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A great link (actually on the funcom general boards) that shows how badly AoC is dying.
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A Massive Falling In Daily Traffic To EVERY Major Gaming Site Except mmorpg.com
Sarcasticgamer traffic is down by 30%, CheapAssGamer is down by 37%, GamePro is down by 25%, VGChartz is down by 30%, GameRankings is down by 46%, Gamasutra is down by 35%, and the list goes on.
Major gaming blogs, like Joystiq, seem to have the hardest hit to their traffic. Joystiq traffic is down 43%, Destructoid is down by 36%, and GoNintendo is down by 38%. The worst, however, is Kotaku, who has seen a falling in daily visitors by a whopping 49%.
Even the biggest of gaming sites is falling victim to the trend: Traffic to Gamespot.com has fallen by 29%, while IGN is down 33%, and 1UP is down by 26%.
Trend linked some how? who knows, just a thought..
Did Flourine compare the European Forums where the game sold more to get an accurate representation of forums traffic in the hypothesis that the game forums are dying?
Or did you decide to think that because Flourine says the "game forums" are dying you would conveniently forgot to admit those two words in the topic title... therefore being misleading again.
Ummm how do posts within a game's official forums relate at all to the traffic on general gaming sites? All that post said was that forum traffic on AoC was down 95%. That's a major loss of traffic and considering only people who have accounts can post there reflects on their subscription numbers.
You forget to mention that your trend can tell us so many things besides what YOU WANT it to tell us.
1. Game is in decline (but in that case Xfire would not be stable),
2. People are much more happy now. When I read some of the old posts most of them seemed to be, "Goodbye I quit posts" or "OMG, fix this imediately posts"
3. The hype is gone, people just play and funny less about on the forums. It's just like me, I recently started so I am kind of thrilled now and run about and post here and there. I will probably not do it that much 3 months from now
4. Any other thing you might think of.
Reason I say this is because my experience is totally fine populationwise and the same every time I log on, and I hear in fact people claim that population is increasing, which is the opposite of what you try to prove.. Last thing, at what point was server merge defined as equivalent to failure? Does that mean AoC woun't be fun? Does that mean another recently launched MMO (WAR) with need for server merge is a failure? Probably not... This is the name of the game and these are natural cycles you will continue to see between every hype like major upgrades (i.e DX10), Release to new geographical areas (like Russia/EEurope, Asia), Expansionpacks and so on. I gonna attach two links now that I don't want you to abuse in future trolling. But it first of all show that Age of Conan still has much higher traffic on it's forum than another recently launched MMO (AoC 0.006 versus WAR 0.0035). Another thing I also would like to mention is that AoC show a much healthier decline in forum activity than WAR which obviously has lost more than 50% of it's forum activity over one sigle day that happens to coincide with end of free subscription month.
AoC: www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/forums.ageofconan.com
WAR: www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/warhammeralliance.com/forums
I am no fan of all these speculations back and forth of games. I really prefer to talk game above nonsens posted in this post, but if we really want to take it to this level you certainly also can argue that AoC seem much more healthy than some people belive.
Counterpoints:
#1: Xfire is stable? Let's review the available evidence for the last week to determine stability:
Oct 18th (Saturday): 6333 hours. Oct 11th: 6835: Decrease in playtime: 7.3%
17th: 5017 Oct 10th: 5900 hours. Decrease? 15%
16th: 4514 Oct 9th: 5068 hours. 10%
15th: 5082 Oct 8th: 5571 hours. 10%
14th: 4819 Oct 7th: 5076 hours. 5%
13th: 4613 Oct 6th: 4818 hours. 4%
Average decrease: 8%, measured by day over day activity the last week.
For the record 5 of these 7 days were the worst recorded XFire days in the game's history.
#2: Much more happy? The I quit posts are shuffled to the off-topic page now. And let me explain to you math. When 10% of your userbase quits when you have 700,000 subscriptions, the forum traffic of I quit is going to be heavy. When the base is 100,000, each post represents a much higher percentage of the playerbase quitting. The game is consistently losing about 5% of its playerbase a week.
#3: Popular games do not lose their forum activity. Witness Eve, WoW.
#4: AoC experienced the same 50% decline that happened to WAR. And then it lost another 50%. And then another 50%. If WAR does that WAR will bite the dust into obscurity too. Fact is WAR is holding its XFire position a lot better than AoC did.
End. Easy.
A Massive Falling In Daily Traffic To EVERY Major Gaming Site Except mmorpg.com
Sarcasticgamer traffic is down by 30%, CheapAssGamer is down by 37%, GamePro is down by 25%, VGChartz is down by 30%, GameRankings is down by 46%, Gamasutra is down by 35%, and the list goes on.
Major gaming blogs, like Joystiq, seem to have the hardest hit to their traffic. Joystiq traffic is down 43%, Destructoid is down by 36%, and GoNintendo is down by 38%. The worst, however, is Kotaku, who has seen a falling in daily visitors by a whopping 49%.
Even the biggest of gaming sites is falling victim to the trend: Traffic to Gamespot.com has fallen by 29%, while IGN is down 33%, and 1UP is down by 26%.
