Not enough servers showing high trafic at peak hours. That would lead you to believe growth has already slowed quite a lot. You cannot hype a game so much and deliver so little at launch. Then treat your subs like fodder. Also they pulled out nerf bats the first week and start swinging.
Combine that with outright deceit and lies,silent nerfs,lousy customer service and a general lack of common sense. They have already caused a decline in subscriptions and a huge drop in new subs.
Not enough servers showing high trafic at peak hours. That would lead you to believe growth has already slowed quite a lot. You cannot hype a game so much and deliver so little at launch. Then treat your subs like fodder. Also they pulled out nerf bats the first week and start swinging. Combine that with outright deceit and lies,silent nerfs,lousy customer service and a general lack of common sense. They have already caused a decline in subscriptions and a huge drop in new subs.
Funcom server room? - Only one server!.
haha you want make beleiv u got actual photo of funcom servers. this is bs, no multi million billion company would EVER give anyone access for people to take photo from their server room. And u may never heard the term serverPARK where tons of company has tons of server? guess not
haha you want make beleiv u got actual photo of funcom servers. this is bs, no multi million billion company would EVER give anyone access for people to take photo from their server room. And u may never heard the term serverPARK where tons of company has tons of server? guess not /fail
Why would Funcom need a hole serverpark. A single server can easy handle the low population there current is. Well of cause there have been lag latency, buffer overflow here lately. But maybe a minor upgrade can take care of it.
Originally posted by AOCjester haha you want make beleiv u got actual photo of funcom servers. this is bs, no multi million billion company would EVER give anyone access for people to take photo from their server room. And u may never heard the term serverPARK where tons of company has tons of server? guess not /fail
I guess someone /failed to grasp the concept of sarcasm
Originally posted by AOCjester haha you want make beleiv u got actual photo of funcom servers. this is bs, no multi million billion company would EVER give anyone access for people to take photo from their server room. And u may never heard the term serverPARK where tons of company has tons of server? guess not /fail
I guess someone /failed to grasp the concept of sarcasm
i dont call sarcasm posting information who is obiously FALSE to try to mislead and spread rumour which is with no root in truth. not that anyone would be stupid to beleiv it in first place, but that not the point here
I think 12% would be the absolute lowest number to plug in when trying to calculate subscriptions.
The % should be higher during the first months of a new game, plus the 12% seems low for peak time (i.e. maybe on average 12% of players are on line at any one time, with those numbers dipping into single digits way off peak and as high as 20% at peak). Since these numbers are taken during peak hours for a recently released game, 20% may be a better number to use for estimates.
Also, they could very well have over 200,000 EU subscribers atm, if you include people who have canceled, but who's time hasn't run out, plus the people who have just stopped logging in, but haven't hit the cancel button yet.
It seems very likely to me, given the current trends, that EU will have under 200,000 subscribers next billing cycle.
The dead server issue is also a negative indicator. Ghost servers never get better on their own and the low populations can greatly decrease enjoyment of the game for people that rolled there, resulting in higher cancelation rates for people on those servers.
Funcom will need to decide what's more important, the negative message server mergers sends about the subscription numbers or moving quickly to retain actual customers.
Since their forte seems to be marketing "smoke and mirrors", my guess is they will let customers go rather than tarnish the illusion of healthy retention rates.
just a little thing (dont know if someone mentioned it before, too lazy to read 7 pages now): 1-3 of July isnt weekend, so you should add something to account for the increased population during weekend primetime, it will proly give 5-10% boost. stil, numbers are way too low 1 month after the game was released
I played on Hyrkania till 2 weeks ago when I canceled.
In the first 2 weeks of launch Hyrkania RP-PVE had an average of 1300+ players online during EU Primetime.
After that the population dropped really fast down to 550-600 players online during EU Primetime each night. I monitored my server population for a couple weeks. This was during weekdays and weekend (weekends are not busier then weekdays. People go out have a drink or other RL things. So weekends arent always busier).
That's 50% drop on players in the first month on my server alone.
And people saying the OP is paid by another company to bash AOC are just desperate in trying to hide the truth. Why? You really think it will keep more players in the game by senselessly trolling the OP with unfounded accusations?
The truth is that most game companies respect eachothers work and play it! They have no desire to go out and pay some idiots to start bashing the competition in a futile attempt to get some people over to their game.
People still thinking this is happening are paranoid and need to go see a shrink!
Funcom will need to decide what's more important, the negative message server mergers sends about the subscription numbers or moving quickly to retain actual customers. Since their forte seems to be marketing "smoke and mirrors", my guess is they will let customers go rather than tarnish the illusion of healthy retention rates.
that's exactly what worries me... And i'm afraid that it'll go exactly like you predicted.
