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xfire shows AoC numbers decreasing :(
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I can think of a dozen people off the top of my head that I know in WoW that were going bonkers for AoC, played it for a week, then quit and came right back to WoW.
What I'm playing now.
Its a sample. You are looking at the trend within that sample. We are looking at Xfire users on launch and Xfire users now. So you are saying that Xfire users as a subset of the AoC community are not representative of the greater community as a whole? bullshit. You could use gingerheaded 25-30 year olds with amd processors. Perfectly acceptable for monitoring the migration out o the game. The 'demographic' of the sample really not that important in this instance unless you are really claiming that Xfire users are actuall more likely to cancel than other users thus squeueing the result.
I chose the Linux example quite deliberately because I am indeed saying that the Xfire community are unlikely to be representative of the greater community as a whole & in particular the section of the greater community that chose to try AoC.
I am not sure what you have against redheads, being half-irish I always felt cheated not to have red hair, but in any case it simply isn't statisitically valid to claim that any cross section of a community regardless of bias is perfectly acceptable for monitoring trends in the community as a whole.
As other posters have pointed out, AoC particularly appeals to casual players who are far less likely to bother with Xfire. I am a casual player & whilst I at least know what Xfire is, I haven't the slightest inclination of bothering with it. The majority of casual players do not bother with forums like MMORPG & have quite probably never even heard of Xfire. I don't know what proportion have heard of it, that would be the subject of yet another poll. Similarly, people that do register with Xfire are far less likely to be casual players. Maybe Xfire themselves can help you there if they have a handy poll of how many of their subscribers consider themselves to be casual, but personally I am just making an educated guess.
So there you have it, if Xfire users are less likely to be casual players, whereas AoC appeals more to casual players, the statistics derived from Xfire could easily be antagonistic to those of average AoC players. This isn't necessarily the case & the statistics could be very similar, but this was my whole point earlier when I said.
I am not trying to argue that AoC numbers haven't decreased. just that it is pointless to try to demonstrate it by quoting statistics from an unrepresentative community.
Of course this is just my personal opinion & you are entitled to believe what you like.
If you can't "Have your cake & eat it too", then how can "The proof of the pudding be in the eating"?
Take the Hecatomb? TCG What Is Your Doom? quiz.
yes same with all my friends some even gone to playing diablo not one person on my xfire even plays aoc now . what worries me more is this just make companys more inclined to bring stuff out on consols . i bet the revamp on A.O gets put back now i cant even play wow now this just killed it for me on morpg games . . back to the good old shoot em up cod2-4
Yet, Funcom is attempting to destroy all of the casual game play which is mainly PvE to fix PvP which is already missing it's hardcore audience...the audience that plays on XFire.
The balancing act has proven to destroy all casual fun. The original game made me feel good when I reached level 49, and had clocked in 89 hours of total play. This made the game feel rewarding as I progressed at a good pace. And yes, I am a casual.
Now, with gray quest nerfs, gray mobs insta death to higher levels, and boss fights ending in one shot player kills...this will totally take away from a casuals play style...It now feels like a job.
Why? Because we love to progress and feel rewarded. But, if we the casual player dies so easily, and still gets no reward to speak of (remember, no itemization, and the economy is the suck)
We will leave...which I did!
(BTW, I use Xfire. All my time is clocking Guild Wars now, which knows how to cater the Casual player with rewards and meaningful PvP that we can get rewarded for within a short amount of time, so that our family lives don't suffer)
dito i know a guild that came back to wow.
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.
WRONG WRONG WRONG! peak for EVE is 25k plus. LOTRO is more than that as well. stop spitting bullshiz and get your facts right.
Ok Magus thats a reasonable argument though I am not sure I completely agree with it. Tbh I am not really sure of the demograhic of Xfire users (who is) but don't believe they are completely squeud. Jackdog discusses the whole casual vs hardcore thing and how it might relate to Xfire earlier in the thread.
