I am going to resub this weekend to see if the game has improved from its poor launch. I quit then as I did not feel like paying to beta test their product. Hopefully they have shaped up now and made endgame interesting.
Playing it and loving it. Game is going in the right direction and will only get better. I can run the game on high np at all, and i thought there was no way in hell i could. Enjoying it alot.
Like i've been saying all along.. AOC has been between 50-59 for most of the last 3 months. They move up and down within that range daily. The OP just waited til they were at their 'peak' of 50 and made this thread to deceive people.
At the moment i can pick up AoC as its currently on offer for £9.98. I would like to know if the game is worth it or if it is dying? Unsure so far from what i have read.
So can someone please post that has first hand experiance with it and tell me the goods and the bads pls.
At the moment i can pick up AoC as its currently on offer for £9.98. I would like to know if the game is worth it or if it is dying? Unsure so far from what i have read. So can someone please post that has first hand experiance with it and tell me the goods and the bads pls. Thx
What I've seen on my server, Age of Conan is slowly but surely dying. These "new" people joining servers are just "old" people coming from their own dead servers because merges have taken too long and will probably never come.
If you can get Age of Conan that cheap and don't mind doing single player pve, then I suggest you buy it and play for a month. you will probably get your moneys worth.
If you want good pvp or want to find a game to play for a long time, then I suggest you go for something else like WAR. Also Darkfall is coming out soon (hopefully).
OK dmn guys. This is not a coincidence anymore. Xfire numbers went even up another notch. This is like the 6th 2 month record in like 2 weeks. Say what you want, but I have not seen AoC #50 and sniffing on the ranks in the 40s in a very long time. Xfire players No. are about 1200. www.xfire.com/games/aoc/Age_of_Conan_Hyborian_Adventures/
Cool, my thirsty sword will finally get the chance to bath in Moaner/Quiter blood. Mohahahahaaa!!!
Once again more hypocrisy.
If xfire doesnt suit them then it means that xfire is meaningless and shouldnt even be considered as an indicator of the population of AoC because people who play AoC dont use xfire.
Once the xfire numbers go up (like they did in every mmo over the holidays) then it means that AoC is getting popular again and the game will be saved. You cant have it both ways. Either support the fact that xfire IS an indicator of a games population or dont post about it at all.
btw....even though the minutes played has gone up, the number of players is about what it was 2 months ago. This tells me that new players are playing AoC and leveling their toons. Once they get to the endgame or even lvl 65 they will hit the cancel button like over 90% of the playerbase did.
NO and NO. AoC has steadily climbed up to rank #50 meaning it had more activity increase than other MMO's. Come on, other games could not have had the same activity increase, otherwise AoC would still have been #57 (comments like what you had on this is just a plain insult to our intelligence). And no the level of players have increased from 900 (and you was the one makeing sure everybody wrote this number down by spamposting how you belive it gonna be 800 soon). Now AoC Xfire numbers are nearly 1200. That is like a +30% increase in 2-3 weeks. That is a pretty profound increase. I'd love to hear what you think gonna happen to these numbers next, but please don't lie to promote your doomish message.
Im guessing its people maybe picking up those cheap games. I saw AoC in Sainsburys for sale at £2. That is a massive bargain for a free months play.
But like me recently returning to AoC and finding out there still is no fun meaningful endgame content at lvl 80...will quickly unsubscribe. I mean its almost 8 months since release and its still the same bugged tank and spank crap endgame with the worst crafting in any mmo.
And AOC has fallen back to #52. Like i've been saying all along.. AOC has been between 50-59 for most of the last 3 months. They move up and down within that range daily. The OP just waited til they were at their 'peak' of 50 and made this thread to deceive people.
I hope you are familiar with the term Standard Deviation since you so eagerly comment trends. Well if you are you understand that this is all part of the wiggle around the trendline which is increasing. It should be very obvious to you when AoC are in the 40's by the end of the week. Another thing, what was Xfire numbers last working day monday ? Yepp, thats right we are +50% of that now, or if we are going to be more fair and take an average of the mondays before in Dec it's more like a +35-40%. So forgive me I don't really see your point. This kind of increase is AoC only.
