http://www.xfire.com/forums/182686/topic/1595966/?p=2 Apparently Xfire is having issues detecting the game with the new patch or something. It seemed way to odd to have such a drop in users over 2 days so I went and did research. The game is probably losing subs left and right still, but I'm pretty sure the mass fall it is having is due to xfire not being able to detect it correctly.
Edit: Scroll down half way to see the current issue.
Which DOES explain why there is no panic on the official STO forums ...
Edit: Xfire should take STO out of the ranking until the problems are fixed, even if the problem is on STOs side.
Xfire rankings are worthless. Not only are games being sold through their services these days but it is easy to climb on that list.
That makes no sense. Even if only a small percentage of people who know about xfire look at the ranking, that could still decide about hundreds or thousands of subs. Im not even a xfire user, but if i see a a mmo being busy tanking on their ranking i dont subscribe to it. I had my share of failing servers becoming ghosttowns, and i can do without that thank you very much.
Just an example: there is no possibiltiy in the world that a game like "Heroes of Newerth" (sic) is being played as much as Counterstrike etc...
Yeah, im totally going to take YOUR word on that over that of a service like xfire that is based on statistical data. Im fine with arguing xfires accuracy, doesnt take a rocket scientist to see lots of holes in it, but that doesnt mean that personal opinion is a more accurate replacement ... HoNE is in closed beta currently, the logical explanation would be that xfire users got beta keys or something which would explain why a large percantage of xfire users is betatesting that game.
It is easy enough these days to duplicate IP adresses running with the game's client and add a few dozen playing sessions from just one machine. With a few of these machines you could climb up the ladder in no time to reach 2K or 3K player sessions.
Yes, and with the proper resources i could fly to the moon. The same argument could be used against how TV stations check which programs people are following. Just a few dozen of these box thingies maybe sending duplicate data ...
Look at games like HoN and Aion and see how wildly they change in the graphs on an even monthly basis (not talking about the weekend play). http://www.xfire.com/games/aion/Aion/
Having on/off 30% difference between different weekends demonstrates the sampling is surely not consistent.
No thats normal. You can easily see it in EvE Online which has the serverpop visible on login at all times. Some weekends they break a new user record, the week after that they are several k short of it. There might also be stuff like a unexpected serverdowntime of a couple hours or a network problem with some major ISP which leads to people logging frustrated off etc.
As for ST: it is simple: the Xfire client is not working in the case of ST.
Thats exactly my point, no reason to have a game in a ranking if you have no idea where it stands on it.
The point of the xfire ranking is not to reflect the exact reality of how games are doing, check the investment reports of the producers of the games for that. The point of xfire is to say: "Hey we have this group of gamers, take a look at our site to see what kind of games they like to play."
The fact that the userbase of xfire has become so huge that it can be considered as a trend check for the gamerpopulation as a whole is purely coincidential with that.
P.S.: I have never seen a game that was busy dropping in xfire rankings "doing good". Likewise i have never seen a commercially successful game that didnt show its success in the xfire rankings. If a mmo crashes by 50% in xfire playtime that shows its in trouble, War, CO, AoC, SWG and countless others proved that.It was obvious for those actually playing the games, but it was just as obvious for those of us just following pop on xfire.
http://www.xfire.com/forums/182686/topic/1595966/?p=2 Apparently Xfire is having issues detecting the game with the new patch or something. It seemed way to odd to have such a drop in users over 2 days so I went and did research. The game is probably losing subs left and right still, but I'm pretty sure the mass fall it is having is due to xfire not being able to detect it correctly.
Edit: Scroll down half way to see the current issue.
Which DOES explain why there is no panic on the official STO forums ...
Edit: Xfire should take STO out of the ranking until the problems are fixed, even if the problem is on STOs side.
Xfire rankings are worthless. Not only are games being sold through their services these days but it is easy to climb on that list.
That makes no sense. Even if only a small percentage of people who know about xfire look at the ranking, that could still decide about hundreds or thousands of subs. Im not even a xfire user, but if i see a a mmo being busy tanking on their ranking i dont subscribe to it. I had my share of failing servers becoming ghosttowns, and i can do without that thank you very much.
Just an example: there is no possibiltiy in the world that a game like "Heroes of Newerth" (sic) is being played as much as Counterstrike etc...
Yeah, im totally going to take YOUR word on that over that of a service like xfire that is based on statistical data. Im fine with arguing xfires accuracy, doesnt take a rocket scientist to see lots of holes in it, but that doesnt mean that personal opinion is a more accurate replacement ... HoNE is in closed beta currently, the logical explanation would be that xfire users got beta keys or something which would explain why a large percantage of xfire users is betatesting that game.
It is easy enough these days to duplicate IP adresses running with the game's client and add a few dozen playing sessions from just one machine. With a few of these machines you could climb up the ladder in no time to reach 2K or 3K player sessions.
Yes, and with the proper resources i could fly to the moon. The same argument could be used against how TV stations check which programs people are following. Just a few dozen of these box thingies maybe sending duplicate data ...
Look at games like HoN and Aion and see how wildly they change in the graphs on an even monthly basis (not talking about the weekend play). http://www.xfire.com/games/aion/Aion/
Having on/off 30% difference between different weekends demonstrates the sampling is surely not consistent.
No thats normal. You can easily see it in EvE Online which has the serverpop visible on login at all times. Some weekends they break a new user record, the week after that they are several k short of it. There might also be stuff like a unexpected serverdowntime of a couple hours or a network problem with some major ISP which leads to people logging frustrated off etc.
As for ST: it is simple: the Xfire client is not working in the case of ST.
Thats exactly my point, no reason to have a game in a ranking if you have no idea where it stands on it.
The point of the xfire ranking is not to reflect the exact reality of how games are doing, check the investment reports of the producers of the games for that. The point of xfire is to say: "Hey we have this group of gamers, take a look at our site to see what kind of games they like to play."
The fact that the userbase of xfire has become so huge that it can be considered as a trend check for the gamerpopulation as a whole is purely coincidential with that.
P.S.: I have never seen a game that was busy dropping in xfire rankings "doing good". Likewise i have never seen a commercially successful game that didnt show its success in the xfire rankings. If a mmo crashes by 50% in xfire playtime that shows its in trouble, War, CO, AoC, SWG and countless others proved that.It was obvious for those actually playing the games, but it was just as obvious for those of us just following pop on xfire.
So you don't think the top ten games is accurate?
It seems to trend very well with game populations, baring odds problems, don't you think?
