Actually most servers are Medium/Medium, and there's 800k current players as stated in a recent report.
Correction.
It said 800 K players as of Sep 30 (the day the first fiscal quarter ended for EA). No problem: we see exactly the current number of War players on Xfire. That's legal financial information. They can't talk about the situation beyond that quarter, hence no word of "subscribers" in that report because that only began on October 18.
As of yesterday (elections) everyone knows now that a sample of 7000 is more than enough to measure the game playing of War over time.
Actually most servers are Medium/Medium, and there's 800k current players as stated in a recent report.
It said 800 K players as of Sep 30 (the day the first fiscal quarter ended for EA). No problem: we see exactly the current number of War players on Xfire.
As of yesterday (elections) everyone knows now that a sample of 7000 is more than enough to measure the game playing of War over time.
Yesterday's Election might have changed the World but it didn't changes the laws of statistics!
It doesn't matter how big a sample is when it is significantly biased.
Nice try at using spurious logic, but Xfire is only representaive of Xfire.
If you can't "Have your cake & eat it too", then how can "The proof of the pudding be in the eating"?
You clearly have no idea how polls work. I think you need to look up on how exactly how meaningful polls, like the exit polls for the presidential election, are made, as you are obviously very confused on the subject.
XFire also measures time played (while it's active), and not subscriptions. All we can say by XFire is that "there's fewer people playing WAR while running XFire". Trying to extrapolate specific data like subscriber numbers from this is pure insanity, though I can see it's useful as a weak escape route/smoke screen to use when facts aren't going your way.
You clearly have no idea how polls work. I think you need to look up on how exactly how meaningful polls, like the exit polls for the presidential election, are made, as you are obviously very confused on the subject. XFire also measures time played (while it's active), and not subscriptions. All we can say by XFire is that "there's fewer people playing WAR while running XFire". Trying to extrapolate specific data like subscriber numbers from this is pure insanity, though I can see it's useful as a weak escape route/smoke screen to use when facts aren't going your way.
So how come it exaclty shows what MJ wants to confirm.
70% retention since the billing began: see the Xfire graph on Oct 19th and the the following week.
Now the interesting part is THIS IS confirmed (again - as in all those other earlier cases - remember AoC subs at 420K in June while Xfire showed aprox the same equivalent).
Why do you think www.xfire.com shows these stats btw ??? )
/quote 1) Our retention rate is higher than 70% based on current data. DAoC was indeed 72% in North America. WAR's number is higher and remains higher than DAoC since billing began. I'm quite happy with WAR's numbers as they are exactly what I expected they would be. 2) No retailer has sent back copies of WAR, they are still selling nicely especially considering new games out/coming out, the economy, etc. 3) We opened the amount of servers we thought we would need for the sales volume we expected and opened a few extra to help with initial population load in the starter areas. If we had opened too few, there would have been queues on most servers and people would have been screaming at us (just as they screamed at Blizzard for WoW's initial server queuing). If we could have known the perfect number, we would have done that but we didn't so we took a guess and decided to open more rather than fewer servers. We might have been better off opening fewer (obviously) but we figured we'd be better off erring on the side of making life easier for the players rather than making them queue. Those are the facts. Oh, here's another fact FYI. I've never, ever said anything about WAR hitting WoW's numbers or anything like that and since we have already sold more copies of WAR than any other MMO (with the usual caveat of maybe WoW since I don't have their exact numbers) during the first 6 weeks how can I be anything but pleased with that? All my quotes/interviews have always focused on us being #2 as my goal and in terms of initial sales, well, we have met and/or exceeded that goal. In a year we'll really be able to judge how successful WAR is overall. Mark /endquote I suppose this won't stop all the doom trolls from proclaiming that "WAR is dead" "worse off than Vanguard/AoC etc.." or all that nonsense with Xfire. However those with a shred of decency left might think twice before posting such crap again.
I dont know how good or bad is war doing but, What you expect Mark Jacobs to say? He say War is doing well. Damn even Smedley says SWG is doing well. And Funcom said AoC was doing well for a long time too. BTW I dont know how War is doing, I just say, you can't expect the guy selling you an item to say that the item is not that good.
Anyway, if you have fun in a game you shouldnt care too much about sub numbers.
I have a few chars with the highest level being 25 and as far as I can see the servers are desserted. Impossible to do any PQs at all, rvr is dead usually you will find a max of 1 or 2 people wandering the rvr wastelands in the forlorn hope of finding an enemy player. Scenarios when they happen are always the same one, nordenwatch for tier 1, mourkain temple for tier 2 and tor anoc for tier 3. Don't get me wrong I love this game but atm it feels like I'm playing a single player game and I am starting to lose interest as a result. Can I ask the level 40s what it is like at 40? Note I actually saw another player last night!!
I should also add I usually play 9pm gmt to midnight.
I have a few chars with the highest level being 25 and as far as I can see the servers are desserted. Impossible to do any PQs at all, rvr is dead usually you will find a max of 1 or 2 people wandering the rvr wastelands in the forlorn hope of finding an enemy player. Scenarios when they happen are always the same one, nordenwatch for tier 1, mourkain temple for tier 2 and tor anoc for tier 3. Don't get me wrong I love this game but atm it feels like I'm playing a single player game and I am starting to lose interest as a result. Can I ask the level 40s what it is like at 40? Note I actually saw another player last night!! I should also add I usually play 9pm gmt to midnight.
