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xfire shows AoC numbers decreasing :(
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Did you know that 9 out of 10 dogs prefer cats....
I'm more of a dog person and think those fluffy good for nothing balls or fur serve no purpose other then to destroy furniture and create fur that needs to be vacuumed or removed from your clothes every day before work....
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Ethion
i note that subs are still on a steady downward curve towards bankruptcy. FC deserve nothing less for releasing such a buggy game and using deceptive business practises to sell it.
For the people that joined at launch their free 30 days ended last Sunday night.
For the people that joined at Early Access (like me) their free 30 days run out tomorrow.
So after friday you will see who stick around and who dropped the buggy game
Well after much debate I finally decided to cancel AoC so it looks like the xfire numbers are gonna go down by one person :P
The game has promise it is just buggy, under developed and really wasn't ready to ship. I'm also not sure I trust funcom to be truthful about things coming schedules, etc.
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Ethion
Sorry, but Xfire simply IS NOT a good statistical measure of player population. For one reason: Casual players. Casual players aren't going to give a rat's ass about Xfire or the bragging rights that go with it. If a certain game has a high percentage of casual players, that population is not going to show up on Xfire.
An example of how this could be skewed: Game Casual has 500k subs but has a low daily population of 10k players. If each of those 10 k players only plays about 1 hour a day, that gives you 10,000 hours. Compare that to our hypothetical Hardcore Game of 250k subscribers that has 5k players on average per day playing 5 hours a day. That puts you at 25,000 hours.
Of course the above thought experiment assumes everyone has Xfire in order to record hours played. But since not everyone has Xfire, and of those who do not it's likely a high majority of them are casual players, the above analysis skews the estimate higher for Game Casual.
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Well on the subject of the post, the descreasing numbers is normal in a new release MMORPG, eventually the numbers will go back up over time.
many people are not resubbing after the first month.
the majority of sales for this game were done in the first month, they have now slowed right down.
things will even out and those who like the game will stay and those that don't will leave or have left already.
a clear picture of the games success will be seen a few months down the line and things level out.
2-300k regular subs sounds about right for this game.
I agree that most Xfire player will be more hard core than average the way I look at it Cerion is a hard core player will put up with things a casual player will not.
Lack of quests for example, a hard core player will grind through levels mob by mob if necessary. Bad crafting, a hard core player will generally care less about fluff items, they tend to be more interested in high end raids and gear. Performance wise a hard core player will tend to have better gear. Bug tolerance will be higher among hard core players than casuals. A casual will be quicker to hit the cancel button than the hard core raid guildie over a bugged quest or bad CS.
In other words if hard core are quitting, I would bet the casuals are leading the way and in greater numbers even. I have one friend who is in a hard core raid guildie, her and her raid guild are just grinding alts to 80 now, ganking newbies and waiting on FC to get some decent dungeons in. She does admit though there are a growing number who are growing bored and heading back to WoW because of the number of high end dungeons and gear can't keep them satisfied. She is giving them 90 days before she cancels. Myself I am not paying for 90 days of "hope", seen too many D&Ls, HZ's and Vanguards. For the record she hung around Vanguard for3 months also, swearing that she knew they would have every thing straight by the end of 3 months.
I miss DAoC
What is baffling me is they seem to be buggering about with little things and not getting the stuff that would keep people playing sorted. Such as:
What do they do instead?
I mean come on?!?!!? I genuinely like this game, it has a nice feel about it, im a casual player so ive not hit level 80 yet but im seriously concerned that Funcom aren't addressing the big issues that need to be sorted and in the meantime people are going to drift back to other MMO's and await the release of Warhammer Online.
This post is a bit lame, AOC is a fantactic game next to the junk that has been out there. I'm sure the numbers are fine. wow's pg type rating helps it have huge numbers. Lets give them a chance before we dog the game out lol, most games never start out this well.
Just click the link at the start 4 weeks ago it was at 92k hours played per day. Yesterday it was 36k. Thats a decline of what 60% in the first month when people are buying the game fastest? I think this paints some picuture about the state of the game... On the other hand 36K is still a big number. However if the trend continues or even accelerates then AoC will definitely be dropping back into the pack before long.
Guildwars being 3rd was 32k,
Silkroad online was 25k
several other bizare games...
eve wsa 10k
lord of the rings 7k
linage 2 6k
SWG 3k
CoH 3k
EQ2 3k
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Ethion
From a High of 17K + players at the start, today there were 9K XFire members playing.
It's not just us Flameboys that have a problem with the game. It's the general population of players.
Waiting for the next thing
ouch, yesterday it dropped to 23k now the number 4 spot for mmorpgs beat by wow, guildwars, and silkroad online....