Trend linked some how? who knows, just a thought..
Did Flourine compare the European Forums where the game sold more to get an accurate representation of forums traffic in the hypothesis that the game forums are dying?
Or did you decide to think that because Flourine says the "game forums" are dying you would conveniently forgot to admit those two words in the topic title... therefore being misleading again.
Ummm how do posts within a game's official forums relate at all to the traffic on general gaming sites? All that post said was that forum traffic on AoC was down 95%. That's a major loss of traffic and considering only people who have accounts can post there reflects on their subscription numbers.
You forget to mention that your trend can tell us so many things besides what YOU WANT it to tell us.
1. Game is in decline (but in that case Xfire would not be stable),
2. People are much more happy now. When I read some of the old posts most of them seemed to be, "Goodbye I quit posts" or "OMG, fix this imediately posts"
3. The hype is gone, people just play and funny less about on the forums. It's just like me, I recently started so I am kind of thrilled now and run about and post here and there. I will probably not do it that much 3 months from now
4. Any other thing you might think of.
Reason I say this is because my experience is totally fine populationwise and the same every time I log on, and I hear in fact people claim that population is increasing, which is the opposite of what you try to prove.. Last thing, at what point was server merge defined as equivalent to failure? Does that mean AoC woun't be fun? Does that mean another recently launched MMO (WAR) with need for server merge is a failure? Probably not... This is the name of the game and these are natural cycles you will continue to see between every hype like major upgrades (i.e DX10), Release to new geographical areas (like Russia/EEurope, Asia), Expansionpacks and so on. I gonna attach two links now that I don't want you to abuse in future trolling. But it first of all show that Age of Conan still has much higher traffic on it's forum than another recently launched MMO (AoC 0.006 versus WAR 0.0035). Another thing I also would like to mention is that AoC show a much healthier decline in forum activity than WAR which obviously has lost more than 50% of it's forum activity over one sigle day that happens to coincide with end of free subscription month.
AoC: www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/forums.ageofconan.com
WAR: www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/warhammeralliance.com/forums
I am no fan of all these speculations back and forth of games. I really prefer to talk game above nonsens posted in this post, but if we really want to take it to this level you certainly also can argue that AoC seem much more healthy than some people belive.
Counterpoints:
#1: Xfire is stable? Let's review the available evidence for the last week to determine stability:
Oct 18th (Saturday): 6333 hours. Oct 11th: 6835: Decrease in playtime: 7.3%
17th: 5017 Oct 10th: 5900 hours. Decrease? 15%
16th: 4514 Oct 9th: 5068 hours. 10%
15th: 5082 Oct 8th: 5571 hours. 10%
14th: 4819 Oct 7th: 5076 hours. 5%
13th: 4613 Oct 6th: 4818 hours. 4%
Average decrease: 8%, measured by day over day activity the last week.
For the record 5 of these 7 days were the worst recorded XFire days in the game's history.
#2: Much more happy? The I quit posts are shuffled to the off-topic page now. And let me explain to you math. When 10% of your userbase quits when you have 700,000 subscriptions, the forum traffic of I quit is going to be heavy. When the base is 100,000, each post represents a much higher percentage of the playerbase quitting. The game is consistently losing about 5% of its playerbase a week.
#3: Popular games do not lose their forum activity. Witness Eve, WoW.
#4: AoC experienced the same 50% decline that happened to WAR. And then it lost another 50%. And then another 50%. If WAR does that WAR will bite the dust into obscurity too. Fact is WAR is holding its XFire position a lot better than AoC did.
End. Easy.
AoC's hype activity drop (end of may) did not coincide with end of subscription month, This is a very big lie from your side made by you to fit the traffic numers of the forums to your story. Also you very conveniently forgot to comment on why a newly hyped game has half the forum activity of the game that for you seemed to be the definition of a failure (0.006 for AoC, 0.003 for WAR). For all your other stuff, I wount repeat myself. My point was that your mathematical revolution might aswell be the the best proof of the game really making headway instead of what you seem to think it proves.
A Massive Falling In Daily Traffic To EVERY Major Gaming Site Except mmorpg.com
Sarcasticgamer traffic is down by 30%, CheapAssGamer is down by 37%, GamePro is down by 25%, VGChartz is down by 30%, GameRankings is down by 46%, Gamasutra is down by 35%, and the list goes on.
Major gaming blogs, like Joystiq, seem to have the hardest hit to their traffic. Joystiq traffic is down 43%, Destructoid is down by 36%, and GoNintendo is down by 38%. The worst, however, is Kotaku, who has seen a falling in daily visitors by a whopping 49%.
Even the biggest of gaming sites is falling victim to the trend: Traffic to Gamespot.com has fallen by 29%, while IGN is down 33%, and 1UP is down by 26%.
Trend linked some how? who knows, just a thought..
Did Flourine compare the European Forums where the game sold more to get an accurate representation of forums traffic in the hypothesis that the game forums are dying?
Or did you decide to think that because Flourine says the "game forums" are dying you would conveniently forgot to admit those two words in the topic title... therefore being misleading again.
