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Seems like the game has peaked on XFire - Part 2
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Common sense. Rare indeed.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
1434.
When do we hit 1000 or less?
I estimate wednesday next week
For the use they are being put to in this thread, XFire numbers are garbage data. If you're really interested in how many XFire players are playing a particular game, then it's spot on.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Common sense. Rare indeed.
K, sounds fair, let's look at MMO's that we know of have had fairly stable sub and player numbers without huge declines, to see how Xfire trends hold.
EVE: in 2009 4500 Xfire users, in Q1 2011 2000 Xfire users, now 1100 Xfire users
WoW: in 2009 400-450k Xfire hours, in first half of 2011 200k Xfire hours and 35k Xfire users, in Apr 2012 70-80k Xfire hours and 17-18k Xfire users.
Explanations?I'm not saying that Xfire is completely valueless in trend analysis, as long as you know where its limits are, as the figures above show. There are other examples in different areas (for example, trying to compare Xfire figures of various games with eachother in an attempt to determine player/sub numbers), but the ones I showed are evident enough.
XFire can only measure active players. Not subscribers waiting for content and playing other games. I certainly wouldn't claim a direct correlation between XFire numbers and subs, but I would say it is more accurate at measuring active player trends.
Even if XFire users are decling over time, seeing them charted together takes away that variable and lets you see which games seem to be dropping much faster than others on XFire. People in AoC forums discredited XFire as well. It was a good indicator of what was really happening. If you are losing playersd at a much faster rate than other MMOs on XFire, your game is probably in trouble.
You can nitpick all you want. But so far, XFire has been pretty good at matching the reality of low server pops, which is a direct measure of active players. Even if it wasn't accurate, it is still interesting measure of a subset of SWTOR players.
I think most people in here understand exactly what we can get from xFire and what we can't... if someone wants to come in here and think they are utterly meaningless or indicative of a thriving and healthy SWTOR... be.. my... guest.
I'm just going to continue tracking
Lizardbones you continue to ignore all the polite replies you get - why are you still here. Yes Xfire users choose to use Xfire but this thread was never about tracking XFire users but 'XFire users who play SWTOR'. My simplest analogy: think of it like a medical trial: people with a disease get drug A, others drug B or a placebo. The fact that they all have the disease does not invalidate the results. By your logic however all medical research along these lines is useless. We should go and give drug A to a random sample of people.
Now the population of XFire users is not constant - its a time series - but over the short period of time we have been looking at this data and in the absence of any major events (like Steam being launched) that is just noise in the background.
And yes it cannot 'track subs': 100% agree but early in a new game people who stop playing stop being subscribers for the most part.
Now if everlasting trial folk are going to be called subscribers in the future - if the news is accurate and it is after all coming from the devs - then we may not be getting any more meaningful data from EA. Nor is anything happening quickly. As EA made such a big thing in February about how subscribers and not sales were the key - Xfire got it "right enough". It showed a very quick fall.
And the deep cuts in staff and the announcements being made support this.
What that shows is a large number of players that are dropping Xfire, which calls into question the validity of using Xfire numbers to validate anything. Where did those players go and what games were they playing? Where are they located? How many of them are located in the United States and how many are located in europe? How many of those players were WOW fans and how many of them were TOR fans? Is the drops in the trend line a causality of players leaving TOR or players that stopped using Xfire?
Sorry, but as someone who took political science it's hard not to question these things.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
Yes, it looks like the number of xfire players has peaked as well.
What do you know, after all this, seems that all we've really proven is xfire is becoming less and less populated.
What we've learned is that SWTOR is freefalling compared to the average XFire player loss. But if you still play the game you probably noticed that unless you are on one of the few decent servers.
As i said above over the short period of time this thread has been running we can ignore changes in the XFire user base - and it is only 5 months since SWTOR launched. There has been no major new voice com system launched; no major disaster. At worst changes in the XFire population simply add to the margin of error.
We don't know the margin of error and any attempts to say "XFire has dropped X% therefore SWTOR has dropped X%" are discouraged. From what we have seen it is not that so bad that it is way off the mark.
NB: The reason for tracking people and not hours early in a games life is that early on people play a lot therefore the hours played is very high - 8 hours a day when SWTOR launched. Then they play less and we get the unfounded doom and gloom threads. If people have simply gone from playing 8 hours to playing 4 hours however then the hours played total can halve with no loss in population. So looking at people is better. In an established game that isn't been advertsied then it won't matter as much. The average hours played will be pretty constant so people and hours will be "close". It was to avoid the doom and gloom element however that was why this thread - started back in December before XFire actually peaked - looked at people.