Maybe it is down though due to the problems with the patch. Today it will probably rebound.
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Ethion
Rebounded all the way down to #7.
to #11... the weekemds figures will be a good indication...
I do not believe this is true. SWG and Vanguard numbers are not improving. Even if SOE offers a free month of gamingto vet players of VG I seriously doubt many will take them up on it. Vanguard still has tons of work that needs done to it. SWG will never rebound, Matric Online will never rebound, AC2 is literally gone, so Ithink you are wrong that numbers rebound after awhile.
AoC numbers are high because....
1. AgeOfConan.exe process continues to run on some computers after the game is shutdown. I play/crash for 2 hours, give up, try again a couple days later, when I try to launch it Iget an error that it's already running. In that situation xfire would show that I've been playing for 48 hours?
2. It's new.
Besides that, it's already down to #11. Who really cares where it peaked, I just want to see it burn.
Completely agree with you.
Funcom has screwed the pooch, royally. To be honest I think SOE did a FAR better job recovering Vanguard than Funcom is doing recovering AoC (because believe me they know they are in recovery mode). Zones are becomming ghost towns compared to launch AND today is the day where initial subs renew, the end of the free month, and I for one managed to cancel before the charge came through.
I'm not alone.
I'll keep an eye out and watch to see how things go but for now there is NO way I'm giving Funcom another penny of my money until they show they have a freaking clue what an MMO means today beyond pretty graphics and a unque targeting system.
I and others are so vastly dissapointed in Funcom's handling of this product and launch that's it's beyond words. Ranging from failure to delivery paid for product (buddy keys, working in game free items, falsely named in box items) to a half-assed designed and developed software package. Guess we have to hope for the NEXT game to be worth playing.
AoC numbers are high because....
1. AgeOfConan.exe process continues to run on some computers after the game is shutdown. I play/crash for 2 hours, give up, try again a couple days later, when I try to launch it Iget an error that it's already running. In that situation xfire would show that I've been playing for 48 hours?
2. It's new.
Besides that, it's already down to #11. Who really cares where it peaked, I just want to see it burn.
Well, there it is. Everything has an explanation. Case closed, we can all go home now.
looks like it is down by almost 9k hours last Saturday to this Saturday. June 21 numbers = 48451, June 28 = 39703. Draw whatever conclusion you want but this old data miner sees a steady decline in numbers apples to apples. It is still 20 at Amazon also so while sales are good less hours are being logged. Considering new players tend to log in more hours, the overall decline in hours played coupled with the steady sales does not bode well. I guess the retail distributors are making money, the retention is sucking though.
By the way fanbois I know Xfire is just a small percentage blah blah blah. It is however a good overall indicator of retention numbers. If AoC cannot retain the hard core players , they sure as hell won't be retaining the casuals who tend to cancel as soon as they get bored or pissed off because of a nerf or CS fubar. Not to mention casuals will not grind mobs for advancement or put up with crap loot drops and grinding for coin.
I miss DAoC
latest overall video games sales at amazon.com:.....
Conan now at position 80(!). Just before a Nancy Drew pre-order adventure ....
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_pg_7?ie=UTF8&rs=468642&rh=n%3A468642&page=7
For a video game that had the top position only a few weeks ago in the overall video game industry - even beating GTA4 ....It sinks faster than the Titanic did.
I think we need to re adjust the subscriptions in the upcoming months, because of this.
I guess 150K will be an achievement now after the summer.
I can't even imagine what the rest of those 150K subs will do after the launches of WAR and WotLK, with each having REAL working Siege combat systems.(at least I suppose these games WILL have some Beta testing before launch)
)).
For what it's worth, I don't think using xfire is going to give us exact numbers. My reason for this is I have XFIRE and I never use it anymore and I PLAY AOC! So there! Besides with how AoC is so finicky on PC's you don't want much running in the background eating up the resources any more than you have to.
While I agree tha xfire isn't a solid indicator of most MMOs and their subscriber rates. I also have to think that anyone who was running xfire last month is still running it this month. I doubt the sharp decline is due to people quitting xfire over peopel quitting Conan.
I don't count overall video game sales. No PC game can hang with PS3 and Xbox, in particular MMORPG's. Just in PC games AoC is holding #20
www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/videogames/12508701/ref=pd_ts_zbw_vg_12508701_more
which tells me that sells even though box sales are still strong, couple that with the trend on hours played and the game is weak on retention. In other words FC's marketing department is doing a bang up job and and the is getting a lot of favorable reviews from major sites. The game does not contain enough meat for retention and once the shiny graphics wear off and people make it out of Totage reality is setting in and they stop playing. If this trend keeps up the servers will be ghost towns in 3 months.
I miss DAoC