Perhaps x-fire users have an amazing ability to stop playing a game when other people stop playing.
My understanding was that CBS (holders of the STO licence) and not Atari were the ones who forced Cryptic to launch so early.
Not sure how much stock I put into that though.
Put no stock into it. That sounds like something that was made up by some fanboy whose feelings get hurt whenever someone criticizes Cryptic/Atari. CBS is busy being a successful broadcasting company and studio (and co-owning a failing one) to concern itself so directly with something it's only getting a paltry licensing fee for. CBS will make more off a single episode of "The Big Bang Theory" than it will make off six months of Star Trek Online.
I personally don't believe it. However it is worth mentioning that it wasn't a random fanboy that stated the CBS thing, it was Craig something-or-other (he's got a really jewish last name that's impossible to remember). He's one of the lead devs on STO.
With that said Cryptic was bought by Atari to push out MMOs once every 1.5-2 years so I figure STO launched exactly when it was intended too.
While MMO companies remain scared witless of releasing subscriber numbers Xfire is far from worthless. It's the only way of finding out how game populations compare and trends in that population.
Most of the flak Xfire gets is purely attempts at trying to shoot the messenger.
http://www.xfire.com/forums/182686/topic/1595966/?p=2 Apparently Xfire is having issues detecting the game with the new patch or something. It seemed way to odd to have such a drop in users over 2 days so I went and did research. The game is probably losing subs left and right still, but I'm pretty sure the mass fall it is having is due to xfire not being able to detect it correctly.
Edit: Scroll down half way to see the current issue.
Which DOES explain why there is no panic on the official STO forums ...
Edit: Xfire should take STO out of the ranking until the problems are fixed, even if the problem is on STOs side.
Xfire rankings are worthless. Not only are games being sold through their services these days but it is easy to climb on that list.
Just an example: there is no possibiltiy in the world that a game like "Heroes of Newerth" (sic) is being played as much as Counterstrike etc...
It is easy enough these days to duplicate IP adresses running with the game's client and add a few dozen playing sessions from just one machine. With a few of these machines you could climb up the ladder in no time to reach 2K or 3K player sessions.
Look at games like HoN and Aion and see how wildly they change in the graphs on an even monthly basis (not talking about the weekend play). http://www.xfire.com/games/aion/Aion/
Having on/off 30% difference between different weekends demonstrates the sampling is surely not consistent.
As for ST: it is simple: the Xfire client is not working in the case of ST.
STO is one of those games that XFire tries to sell to people. Wouldn't it make more sense for them to pad the numbers to make it seem more popular than it really is to tap into a bandwagon effect and sell that game to more people from their store?
Look at City of Heroes's numbers: www.xfire.com/games/coh/City_of_Heroes/ Look at that huge spike around the 4th. Wow, that must be a mistake! City of Heroes is an old game, and that spike looks like a weird anomaly. There's no way those numbers can be accurate!
Except that they are pretty damn close to accurate. Why? Because City of Heroes just had a free reactivation and double XP weekend that regularly attracts many more people playing at once than is usual.
While MMO companies remain scared witless of releasing subscriber numbers Xfire is far from worthless. It's the only way of finding out how game populations compare and trends in that population. Most of the flak Xfire gets is purely attempts at trying to shoot the messenger.
Publicly traded companies, like Atari, actually have to release something close to subscriber numbers. They release info on what their profits are and what profits their products are making. We'll be able to tell how STO is doing when they release their quarterly financial reports.
While MMO companies remain scared witless of releasing subscriber numbers Xfire is far from worthless. It's the only way of finding out how game populations compare and trends in that population. Most of the flak Xfire gets is purely attempts at trying to shoot the messenger.
Publicly traded companies, like Atari, actually have to release something close to subscriber numbers. They release info on what their profits are and what profits their products are making. We'll be able to tell how STO is doing when they release their quarterly financial reports.
I guess we'll see it's odd 2 months ago they were crowing about how successful sto was. Now,... nothing and they close threads about the low player population on the forums claiming they violate the TOS. If it kept up the momentum it had at launch, you'd think they'd be spouting it everywhere.
It seems to trend very well with game populations, baring odds problems, don't you think? Perhaps x-fire users have an amazing ability to stop playing a game when other people stop playing.
I think i was pretty clear in voicing what i think. Do i really have to requote my own words at you in little pieces?
xfire position is dropping because xfire currently does not correctly detect when STO is being played, there is a bug discussion regarding this on xfires forum
until xfire is fixed the numbers are totally inaccurate
The fact that a game which is in closed Beta is even on that top 10 list of Xfire, shows the Xfire samples are NOT representative for the games that are being played in the real world.
It all looks legitemate until you realise that a Closed Beta game llike Heroes of Newerth is on that list together with massively played operational PC games like Counterstrike.
No matter how you turn that, it makes a "hitparade" useless, since in NO way the few thousands Beta players of a game not even in its final stage of development can beat a full operational game.
It pretty much shows that the makers of Heroes of Newerth let Xfire install on pretty every darned machine that's running their Beta.
The trend was first seen in other games, now everyone who wants to have a show in that Xfire hitparade is doing it.
.
The fact that several other games (amongst others ST apparently) can't even get to run the Xfire client is proof that the hitparade is pure nonsense these days.
Like I said it is even technically very easy to log in with multiple IP's running from one machine with one client.
The ratio between EVE and Aion for example was always very suspect, from launch up until this day.
.
The ratio of a BETA (!) game like HoN with full operational games simply shows the data don't represent any real samples even more. This time with full proof.
This practice began around summer 2009 and got worse ever since. HoN is full proof of non representative samples.
Also the number of Xfire on line players for all games got worse in the past year. Meaning the popularity of the tool is down. hence they now sell games themselves on their website (together with the tool).
I wouldn't be surprised if in the following months a lot of new HoN cases will be shown. As a matter of fact it is already happening. Just look at some of the pathetic low unpopular games in that top 20 list.
As well as the reasons you listed, Atari can't force Cryptic to do anything because Cryptic is wholly owned by Atari. Saying "Atari forced Cryptic to do this" is like me saying "I forced my hands to type this message. They didn't want to, but, by golly, I made them do it!
Yes, but unfortunately people aren't making that connection; it seems to be all poor Cryptic/evil Atari comments, even though they are one and the same now as pointed out. I would love to see Atari show everyone what the real relationship actually is by getting rid of everyone on the following page: www.crypticstudios.com/index.php. Of course then you would hear people complaining about how Atari just destroyed both games by doing that (although in my opinion getting rid of those people would improve things).
