So trolls decided server merges are bad? I thought the gerenal troll opinion was Mythic is dumb because they've got populations spread out too much, so their big new thing (RvR) was pointless with so few people. Concentrating players to several well populated servers to show how fun RvR is and then attract more players to fill new servers isn't exactly a bad idea...
I completely agree. I played WAR for the free month I got from paying for it and it just felt so sparse. I honestly didn't like the instanced battles either, I felt like I was playing Call of Duty 4 mmo style. That and after I was introduced to Darkfall I kinda lost interest in WAR since it wasnt' really what I've been waiting for in an MMO. The server merge deal should be good for WAR though, it'll make it a lot more exciting with denser populations in each server.
Jetrpg, not to nitpick, because I don't disagree very much with you. However, there really are plenty of quests to level up. You have to literally do every quest from each pairing and zone, including the rvr lake quests, but there are enough to get you from 1 tier to the next. PQ's will augment you with some blue gear, but I haven't found them required to gain the levels. And honestly, T3+ it is increasingly difficult to get a good enough group together to make PQ's worth the time IMO. Just go get all the quests done and if you need an elite chapter reward, go solo influence while sitting in the scenario queue.
server merges = death 6 weeks in and they arent adding servers...they arent even stable, they are killing almost 22 servers. Remember that article from Massively? during the launch he said WaR will settle around 250k ish subs. Most war fanbois laughed and said OMG WAR WILL GET 2 million subs easy !
lol...just lol.... see ya later WaR no more medicore MMO's please. the Majority have spoken. and yes we are the majority.. 750k accounts created 250k playing WaR Equals 500k people (majority) that think WaR is nothing special.
TROLL ON LOL...........this thread FAIL's badly and why be so secret about who you are, If you believe in what you say,( post ) then surely you are willing to stand by what you say, or is this what it looks like, just another hate filled troll trying to get some attention, because he can't handle or understand the game he's tying to play,( or no one in the game wants' to play with him ) maybe you should go back and post this dribble on MMOSITE.com where you came from and this thread belongs.
I think it's pretty obvious that WAR was a very "safe" game for Mythic to develop. They didn't try anything risky or innovative, they stuck to the WoW formula and added sieges... Really nothing new with all this.
They grossly overestimated the retention factor this game offers. There simply isn't a reason to keep playing the game after a month or so, or at least for most people.
I believe gamers sit back and play games like Grand Theft Auto and Elder Scrolls and see what the MMO industry SHOULD be offering them. I do believe that the consumer is ready for the next level of MMO and are quite bored with the current batch. WoW will retain high numbers because it is WoW and people have toons that are years into the game. It's a social trend at this point to play WoW.
But new MMO games are going to struggle to achieve high subscriptions because they aren't advancing the genre. This industry has stop evolution for some time now.
There is hope on the horizon with the next batch of games but certainly WAR isn't going to compete with WoW. Heck, SWG had 250,000 subscribers back in 2003 and it was considered a niche game until the game mechanics were changed to compete with WoW.
At 800 K users and 50% low/low servers, while at 500 K users we had 50% full/full servers and no low/low servers. Explain.... And where are those other 400 K? Here we go : I'll explain: 800K user accounts created (Oct 10th 750 K statement of Mythic remember). Shipped boxes to retailers: 1.2 M. But no 400K extra accounts since they still sit on the retailers shelves. Of those 800K user accounts created, 55% left already: so we see a 350K population manning our servers with a result of low/low servers compared to the 700K of the first 2/3 weeks.
Xfire results show the decline for Xfire users.
So the 1.2 M are only sold to retailers - not to customers. The 800K created accounts are certainly not ALL active players.... and we see indeed 50% .... empty servers .... and as of next week server merges. Facts straight.
Where did you get 55% of current subscriptions left? It's not that hard to read the report. 1.2 million copies sold, 800k CURRENT subscriptions. See the word CURRENT?
Oh and I didn't get to play the first 3 weeks and didn't see the Full / Full servers list, but I'm pretty sure if that was the case, they would have added more servers. Depending on how many servers they added might also have played a role in the current populations. Not to mention, they may have increased the servers max population size.
Anyhow, the report is dated for today and it states 800k, so I'll just go with the flow and assume they aren't lying.
With 500K players the game had 24 Full to closed servers in EU.
Now they have about 25 to 30 low/low servers and it is supposed to have 800 K players?
No the report is from the quarter running up to Sep 30th and they already communicated they had 750K "accounts created" on that day (source MJ himself). So clearly the report is only talking of the created player accounts, not active ones.
55% is easely traced also: just look at www.xfire.com where WAR dropped these number of percentages for Xfire Warhammer players.
So we have the word of MJ himself, we have Xfire (War is at 12.5 less number of Wow players (4.5 M western subs there divided by 12.5... ) and we have a lot of empty servers compared to the first 3 weeks. All leading to the same conclusion: about 350K to 400K active players.
So UNLESS all these 3 are incorrect (MJ inclusive), the 800K is the accounts created in game and the 1.2 M sold means 400K of accounts still linger on dealers shelves.