Try rolling a new character on a Med/Med Server as an experiment.
I usually play in a similar timeslot on the European Servers & that's what I did after reading a thread about how much difference it makes if you are currently on a low population server.
If it seems better then move your original characters later or if you don't mind starting from scratch as they are still relatively low level, just keep them on hold until you are certain of the move like I am doing.
It's a shame that Mythic misjudged the amount of servers by so much, the number they created in Europe was just crazy. Since moving though I've noticed a big difference & hopefully you might see the same.
If you can't "Have your cake & eat it too", then how can "The proof of the pudding be in the eating"?
Try rolling a new character on a Med/Med Server as an experiment. I usually play in a similar timeslot on the European Servers & that's what I did after reading a thread about how much difference it makes if you are currently on a low population server. If it seems better then move your original characters later or if you don't mind starting from scratch as they are still relatively low level, just keep them on hold until you are certain of the move like I am doing. It's a shame that Mythic misjudged the amount of servers by so much, the number they created in Europe was just crazy. Since moving though I've noticed a big difference & hopefully you might see the same.
They didn't misjudge anything. Not even in Europe.
On the first 2 weeks in prime time every server was full (capped) or high. Only 25% were medium and only the 6 servers they added after one week (to limit the excessive long queing times to enter) never went anywhere. But all the others were capped, full and medium loaded.
The people just left after Oct 1st and were gradually NOT replaced with newer people due to the lesser sales starting in the second week of October when War fell out the top 100 on the general video sales on amazon.com. They know it. MJ even said they didn't misjudge anything in these hectic first 2 weeks.
I wonder why you always say they launched "too many servers". Just look back on these forums, the first week everyone was screaming to have new servers.
Of course at that time there were K 800 users (or like MJ said 750 K "accounts created"). Since then the servers became empty and with Xfire we all saw it coming.
But as you don't believe Xfire, you must think they are still with 800 K users
Try rolling a new character on a Med/Med Server as an experiment. I usually play in a similar timeslot on the European Servers & that's what I did after reading a thread about how much difference it makes if you are currently on a low population server. If it seems better then move your original characters later or if you don't mind starting from scratch as they are still relatively low level, just keep them on hold until you are certain of the move like I am doing. It's a shame that Mythic misjudged the amount of servers by so much, the number they created in Europe was just crazy. Since moving though I've noticed a big difference & hopefully you might see the same.
They didn't misjudge anything. Not even in Europe.
On the first 2 weeks in prime time every server was full (capped) or high. Only 25% were medium and only the 6 servers they added after one week (to limit the excessive long queing times to enter) never went anywhere. But all the others were capped, full and medium loaded.
The people just left after Oct 1st and were gradually NOT replaced with newer people due to the lesser sales starting in the second week of October when War fell out the top 100 on the general video sales on amazon.com. They know it. MJ even said they didn't misjudge anything in these hectic first 2 weeks.
I wonder why you always say they launched "too many servers". Just look back on these forums, the first week everyone was screaming to have new servers.
Of course at that time there were K 800 users (or like MJ said 750 K "accounts created"). Since then the servers became empty and with Xfire we all saw it coming.
But as you don't believe Xfire, you must think they are still with 800 K users
Funny, I remember choosing which server to create a character on and didn't see that at all.
As with most of your other comments it is highly exaggerated makes no sense. If the situation was as you claim then the retention rate would be less than 20% which not even your beloved Xfire is suggesting.
The other factor you constantly misinterpret is that Xfire only measure hours played for those people that can be bothered with running it in the back ground, not subscription rates. There are far better chat tools & unless you really like the gimmicky signatures there is no point in using it at all, especially when it affects performance in many games.
In the first week almost everyone that is still happily subscribed probably played it for longer because it had just launched. After the initial enthusiasm people tend to settle down into more regular playing patterns which would generate false data in primitive biased tools like Xfire.
Interesting language in your final comment though, you finally seem to be acknowledging that your support of Xfire is an act of faith rather than fact. On that note you must get excited around this time of year, after all if you really 'believe' in Xfire so strongly, you probably still believe in 'Santa Claus' too.
If you can't "Have your cake & eat it too", then how can "The proof of the pudding be in the eating"?
Xfire also tracks users. The graph is for /played, but right below that for each game they show the number of users logging in. At launch it was close to 16,000... now it is down to 6,700 /played and users generally line up, but not always. I look at the graph, but base my opinion from the users.
It's ok if you guys want to not believe what is happening. It's just obvious from so many different sources. Box sales plummeted after the first 2 weeks. Servers that had comfortable populations a month ago, are now deserted. There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence here and on other forums where people talk about the numbers of guildmates logging in. I've read plenty of stuff like 16 our of 200 people have not logged in 3 weeks, another said 4 out of 25. You also see a very large number of posts where people aren't upset at Mythic, but they just say the game is not what they expected and quit.
