Originally posted by xzyax Originally posted by mutantmagnet
Originally posted by EatKrumsTasos is a buffoon. He is bringing up numbers on a forum that has been online for the last 8 YEARS. It literally took them 8 years to get those numbers registered. How many of those people are long gone by now after 8 years? I would say at least 30-40%. The fact that he would even bring those numbers up and use it as a gauge just shows how incompetent he truly is.
If you've ever been part of the Darkfall forums for over a year you would know the amount of registered people was about 50k until August 2008. When the big trailers came out the forum population mushroomed. Don't call someone an idiot unless you understand the metrics involved. That's one opinion on why the population mushroomed.
Another opinion is that because the Forum name and registration of said forum was tied to getting a chance of being in Beta. Not that ANYONE would EVER create multiple forum accounts to have a better shot at getting into Beta... Nope. I'm sure that all registered user there are unique posters, and only represent 1 person each. Just like all the accounts here at mmorpg.com
They purge accounts made for increasing chances into getting into beta. They did that last time with the Clan beta registration.
My prediction?i am guessing that it will fall into the same relams as AOC did,an initial burst of players ,then slowly fall off.
I highly doubt that. In spite of Darkfall's past few months of activity search queries on google trends show the visibility of darkfall is low to the point of being pathetic.
Both Warhammer and Age of Conan had obvious spikes of interest three months prior to release.
Darkfall search queries three months prior to release are so low they don't trend higher than search queries for the two mentioned games long after they have released.
You guys are really asking for alot out of this game. Seriously 300k subs? with no in store game box and a 18 gig file on a torrent? If DF has more then 20k people playing on more then two servers it will be a massive success in my eyes. This is a low budget developer there's no way in hell they will generate the subs or the polish that will make you silly guys/gals happy. It will be a decent game that the realistic sandbox crowd is expecting. A niche pvp game with a small tight knit community that will give the DF devs time to implement the massive amount of features that will be missing from this game at launch The true sandbox/pvp fans will have faith and pay for DF as its in its paid phase of Beta (january release).
As sandbox fans we have done this for UO, SWG, EvE and Ryzom, DF will be no different.
Don't even bother......
These guys think Darkfall is going to have a million subscriptions and take over the world.
We know better, I will be right there with you as one of the 20k people that will enjoy this game.
With the exception of Ryzom all of those games earned more than 100k subs let alone 20k. What's even more silly is that ignoring UO the remaining two games made over 200k subs
Anyone who sites those games as evidence of Darkfall being a niche with X0,000 subs are the ones in denial of their own facts.
With the exception of Ryzom all of those games earned more than 100k subs let alone 20k. What's even more silly is that ignoring UO the remaining two games made over 200k subs Anyone who sites those games as evidence of Darkfall being a niche with X0,000 subs are the ones in denial of their own facts.
Come back to this thread after release, hell come back to this thread six months after release.
Necro my post I promise you DF will have under 100k subs and only a couple servers.
This is an indy dev team they can't possibly release a game with the features they listed on release.
With missing features and unforgiving gameplay (ffapvp) this game will be niche like the rest.
Also it took games like Eve a very long time to get to that 200k+ mark and that game is considered by most as the best sandbox since swg.
With the exception of Ryzom all of those games earned more than 100k subs let alone 20k. What's even more silly is that ignoring UO the remaining two games made over 200k subs Anyone who sites those games as evidence of Darkfall being a niche with X0,000 subs are the ones in denial of their own facts.
Come back to this thread after release, hell come back to this thread six months after release.
Necro my post I promise you DF will have under 100k subs and only a couple servers.
This is an indy dev team they can't possibly release a game with the features they listed on release.
With missing features and unforgiving gameplay (ffapvp) this game will be niche like the rest.
Also it took games like Eve a very long time to get to that 200k+ mark and that game is considered by most as the best sandbox since swg.
Best "since" SWG?
Eve was around long before SWG my friend. Fair to say Eve is a very niche game, but atleast it dared to be different. No goblins, orks, fairies or Elves!
