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The state of the community
I like to think I know this community well, from just watching and following the trends in the mediums we have.
What can be said about the state of the community today?
Well lets base ourselves on the main medium the darkfall official forums.
30,776 members registered at the time of this post.
Of those I would estimate around 400 comprise the people who are vocal and actually stick around and follow the forums and participate. Then you have what can be called your "newbies of the current month" always coming and going.
Of the state of #darkfall I cannot speak much but it seems to have stabilized around its usual 100 users although there is little activity going on and certainly not alot of darkfall online discussion.
Whats interesting about this state of things is that one can assume its not very healthy compared to what some might think it could be, including myself.
The community has followed the pattern of people joining getting interested and then going away perhaps to come back later when there is some hard information and beta is truly soon, or simply seduced by competing titles and not coming back at all. Frustration due to the obvious disregard for the community by adventurine since around 2003 I believe is also a big factor, and It might even cause problems in getting some of these frustrated users back when there is an actual game to play.
The fact is the community COULD be around the 20 000 somewhat ACTIVE users in my personal estimate, and the forums could have many more registered users. In turn there would be more hype, more people to fight darkfall's sticky vaporware reputation on other MMOG mediums on the web and help promote the game.
As it is now its like an old starving dog chasing and chewing on his own tail. And those that are so seduced by the game to still prove loyal or for other reasons like myself, chose to remain because they enjoy the chatter with certain members of the community get nothing for this loyalty and continious interest and in some cases support.
Lets face it, there is idiocy in the policies and reasons behind this which we all know too well, someone or a group of people are responsible for this state of the commmunity. Aventurine have shot themselves in the foot one too many times and in the meantime proved a complete lack of interest for the welfare of their own community.
I believe bitterness and discontent has been slowly brewing in the community and now even the few loyal users are becoming affected by it.
Unlike what some seem to think I do NOT believe the old "build it and they will come" philosophy will prove to make everything alright.
You can build and present a great game in the form of a great open beta, you can get good word of mouth from the leaks in closed beta, BUT if you have the trackrecord Aventurine has you have you are going to have serious trouble getting your frustrated and disappointed former community members back. Specially when there are games out there who can be considered competition whose teams have not commited the same fatal mistakes.
This whole scenario becomes more sad, and the people responsible for it look more like idiots when you consider the fact that Darkfall is a niche game. So, by logic one would think that they would do everything in their power to attract and gain the trust of that niche specially after the fiasco that was SB.
Yet this did not happen, and from the looks of it, unless something revolutionary happens and happens overtime, it might just be too late.
Comments
And btw, many active posters present a whole guild. Loads of people are interested about Darkfall, they just arent interested about forums.
Loads of people, like the other people who once bothered to register in the official forums or the loads of people that comprise the other 99.99% of the MMOG community that think Darkfall is vaporware? Some of which are the guild representatives you mentioned.
Fenril I dont think a games sucess is based on the subscriptions of the pre game fans. Alot of people make up all kinds of crap in thier heads about what DF will be and when they finaly get the game it doest match and they quit. That does not happen with people who approach the game with an open mind.
- 3000th user last visit 6-9-2006
- 4500th user last visit 5-15-2006
- 6000th user last visit 4-14-2006
- 7500th user last visit 3-14-2006
- 9000th user last visit 2-18-2006
- 12000th user last visit 21-12-2005
- 15000th user last visit 11-12-2005
- 18000th user last visit 10-17-2005
- 21000th user last visit 9-20-2005
So it is not as bad as you may have thought. And however what we can think about the recent news, it is a fact, that we get at the moment 2 news updates(warcry and ign) per week. And this is much much better than ever before and even more than the most other mmorpgs in development.
The only thing we can now hope is, that they continue with it, and that we get some more indeep information, and of course that the beta starts really "soon"(tm).
Im sorry but that user last visit search seems confusing to me.
21000 users visiting regularly? Not happening. All you are saying is that a good deal of people visit the forums every few months. All it takes is to look at the user stats regurlarly to see whats going on. Most of the traffic comes from guests.
- 4500th user last visit 5-15-2006
- 6000th user last visit 4-14-2006
- 7500th user last visit 3-14-2006
- 9000th user last visit 2-18-2006
- 12000th user last visit 21-12-2005
- 15000th user last visit 11-12-2005
- 18000th user last visit 10-17-2005
- 21000th user last visit 9-20-2005
What thats saying is that there have been roughly 3000 different members visiting the DF forums since the 9th of june (about 3 weeks ago), about 4500 since the 15th of May and so on. the 21000 mean thats how many different members have visited since Sep. 20 last year.
I personally wouldn't take to heart anything about the statistics of who is visiting forums. I know that, for all of the MMO's that I've been a part of, I haven't hung around their forums eagerly in the years leading up to release, and I'm sure it's the same for a majority of people out there.
your reading to much into it. I have been a registered user on DF's forums since '04 and may have posted, 4 times? I just don't get into talking about game mechanics that don't exist yet like some people do, and while I do check up on clan info just to see who is planning on playing, I don't post there either since I plan to go solo and see who I run in to when the games actually live.
If the community seems dead, its because there is very little factual information to talk about that hasn't been beat to death already. When something real is released, and there's something solid to actually discuss for all the non-trolls, then you can actually have a community. Until then I continue the wait and hold off on predictions.