Ummm how do posts within a game's official forums relate at all to the traffic on general gaming sites? All that post said was that forum traffic on AoC was down 95%. That's a major loss of traffic and considering only people who have accounts can post there reflects on their subscription numbers.
The majority of people who visited the forums had tech issues which on the whole have now been resolved
The details are only for the US forums where there is a different trend to several multi language forums and type of player in the EU.
Just because you can not post doesn't mean to say you can't read the forums.
Initial hype plays a big part, from there on out there are guild forums, fansites such as here and TTH for example all have places to discuss specifics.
Just look at all the traffic to these forums the past few months.
Guild forums get busier and the game fleshes out and you talk specifics about GvG issues on your own turf as its a GvG game.
No one even knows those figures are legit either.
I am not doubting that people have stopped posting on the US forums and quite a few people left, therefore it goes hand in hand, does it not?
There are many reasons and factors. Picking the one you post about and with your purposefully not putting in the "game forums" same title as the quoted thread is misleading to say the least - and for me a grain of salt.
What? You are rambling now. Read what you are saying...seriously:
#1: If people were having "tech issues" visiting the forums" that means the situation is even worse. Because despite the forums being "fixed" the population of people posting on the General Forums has dropped off substantively. Did you even read the numbers?
For the first 900 pages the average turnaround time for 15 posts was 40 minutes. It is now 1200 minutes. That's pretty brutal.
#2: Are you claiming that the US forums are the only ones experiencing this type of attrition? Prove it the way the OP on the AoC official forums did. Please.
#3: Why would being able to read the forums matter? The numbers relate to the number of postings...not the number of views.
#4: Funny I'm viewing the WoW forums and they dont have the same dropoff of general forum use...how can you explain that? You have no basis to assume that forum use decreases over time...the numbers showed that up until July forum usage was very solid. Only in August and in September did it radically drop.
#5: If those figures aren't legit the method is pretty simple...it's not like he is privy to the data. Go calculate it and double check yourself if you dont believe them.
That takes care of that.
Sorry if you can't comprehend the points I laid out.
Your simply saying that some guy potentially pulled some stats out of his hat in relation to the US forum posting count and deem that a worthy indicator that the game is dying - I beg to differ.
A lot of people who had technical issues came to the forum for support and most likely there posted in general, as a lot of issues have been resolved they might not of visited so much.
General forums are not server specific forums where things could of been posted in instead, as other sites and guild forums.
I am looking at the bigger picture where there are lots of variables where this is concentrated on one part and not the whole. If you want to bring info in the same format for the EU forums then go ahead its still a waste of time.
This game is not WoW.
Again a measurement of general forum popularity is not an indication of the whole forum and neither an accurate indication of the the game itself. What about games that don't have official forums? To be totally accurate you would have to go around a large percentage of sites like this and other game site forums a long with guild forums. Every single bit of info relates. Trends of players are different from one another such as posting habits, people could be posting elsewhere such as test forums. Those types of specific posts could possibly been talked about on many other boards people are privvy to.
You see you cross forum posted a link which might of been discussed before elsewhere and therefore people aren't going to talk about it twice (this relates to any type of cross forum post)
The links to gaming sites I have shown, show a drop of in visitations across the board in all areas of gaming.
Do you always get your shopping from the same place every week or are there a variety of stores you go to? Same with everything in everyday life like, Gas, books, public transport, purchasing games.
Tastes change. Forums posting is not indicative of popularity in game, especially when conversation can be spread in many different places.
I can comprehend your posts fine. It was my comprehension skills which made it abundantly clear you were not addressing my points. And you are committing the same errors again...you start rambling about unrelated points. I however will be so kind to respond to each of your points specifically:
Paragraph #1: He presented numbers that showed that the general forums were dying and inferred from that that interest in the game has subsided. I think that makes sense: if less players play, less players are posting. The sheer volume decrease in posts is astounding: from 500 brand new posts a day to 25! In addition, by you saying he pulled it out of his "hat" implies that he made the numbers up...but the numbers are there and easily checked. The numbers seem legit to me from a cursory examination.
Par #2: There is an entire technical forum for those posts and most of those got moved over at the start. If they had not the numbers would have been even more skewed to a drop in player population and forum activity. That point defeats your position and does not evidence it in the least.
Par's #3 and #4: Nonsensical off-topic rambling.
Par #5: WoW is an MMORPG. If your argument of people starting to use other sites and ventrilo and guild websites to post instead of the general forums was true we would see this effect in other MMORPGs which have healthy populations (because you said it was not a function of player population but a function of the dynamics of a game's evolution). WoW (and EVE for that matter) counter that position and thus are extremely probative.
Par #6: Sentence #1: Thesis. Sentence #2: Support for thesis backed up by question...not evidence. 0 points. Sentence #3 and beyond: You make this claim that you'd have to go to all these forums and check it. Well I have for two and my thesis and position stands...and counters yours. Where is your evidence? You are simply regurgitating a skeptical position without providing anything to support your point. That is not argument that is analysis. Your job is to support your point after critizicing mine. You forgot the former.