And AOC has fallen back to #52. Like i've been saying all along.. AOC has been between 50-59 for most of the last 3 months. They move up and down within that range daily. The OP just waited til they were at their 'peak' of 50 and made this thread to deceive people.
I hope you are familiar with the term Standard Deviation since you so eagerly comment trends. Well if you are you understand that this is all part of the wiggle around the trendline which is increasing. It should be very obvious to you when AoC are in the 40's by the end of the week. Another thing, what was Xfire numbers last working day monday ? Yepp, thats right we are +50% of that now, or if we are going to be more fair and take an average of the mondays before in Dec it's more like a +35-40%. So forgive me I don't really see your point. This kind of increase is AoC only.
And what are you talking about being ' up' 50% since last monday. Do you even bother to look at the information you try to quote?
AOC Dec 29th (monday) = 4957
AOC Yesterday(monday) = 4566
That is a 10% drop.
and it's funny, when AOC gains 2 spots, you say it is proof of a trend and start a thread, but when it falls those same 2 spots, you say it is ok because it is within the 'standard deviation'. The game has been within 50-60 for the last 3 months. The games in that range are all seperated by very little, so the daily fluctuations will make it move up or down pretty randomly. I was being sarcastic when I said AOC was dying because it moved from 50 to 52... it really doesn't mean anything since it's gone from 50 to 52 a few times in the past 3 months..... just like it has gone from 52 to 50.
And AOC has fallen back to #52. Like i've been saying all along.. AOC has been between 50-59 for most of the last 3 months. They move up and down within that range daily. The OP just waited til they were at their 'peak' of 50 and made this thread to deceive people.
I hope you are familiar with the term Standard Deviation since you so eagerly comment trends. Well if you are you understand that this is all part of the wiggle around the trendline which is increasing. It should be very obvious to you when AoC are in the 40's by the end of the week. Another thing, what was Xfire numbers last working day monday ? Yepp, thats right we are +50% of that now, or if we are going to be more fair and take an average of the mondays before in Dec it's more like a +35-40%. So forgive me I don't really see your point. This kind of increase is AoC only.
And what are you talking about being ' up' 50% since last monday. Do you even bother to look at the information you try to quote?
AOC Dec 29th (monday) = 4957
AOC Yesterday(monday) = 4566
That is a 10% drop.
and it's funny, when AOC gains 2 spots, you say it is proof of a trend and start a thread, but when it falls those same 2 spots, you say it is ok because it is within the 'standard deviation'. The game has been within 50-60 for the last 3 months. The games in that range are all seperated by very little, so the daily fluctuations will make it move up or down pretty randomly. I was being sarcastic when I said AOC was dying because it moved from 50 to 52... it really doesn't mean anything since it's gone from 50 to 52 a few times in the past 3 months..... just like it has gone from 52 to 50.
Comprehension skills not that sharp eh?... You can't compare a Holiday monday to a working day monday can you? So spoonfeeding you again, we must compare to Dec 15th or any monday before that. An average is much preferable which still gives +35-40%.
Lets revisit this one this weekend, then we'll see who's right out of the parrot poster and the analyst.
yesterday is still a 'holiday'. most schools are still closed so it's much more appropriate to compare it to last monday rather than a day back in early december when kids were in school.
but that still doesn't matter because AOC lost 2 spots, which is compared to other games. Down to 52 and falling fast.
Based on your supposition, EQ2 which ranks around the 90 to 100+ spot would have lost a total of a 180% of it's player base since launch.
Vanguard? 200%
Tabula Rasa? 300+%
Can you show me how you subtract 300% of players?
Really, all I need is the actual data of 90% of the player base is gone, and I will believe you. Include links or other relevant excel sheets, etc.
Thanks
Beware of fuzzy math. Now if we just look at hours played per day whne AoC was in the top ten spots.Aoc was getting 80K hours logged per day on XFire at launch, within a month it dropped to 60K hours logged then a steady decline to the point where it is less than 5K. Now my math says that was a drop of around 94%. But lets be generous and give AoC the benefit of the doubt because everyone including me was playing a crazy amoiunt of hours at launch so we take the 50K hours per day and that works out to a 90% drop since the end of the first month aftger launch.
