AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
Originally posted by Jackdog
Originally posted by openedge1
Origi
This issue here lies in the fact that the assumption is EVERY person who played AoC used XFire.
The number of Xfire players has dropped by 90%, and that I can vouch for. The poster is stating the overall player base, and that is where his math goes wrong.
Xfire is a random sample of player. Fanbois and shills seem to think that 90% of the XFire players quit but most of the non XFire players stayed. Bad bad logic there OpenEdge unless you can prove that XFire players are some how different from the average person who bought and played AoC.
Now if you can pull up some spead sheets that show that XFire users tend to quit games at a more rapid pace than non XFire gamers I might be able to buy into that but otherwise it is only logical to believe that XFire users and non XFire users quit at about the same pace. I don't use XFire and I quit before the end of the free month and so did a lot of other non Xfire users in my guild. As a matter of fact I cannot think of anyone in my guild who uses XFire and we all ( 50+) quit within a month.
Can you prove X-fire users are average AoC players? It works both ways. It is a random sample of people who have Xfire installed nothing else. And therefore any subsequent stats are based off that small populous from which we can't say if they are or are not an average Age of Conan player.
It is like asking how many people kept their bus ticket from the number 43 ride from downtown to home and trying to guess how often they ride the bus. It doesn't take into account if that person is working part time / full time / what they do in life, just that they used the bus at some point. Your measuring how often they use the bus as populous. Thing is one sub is one sub, doesn't matter how much you people want to argue it is still the same sub being paid out therefore the only proper metric is the amount of people and not how long they are playing. Age of Conan in from the people that use Xfire has only lost 500 people since August in this area.
Of course those that dislike the game will go for the higher number such as hours played and not amount of people. Xfire also doesn't tell us about the casual gamer either.
Think about it. Go look at the Xfire threads for the population and not the hours spent over the past few months and now go look at the population.
Such a small number of sample base just shows what a few ants like to do from a whole colony.
Can you prove X-fire users are average AoC players? It works both ways. It is a random sample of people who have Xfire installed nothing else. And therefore any subsequent stats are based off that small populous from which we can't say if they are or are not an average Age of Conan player.
trying to argue the games population is healthy when they are doing server merges is a self defeating argument. I guess they are merging servers because they are bored?
It cracks me up how people who really want AoC to succeed will trash xfire on how it has no meaning on how many people play Conan. But once it goes up a few notches on the board, all you hear is "AOC IS INCREASING IN POPULATION!!!!!!!!!!!!"
All xfire is, is a fairly accurate tool to use on what the population of an mmo or pc game has. Its just like how Fox uses the nielson ratings on how many people watched the Super Bowl or any other show on television. If you hear that 80 million people watched the super bowl it doesnt mean exactly 80 million, its a determination based on how many nielson boxes watched it then they calculate that by whatever formula they use.
ITS THAT SIMPLE. Any other excuses is just bullshit.
btw...Numbers for AoC will gradually go up for a while but will fall back down just like they did after they added the new area. People will play because of the server merges then find out that its just the same old crap and cancel.
AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
Originally posted by Jackdog
Originally posted by AmazingAvery
Can you prove X-fire users are average AoC players? It works both ways. It is a random sample of people who have Xfire installed nothing else. And therefore any subsequent stats are based off that small populous from which we can't say if they are or are not an average Age of Conan player.
trying to argue the games population is healthy when they are doing server merges is a self defeating argument. I guess they are merging servers because they are bored?
Ok so all the servers at launch were packed? I think not. Even with funcom adding in additional servers post launch based on how fast the game was selling was right / wrong? who knows if that was the best course of action. Simple fact is there were plenty of servers that were low pop and always have been.
Population can still be healthy and still be spread thin over a large area.
Take a city for example - downtown is going to be more populated rather than the outskirts of that city - but they still fall under the same name. Difference is that downtown there are usually more ammenities than on the outskirts (people / population)
The merges was a community led request before any official announcement was made. It was asked for and given.
Whether it was right or wrong in terms of the amount of servers released for play at launch doesn't matter now.
The population is spread too thin over a large area. In that area there are more than healthy servers that have been like that since launch. (pre launch guilds and community etc)
There were always too many servers and it has to be condensed at some point if things stayed the course they were on - which is where we are at today.
The first merge from 50 + servers is a success - not one complaint and a reinvigorated server.
Do this as many times as needed and what do we have?
Something bad? I think not.
There are more pro's than con's to this. You yourself are looking to come back, want to play on a dead server? No course you don't.
What does it matter to the person (who wants to play on a populated server and finds one) that there are dead servers in game if your going to roll on a good one. - Doesn't matter much really does it.
What does it matter to those people who are already playing and paying a sub on a dead server? - Everything to be able to do so with more people.
