Steam numbers are in no way an "accurate" portrayal of how a game is doing. As for Wildstar, regardless of it being now on Steam, it's still a shit game(of course this is subjective) and will still go to the wayside. It's died a few times already. Let it be.
Unless it has at least 500,000 at once it's clearly a total failure. Ignore the fact that Final Fantasy XIV's maximum ever is 11,900.
FFXIV probably being one of the top 3 sub games on the market in terms of how well its doing, population, etc, the numbers on steam are another indication to take Steams numbers with a grain of salt. Not sure why a lot of people put so much stock on steam numbers and twitch numbers. FFXIV is doing a LOT better than what steams numbers indicate.
I miss the days when mmos were honest and just showed the number of people playing. No need for all the stupid speculation. Especially in a f2p game where people playing doesn't directly correlate to success.
Unless it has at least 500,000 at once it's clearly a total failure. Ignore the fact that Final Fantasy XIV's maximum ever is 11,900.
FFXIV probably being one of the top 3 sub games on the market in terms of how well its doing, population, etc, the numbers on steam are another indication to take Steams numbers with a grain of salt. Not sure why a lot of people put so much stock on steam numbers and twitch numbers. FFXIV is doing a LOT better than what steams numbers indicate.
Steam numbers are fine. What you have to factor in is how people can play the game.
FFXIV can be played on Steam OR via Square Enix (on PC) OR on Playstation. And its realistic to assume that most people in e.g. Japan play via SE since it didn't come out on Steam on day 1. The reason the game probably launched on Steam is - probably - to offer the game in countries were SE doesn't have much "presence".
As far as TESO goes - same deal. You can play on Steam or via Zenimax or PS4 or XB1.
I assume that Wildstar can still be played via Carbine as well. The problem the game has - based on NCSoft's financial results - is it wasn't doing very well before the launch. And a few thousand f2p players are not going to change that. It needs "lots".
I miss the days when mmos were honest and just showed the number of people playing. No need for all the stupid speculation. Especially in a f2p game where people playing doesn't directly correlate to success.
Not many companies ever really did that, most of it was estimated speculation (MMOdata) or marketing speak (boxes sold) back in the day as well. The only two companies I can think of that ever spoke regularly in terms of actual sub numbers were Blizzard and CCP.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I miss the days when mmos were honest and just showed the number of people playing. No need for all the stupid speculation. Especially in a f2p game where people playing doesn't directly correlate to success.
Not many companies ever really did that, most of it was estimated speculation (MMOdata) or marketing speak (boxes sold) back in the day as well. The only two companies I can think of that ever spoke regularly in terms of actual sub numbers were Blizzard and CCP.
I mean this. There is really no hiding a low population. You can just log in and see. In a b2p game I can almost understand it, but f2p means anyone can log in and find out for themselves. No need for all the subterfuge.
Chances are when people start hiding subs or server pops, something is wrong. See Blizzard and their policy about no longer reporting WoW numbers but their willingness to continually shove Overwatch numbers in our face.
Steam numbers are in no way an "accurate" portrayal of how a game is doing. As for Wildstar, regardless of it being now on Steam, it's still a shit game(of course this is subjective) and will still go to the wayside. It's died a few times already. Let it be.
Last time it died was after the F2P transition. Although not because "it's a shit game", but because Carbine's servers were rubbish and couldn't keep up with the number of players. For weeks the lag was unbearable, login not realiable, characters not showing in the menu, patcher timeouts, zones not loading and other issues going on. It stabilized when everyone left in disgust.
So the interest in the game was there, but once again Carbine had no idea wtf to do with the players. Just like people always wanted to spend money on the cash shop and Carbine did not know how to run it and put some stuff in to there. Altogether i wouldn't say that the game died on it's own, but Carbine let it die.
At least the servers seem to be stable now. Not too bad, considering there is only a single guy in charge of their network structure. What this game needs the most is a more competent studio behind it.
I miss the days when mmos were honest and just showed the number of people playing. No need for all the stupid speculation. Especially in a f2p game where people playing doesn't directly correlate to success.
Not many companies ever really did that, most of it was estimated speculation (MMOdata) or marketing speak (boxes sold) back in the day as well. The only two companies I can think of that ever spoke regularly in terms of actual sub numbers were Blizzard and CCP.
I mean this. There is really no hiding a low population. You can just log in and see. In a b2p game I can almost understand it, but f2p means anyone can log in and find out for themselves. No need for all the subterfuge.
Chances are when people start hiding subs or server pops, something is wrong. See Blizzard and their policy about no longer reporting WoW numbers but their willingness to continually shove Overwatch numbers in our face.