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
Like I stated above: The fact that a game which is in closed Beta is even on that top 10 list of Xfire, shows the Xfire samples are NOT representative for the games that are being played in the real world. It all looks legitemate until you realise that a Closed Beta game llike Heroes of Newerth is on that list together with massively played operational PC games like Counterstrike. No matter how you turn that, it makes a "hitparade" useless, since in NO way the few thousands Beta players of a game not even in its final stage of development can beat a full operational game. It pretty much shows that the makers of Heroes of Newerth let Xfire install on pretty every darned machine that's running their Beta. The trend was first seen in other games, now everyone who wants to have a show in that Xfire hitparade is doing it. . The fact that several other games (amongst others ST apparently) can't even get to run the Xfire client is proof that the hitparade is pure nonsense these days. Like I said it is even technically very easy to log in with multiple IP's running from one machine with one client. The ratio between EVE and Aion for example was always very suspect, from launch up until this day. . The ratio of a BETA (!) game like HoN with full operational games simply shows the data don't represent any real samples even more. This time with full proof. This practice began around summer 2009 and got worse ever since. HoN is full proof of non representative samples. Also the number of Xfire on line players for all games got worse in the past year. Meaning the popularity of the tool is down. hence they now sell games themselves on their website (together with the tool). I wouldn't be surprised if in the following months a lot of new HoN cases will be shown. As a matter of fact it is already happening. Just look at some of the pathetic low unpopular games in that top 20 list. http://www.xfire.com/games/# eg; Silkroad on line, Cabal on line, ... all very suspect as not being any representative.
*Sigh* Is it REALLY that hard to understand? Let me explain it by using cat food.
You know these big companies producing catfood have to test their stuff. To make it as delicious and addictive as they can for cats, in order to maximise profit. So how do they test it? They have centers with hundreds of cats of different races, think like a animal shelter just without the option of getting out. And probably better food.
Well anyway, they serve these cats different brands of their products, new formulas and stuff. The trick is the cats are never let hungry, and they always get several "dishes" at once. Always more than they could possibly eat, which isnt a problem as cats only eat till they are sated, unlike dogs who gorge themselves. The cats are also never allowed to get used to a certain brand, so they eat what appeals most to them, and the scientists/chefs take note of that.
Now some cats prefer fish, others like chicken. But since they have so many cats they can still clearly see when a new brand of food gets preferred over another, cause they know the tabby with number #13 likes chicken, so they serve him different chickenflavours.
Is that going to representative of what ALL cats actually do eat? No its not, but its showing them stuff. Like if they added a certain ingredient to the food the majority of cats wouldnt try it and they knew thats a bad idea. Or if many cats got bad fur from it they new it probably wouldnt be a good idea to advertise it as premium food.
And now try to apply that logic to xfire. HoNE IS beign played as much as CS by xfire players. Just like caviar catfood might be just as much liked as chicken catfood in the catcenter i described above. Obviously cats outside the center dont get the chance to eat caviar catfood much, thats not the point, the point is if they got the opporunity they might like it just as much as another popular brand.
So what does xfire tell us? Xfire tells us where a relatively closed group of people, with access to pretty much all games on the market, decides to spend their playtime. The realworld sales of games is completly irrelevant to us gamers. Because that would show us that War/AoC or STO would have been huge successes. Xfire is telling the other side of the story. Even within MMOs you cant compare it easily because server populations vary wildly and thats really the only thing you can easily count.
Xfire is not perfect, but its the best/only thing we have to compare game pops to each other if the devs of said games are not forthcoming with info.
P.S.: Silkroad and cabal are F2P afaik, nothing at all suspect there. My 12 year old cousins class pretty much completly plays Metin 2(F2P too). I tried to get him into "proper" games but thats not an option for him as many of his friends are limited to F2P games. All of the shoddy games in the top 20 appear to be F2P, which makes kinda sense.
While MMO companies remain scared witless of releasing subscriber numbers Xfire is far from worthless. It's the only way of finding out how game populations compare and trends in that population. Most of the flak Xfire gets is purely attempts at trying to shoot the messenger.
Publicly traded companies, like Atari, actually have to release something close to subscriber numbers. They release info on what their profits are and what profits their products are making. We'll be able to tell how STO is doing when they release their quarterly financial reports.
No they don't. When has Atari released CO numbers? I haven't seen WAR numbers in a year, or DAoC numbers since EA bought Mythic. All Publicly traded companies of course have to release their financials, but they don't have to break it down by title. Funcom you could make an educated guess since AoC was their primary source of revenue, but a company like Atari has lots of titles so it will be near impossible to guess STO numbers.
I don't think there are many people that want to attribute anything close to scientific accuracy to Xfire numbers, but since virtually nobody releases sub numbers, it's a good tool for measuring trends and relative popularity compared to other titles. STO had a peak of 19 with an average in the low 30s the first month then drop to low 50s in March before this bug that caused STO to not register. I'm sure it would still be trending downward if it was working.
*Sigh* Is it REALLY that hard to understand? Let me explain it by using cat food. You know these big companies producing catfood have to test their stuff. To make it as delicious and addictive as they can for cats, in order to maximise profit. So how do they test it? They have centers with hundreds of cats of different races, think like a animal shelter just without the option of getting out. And probably better food. Well anyway, they serve these cats different brands of their products, new formulas and stuff. The trick is the cats are never let hungry, and they always get several "dishes" at once. Always more than they could possibly eat, which isnt a problem as cats only eat till they are sated, unlike dogs who gorge themselves. The cats are also never allowed to get used to a certain brand, so they eat what appeals most to them, and the scientists/chefs take note of that. Now some cats prefer fish, others like chicken. But since they have so many cats they can still clearly see when a new brand of food gets preferred over another, cause they know the tabby with number #13 likes chicken, so they serve him different chickenflavours.
Is that going to representative of what ALL cats actually do eat? No its not, but its showing them stuff. Like if they added a certain ingredient to the food the majority of cats wouldnt try it and they knew thats a bad idea. Or if many cats got bad fur from it they new it probably wouldnt be a good idea to advertise it as premium food.
And now try to apply that logic to xfire. HoNE IS beign played as much as CS by xfire players. Just like caviar catfood might be just as much liked as chicken catfood in the catcenter i described above. Obviously cats outside the center dont get the chance to eat caviar catfood much, thats not the point, the point is if they got the opporunity they might like it just as much as another popular brand.