Does the amount of servers the game has ultimately effect your decision to play - I think to some degree, yes. But how many? You are not going to see everyone of those people are you?
Heck I don't expect to see everyone on the server I play on.
All that matters is there are people in game around you for the mechanics of the game to work properly and that is not happening right on dead servers is it.
So yea I am sure FC just decided to merge for the fun of it.
We can see quite clearly that for a long time now some servers have been pretty much DOA.
Even with cutting back the mass of servers the game has to an amount that properly supports it's playerbase and those coming to the game is no bad thing.
And with the amount left over after all this is done? Is that going to be an indication of success and is x-fire going to tell us so?
What if this game had 8 servers for US and 8 for EU to begin with and the populous was there and X-fire stats were the same - still going to class the game as not increasing?
At the end of the day the amount of servers doesn't matter if the trend is still the same no matter how it is fabricated. Amount of servers doesn't fit into the equation here as we are not loosing or gaining that Xfire can tell.
What will happen is a more rounded server community, players will be happier which after all is the aim here.
EDIT:
What if it was like this from the start with people saying the population was great - it is just based of the individuals experience from one server (unless they rolled on more) - wouldn't that go against the X-fire statements - or would Xfire trends still win out even though it goes against personal experience - still can't tell you how a particular server is - which is all you might be after to begin with - a decent pop
Like I said more pro's than con's.
AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
Originally posted by Hamrtime2
It cracks me up how people who really want AoC to succeed will trash xfire on how it has no meaning on how many people play Conan. But once it goes up a few notches on the board, all you hear is "AOC IS INCREASING IN POPULATION!!!!!!!!!!!!" All xfire is, is a fairly accurate tool to use on what the population of an mmo or pc game has. Its just like how Fox uses the nielson ratings on how many people watched the Super Bowl or any other show on television. If you hear that 80 million people watched the super bowl it doesnt mean exactly 80 million, its a determination based on how many nielson boxes watched it then they calculate that by whatever formula they use. ITS THAT SIMPLE. Any other excuses is just bullshit. btw...Numbers for AoC will gradually go up for a while but will fall back down just like they did after they added the new area. People will play because of the server merges then find out that its just the same old crap and cancel.
What does it matter to you? What's your interest? How does it effect you personally?
What if the reason some people left was because of low population on their original server of choice?
What if one of those people rolled again and now they have a healthy populated server?
Are you really posting here because that just gets right up your nose and you can't take it? because in some other reality the game really messed with your head and your out for revenge? ~ just asking here because it is obvious you have not got the games best interests in mind. And that shows us the mindset you carry which for me and I am sure many others is not just worth the time of day.
Also funny that some ppl dedicate theire time to piss and shit on a game they havent even tried,or just gave up after 1 week. Not directed to you btw,but in general.Seems like ppl dont want competition for theire own games.I always tought competition was a good thing.
I can't stand this game, but I played ALOT more than just a few weeks. This game isn't competition with anything worth mentioning. Exept Mr Madoff maybe in ripping people off.
I can't believe people still talk about this pos at all.
Just my opinion.
Edit in: ohhh my post got put right under Amazing Avery's post lol. Bet that pisses him off Hi Avery !! Avery is the best thing to happen to AOC. Man has balls to fly in the face of so much discontent, hats off to you dude. I hate the game but respect you. Your still wrong all the time but hey , I digress
Dude I congratulated Famine and FC for having the courage and good sense to merge servers in another thread, and I meant it.
It is just all these ohmygawd the population is now booming threads that are pretty ridiculous in my opinion. They launched , sold 800K boxes in a month, servers were choking even with the instancing technology so they had to add servers. People like myself decide after a month or two of play that while the game looks fantastic and while FC talked a good game that it was not worth a monthly fee and pop drops from 800K to zit point shit. Now I admit I am guessing but around 75K to 100K would seem to be a generous guess to me. So now they have about 3 or 4 US servers with adequate pops for grouping and PvP and 20 or so others that are ghost towns and they need to merge em down. Now the only questions are (1) will they try to save face and still end up with too many servers with too low of populations (2) will the lag come back once server pops increase.
As you say this weekend I might even drop 15 bucks for another lookaround if I have too many brewskies and feel reckless. But I will probably hold off till they do whatever they plan on doing with the Zug server. Right now on the official forums old Zug only has a half dozen active posters and maybe 1 or 2 threads get posted in oper day so I think it would be best if I hold off a bit until after al the merges at the least and probably should not bother till they get the crafting fixed a bit .
Can you prove X-fire users are average AoC players? It works both ways. It is a random sample of people who have Xfire installed nothing else. And therefore any subsequent stats are based off that small populous from which we can't say if they are or are not an average Age of Conan player.
trying to argue the games population is healthy when they are doing server merges is a self defeating argument. I guess they are merging servers because they are bored?