This IS 2008 you know, if it weren't for open communications, we all would still believe FunCom had millions of subs.
Strategy, i played from pre-release to present and our EU server was never full, not once. It's still not full, therefore, there's no statistical proof for me of how the numbers changed.
Using Xfire is pointless, I know one person who uses it in my gaming circle, it's not representative, therefore cannot be taken as statistical proof of how the numbers have changed. And before you say that if 55% of Xfire users left then that should extrapolate to 55% of players leaving, I'll point out that if a certain type of gamer uses Xfire (i'll say no more on that) then that would magnify the actions of a certain small percentage of an unrepresentative minority of gamers with certain predefined preferences.
"People don't use razors because this poll i did of Amish people show that they don't use razors therefore I can say that people don't use razors"
Speculation never proves anything, it's just speculation.
Strategy, i played from pre-release to present and our EU server was never full, not once. It's still not full, therefore, there's no statistical proof for me of how the numbers changed. Using Xfire is pointless, I know one person who uses it in my gaming circle, it's not representative, therefore cannot be taken as statistical proof of how the numbers have changed. And before you say that if 55% of Xfire users left then that should extrapolate to 55% of players leaving, I'll point out that if a certain type of gamer uses Xfire (i'll say no more on that) then that would magnify the actions of a certain small percentage of an unrepresentative minority of gamers with certain predefined preferences. "People don't use razors because this poll i did of Amish people show that they don't use razors therefore I can say that people don't use razors" Speculation never proves anything, it's just speculation.
Well I play since pre- release and I even noted the server populations: around Sep 23th they had 28 Full servers in EU at 21.00 PM. At that time 5 servers were on low. Queing times of more than 200+ people on about 7 to 9 servers at Chaos side were common in prime time.
That time was ... 500K players (source MJ). Two weeks later he announced "750 K accounts created". Now this press release speaks of "800K" players, while half the servers are now on low/low and the number of full servers are a handfull.
It is NOT because you were always on a medium server you can speak for all EU servers.
Care to look tonight (friday should be a good day for gaming...)?
So it is very clear to everyone (except for the rabid fan) a LOT of servers are now showing less people playing, and guess what ?
www.xfire.com with 15.000 registred (!) WAR players got to 50% less War players during working days in this same 4 weeks.
Be thankful there ARE tools like Xfire with thousands of War players on it to view the need of server merges. 7000 to 15000 XFire western War players are A LOT players to have a sample.
I am not speculating. I SEE the server status and look at the current number of War Players at www.xfire.com. IF 800K were actively playing (and not merely created accounts) , Wow would have 800x12.5= 10 M western subscribers. Impossible.
You WANT to believe the 800K active players? Great, where are they on the servers?
server merges = death 6 weeks in and they arent adding servers...they arent even stable, they are killing almost 22 servers. Remember that article from Massively? during the launch he said WaR will settle around 250k ish subs. Most war fanbois laughed and said OMG WAR WILL GET 2 million subs easy !
lol...just lol.... see ya later WaR no more medicore MMO's please. the Majority have spoken. and yes we are the majority.. 750k accounts created 250k playing WaR Equals 500k people (majority) that think WaR is nothing special.
They HAVE TO DO server merges because they were too stupid to launch with way too many servers!
The population is spread out over so many servers, it's not even funny!
Sure 30-40% will quit after the first month. That's no suprise as that's todays standard. There are still many people buying a game, without reading the box and then see that they have to pay a monthly fee.
Next to that you always have people that burn through content in a month or just found out it's not their game and quit.
So yes here in EU they can clean up half the servers, wich leaves still roughly 30 well populated servers afterwards!
I don't see anything negative in that. Lot better then Age of Conan, that only has maybe 2-3 well populated servers left and rest being complete ghosttowns.
www.xfire.com with 15.000 registred (!) WAR players got to 50% less War players during working days in this same 4 weeks.
Be thankful there ARE tools like Xfire with thousands of War players on it to view the need of server merges. 7000 to 15000 XFire western War players are A LOT players to have a sample.
For the last time, Xfire statistics are NOt a good sample. It is a good amount of people for a sample, but it is not a random sample at all, and therefore cannot be used to make ANY (ie: zero, none) conclusions. If this was a sampling of a random selection of 15000 people and now only 7000 play then yes, you could draw some conclusions from that.
However, this is 15000 of core gamers, the ones who probably have more than 5 MMOs in their "most played" list. These are the gamers that, ironically, also come to MMORPG.com to post about how every MMO in the world sucks.
I'd recommend you guys who are saying Xfire is a good indicator of subs to take a simple statistics course.... hell, I bet you can get one in high school... and then you'll know what you're saying is completely false. To make conclusions for anything, you need a random sample, not one sample taken from one isolated group that caters only to the less-casual gamers.
www.xfire.com with 15.000 registred (!) WAR players got to 50% less War players during working days in this same 4 weeks.
Be thankful there ARE tools like Xfire with thousands of War players on it to view the need of server merges. 7000 to 15000 XFire western War players are A LOT players to have a sample.
