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xfire shows AoC numbers decreasing :(
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lol are you serious? lol uhh right..
I turn off xfire before i start AoC, i used to run it, now it's annoying, all of my friends are either ingame or i make them talk to me through steam *so it DOESNT interupt me lol*
I'm sure my AoC xfire stats were higher before i started purposely closing it. Most of my frends that use xfire turn it off before they play most of their games. Mainly because ingame chat features work better.
Not to mention xfire has always been an annoyance, anytime my game crashes (any game) xfire tries to steal report priority, like i really care about giving Them the client crash info, lol if the client crash was their fault at all, i'd just rather uninstall it then help them fix it. It has become more annoying than it has a convenience lately.
"Sometimes, things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. People are basically good. Honor, courage, virtue mean everything. Power and money, money and power mean nothing. Good always triumphs over evil. Love, True Love Never Dies."
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
I don't think the real numbers will be known for a few months to see where this game levels out. It shouldn't be any suprise that the highest numbers will most likely be the may numbers. FC really did it to themselves though by promising so much and then hiding all of the shortfalls by making the beta so limited and keeping the NDA up the whole time. They may have been successfull in boosting sales based on hype and the fact that so many people are looking for a new game, but I think in the long run that shitty marketing strategy will prove to hurt the game.
It seems to me like they would have better served by being up front about the limitations they realised a long time ago rather than to keep promising what they knew they couldn't deliver. I don't know how many more games have to go this way before something changes but it's pretty frustrating to say the least. It's like watching a bus drive off a cliff and you don't have any way of telling them they are about to drive off a cliff. Quite a few MMO's have driven off the cliff in the last few years and I guess the industry just wants to keep looking away and pretending they can keep cranking out garbage.
I know this doesn't add much to the discussion, but:
A-*F*CK'N*-Men
They must have taken lessons from Flagship, because Hellgate London flopped after months of mega-hype, pushing out a mediocre shoot 'em up, and Flagship never bother to talk to their customers either. One of the things that struck me as hilarious was that even THEY couldn't explain how the game mechanics worked! Priceless
lowest friday numbers yet in spite of this thread driving people to use xfire to bump the numbers up....
---
Ethion
XFIRE USERS: PUUUUSH!!!
Since it's currently a large part of my job in RL, I can't resist the obvious quote.
"There are Lies, Damn Lies & Statistics"
If you can't "Have your cake & eat it too", then how can "The proof of the pudding be in the eating"?
Take the Hecatomb? TCG What Is Your Doom? quiz.
xfire is not the whole player base.
xfire is not even a quarter of the player base...of any game
and those that use xfire (mainly) are the asswipes that i detest in games (to be cliche...the wow fanboi's)
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
How does xfire get it's numbers?
I've played many, many mmo's and haven't even heard of xfire before coming to these forums.
You miss the point.
Xfire is a indicator and a darn good one since most of the Xfire users would be considered medium to hard core as far as time spent playing goes. AoC does not have sufficient soft core content to carry big numbers or even moderate numbers of players. I would say the majority of AoC players are still enamored by the flashy graphics and promises of siege warfare. Once they get to the point whee the graphics are no longer a new novelty unless the FC has really gotten the PvP to where it will hold players and the loot tables fixed and more mid to upper level content in place even the current fanbois will begin to drop like flies.
I miss DAoC
So... am I actually the only one that do not see those statistics as bad?
up one spot from yesterday, and x-fire is just a small portion of the overall user base, now that is a fact.
I wonder how much of that one spot rise is due to them starting to send out buddy keys?
That small percentage of users are logging about half the hours there were at aunch. From over 95 K just after launch to 48 K yesterday. Lost a third of the hours from the last 2 weekends, June 8th it had 66K hours, June 15th 60K. It is pretty obvious that people are canceling their subs.