Based on your supposition, EQ2 which ranks around the 90 to 100+ spot would have lost a total of a 180% of it's player base since launch.
Vanguard? 200%
Tabula Rasa? 300+%
Can you show me how you subtract 300% of players?
Really, all I need is the actual data of 90% of the player base is gone, and I will believe you. Include links or other relevant excel sheets, etc.
Thanks
Beware of fuzzy math. Now if we just look at hours played per day whne AoC was in the top ten spots.Aoc was getting 80K hours logged per day on XFire at launch, within a month it dropped to 60K hours logged then a steady decline to the point where it is less than 5K. Now my math says that was a drop of around 94%. But lets be generous and give AoC the benefit of the doubt because everyone including me was playing a crazy amoiunt of hours at launch so we take the 50K hours per day and that works out to a 90% drop since the end of the first month aftger launch.
This issue here lies in the fact that the assumption is EVERY person who played AoC used XFire.
The number of Xfire players has dropped by 90%, and that I can vouch for. The poster is stating the overall player base, and that is where his math goes wrong.
Calculating the total player base on one piece of software is suspect. Using the rankings there is totally off key as well.
It is most definitely cool when hours go up. I even believe the fanbois really need to stop using Xfire as an example of overall popularity of this game.
The fact remains, that the game is in flux, just like any game (take WAR which had a downward spiral after launch as well, and will be even more affected by Darkfall, or LOTRO which is experiencing an upswing due to Mines of Moria...this will change when Aion comes out), so calling the end of AoC thanks to a swing in Xfire (or a major success) is wrong. Calling success is wrong also.
All we can see is that it has shown a trend, and that trend is there is a minor upswing in AoC, which is cool for Funcom.
The estimate of AOC comes from many sources, Xfire is just one piece in the puzzle
1. The percentage of servers with a decent population - 10-20%
2. Guild number reports from the first month - how many times did we see posts about guilds of 200 not having more than 2-3 people logged in within the past month? I only really count the ones where the player likes AOC and can't understand why his guildmates didn't log in.
3. Aoc box sales - fell off the top 100 in the first 2 weeks, now is around 1000.
4. Xfire
The thing I go by is mostly server populations. There are 4-5 servers that have a decent population, and none of them are anywhere near where they were at launch. Even the most populated servers don't have multiple instances of zones. This despite the fact that most players rerolled on those servers and new players are guided onto those servers. When your best 5 servers have less players than they did at launch, and the rest of your servers are dead, it's not hard to do the math.
When it comes to xfire average user - playing FPS ( usually more then 1 like CoD, CS etd ... ) - having his WoW accoutn always subscribed - on side subscribed to at least 1 more MMO ( war, aoc, lotro )
Yes AoC lost majority of players that are not playing only 1 game and only 1 MMO at the time. ( beside loosing bunch of those ones too )
For example: I usually play only 1 game and nothing more, mainly cause when I play something I like to dedicate my spare time only for that game.
In our guild (100+ active members) around 70% of members are 25/30+ age and they all play only AoC and no other game on a side. ( we are talking on ventrilo all the time we play .. and no one us xfire btw )
Then we have 30% of members that are between 18-25 age and some of those are also playing WoW on side together with Left4Dead and CoD:WaW and guess what those that play multiple games at same time also like to use xfire as its easier for them to find friends on different games.
Whoever is forming statistic for ANY game not age of conan only based on Xfire will go way way off as for statistic you need random type of players and Xfire users are NOT.
To conclude Xfire vs AoC or any other game -> players that usually play lots of different games at the same time choose to QUIT AoC and spend more time on those other games.
Whats with people and this xfire obsession. When it comes to xfire average user
- playing FPS ( usually more then 1 like CoD, CS etd ... )
- having his WoW accoutn always subscribed
- on side subscribed to at least 1 more MMO ( war, aoc, lotro ) Yes AoC lost majority of players that are not playing only 1 game and only 1 MMO at the time. ( beside loosing bunch of those ones too ) For example:
I usually play only 1 game and nothing more, mainly cause when I play something I like to dedicate my spare time only for that game. In our guild (100+ active members) around 70% of members are 25/30+ age and they all play only AoC and no other game on a side. ( we are talking on ventrilo all the time we play .. and no one us xfire btw ) Then we have 30% of members that are between 18-25 age and some of those are also playing WoW on side together with Left4Dead and CoD:WaW and guess what those that play multiple games at same time also like to use xfire as its easier for them to find friends on different games.