I hate to use the 'fail' word willy nilly but it is apropriate in this context. I do think AoC fails as a long term MMORPG whether you are casual or not. Once you have experienced the content (a lot of which is enjoyable) there really is nothing to do. There is a good chance there will be an exodus of 'casuals' 3 or 4 months in. Of course that might have started already and we would not observe that through Xfire if your argument holds
Thank you. All I was trying to say was that the behaviour of Xfire users is not a valid predictor of general players of the game, especially the casual ones. Whilst I certainly hope not, for all I know the real figures for general/casual players could actually be worse, but so far no-one seems to have any real data.
If you can't "Have your cake & eat it too", then how can "The proof of the pudding be in the eating"?
Take the Hecatomb? TCG What Is Your Doom? quiz.
You can get a good idea of how the game is faring by these numbers. It's only a percentage of the playerbase that uses Xfire. But that sampling of people is showing that over time they are playing Aoc less and less. So why wouldn't this segment of the playerbase be representative of the entire playerbase as a whole?
on the plus side, when the amublance has left, and the crowds have cleared, at least we'll have Avery & Co there to lavish the corpse with incense, thus covering up the stink in order to perhaps fool the remaining few people into thinking that the corpse is still alive. Id call it Weekend at Conies.
Because it's potentially like trying to forecast how McDonalds will fare over the next 12 months by asking vegetarians who have eaten there in the past. Sure, they probably still sell a lot of Veggie-Burgers & Salads, but they are hardly average customers.
I suppose that's why the "Lies, Damn Lies & Statistics" quote exists, people always choose to interpret statistics in the way that best fits their own expectations.
If you can't "Have your cake & eat it too", then how can "The proof of the pudding be in the eating"?
Take the Hecatomb? TCG What Is Your Doom? quiz.
really and what logic do you use to come up with that idea London. Xfire players are a very valid sample group since they would all time zones, all countries, both sex's, all races, all ages, all types of processors, all video card brands etc etc. It is all signal and no noise. The only way the data could be skewed is if FC or the fanbois decide to skew it in FC's favor by all making Xfire accounts and leaving toons logged in 24 and 7.
From June 15 to June 22 the hours went from 60K to 48K, or a 12 k loss which equals about 20%. from 22 June to 29 June another 8K or a 16% loss, from June 29 to July 05 it lost 7K or 17%, from July 05 to July 12 it lost another 5 k or another 15%. That is a pretty damn steady curve if you ask me. You can even see the end of the first month ohmygawd this game sux no way i am going to pay a monthly fee for it realization. Let's see if it loses another 4 K by the 19th now to hold the trend. I predict by the end of 90 days from release it will be below 10K and will probably settle in the 2 to 4 K range by years end and I am being very kind with those figures.
As usual people are missing the point which is. You had X number people with both Xfire and AoC installed and were playing x Number of hours per day a week ago, This week you had X number of players with Xfire and AoC installed logging in X number of hours less.
Going back to your McDonalds theory if McDonalads starts selling fewer veggie burgers each week as a consistent trend over a period of several weeks that would tell me that McDonalds needs to improve either their marketing to the vegetarian sector or improve the taste or value of the veggie burger. So if I were Funcom I would either be improving the "taste" of AoC or dropping the price. God knows their marketing is working overtime selling it, people just keep spitting it out.
I miss DAoC
How about the fact that most players have prbably either never heard of Xfire or can't be bothered with it.
I am glad that you like the veggie example though, it proves my point exactly. Yes McDonalds should be concerned with all of their customers, but it's the meat products that are their core business & people that buy the regular burgers & have never tried the veggie stuff would wonder what all the fuss was about.
Just to clarify though, I never eat at McDonalds.
If you can't "Have your cake & eat it too", then how can "The proof of the pudding be in the eating"?
Take the Hecatomb? TCG What Is Your Doom? quiz.