And once again these are the more dedicated MMORPGers who live for the PvP and are gear whores. These are the guys and gals who did not give a damn about grinding the last 30 or 40 levels of content because FC did have time to do a decent questline all the way to 80. These are the people who could give a damn about crafting and RP'ing. If they are quitting in such numbers what about the casual player who will be quicker to hit the cancel button when customer service blows him or her off or runs out of quests and just refuses to grind mobs for 40 levels. What about the casual players who want to be able to craft and enjoy the RP fluff content?
Bottom line is if AoC cannot hold the hard core players the casuals will be leaving a lot faster.
I miss DAoC
Xfire numbers aren't very accurate, and even so it looks like it's evened out and is slowly back on the rise. There will be those who don't like the game and leave, but subscriber numbers will still rise a bit and level off. Last night around 4 AM I counted about 1400 people on the Cimmeria RP-PvP server. And there was about 5000 at peak. Not bad for one server, I must say.
I prefer to count how many people are on my server IG so I know what type of numbers there are, just search 1-80 and count the pages and multiply that by 50 (50 players per page).
I wonder how much of that one spot rise is due to them starting to send out buddy keys?
That small percentage of users are logging about half the hours there were at aunch. From over 95 K just after launch to 48 K yesterday. Lost a third of the hours from the last 2 weekends, June 8th it had 66K hours, June 15th 60K. It is pretty obvious that people are canceling their subs.
And once again these are the more dedicated MMORPGers who live for the PvP and are gear whores. These are the guys and gals who did not give a damn about grinding the last 30 or 40 levels of content because FC did have time to do a decent questline all the way to 80. These are the people who could give a damn about crafting and RP'ing. If they are quitting in such numbers what about the casual player who will be quicker to hit the cancel button when customer service blows him or her off or runs out of quests and just refuses to grind mobs for 40 levels. What about the casual players who want to be able to craft and enjoy the RP fluff content?
Bottom line is if AoC cannot hold the hard core players the casuals will be leaving a lot faster.
I would argue that correlation is a-typical of any mmorpg. But we havent got data from X-fire Vs other mmo's to compare have we, Vs first month of game time included in the box.
Hardcore and Casual correlation to back up your assumption? They are opposite ends from each other. A hardore player will have the game done weeks before a casual player. We are talking one month of play, where the hardcore players are barely touching Tier 3 crafting at all for example. There maybe is 20 people in the whole game who have made everything. And yet 12k x-fire users are such a small portion of the over all numbers.
I compared EQ2 reports to release reports... and xfire is pretty dang spot on.. EQ2 is on the rise from a downfall and it clearly shows that.
While it's OBVIOUSLY not going to be extremely accurate.. it's a pretty good estimate.
My ingame experiences also suggest population is on the downfall.. getting a group compared to release week is an absolutely struggle now.
I'm debating shelfing it for awhile, but I fear I'll probably never come back.. my 4yr old EQ2 account is calling me.. Somehow I -always- go back to eq2.. went to wow.. ran back to eq2.. tabula rasa.. back to eq2.. same situation each time..
My problem is I don't like pvp unless it's exactly like daoc.. and I don't like raiding unless it's 10man at most (I like my groups more personal).. so saddly AoC fails in both those aspects... at level80 there's nothing to do but pvp and raid.. and the pvp is awful.. the raiding loot is extremely buggy.. Maybe in time it'll get better, but I may just stick to EQ2 and play single player games like spore and fallout3 on the side..
Going to finally get into my career in approx a month.. so I really don't care what I play as long as I can have some fun.. and when AoC keeps crashing.. it makes me not want to play.. I find it EXTREMELY easy to walk away from this game and I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.
You do not think it is natural that people played more right after the game launched?
It is obvious that the people who did not find the game to their liking play less and choose not to resubscribe.
What will be interesting to see now is how the graph turns out in the following weeks, based on those who did resubscribe.
Supposedly all the people dissatisfied with AoC are going to Vanguard. way to go vanguard!