For the last time, Xfire statistics are NOt a good sample. It is a good amount of people for a sample, but it is not a random sample at all, and therefore cannot be used to make ANY (ie: zero, none) conclusions. If this was a sampling of a random selection of 15000 people and now only 7000 play then yes, you could draw some conclusions from that.
However, this is 15000 of core gamers, the ones who probably have more than 5 MMOs in their "most played" list. These are the gamers that, ironically, also come to MMORPG.com to post about how every MMO in the world sucks.
I'd recommend you guys who are saying Xfire is a good indicator of subs to take a simple statistics course.... hell, I bet you can get one in high school... and then you'll know what you're saying is completely false. To make conclusions for anything, you need a random sample, not one sample taken from one isolated group that caters only to the less-casual gamers.
These stats above - now War is in position 12 today - are very accurate.
The problem is that these stats are NOT used for a social study with VERY limited samples. These are BIG samples with only ONE purpose. It gives very accurate stats how many PC game players play which games (and for how long) if they have Xfire installed on their computers.
Nothing more ---- but also nothing less !
Xfire users may be clowns, elderly people with no hair and would have a black or purple skin. I don't care. They are WAR players - used to be 15.000 - and now they are down to 7500 during weeks.
With a downward trend. Now look at your overall server populations.... are they UP ? Nope. So you could speak of percentages, but I let you show an overall and general constant drop, with a usual hick up every weekend. 45K Xfire played at the opening days with 500 K users (MJ source), 24 K played yesterday with 800K users .... EA lets you believe.
Sorry but I believe my eyes in viewing the server status in EU AND a program that doesn't need to worry about falling stock prices
Now look,at GW, EQ2, LOTRO and Wow and compare (and see the influence of patch updates etc ...)
People need to stop claiming xfire is accurate for checking subs.
But lets use some of that flawed logic for a second, ok?
Warhammer has around a 25,000hour listing right now. So if warhammer only has 200-250k players, then that means EVE Online, which looks to be around 8000-8500 hours, would be down around 60-75k players (roughly), right?
But wait, EVE Online pretty regularly says what its subs are, and it's well over 200k.
I play warhammer (and EVE). I don't use xfire. I don't know of anyone I play either game with that uses it. Only certain types of gamers use crap like xfire. Those types tend to be found more in WoW, less in EVE. Warhammer doesn't seem to know which way it wants to go, but as the quarterly report info is from sept 30th, it's going by box sale accounts at that time, and doesn't factor in any gains or losses during October. However, WAR did have server cap increases at one point, and launched with way, way too many servers for its type of game. They should slash the servers in half, and put as many to high/high as they can. Even med/med can be pretty slim pickings for T4 fighting, granted it does not help that some of the stuff is screwed up. I'm currently carrying gold bags from Praag and Thunder Mountain that don't have set pieces for my warrior priest, and the bind on pickup/timer stuff for the Pve dungeon bosses that drop sets that help and are greatly needed for the higher RvR NPCs sucks royally. One or the other needs to go away.
People need to stop claiming xfire is accurate for checking subs.
But lets use some of that flawed logic for a second, ok?
Warhammer has around a 25,000hour listing right now. So if warhammer only has 200-250k players, then that means EVE Online, which looks to be around 8000-8500 hours, would be down around 60-75k players (roughly), right?
But wait, EVE Online pretty regularly says what its subs are, and it's well over 200k.
I play warhammer (and EVE). I don't use xfire. I don't know of anyone I play either game with that uses it. Only certain types of gamers use crap like xfire. Those types tend to be found more in WoW, less in EVE. Warhammer doesn't seem to know which way it wants to go, but as the quarterly report info is from sept 30th, it's going by box sale accounts at that time, and doesn't factor in any gains or losses during October. However, WAR did have server cap increases at one point, and launched with way, way too many servers for its type of game. They should slash the servers in half, and put as many to high/high as they can. Even med/med can be pretty slim pickings for T4 fighting, granted it does not help that some of the stuff is screwed up. I'm currently carrying gold bags from Praag and Thunder Mountain that don't have set pieces for my warrior priest, and the bind on pickup/timer stuff for the Pve dungeon bosses that drop sets that help and are greatly needed for the higher RvR NPCs sucks royally. One or the other needs to go away.
Ok let's do the caluculations.
First I am talking basic PLAYERS playing (not subscriptions).
Wow has in weekends top of about 110 K number of players these days. War has about 9500 on weekends. So a 1/12 to 1/11 relation. Meaning 11 or 12 times more Wow players than WAR.
Since 800K accounts were created for War (own press release) and we see a 55% decrease on Xfire stats, we could argue there are around 400 K or even just a little less active players for War. Multiply: x 12 or x11--- Wow would have 4.400.000 to 4.800.000 players now (last known western subs of Jan 2008 which was 4.5 M,). But that game had a prelaunch patch and an increase in players , so very logical according to Xfire.
It used to be 1/8 at WAR's launch and before the famous pre release Wow patch... meaning (little less) 4M and 500K War players....