I love the xfire statistics. They give a second look at how a game is doing, based on a small sample. This is no different from taking a cup of water from a river to extrapolate overall water quality instead of actually measuring the entire river. It is all cognitive dissonance anyways. Supporters of the game will prefer positive information while detractors tend to prefer negative information. I am sure many of the xfire statistics haters would be applauding it and getting more Age of Conan users to use xfire, if it showed AoC peaking over World of Warcraft!
edit: typo
I don't know about the statistics. Its early days. My personal experience is from a small rp guild on Aquilonia. We started with 25 people from beta with a web site, enthusiasm and a commitment to recruiting, getting our keeps up and having a laugh. Then frustration hit, our officers went quiet on the recruitment front but we were still having a laugh as the devs were quickly rolling out the fixes. RL intervened and I was away a few weeks. I come back for the day we are putting up our first fort- and nothing works. I return properly last week to find most people are quitting for former games frustrated by the bugs, absence of end-game, absence of end-game pvp, difficulty to rp due to the bog-awful chat interface etc.
I'm still playing dreaming of a rosy dawn. I can tolerate the bugs but I'd really apprecaite some honesty. If something's a problem they are aware of then they should say we are aware of x, hope to do y, but are busy getting on with fixing z first. As it is we players trawl the unofficial forums the day after a patch to find out what's been changed that they've neglected to tell us about and await the next patch like ignorant peasants huddle in a cold cave hoping somebody's going to bring a light for the wood we've gathered.
This game will continue to haemorage players which will be a real issue when the sales start drying up. It's started to slip down some sales charts already. I realise they had to release now or be crushed under the marketing juggernauts of EA and Blizz for their MMO's so were forced to release a beta just to have clear water in terms of shipping times.
I'm kinda pissed to be paying a sub for it but love the look. However my finger is hovering over the cancel button because of the absence of any attempt to keep the players informed of detail of what changes they may hope for beyond 'yeah we promised you siege warfare in our launch marketing and then a month ago but it is still in in-house beta. We kinda thought we better mention that as its the top given reason for subscription cancellations and we would rather have you hanging on in hope that it is in an earlier stage of development than we'd previously told you rather than have you conclude that our primary marketing point was actually a lie'.
players I talk to in ooc want to know what is being done backstage to review balance issues and be informed of a general set of dev priorities. Can demos expect to get a class review like the necros before PVP-end game is fixed, after X, y and Z, or never because they are fine as is in the view of development team etc. While people may dispute the validity of using xfire to make a generalisation. It does tell us there are less xfire players in-game than before. This supports my own subjective experience of less RPers. It is also my subjective experience (unsupported by statistics) that I am seeing less instances now than six weeks ago and I'm playing in tarantia and the fields of the dead. There's not many other places to be for people my level.
Obviously the bulge in players much higher level than me will again mean this could be more a reflection of my leisurely pace of levelling. This would be valid were it not for the given sales figures of this game meaning there should be more people/instances at my level than I am seeing as new players start up new chars.
i am not saying this game's heading the same way of HG:L. I would say this game may be unneccessarily haemoraging players and if they'd let people like Jayde post more and respond to player questions like good li'l mods should they might find they keep some. I'm told by very happy friends playing in the WAR beta its how they are being treated. one even told me that in response to a question about a game mechanic he got a GM response along the line of 'hehe, i'd like to know that too, its on the list to be looked at but they are doing [lots of things he wouldn't tell me about as he wants to keep his beta key] before they get to it.' Would that Funcom could learn to do the same.
Which means I share the op's curiousity as to how things will unfold as cancellations overtake sales and the persistent player base numbers become clearer. My opinion is that how funcom responds now in the adjustment phase we are starting to enter into will be a factor affecting the subscription figures in six months time. I base this on the fact I know a number of people hung in LoTRO for longer than we might have as we did feel pretty well informed and so got excited about player housing etc and that this was relected in posts on the forums.
You still miss the point Magus. What makes you think that the average Xfire user is vastly different from the average gamer? Xfire has over 8 million users who play everything from solitaire to AoC and every game in between those extremes. It does not matter if 10% or 100% of all AoC users have heard of it or use it. All that matters is that the AoC users that are using it are playing less and less. Does not take a MBA to see that. The gane is frigging bleeding players and is on it's way to the bottom , although the Norwegian versions of Baghdad Bob want you to believe otherwise.
I miss DAoC
Well, the numbers certainly stabalised and is now going back up.
http://www.xfire.com/games/aoc/Age_of_Conan_Hyborian_Adventures/
make of that what you will.
Knights who say Ni website!