So what does xfire tell us? Xfire tells us where a relatively closed group of people, with access to pretty much all games on the market, decides to spend their playtime. The realworld sales of games is completly irrelevant to us gamers. Because that would show us that War/AoC or STO would have been huge successes. Xfire is telling the other side of the story. Even within MMOs you cant compare it easily because server populations vary wildly and thats really the only thing you can easily count.
Xfire is not perfect, but its the best/only thing we have to compare game pops to each other if the devs of said games are not forthcoming with info.
P.S.: Silkroad and cabal are F2P afaik, nothing at all suspect there. My 12 year old cousins class pretty much completly plays Metin 2(F2P too). I tried to get him into "proper" games but thats not an option for him as many of his friends are limited to F2P games. All of the shoddy games in the top 20 appear to be F2P, which makes kinda sense.
Let me ask you a simple question ...
What do you think will happen in that Xfire hitparede when Heroes of Newerth will be published ... .
Because they are already in 8th place with ... 3000 beta testers, what do you think will happen when they launch ?
Those 3K non representative - fake samples - will be added to the others. Giving a false sample of ... at least 100/200 % error rate in the represenatation vs other games.
At the moment 3000 Xfire players would mean at least 100/200K+ players in the "real world".
So the samples between the games on the hitparade are NON representative of what is being played,
So the "hitparade" is a charade.
Look at the present day Xfire top 20 lists. Even as we speak new games enter the room. All on a basis of not equal representation.
A necessity for any "hit parade" based on a ranking system.
Xfire has become worthless tx to the exploits of companies such as those that publish games like HoN.
Everyone can see it, why don't you see it?
Want a real mmorpg? Play WOW with experience turned off mode and be Pve_Pvp King at any level without a rat race.
When a WAR ends, we can only measure the devestation it has caused by counting the number of tombstones in the graveyards and those who are MIA.
Being a sucker that has fallen for both of Cryptic Scams. STO is going the way of CO. And I see many gravestones on the forums and many are MIA from the server compared to 3 weeks ago.
*Sigh* Is it REALLY that hard to understand? Let me explain it by using cat food. You know these big companies producing catfood have to test their stuff. To make it as delicious and addictive as they can for cats, in order to maximise profit. So how do they test it? They have centers with hundreds of cats of different races, think like a animal shelter just without the option of getting out. And probably better food. Well anyway, they serve these cats different brands of their products, new formulas and stuff. The trick is the cats are never let hungry, and they always get several "dishes" at once. Always more than they could possibly eat, which isnt a problem as cats only eat till they are sated, unlike dogs who gorge themselves. The cats are also never allowed to get used to a certain brand, so they eat what appeals most to them, and the scientists/chefs take note of that. Now some cats prefer fish, others like chicken. But since they have so many cats they can still clearly see when a new brand of food gets preferred over another, cause they know the tabby with number #13 likes chicken, so they serve him different chickenflavours.
Is that going to representative of what ALL cats actually do eat? No its not, but its showing them stuff. Like if they added a certain ingredient to the food the majority of cats wouldnt try it and they knew thats a bad idea. Or if many cats got bad fur from it they new it probably wouldnt be a good idea to advertise it as premium food.
And now try to apply that logic to xfire. HoNE IS beign played as much as CS by xfire players. Just like caviar catfood might be just as much liked as chicken catfood in the catcenter i described above. Obviously cats outside the center dont get the chance to eat caviar catfood much, thats not the point, the point is if they got the opporunity they might like it just as much as another popular brand.
So what does xfire tell us? Xfire tells us where a relatively closed group of people, with access to pretty much all games on the market, decides to spend their playtime. The realworld sales of games is completly irrelevant to us gamers. Because that would show us that War/AoC or STO would have been huge successes. Xfire is telling the other side of the story. Even within MMOs you cant compare it easily because server populations vary wildly and thats really the only thing you can easily count.
Xfire is not perfect, but its the best/only thing we have to compare game pops to each other if the devs of said games are not forthcoming with info.
P.S.: Silkroad and cabal are F2P afaik, nothing at all suspect there. My 12 year old cousins class pretty much completly plays Metin 2(F2P too). I tried to get him into "proper" games but thats not an option for him as many of his friends are limited to F2P games. All of the shoddy games in the top 20 appear to be F2P, which makes kinda sense.
Let me ask you a simple question ...
What do you think will happen in that Xfire hitparede when Heroes of Newerth will be published ... .
Because they are already in 8th place with ... 3000 beta testers, what do you think will happen when they launch ?
Those 3K non representative - fake samples - will be added to the others. Giving a false sample of ... at least 100/200 % error rate in the represenatation vs other games.
At the moment 3000 Xfire players would mean at least 100/200K+ players in the "real world".
So the samples between the games on the hitparade are NON representative of what is being played,
So the "hitparade" is a charade.
Look at the present day Xfire top 20 lists. Even as we speak new games enter the room. All on a basis of not equal representation.
A necessity for any "hit parade" based on a ranking system.
Xfire has become worthless tx to the exploits of companies such as those that publish games like HoN.
Everyone can see it, why don't you see it?
But i am seeing it. Im not blind after all. I simply draw a different conclusion from it than you do. And to answer your question, when HoNE publishes it will plummet drastically in the ranking, because it will go from a F2P To a P2P. And there will be no adding of rankings, because xfire is using a rolling average, i.e. the past ranking doesnt matter for the current ranking. Thats pretty obvious though isnt it? If i read you correctly you dont believe that many people play F2P games, that might be your opinion, but everything i read about it seems to say otherwise.
And please give some examples of those games that you dont think belong into the hitparade. You keep mentioning HoNE, but what are those other games not belonging there? WoW, Call of Duty series, BF:BC, CS, Warcraft III, Aion, GTA:SA, TF 2, Wolfenstein: ET, EvE, Guildwars and a bunch of F2P games. That looks like a pretty realistic top 20 to me.
I know you could theoretically cheat the ranking, but its not easy, and it would be kinda obvious if Warhammer suddenly would have a larger following than WoW ... For example to push Aion 1 rank would require 170k minutes of playtime currently or 2800 hours. And that every day cause its a daily average. So you would have to run about 118 Aion accounts(and that game has autologout, so you have to macro in it to stay in it), with 118 xfire accounts, 24hours a day just to gain 1 rank in xfire. If you honestly think any sane person is doing that ... im not having any kind of discussion with you. Maybe about tinfoil heads, always looking for ways to shield my mind from the governement.
