the future. My stress to those running this site is to remember that keeping the site fun and exciting is the key to keeping older members, and gaining new members. Offering point boosting drinks, and forcing us to buy new equipment just to be able to play the same old courses we've played thousands of times is not the way to go about it in my humble opinion. Creating new courses for stroke and match play, I think, should be the main priority.
My thanks to everyone responsible for running this site. Mostly, I enjoy it very much and I hope it continues to grow and improve.