I also think the fact that MJ continually quotes misleading numbers says a lot about how badly things are going. First he said that average server populations were only 3% lower the day after the first billing date(oct 17th) compared to the day before. Which is misleading on so many levels. The biggest being that most players, including all of EU had not actually reached their last day. Anyone who did not enter their credit card the first day was of course, still on those servers. It also was misleading because people who were planning on quitting stopped playing WELL before the last day.
Now he throws out another number and 'under his breath' mentions that is only counts 'since billing begain'... which is extremely useless and misleading.
In both cases he could have given straight information. Instead he used worthless stats and hope that players assumed they were something different.
But it's ok, there are still people on AOC forums who they they have 500k subscribers too.
Xfire also tracks users. The graph is for /played, but right below that for each game they show the number of users logging in. At launch it was close to 16,000... now it is down to 6,700 /played and users generally line up, but not always. I look at the graph, but base my opinion from the users. It's ok if you guys want to not believe what is happening. It's just obvious from so many different sources. Box sales plummeted after the first 2 weeks. Servers that had comfortable populations a month ago, are now deserted. There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence here and on other forums where people talk about the numbers of guildmates logging in. I've read plenty of stuff like 16 our of 200 people have not logged in 3 weeks, another said 4 out of 25. You also see a very large number of posts where people aren't upset at Mythic, but they just say the game is not what they expected and quit. I also think the fact that MJ continually quotes misleading numbers says a lot about how badly things are going. First he said that average server populations were only 3% lower the day after the first billing date(oct 17th) compared to the day before. Which is misleading on so many levels. The biggest being that most players, including all of EU had not actually reached their last day. Anyone who did not enter their credit card the first day was of course, still on those servers. It also was misleading because people who were planning on quitting stopped playing WELL before the last day. Now he throws out another number and 'under his breath' mentions that is only counts 'since billing begain'... which is extremely useless and misleading. In both cases he could have given straight information. Instead he used worthless stats and hope that players assumed they were something different. But it's ok, there are still people on AOC forums who they they have 500k subscribers too.
Hey don't get me wrong, I am not trying to claim that the game isn't having problems.
I just hate sloppy statistics & the constant quotation of Xfire like it is was supposed to be the gaming equivalent of the 'Dow Jones Index' is just ridiculous.
If you can't "Have your cake & eat it too", then how can "The proof of the pudding be in the eating"?
Mark Jacobs fully expected the retention rate to be "Drum roll please" 70% In his next whistle stop tour of the forums he'll be providing the lottery numbers next week /psychic FTW
It probably was 70% but he needs to include the following months after the free month. Nice PR move to lie. Numbers show the facts, Server Transfers show the facts, his lies are just a deperate measure to try and hide the fact that the number of people playing are still declining.
You clearly have no idea how polls work. I think you need to look up on how exactly how meaningful polls, like the exit polls for the presidential election, are made, as you are obviously very confused on the subject. XFire also measures time played (while it's active), and not subscriptions. All we can say by XFire is that "there's fewer people playing WAR while running XFire". Trying to extrapolate specific data like subscriber numbers from this is pure insanity, though I can see it's useful as a weak escape route/smoke screen to use when facts aren't going your way.
So how come it exaclty shows what MJ wants to confirm.
70% retention since the billing began: see the Xfire graph on Oct 19th and the the following week.
Now the interesting part is THIS IS confirmed (again - as in all those other earlier cases - remember AoC subs at 420K in June while Xfire showed aprox the same equivalent).
Why do you think www.xfire.com shows these stats btw ??? )
I have a question.. isn't it possible that even though these people have stopped playing as much as they used to, that they could have infact kept their subscriptions? You know.. like they went back to their previous MMO but kept their WAR subscriptions when they wanted to jump in for a scenario or something? I know quite a few people who are currently playing both WoW (or another MMO) and WAR and don't mind paying for both..
I don't know too much about xfire, I've never used it and only a few people in my guild of 80+ use it. That chart makes things look bad, but it also looks like WAR is still the second most played MMO..
Waiting for Fallen Earth, World of Darkness, Old Republic, FFXIV
So how come it exaclty shows what MJ wants to confirm. 70% retention since the billing began: see the Xfire graph on Oct 19th and the the following week. Now the interesting part is THIS IS confirmed (again - as in all those other earlier cases - remember AoC subs at 420K in June while Xfire showed aprox the same equivalent). Why do you think www.xfire.com shows these stats btw ??? )
I have a question.. isn't it possible that even though these people have stopped playing as much as they used to, that they could have infact kept their subscriptions? You know.. like they went back to their previous MMO but kept their WAR subscriptions when they wanted to jump in for a scenario or something? I know quite a few people who are currently playing both WoW (or another MMO) and WAR and don't mind paying for both..
I don't know too much about xfire, I've never used it and only a few people in my guild of 80+ use it. That chart makes things look bad, but it also looks like WAR is still the second most played MMO..
This is very plausible, yes. People don't play or far less and still have a subscription running. Good post.
It happens to me all the time, for about one or maximum two months. After that I make a choice. It's all about the general feel you have.
Also in older MMO's I think a decent % of players still have subs but don't play very much. I think about Eve and LOTRO and Wow of course. But I think that only applies to the guys who pay with the credit cards. The people who use prepaid cards just run out of time and don't activate IF they think of it.
These stats are ALL about general trends.