That would certainly be helpful, I've personally never played a game that featured that type of breakdown. AT most I've seen the light/heavy indicators on server selections.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Steam numbers are in no way an "accurate" portrayal of how a game is doing. As for Wildstar, regardless of it being now on Steam, it's still a shit game(of course this is subjective) and will still go to the wayside. It's died a few times already. Let it be.
Last time it died was after the F2P transition. Although not because "it's a shit game", but because Carbine's servers were rubbish and couldn't keep up with the number of players. For weeks the lag was unbearable, login not realiable, characters not showing in the menu, patcher timeouts, zones not loading and other issues going on. It stabilized when everyone left in disgust.
So the interest in the game was there, but once again Carbine had no idea wtf to do with the players. Just like people always wanted to spend money on the cash shop and Carbine did not know how to run it and put some stuff in to there. Altogether i wouldn't say that the game died on it's own, but Carbine let it die.
At least the servers seem to be stable now. Not too bad, considering there is only a single guy in charge of their network structure. What this game needs the most is a more competent studio behind it.
Actually, I have to respectfully disagree with you. The game launched with not a huge following behind it. You could tell from day 1 launch. In a LOT of MMO's, day 1 you see TON of players in the newbie areas. In Wildstar's launch, on 2 different servers which at the time were supposedly the "highest" populated PvE and PvP servers, I saw hardly any people. I kept asking all my buddies on our voice coms if it was just me or did everyone else notice a severe lack of players for a launch. They all agreed and even chat had some talk about it as well. Their servers were bad yes, but it didn't have a lot of players from the get-go. Put those two together and that's a recipe for disaster.
After the first large update, the games population dropped significantly.. from seeing some people in the main town hubs to hardly anyone at all, even during prime time hours. In fact, before the first game update, my guild had over 120 players in it(no joke) 120 ACTIVE players. Post update, the guild folded because most of the players quit. The remaining players merged with another guild and shortly after that, they foiled due to another player drop. The game did not have a large player base at launch which was odd for a game that was getting a lot of talk prior to its launch. So while I agree their servers were shit, the game just wasn't popular from the getgo and further went down the rabbid hole. I personally think it was also due to a very shity optimization job by them. The game ran horribly for the style of graphics.
Dark Age of Camelot showed their player numbers for a very long time, both on the website and in the client.
Unfortunately as time went on (and the game became less popular) they did away with it. You can still freely check it ingame though. There really shouldn't be any shame involved in showing how many players are actively playing, hiding it sends a much worse message in my opinion. And you can't go by high/medium/low population either since several MMOs have "adjusted" those to make them seem more popular than they are.
I do think Steam is a pretty good indicator for Wildstar at this point in time because you had a lot of players move over to Steam in order to promote the game / review it / get Steam achievements. On the other hand you have players trying it out and not sticking around for very long. Check back in a week :P
Wildstar can find more success if put on xbox one and ps4, the controls seem like it would be more comfortable with a gamepad anyway. Its gameplay feels weird with keyboard and mouse imo
Dark Age of Camelot showed their player numbers for a very long time, both on the website and in the client.
Unfortunately as time went on (and the game became less popular) they did away with it. You can still freely check it ingame though. There really shouldn't be any shame involved in showing how many players are actively playing, hiding it sends a much worse message in my opinion. And you can't go by high/medium/low population either since several MMOs have "adjusted" those to make them seem more popular than they are.
I do think Steam is a pretty good indicator for Wildstar at this point in time because you had a lot of players move over to Steam in order to promote the game / review it / get Steam achievements. On the other hand you have players trying it out and not sticking around for very long. Check back in a week :P
I really didn't remember that being in DAOC. Maybe more had it and I didn't realize it or pay attention to it. The only thing I remember doing to find out anything about players was typing /who... Which I don't even know if modern games have that or not, it's been forever since I thought about doing that. Or felt the need to.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Over $25 Million USD first quarter of release is not too bad. The game was $60 at launch.
They obviously plummeted after the first quarter but the game did sell a fair amount at launch.
I think a lot of folks just look at the pre-release community, rather than researching the numbers. I know as far as pre-release activity goes, it was rather stunted on MMORPG.com as an example. Sure it had a semi active forum, yet it didn't have a lot in the way of in and out traffic it seemed. I guess a lot of that had to do with so much activity in regard to ESO at the time. As well as a couple other notable games of interest. I know I didn't see a lot of those mega threads this site can be known for during the pre-release frenzy for more popular titles.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
They launched as a subscription game, had a huge number of players initially and a very swift fall off. They launched as F2P, had a reasonable number of players initially and a very swift fall off. They launched on Steam, had a reasonable number of players initially and...
WS simply can;t retain players, for whatever reason that may be (multiple bad design choices).
Dark Age Camelot had the numbers up at their site front page . Was easy to check and see. Even Asheron Call 2 had their numbers up which was why it was so easy to ridicule it when one of their servers had 6 people on it. There was a thread on Vault about it and much laughter ensued. So showing numbers is not a good thing when they fall or get low.