That is an absoultely massive drop in active players. Impressive, only took them 7 weeks to kill their game?
Whatever they did last week in a patch killed Xfire. There's a link in this thread talking about Xfire not recording STO. While I don't doubt thousands of people are dropping this game by the week, it's not THAT dead...yet.
Originally posted by Darth_Osor Originally posted by Xondar123 Originally posted by Renko While MMO companies remain scared witless of releasing subscriber numbers Xfire is far from worthless. It's the only way of finding out how game populations compare and trends in that population. Most of the flak Xfire gets is purely attempts at trying to shoot the messenger.
Publicly traded companies, like Atari, actually have to release something close to subscriber numbers. They release info on what their profits are and what profits their products are making. We'll be able to tell how STO is doing when they release their quarterly financial reports.
No they don't. When has Atari released CO numbers? I haven't seen WAR numbers in a year, or DAoC numbers since EA bought Mythic. All Publicly traded companies of course have to release their financials, but they don't have to break it down by title. Funcom you could make an educated guess since AoC was their primary source of revenue, but a company like Atari has lots of titles so it will be near impossible to guess STO numbers. I don't think there are many people that want to attribute anything close to scientific accuracy to Xfire numbers, but since virtually nobody releases sub numbers, it's a good tool for measuring trends and relative popularity compared to other titles. STO had a peak of 19 with an average in the low 30s the first month then drop to low 50s in March before this bug that caused STO to not register. I'm sure it would still be trending downward if it was working.
While Atari didn't release specific numbers for COs subs they did say they took a $20M USD loss on the project.
Well, people also need to use logic while guessing numbers. I completely agree the game has had a serious hit as far as subs go, it may also not be as bad as some think. Right now I would say a good chunk of people are at the end of the game. Well what is there to do? Dailies and log out. If you just do the basic exploration quests, you can be done in about 30 minutes or so. If you do the PvP one, that can take you about another 30 min or so. The Infected quest can take about 2 hours or so, but I know a lot of people aren't even really bothering with it because the rewards suck, and PUGS are a nightmare in this game.
So if you break down the average of what people are playing now as opposed to what they were when they were leveling, the drop would be pretty significant. Doesn't mean the subs are gone, just not enough hours are being logged in to make the game seem like everyone and their mother is playing.
But even with a little sunshine in this post, Cryptic still is in deep sh*t. The patch doesn't seem to really do much as far as adding any real longevity to the game that already only gives at best a few hours of content a DAY. That might fly with some people, but when you're bottlenecked into a narrow scope of content for only a short period of time a day, I can see why people are leaving. Myself included.
With all due repect to real MMO gamers here, Gamers that know MMOs are supposed to have good PvP, STO will never again have good numbers on Xfire. STO is not a PvP in the MMO sense. It is a PvP game in the Console gaming sense (and a poor one).... because STO is basically a console game designed for both PC and whatever consoles they can get it on in the future. Xfire's core Players for the most part are hardcore MMO PvP Players. That's people like you, and once People like you found out what STO was all about, many left.
That's just the way STO rolls. I had wished for so much more, and I don't even PvP.
When a MMO is easy for me (I am a MMO permanoob, I always have been and always will be) then it's a failure of epic proportions. It is a shame it couldn't have been made much much better. STO should have kicked my ***, but it doesn't.
That's why the Xfire numbers are so low. The game is fun for many Players, but it is no challenge. STO will live long. It may not prosper, but it will live long. There are plenty of players that will buy and play STO... just... like... me.
Playing STO almost makes me want to go back to EvE just to get ganked three times a day.... in Empire space... right next to a gate.
I am the Player that wonders... "What the %#*& just happened?!" ............... "I Believe... There should be NO financial connection or portals between the Real World and the Virtual in MMOs. " __Ever Present Cockroach of the MMO Verses__ ...scurrying to and fro... .munching on bits of garbage... always under foot...
Comments
Which DOES explain why there is no panic on the official STO forums ...
Edit: Xfire should take STO out of the ranking until the problems are fixed, even if the problem is on STOs side.
Xfire rankings are worthless. Not only are games being sold through their services these days but it is easy to climb on that list.
That makes no sense. Even if only a small percentage of people who know about xfire look at the ranking, that could still decide about hundreds or thousands of subs. Im not even a xfire user, but if i see a a mmo being busy tanking on their ranking i dont subscribe to it. I had my share of failing servers becoming ghosttowns, and i can do without that thank you very much.
Just an example: there is no possibiltiy in the world that a game like "Heroes of Newerth" (sic) is being played as much as Counterstrike etc...
Yeah, im totally going to take YOUR word on that over that of a service like xfire that is based on statistical data. Im fine with arguing xfires accuracy, doesnt take a rocket scientist to see lots of holes in it, but that doesnt mean that personal opinion is a more accurate replacement ... HoNE is in closed beta currently, the logical explanation would be that xfire users got beta keys or something which would explain why a large percantage of xfire users is betatesting that game.
It is easy enough these days to duplicate IP adresses running with the game's client and add a few dozen playing sessions from just one machine. With a few of these machines you could climb up the ladder in no time to reach 2K or 3K player sessions.
Yes, and with the proper resources i could fly to the moon. The same argument could be used against how TV stations check which programs people are following. Just a few dozen of these box thingies maybe sending duplicate data ...
Look at games like HoN and Aion and see how wildly they change in the graphs on an even monthly basis (not talking about the weekend play). http://www.xfire.com/games/aion/Aion/
Having on/off 30% difference between different weekends demonstrates the sampling is surely not consistent.
No thats normal. You can easily see it in EvE Online which has the serverpop visible on login at all times. Some weekends they break a new user record, the week after that they are several k short of it. There might also be stuff like a unexpected serverdowntime of a couple hours or a network problem with some major ISP which leads to people logging frustrated off etc.
As for ST: it is simple: the Xfire client is not working in the case of ST.
Thats exactly my point, no reason to have a game in a ranking if you have no idea where it stands on it.
The point of the xfire ranking is not to reflect the exact reality of how games are doing, check the investment reports of the producers of the games for that. The point of xfire is to say: "Hey we have this group of gamers, take a look at our site to see what kind of games they like to play."
The fact that the userbase of xfire has become so huge that it can be considered as a trend check for the gamerpopulation as a whole is purely coincidential with that.