So by your logic, you cant have an increase while merging low population servers into bigger servers? My god where are you getting these thoughts from?
Can you prove X-fire users are average AoC players? It works both ways. It is a random sample of people who have Xfire installed nothing else. And therefore any subsequent stats are based off that small populous from which we can't say if they are or are not an average Age of Conan player.
trying to argue the games population is healthy when they are doing server merges is a self defeating argument. I guess they are merging servers because they are bored?
So by you logic, you cant have an increase while merging low population servers into bigger servers? My god where are you getting these thoughts from?
I'll take MMORPGs for one thousand Alex.
Ages of Conan
ummm What was the one game in all of MMORPG history that had server merges due to it's outstanding success and increasing population?
It seems i was not clear enough regarding my opinion about XFire.
Its no secret AoC lost lots of players but the fact is the more games you play at same time the faster you quit AoC as you were already spending your time in other games and as soon as you got bored you switched.
I did not say AoC players are different I said that majority of players that stayed are not split between AoC + XX mmo + XX fps games and majority of players that play multiple games are more likely to use XFire. ( or am I wrong here ? )
AoC sold 800.000 boxes within a 1st month and some more in 2nd and 3rd. After launch they opened bunch of new servers so they could support 800K-1m players.
Now even if AoC have 400K subscribers and you divide that by 49 servers = 8.163 per servers and for healthy server you need around 2x -2.5x more players.
Well imo AoC atm probably have around 150K and I notice lots of players are not really active .. they connect for 2h during prime time .. do some raiding and disconnect.
It seems i was not clear enough regarding my opinion about XFire. Its no secret AoC lost lots of players but the fact is the more games you
play at same time the faster you quit AoC as you were already spending your time in other games and as soon as you got bored you switched. I did not say AoC players are different I said that majority of players that stayed are not split between AoC + XX mmo + XX fps games and majority of players that play multiple games are more likely to use XFire. ( or am I wrong here ? )
AoC sold 800.000 boxes within a 1st month and some more in 2nd and 3rd.
After launch they opened bunch of new servers so they could support 800K-1m players. Now even if AoC have 400K subscribers and you divide that by 49 servers = 8.163 per servers and for healthy server you need around 2x -2.5x more players. Well imo AoC atm probably have around 150K and I notice lots of players are not really active .. they connect for 2h during prime time .. do some raiding and disconnect.
Well I think that 800 000 number is seriously outdated. When AoC is like #15 on play.com it's obvious the game is selling pretty hot these days...
Well I think that 800 000 number is seriously outdated. When AoC is like #15 on play.com it's obvious the game is selling pretty hot these days...
well in my estimate it looks like the price drop plus holiday season treated AoC well. My estimate is they are about 20% + or - 4% better off now than they were at the beginning of the holidays. I was thinking they were between about 80K to 100K now I would guess they are around 100K to 125K.
I figure a lot of people got new gear at Xmas that will handle the graphics better plus Xmas gifts/money plus the fact it is selling for less than the price of a months subscription ( £7.99 = about $12.00 USD) all added up.
Now all FC has to do is figure out how to retain those customers and account for thier churn rate and they will be set.
Originally posted by OrionMan Well I think that 800 000 number is seriously outdated. When AoC is like #15 on play.com it's obvious the game is selling pretty hot these days...
Hmm yea but who is buying it if I may ask I did not notice any BIG increase of players on our or other EU servers.
Sure some new player here and there and some old returns due server merge etc..
The price on play.com is really nice and maybe people are buying and plan to activate after the merge or something ...
But seriously I dont see why its necessary to talk about subscriber base ok if there was bunch of post were people are claiming some stupid 50K numbers ...
I would prefer whoever likes the game to stick to the fixed and added features .. the game is progressing nicely but still lacks of quite few stuff.
Well to be honest Iam very strict when it comes to advertising game to my friends so regarding AoC if my friends/guildies ( guildies from other games we played ) ask me about AoC:
To all PvP nuts we have I say come its uber fun and if you dont mind killing around just for PvP XP without any other really good content except sieging here and there.
PvP wise we have lots of fun with our guild its a slaughter and yes it gets repetitive but the good side is you can play it as you play FPS games like CS ... combat is fun and skill matters.
If iam asked about economy all i can say is what economy ?
If Iam asked about crafting all I can say will let you know as soon as they add/fix it .. atm its quite pointless ?
If Iam asked about raiding -> its fun and challenging for a while but after 10, 20 times its same old same old .. with loot tables quite fu*ked
If Iam asked about guild management/interface -> very very basic and needs lots of love.
And then a people ask me so why do you play well its all about guild community and fun we can have together especially with PvP.
