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xfire shows AoC numbers decreasing :(
ethion
Member UncommonPosts: 2,888
Kinda sad they might be topping the sales charts but it looks like they are sliding on keeping subs... It will be interesting to see how th coming weeks shape up as accounts run out.
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Ethion
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
I think both the fanboys and the haters will get somewhat satisfied. The game wont be a great success gaining more and more subscribers, but instead lose quite alot. But at the same time there will be maybe 200-300k players or so I'm guessing and that means the game is going strong which should satisfy those that wanna play it.
I'm somewhat of a hater myself. The disappointment of the game feeling broken for me means I got nothing to play now and I'm bored and blame that on Funcom, unfairly but still.
Look beyond just the decline and compare it to other recent releases and popular MMOs.
LOTRO (est. 150.000 subscriptions) has 10.000+ hours played at peak. Its all time high was at #14.
EVE online with 250.000 subscribers has 13.000+ hours played at peak. Its all time high was at #12.
AoC still has 50.000+ hours played at peak. Its all time high was at #4.
You base your statistics on people using Xfire?!? Makes we wonder how many other that are playing - not using this program. I have never used it, not sure what it does or what it is good for so this doesn't say jack...
When looking at several similar MMOs, estimated subscriber numbers to xfire user ratio come out quite close across the board.
I have waited for this game for years and years keeping track every single day and I have been a big supporter of the game but now I am becoming fairly negative.
Not because of the lack of content or the never ending bugs. I sort of expected that.
No its the completely unprofessional way funcom acts in regard to their customers. They keep stonewalling never ever engaging in meaningful communication. They never ever inform about what really happens and they keep the most basic game mechanics hidden which cause people to make choices that goes against what they really wanted.
Why does a company in 2008 think you can avoid talking to their customers? It makes them look like amateurs when they only come out with a controlled press release once in a while which is so far from the reality their players experience in the game that it just look like damage control, outright lies and untruthful hype.
If FunCom were honest about the state of the game and actually talked to their players about what works and what dont work and how things were intended to work in the game then they would probably have avoided loosing a very large percentage of those who quit these days.
People can easily forgive errors and problems. People will never forgive dishonesty.
"You are the hero our legends have foretold will save our tribe, therefore please go kill 10 pigs."
Look beyond just the decline and compare it to other recent releases and popular MMOs.
LOTRO (est. 150.000 subscriptions) has 10.000+ hours played at peak. Its all time high was at #14.
EVE online with 250.000 subscribers has 13.000+ hours played at peak. Its all time high was at #12.
AoC still has 50.000+ hours played at peak. Its all time high was at #4.
The hype machine and the hopefulness that the next patch will solve its problems or the unwillingness of some to accept that they've been rooked out of, in some cases, $1000+ to even be able to play this game is what keeps it at the relatively high numbers. EVE I never even heard of before I found it by accident some years ago, and though LOTRO has years of lore, books, movies , single player games, the hype surrounding the mmo was not comparable, AoC made promises(lies) that AoC would be earth shattering, deep, dynamic and a new standard in AAA titles. What a crock. Anyway my point is, AoC's numbers are not a function of its quality or potential longevity, it is a function of a company taking advantage of a desperate playerbase by getting people to pay for extended beta by throwing who knows how much money into marketing, and using it to sell an inordinate number of pre-orders, collector's editions(which usually don't come out with a game's first run) and units in general. AoC is incomplete, poorly coded and poorly designed, you can't offer things you can't implement, have just enough content to make the first 20 levels (of 80) interesting and rely on good graphics to save you. Fact is though, that most mmos can survive at a low simmer almost ad infinitum, and funcom knows this, low standards have made more than 1 game company money in the long run, I'm sure AoC will be no different.
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." -Edmund Burke
Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?"
(Psalm 94:16)
As for the xfire thing: Funcom is not likely to release the real subscription numbers anytime soon, so we have to do with what we can find to estimate the numbers. Thanks for posting OP.
it was kindof expected, since this is the first month. many players simply stopped during their free time and never subscribed. that's why funcom suddenly has the idea to make this perk bullshit for those who subscribe (i.e. points for payed subtime).
now that the first month is over, we get to see how many really stay.
Xfire numbers are not a good stat to use for any game. AoC has a lot of missing features, but the way some of you whine, you'd think it shipped with the CD ROM cracked in half.
If subs were low, they'd open up the buddy keys.
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I am going to agree with what some here have said. Lack of communication is hurting them. I could be more understanding if I knew they were aware of the problem and working on it. An update here and there saying what they were doing, and maybe an estimate of when a fix would be in would go a long ways. Instead they are mostly silent on their tech forums.