Strange coincidence isn't it?
Now on to AoC: at the end of June Xfire showed AoC with around 40 K Xfire users on average. MONTHS later FunCom said they had 420 K subs at the end of ... June. XFire showed the trend on a weekly basis back then, months before it was being confirmed by FunCom.
Now on to War: it is in about the same amount of Xfire players as AoC was at the end of June (even just a little less with the last days included)... meaning 40K XFire Playing Time (high weekend)...at the same time we saw the 50% decline of War on XFire.
Curious 50% of 750/800K created accounts is ... just a little less than 400 K.
Ok next step: EVE today had 2974 Xfire players against the 7421 Xfire players of WAR. That's 2.4 ratio between the two. It would mean WAR has 2.4 more players than EVE today, It could mean indeed that only about 170K were playing yesterday out of a possible 220K subs on EVE (estimated).
Everyone who knows EVE knows that the game isn't being played on a daily basis by the subs (older MMORPG - you advance even when not logging on). it's the Eve play style and logical for an older MMORPG.
So you have here all examples which show just how accurate number of players are demonstrated by XFire. NOT subs btw, but subs are used here as a reference and show that the number on XFire are rather very accurate to view player numbers.
You would NEVER get these results if Xfire were completely based on thin air.
Guys, it's a financial report. EA can't make shit up on their investor statements. They can state things in a way that makes the overall picture of the company's fortunes look better than they might be in reality. However, when they say something like "WAR has 800K current subs" you can be damn sure that it's literally true.
Make any arguments you like using using troll or fanboy assmath, X-fire numbers, words from angels holding glowing swords, or whatever...it doesn't matter. The game currently has 800K subs.
Will it have 800K subs at the end of the Novermber? I seriously doubt it. But for the moment, the fact of the matter is 800K subs. Throw a party or cry yourself to sleep, depending on how that makes you feel.
I don't want to write this, and you don't want to read it. But now it's too late for both of us.
Warhammer has around a 25,000hour listing right now. So if warhammer only has 200-250k players, then that means EVE Online, which looks to be around 8000-8500 hours, would be down around 60-75k players (roughly), right?
Your logic is flawed, because you are assuming that the same exact percentage of people using Xfire in Warhammer is the same exact percentage using xfire in Eve. You can't simply take number from Warhammer and multiply those by Eve to calculate some total.
Warhammer xfire numbers only represent warhammer, nothing else. People also made the same exact claims about xfires validity over on the Conan forums followed up by a myriad of excuses of why the servers showed low populations or "looked empty", but we all know how that turned out.
While Warhammer isn't anywhere close to the state of Conan on release, it is showing some of the exact same issues and Mythic knows it and they taking action to correct that course. That is going to be the big difference. Mythic actively trying to fix the problems instead of just talk about it.
1. It is useless trying to argue about Xfire. There are people who say " I don't use xfire, therefore it isn't accurate'. I've followed Xfire stats for the past 2 years. Every time a game released numbers it was what Xfire had preficted. WOW, AOC and Warhammer all have zero reason for people to play them and use Xfire... so it's silly for people to say that 'only WOW players use Xfre" The same proportion of AOC, WOW and Warhammer players use Xfire, which is why the Xfire numbers always support the numbers released by the companies. You can compare a games own trend very accurately, and you can do a ballpark comparision between games(within 20%)
2. Forget about counting full/full servers and showing the drop in them, compared to the increase in low/low servers. People will say " I have no problem finding a group on my server" and think that defeats your analysis
3. Forget about using bestseller lists where Warhammer is now selling less copies then 'Professor Layton and the Curious Village'... instead they will tell you about the 3 people they saw last night in T1. The game has sold less copies then 'never heard of that' games like the Professor for almost a month now.
I've seen all this before.. The next step is
Who cares if it only has 250-350k subscribers.. that is still really profitable for EA
The next step is
Who cares if it only has 100k subscribers, I am having fun.
Then finally you get to where AOC is at when you wonder when EA is going to turn the game off.
Guys, it's a financial report. EA can't make shit up on their investor statements. They can state things in a way that makes the overall picture of the company's fortunes look better than they might be in reality. However, when they say something like "WAR has 800K current subs" you can be damn sure that it's literally true. Make any arguments you like using using troll or fanboy assmath, X-fire numbers, words from angels holding glowing swords, or whatever...it doesn't matter. The game currently has 800K subs. Will it have 800K subs at the end of the Novermber? I seriously doubt it. But for the moment, the fact of the matter is 800K subs. Throw a party or cry yourself to sleep, depending on how that makes you feel.
There is ONE little error in your post.
The original EA report does NOT - and I repeat - does NOT speak of subscriptions. )
They speak of "players" and as this is a report of the 3rd quarter it ended on Sep 30th, the same period our friend MJ said there were ehmhem .... 750 K "accounts created".
As "accounts created" is a statement too difficult to put out on a non technical crowd read stock holders - , EA speaks of "players".
Please be on top of the info when you post and CHECK the orginal and official message, not some game reporter who thinks he can read.