Par #8: Already discussed. Tell me how visits to general gaming portals are reflections of gaming traffic to specific game forums? Comparing gamespot and nintendo websites to AoC general forums? Are you seriously saying that is analogous to oh: WoW general forums and Eve general forums to AoC general forums? Sets and subsets my friends...learn the difference.
Par #9: More off-topic questions instead of answers and positions.
Par #10: Finally I agree with you. Tastes do change. And AoC is a taste no gamer seems to want lately.
/End rant.
// Don't worry I'm a lawyer, you weren't supposed to win.
/// Lol.
I don't need to post in fancy colours and bold type to point out the obvious to you.
Drum roll...
Halt!
WAR does not have official forums.
Thanks for playing Age of Debate. Insert another coin to continue.
A Massive Falling In Daily Traffic To EVERY Major Gaming Site Except mmorpg.com
Sarcasticgamer traffic is down by 30%, CheapAssGamer is down by 37%, GamePro is down by 25%, VGChartz is down by 30%, GameRankings is down by 46%, Gamasutra is down by 35%, and the list goes on.
Major gaming blogs, like Joystiq, seem to have the hardest hit to their traffic. Joystiq traffic is down 43%, Destructoid is down by 36%, and GoNintendo is down by 38%. The worst, however, is Kotaku, who has seen a falling in daily visitors by a whopping 49%.
Even the biggest of gaming sites is falling victim to the trend: Traffic to Gamespot.com has fallen by 29%, while IGN is down 33%, and 1UP is down by 26%.
Trend linked some how? who knows, just a thought..
Did Flourine compare the European Forums where the game sold more to get an accurate representation of forums traffic in the hypothesis that the game forums are dying?
Or did you decide to think that because Flourine says the "game forums" are dying you would conveniently forgot to admit those two words in the topic title... therefore being misleading again.
Ummm how do posts within a game's official forums relate at all to the traffic on general gaming sites? All that post said was that forum traffic on AoC was down 95%. That's a major loss of traffic and considering only people who have accounts can post there reflects on their subscription numbers.
You forget to mention that your trend can tell us so many things besides what YOU WANT it to tell us. The forum activity decline could be related to any of the below (first one being your only option):
1. Game is in decline (but in that case Xfire wouldn't be stable).
2. People are much more happy now. When I read some of the old posts on the AoC official forums most of them seemed to be, "Goodbye I quit posts" or "OMG, fix this imediately posts". AoC has according to some of the people that have been in from launch, had a tremendous performance and bug improvement over the last 1 to 2 months. Wouldn't it just be the most logical thing in the world that there would be less bitching over the forums as issues get resolved?
3. The hype is gone, people just play and funny less about on the forums. It's just like me, I recently started so I am kind of thrilled now and run about and post here and there. I will probably not do it that much 3 months from now
4. Any other thing you might think of.
The reason I say this is because my experience is totally fine populationwise and more inporatantly the same every time I log on. I hear some people in fact claim that population is increasing, which is the opposite of what you try to prove.. Last thing, at what point was low population on some servers and server merge defined as equivalent to failure? Does that mean AoC woun't be fun? Does that mean another recently launched MMO (WAR) with need for server merge is a failure? Probably not... This is the name of the game and these are natural cycles you will see between every hype like major upgrades (i.e DX10), Release to new geographical areas (like Russia/EEurope, Asia), Expansionpacks and so on. I gonna attach two links now that I don't want you to abuse in future trolling. But it first of all show that Age of Conan still has much higher traffic on it's forum than another recently launched MMO (AoC 0.006 versus WAR 0.003). Another thing I also would like to mention is that AoC show a much healthier decline in forum activity than WAR which obviously has lost more than 50% of it's forum activity over one sigle day that happened to coincide with end of free subscription month (very scary).
AoC: www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/forums.ageofconan.com
WAR: www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/warhammeralliance.com/forums
I am no fan of all these speculations back and forth of games. I really prefer to talk game above nonsens like what in my opinion OP posted and now I have posted. Anyway, if we really want to take it to this level you certainly also can argue that AoC seem much more healthy than some people belive.
My advice, ask yourself and others if they think the game is fun or what gamesystems they like/don't like, stop trying to be an oracle.
Thank you for taking the time to put that together, though to be honest it read so much like forum regular Orionman; I had to check the forum name twice before replying. Not implying, but it was eerily close. In any event, can you elaborate more on points 1,2 and 3 above with some data to support it?
It would be a nice counterpoint to the discussion at hand.
A Massive Falling In Daily Traffic To EVERY Major Gaming Site Except mmorpg.com
Sarcasticgamer traffic is down by 30%, CheapAssGamer is down by 37%, GamePro is down by 25%, VGChartz is down by 30%, GameRankings is down by 46%, Gamasutra is down by 35%, and the list goes on.
Major gaming blogs, like Joystiq, seem to have the hardest hit to their traffic. Joystiq traffic is down 43%, Destructoid is down by 36%, and GoNintendo is down by 38%. The worst, however, is Kotaku, who has seen a falling in daily visitors by a whopping 49%.