Look beyond just the decline and compare it to other recent releases and popular MMOs.
LOTRO (est. 150.000 subscriptions) has 10.000+ hours played at peak. Its all time high was at #14.
EVE online with 250.000 subscribers has 13.000+ hours played at peak. Its all time high was at #12.
AoC still has 50.000+ hours played at peak. Its all time high was at #4.
Slightly OT, but the guy behind MMOGCHART has already pointed out he no longer believes the 150,000 figure he was given. He now believes the previous figure of somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 is more accurate, with the possibility it could even be a lot higher.
I don't play LOTRO, but it goes to show you have to be very careful when playing with stats. Even taking your one above comparing against EvE, it is pretty clear the xfire figures are skewed by some unknown factor. Back calculating it would make AoC have near on 1mil subscribers, which is clearly wrong.
At that point I would be tempted to ignore them as not saying anything of any worth, either way.
sadly from 200 members of my guild 50 is playing on regular basis...others didnt quit they dont just play as much as they did at start...few left thats true.
who would trust those numbers anyway....
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Would you like some cheese with that whine?
Releasing a half assed game has helped and hindered them.
Help - People are bored there is nothing out there worth playing and the timing was perfect a few months before WAR and Aion.
Hindered - Its bug ridden garbage people are seeing that and no matter what enjoyment the game holds very few will stick around with lag and persistant crashes, these are the guys who leave now vowing to return in 6 months time but just never go back.
Come Jan next year after War, Aion and the WOW expansion I seriousley think Conan will have a sub 50k subscription number.
I realy do hope the game slide's for the condition it was released in perhaps this will finally send a message to MMO producer's that Joe Public will no longer accept beta retail releases with empty promises and half the box features missing.
not sure if xfire is a good indicator, yes its popular in some parts of the mmo community. But thats the mainprobelm i see, cause its mainly used in subcommunites you might not get a good statistical spread over all different types of players. So basically what i am saying with this is that it probably has not better statistical foundation as looking on the Forums on different MMO websites to see what people think about the game.
Interesting to think about whether xifre figures are a useful indicators. I guess Xfire it comes down to whether xfire provides a large and varied sample.
Though, that said, I think the falling graph is probably inevitable in any MMO after first month release. For AOC this is probably due to general displeasure, seen here and on the official forums. Hopefully devs will realize the wisdom in releasing a *more* polished and complete product. Promising magical patches one month after release is just .. well... risky and annoying. "Polishy polish" and content is everything if you want subscriptions to carry on.
Personally I think AOC isn't going to be massive, it will probably get a long. I get the impression box sales are/were more important. Especially with the console release. In the end, its all about the money and most people are so desperate for a new MMO right now you could sell shit in a box and people buy it. Not saying AOC is total $&£", just pointing out a prevailing attitude...
I don't really think that xfire can show you much meaningful when comparing game sub numbers it is a rough view at best and could be skewed by one game community liking xfire a lot more then another community. I do think however it is a good tool for showing a trend. It isn't unreasonable to assume that x% of aoc subs are using xfire. And it is reasonable to expect that X% would be a pretty static number unless of course some outside influence causes a bunch of people to suddenly stop using Xfire or conversely to start using xfire. HAHA what is funny is this thread might be skewing the xfire numbers up as some poeple reading this will no doubt install xfire.
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Ethion
Whether I'd like or dislike a game I would certainly not draw any conclusions about increasing or decreasing subs taking Xfire as a valuable data source.
Perhaps it is a decline of subs to Xfire instead of the game in question? Can you prove either of these two statements?
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Remember, remember the 5th of November
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Whether I'd like or dislike a game I would certainly not draw any conclusions about increasing or decreasing subs taking Xfire as a valuable data source.
Perhaps it is a decline of subs to Xfire instead of the game in question? Can you prove either of these two statements?
Nope can't prove anything and like I said in the previous post it could be affected by outside influences. That said it is a reasonable indicator of trends. Common sense leads you to that conclusion. It certainly showed AoC jumping to the top of the charts second to only Wow and it does show an accurate mmo usage rate where weekends spike up and week days drop down.
For some games it also showed a drop off when AoC launched and is showing some rebounding as one can assume players that left for AoC are coming back. So is Xfire an accurate comparison? probably not. Does Xfire show useful trending info? I'd say it does.
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Ethion
Whether I'd like or dislike a game I would certainly not draw any conclusions about increasing or decreasing subs taking Xfire as a valuable data source.
Perhaps it is a decline of subs to Xfire instead of the game in question? Can you prove either of these two statements?
You don't sub to X-Fire its free.