Guys, it's a financial report. EA can't make shit up on their investor statements. They can state things in a way that make the overall picture of the company's fortunes look better than they might be in reality. However, when they say something like "WAR has 800K current subs" you can be damn sure that is literally true. Make any arguments you like using using troll or fanboy assmath, X-fire numbers, words from angels holding glowing swords, or whatever...it doesn't matter. The game currently has 800K subs. Will it have 800K subs at the end of the Novermber? I seriously doubt it. But for the moment, that fact of the matter is 800K subs. Throw a party or cry yourself to sleep, depending on how that makes you feel.
Is that link a financial report or is it someones analysis of some information EA released. I could be wrong, but that link reads like someones summary of what they read in "preliminary financial results for its fiscal second quarter ended September 30, 2008. ", not the official release itself. Even the copyright at the bottoms suggests this is not the actual financial reports, but a writers analysis of that report.
This area is not my strongsuit and it is possible that I am wrong, but that link just doesn't look like it points to the financial statement. To me it looks like the author of that article read the 800k number and screwed up the verbage, because they don't know how important the wording is. Similar to how people were saying Warhammer has 750k subscribers right after MJ said Warhammer had 750k accounts registered. There is a mile of difference in registered accounts, active players and subscribers. They all mean different things.
I'm sure there is someone here with a strong enough background that can make actual heads/tails of what is written?
Who the hell cares, seriosly play the game or don t. Talk about the game not the stupid guessing of numbers that no one actually knows. Such a waste of time.
server merges = death 6 weeks in and they arent adding servers...they arent even stable, they are killing almost 22 servers. Remember that article from Massively? during the launch he said WaR will settle around 250k ish subs. Most war fanbois laughed and said OMG WAR WILL GET 2 million subs easy !
lol...just lol.... see ya later WaR no more medicore MMO's please. the Majority have spoken. and yes we are the majority.. 750k accounts created 250k playing WaR Equals 500k people (majority) that think WaR is nothing special.
1.2mil boxes sold / 800k registered users...., yes this game is dead
server merges = death 6 weeks in and they arent adding servers...they arent even stable, they are killing almost 22 servers. Remember that article from Massively? during the launch he said WaR will settle around 250k ish subs. Most war fanbois laughed and said OMG WAR WILL GET 2 million subs easy !
lol...just lol.... see ya later WaR no more medicore MMO's please. the Majority have spoken. and yes we are the majority.. 750k accounts created 250k playing WaR Equals 500k people (majority) that think WaR is nothing special.
1.2mil boxes sold / 800k registered users...., yes this game is dead
Yep, because games must be played and not on dealer shelves or in the player's closets.
Therefore the merging of servers is needed urgently, before the last one puts out the light.
Comments
Hmmm another WAR is dying thread. This is neither new or exciting...
AoC is the fastest dying MMO of all time, let's not forget that.
Darkfall Travelogues!
I completely agree. I played WAR for the free month I got from paying for it and it just felt so sparse. I honestly didn't like the instanced battles either, I felt like I was playing Call of Duty 4 mmo style. That and after I was introduced to Darkfall I kinda lost interest in WAR since it wasnt' really what I've been waiting for in an MMO. The server merge deal should be good for WAR though, it'll make it a lot more exciting with denser populations in each server.
Jetrpg, not to nitpick, because I don't disagree very much with you. However, there really are plenty of quests to level up. You have to literally do every quest from each pairing and zone, including the rvr lake quests, but there are enough to get you from 1 tier to the next. PQ's will augment you with some blue gear, but I haven't found them required to gain the levels. And honestly, T3+ it is increasingly difficult to get a good enough group together to make PQ's worth the time IMO. Just go get all the quests done and if you need an elite chapter reward, go solo influence while sitting in the scenario queue.
Hohoho, that sounds pretty good to me, man.
TROLL ON LOL...........this thread FAIL's badly and why be so secret about who you are, If you believe in what you say,( post ) then surely you are willing to stand by what you say, or is this what it looks like, just another hate filled troll trying to get some attention, because he can't handle or understand the game he's tying to play,( or no one in the game wants' to play with him ) maybe you should go back and post this dribble on MMOSITE.com where you came from and this thread belongs.
I think it's pretty obvious that WAR was a very "safe" game for Mythic to develop. They didn't try anything risky or innovative, they stuck to the WoW formula and added sieges... Really nothing new with all this.
They grossly overestimated the retention factor this game offers. There simply isn't a reason to keep playing the game after a month or so, or at least for most people.
I believe gamers sit back and play games like Grand Theft Auto and Elder Scrolls and see what the MMO industry SHOULD be offering them. I do believe that the consumer is ready for the next level of MMO and are quite bored with the current batch. WoW will retain high numbers because it is WoW and people have toons that are years into the game. It's a social trend at this point to play WoW.
But new MMO games are going to struggle to achieve high subscriptions because they aren't advancing the genre. This industry has stop evolution for some time now.