Even the biggest of gaming sites is falling victim to the trend: Traffic to Gamespot.com has fallen by 29%, while IGN is down 33%, and 1UP is down by 26%.
Trend linked some how? who knows, just a thought..
Did Flourine compare the European Forums where the game sold more to get an accurate representation of forums traffic in the hypothesis that the game forums are dying?
Or did you decide to think that because Flourine says the "game forums" are dying you would conveniently forgot to admit those two words in the topic title... therefore being misleading again.
Ummm how do posts within a game's official forums relate at all to the traffic on general gaming sites? All that post said was that forum traffic on AoC was down 95%. That's a major loss of traffic and considering only people who have accounts can post there reflects on their subscription numbers.
You forget to mention that your trend can tell us so many things besides what YOU WANT it to tell us. The forum activity decline could be related to any of the below (first one being your only option):
1. Game is in decline (but in that case Xfire wouldn't be stable).
2. People are much more happy now. When I read some of the old posts on the AoC official forums most of them seemed to be, "Goodbye I quit posts" or "OMG, fix this imediately posts". AoC has according to some of the people that have been in from launch, had a tremendous performance and bug improvement over the last 1 to 2 months. Wouldn't it just be the most logical thing in the world that there would be less bitching over the forums as issues get resolved?
3. The hype is gone, people just play and funny less about on the forums. It's just like me, I recently started so I am kind of thrilled now and run about and post here and there. I will probably not do it that much 3 months from now
4. Any other thing you might think of.
The reason I say this is because my experience is totally fine populationwise and more inporatantly the same every time I log on. I hear some people in fact claim that population is increasing, which is the opposite of what you try to prove.. Last thing, at what point was low population on some servers and server merge defined as equivalent to failure? Does that mean AoC woun't be fun? Does that mean another recently launched MMO (WAR) with need for server merge is a failure? Probably not... This is the name of the game and these are natural cycles you will see between every hype like major upgrades (i.e DX10), Release to new geographical areas (like Russia/EEurope, Asia), Expansionpacks and so on. I gonna attach two links now that I don't want you to abuse in future trolling. But it first of all show that Age of Conan still has much higher traffic on it's forum than another recently launched MMO (AoC 0.006 versus WAR 0.003). Another thing I also would like to mention is that AoC show a much healthier decline in forum activity than WAR which obviously has lost more than 50% of it's forum activity over one sigle day that happened to coincide with end of free subscription month (very scary).
AoC: www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/forums.ageofconan.com
WAR: www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/warhammeralliance.com/forums
I am no fan of all these speculations back and forth of games. I really prefer to talk game above nonsens like what in my opinion OP posted and now I have posted. Anyway, if we really want to take it to this level you certainly also can argue that AoC seem much more healthy than some people belive.
My advice, ask yourself and others if they think the game is fun or what gamesystems they like/don't like, stop trying to be an oracle.
Thank you for taking the time to put that together, though to be honest it read so much like forum regular Orionman; I had to check the forum name twice before replying. Not implying, but it was eerily close. In any event, can you elaborate more on points 1,2 and 3 above with some data to support it?
It would be a nice counterpoint to the discussion at hand.
Na Sin, It's late and I want to logg. None of those points 1, 2,3 are important, it was just something I pulled out of my ass in a hartbeat. Same as the post of OP. Therefore there is no real incentive from my side to prove anything at all. I am just making a point of that OP's "information" might mean a lot of things, not only what he seem to want it to mean. Anyway, enough yummy for the troll. I'm heading out.
A Massive Falling In Daily Traffic To EVERY Major Gaming Site Except mmorpg.com
Sarcasticgamer traffic is down by 30%, CheapAssGamer is down by 37%, GamePro is down by 25%, VGChartz is down by 30%, GameRankings is down by 46%, Gamasutra is down by 35%, and the list goes on.
Major gaming blogs, like Joystiq, seem to have the hardest hit to their traffic. Joystiq traffic is down 43%, Destructoid is down by 36%, and GoNintendo is down by 38%. The worst, however, is Kotaku, who has seen a falling in daily visitors by a whopping 49%.
Even the biggest of gaming sites is falling victim to the trend: Traffic to Gamespot.com has fallen by 29%, while IGN is down 33%, and 1UP is down by 26%.
Trend linked some how? who knows, just a thought..
Did Flourine compare the European Forums where the game sold more to get an accurate representation of forums traffic in the hypothesis that the game forums are dying?
Or did you decide to think that because Flourine says the "game forums" are dying you would conveniently forgot to admit those two words in the topic title... therefore being misleading again.
Ummm how do posts within a game's official forums relate at all to the traffic on general gaming sites? All that post said was that forum traffic on AoC was down 95%. That's a major loss of traffic and considering only people who have accounts can post there reflects on their subscription numbers.
The majority of people who visited the forums had tech issues which on the whole have now been resolved
The details are only for the US forums where there is a different trend to several multi language forums and type of player in the EU.
Just because you can not post doesn't mean to say you can't read the forums.