I want WAR to have 250-350K subs. Really I do ! (the only thing I didn't like was the PvP control but if they could fix that I would come back).
But what I can NOT stand is this constant "cheating" on false figures. It reminds me way too much of AoC and their lying and not telling the truth. Things lke "active users" and "only 3% less players (but only in relation to ... yesterday)".
Now it's this 70% rule again. Over what period ? One week, two weeks ?
The same with those famous server caps. Caps were raised but WHEN and with HOW much? Never a decent answer. Always turning around. Therefore the only stats we have I trust and Amazon doesn't lie and why should 7000 XFire users be any different than other War players. The sample is much too big to be ignored.
Those who STILL believe this game has 800 K users spread over 113 servers: raise their hands. Ok now we know who still believes in Santa.
So blizz talk retention too: ""To date 46 percent of players who listed Warhammer as their reason for cancellation have reactivated their subscriptions to World of Warcraft."
So how come it exaclty shows what MJ wants to confirm. 70% retention since the billing began: see the Xfire graph on Oct 19th and the the following week. Now the interesting part is THIS IS confirmed (again - as in all those other earlier cases - remember AoC subs at 420K in June while Xfire showed aprox the same equivalent). Why do you think www.xfire.com shows these stats btw ??? )
I have a question.. isn't it possible that even though these people have stopped playing as much as they used to, that they could have infact kept their subscriptions? You know.. like they went back to their previous MMO but kept their WAR subscriptions when they wanted to jump in for a scenario or something? I know quite a few people who are currently playing both WoW (or another MMO) and WAR and don't mind paying for both..
I don't know too much about xfire, I've never used it and only a few people in my guild of 80+ use it. That chart makes things look bad, but it also looks like WAR is still the second most played MMO..
This is very plausible, yes. People don't play or far less and still have a subscription running. Good post.
It happens to me all the time, for about one or maximum two months. After that I make a choice. It's all about the general feel you have.
Also in older MMO's I think a decent % of players still have subs but don't play very much. I think about Eve and LOTRO and Wow of course. But I think that only applies to the guys who pay with the credit cards. The people who use prepaid cards just run out of time and don't activate IF they think of it.
These stats are ALL about general trends.
I want WAR to have 250-350K subs. Really I do ! (the only thing I didn't like was the PvP control but if they could fix that I would come back).
But what I can NOT stand is this constant "cheating" on false figures. It reminds me way too much of AoC and their lying and not telling the truth. Things lke "active users" and "only 3% less players (but only in relation to ... yesterday)".
Now it's this 70% rule again. Over what period ? One week, two weeks ?
The same with those famous server caps. Caps were raised but WHEN and with HOW much? Never a decent answer. Always turning around. Therefore the only stats we have I trust and Amazon doesn't lie and why should 7000 XFire users be any different than other War players. The sample is much too big to be ignored.
Those who STILL believe this game has 800 K users spread over 113 servers: raise their hands. Ok now we know who still believes in Santa.
LOL, Stop trying to pretend that anyone who thinks Xfire Statistics are nonsense is just trying to defend the game & we all know that you are the one that believes Santa lives in the Lost City of Atlantis rather than at the North Pole.
As I said earlier on this thread.
Hey don't get me wrong, I am not trying to claim that the game isn't having problems.
I just hate sloppy statistics & the constant quotation of Xfire like it is was supposed to be the gaming equivalent of the 'Dow Jones Index' is just ridiculous.
It's bizarre that in your latest post you claim to have such a sense of injustice toward anyone using bad statistics, but somehow don't apply the same logic to yourself.
As for reasons why 7000 Xfire users should be any different than other WAR players. The fact that most people think it is a complete waste of time, suggests that people that do use it are hardly going to be a random sample, but why speculate just look at the published demographics of Xfire users!
The comment about certain things 'Only applying to the guys that use Credit Cards' was also amusing, surely that would be most adult game players. Weren't prepaid game cards purely introduced for children, but since a very large percentage of Xfire users are still under 18 that explains your interest.
Unfortunately your fetish for block capitals seems to have emerged again but other than that keep it up, your posts are a constant source of amusement.
If you can't "Have your cake & eat it too", then how can "The proof of the pudding be in the eating"?
All i know is at my local EB Games there isn t a copy of WAR at all. More are coming in as we speak. When AOC was a month out he couldn t sell the 30 or so copies on the shelf at all. So i would say comparing those 2 WAR is and will be a much larger success.
Personal posts from the hype machine is never to be taken seriously. Look, the game got problems and Mark is sugarcoating it, same as you guys do. You know it, we know it and he know it. He can't say otherwise though cause how long do you think he keep his job if he go around admitting to those problems. His job is to keep the pr machine going and have good community relations with the general public. It's the same with every mmo out there. As one example, Craig Morrison aka Silirrion, as good as a game director he is, never went out and admitted to the problems Anarchy Online had, neither did Gaute Godager. Craig didn't admit the problems AoC had/have either. It's just the way it is, so never take their hyped post for granted. I don't hate on the game at all though, it's just the facts staring me in the eyes. Game need a bloody big band-aid to patch it up and somehow manage to lure and tempt ex-war players, such as myself, to resubscribe to the game. On the 250k subscribers as a goal Mythic had, it's amazing how fast people forget. They aimed at 1 million, and Mark himself said that if WAR didn't reach that goal he feared for the future of mmo's. That man is full of himself and that comment proves it. The mmo genre will outlive both WoW and WAR and if WAR plonks it will leave no marks at all on the mmo market. It's a much bigger deal if WoW falls flat on its face, but the chance of that happening is close to zero. Even that hypothetical event wont change the mmo market much except flooding it with mmo addicts without a game to play. The market will still be there though, players will still play mmo's and developers will still make mmo's.