There is hope on the horizon with the next batch of games but certainly WAR isn't going to compete with WoW. Heck, SWG had 250,000 subscribers back in 2003 and it was considered a niche game until the game mechanics were changed to compete with WoW.
Tecmo Bowl.
Where did you get 55% of current subscriptions left? It's not that hard to read the report. 1.2 million copies sold, 800k CURRENT subscriptions. See the word CURRENT?
Oh and I didn't get to play the first 3 weeks and didn't see the Full / Full servers list, but I'm pretty sure if that was the case, they would have added more servers. Depending on how many servers they added might also have played a role in the current populations. Not to mention, they may have increased the servers max population size.
Anyhow, the report is dated for today and it states 800k, so I'll just go with the flow and assume they aren't lying.
With 500K players the game had 24 Full to closed servers in EU.
Now they have about 25 to 30 low/low servers and it is supposed to have 800 K players?
No the report is from the quarter running up to Sep 30th and they already communicated they had 750K "accounts created" on that day (source MJ himself). So clearly the report is only talking of the created player accounts, not active ones.
55% is easely traced also: just look at www.xfire.com where WAR dropped these number of percentages for Xfire Warhammer players.
So we have the word of MJ himself, we have Xfire (War is at 12.5 less number of Wow players (4.5 M western subs there divided by 12.5... ) and we have a lot of empty servers compared to the first 3 weeks. All leading to the same conclusion: about 350K to 400K active players.
So UNLESS all these 3 are incorrect (MJ inclusive), the 800K is the accounts created in game and the 1.2 M sold means 400K of accounts still linger on dealers shelves.
This IS 2008 you know, if it weren't for open communications, we all would still believe FunCom had millions of subs.
Strategy, i played from pre-release to present and our EU server was never full, not once. It's still not full, therefore, there's no statistical proof for me of how the numbers changed.
Using Xfire is pointless, I know one person who uses it in my gaming circle, it's not representative, therefore cannot be taken as statistical proof of how the numbers have changed. And before you say that if 55% of Xfire users left then that should extrapolate to 55% of players leaving, I'll point out that if a certain type of gamer uses Xfire (i'll say no more on that) then that would magnify the actions of a certain small percentage of an unrepresentative minority of gamers with certain predefined preferences.
"People don't use razors because this poll i did of Amish people show that they don't use razors therefore I can say that people don't use razors"
Speculation never proves anything, it's just speculation.
They released too many servers, the game heavily depends on healthy server population.
this is a good move. if they didn't do this they would of lost a ton more subs.
PLaying: EvE, Ryzom
Waiting For: Earthrise, Perpetuum
Well I play since pre- release and I even noted the server populations: around Sep 23th they had 28 Full servers in EU at 21.00 PM. At that time 5 servers were on low. Queing times of more than 200+ people on about 7 to 9 servers at Chaos side were common in prime time.
That time was ... 500K players (source MJ). Two weeks later he announced "750 K accounts created". Now this press release speaks of "800K" players, while half the servers are now on low/low and the number of full servers are a handfull.
It is NOT because you were always on a medium server you can speak for all EU servers.
Care to look tonight (friday should be a good day for gaming...)?
So it is very clear to everyone (except for the rabid fan) a LOT of servers are now showing less people playing, and guess what ?
www.xfire.com with 15.000 registred (!) WAR players got to 50% less War players during working days in this same 4 weeks.
Be thankful there ARE tools like Xfire with thousands of War players on it to view the need of server merges. 7000 to 15000 XFire western War players are A LOT players to have a sample.
I am not speculating. I SEE the server status and look at the current number of War Players at www.xfire.com. IF 800K were actively playing (and not merely created accounts) , Wow would have 800x12.5= 10 M western subscribers. Impossible.
You WANT to believe the 800K active players? Great, where are they on the servers?
They HAVE TO DO server merges because they were too stupid to launch with way too many servers!
The population is spread out over so many servers, it's not even funny!
Sure 30-40% will quit after the first month. That's no suprise as that's todays standard. There are still many people buying a game, without reading the box and then see that they have to pay a monthly fee.
Next to that you always have people that burn through content in a month or just found out it's not their game and quit.
So yes here in EU they can clean up half the servers, wich leaves still roughly 30 well populated servers afterwards!
I don't see anything negative in that. Lot better then Age of Conan, that only has maybe 2-3 well populated servers left and rest being complete ghosttowns.
Cheers
www.xfire.com with 15.000 registred (!) WAR players got to 50% less War players during working days in this same 4 weeks.
Be thankful there ARE tools like Xfire with thousands of War players on it to view the need of server merges. 7000 to 15000 XFire western War players are A LOT players to have a sample.
For the last time, Xfire statistics are NOt a good sample. It is a good amount of people for a sample, but it is not a random sample at all, and therefore cannot be used to make ANY (ie: zero, none) conclusions. If this was a sampling of a random selection of 15000 people and now only 7000 play then yes, you could draw some conclusions from that.
However, this is 15000 of core gamers, the ones who probably have more than 5 MMOs in their "most played" list. These are the gamers that, ironically, also come to MMORPG.com to post about how every MMO in the world sucks.