P.S.: I have never seen a game that was busy dropping in xfire rankings "doing good". Likewise i have never seen a commercially successful game that didnt show its success in the xfire rankings. If a mmo crashes by 50% in xfire playtime that shows its in trouble, War, CO, AoC, SWG and countless others proved that.It was obvious for those actually playing the games, but it was just as obvious for those of us just following pop on xfire.
Which DOES explain why there is no panic on the official STO forums ...
Edit: Xfire should take STO out of the ranking until the problems are fixed, even if the problem is on STOs side.
Xfire rankings are worthless. Not only are games being sold through their services these days but it is easy to climb on that list.
That makes no sense. Even if only a small percentage of people who know about xfire look at the ranking, that could still decide about hundreds or thousands of subs. Im not even a xfire user, but if i see a a mmo being busy tanking on their ranking i dont subscribe to it. I had my share of failing servers becoming ghosttowns, and i can do without that thank you very much.
Just an example: there is no possibiltiy in the world that a game like "Heroes of Newerth" (sic) is being played as much as Counterstrike etc...
Yeah, im totally going to take YOUR word on that over that of a service like xfire that is based on statistical data. Im fine with arguing xfires accuracy, doesnt take a rocket scientist to see lots of holes in it, but that doesnt mean that personal opinion is a more accurate replacement ... HoNE is in closed beta currently, the logical explanation would be that xfire users got beta keys or something which would explain why a large percantage of xfire users is betatesting that game.
It is easy enough these days to duplicate IP adresses running with the game's client and add a few dozen playing sessions from just one machine. With a few of these machines you could climb up the ladder in no time to reach 2K or 3K player sessions.
Yes, and with the proper resources i could fly to the moon. The same argument could be used against how TV stations check which programs people are following. Just a few dozen of these box thingies maybe sending duplicate data ...
Look at games like HoN and Aion and see how wildly they change in the graphs on an even monthly basis (not talking about the weekend play). http://www.xfire.com/games/aion/Aion/
Having on/off 30% difference between different weekends demonstrates the sampling is surely not consistent.
No thats normal. You can easily see it in EvE Online which has the serverpop visible on login at all times. Some weekends they break a new user record, the week after that they are several k short of it. There might also be stuff like a unexpected serverdowntime of a couple hours or a network problem with some major ISP which leads to people logging frustrated off etc.
As for ST: it is simple: the Xfire client is not working in the case of ST.
Thats exactly my point, no reason to have a game in a ranking if you have no idea where it stands on it.
The point of the xfire ranking is not to reflect the exact reality of how games are doing, check the investment reports of the producers of the games for that. The point of xfire is to say: "Hey we have this group of gamers, take a look at our site to see what kind of games they like to play."
The fact that the userbase of xfire has become so huge that it can be considered as a trend check for the gamerpopulation as a whole is purely coincidential with that.
P.S.: I have never seen a game that was busy dropping in xfire rankings "doing good". Likewise i have never seen a commercially successful game that didnt show its success in the xfire rankings. If a mmo crashes by 50% in xfire playtime that shows its in trouble, War, CO, AoC, SWG and countless others proved that.It was obvious for those actually playing the games, but it was just as obvious for those of us just following pop on xfire.
So you don't think the top ten games is accurate?
It seems to trend very well with game populations, baring odds problems, don't you think?
Perhaps x-fire users have an amazing ability to stop playing a game when other people stop playing.
Put no stock into it. That sounds like something that was made up by some fanboy whose feelings get hurt whenever someone criticizes Cryptic/Atari. CBS is busy being a successful broadcasting company and studio (and co-owning a failing one) to concern itself so directly with something it's only getting a paltry licensing fee for. CBS will make more off a single episode of "The Big Bang Theory" than it will make off six months of Star Trek Online.
I personally don't believe it. However it is worth mentioning that it wasn't a random fanboy that stated the CBS thing, it was Craig something-or-other (he's got a really jewish last name that's impossible to remember). He's one of the lead devs on STO.
With that said Cryptic was bought by Atari to push out MMOs once every 1.5-2 years so I figure STO launched exactly when it was intended too.
"Zinkivich," kinda sounds Ukrainian to me.
While MMO companies remain scared witless of releasing subscriber numbers Xfire is far from worthless. It's the only way of finding out how game populations compare and trends in that population.
Most of the flak Xfire gets is purely attempts at trying to shoot the messenger.
Which DOES explain why there is no panic on the official STO forums ...
Edit: Xfire should take STO out of the ranking until the problems are fixed, even if the problem is on STOs side.
Xfire rankings are worthless. Not only are games being sold through their services these days but it is easy to climb on that list.
Just an example: there is no possibiltiy in the world that a game like "Heroes of Newerth" (sic) is being played as much as Counterstrike etc...
It is easy enough these days to duplicate IP adresses running with the game's client and add a few dozen playing sessions from just one machine. With a few of these machines you could climb up the ladder in no time to reach 2K or 3K player sessions.
Look at games like HoN and Aion and see how wildly they change in the graphs on an even monthly basis (not talking about the weekend play). http://www.xfire.com/games/aion/Aion/
Having on/off 30% difference between different weekends demonstrates the sampling is surely not consistent.
As for ST: it is simple: the Xfire client is not working in the case of ST.
STO is one of those games that XFire tries to sell to people. Wouldn't it make more sense for them to pad the numbers to make it seem more popular than it really is to tap into a bandwagon effect and sell that game to more people from their store?
Look at City of Heroes's numbers: www.xfire.com/games/coh/City_of_Heroes/ Look at that huge spike around the 4th. Wow, that must be a mistake! City of Heroes is an old game, and that spike looks like a weird anomaly. There's no way those numbers can be accurate!
Except that they are pretty damn close to accurate. Why? Because City of Heroes just had a free reactivation and double XP weekend that regularly attracts many more people playing at once than is usual.
Publicly traded companies, like Atari, actually have to release something close to subscriber numbers. They release info on what their profits are and what profits their products are making. We'll be able to tell how STO is doing when they release their quarterly financial reports.
Publicly traded companies, like Atari, actually have to release something close to subscriber numbers. They release info on what their profits are and what profits their products are making. We'll be able to tell how STO is doing when they release their quarterly financial reports.
I guess we'll see it's odd 2 months ago they were crowing about how successful sto was. Now,... nothing and they close threads about the low player population on the forums claiming they violate the TOS. If it kept up the momentum it had at launch, you'd think they'd be spouting it everywhere.