Did he also say that they needed 500,000 subs to keep the game running. Anyone remember the 500,000 number?
All i know is at my local EB Games there isn t a copy of WAR at all. More are coming in as we speak. When AOC was a month out he couldn t sell the 30 or so copies on the shelf at all. So i would say comparing those 2 WAR is and will be a much larger success.
i went and got fallout 3 the other day from my EB, warhammer was the only game with more copies on the shelf than any other in the store! then again it makes it worse as WAR was designed for the masses.
Last nite half the servers were med/med. Clicked on a low/low server where I had a character and a msg saying warning this is a low pop server go here to transfer blah blah blah.
Games doing fine.
They made more servers and kept the pop cap low at release so the servers wouldnt get stressed and crash.
Long ques, crashing and laggy servers = bad release.
Now there pulling everyone off the extra servers and will probaly drop em. Working as intended.
All i know is at my local EB Games there isn t a copy of WAR at all. More are coming in as we speak. When AOC was a month out he couldn t sell the 30 or so copies on the shelf at all. So i would say comparing those 2 WAR is and will be a much larger success.
i went and got fallout 3 the other day from my EB, warhammer was the only game with more copies on the shelf than any other in the store! then again it makes it worse as WAR was designed for the masses.
Meaningless Personal Experience #1, meet Meaningless Personal Experience #2. Can Xfire and Amazon lists be far behind?
New games with server merges are NOT "working as intended"... Far from it. I don't think WAR is going to be shut down anytime soon but they clearly anticipated more subscribers than what they actually achieved.
Moving people from server to server is never ideal.
You clearly have no idea how polls work. I think you need to look up on how exactly how meaningful polls, like the exit polls for the presidential election, are made, as you are obviously very confused on the subject. XFire also measures time played (while it's active), and not subscriptions. All we can say by XFire is that "there's fewer people playing WAR while running XFire". Trying to extrapolate specific data like subscriber numbers from this is pure insanity, though I can see it's useful as a weak escape route/smoke screen to use when facts aren't going your way.
So how come it exaclty shows what MJ wants to confirm.
70% retention since the billing began: see the Xfire graph on Oct 19th and the the following week.
Now the interesting part is THIS IS confirmed (again - as in all those other earlier cases - remember AoC subs at 420K in June while Xfire showed aprox the same equivalent).
Why do you think www.xfire.com shows these stats btw ??? )
I have a question.. isn't it possible that even though these people have stopped playing as much as they used to, that they could have infact kept their subscriptions? You know.. like they went back to their previous MMO but kept their WAR subscriptions when they wanted to jump in for a scenario or something? I know quite a few people who are currently playing both WoW (or another MMO) and WAR and don't mind paying for both..
I don't know too much about xfire, I've never used it and only a few people in my guild of 80+ use it. That chart makes things look bad, but it also looks like WAR is still the second most played MMO..
Yes
I have 2 RL friends who both subbed for 3 months, and no longer play (1 has gone back to EQ2 (why???) and the other LoTRO).
I will decide if I am gonna sub or not when I read the feedback from patch 1.1 in December....
Nice try to spin that one lmao... New games with server merges are NOT "working as intended"... Far from it. I don't think WAR is going to be shut down anytime soon but they clearly anticipated more subscribers than what they actually achieved. Moving people from server to server is never ideal.
Says who?
I would rather have a server merge than a bad launch. And technicaly its not a server merge. But a character transfer service. Theres a difference. Notice how they point out its free right now. Its a common pay service. And you will have to pay for it later on.
Comments
Actually most servers are Medium/Medium, and there's 800k current players as stated in a recent report.
Correction.
It said 800 K players as of Sep 30 (the day the first fiscal quarter ended for EA). No problem: we see exactly the current number of War players on Xfire. That's legal financial information. They can't talk about the situation beyond that quarter, hence no word of "subscribers" in that report because that only began on October 18.
As of yesterday (elections) everyone knows now that a sample of 7000 is more than enough to measure the game playing of War over time.
http://www.xfire.com/games/who/Warhammer_Online_Age_of_Reckoning/
This link shows the current situation.
It said 800 K players as of Sep 30 (the day the first fiscal quarter ended for EA). No problem: we see exactly the current number of War players on Xfire.
As of yesterday (elections) everyone knows now that a sample of 7000 is more than enough to measure the game playing of War over time.
Yesterday's Election might have changed the World but it didn't changes the laws of statistics!
It doesn't matter how big a sample is when it is significantly biased.
Nice try at using spurious logic, but Xfire is only representaive of Xfire.
If you can't "Have your cake & eat it too", then how can "The proof of the pudding be in the eating"?
Take the Hecatomb? TCG What Is Your Doom? quiz.