When it comes to PvP I did not have that much fun in any other MMO starting with UO/1997 and I played lots of them.
The problem with AoC atm is it lacks a lot of features and being so much SOLO friendly is not good as people get bored.
The proper way to have fun in AoC is only if you are in some good guild and you do stuff together from PvP/mats grinding/dungeon runs/raids etc..
And also AoC is worth its money if you like to play FRP games you have enough content to have some fun with it .. but for long term play without decent guild is big no no.
Just wanted to trow another "fanboi log" on the fire and say:
NR 49 on XFIRE YESTERDAY.
AoC is the "REBOUND" candidate of the year!!!
ok, ill relax a little. Its growing slowly which makes me glad. Very few "hater" posts on forums, and most of these are old grudges.
And when comparing xfire games look at EVE, does EVE really have more players than WAR? And did the pre xmas growth mean that it suddenly doubled its paying subscriber base?
No, it didnt. It just added a new expansion that made Xfire users with an EVE account play a little more. (no, I cant prove that, its a theory!)
Originally posted by BishopB:
Are a lot of the trolls just angry kids with old gaming hardware?
So you work for Funcom or am I misreading this? Just curious..
Totally misread. He was a tester for games for the book, not specifically Funcom. Also, if you would pay attention, you would notice that many developers and games were discussed.
I searched various resources and there is no mention of Erik being a specific Funcom tester.
Just wanted to trow another "fanboi log" on the fire and say: NR 49 on XFIRE YESTERDAY. AoC is the "REBOUND" candidate of the year!!! ok, ill relax a little. Its growing slowly which makes me glad. Very few "hater" posts on forums, and most of these are old grudges. And when comparing xfire games look at EVE, does EVE really have more players than WAR? And did the pre xmas growth mean that it suddenly doubled its paying subscriber base? No, it didnt. It just added a new expansion that made Xfire users with an EVE account play a little more. (no, I cant prove that, its a theory!)
I was impressed when I saw this today. As a note, LOTRO and FFXI both had losses....wild eh?
Glad to hear the game is picking up a little steam (some is better than none)
and it's not a thing all games are seeing. Other games have a good decline in fact.
Hate to rub it in but what did I say? "By the weekend AoC would be in the #40s.. lol, and it's only friday now. Lets see monday morning what activity AoC had on Sunday. Funny thing is you can see it's not only the gaingtime increasing it is also number of subscribers.
#49 (Xfire) www.xfire.com/games/aoc/Age_of_Conan_Hyborian_Adventures/ and it's not a thing all games are seeing. Other games have a good decline in fact. Hate to rub it in but what did I say? "By the weekend AoC would be in the #40s.. lol, and it's only friday now. Lets see monday morning what activity AoC had on Sunday. Funny thing is you can see it's not only the gaingtime increasing it is also number of subscribers.
It really does look more impressive when you make the font bigger.
Just wanted to trow another "fanboi log" on the fire and say: NR 49 on XFIRE YESTERDAY. AoC is the "REBOUND" candidate of the year!!! ok, ill relax a little. Its growing slowly which makes me glad. Very few "hater" posts on forums, and most of these are old grudges. And when comparing xfire games look at EVE, does EVE really have more players than WAR? And did the pre xmas growth mean that it suddenly doubled its paying subscriber base? No, it didnt. It just added a new expansion that made Xfire users with an EVE account play a little more. (no, I cant prove that, its a theory!)
AS for EVE. They had a contest on Xfire.
Play 40h in 2 weeks and you get a chance to win 1year subscription amongst other prizes. Yeah, everyone and there gdam mother installes xfire and loaded up EVE. In one or two days it went from no: 25-30 to no:6.
So in EVE's case it doesn't reflect any on the okayer acticity or gained subscriptions. At least not due to this drastical surge in Xfire time.
Just wanted to trow another "fanboi log" on the fire and say: NR 49 on XFIRE YESTERDAY. AoC is the "REBOUND" candidate of the year!!! ok, ill relax a little. Its growing slowly which makes me glad. Very few "hater" posts on forums, and most of these are old grudges. And when comparing xfire games look at EVE, does EVE really have more players than WAR? And did the pre xmas growth mean that it suddenly doubled its paying subscriber base? No, it didnt. It just added a new expansion that made Xfire users with an EVE account play a little more. (no, I cant prove that, its a theory!)
AS for EVE. They had a contest on Xfire.
Play 40h in 2 weeks and you get a chance to win 1year subscription amongst other prizes. Yeah, everyone and there gdam mother installes xfire and loaded up EVE. In one or two days it went from no: 25-30 to no:6.
So in EVE's case it doesn't reflect any on the okayer acticity or gained subscriptions. At least not due to this drastical surge in Xfire time.