As of now the fact that they even go as far as censoring messages asking for mergers, means that they're not even ready to think about it yet.
how is this survey any better than say counting farmers in rice field in asia by looking at their hats from a cliff? yes, you can stand there counting that there are 5-10, 20,100, 1000 farmer picking rice but u forget to adding those u dont see. see some are working different hour and not all can pick rice at the same time, some pick faster in 2 hours gone. then some may not be there at all or simply off at another field.
better yet it rice represent hours played and farmers the players, how to find the better time to survey for farmers on the field. some have need for rice, some pick sooner, later, others dont need rice RIGHT NOW but still later, follow?
thats what makes this "survey" so diffecult to be correct, as in "you cant count the farmers by measuring the rice"
The only thing that counts in relation of player enjoyment is the number of people online at the same time. Can't care the less if the server has 10000 or 20000 or 500 subscribers if only 500 are online at the same time, and you have problems finding anyone to do something.
Thus this survey should be quite accurate in seeing what servers are healthy, concurrent population wise, and which ones are not.
Easy. Of course it takes not being a rabid fanboy to get that. (and it's easy to identify one in someone that has "aoc" in his nickname)
This survey accounts for all of that. It picks 1 time of day (primetime) and STATES that its only after concurrently online players. that means people all on at once. if you actually ready the whole thread you'd notice that we've been going over certain figures based on averages from other games of the same genre to see how it relates to total players.
We pick the time the most people are online at once, we see how many people are on. we DON"T pretend that is the total population of the server. that would be using a statistic to mislead, like funcom saying they had 700,000 activated accounts. we've said over and over this is NOT the total players on a server, and have been simply basing this on it, with the assumption that between 12% and 30% of the total population (30% being more likely for weekend primetime, though i personally think 12% is just a bit too low, maybe closer to 15%)
its a USEFUL statistic. it has to do with how many people you'll be playing with, and its the only information we have. So unless you have other useful information I hope you keep your fanboyism out of this very nice thread.
Everything creates huge amounts of negativity on the internet, that's what the internet is for: Negativity, porn and lolcats.
exactly, they took a statistic that is never used in the MMO industry, and put it out there. so the 700k number is compared to say.. LoTR which put out 160k as their active account number, or WoWs 10million. this is the misuse. if all MMO companies gave out activated accounts (activated, not active) then the statistic would be fine, it would be compared to the same statistic from other games (pretty much, games sold).
THATS where the problem is. they take a number that SOUNDS similar (activated accounts instead of active accounts) and publish that information, but not the information most MMO companies give. this thread is taking a slightly less used statistic than active accounts. and is using it to measure the health of the game. (anyone who played EVE watched concurrent users a lot, I was user 9,989 on the day we broke 10k)
But activated accounts is something no one uses. you can just IMAGINE how big a number WoW would have, with all the constantly banned gold farmer accounts, and everyone who has quit the game over the years... who knows, they may have sold 100,000,000 boxes by now. the point is the don't publish that information because no one wants it.
Just like most MMOs don't publish "boxes shipped" like AoC did. Its that kind of marketing spin that people are angry about. If you are going to publish similar sounding but completely diffrent statistics than the rest of the market, you need to be clear about it. The way Funcom is doing it they are just being... dishonest.
Everything creates huge amounts of negativity on the internet, that's what the internet is for: Negativity, porn and lolcats.
Not enough servers showing high trafic at peak hours. That would lead you to believe growth has already slowed quite a lot. You cannot hype a game so much and deliver so little at launch. Then treat your subs like fodder. Also they pulled out nerf bats the first week and start swinging. Combine that with outright deceit and lies,silent nerfs,lousy customer service and a general lack of common sense. They have already caused a decline in subscriptions and a huge drop in new subs.
Funcom server room? - Only one server!.
haha you want make beleiv u got actual photo of funcom servers. this is bs, no multi million billion company would EVER give anyone access for people to take photo from their server room. And u may never heard the term serverPARK where tons of company has tons of server? guess not
/fail
I call Shenanagins!!! Where is the Gerbil Backup Power Station?
exactly, they took a statistic that is never used in the MMO industry, and put it out there. so the 700k number is compared to say.. LoTR which put out 160k as their active account number, or WoWs 10million. this is the misuse. if all MMO companies gave out activated accounts (activated, not active) then the statistic would be fine, it would be compared to the same statistic from other games (pretty much, games sold).
THATS where the problem is. they take a number that SOUNDS similar (activated accounts instead of active accounts) and publish that information, but not the information most MMO companies give. this thread is taking a slightly less used statistic than active accounts. and is using it to measure the health of the game. (anyone who played EVE watched concurrent users a lot, I was user 9,989 on the day we broke 10k)
But activated accounts is something no one uses. you can just IMAGINE how big a number WoW would have, with all the constantly banned gold farmer accounts, and everyone who has quit the game over the years... who knows, they may have sold 100,000,000 boxes by now. the point is the don't publish that information because no one wants it.