The main problem about Wildstar and this is my opinion that makes the population consistently leave after initially trying it , is the combat.
They launched as a subscription game, had a huge number of players initially and a very swift fall off. They launched as F2P, had a reasonable number of players initially and a very swift fall off. They launched on Steam, had a reasonable number of players initially and...
WS simply can;t retain players, for whatever reason that may be (multiple bad design choices).
5k for a f2p AAA budget mmorpg launching on steam are weak numbers. Tera had 25k, neverwinter had 14k, planetside 2 had 30k, rift got up to 11k when they switched to f2p. Even sub games like ff14 peaked higher on steam.
A reasonable number for wildstar would be peaking at 10k while averaging above 1k players 3 months from now.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
They launched as a subscription game, had a huge number of players initially and a very swift fall off. They launched as F2P, had a reasonable number of players initially and a very swift fall off. They launched on Steam, had a reasonable number of players initially and...
WS simply can;t retain players, for whatever reason that may be (multiple bad design choices).
5k for a f2p AAA budget mmorpg launching on steam are weak numbers. Tera had 25k, neverwinter had 14k, planetside 2 had 30k, rift got up to 11k when they switched to f2p. Even sub games like ff14 peaked higher on steam.
A reasonable number for wildstar would be peaking at 10k while averaging above 1k players 3 months from now.
Honestly for a F2P those peak numbers are of the least importance, that peak could quite simply identify with events such as launch, giveaways, tournaments etc... Just because it's a big number doesn't make it significant.
The more important number is the average amount of logged in users, not to mention how many are spending, as well as how much...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Comments
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
considering also huge amount of kido around there no big deal
FFXIV can be played on Steam OR via Square Enix (on PC) OR on Playstation. And its realistic to assume that most people in e.g. Japan play via SE since it didn't come out on Steam on day 1. The reason the game probably launched on Steam is - probably - to offer the game in countries were SE doesn't have much "presence".
As far as TESO goes - same deal. You can play on Steam or via Zenimax or PS4 or XB1.
I assume that Wildstar can still be played via Carbine as well. The problem the game has - based on NCSoft's financial results - is it wasn't doing very well before the launch. And a few thousand f2p players are not going to change that. It needs "lots".
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I mean this. There is really no hiding a low population. You can just log in and see. In a b2p game I can almost understand it, but f2p means anyone can log in and find out for themselves. No need for all the subterfuge.
Chances are when people start hiding subs or server pops, something is wrong. See Blizzard and their policy about no longer reporting WoW numbers but their willingness to continually shove Overwatch numbers in our face.
It stabilized when everyone left in disgust.
So the interest in the game was there, but once again Carbine had no idea wtf to do with the players. Just like people always wanted to spend money on the cash shop and Carbine did not know how to run it and put some stuff in to there. Altogether i wouldn't say that the game died on it's own, but Carbine let it die.
At least the servers seem to be stable now. Not too bad, considering there is only a single guy in charge of their network structure.
What this game needs the most is a more competent studio behind it.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
After the first large update, the games population dropped significantly.. from seeing some people in the main town hubs to hardly anyone at all, even during prime time hours. In fact, before the first game update, my guild had over 120 players in it(no joke) 120 ACTIVE players. Post update, the guild folded because most of the players quit. The remaining players merged with another guild and shortly after that, they foiled due to another player drop. The game did not have a large player base at launch which was odd for a game that was getting a lot of talk prior to its launch. So while I agree their servers were shit, the game just wasn't popular from the getgo and further went down the rabbid hole. I personally think it was also due to a very shity optimization job by them. The game ran horribly for the style of graphics.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
Unfortunately as time went on (and the game became less popular) they did away with it. You can still freely check it ingame though. There really shouldn't be any shame involved in showing how many players are actively playing, hiding it sends a much worse message in my opinion. And you can't go by high/medium/low population either since several MMOs have "adjusted" those to make them seem more popular than they are.
I do think Steam is a pretty good indicator for Wildstar at this point in time because you had a lot of players move over to Steam in order to promote the game / review it / get Steam achievements. On the other hand you have players trying it out and not sticking around for very long. Check back in a week :P
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
They launched as a subscription game, had a huge number of players initially and a very swift fall off.
They launched as F2P, had a reasonable number of players initially and a very swift fall off.
They launched on Steam, had a reasonable number of players initially and...
WS simply can;t retain players, for whatever reason that may be (multiple bad design choices).
The main problem about Wildstar and this is my opinion that makes the population consistently leave after initially trying it , is the combat.
A reasonable number for wildstar would be peaking at 10k while averaging above 1k players 3 months from now.
The more important number is the average amount of logged in users, not to mention how many are spending, as well as how much...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson