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Seems like the game has peaked on XFire
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lol, seriously? Of course XFire is just a fragment of the TOR population, but the thing is, unless EA starts releasing real numbers, its the best tool we've got for estimating trends. People who want to get at the truth make do as best they can, with what they can, and can accept that it isn't completely accurate, but that it's better than nothing. That's how its been all throughout history, while most of the population prefers to just have faith in whatever they want to have faith in, and can't understand how that isn't the same as using imperfect tools, and having doubt and margins for error.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Ah i think you are mixing things up. The 70k hours is from xfire users, you can't count them against boxes sold total since they are only a small part of that.
Also its over 7k users playing per day, xfire logs that too.
And sure i can extrapolate things using xfire, for example we have known numbers for Eve Online. They report in realtime exactly how many people are playing on their server, people can make graphs(they are right to left, reverse of xfire) out of that and we can compare them to the xfire(left to right) ones. With that info we can compare the accuracy of xfire regarding EvE online. That doesn't tell us anything about the accuracy of Xfire regarding SWTOR i admit, but it does put them somewhat into perspective imho.
Now im not saying you can see +-5% changes or something, but a 50% change in population? I believe you would be able to see that on xfire. Imho the question isn't wether you can see gametrends on xfire, but how big the trendchange has to be to become visible. F.e. when a MMO shuts down you can clearly see it on xfire. If there is a multiday downtime due to a big hack(like the sony one) you can also see that on xfire. If a game looses 90% of its supscribers(AoC for example) you could also see that on xfire, AoC was rated almost as high on xfire as SWTOR is now and the drop in ranking xfire showed accurately reflected the real demise of AoC.
You can't get to the truth by using XFire. There needs to be a direct relation between XFire (and all the other stupid charts people pull up here) and the actual numbers of subscribers. Nobody even knows what the margin for error is. It could be different for every game on the XFire site.
It's just not a useful 'tool' at all. Anything beyond "XFire users are playing SWToR less" is meaningless. People just use it to support how they feel about games, while ignoring all the problems with the numbers. It's even worse when people tie XFire numbers to some kind of real world numbers...like asking how long SWToR can survive losing 10,000 hours of subscribers a week. The answer is just as ridiculous as the question. Twenty eight years. Fourteen years if you assume that they're starting with a million subs at the time that the question was asked.
For instance, there were many threads about Rift and XFire and how Rift was failing, dying, etc. Yet Rift made a hundred million dollars last year. They've used Rift to finance two additional games along with building swimming pools full of money. XFire's numbers indicated absolutely nothing relative to the success or failure of the game.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
At 3 hours played per day, that's about 476 people. Assuming the people play 5 days a week instead of 7, you're looking at 666 people lost per week. With 2 million boxes sold, they can go 1,500 weeks* before they lose half their people.
That's 28 years.
** edit **
You can't extrapolate anything useful from XFire or any of the other sites that have charts and graphs. You can say there's a downward trend in XFire users playing a game and that's it.
Ah i think you are mixing things up. The 70k hours is from xfire users, you can't count them against boxes sold total since they are only a small part of that.
Also its over 7k users playing per day, xfire logs that too.
And sure i can extrapolate things using xfire, for example we have known numbers for Eve Online. They report in realtime exactly how many people are playing on their server, people can make graphs(they are right to left, reverse of xfire) out of that and we can compare them to the xfire(left to right) ones. With that info we can compare the accuracy of xfire regarding EvE online. That doesn't tell us anything about the accuracy of Xfire regarding SWTOR i admit, but it does put them somewhat into perspective imho.
Now im not saying you can see +-5% changes or something, but a 50% change in population? I believe you would be able to see that on xfire. Imho the question isn't wether you can see gametrends on xfire, but how big the trendchange has to be to become visible. F.e. when a MMO shuts down you can clearly see it on xfire. If there is a multiday downtime due to a big hack(like the sony one) you can also see that on xfire. If a game looses 90% of its supscribers(AoC for example) you could also see that on xfire, AoC was rated almost as high on xfire as SWTOR is now and the drop in ranking xfire showed accurately reflected the real demise of AoC.