Initial hype plays a big part, from there on out there are guild forums, fansites such as here and TTH for example all have places to discuss specifics.
Just look at all the traffic to these forums the past few months.
Guild forums get busier and the game fleshes out and you talk specifics about GvG issues on your own turf as its a GvG game.
No one even knows those figures are legit either.
I am not doubting that people have stopped posting on the US forums and quite a few people left, therefore it goes hand in hand, does it not?
There are many reasons and factors. Picking the one you post about and with your purposefully not putting in the "game forums" same title as the quoted thread is misleading to say the least - and for me a grain of salt.
What? You are rambling now. Read what you are saying...seriously:
#1: If people were having "tech issues" visiting the forums" that means the situation is even worse. Because despite the forums being "fixed" the population of people posting on the General Forums has dropped off substantively. Did you even read the numbers?
For the first 900 pages the average turnaround time for 15 posts was 40 minutes. It is now 1200 minutes. That's pretty brutal.
#2: Are you claiming that the US forums are the only ones experiencing this type of attrition? Prove it the way the OP on the AoC official forums did. Please.
#3: Why would being able to read the forums matter? The numbers relate to the number of postings...not the number of views.
#4: Funny I'm viewing the WoW forums and they dont have the same dropoff of general forum use...how can you explain that? You have no basis to assume that forum use decreases over time...the numbers showed that up until July forum usage was very solid. Only in August and in September did it radically drop.
#5: If those figures aren't legit the method is pretty simple...it's not like he is privy to the data. Go calculate it and double check yourself if you dont believe them.
That takes care of that.
Sorry if you can't comprehend the points I laid out.
Your simply saying that some guy potentially pulled some stats out of his hat in relation to the US forum posting count and deem that a worthy indicator that the game is dying - I beg to differ.
A lot of people who had technical issues came to the forum for support and most likely there posted in general, as a lot of issues have been resolved they might not of visited so much.
General forums are not server specific forums where things could of been posted in instead, as other sites and guild forums.
I am looking at the bigger picture where there are lots of variables where this is concentrated on one part and not the whole. If you want to bring info in the same format for the EU forums then go ahead its still a waste of time.
This game is not WoW.
Again a measurement of general forum popularity is not an indication of the whole forum and neither an accurate indication of the the game itself. What about games that don't have official forums? To be totally accurate you would have to go around a large percentage of sites like this and other game site forums a long with guild forums. Every single bit of info relates. Trends of players are different from one another such as posting habits, people could be posting elsewhere such as test forums. Those types of specific posts could possibly been talked about on many other boards people are privvy to.
You see you cross forum posted a link which might of been discussed before elsewhere and therefore people aren't going to talk about it twice (this relates to any type of cross forum post)
The links to gaming sites I have shown, show a drop of in visitations across the board in all areas of gaming.
Do you always get your shopping from the same place every week or are there a variety of stores you go to? Same with everything in everyday life like, Gas, books, public transport, purchasing games.
Tastes change. Forums posting is not indicative of popularity in game, especially when conversation can be spread in many different places.
I can comprehend your posts fine. It was my comprehension skills which made it abundantly clear you were not addressing my points. And you are committing the same errors again...you start rambling about unrelated points. I however will be so kind to respond to each of your points specifically:
Paragraph #1: He presented numbers that showed that the general forums were dying and inferred from that that interest in the game has subsided. I think that makes sense: if less players play, less players are posting. The sheer volume decrease in posts is astounding: from 500 brand new posts a day to 25! In addition, by you saying he pulled it out of his "hat" implies that he made the numbers up...but the numbers are there and easily checked. The numbers seem legit to me from a cursory examination.
Par #2: There is an entire technical forum for those posts and most of those got moved over at the start. If they had not the numbers would have been even more skewed to a drop in player population and forum activity. That point defeats your position and does not evidence it in the least.
Par's #3 and #4: Nonsensical off-topic rambling.
Par #5: WoW is an MMORPG. If your argument of people starting to use other sites and ventrilo and guild websites to post instead of the general forums was true we would see this effect in other MMORPGs which have healthy populations (because you said it was not a function of player population but a function of the dynamics of a game's evolution). WoW (and EVE for that matter) counter that position and thus are extremely probative.
Par #6: Sentence #1: Thesis. Sentence #2: Support for thesis backed up by question...not evidence. 0 points. Sentence #3 and beyond: You make this claim that you'd have to go to all these forums and check it. Well I have for two and my thesis and position stands...and counters yours. Where is your evidence? You are simply regurgitating a skeptical position without providing anything to support your point. That is not argument that is analysis. Your job is to support your point after critizicing mine. You forgot the former.
Par #8: Already discussed. Tell me how visits to general gaming portals are reflections of gaming traffic to specific game forums? Comparing gamespot and nintendo websites to AoC general forums? Are you seriously saying that is analogous to oh: WoW general forums and Eve general forums to AoC general forums? Sets and subsets my friends...learn the difference.
Par #9: More off-topic questions instead of answers and positions.
Par #10: Finally I agree with you. Tastes do change. And AoC is a taste no gamer seems to want lately.
/End rant.