If we take an overall look at how many hours were played over the last 3 Saturdays to see how the Xfire crowd has been playing various games, we see
**Age of Conan
June 28th
39702 hours
July 5th
33493
July 12th
28409
We see a constant decline. Period.
**Guild Wars
June 28th
36363
July 5th
46695
July 12th
37257
Now, what trends do we see here? A steady group plays Guild Wars, consistently each weekend playing a set number of hours or a rough average. The reason for the peak on the 5th was thanks to a live event GW has done every year for the 4th...i.e: Dragon Festival.
Now, lets do one more game, LOTRO
June 28th
9097
July 5th
9191
July 12th
10103
Still consistent (even though very low) and even moving higher with this Saturday seeing a larger peak than normal (thanks to the fact that some people seem to be leaving their old games for LOTRO...wonder what other game they are leaving)
What does this show? Games level off, and eventually get their specific players, and have a steady consistent game time.
I don't care who you are...if you are too stupid to see a trend based on this and use the "Xfire is crap, no one uses it" argument, please go back to school. Any statition can easily look at this and say "AoC is losing players".
Now, how many over time is hard to say, or if it can even go up. I Think we will still see a decline until either PvP is patched to the new rewards/punishment system, or the game goes under.
Should be fun just watching to see what happens.
(PS: if no one thinks people are leaving AoC for other games, then this chart should prove something..
Vanguard
That is the scariest thing)
they dropped from 33k last Saturday to 28K this Saturday. Of course they will increase on weekends and drop during the weekdays, again that is just common sense people. Friday to Friday, Monday to Monday, Wednesday to Wednesday give the trends. Patch days cannot be used since the servers might be down 2 hours for the patch one week and 12 hours the next.
I miss DAoC
It's called the weekend, it goes up every week, just like every other game.
OT but one of the r4easons for Lotros increase is also probably due to Book 14 will be patched into the game the next couple of weeks, so the numbers will be higher than normal for the next month or so. The upcoming Mines of Moria expansion will be driving numbers up also.
I miss DAoC
I really like VG but comparing a curve decrease of a 20-30k program to an increase of a 600-700 game is... kinda daring.
All I see in xfire is that AoC lost around half of its subscribers so far. At end of month, when the new payment has to be made, we see how far AoC drops or if its stabilizing.
VG seems to be steadily climbing from its depths. Gogogo!
So, Ex-Aoc players are going back to Vanguard ?
Spoils of War - The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
You still miss the point Magus. What makes you think that the average Xfire user is vastly different from the average gamer? Xfire has over 8 million users who play everything from solitaire to AoC and every game in between those extremes. It does not matter if 10% or 100% of all AoC users have heard of it or use it. All that matters is that the AoC users that are using it are playing less and less. Does not take a MBA to see that. The gane is frigging bleeding players and is on it's way to the bottom , although the Norwegian versions of Baghdad Bob want you to believe otherwise.
Nope I don't miss the point at all, or rather I think you have it backwards. What makes you think Xfire is representative when it is just some minority interest 'Chatting Tool' favoured by a fairly specialist sub-section of the gaming community?
To answer your question above though, it certainly does matter whether 10% or 100% have heard of it or use it though. If 75% of Xfire users quit, but 80% of non Xfire users kept on playing & the proportion of Xfire users was itself only 5%, that would only be an overall quit rate of 22.75%.
I could quote equivalent statistical analogies all day, but it obviously wouldn't make any difference. As I stated earlier, the worst thing about statistics is that people abuse them to back up what they wanted to prove anyway. People that hate AoC cling to the idea that Xfire is representative because it satisfies their obsessive need to see the game failing, but given it's obscurity there is no more reason to assume that it is representative of general AoC players than users of Linux are of general home computer owners (my earlier example).
Obviously you are in the negative camp & I am in the positive one, but both camps will just have to wait & see since Xfire numbers are only directly relevant to the Xfire community.
If you can't "Have your cake & eat it too", then how can "The proof of the pudding be in the eating"?
Take the Hecatomb? TCG What Is Your Doom? quiz.
Dont suppose anyone has taken into account the fact that there is issues with running AoC through xfire? No i doubt it...
Knights who say Ni website!