Just wanted to trow another "fanboi log" on the fire and say: NR 49 on XFIRE YESTERDAY. AoC is the "REBOUND" candidate of the year!!! ok, ill relax a little. Its growing slowly which makes me glad. Very few "hater" posts on forums, and most of these are old grudges. And when comparing xfire games look at EVE, does EVE really have more players than WAR? And did the pre xmas growth mean that it suddenly doubled its paying subscriber base? No, it didnt. It just added a new expansion that made Xfire users with an EVE account play a little more. (no, I cant prove that, its a theory!)
AS for EVE. They had a contest on Xfire.
Play 40h in 2 weeks and you get a chance to win 1year subscription amongst other prizes. Yeah, everyone and there gdam mother installes xfire and loaded up EVE. In one or two days it went from no: 25-30 to no:6.
So in EVE's case it doesn't reflect any on the okayer acticity or gained subscriptions. At least not due to this drastical surge in Xfire time.
LOL, OMG is that even legal?
Yeah, Eve went from #20 up to #6 for those couple weeks, but now is back down to where it started. The thing is that Xfire is a continuous process, so when the devs do something to 'cheat'.. it doesn't last long and now eve is back to #20.
Now what would happen if the devs encouraged players to vote on a poll that only had a 2 week duration? is that even legal?
Now what would happen if the devs encouraged players to vote on a poll that only had a 2 week duration? is that even legal?
I believe so. Turbine did it last year for LOTRO and the RPG Game of the Year award (or something like that) at Voodoo Extreme...and won..
So, it seems fair.
(EDIT: Forgot the Golden Joystick awards and the 1UP awards which were all based on votes by players and were linked on the LOTRO forums...congrats Turbine!)
Just a comment the new AoC after server merges have 18 servers (with fresh start) compared to the 50 they expanded to a week after launch. 18/50 = 0.36. If we do a quick calculation 0.36 * 750000 (which is the number of people we belive were in AoC first month) we end up with something like 270000 players in AoC today. Mystrery finally solved.
Comments
This issue here lies in the fact that the assumption is EVERY person who played AoC used XFire.
The number of Xfire players has dropped by 90%, and that I can vouch for. The poster is stating the overall player base, and that is where his math goes wrong.
Xfire is a random sample of player. Fanbois and shills seem to think that 90% of the XFire players quit but most of the non XFire players stayed. Bad bad logic there OpenEdge unless you can prove that XFire players are some how different from the average person who bought and played AoC.
Now if you can pull up some spead sheets that show that XFire users tend to quit games at a more rapid pace than non XFire gamers I might be able to buy into that but otherwise it is only logical to believe that XFire users and non XFire users quit at about the same pace. I don't use XFire and I quit before the end of the free month and so did a lot of other non Xfire users in my guild. As a matter of fact I cannot think of anyone in my guild who uses XFire and we all ( 50+) quit within a month.
Can you prove X-fire users are average AoC players? It works both ways. It is a random sample of people who have Xfire installed nothing else. And therefore any subsequent stats are based off that small populous from which we can't say if they are or are not an average Age of Conan player.
It is like asking how many people kept their bus ticket from the number 43 ride from downtown to home and trying to guess how often they ride the bus. It doesn't take into account if that person is working part time / full time / what they do in life, just that they used the bus at some point. Your measuring how often they use the bus as populous. Thing is one sub is one sub, doesn't matter how much you people want to argue it is still the same sub being paid out therefore the only proper metric is the amount of people and not how long they are playing. Age of Conan in from the people that use Xfire has only lost 500 people since August in this area.
Of course those that dislike the game will go for the higher number such as hours played and not amount of people. Xfire also doesn't tell us about the casual gamer either.
Think about it. Go look at the Xfire threads for the population and not the hours spent over the past few months and now go look at the population.
Such a small number of sample base just shows what a few ants like to do from a whole colony.
Can you prove X-fire users are average AoC players? It works both ways. It is a random sample of people who have Xfire installed nothing else. And therefore any subsequent stats are based off that small populous from which we can't say if they are or are not an average Age of Conan player.
trying to argue the games population is healthy when they are doing server merges is a self defeating argument. I guess they are merging servers because they are bored?
I miss DAoC
It cracks me up how people who really want AoC to succeed will trash xfire on how it has no meaning on how many people play Conan. But once it goes up a few notches on the board, all you hear is "AOC IS INCREASING IN POPULATION!!!!!!!!!!!!"
All xfire is, is a fairly accurate tool to use on what the population of an mmo or pc game has. Its just like how Fox uses the nielson ratings on how many people watched the Super Bowl or any other show on television. If you hear that 80 million people watched the super bowl it doesnt mean exactly 80 million, its a determination based on how many nielson boxes watched it then they calculate that by whatever formula they use.