I think i was pretty clear in voicing what i think. Do i really have to requote my own words at you in little pieces?
xfire position is dropping because xfire currently does not correctly detect when STO is being played, there is a bug discussion regarding this on xfires forum
until xfire is fixed the numbers are totally inaccurate
Like I stated above:
The fact that a game which is in closed Beta is even on that top 10 list of Xfire, shows the Xfire samples are NOT representative for the games that are being played in the real world.
It all looks legitemate until you realise that a Closed Beta game llike Heroes of Newerth is on that list together with massively played operational PC games like Counterstrike.
No matter how you turn that, it makes a "hitparade" useless, since in NO way the few thousands Beta players of a game not even in its final stage of development can beat a full operational game.
It pretty much shows that the makers of Heroes of Newerth let Xfire install on pretty every darned machine that's running their Beta.
The trend was first seen in other games, now everyone who wants to have a show in that Xfire hitparade is doing it.
.
The fact that several other games (amongst others ST apparently) can't even get to run the Xfire client is proof that the hitparade is pure nonsense these days.
Like I said it is even technically very easy to log in with multiple IP's running from one machine with one client.
The ratio between EVE and Aion for example was always very suspect, from launch up until this day.
.
The ratio of a BETA (!) game like HoN with full operational games simply shows the data don't represent any real samples even more. This time with full proof.
This practice began around summer 2009 and got worse ever since. HoN is full proof of non representative samples.
Also the number of Xfire on line players for all games got worse in the past year. Meaning the popularity of the tool is down. hence they now sell games themselves on their website (together with the tool).
I wouldn't be surprised if in the following months a lot of new HoN cases will be shown. As a matter of fact it is already happening. Just look at some of the pathetic low unpopular games in that top 20 list.
http://www.xfire.com/games/#
eg; Silkroad on line, Cabal on line, ... all very suspect as not being any representative.
Want a real mmorpg? Play WOW with experience turned off mode and be Pve_Pvp King at any level without a rat race.
Yes, but unfortunately people aren't making that connection; it seems to be all poor Cryptic/evil Atari comments, even though they are one and the same now as pointed out. I would love to see Atari show everyone what the real relationship actually is by getting rid of everyone on the following page: www.crypticstudios.com/index.php. Of course then you would hear people complaining about how Atari just destroyed both games by doing that (although in my opinion getting rid of those people would improve things).
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
*Sigh* Is it REALLY that hard to understand? Let me explain it by using cat food.
You know these big companies producing catfood have to test their stuff. To make it as delicious and addictive as they can for cats, in order to maximise profit. So how do they test it? They have centers with hundreds of cats of different races, think like a animal shelter just without the option of getting out. And probably better food.
Well anyway, they serve these cats different brands of their products, new formulas and stuff. The trick is the cats are never let hungry, and they always get several "dishes" at once. Always more than they could possibly eat, which isnt a problem as cats only eat till they are sated, unlike dogs who gorge themselves. The cats are also never allowed to get used to a certain brand, so they eat what appeals most to them, and the scientists/chefs take note of that.
Now some cats prefer fish, others like chicken. But since they have so many cats they can still clearly see when a new brand of food gets preferred over another, cause they know the tabby with number #13 likes chicken, so they serve him different chickenflavours.
Is that going to representative of what ALL cats actually do eat? No its not, but its showing them stuff. Like if they added a certain ingredient to the food the majority of cats wouldnt try it and they knew thats a bad idea. Or if many cats got bad fur from it they new it probably wouldnt be a good idea to advertise it as premium food.
And now try to apply that logic to xfire. HoNE IS beign played as much as CS by xfire players. Just like caviar catfood might be just as much liked as chicken catfood in the catcenter i described above. Obviously cats outside the center dont get the chance to eat caviar catfood much, thats not the point, the point is if they got the opporunity they might like it just as much as another popular brand.
So what does xfire tell us? Xfire tells us where a relatively closed group of people, with access to pretty much all games on the market, decides to spend their playtime. The real world sales of games is completly irrelevant to us gamers. Because that would show us that War/AoC or STO would have been huge successes. Xfire is telling the other side of the story. Even within MMOs you cant compare it easily because server populations vary wildly and thats really the only thing you can easily count.
Xfire is not perfect, but its the best/only thing we have to compare game pops to each other if the devs of said games are not forthcoming with info.
P.S.: Silkroad and cabal are F2P afaik, nothing at all suspect there. My 12 year old cousins class pretty much completly plays Metin 2(F2P too). I tried to get him into "proper" games but thats not an option for him as many of his friends are limited to F2P games. All of the shoddy games in the top 20 appear to be F2P, which makes kinda sense.
Publicly traded companies, like Atari, actually have to release something close to subscriber numbers. They release info on what their profits are and what profits their products are making. We'll be able to tell how STO is doing when they release their quarterly financial reports.
No they don't. When has Atari released CO numbers? I haven't seen WAR numbers in a year, or DAoC numbers since EA bought Mythic. All Publicly traded companies of course have to release their financials, but they don't have to break it down by title. Funcom you could make an educated guess since AoC was their primary source of revenue, but a company like Atari has lots of titles so it will be near impossible to guess STO numbers.
I don't think there are many people that want to attribute anything close to scientific accuracy to Xfire numbers, but since virtually nobody releases sub numbers, it's a good tool for measuring trends and relative popularity compared to other titles. STO had a peak of 19 with an average in the low 30s the first month then drop to low 50s in March before this bug that caused STO to not register. I'm sure it would still be trending downward if it was working.
Let me ask you a simple question ...
What do you think will happen in that Xfire hitparede when Heroes of Newerth will be published ... .
Because they are already in 8th place with ... 3000 beta testers, what do you think will happen when they launch ?
Those 3K non representative - fake samples - will be added to the others. Giving a false sample of ... at least 100/200 % error rate in the represenatation vs other games.
At the moment 3000 Xfire players would mean at least 100/200K+ players in the "real world".
So the samples between the games on the hitparade are NON representative of what is being played,
So the "hitparade" is a charade.
Look at the present day Xfire top 20 lists. Even as we speak new games enter the room. All on a basis of not equal representation.
A necessity for any "hit parade" based on a ranking system.
Xfire has become worthless tx to the exploits of companies such as those that publish games like HoN.
Everyone can see it, why don't you see it?
Want a real mmorpg? Play WOW with experience turned off mode and be Pve_Pvp King at any level without a rat race.
When a WAR ends, we can only measure the devestation it has caused by counting the number of tombstones in the graveyards and those who are MIA.