Just like most MMOs don't publish "boxes shipped" like AoC did. Its that kind of marketing spin that people are angry about. If you are going to publish similar sounding but completely diffrent statistics than the rest of the market, you need to be clear about it. The way Funcom is doing it they are just being... dishonest.
Turbine has never released official numbers for LotRO. Turbine also released a press statement claiming 4 million characters!
Blizzard has specifically stated what counts as 10 million.
World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.
Someone told me once that the number of player online at a certain time is around 12% of the total number of subscribers so using that as a standard that gives us about 269K subs in Europe. Don't flame me asking for evidence of the 12% figure, I don't have it. Take what you want from my figures.
Comments
More or less exactly what i thought.
Fun that everyone I hear in game hates that avatar
Same Abriael from #warhammeronline?
Interesting stats, but did you take these after your first free month?
i took them yesterdayand the two days before then. And yes, i think i'm the only abriael on the net due to the AE part
If funcom manages to persuade me that it's worth staying until then, I'll redo the poll at the end of summer to see the trend
Hey, thats fine for a new MMO, even for WoW that would be amazing...
my hats off t whomever did that survey...must have been painstaking
It is actually about the same size as Vanguard at release in the US.
Not enough servers showing high trafic at peak hours. That would lead you to believe growth has already slowed quite a lot. You cannot hype a game so much and deliver so little at launch. Then treat your subs like fodder. Also they pulled out nerf bats the first week and start swinging.
Combine that with outright deceit and lies,silent nerfs,lousy customer service and a general lack of common sense. They have already caused a decline in subscriptions and a huge drop in new subs.
Funcom server room? - Only one server!.
haha you want make beleiv u got actual photo of funcom servers. this is bs, no multi million billion company would EVER give anyone access for people to take photo from their server room. And u may never heard the term serverPARK where tons of company has tons of server? guess not
/fail
Why would Funcom need a hole serverpark. A single server can easy handle the low population there current is. Well of cause there have been lag latency, buffer overflow here lately. But maybe a minor upgrade can take care of it.
I guess someone /failed to grasp the concept of sarcasm
I guess someone /failed to grasp the concept of sarcasm
i dont call sarcasm posting information who is obiously FALSE to try to mislead and spread rumour which is with no root in truth. not that anyone would be stupid to beleiv it in first place, but that not the point here
Yes, you definately failed to grasp the concept.
I think 12% would be the absolute lowest number to plug in when trying to calculate subscriptions.
The % should be higher during the first months of a new game, plus the 12% seems low for peak time (i.e. maybe on average 12% of players are on line at any one time, with those numbers dipping into single digits way off peak and as high as 20% at peak). Since these numbers are taken during peak hours for a recently released game, 20% may be a better number to use for estimates.
Also, they could very well have over 200,000 EU subscribers atm, if you include people who have canceled, but who's time hasn't run out, plus the people who have just stopped logging in, but haven't hit the cancel button yet.
It seems very likely to me, given the current trends, that EU will have under 200,000 subscribers next billing cycle.
The dead server issue is also a negative indicator. Ghost servers never get better on their own and the low populations can greatly decrease enjoyment of the game for people that rolled there, resulting in higher cancelation rates for people on those servers.
Funcom will need to decide what's more important, the negative message server mergers sends about the subscription numbers or moving quickly to retain actual customers.
Since their forte seems to be marketing "smoke and mirrors", my guess is they will let customers go rather than tarnish the illusion of healthy retention rates.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
just a little thing (dont know if someone mentioned it before, too lazy to read 7 pages now): 1-3 of July isnt weekend, so you should add something to account for the increased population during weekend primetime, it will proly give 5-10% boost. stil, numbers are way too low 1 month after the game was released
The graphic charts are absolutely correct!
I played on Hyrkania till 2 weeks ago when I canceled.
In the first 2 weeks of launch Hyrkania RP-PVE had an average of 1300+ players online during EU Primetime.
After that the population dropped really fast down to 550-600 players online during EU Primetime each night. I monitored my server population for a couple weeks. This was during weekdays and weekend (weekends are not busier then weekdays. People go out have a drink or other RL things. So weekends arent always busier).
That's 50% drop on players in the first month on my server alone.
And people saying the OP is paid by another company to bash AOC are just desperate in trying to hide the truth. Why? You really think it will keep more players in the game by senselessly trolling the OP with unfounded accusations?
The truth is that most game companies respect eachothers work and play it! They have no desire to go out and pay some idiots to start bashing the competition in a futile attempt to get some people over to their game.