Vanguard-
Highest: #15 on 2007-02-04
Age of Conan
Highest: #4 on 2008-06-01
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
Lao-Tze
You do not think it is natural that people played more right after the game launched?
It is obvious that the people who did not find the game to their liking play less and choose not to resubscribe.
What will be interesting to see now is how the graph turns out in the following weeks, based on those who did resubscribe.
of course it is natural that a game has more hours played right after release. What will tell the tale is what that chart looks like two weeks from now and then this time next month, then 2 months from now.
Look at the figures for May 27th that was a natural curve down from launch mania. By June 01 it had rose back to 81K which I would attribute to people like myself who were lulled in by the "successful" launch. But the 8th ( 66k), the 15th (60K), and then the 21st( 48K) shows a steadily decreasing trend due to people either getting bored very quickly and or canceling faster than new people are coming in. AoC is still doing very well in the sales charts so I think it is boredom eating into their numbers, the long term retention does not seem to be very good at all at point.
I predict sales will start dropping by the end of the month and if this trend of the game growing stale in a couple of weeks does not halt their numbers will be in the toilet by the end of August. If they do not have a firm and happy core group by the time WAR arrives they are screwed royally.
I miss DAoC
AOC has hardly any staying power, I wonder what % of those 400k that have bought the game will be around in a month (or two).
Another cry of the sky is falling. I say good, because mostly it's the annoying snot-nosed brats with a short attention span.
I can't wait for WAR so the rest of the WOW kiddies leave.
PS-Screw xfire. I'm not on Xfire but I am on AOC.
XFIRE is just another marketing monitor scam.
SHOHADAKU
I dont understand people calling it a broken game. Vanguard is a broken game. Conan has some bugs and some unfinished quests but thats about it. Nothing game breaking. I run on an older macbook pro. Certainly a powerful machine but not made for gaming. 2 gigs of ram, a shitty ati, and a core 2 duo. I run on low in cities and usually medium in remote areas. I havent crashed ONCE. The only bugs I encounter are an invisible mob here or there.
Also as far as people calling it incomplete its because most people have nothing better to do than rush through the game to lvl 80 in the first week of release. Even a "completed game" would get very boring after hitting lvl cap in the first week. You wouldnt last for another month or so after that without complaining because new content dosent come out that fast.
playing: darkfall
waiting: earthrise
There is no correlation between people who use xfire and what types of games they play. Nor is there a correlation between xfire and how long people retain accounts. I consider it a 'neutral' app that is used by all types of people for all types of games and there is no evidence to support that it is only used by a particular group of gamers, be it WoWers or otherwise.
The fact that such a small fraction of all mmo gamers actually use xfire, drives the point home further. If xfire shows AoC numbers decreasing and most people don't use xfire... then that means way more people are leaving than we will ever know about. Which doesn't surprise me in the least because I ran out of content and got bored after only 2 weeks of casually playing it. I have played over a dozen mmos and AoC was easily my shortest lasting subscription by a longshot.
I don't think this trend is bad at all. Its clear that AoC has done, and continues to do, many things bad for the genre. It has lowered the bar in just about every area except graphics - such as functionality, customer service, developer honesty, instancing, crafting.. etc..
Such things SHOULD result in unpopularity and lowered subs, because if that didn't happen, we will see such bad traits continuing in the future in other games. If AoC dies out, then we will see higher quality games, from developers who learned from Funcom's failures.
So turn that frown upside down, OP, this is a GOOD thing, for all of us. Well, maybe not the fanboys
Waiting for: A skill-based MMO with Freedom and Consequence.
Woe to thee, the pierce-ed.
Xfire hasnt logged my AoC hours since second week... not saying thats why but anyway its not logging my hours....
MMO is about endgame. Well there are some MMOs where you can level more or less forever, but usually its about leveling up to max and then start playing for real. Considering the content that it was suppose to be released with at launch either isnt ingame or broken its no wonder people are leaving. I left and I played this game without a single hardware issue. My problem was the game itself or well more Funcom's lies and crappy support.