I'd recommend you guys who are saying Xfire is a good indicator of subs to take a simple statistics course.... hell, I bet you can get one in high school... and then you'll know what you're saying is completely false. To make conclusions for anything, you need a random sample, not one sample taken from one isolated group that caters only to the less-casual gamers.
www.xfire.com with 15.000 registred (!) WAR players got to 50% less War players during working days in this same 4 weeks.
Be thankful there ARE tools like Xfire with thousands of War players on it to view the need of server merges. 7000 to 15000 XFire western War players are A LOT players to have a sample.
For the last time, Xfire statistics are NOt a good sample. It is a good amount of people for a sample, but it is not a random sample at all, and therefore cannot be used to make ANY (ie: zero, none) conclusions. If this was a sampling of a random selection of 15000 people and now only 7000 play then yes, you could draw some conclusions from that.
However, this is 15000 of core gamers, the ones who probably have more than 5 MMOs in their "most played" list. These are the gamers that, ironically, also come to MMORPG.com to post about how every MMO in the world sucks.
I'd recommend you guys who are saying Xfire is a good indicator of subs to take a simple statistics course.... hell, I bet you can get one in high school... and then you'll know what you're saying is completely false. To make conclusions for anything, you need a random sample, not one sample taken from one isolated group that caters only to the less-casual gamers.
http://www.xfire.com/games/who/Warhammer_Online_Age_of_Reckoning/
These stats above - now War is in position 12 today - are very accurate.
The problem is that these stats are NOT used for a social study with VERY limited samples. These are BIG samples with only ONE purpose. It gives very accurate stats how many PC game players play which games (and for how long) if they have Xfire installed on their computers.
Nothing more ---- but also nothing less !
Xfire users may be clowns, elderly people with no hair and would have a black or purple skin. I don't care. They are WAR players - used to be 15.000 - and now they are down to 7500 during weeks.
With a downward trend. Now look at your overall server populations.... are they UP ? Nope. So you could speak of percentages, but I let you show an overall and general constant drop, with a usual hick up every weekend. 45K Xfire played at the opening days with 500 K users (MJ source), 24 K played yesterday with 800K users .... EA lets you believe.
Sorry but I believe my eyes in viewing the server status in EU AND a program that doesn't need to worry about falling stock prices
Now look,at GW, EQ2, LOTRO and Wow and compare (and see the influence of patch updates etc ...)
Not accepting this t r e n d is foolish.
People need to stop claiming xfire is accurate for checking subs.
But lets use some of that flawed logic for a second, ok?
Warhammer has around a 25,000hour listing right now. So if warhammer only has 200-250k players, then that means EVE Online, which looks to be around 8000-8500 hours, would be down around 60-75k players (roughly), right?
But wait, EVE Online pretty regularly says what its subs are, and it's well over 200k.
I play warhammer (and EVE). I don't use xfire. I don't know of anyone I play either game with that uses it. Only certain types of gamers use crap like xfire. Those types tend to be found more in WoW, less in EVE. Warhammer doesn't seem to know which way it wants to go, but as the quarterly report info is from sept 30th, it's going by box sale accounts at that time, and doesn't factor in any gains or losses during October. However, WAR did have server cap increases at one point, and launched with way, way too many servers for its type of game. They should slash the servers in half, and put as many to high/high as they can. Even med/med can be pretty slim pickings for T4 fighting, granted it does not help that some of the stuff is screwed up. I'm currently carrying gold bags from Praag and Thunder Mountain that don't have set pieces for my warrior priest, and the bind on pickup/timer stuff for the Pve dungeon bosses that drop sets that help and are greatly needed for the higher RvR NPCs sucks royally. One or the other needs to go away.
Ok let's do the caluculations.
First I am talking basic PLAYERS playing (not subscriptions).
Wow has in weekends top of about 110 K number of players these days. War has about 9500 on weekends. So a 1/12 to 1/11 relation. Meaning 11 or 12 times more Wow players than WAR.
Since 800K accounts were created for War (own press release) and we see a 55% decrease on Xfire stats, we could argue there are around 400 K or even just a little less active players for War. Multiply: x 12 or x11--- Wow would have 4.400.000 to 4.800.000 players now (last known western subs of Jan 2008 which was 4.5 M,). But that game had a prelaunch patch and an increase in players , so very logical according to Xfire.
It used to be 1/8 at WAR's launch and before the famous pre release Wow patch... meaning (little less) 4M and 500K War players....
Strange coincidence isn't it?
Now on to AoC: at the end of June Xfire showed AoC with around 40 K Xfire users on average. MONTHS later FunCom said they had 420 K subs at the end of ... June. XFire showed the trend on a weekly basis back then, months before it was being confirmed by FunCom.
Now on to War: it is in about the same amount of Xfire players as AoC was at the end of June (even just a little less with the last days included)... meaning 40K XFire Playing Time (high weekend)...at the same time we saw the 50% decline of War on XFire.
Curious 50% of 750/800K created accounts is ... just a little less than 400 K.