// Don't worry I'm a lawyer, you weren't supposed to win.
/// Lol.
Good job your a lawyer and not a judge then. (litigator_AB ?)
Bring some info that supports the amount of general forum postings in direct relation to the population in game and then you might have some hard evidence, until then its hearsay and not even official. Do you even sub to the game?
When you have motives such as yourself I can understand its hard for you to grasp the "other" points I have made, and take them into proper consideration, you have blinkers on and are not looking at the bigger picture, when you just have circumstantial evidence that a random wrote up.
Its not about winning its about living in reality. Taking all things into consideration.
Your acting as though the numbers are legit, when we all know that any Tom, Dick or Harry could write that and thats what I have a problem with, whether its true or not. A difference of opinion, its not about being anti AoC or pro AoC.
Na Sin, It's late and I want to logg. None of those points 1, 2,3 are important, it was just something I pulled out of my ass in a hartbeat. Same as the post of OP. Therefore there is no real incentive from my side to prove anything at all. I am just making a point of that OP's "information" might mean a lot of things, not only what he seem to want it to mean. Anyway, enough yummy for the troll. I'm heading out.
Review my post history compared to your post history and see who the troll is.
I'm anti-AoC and proud of it. That does not make me a troll. I'm simply providing as much evidence I can, until Q3 numbers come in 4 weeks, to show how badly AoC is doing.
Hi Sin, I agree that X-fire hours are down, but the amount of people have been pretty close for the past few months now. All I have is posting on the the x-fire threads here and on the official forums where there are posts saying the amount of people on that specific day.
Yes less time is being played, but the amount of players over september and october have been within 1k.
Good job your a lawyer and not a judge then. (litigator_AB ?)
Bring some info that supports the amount of general forum postings in direct relation to the population in game and then you might have some hard evidence, until then its hearsay and not even official. Do you even sub to the game?
When you have motives such as yourself I can understand its hard for you to grasp the "other" points I have made, and take them into proper consideration, you have blinkers on and are not looking at the bigger picture, when you just have circumstantial evidence that a random wrote up.
Its not about winning its about living in reality.
Your acting as though the numbers are legit, when we all know that any Tom, Dick or Harry could write that and thats what I have a problem with, whether its true or not.
All judges started out as lawyers...what is your point? But you are right in this one sense. I'm in the position of an advocate right now and not a neutral observer. I guess I'm doing my job, right?
It is not hearsay evidence. I can cross-examine it (so to speak) just fine. And...official evidence? As opposed to? Lol.
I've already brought about some information from games: WoW and EVE. I could bring in more if i had to...im sure LotRO would oblige as well. I'm building my case that AoC is dying a gruesome death from a myriad of evidence exhibits. This is just another one. I won't have the proverbial smoking gun until Q4 results are out. Q3 will be VERY good evidence but will undoubtedly be interpreted to somehow pretend AoC had 200,000 subscribers in July and more subscribers now by diehard fanbois.
Do I have a subscription now? No...of course not. Ewww.
My motives are to find the correct position through evidence and vigorously defend it. That's what I'm doing. If you want to examine the bigger picture stop making excuses with "technical difficulties" and "people posting elsewhere" and claiming "no one uses XFire" and think about this:
#1: They have openly acknowledged a population problem and are actively looking to merge servers.
#2: They fired their game director.
#3: The stock has fallen 92% from its high.
#4: Xfire traffic has dropped 94% from its high.
#5: Forum traffic (at least in the largest forum of the game...US general) has dropped 90%+ since release.
#6: Literally hundreds of posts on the main forums saying "please merge the servers my server is absolutely dead."
#7: LITERALLY hundreds of posts saying "wow my server had 6 instances of Khesh open and now it never has more than one."
Now tell me AmazingAvery, how can you defend the health of a game that has lost by all accounts 80-90% of its users in its first 5 months? Do you think that is normal? Now who is it that needs to open their eyes?
Hi Sin, I agree that X-fire hours are down, but the amount of people have been pretty close for the past few months now. All I have is posting on the the x-fire threads here and on the official forums where there are posts saying the amount of people on that specific day.
Yes less time is being played, but the amount of players over september and october have been within 1k.
You are right in that sense...the number of actual players on XFire has dropped from mid-September to now about 600...or 2100 to 1400-1500. That's a drop of ~30%, divided by 4 weeks...is about 7.5%...which is exactly what XFire total hours played have dropped by over that period.
So that mirrors the sentiment that it is the result of fewer players that Xfire numbers are decreasing...and not less time played.
Xoxo
Good job your a lawyer and not a judge then. (litigator_AB ?)
Bring some info that supports the amount of general forum postings in direct relation to the population in game and then you might have some hard evidence, until then its hearsay and not even official. Do you even sub to the game?
When you have motives such as yourself I can understand its hard for you to grasp the "other" points I have made, and take them into proper consideration, you have blinkers on and are not looking at the bigger picture, when you just have circumstantial evidence that a random wrote up.
Its not about winning its about living in reality.
Your acting as though the numbers are legit, when we all know that any Tom, Dick or Harry could write that and thats what I have a problem with, whether its true or not.