People still thinking this is happening are paranoid and need to go see a shrink!
Cheers
that's exactly what worries me... And i'm afraid that it'll go exactly like you predicted.
As of now the fact that they even go as far as censoring messages asking for mergers, means that they're not even ready to think about it yet.
how is this survey any better than say counting farmers in rice field in asia by looking at their hats from a cliff? yes, you can stand there counting that there are 5-10, 20,100, 1000 farmer picking rice but u forget to adding those u dont see. see some are working different hour and not all can pick rice at the same time, some pick faster in 2 hours gone. then some may not be there at all or simply off at another field.
better yet it rice represent hours played and farmers the players, how to find the better time to survey for farmers on the field. some have need for rice, some pick sooner, later, others dont need rice RIGHT NOW but still later, follow?
thats what makes this "survey" so diffecult to be correct, as in "you cant count the farmers by measuring the rice"
The only thing that counts in relation of player enjoyment is the number of people online at the same time. Can't care the less if the server has 10000 or 20000 or 500 subscribers if only 500 are online at the same time, and you have problems finding anyone to do something.
Thus this survey should be quite accurate in seeing what servers are healthy, concurrent population wise, and which ones are not.
Easy. Of course it takes not being a rabid fanboy to get that. (and it's easy to identify one in someone that has "aoc" in his nickname)
This survey accounts for all of that. It picks 1 time of day (primetime) and STATES that its only after concurrently online players. that means people all on at once. if you actually ready the whole thread you'd notice that we've been going over certain figures based on averages from other games of the same genre to see how it relates to total players.
We pick the time the most people are online at once, we see how many people are on. we DON"T pretend that is the total population of the server. that would be using a statistic to mislead, like funcom saying they had 700,000 activated accounts. we've said over and over this is NOT the total players on a server, and have been simply basing this on it, with the assumption that between 12% and 30% of the total population (30% being more likely for weekend primetime, though i personally think 12% is just a bit too low, maybe closer to 15%)
its a USEFUL statistic. it has to do with how many people you'll be playing with, and its the only information we have. So unless you have other useful information I hope you keep your fanboyism out of this very nice thread.
Everything creates huge amounts of negativity on the internet, that's what the internet is for: Negativity, porn and lolcats.
Funcom never said they had 700,000 ACTIVE, just 700k accounts. Those could be beta accounts added for all we know.
exactly, they took a statistic that is never used in the MMO industry, and put it out there. so the 700k number is compared to say.. LoTR which put out 160k as their active account number, or WoWs 10million. this is the misuse. if all MMO companies gave out activated accounts (activated, not active) then the statistic would be fine, it would be compared to the same statistic from other games (pretty much, games sold).
THATS where the problem is. they take a number that SOUNDS similar (activated accounts instead of active accounts) and publish that information, but not the information most MMO companies give. this thread is taking a slightly less used statistic than active accounts. and is using it to measure the health of the game. (anyone who played EVE watched concurrent users a lot, I was user 9,989 on the day we broke 10k)
But activated accounts is something no one uses. you can just IMAGINE how big a number WoW would have, with all the constantly banned gold farmer accounts, and everyone who has quit the game over the years... who knows, they may have sold 100,000,000 boxes by now. the point is the don't publish that information because no one wants it.
Just like most MMOs don't publish "boxes shipped" like AoC did. Its that kind of marketing spin that people are angry about. If you are going to publish similar sounding but completely diffrent statistics than the rest of the market, you need to be clear about it. The way Funcom is doing it they are just being... dishonest.
Everything creates huge amounts of negativity on the internet, that's what the internet is for: Negativity, porn and lolcats.
haha you want make beleiv u got actual photo of funcom servers. this is bs, no multi million billion company would EVER give anyone access for people to take photo from their server room. And u may never heard the term serverPARK where tons of company has tons of server? guess not
/fail
I call Shenanagins!!! Where is the Gerbil Backup Power Station?
Waiting for the next thing
Turbine has never released official numbers for LotRO. Turbine also released a press statement claiming 4 million characters!
Blizzard has specifically stated what counts as 10 million.
http://www.blizzard.com/us/press/080122.html
World of Warcraft's Subscriber Definition
World of Warcraft subscribers include individuals who have paid a subscription fee or have an active prepaid card to play World of Warcraft, as well as those who have purchased the game and are within their free month of access. Internet Game Room players who have accessed the game over the last thirty days are also counted as subscribers. The above definition excludes all players under free promotional subscriptions, expired or cancelled subscriptions, and expired prepaid cards. Subscribers in licensees' territories are defined along the same rules.
yes u are right its around 15% approx
PROOF? -> Sorry, I don't believe you.
screenshot or It didn't happen