Ok next step: EVE today had 2974 Xfire players against the 7421 Xfire players of WAR. That's 2.4 ratio between the two. It would mean WAR has 2.4 more players than EVE today, It could mean indeed that only about 170K were playing yesterday out of a possible 220K subs on EVE (estimated).
Everyone who knows EVE knows that the game isn't being played on a daily basis by the subs (older MMORPG - you advance even when not logging on). it's the Eve play style and logical for an older MMORPG.
So you have here all examples which show just how accurate number of players are demonstrated by XFire. NOT subs btw, but subs are used here as a reference and show that the number on XFire are rather very accurate to view player numbers.
You would NEVER get these results if Xfire were completely based on thin air.
Guys, it's a financial report. EA can't make shit up on their investor statements. They can state things in a way that makes the overall picture of the company's fortunes look better than they might be in reality. However, when they say something like "WAR has 800K current subs" you can be damn sure that it's literally true.
Make any arguments you like using using troll or fanboy assmath, X-fire numbers, words from angels holding glowing swords, or whatever...it doesn't matter. The game currently has 800K subs.
Will it have 800K subs at the end of the Novermber? I seriously doubt it. But for the moment, the fact of the matter is 800K subs. Throw a party or cry yourself to sleep, depending on how that makes you feel.
I don't want to write this, and you don't want to read it. But now it's too late for both of us.
Your logic is flawed, because you are assuming that the same exact percentage of people using Xfire in Warhammer is the same exact percentage using xfire in Eve. You can't simply take number from Warhammer and multiply those by Eve to calculate some total.
Warhammer xfire numbers only represent warhammer, nothing else. People also made the same exact claims about xfires validity over on the Conan forums followed up by a myriad of excuses of why the servers showed low populations or "looked empty", but we all know how that turned out.
While Warhammer isn't anywhere close to the state of Conan on release, it is showing some of the exact same issues and Mythic knows it and they taking action to correct that course. That is going to be the big difference. Mythic actively trying to fix the problems instead of just talk about it.
1. It is useless trying to argue about Xfire. There are people who say " I don't use xfire, therefore it isn't accurate'. I've followed Xfire stats for the past 2 years. Every time a game released numbers it was what Xfire had preficted. WOW, AOC and Warhammer all have zero reason for people to play them and use Xfire... so it's silly for people to say that 'only WOW players use Xfre" The same proportion of AOC, WOW and Warhammer players use Xfire, which is why the Xfire numbers always support the numbers released by the companies. You can compare a games own trend very accurately, and you can do a ballpark comparision between games(within 20%)
2. Forget about counting full/full servers and showing the drop in them, compared to the increase in low/low servers. People will say " I have no problem finding a group on my server" and think that defeats your analysis
3. Forget about using bestseller lists where Warhammer is now selling less copies then 'Professor Layton and the Curious Village'... instead they will tell you about the 3 people they saw last night in T1. The game has sold less copies then 'never heard of that' games like the Professor for almost a month now.
I've seen all this before.. The next step is
Who cares if it only has 250-350k subscribers.. that is still really profitable for EA
The next step is
Who cares if it only has 100k subscribers, I am having fun.
Then finally you get to where AOC is at when you wonder when EA is going to turn the game off.
There is ONE little error in your post.
The original EA report does NOT - and I repeat - does NOT speak of subscriptions.
)
They speak of "players" and as this is a report of the 3rd quarter it ended on Sep 30th, the same period our friend MJ said there were ehmhem .... 750 K "accounts created".
As "accounts created" is a statement too difficult to put out on a non technical crowd read stock holders - , EA speaks of "players".
Please be on top of the info when you post and CHECK the orginal and official message, not some game reporter who thinks he can read.
Is that link a financial report or is it someones analysis of some information EA released. I could be wrong, but that link reads like someones summary of what they read in "preliminary financial results for its fiscal second quarter ended September 30, 2008. ", not the official release itself. Even the copyright at the bottoms suggests this is not the actual financial reports, but a writers analysis of that report.
This area is not my strongsuit and it is possible that I am wrong, but that link just doesn't look like it points to the financial statement. To me it looks like the author of that article read the 800k number and screwed up the verbage, because they don't know how important the wording is. Similar to how people were saying Warhammer has 750k subscribers right after MJ said Warhammer had 750k accounts registered. There is a mile of difference in registered accounts, active players and subscribers. They all mean different things.
I'm sure there is someone here with a strong enough background that can make actual heads/tails of what is written?
Who the hell cares, seriosly play the game or don t. Talk about the game not the stupid guessing of numbers that no one actually knows. Such a waste of time.
1.2mil boxes sold / 800k registered users...., yes this game is dead
1.2mil boxes sold / 800k registered users...., yes this game is dead
Yep, because games must be played and not on dealer shelves or in the player's closets.
Therefore the merging of servers is needed urgently, before the last one puts out the light.
The Irony is that Funcom/AOC used almost the exact same numbers on their financial reports. 1.2M boxes sold and 750k users as of June 30th