All judges started out as lawyers...what is your point? But you are right in this one sense. I'm in the position of an advocate right now and not a neutral observer. I guess I'm doing my job, right?
It is not hearsay evidence. I can cross-examine it (so to speak) just fine. And...official evidence? As opposed to? Lol.
I've already brought about some information from games: WoW and EVE. I could bring in more if i had to...im sure LotRO would oblige as well. I'm building my case that AoC is dying a gruesome death from a myriad of evidence exhibits. This is just another one. I won't have the proverbial smoking gun until Q4 results are out. Q3 will be VERY good evidence but will undoubtedly be interpreted to somehow pretend AoC had 200,000 subscribers in July and more subscribers now by diehard fanbois.
Do I have a subscription now? No...of course not. Ewww.
My motives are to find the correct position through evidence and vigorously defend it. That's what I'm doing. If you want to examine the bigger picture stop making excuses with "technical difficulties" and "people posting elsewhere" and claiming "no one uses XFire" and think about this:
#1: They have openly acknowledged a population problem and are actively looking to merge servers.
#2: They fired their game director.
#3: The stock has fallen 92% from its high.
#4: Xfire traffic has dropped 94% from its high.
#5: Forum traffic (at least in the largest forum of the game...US general) has dropped 90%+ since release.
#6: Literally hundreds of posts on the main forums saying "please merge the servers my server is absolutely dead."
#7: LITERALLY hundreds of posts saying "wow my server had 6 instances of Khesh open and now it never has more than one."
Now tell me AmazingAvery, how can you defend the health of a game that has lost by all accounts 80-90% of its users in its first 5 months? Do you think that is normal? Now who is it that needs to open their eyes?
Now where is 80-90% coming from Colombo? You wouldnt just pull those numbers too out of your ass being a very proud AoC Hater and all?
Sigh. That percentage of 80%-90% is the INFERENCE made from the lines of evidence presented. That's the whole point of presenting arguments: to support a position you can't measure/examine directly.
Trust me kid I wish Funcom would just come out and tell us what its subscription numbers are. But they won't. They even made it explicit that they will not comment on it directly from its financial reports. Unfortunately for them the numbers are easily parsed: Funcom's only substantial revenue is from Age of Conan.
These various lines of evidence show that even if there is not 1:1 correspondence an 80% drop is substantiated if there is but a 1:4 correspondence. I hope I wouldn't have to explain what type of R^2 we'd need for that to be accurate. It isn't that high.
Good job your a lawyer and not a judge then. (litigator_AB ?)
Bring some info that supports the amount of general forum postings in direct relation to the population in game and then you might have some hard evidence, until then its hearsay and not even official. Do you even sub to the game?
When you have motives such as yourself I can understand its hard for you to grasp the "other" points I have made, and take them into proper consideration, you have blinkers on and are not looking at the bigger picture, when you just have circumstantial evidence that a random wrote up.
Its not about winning its about living in reality.
Your acting as though the numbers are legit, when we all know that any Tom, Dick or Harry could write that and thats what I have a problem with, whether its true or not.
All judges started out as lawyers...what is your point? But you are right in this one sense. I'm in the position of an advocate right now and not a neutral observer. I guess I'm doing my job, right?
It is not hearsay evidence. I can cross-examine it (so to speak) just fine. And...official evidence? As opposed to? Lol.
I've already brought about some information from games: WoW and EVE. I could bring in more if i had to...im sure LotRO would oblige as well. I'm building my case that AoC is dying a gruesome death from a myriad of evidence exhibits. This is just another one. I won't have the proverbial smoking gun until Q4 results are out. Q3 will be VERY good evidence but will undoubtedly be interpreted to somehow pretend AoC had 200,000 subscribers in July and more subscribers now by diehard fanbois.
Do I have a subscription now? No...of course not. Ewww.
My motives are to find the correct position through evidence and vigorously defend it. That's what I'm doing. If you want to examine the bigger picture stop making excuses with "technical difficulties" and "people posting elsewhere" and claiming "no one uses XFire" and think about this:
#1: They have openly acknowledged a population problem and are actively looking to merge servers.
#2: They fired their game director.
#3: The stock has fallen 92% from its high.
#4: Xfire traffic has dropped 94% from its high.
#5: Forum traffic (at least in the largest forum of the game...US general) has dropped 90%+ since release.
#6: Literally hundreds of posts on the main forums saying "please merge the servers my server is absolutely dead."
#7: LITERALLY hundreds of posts saying "wow my server had 6 instances of Khesh open and now it never has more than one."
Now tell me AmazingAvery, how can you defend the health of a game that has lost by all accounts 80-90% of its users in its first 5 months? Do you think that is normal? Now who is it that needs to open their eyes?
Now where is 80-90% coming from Colombo? You wouldnt just pull those numbers too out of your ass being a very proud AoC Hater and all?
You quoted him and still asked that question? He has a list there and then says by all accounts.... The key words being "by all accounts" and the other giveaway is the numbered list... Geesh people..
It does not seem to be doing all that bad.