ITS THAT SIMPLE. Any other excuses is just bullshit.
btw...Numbers for AoC will gradually go up for a while but will fall back down just like they did after they added the new area. People will play because of the server merges then find out that its just the same old crap and cancel.
Can you prove X-fire users are average AoC players? It works both ways. It is a random sample of people who have Xfire installed nothing else. And therefore any subsequent stats are based off that small populous from which we can't say if they are or are not an average Age of Conan player.
trying to argue the games population is healthy when they are doing server merges is a self defeating argument. I guess they are merging servers because they are bored?
Ok so all the servers at launch were packed? I think not. Even with funcom adding in additional servers post launch based on how fast the game was selling was right / wrong? who knows if that was the best course of action. Simple fact is there were plenty of servers that were low pop and always have been.
Population can still be healthy and still be spread thin over a large area.
Take a city for example - downtown is going to be more populated rather than the outskirts of that city - but they still fall under the same name. Difference is that downtown there are usually more ammenities than on the outskirts (people / population)
The merges was a community led request before any official announcement was made. It was asked for and given.
Whether it was right or wrong in terms of the amount of servers released for play at launch doesn't matter now.
The population is spread too thin over a large area. In that area there are more than healthy servers that have been like that since launch. (pre launch guilds and community etc)
There were always too many servers and it has to be condensed at some point if things stayed the course they were on - which is where we are at today.
The first merge from 50 + servers is a success - not one complaint and a reinvigorated server.
Do this as many times as needed and what do we have?
Something bad? I think not.
There are more pro's than con's to this. You yourself are looking to come back, want to play on a dead server? No course you don't.
What does it matter to the person (who wants to play on a populated server and finds one) that there are dead servers in game if your going to roll on a good one. - Doesn't matter much really does it.
What does it matter to those people who are already playing and paying a sub on a dead server? - Everything to be able to do so with more people.
Does the amount of servers the game has ultimately effect your decision to play - I think to some degree, yes. But how many? You are not going to see everyone of those people are you?
Heck I don't expect to see everyone on the server I play on.
All that matters is there are people in game around you for the mechanics of the game to work properly and that is not happening right on dead servers is it.
So yea I am sure FC just decided to merge for the fun of it.
We can see quite clearly that for a long time now some servers have been pretty much DOA.
Even with cutting back the mass of servers the game has to an amount that properly supports it's playerbase and those coming to the game is no bad thing.
And with the amount left over after all this is done? Is that going to be an indication of success and is x-fire going to tell us so?
What if this game had 8 servers for US and 8 for EU to begin with and the populous was there and X-fire stats were the same - still going to class the game as not increasing?
At the end of the day the amount of servers doesn't matter if the trend is still the same no matter how it is fabricated. Amount of servers doesn't fit into the equation here as we are not loosing or gaining that Xfire can tell.
What will happen is a more rounded server community, players will be happier which after all is the aim here.
EDIT:
What if it was like this from the start with people saying the population was great - it is just based of the individuals experience from one server (unless they rolled on more) - wouldn't that go against the X-fire statements - or would Xfire trends still win out even though it goes against personal experience - still can't tell you how a particular server is - which is all you might be after to begin with - a decent pop
Like I said more pro's than con's.
What does it matter to you? What's your interest? How does it effect you personally?
What if the reason some people left was because of low population on their original server of choice?
What if one of those people rolled again and now they have a healthy populated server?
Are you really posting here because that just gets right up your nose and you can't take it? because in some other reality the game really messed with your head and your out for revenge? ~ just asking here because it is obvious you have not got the games best interests in mind. And that shows us the mindset you carry which for me and I am sure many others is not just worth the time of day.
Cheers!
I can't stand this game, but I played ALOT more than just a few weeks. This game isn't competition with anything worth mentioning. Exept Mr Madoff maybe in ripping people off.
I can't believe people still talk about this pos at all.
Just my opinion.
Edit in: ohhh my post got put right under Amazing Avery's post lol. Bet that pisses him off
Hi Avery !! Avery is the best thing to happen to AOC. Man has balls to fly in the face of so much discontent, hats off to you dude. I hate the game but respect you. Your still wrong all the time but hey , I digress
Dude I congratulated Famine and FC for having the courage and good sense to merge servers in another thread, and I meant it.
It is just all these ohmygawd the population is now booming threads that are pretty ridiculous in my opinion. They launched , sold 800K boxes in a month, servers were choking even with the instancing technology so they had to add servers. People like myself decide after a month or two of play that while the game looks fantastic and while FC talked a good game that it was not worth a monthly fee and pop drops from 800K to zit point shit. Now I admit I am guessing but around 75K to 100K would seem to be a generous guess to me. So now they have about 3 or 4 US servers with adequate pops for grouping and PvP and 20 or so others that are ghost towns and they need to merge em down. Now the only questions are (1) will they try to save face and still end up with too many servers with too low of populations (2) will the lag come back once server pops increase.