Whoever is forming statistic for ANY game not age of conan only based on Xfire will go way way off as for statistic you need random type of players and Xfire users are NOT. To conclude Xfire vs AoC or any other game -> players that usually play lots of different games at the same time choose to QUIT AoC and spend more time on those other games.
So your hypothesis is that the average AOC player is very different than the average WOW, War, LotRO and Eve player. Because all of those games are doing fine on Xfire. While I agree that the average xfire user is not a 'normal' gamer.. I don't believe AOC is that different than the other mmorpgs... so why do xfire users play WOW twice as much as any other FPS game? Why would Xfire users chose LotRO and Warhammer almost 4:1 over AOC?
If all MMORPGs were suffering on the charts on Xfire, I would agree, but 4 of the top 20 spots are held by MMORPGs.
And ironically, the xfire proportions are nearly the same as the server proportions. Warhammer is 4:1 over AOC on xfire, and it has 20:5 decently populated servers.
If all MMORPGs were suffering on the charts on Xfire, I would agree, but 4 of the top 20 spots are held by MMORPGs.
And what is below AoC?
Second Life (well, not a TRUE MMO, but has many aspects of the same genre...just no combat that I know of...)
Final Fantasy XI
SWG
City Of Heroes
Runescape (please note, this game has been discussed as having 1 million players...lol)
EQ2
Vanguard
Matrix
It seems more MMO's are below AoC that have been around a while, and were quite popular during their time (CoH, EQ2 and FFXI...).
And note, the last quoted subscriber rate for FFXI was 500k subs. CoH has been noted to have 150k plus players from the last notice. That is why Xfire is not a TRUE scale of players, but does show trends...
I can easily see AoC having around 200k players if we base it on trends of the market vs Xfire.
Try this example....If we look at popular subscription based MMO's and place them in order based on Xfire...We would have this top 10 list.
WoW / WAR / EvE / LOTRO / Lineage 2 / Age of Conan / FFXI / SWG / CoH / EQ2
I do not see FFXI, SWG, EQ2 or CoH closing, so any argument of AoC being the least popular MMO is rubbish when using Xfire here.
Maybe people need to put some things in perspective, and cool off for a while.
This issue here lies in the fact that the assumption is EVERY person who played AoC used XFire.
The number of Xfire players has dropped by 90%, and that I can vouch for. The poster is stating the overall player base, and that is where his math goes wrong.
Xfire is a random sample of player. Fanbois and shills seem to think that 90% of the XFire players quit but most of the non XFire players stayed. Bad bad logic there OpenEdge unless you can prove that XFire players are some how different from the average person who bought and played AoC.
Now if you can pull up some spead sheets that show that XFire users tend to quit games at a more rapid pace than non XFire gamers I might be able to buy into that but otherwise it is only logical to believe that XFire users and non XFire users quit at about the same pace. I don't use XFire and I quit before the end of the free month and so did a lot of other non Xfire users in my guild. As a matter of fact I cannot think of anyone in my guild who uses XFire and we all ( 50+) quit within a month.
I agree completely. But remember that 'we' are replying to a thread started by Orion/Warg/ILOVEFUNCOM/etc who used an insignificant bump in xfire rating as proof that AOC is increasing in subs. Nobody around here has started threads showing the demise of AOC based on Xfire in a long long time. If someone were to start a thread saying AOC is failing because it dropped from #50 to #52, I would laugh as hard as them as I did at the OP's post.
That is funny, as Jackdog stated in another thread that due to the drop, AoC would keep going down to 54, then 60 very soon..
The following day it went back up by 1...lol
I agree that any bump right now is insignificant. What is REALLY important is that it keeps itself at it's current location or higher...