You clearly have no idea how polls work. I think you need to look up on how exactly how meaningful polls, like the exit polls for the presidential election, are made, as you are obviously very confused on the subject.
XFire also measures time played (while it's active), and not subscriptions. All we can say by XFire is that "there's fewer people playing WAR while running XFire". Trying to extrapolate specific data like subscriber numbers from this is pure insanity, though I can see it's useful as a weak escape route/smoke screen to use when facts aren't going your way.
So how come it exaclty shows what MJ wants to confirm.
70% retention since the billing began: see the Xfire graph on Oct 19th and the the following week.
Now the interesting part is THIS IS confirmed (again - as in all those other earlier cases - remember AoC subs at 420K in June while Xfire showed aprox the same equivalent).
Why do you think www.xfire.com shows these stats btw ???
)
I dont know how good or bad is war doing but, What you expect Mark Jacobs to say? He say War is doing well. Damn even Smedley says SWG is doing well. And Funcom said AoC was doing well for a long time too. BTW I dont know how War is doing, I just say, you can't expect the guy selling you an item to say that the item is not that good.
Anyway, if you have fun in a game you shouldnt care too much about sub numbers.
I have a few chars with the highest level being 25 and as far as I can see the servers are desserted. Impossible to do any PQs at all, rvr is dead usually you will find a max of 1 or 2 people wandering the rvr wastelands in the forlorn hope of finding an enemy player. Scenarios when they happen are always the same one, nordenwatch for tier 1, mourkain temple for tier 2 and tor anoc for tier 3. Don't get me wrong I love this game but atm it feels like I'm playing a single player game and I am starting to lose interest as a result. Can I ask the level 40s what it is like at 40? Note I actually saw another player last night!!
I should also add I usually play 9pm gmt to midnight.
Try rolling a new character on a Med/Med Server as an experiment.
I usually play in a similar timeslot on the European Servers & that's what I did after reading a thread about how much difference it makes if you are currently on a low population server.
If it seems better then move your original characters later or if you don't mind starting from scratch as they are still relatively low level, just keep them on hold until you are certain of the move like I am doing.
It's a shame that Mythic misjudged the amount of servers by so much, the number they created in Europe was just crazy. Since moving though I've noticed a big difference & hopefully you might see the same.
If you can't "Have your cake & eat it too", then how can "The proof of the pudding be in the eating"?
Take the Hecatomb? TCG What Is Your Doom? quiz.
They didn't misjudge anything. Not even in Europe.
On the first 2 weeks in prime time every server was full (capped) or high. Only 25% were medium and only the 6 servers they added after one week (to limit the excessive long queing times to enter) never went anywhere. But all the others were capped, full and medium loaded.
The people just left after Oct 1st and were gradually NOT replaced with newer people due to the lesser sales starting in the second week of October when War fell out the top 100 on the general video sales on amazon.com. They know it. MJ even said they didn't misjudge anything in these hectic first 2 weeks.
I wonder why you always say they launched "too many servers". Just look back on these forums, the first week everyone was screaming to have new servers.
Of course at that time there were K 800 users (or like MJ said 750 K "accounts created"). Since then the servers became empty and with Xfire we all saw it coming.
But as you don't believe Xfire, you must think they are still with 800 K users
They didn't misjudge anything. Not even in Europe.
On the first 2 weeks in prime time every server was full (capped) or high. Only 25% were medium and only the 6 servers they added after one week (to limit the excessive long queing times to enter) never went anywhere. But all the others were capped, full and medium loaded.
The people just left after Oct 1st and were gradually NOT replaced with newer people due to the lesser sales starting in the second week of October when War fell out the top 100 on the general video sales on amazon.com. They know it. MJ even said they didn't misjudge anything in these hectic first 2 weeks.
I wonder why you always say they launched "too many servers". Just look back on these forums, the first week everyone was screaming to have new servers.
Of course at that time there were K 800 users (or like MJ said 750 K "accounts created"). Since then the servers became empty and with Xfire we all saw it coming.
But as you don't believe Xfire, you must think they are still with 800 K users
Funny, I remember choosing which server to create a character on and didn't see that at all.
As with most of your other comments it is highly exaggerated makes no sense. If the situation was as you claim then the retention rate would be less than 20% which not even your beloved Xfire is suggesting.
The other factor you constantly misinterpret is that Xfire only measure hours played for those people that can be bothered with running it in the back ground, not subscription rates. There are far better chat tools & unless you really like the gimmicky signatures there is no point in using it at all, especially when it affects performance in many games.
In the first week almost everyone that is still happily subscribed probably played it for longer because it had just launched. After the initial enthusiasm people tend to settle down into more regular playing patterns which would generate false data in primitive biased tools like Xfire.
Interesting language in your final comment though, you finally seem to be acknowledging that your support of Xfire is an act of faith rather than fact. On that note you must get excited around this time of year, after all if you really 'believe' in Xfire so strongly, you probably still believe in 'Santa Claus' too.
If you can't "Have your cake & eat it too", then how can "The proof of the pudding be in the eating"?
Take the Hecatomb? TCG What Is Your Doom? quiz.