Really, I am just being a smartass.
It is obvious that SWToR's population is falling. I am simply skeptical that xfire should be the primary tool for which to measure. I believe that what xfire shows us is:
a. SWToR is becoming less popular with xfire users.
b. Xfire is becoming less popular with gamers.
c. xfire users may reflect general gamer trends (rts, fps, etc.) more than mmo specific player trends.
I think SWToR is losing population.
I don't believe xfire proves that SWToR is a 'fail' game.
Like I said in the other topic. Just go check out the official Server Status Page on swtor.com and see for yourself of how dead the population is.
I mean..... there is only one heavy load server left: The Fatman in US. Two standard load in US. Two standard load in EU.
Everything else is Light load!
Really.... it can't get any worse than this. There is a reason they suddenly laid off THAT many people.
If you want to eliminate or determine the overall Xfire decline that affects all figures over a longer course of time, it's handy to use other (fairly) reliable measuring tools as well, like Steam figures or Raptr. If they show a very different trend with a far less steep decline over a long period of time, then you'll know that it's Xfire's decreasing player population that has an effect. If both in Xfire as Raptr (and Steam) the same trend is seen, then you'll know it's Xfire independent.
To see how reliable or not reliable comparing the figures of different games with eachother is, you only have to compare games of which the PCU's or subs are known (like EVE and WoW etc) and compare the Xfire figures of those with eachother.
But, damn, will we see an Xfire thread with each new MMO from now on, to follow it like it's some football player stats? Lol :-)Where are you guys getting these graphs?
I'm making it. Everyday I put the number of players of SWTOR, WOW, Aion, GW2, Tera and Eve in a spreadsheet. Then I post it here usually monday to have the whole week complete.
Maybe i will switch to Google Docs so it's available always.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
Oh. Do you have a recent one?
I'm not ignoring polite replies, I'm pointing out what's wrong with trying to 'scientifically' apply XFire's numbers to anything other than XFire users.
Your analogy is bad. Medical research trials generally start with tens of thousands of people, and when they release the results a couple thousand are actually relevant to the trial. The input is selected so that it is relevant to the output. Many thousands of participants are removed from the trial because they deviate from what the trial is actually trying to determine. It is done in such a way that you know what the likelihood of significance is, and what the margin of error is.
The closest anyone in this thread has come to XFire's accuracy is "not 100%". Ditto for XFire's significance. Unless you're looking at specifically how many XFire players are playing SWToR, it is just garbage information.
I've noticed something with threads like these. On the one hand, a company like EA will release numbers, and then people will claim XFire's accuracy because the company released numbers. Then, shortly thereafter, they'll deride the company's numbers as being "lies"*. Very similar to your last paragraph. Either EA is telling the truth or they aren't. You can't on the one hand use EA's numbers to validate XFire's numbers, and then at the same time call EA's numbers into question.
EA restructured and got rid of some people. This literally happens all the time**. They also moved from people from another game over to the SWToR team. People happily read the first bit of news and conveniently ignore the second bit of news.
Finally, I could not care less about SWToR's subscription numbers or EA's corporate health. They'll either make it or they won't. XFire is just a really poor excuse for proof of anything; whether it be success or failure.
** edit **
* You are not calling EA's numbers lies, but you are attempting to cast doubt on the veracity of the numbers released by EA.
** In corporations that reach a certain size. A new manager or VP will get a new position and put their mark on things, usually by rearranging people. This isn't good, in my opinion, but it is standard operating procedure.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Saturday evening, 22:35 in Europe. We have about 7 servers on standard pop, the rest is light. No heavy, no full. Just light.
This. This is something that has relevance. When you play on a light population server, you know what it feels like. This is what discussions should be about because it's actually relevant. XFire is just noise and takes away from discussions that could have some relevance.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
You mean like EA "Restructured" the Warhammer online team?
I agree, xfire is an indicator. It does indicate that the population is in free fall, but it doesn't prove it.
There are other indicators, like bioware letting people go and the very light load on the servers.
Altogether, there is no indicators that the active population is not falling.
The number of subscribers is probably much higher than the active players at the moment. People tend to buy 3-6-12 month subscriptions for games they initially really like.
I don't know what happened to the WarHammer team. EA shuffled some people around, dropped a couple people and moved some people from Dragon Age to SWToR. It's a much bigger deal for the future of Dragon Age than it is for SWToR.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Agree ).