If it does fall below 60, then we could question where AoC is going. For now AoC is niche, just like L2, LOTRO, EvE, etc...
Good for them!
Christmas holidays and bargain bin pricing. I don't think I put a timeline or date on it hitting 60 but if you want to push the issue let's see where it is in a month.
BTW - I bet Funcom wishes AoC was as niche as Lotro LOL
Comments
I am going to resub this weekend to see if the game has improved from its poor launch. I quit then as I did not feel like paying to beta test their product. Hopefully they have shaped up now and made endgame interesting.
Playing it and loving it. Game is going in the right direction and will only get better. I can run the game on high np at all, and i thought there was no way in hell i could. Enjoying it alot.
And AOC has fallen back to #52.
Like i've been saying all along.. AOC has been between 50-59 for most of the last 3 months. They move up and down within that range daily. The OP just waited til they were at their 'peak' of 50 and made this thread to deceive people.
At the moment i can pick up AoC as its currently on offer for £9.98. I would like to know if the game is worth it or if it is dying? Unsure so far from what i have read.
So can someone please post that has first hand experiance with it and tell me the goods and the bads pls.
Thx
What I've seen on my server, Age of Conan is slowly but surely dying. These "new" people joining servers are just "old" people coming from their own dead servers because merges have taken too long and will probably never come.
If you can get Age of Conan that cheap and don't mind doing single player pve, then I suggest you buy it and play for a month. you will probably get your moneys worth.
If you want good pvp or want to find a game to play for a long time, then I suggest you go for something else like WAR. Also Darkfall is coming out soon (hopefully).
Once again more hypocrisy.
If xfire doesnt suit them then it means that xfire is meaningless and shouldnt even be considered as an indicator of the population of AoC because people who play AoC dont use xfire.
Once the xfire numbers go up (like they did in every mmo over the holidays) then it means that AoC is getting popular again and the game will be saved. You cant have it both ways. Either support the fact that xfire IS an indicator of a games population or dont post about it at all.
btw....even though the minutes played has gone up, the number of players is about what it was 2 months ago. This tells me that new players are playing AoC and leveling their toons. Once they get to the endgame or even lvl 65 they will hit the cancel button like over 90% of the playerbase did.
NO and NO. AoC has steadily climbed up to rank #50 meaning it had more activity increase than other MMO's. Come on, other games could not have had the same activity increase, otherwise AoC would still have been #57 (comments like what you had on this is just a plain insult to our intelligence). And no the level of players have increased from 900 (and you was the one makeing sure everybody wrote this number down by spamposting how you belive it gonna be 800 soon). Now AoC Xfire numbers are nearly 1200. That is like a +30% increase in 2-3 weeks. That is a pretty profound increase. I'd love to hear what you think gonna happen to these numbers next, but please don't lie to promote your doomish message.
Im guessing its people maybe picking up those cheap games. I saw AoC in Sainsburys for sale at £2. That is a massive bargain for a free months play.
But like me recently returning to AoC and finding out there still is no fun meaningful endgame content at lvl 80...will quickly unsubscribe. I mean its almost 8 months since release and its still the same bugged tank and spank crap endgame with the worst crafting in any mmo.
I hope you are familiar with the term Standard Deviation since you so eagerly comment trends. Well if you are you understand that this is all part of the wiggle around the trendline which is increasing. It should be very obvious to you when AoC are in the 40's by the end of the week. Another thing, what was Xfire numbers last working day monday
? Yepp, thats right we are +50% of that now, or if we are going to be more fair and take an average of the mondays before in Dec it's more like a +35-40%. So forgive me I don't really see your point. This kind of increase is AoC only.
I hope you are familiar with the term Standard Deviation since you so eagerly comment trends. Well if you are you understand that this is all part of the wiggle around the trendline which is increasing. It should be very obvious to you when AoC are in the 40's by the end of the week. Another thing, what was Xfire numbers last working day monday
? Yepp, thats right we are +50% of that now, or if we are going to be more fair and take an average of the mondays before in Dec it's more like a +35-40%. So forgive me I don't really see your point. This kind of increase is AoC only.
And what are you talking about being ' up' 50% since last monday. Do you even bother to look at the information you try to quote?