Xfire also tracks users. The graph is for /played, but right below that for each game they show the number of users logging in. At launch it was close to 16,000... now it is down to 6,700 /played and users generally line up, but not always. I look at the graph, but base my opinion from the users.
It's ok if you guys want to not believe what is happening. It's just obvious from so many different sources. Box sales plummeted after the first 2 weeks. Servers that had comfortable populations a month ago, are now deserted. There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence here and on other forums where people talk about the numbers of guildmates logging in. I've read plenty of stuff like 16 our of 200 people have not logged in 3 weeks, another said 4 out of 25. You also see a very large number of posts where people aren't upset at Mythic, but they just say the game is not what they expected and quit.
I also think the fact that MJ continually quotes misleading numbers says a lot about how badly things are going. First he said that average server populations were only 3% lower the day after the first billing date(oct 17th) compared to the day before. Which is misleading on so many levels. The biggest being that most players, including all of EU had not actually reached their last day. Anyone who did not enter their credit card the first day was of course, still on those servers. It also was misleading because people who were planning on quitting stopped playing WELL before the last day.
Now he throws out another number and 'under his breath' mentions that is only counts 'since billing begain'... which is extremely useless and misleading.
In both cases he could have given straight information. Instead he used worthless stats and hope that players assumed they were something different.
But it's ok, there are still people on AOC forums who they they have 500k subscribers too.
Hey don't get me wrong, I am not trying to claim that the game isn't having problems.
I just hate sloppy statistics & the constant quotation of Xfire like it is was supposed to be the gaming equivalent of the 'Dow Jones Index' is just ridiculous.
If you can't "Have your cake & eat it too", then how can "The proof of the pudding be in the eating"?
Take the Hecatomb? TCG What Is Your Doom? quiz.
It probably was 70% but he needs to include the following months after the free month. Nice PR move to lie. Numbers show the facts, Server Transfers show the facts, his lies are just a deperate measure to try and hide the fact that the number of people playing are still declining.
So how come it exaclty shows what MJ wants to confirm.
70% retention since the billing began: see the Xfire graph on Oct 19th and the the following week.
Now the interesting part is THIS IS confirmed (again - as in all those other earlier cases - remember AoC subs at 420K in June while Xfire showed aprox the same equivalent).
Why do you think www.xfire.com shows these stats btw ???
)
I have a question.. isn't it possible that even though these people have stopped playing as much as they used to, that they could have infact kept their subscriptions? You know.. like they went back to their previous MMO but kept their WAR subscriptions when they wanted to jump in for a scenario or something? I know quite a few people who are currently playing both WoW (or another MMO) and WAR and don't mind paying for both..
I don't know too much about xfire, I've never used it and only a few people in my guild of 80+ use it. That chart makes things look bad, but it also looks like WAR is still the second most played MMO..
Waiting for Fallen Earth, World of Darkness, Old Republic, FFXIV
I have a question.. isn't it possible that even though these people have stopped playing as much as they used to, that they could have infact kept their subscriptions? You know.. like they went back to their previous MMO but kept their WAR subscriptions when they wanted to jump in for a scenario or something? I know quite a few people who are currently playing both WoW (or another MMO) and WAR and don't mind paying for both..
I don't know too much about xfire, I've never used it and only a few people in my guild of 80+ use it. That chart makes things look bad, but it also looks like WAR is still the second most played MMO..
This is very plausible, yes. People don't play or far less and still have a subscription running. Good post.
It happens to me all the time, for about one or maximum two months. After that I make a choice. It's all about the general feel you have.
Also in older MMO's I think a decent % of players still have subs but don't play very much. I think about Eve and LOTRO and Wow of course. But I think that only applies to the guys who pay with the credit cards. The people who use prepaid cards just run out of time and don't activate IF they think of it.
These stats are ALL about general trends.
I want WAR to have 250-350K subs. Really I do ! (the only thing I didn't like was the PvP control but if they could fix that I would come back).
But what I can NOT stand is this constant "cheating" on false figures. It reminds me way too much of AoC and their lying and not telling the truth. Things lke "active users" and "only 3% less players (but only in relation to ... yesterday)".
Now it's this 70% rule again. Over what period ? One week, two weeks ?
The same with those famous server caps. Caps were raised but WHEN and with HOW much? Never a decent answer. Always turning around. Therefore the only stats we have I trust and Amazon doesn't lie and why should 7000 XFire users be any different than other War players. The sample is much too big to be ignored.
Those who STILL believe this game has 800 K users spread over 113 servers: raise their hands. Ok now we know who still believes in Santa.
So blizz talk retention too: ""To date 46 percent of players who listed Warhammer as their reason for cancellation have reactivated their subscriptions to World of Warcraft."
bet that made MJ froth at the mouth.
www.edge-online.com/news/blizzard-unfazed-conan-warhammer
I have a question.. isn't it possible that even though these people have stopped playing as much as they used to, that they could have infact kept their subscriptions? You know.. like they went back to their previous MMO but kept their WAR subscriptions when they wanted to jump in for a scenario or something? I know quite a few people who are currently playing both WoW (or another MMO) and WAR and don't mind paying for both..
I don't know too much about xfire, I've never used it and only a few people in my guild of 80+ use it. That chart makes things look bad, but it also looks like WAR is still the second most played MMO..