Being a sucker that has fallen for both of Cryptic Scams. STO is going the way of CO. And I see many gravestones on the forums and many are MIA from the server compared to 3 weeks ago.
This game is dying...
Let me ask you a simple question ...
What do you think will happen in that Xfire hitparede when Heroes of Newerth will be published ... .
Because they are already in 8th place with ... 3000 beta testers, what do you think will happen when they launch ?
Those 3K non representative - fake samples - will be added to the others. Giving a false sample of ... at least 100/200 % error rate in the represenatation vs other games.
At the moment 3000 Xfire players would mean at least 100/200K+ players in the "real world".
So the samples between the games on the hitparade are NON representative of what is being played,
So the "hitparade" is a charade.
Look at the present day Xfire top 20 lists. Even as we speak new games enter the room. All on a basis of not equal representation.
A necessity for any "hit parade" based on a ranking system.
Xfire has become worthless tx to the exploits of companies such as those that publish games like HoN.
Everyone can see it, why don't you see it?
But i am seeing it. Im not blind after all. I simply draw a different conclusion from it than you do. And to answer your question, when HoNE publishes it will plummet drastically in the ranking, because it will go from a F2P To a P2P. And there will be no adding of rankings, because xfire is using a rolling average, i.e. the past ranking doesnt matter for the current ranking. Thats pretty obvious though isnt it? If i read you correctly you dont believe that many people play F2P games, that might be your opinion, but everything i read about it seems to say otherwise.
And please give some examples of those games that you dont think belong into the hitparade. You keep mentioning HoNE, but what are those other games not belonging there? WoW, Call of Duty series, BF:BC, CS, Warcraft III, Aion, GTA:SA, TF 2, Wolfenstein: ET, EvE, Guildwars and a bunch of F2P games. That looks like a pretty realistic top 20 to me.
I know you could theoretically cheat the ranking, but its not easy, and it would be kinda obvious if Warhammer suddenly would have a larger following than WoW ... For example to push Aion 1 rank would require 170k minutes of playtime currently or 2800 hours. And that every day cause its a daily average. So you would have to run about 118 Aion accounts(and that game has autologout, so you have to macro in it to stay in it), with 118 xfire accounts, 24hours a day just to gain 1 rank in xfire. If you honestly think any sane person is doing that ... im not having any kind of discussion with you. Maybe about tinfoil heads, always looking for ways to shield my mind from the governement.
Just checked Xfire, its now at 693rd place lol.
Hehe who are these seven people that somehow still manage to have STO being recorded?
That is an absoultely massive drop in active players. Impressive, only took them 7 weeks to kill their game?
Right now my phaser is set to stun. Do not make me set it to kill. Pew Pew!
Whatever they did last week in a patch killed Xfire. There's a link in this thread talking about Xfire not recording STO. While I don't doubt thousands of people are dropping this game by the week, it's not THAT dead...yet.
Publicly traded companies, like Atari, actually have to release something close to subscriber numbers. They release info on what their profits are and what profits their products are making. We'll be able to tell how STO is doing when they release their quarterly financial reports.
No they don't. When has Atari released CO numbers? I haven't seen WAR numbers in a year, or DAoC numbers since EA bought Mythic. All Publicly traded companies of course have to release their financials, but they don't have to break it down by title. Funcom you could make an educated guess since AoC was their primary source of revenue, but a company like Atari has lots of titles so it will be near impossible to guess STO numbers.
I don't think there are many people that want to attribute anything close to scientific accuracy to Xfire numbers, but since virtually nobody releases sub numbers, it's a good tool for measuring trends and relative popularity compared to other titles. STO had a peak of 19 with an average in the low 30s the first month then drop to low 50s in March before this bug that caused STO to not register. I'm sure it would still be trending downward if it was working.
While Atari didn't release specific numbers for COs subs they did say they took a $20M USD loss on the project.
That's better than numbers to me.
Alltern8 Blog | Star Wars Space Combat and The Old Republic | Cryptic Studios - A Pre Post-Mortem | Klingon Preview, STO's Monster Play
Well, people also need to use logic while guessing numbers. I completely agree the game has had a serious hit as far as subs go, it may also not be as bad as some think. Right now I would say a good chunk of people are at the end of the game. Well what is there to do? Dailies and log out. If you just do the basic exploration quests, you can be done in about 30 minutes or so. If you do the PvP one, that can take you about another 30 min or so. The Infected quest can take about 2 hours or so, but I know a lot of people aren't even really bothering with it because the rewards suck, and PUGS are a nightmare in this game.
So if you break down the average of what people are playing now as opposed to what they were when they were leveling, the drop would be pretty significant. Doesn't mean the subs are gone, just not enough hours are being logged in to make the game seem like everyone and their mother is playing.
But even with a little sunshine in this post, Cryptic still is in deep sh*t. The patch doesn't seem to really do much as far as adding any real longevity to the game that already only gives at best a few hours of content a DAY. That might fly with some people, but when you're bottlenecked into a narrow scope of content for only a short period of time a day, I can see why people are leaving. Myself included.
With all due repect to real MMO gamers here, Gamers that know MMOs are supposed to have good PvP, STO will never again have good numbers on Xfire. STO is not a PvP in the MMO sense. It is a PvP game in the Console gaming sense (and a poor one).... because STO is basically a console game designed for both PC and whatever consoles they can get it on in the future. Xfire's core Players for the most part are hardcore MMO PvP Players. That's people like you, and once People like you found out what STO was all about, many left.
That's just the way STO rolls. I had wished for so much more, and I don't even PvP.
When a MMO is easy for me (I am a MMO permanoob, I always have been and always will be) then it's a failure of epic proportions. It is a shame it couldn't have been made much much better. STO should have kicked my ***, but it doesn't.
That's why the Xfire numbers are so low. The game is fun for many Players, but it is no challenge. STO will live long. It may not prosper, but it will live long. There are plenty of players that will buy and play STO... just... like... me.
Playing STO almost makes me want to go back to EvE just to get ganked three times a day.... in Empire space... right next to a gate.
I am the Player that wonders... "What the %#*& just happened?!"
...............
"I Believe... There should be NO financial connection or portals between the Real World and the Virtual in MMOs. "
__Ever Present Cockroach of the MMO Verses__
...scurrying to and fro... .munching on bits of garbage... always under foot...
Basing time from X-Fire doesn't mean anything plenty of people that don't use X-Fire including myself why does it matter?