AOC Dec 29th (monday) = 4957
AOC Yesterday(monday) = 4566
That is a 10% drop.
and it's funny, when AOC gains 2 spots, you say it is proof of a trend and start a thread, but when it falls those same 2 spots, you say it is ok because it is within the 'standard deviation'. The game has been within 50-60 for the last 3 months. The games in that range are all seperated by very little, so the daily fluctuations will make it move up or down pretty randomly. I was being sarcastic when I said AOC was dying because it moved from 50 to 52... it really doesn't mean anything since it's gone from 50 to 52 a few times in the past 3 months..... just like it has gone from 52 to 50.
I hope you are familiar with the term Standard Deviation since you so eagerly comment trends. Well if you are you understand that this is all part of the wiggle around the trendline which is increasing. It should be very obvious to you when AoC are in the 40's by the end of the week. Another thing, what was Xfire numbers last working day monday
? Yepp, thats right we are +50% of that now, or if we are going to be more fair and take an average of the mondays before in Dec it's more like a +35-40%. So forgive me I don't really see your point. This kind of increase is AoC only.
And what are you talking about being ' up' 50% since last monday. Do you even bother to look at the information you try to quote?
AOC Dec 29th (monday) = 4957
AOC Yesterday(monday) = 4566
That is a 10% drop.
and it's funny, when AOC gains 2 spots, you say it is proof of a trend and start a thread, but when it falls those same 2 spots, you say it is ok because it is within the 'standard deviation'. The game has been within 50-60 for the last 3 months. The games in that range are all seperated by very little, so the daily fluctuations will make it move up or down pretty randomly. I was being sarcastic when I said AOC was dying because it moved from 50 to 52... it really doesn't mean anything since it's gone from 50 to 52 a few times in the past 3 months..... just like it has gone from 52 to 50.
Comprehension skills not that sharp eh?... You can't compare a Holiday monday to a working day monday can you? So spoonfeeding you again, we must compare to Dec 15th or any monday before that. An average is much preferable which still gives +35-40%.
Lets revisit this one this weekend, then we'll see who's right out of the parrot poster and the analyst.
yesterday is still a 'holiday'. most schools are still closed so it's much more appropriate to compare it to last monday rather than a day back in early december when kids were in school.
but that still doesn't matter because AOC lost 2 spots, which is compared to other games. Down to 52 and falling fast.
Am I the only one that finds it funny when this happens:
1. AoC is 4# on Xfire
2. Fanbois are very happy and say AoC is a "WoW-killer"
3. 90% of player quit and AoC drops DOWN to #54
4. Fanbois say Xfire doesn't mean anything
5. During holidays AoC goes UP a little bit on Xfire
6. Fanbois start a thread about AoC population increasing
7. AoC drops DOWN again, this time even lower than before
8. Fanbois say Xfire doesn't mean anything
etc.
Math is pretty cool if you understand it,...
Based on your supposition, EQ2 which ranks around the 90 to 100+ spot would have lost a total of a 180% of it's player base since launch.
Vanguard? 200%
Tabula Rasa? 300+%
Can you show me how you subtract 300% of players?
Really, all I need is the actual data of 90% of the player base is gone, and I will believe you. Include links or other relevant excel sheets, etc.
Thanks
Math is pretty cool if you understand it,...
Based on your supposition, EQ2 which ranks around the 90 to 100+ spot would have lost a total of a 180% of it's player base since launch.
Vanguard? 200%
Tabula Rasa? 300+%
Can you show me how you subtract 300% of players?
Really, all I need is the actual data of 90% of the player base is gone, and I will believe you. Include links or other relevant excel sheets, etc.
Thanks
References, he don't need that. It's Azrile! He pulls it out of that special place.
Math is pretty cool if you understand it,...
Based on your supposition, EQ2 which ranks around the 90 to 100+ spot would have lost a total of a 180% of it's player base since launch.
Vanguard? 200%
Tabula Rasa? 300+%
Can you show me how you subtract 300% of players?
Really, all I need is the actual data of 90% of the player base is gone, and I will believe you. Include links or other relevant excel sheets, etc.