This is very plausible, yes. People don't play or far less and still have a subscription running. Good post.
It happens to me all the time, for about one or maximum two months. After that I make a choice. It's all about the general feel you have.
Also in older MMO's I think a decent % of players still have subs but don't play very much. I think about Eve and LOTRO and Wow of course. But I think that only applies to the guys who pay with the credit cards. The people who use prepaid cards just run out of time and don't activate IF they think of it.
These stats are ALL about general trends.
I want WAR to have 250-350K subs. Really I do ! (the only thing I didn't like was the PvP control but if they could fix that I would come back).
But what I can NOT stand is this constant "cheating" on false figures. It reminds me way too much of AoC and their lying and not telling the truth. Things lke "active users" and "only 3% less players (but only in relation to ... yesterday)".
Now it's this 70% rule again. Over what period ? One week, two weeks ?
The same with those famous server caps. Caps were raised but WHEN and with HOW much? Never a decent answer. Always turning around. Therefore the only stats we have I trust and Amazon doesn't lie and why should 7000 XFire users be any different than other War players. The sample is much too big to be ignored.
Those who STILL believe this game has 800 K users spread over 113 servers: raise their hands. Ok now we know who still believes in Santa.
LOL, Stop trying to pretend that anyone who thinks Xfire Statistics are nonsense is just trying to defend the game & we all know that you are the one that believes Santa lives in the Lost City of Atlantis rather than at the North Pole.
As I said earlier on this thread.
Hey don't get me wrong, I am not trying to claim that the game isn't having problems.
I just hate sloppy statistics & the constant quotation of Xfire like it is was supposed to be the gaming equivalent of the 'Dow Jones Index' is just ridiculous.
It's bizarre that in your latest post you claim to have such a sense of injustice toward anyone using bad statistics, but somehow don't apply the same logic to yourself.
As for reasons why 7000 Xfire users should be any different than other WAR players. The fact that most people think it is a complete waste of time, suggests that people that do use it are hardly going to be a random sample, but why speculate just look at the published demographics of Xfire users!
The comment about certain things 'Only applying to the guys that use Credit Cards' was also amusing, surely that would be most adult game players. Weren't prepaid game cards purely introduced for children, but since a very large percentage of Xfire users are still under 18 that explains your interest.
Unfortunately your fetish for block capitals seems to have emerged again but other than that keep it up, your posts are a constant source of amusement.
If you can't "Have your cake & eat it too", then how can "The proof of the pudding be in the eating"?
Take the Hecatomb? TCG What Is Your Doom? quiz.
All i know is at my local EB Games there isn t a copy of WAR at all. More are coming in as we speak. When AOC was a month out he couldn t sell the 30 or so copies on the shelf at all. So i would say comparing those 2 WAR is and will be a much larger success.
Did he also say that they needed 500,000 subs to keep the game running. Anyone remember the 500,000 number?
i went and got fallout 3 the other day from my EB, warhammer was the only game with more copies on the shelf than any other in the store! then again it makes it worse as WAR was designed for the masses.
Last nite half the servers were med/med. Clicked on a low/low server where I had a character and a msg saying warning this is a low pop server go here to transfer blah blah blah.
Games doing fine.
They made more servers and kept the pop cap low at release so the servers wouldnt get stressed and crash.
Long ques, crashing and laggy servers = bad release.
Now there pulling everyone off the extra servers and will probaly drop em. Working as intended.
i went and got fallout 3 the other day from my EB, warhammer was the only game with more copies on the shelf than any other in the store! then again it makes it worse as WAR was designed for the masses.
Meaningless Personal Experience #1, meet Meaningless Personal Experience #2. Can Xfire and Amazon lists be far behind?
Nice try to spin that one lmao...
New games with server merges are NOT "working as intended"... Far from it. I don't think WAR is going to be shut down anytime soon but they clearly anticipated more subscribers than what they actually achieved.
Moving people from server to server is never ideal.
Tecmo Bowl.
So how come it exaclty shows what MJ wants to confirm.
70% retention since the billing began: see the Xfire graph on Oct 19th and the the following week.
Now the interesting part is THIS IS confirmed (again - as in all those other earlier cases - remember AoC subs at 420K in June while Xfire showed aprox the same equivalent).
Why do you think www.xfire.com shows these stats btw ???
)
I have a question.. isn't it possible that even though these people have stopped playing as much as they used to, that they could have infact kept their subscriptions? You know.. like they went back to their previous MMO but kept their WAR subscriptions when they wanted to jump in for a scenario or something? I know quite a few people who are currently playing both WoW (or another MMO) and WAR and don't mind paying for both..
I don't know too much about xfire, I've never used it and only a few people in my guild of 80+ use it. That chart makes things look bad, but it also looks like WAR is still the second most played MMO..
Yes
I have 2 RL friends who both subbed for 3 months, and no longer play (1 has gone back to EQ2 (why???) and the other LoTRO).
I will decide if I am gonna sub or not when I read the feedback from patch 1.1 in December....
Currently Playing Nothing...
Says who?
I would rather have a server merge than a bad launch. And technicaly its not a server merge. But a character transfer service. Theres a difference. Notice how they point out its free right now. Its a common pay service. And you will have to pay for it later on.