As you say this weekend I might even drop 15 bucks for another lookaround if I have too many brewskies and feel reckless. But I will probably hold off till they do whatever they plan on doing with the Zug server. Right now on the official forums old Zug only has a half dozen active posters and maybe 1 or 2 threads get posted in oper day so I think it would be best if I hold off a bit until after al the merges at the least and probably should not bother till they get the crafting fixed a bit .
I miss DAoC
Can you prove X-fire users are average AoC players? It works both ways. It is a random sample of people who have Xfire installed nothing else. And therefore any subsequent stats are based off that small populous from which we can't say if they are or are not an average Age of Conan player.
trying to argue the games population is healthy when they are doing server merges is a self defeating argument. I guess they are merging servers because they are bored?
So by your logic, you cant have an increase while merging low population servers into bigger servers? My god where are you getting these thoughts from?
Can you prove X-fire users are average AoC players? It works both ways. It is a random sample of people who have Xfire installed nothing else. And therefore any subsequent stats are based off that small populous from which we can't say if they are or are not an average Age of Conan player.
trying to argue the games population is healthy when they are doing server merges is a self defeating argument. I guess they are merging servers because they are bored?
So by you logic, you cant have an increase while merging low population servers into bigger servers? My god where are you getting these thoughts from?
I'll take MMORPGs for one thousand Alex.
Ages of Conan
ummm What was the one game in all of MMORPG history that had server merges due to it's outstanding success and increasing population?
Uh yeah right
I miss DAoC
It seems i was not clear enough regarding my opinion about XFire.
Its no secret AoC lost lots of players but the fact is the more games you
play at same time the faster you quit AoC as you were already spending your time in other games and as soon as you got bored you switched.
I did not say AoC players are different I said that majority of players that stayed are not split between AoC + XX mmo + XX fps games and majority of players that play multiple games are more likely to use XFire. ( or am I wrong here ? )
AoC sold 800.000 boxes within a 1st month and some more in 2nd and 3rd.
After launch they opened bunch of new servers so they could support 800K-1m players.
Now even if AoC have 400K subscribers and you divide that by 49 servers = 8.163 per servers and for healthy server you need around 2x -2.5x more players.
Well imo AoC atm probably have around 150K and I notice lots of players are not really active .. they connect for 2h during prime time .. do some raiding and disconnect.
Futilez[Do You Have What It Takes ?]
Well I think that 800 000 number is seriously outdated. When AoC is like #15 on play.com it's obvious the game is selling pretty hot these days...
Well I think that 800 000 number is seriously outdated. When AoC is like #15 on play.com it's obvious the game is selling pretty hot these days...
well in my estimate it looks like the price drop plus holiday season treated AoC well. My estimate is they are about 20% + or - 4% better off now than they were at the beginning of the holidays. I was thinking they were between about 80K to 100K now I would guess they are around 100K to 125K.
I figure a lot of people got new gear at Xmas that will handle the graphics better plus Xmas gifts/money plus the fact it is selling for less than the price of a months subscription ( £7.99 = about $12.00 USD) all added up.
Now all FC has to do is figure out how to retain those customers and account for thier churn rate and they will be set.
I miss DAoC
Hmm yea but who is buying it if I may ask I did not notice any BIG increase of players on our or other EU servers.
Sure some new player here and there and some old returns due server merge etc..
The price on play.com is really nice and maybe people are buying and plan to activate after the merge or something ...
But seriously I dont see why its necessary to talk about subscriber base ok if there was bunch of post were people are claiming some stupid 50K numbers ...
I would prefer whoever likes the game to stick to the fixed and added features .. the game is progressing nicely but still lacks of quite few stuff.
Well to be honest Iam very strict when it comes to advertising game to my friends so regarding AoC if my friends/guildies ( guildies from other games we played ) ask me about AoC:
To all PvP nuts we have I say come its uber fun and if you dont mind killing around just for PvP XP without any other really good content except sieging here and there.
PvP wise we have lots of fun with our guild its a slaughter and yes it gets repetitive but the good side is you can play it as you play FPS games like CS ... combat is fun and skill matters.
If iam asked about economy all i can say is what economy ?
If Iam asked about crafting all I can say will let you know as soon as they add/fix it .. atm its quite pointless ?
If Iam asked about raiding -> its fun and challenging for a while but after 10, 20 times its same old same old .. with loot tables quite fu*ked
If Iam asked about guild management/interface -> very very basic and needs lots of love.
And then a people ask me so why do you play well its all about guild community and fun we can have together especially with PvP.