Thanks
Didn't you hear? Xfire means nothing today because AoC dropped back to #52.
Math is pretty cool if you understand it,...
Based on your supposition, EQ2 which ranks around the 90 to 100+ spot would have lost a total of a 180% of it's player base since launch.
Vanguard? 200%
Tabula Rasa? 300+%
Can you show me how you subtract 300% of players?
Really, all I need is the actual data of 90% of the player base is gone, and I will believe you. Include links or other relevant excel sheets, etc.
Thanks
Beware of fuzzy math. Now if we just look at hours played per day whne AoC was in the top ten spots.Aoc was getting 80K hours logged per day on XFire at launch, within a month it dropped to 60K hours logged then a steady decline to the point where it is less than 5K. Now my math says that was a drop of around 94%. But lets be generous and give AoC the benefit of the doubt because everyone including me was playing a crazy amoiunt of hours at launch so we take the 50K hours per day and that works out to a 90% drop since the end of the first month aftger launch.
I miss DAoC
no way.. my friend, and his friend just started playing, and I saw 4 people in tortage. Therefore AOC has 700,000 players.
Math is pretty cool if you understand it,...
Based on your supposition, EQ2 which ranks around the 90 to 100+ spot would have lost a total of a 180% of it's player base since launch.
Vanguard? 200%
Tabula Rasa? 300+%
Can you show me how you subtract 300% of players?
Really, all I need is the actual data of 90% of the player base is gone, and I will believe you. Include links or other relevant excel sheets, etc.
Thanks
Beware of fuzzy math. Now if we just look at hours played per day whne AoC was in the top ten spots.Aoc was getting 80K hours logged per day on XFire at launch, within a month it dropped to 60K hours logged then a steady decline to the point where it is less than 5K. Now my math says that was a drop of around 94%. But lets be generous and give AoC the benefit of the doubt because everyone including me was playing a crazy amoiunt of hours at launch so we take the 50K hours per day and that works out to a 90% drop since the end of the first month aftger launch.
This issue here lies in the fact that the assumption is EVERY person who played AoC used XFire.
The number of Xfire players has dropped by 90%, and that I can vouch for. The poster is stating the overall player base, and that is where his math goes wrong.
Calculating the total player base on one piece of software is suspect. Using the rankings there is totally off key as well.
It is most definitely cool when hours go up. I even believe the fanbois really need to stop using Xfire as an example of overall popularity of this game.
The fact remains, that the game is in flux, just like any game (take WAR which had a downward spiral after launch as well, and will be even more affected by Darkfall, or LOTRO which is experiencing an upswing due to Mines of Moria...this will change when Aion comes out), so calling the end of AoC thanks to a swing in Xfire (or a major success) is wrong. Calling success is wrong also.
All we can see is that it has shown a trend, and that trend is there is a minor upswing in AoC, which is cool for Funcom.
Cheers
The estimate of AOC comes from many sources, Xfire is just one piece in the puzzle
1. The percentage of servers with a decent population - 10-20%
2. Guild number reports from the first month - how many times did we see posts about guilds of 200 not having more than 2-3 people logged in within the past month? I only really count the ones where the player likes AOC and can't understand why his guildmates didn't log in.
3. Aoc box sales - fell off the top 100 in the first 2 weeks, now is around 1000.
4. Xfire
The thing I go by is mostly server populations. There are 4-5 servers that have a decent population, and none of them are anywhere near where they were at launch. Even the most populated servers don't have multiple instances of zones. This despite the fact that most players rerolled on those servers and new players are guided onto those servers. When your best 5 servers have less players than they did at launch, and the rest of your servers are dead, it's not hard to do the math.
Whats with people and this xfire obsession.
When it comes to xfire average user
- playing FPS ( usually more then 1 like CoD, CS etd ... )
- having his WoW accoutn always subscribed
- on side subscribed to at least 1 more MMO ( war, aoc, lotro )
Yes AoC lost majority of players that are not playing only 1 game and only 1 MMO at the time. ( beside loosing bunch of those ones too )
For example:
I usually play only 1 game and nothing more, mainly cause when I play something I like to dedicate my spare time only for that game.