Using math to make up numbers doesn't make them right.
The only known numbers are "XFire users playing game X for Y hours". That's it. You cannot get from those numbers to real number unless the developer releases them. If Eve's developer releases them, great. You can get all kinds of interesting things out of Eve's XFire numbers. You can't do it for any other game where the developer doesn't release actual numbers.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
At 3 hours played per day, that's about 476 people. Assuming the people play 5 days a week instead of 7, you're looking at 666 people lost per week. With 2 million boxes sold, they can go 1,500 weeks* before they lose half their people.
That's 28 years.
** edit **
You can't extrapolate anything useful from XFire or any of the other sites that have charts and graphs. You can say there's a downward trend in XFire users playing a game and that's it.
Lizardbones no-one is even trying to do that.
We are taking a subset of SWTOR playing population, namely those who play SWTOR and use XFire. Then assume that that subset is representative of whole SWTOR playerbase. Thus if numbers recorded by XFire drop by 50%, we'll assume that SWTOR usage has dropped by 50%. That way they can lose half of their playerbase in just a few weeks.
This requires some assumptions
1) Assuming that XFire population stays constant
2) Assuming that XFire users who play SWTOR are representative of all SWTOR players.
Assumption 1 doesn't have so large problems, I don't see XFire userbase changing radically in just a few weeks..
Assumption 2 requires a leap of faith, and all results gained from monitoring XFire will have large margin of error. But XFire population has previously shown accurately the population trends of other big MMORPGs, and it's common sense that XFire users who play SWTOR are just human like all other SWTOR players, and not radically different from all other SWTOR players. Which makes assumption 2 reasonable in lack of better ways to estimate popularity of SWTOR. As long as the person admits that it's uncertain how large the margin of error is, and that it's likely large.
What was the margin for error in the other games? At what point were the games' actual subscriber numbers tied to the XFire numbers?
Nobody knows the margin for error. The subscriber numbers were never tied to XFire numbers. Many assumptions were made, including number of players per server, what a "full" server meant, etc. It's not one assumption, it's many.
"There are fewer SWToR players this week than last week." That's as close to a useful statement you can pull from XFire numbers as you're going to get. Putting any numbers in there at all is just making stuff up.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I am not a user of Xfire and just followed a link . It says SWTOR has 31k hours WoW 78k hours and the next closest pay MMO's are AION and EVE with 4k .
So basically SWTOR has atm about half wow population and 10x AION's which is the next biggest one?
And it's failing hard?
Can someone sane explain this to me pls ?
Most of us are taking into account how long each of them has been around. All of them have done relatively well in their first few months, but they all lose players at different rates (or gain them, in the case of EVE and WoW). TOR is the only one we're still just speculating on, because it's so new. Xfire numbers for TOR are going down at a significant rate, while the others have stabilized, since they've been out for years.
Does that make more sense now?
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
unreliable however does mean that it means nothing. Which pretty much means that to draw a conclusion from nothing is just making stuff up essentially, Which by the way 97.67% of the internet is made up of these unreliable facts so I say sure lets use unreliable as truth now!
Reaching lowest level since release both in xFire and server stats.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
Hours and population are different
SWTOR being a new shiny toy, it's expected to have more population, just as WAR and AoC did back in the days when they just came out.
The number of users three weeks ago was over 10 000. Today it was 7284. That's about 30% population loss.
WoW has been alternating between 18 000 and 20 000 for the past few months.
We'll see how SWTOR does in a month.
Also, the graph is clearly downwards, so that also serves as a warning.
But then again, these are just stats and can always change
I review lots of indie games and MMORPGs
There is only one realistic way to with high certainty show that the Xfire population within a game is representative of the total population of that game: show that Xfire declines and rises of previous MMORPGs have been very consistent with the actual declines/rises in total population of those games. The more games you can show follows the pattern, the more likely it is that the statement "Xfire is representative of the actual total population in a game" is true.
If a game doesn't follow the Xfire pattern, then either you need to provide a good explanation why that game was "unique" or refute the hypothesis that "Xfire is representative of the actual total population in a game".