When it comes to PvP I did not have that much fun in any other MMO starting with UO/1997 and I played lots of them.
The problem with AoC atm is it lacks a lot of features and being so much SOLO friendly is not good as people get bored.
The proper way to have fun in AoC is only if you are in some good guild and you do stuff together from PvP/mats grinding/dungeon runs/raids etc..
And also AoC is worth its money if you like to play FRP games you have enough content to have some fun with it .. but for long term play without decent guild is big no no.
Futilez[Do You Have What It Takes ?]
The proper way to have fun in AoC is only if you are in some good guild and you do stuff together from PvP/mats grinding/dungeon runs/raids etc..
Just my opinion here but I would say that is true for every MMORPG there is.
I miss DAoC
I also have to agree there too. Shit guild that doesnt do anythign = better find a new guild or be bored/quit playing the game.
Just wanted to trow another "fanboi log" on the fire and say:
NR 49 on XFIRE YESTERDAY.
AoC is the "REBOUND" candidate of the year!!!
ok, ill relax a little. Its growing slowly which makes me glad. Very few "hater" posts on forums, and most of these are old grudges.
And when comparing xfire games look at EVE, does EVE really have more players than WAR? And did the pre xmas growth mean that it suddenly doubled its paying subscriber base?
No, it didnt. It just added a new expansion that made Xfire users with an EVE account play a little more. (no, I cant prove that, its a theory!)
Originally posted by BishopB:
Are a lot of the trolls just angry kids with old gaming hardware?
Sorry I checked your profile
Are you the same "Erik Staubo" that was a lead tester for Age of Conan on the Book of Games Volume 2?
books.google.com/books
So you work for Funcom or am I misreading this? Just curious..
Totally misread. He was a tester for games for the book, not specifically Funcom. Also, if you would pay attention, you would notice that many developers and games were discussed.
I searched various resources and there is no mention of Erik being a specific Funcom tester.
Thanks
I was impressed when I saw this today. As a note, LOTRO and FFXI both had losses....wild eh?
Glad to hear the game is picking up a little steam (some is better than none)
Cheers
#49 (Xfire)
www.xfire.com/games/aoc/Age_of_Conan_Hyborian_Adventures/
and it's not a thing all games are seeing. Other games have a good decline in fact.
Hate to rub it in but what did I say? "By the weekend AoC would be in the #40s.. lol, and it's only friday now. Lets see monday morning what activity AoC had on Sunday. Funny thing is you can see it's not only the gaingtime increasing it is also number of subscribers.
It really does look more impressive when you make the font bigger.
AS for EVE. They had a contest on Xfire.
Play 40h in 2 weeks and you get a chance to win 1year subscription amongst other prizes. Yeah, everyone and there gdam mother installes xfire and loaded up EVE. In one or two days it went from no: 25-30 to no:6.
So in EVE's case it doesn't reflect any on the okayer acticity or gained subscriptions. At least not due to this drastical surge in Xfire time.
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
AS for EVE. They had a contest on Xfire.
Play 40h in 2 weeks and you get a chance to win 1year subscription amongst other prizes. Yeah, everyone and there gdam mother installes xfire and loaded up EVE. In one or two days it went from no: 25-30 to no:6.
So in EVE's case it doesn't reflect any on the okayer acticity or gained subscriptions. At least not due to this drastical surge in Xfire time.
LOL, OMG is that even legal?
AS for EVE. They had a contest on Xfire.
Play 40h in 2 weeks and you get a chance to win 1year subscription amongst other prizes. Yeah, everyone and there gdam mother installes xfire and loaded up EVE. In one or two days it went from no: 25-30 to no:6.
So in EVE's case it doesn't reflect any on the okayer acticity or gained subscriptions. At least not due to this drastical surge in Xfire time.
LOL, OMG is that even legal?
Yeah, Eve went from #20 up to #6 for those couple weeks, but now is back down to where it started. The thing is that Xfire is a continuous process, so when the devs do something to 'cheat'.. it doesn't last long and now eve is back to #20.
Now what would happen if the devs encouraged players to vote on a poll that only had a 2 week duration? is that even legal?
I believe so. Turbine did it last year for LOTRO and the RPG Game of the Year award (or something like that) at Voodoo Extreme...and won..
So, it seems fair.
(EDIT: Forgot the Golden Joystick awards and the 1UP awards which were all based on votes by players and were linked on the LOTRO forums...congrats Turbine!)
Just a comment the new AoC after server merges have 18 servers (with fresh start) compared to the 50 they expanded to a week after launch. 18/50 = 0.36. If we do a quick calculation 0.36 * 750000 (which is the number of people we belive were in AoC first month) we end up with something like 270000 players in AoC today. Mystrery finally solved.