In our guild (100+ active members) around 70% of members are 25/30+ age and they all play only AoC and no other game on a side. ( we are talking on ventrilo all the time we play .. and no one us xfire btw )
Then we have 30% of members that are between 18-25 age and some of those are also playing WoW on side together with Left4Dead and CoD:WaW and guess what those that play multiple games at same time also like to use xfire as its easier for them to find friends on different games.
Whoever is forming statistic for ANY game not age of conan only based on Xfire will go way way off as for statistic you need random type of players and Xfire users are NOT.
To conclude Xfire vs AoC or any other game -> players that usually play lots of different games at the same time choose to QUIT AoC and spend more time on those other games.
Futilez[Do You Have What It Takes ?]
So your hypothesis is that the average AOC player is very different than the average WOW, War, LotRO and Eve player. Because all of those games are doing fine on Xfire. While I agree that the average xfire user is not a 'normal' gamer.. I don't believe AOC is that different than the other mmorpgs... so why do xfire users play WOW twice as much as any other FPS game? Why would Xfire users chose LotRO and Warhammer almost 4:1 over AOC?
If all MMORPGs were suffering on the charts on Xfire, I would agree, but 4 of the top 20 spots are held by MMORPGs.
And ironically, the xfire proportions are nearly the same as the server proportions. Warhammer is 4:1 over AOC on xfire, and it has 20:5 decently populated servers.
And what is below AoC?
Second Life (well, not a TRUE MMO, but has many aspects of the same genre...just no combat that I know of...)
Final Fantasy XI
SWG
City Of Heroes
Runescape (please note, this game has been discussed as having 1 million players...lol)
EQ2
Vanguard
Matrix
It seems more MMO's are below AoC that have been around a while, and were quite popular during their time (CoH, EQ2 and FFXI...).
And note, the last quoted subscriber rate for FFXI was 500k subs. CoH has been noted to have 150k plus players from the last notice. That is why Xfire is not a TRUE scale of players, but does show trends...
I can easily see AoC having around 200k players if we base it on trends of the market vs Xfire.
Try this example....If we look at popular subscription based MMO's and place them in order based on Xfire...We would have this top 10 list.
WoW / WAR / EvE / LOTRO / Lineage 2 / Age of Conan / FFXI / SWG / CoH / EQ2
I do not see FFXI, SWG, EQ2 or CoH closing, so any argument of AoC being the least popular MMO is rubbish when using Xfire here.
Maybe people need to put some things in perspective, and cool off for a while.
AOC is ahead of the #52 game by 3 hours from 1000 players overall.
AOC = 4461
#52 = 4458
It's meaningless to talk about anything less than 10 spots or so.
#51 today
This issue here lies in the fact that the assumption is EVERY person who played AoC used XFire.
The number of Xfire players has dropped by 90%, and that I can vouch for. The poster is stating the overall player base, and that is where his math goes wrong.
Xfire is a random sample of player. Fanbois and shills seem to think that 90% of the XFire players quit but most of the non XFire players stayed. Bad bad logic there OpenEdge unless you can prove that XFire players are some how different from the average person who bought and played AoC.
Now if you can pull up some spead sheets that show that XFire users tend to quit games at a more rapid pace than non XFire gamers I might be able to buy into that but otherwise it is only logical to believe that XFire users and non XFire users quit at about the same pace. I don't use XFire and I quit before the end of the free month and so did a lot of other non Xfire users in my guild. As a matter of fact I cannot think of anyone in my guild who uses XFire and we all ( 50+) quit within a month.
I miss DAoC
That is funny, as Jackdog stated in another thread that due to the drop, AoC would keep going down to 54, then 60 very soon..
The following day it went back up by 1...lol
I agree that any bump right now is insignificant. What is REALLY important is that it keeps itself at it's current location or higher...
If it does fall below 60, then we could question where AoC is going. For now AoC is niche, just like L2, LOTRO, EvE, etc...
Good for them!
Christmas holidays and bargain bin pricing. I don't think I put a timeline or date on it hitting 60 but if you want to push the issue let's see where it is in a month.
BTW - I bet Funcom wishes AoC was as niche as Lotro LOL
I miss DAoC