Hindsight is a beautiful thing. If you dig a bit in these very forums you will find similar threads with similar arguments in the following games subforums:
1. Warhammer
2. Aion
3. AoC
4. STO
5. CO
I know because i participated in some of them aswell, in every single of these threads the accuracy of xfire was questioned, every single time just like here. On the other hand you won't find a single thread where people wonder why xfire shows a decline if a game is actually growing. Apparently it can only be inaccurate in one direction.
History is repeating itself, and people are to blind to recognize it, hiding behind conjecture and asking for proof. Todays graph shows ToR at 1/3 of the strength it had in early january. Never once has xfire shown a decline like this and been wrong about it. Doesn't mean this won't be the first time. And maybe we will archive peace in the middle east tomorrow.
And yeah im pissed because i rather had seen this game succeed. Why i think this could be archived by copying WoW is *caution hindsight* beyond me.
^ it's happened so many times in the past years i can't beleive people are still blind to this.. i can also add DCUO to this list of games you could watch charts of that looked very similar to what swtor is doing now.. ONLY difference I see is this game had a much higher initial sales start which should be obvious considering the IP, bioware, and the advertising.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/339443/Video-FollowUp-Guide-For-Enhancing-Graphics-and-Performance-in-SWTORSorry-still-Nvidia-Only.html
I would rather see a better game, rather than see this succesful, because, if this wow-clone has any success, we will see nothing else but wow BG-Instance-Raid-tankandspank clones in the future...
Er...no. What you need are several games that gives you their actual subscriber numbers, then compare that number to the XFire numbers. In the examples given in this thread, the only thing known is that subscriber counts went down. That's it. How much the overall subscribers went down and how that relates to XFire's numbers are an unknown and cannot be determined.
** edit **
Let's play magic numbers anyway.
Eve has about 300,000 players. They have 1,295 players on XFire. That's a ratio of 233.xx to 1. ToR has 7284 players. If we use the ratio of 233.xx to 1, that means ToR has 1,687,412 players. We know from EA's financial report that ToR had 1,700,000 players as of 12/31/2011. In the past month, they've lost 12,586 players total. That's a drop of 0.7%. Just so nobody misreads that, that's seven tenths of one percent.
That's not a large drop in the total number of players. It's a barely noticeable drop.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Its a hype effect everyone is seeing here. Does it mean the game is a failure, I dont know the answer to that. What I can say is the effect you are seeing of the XFIRE numbers and such are caused entirely by the hype factor. If a game like SWTOR which has tremendous hype to it prior to launch, cgoes live with that same high hype level your intial value will be elevated. This inflated intial number causes the decline to be more pronounced than had the game not had such a high hype level prior to and at launch.
Let me explain, lets say the game without any hype at all would have 200,000 peopel buy it for launch and we expect a 20% loss of players in the first month (hypothetical value for this demonstration only - no I do not have numbers to support that 20% loss inthe first month). Then we would expect to see a 40,000 loss in subscribers at the end of the free 30 days.
Now lets say we add on all the hype we had on SWTOR to these numbers. And we all know hype never lives up to the expectations. So instead of getting the initial 200,000 people buying the game for launch, we get 500,000. But, because we have this inflated 150% increase in our initial number, almost all of which who already believe the game will be something it isn't, we have to increase our expected losses in the same manner, 150% increase. Now instead of taking our 40,000 loss in subscribers on 200,000, we are looking at a 50% overall loss or 250,000 of our 500,000. Inflated numbers with unrealistic expectations.
At the end of the day however, the game that we expected to launch with no more than 200,000 players and no more than 160,000 subscribers at the end of 30 days ended up at the end of 30 days with 250,000 subscribers. In reality it was a huge success over initial expectations, but to those that look at trending of numbers AFTER launch it looks to be a complete failure. Which is true??
(DISCLAIMER - The use of the word YOU in the above post is not directed at any one person in particular, but towards those who fall into the category itself - there is no personal attack here, neither intentional nor implied.)
Or maybe Xfire has peaked as some people uninstalled the program lol.
Representative does not mean that the same ratio is kept from game to game. The only condition they need to satisfy is that the percentwise declines/increases within the xfire population needs to match the actual declines/increases of the total population of the game of interest.