You don't really even need to look at that. Go to any boards for other games and it kind of shocking how many people that are flocking from AoC to older games. Eq2 and especially Vanguard, I've seen a lot of traffic to these two games. So many people saying the feel hurt because of the state of AoC and their customer service.
I bought the collectors edition for AoC. I leveled a character to 24 and got bored. I started a new one and leveled it to 40 and once I got there I realized I didn't like the game. I am not a fanboi or a hater. I bought the game with an open mind and felt burned. I canceled in my 30 day trial. I didn't have performance issues with the game. I don't have a NASA computer. But I could run the game smoothly on high settings. I never had crashes or anything like that. It was the way the game felt to me.
To me it felt like they put out this big world with a bunch of broken or missing toys. Broken quests. I'd do quests and turn them in and instead of getting a reward and move on in the quest line, I'd get the quest I had just finished again. There just didn't seem like there was a point to anything in the game at all. They made it so people level way too fast. I am a casual player and I made it to 24 and 40 with two different characters in less than a week. But the higher end content is broken even worse than the lower stuff. When you couple that with fast leveling it doesn't spell good things. Or it didn't to me. Why would they want people to level so fast if they weren't going to give them anything to do?
The instancing , way too much of it for my tastes. These game companies are really starting to move away from what makes an MMO fun. They slowly seem to be carving away at the Massively part. Hey let instance the hell out of our game so the most people you come across in our massive world is two or three.
I tried to like it, and I wanted to. but it just wasn't for me. I do think they'll make a solid game for what it is. I mean this isn't the worst release funcom has ever had. AO was a nightmare. I remember being in beta and in complete shock when they said they were going to release it. But in the end it's a game I don't think I will like. Good luck to those that stay. I'm sure you'll have a solid game within a year. It took EQ2 and Vanguard that long to sort some of their problems out too. Which were both games I disliked a lot too. But I find them to be a little more fun now.
i'm not at all all surprised, the game is a crap re-run of WOW with better graphics, lots of bug, missing features, and broken promises.
no sympathy.
Hoprfully they loose all there subscribers. Unfinished games, lying gamedevelopers isnt something i want too see in the future.
Originally posted by afoaa
If FunCom were honest about the state of the game and actually talked to their players about what works and what dont work and how things were intended to work in the game then they would probably have avoided loosing a very large percentage of those who quit these days.
People can easily forgive errors and problems. People will never forgive dishonesty.
Well said guys well said. Will this teach other game companies a leason i hope so, we as the consumer have far more power than any game company out there. And i think it's time we use that power. We must not buy into hype but into facts me included.
FFxi Retired
Coh/Cov Retired
Guild Wars/Retired
WOW/(11-23-04/1-6-07)
VSOH/ retired
AOC/retired that was fast
Waiting 4 DCUO ,and FFXIV
Do you know how statistics are determined from surveys? You know, the ones you see on the news that says 45% people prefer this over that? Do you think the companies actually go out and talk to 100,000 people or 2 million people to reach those numbers? No, they take a sampling of people, and then based on the sample, apply it over a larger population. That is why there is a +/- margin to the percentages to take into account the discrepency sampling 1000 over 10,000 might have.
Based on what the other guy said, xfire is a good reflection of subscriber numbers for many of the latest mmorpgs. Bascilly it reflects a small group of xfire uses who play AoC but that small group reflects the entire AoC subscriber base. It's not 100% correct but probably pretty damn close to what the actual numbers are.
Plus Aoc was released in during a lull in the mmorpg market. WoW is out of content and nothing new has been our or is coming out. Thus AoC enjoyed the huge spotlight and the attention. It will definitely be interesting to see what happens when WotLK and Warhammer are released.
Do you know how statistics are determined from surveys? You know, the ones you see on the news that says 45% people prefer this over that? Do you think the companies actually go out and talk to 100,000 people or 2 million people to reach those numbers? No, they take a sampling of people, and then based on the sample, apply it over a larger population. That is why there is a +/- margin to the percentages to take into account the discrepency sampling 1000 over 10,000 might have.
Based on what the other guy said, xfire is a good reflection of subscriber numbers for many of the latest mmorpgs. Bascilly it reflects a small group of xfire uses who play AoC but that small group reflects the entire AoC subscriber base. It's not 100% correct but probably pretty damn close to what the actual numbers are.
Plus Aoc was released in during a lull in the mmorpg market. WoW is out of content and nothing new has been our or is coming out. Thus AoC enjoyed the huge spotlight and the attention. It will definitely be interesting to see what happens when WotLK and Warhammer are released.
Then AoC has around 750.000 players right now, if you use the numbers from LotR. That would be a 80-100% retention (depending on how many of the 1 milion shipped they sold), which seems to be too much.