To specify: xfire population base may be 0.1% in one game, but 0.01% in another, but still be representative of the actual populations in both cases.
Edit:
To be even more specific:
Suppose we want to know whether people prefer apples or oranges in Game A and whether they prefer soda or lemonade in Game B.
Assume that the in game A, 60% of the total population prefer apples over oranges. Also assume that in game B, 80% of the total population prefer soda over lemonade.
Assume the Xfire population is 0.1% of the total one in game A, while only 0.01% of the total one in game B.
If 60% of the Xfire population playing game A prefers apple over oranges and 80% of the Xfire population playing game B prefers soda over lemonade, we say that the Xfire population is "representative" of the total populations in the aspects "apple vs orange in game A" and "soda vs lemonade in game B".
So as you can see, depending on the question you want to answer, the actual % that the Xfire correspond to in the actual game, may not matter whatsoever for whether or not the Xfire population is representative or not.
Your doing it wrong.
Point 1. is still right, the 7284 xfire players correlate really nicely to to official number if we take the 233.xx factor of eve, but thats pretty much coincidence i think, the number of EA will be rounded, and theres no reason for eve and SWTOr having the exact same factor.
Whats important though is that xfire showed 7777(i remember because i thought its a strange number) users yesterday, and today it shows 7284 users. Now we do not need the factor actually aslong as we accept that it didn't change from yesterday to today. Its also not a neglible amount anymore(though there is a natural variance depending on days, but usually not that strong midweek)...
Let's play "More Magic Numbers With Lizardbones" again!
This time we won't mention Eve.
ToR peaked at 80,742 hours near the beginning of the year. If we take that to have happened at ToR's peak users of 1,700,000, we can divide the numbers of hours on XFire by the total number of known ToR players and get 0.0475 hours per known user. The current low point of hours played is 31,368. Using the 0.0475 hours per user, that gives us a recent subscriber count of 660,444 players. That's a loss of 1,039,555 players.
So ToR has lost somewhere between 12,000 players and 1,000,000 players (I've rounded here to make nice, round numbers).
If anyone else would care to take XFire's numbers and some known values and come up with some actual numbers that aren't ridiculous or just out and out made up, I'd really like to see it.
The only known true statement you can make about XFire's numbers is that fewer XFire players are playing ToR. You could infer from this that there are fewer ToR players overall, but you'd be making an assumption. It's probably correct, but it cannot be proven correct.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
number seems pretty accurate to me:)
look at those light servers soar http://www.torstatus.net/shards/us/trends
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/339443/Video-FollowUp-Guide-For-Enhancing-Graphics-and-Performance-in-SWTORSorry-still-Nvidia-Only.html
look at those light servers soar http://www.torstatus.net/shards/us/trends
:-)
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I think the part in red actually makes perfect sense, both the upper and lower limit i would consider far off, but then again thats cause they are at the extreme end and are called limits.
Its really easier at this point to just wait a week or two and get more data, than trying to play crystal ball with what we have now.
On this thread sense has left the building a while ago.
A few facts :
This was the biggest launch in MMO history , it sold 6 times what WoW sold at launch.
The launch was at christmas when people spent more time playing video games.
All modern MMO's have and will continue to have big drops after launch the reason being that there is a much bigger audience for them than 2003 and 2004 .
Relating to above is the fact that game nowdays are more easily accessible to everyone through digital downloads so easier to customers to purchase them .
A lot of the people that bought the game switched to other MMO's or single player games and play occasionally now that the initial rush is over , like they do in every other MMO.
Could the above explain a drop in hours and players in Xfire?
But people don't seem to be able to answer my simple question . If STWOR at its downward slide has 33k hours played and EVE has 4k hours played , does that mean SWTOR has 10 x eve's population? Which means 10x300.000=3000000 ?
Or is it that it has half of WoW's population? 10.000.000 / 2 = 5.000.000
Or option 3 = all this is crap ?
Its really easier at this point to just wait a week or two and get more data, than trying to play crystal ball with what we have now.
What data would that be? We have exactly 1 known value related to ToR's overall player population. There were 1.7 million players right at the beginning of the year. What new information is going to come to light?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.