Its easy to look on these forum's and be swayed one way or another towards Darkfall. I think the best way to predict if its going to be a success or a failure, is to take a step back from all the hype, and look at the games position / its potential / why it may fail, and try and hazard a guess at how its going to perform. Without wanting to be accused of either hyping or dishing Darkfall, i'll briefly sum up my thoughts at both ends of the spectrum. If Darkfall is to do really well, it will do so because it offer's the player something different , and it pulls off what its trying to achieve, with some fine polish. I believe what it has going for it on paper is, the freedom, the combat and the immersive world, and the vast array of features it offer's the player. Of course all of this could turn out to be a load of rubble, but to be optimistic at this point in time, there are a good number of beta reports that indicate a very high quality game, which has been compared in many area's to an online Oblivion, aside from the obvious difference's. On this basis I am willing to give Darkfall a try at launch, and if it turns out to be a stinker, I'll just move on to something else, and pay my respects to the developers for at least trying. If Darkfall is going to flop, it will flop because it will be, badly unstable / buggy at launch, the combat won't be up to scratch, the world will be unbalanced, the full loot system won't work, and it potentially it could be an unbearable gank fest. From what the developer's say though, they have taken all these things very seriously and carefully designed the game to prevent them. Can the developers be relied on? probably not, but I will reserve my judgement until I actually play it. The other thing that may be detrimental to its launch, is the apparent lack of any high street DVD distribution or game shop publicity. 18GB is a lot to download for people and though I can only speculate, I suspect that a good number of people still don't have the super fast connections to easily download such a big quantity of data. If the game does turn out to be brilliant, then this factor won't stop it being a success in the long run, but it won't help the subs at the start. Aside from the above, another possibility other then out right success or failure, is that the game could fall somewhere in between. It may not be the great game it wanted to be, but it could turn out to be a stable solid average game, that doesn't live up to the hype, yet is still playable and generates a steady subscriber base. There are some people who have made ridiculous predictions like Darkfall will be the One to tople WOW. I can say for sure this will not happen, its not even out to compete with WOW, and its not going to appeal to a big majority of the quest / raid friendly pve crowd, because in its nature its a pvp game. On the other hand, it may not be the ultra hardcore unapproachable gank fest its been made out to be. Again according to info the player is strong from the off, its not about epic gear, and the world is big a strategic enough to prevent this. If the game turns out to be very user friendly, and can be enjoyed by the more casual player then it could attract many people from the quest / raid based games like Wow, despite its full looting nature. The key here is, easy to play, hard to master. More realistically though Darkfall could, possibly compete on a subscriber level with AOC or WAR. It hasn't had the massive development budgets, or advertising budgets, that these two games have enjoyed, so it certainly won't have their subscriber numbers at launch, but if its as good as they say it will be this won't matter as it will steadily gain more publicity for being a high quality game, magazines / reviewers will take note, and people will come in bigger numbers. I can think to compare this to the launch of the 3 big consoles, the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and the Nintendo WII. The WII was the underdog, lowest spec and lowest in its budget, yet it offered something different and when it arrived, it did what it set out to do with great polish, so has become the biggest success story of the three. Obviously Nintendo were already established unlike Darkfall, and comparing this analogy is silly, but the idea is there all the same. Looking quickly at the December website traffic for Darkfall it was nearly 30,000k in, which is in the same regions as AOC / WAR. The hype is also there on sites mmorpg.com and many similar sites, but it doesn't have the magazine or media hype that other big titles recieve. So to finish off, my prediction is that Darkfall will fall in to one of three catogory's after release:
1) A Fantastic Game / Large subcriber base, 2) A Good / Average Game / Medium Subscriber base 3) Poor Game / Low subscriber base and eventual closure.
Optimistically I am hoping for number 1), but realistically I believe it could be number 2). The worsed case scenario will be number 3). Well thanks for reading my thoughts on the madness that surrounds Darkfall. At least we only have less then a fortnight for the story to begin to unravel, if it launches.
This was a very well written post and was good to read. However without intending to sound mean it was rather pointless although I realise you probably had fun typing it.
Basicly your conclusion is that Darkfall will be good, average or crap.
I can't see it getting less than 100k downloads on launch unless they don't want that many. It's being discussed on every gaming forum I've looked at, even on the WoW forums and it was quite positive.
A new mmorpg only happens a few times a year and it normally garners a lot of interest. There are exceptions but I don't DF will be one of those.
An 18G download is asking alot of people. That in itself is really going to hurt the overall subscriber numbers. Remember, not everyone has unlimited broadband. They really better be considering selling this on a disk.
The client size in itself is disturbing. The download has to be compressed, so what's the real size? Again, not everyone will have the hard drive space to run it, which will also limit the subscribers. Looking on my pc, the uninstall program shows WAR at 10.8 gig and LOTRO at 9.44 gig.
I'll say 50,000 - 75,000 subscribers, the top end of that is what Lineage 2 gets worldwide outside of Korea and Japan.
With the exception of Ryzom all of those games earned more than 100k subs let alone 20k. What's even more silly is that ignoring UO the remaining two games made over 200k subs Anyone who sites those games as evidence of Darkfall being a niche with X0,000 subs are the ones in denial of their own facts.
Come back to this thread after release, hell come back to this thread six months after release.
Necro my post I promise you DF will have under 100k subs and only a couple servers.
This is an indy dev team they can't possibly release a game with the features they listed on release.
With missing features and unforgiving gameplay (ffapvp) this game will be niche like the rest.
Also it took games like Eve a very long time to get to that 200k+ mark and that game is considered by most as the best sandbox since swg.
Best "since" SWG?
Eve was around long before SWG my friend. Fair to say Eve is a very niche game, but atleast it dared to be different. No goblins, orks, fairies or Elves!
Alot of the players that were turned away by SoE NGE turned to Eve same thing happened when E&B closed down they went to eve. thats what made Eve so cool the population was a combo of UO, Swg and E&B mixed with a few sci-fi geeks.
I know thier just as old as on another but until SWG changed eve was very small. If Swg didnt change and E&B didnt close down Eve wouldn't be as big today im sure.
Edit: Im getting old I actually had to check wikis when the two games released (children are destroying my brain). Eve online released May 03, SWG release june 03. lol so eve was born 1 month before swg. 30 day mean squat so lets just say they came out during the same time lol.
anyway SWG was the better game until it changed once it did Eve took the title.
Based on the last bit of info from that coffe cup thing whatever it was -- it does not look like this game is anywhere near ready for a launch. It literally looks like the guy was fishing around for investment money for a supposed feature complete game that is launching in 13 days. He even says that they have no marketing budget. What kind of a company builds a product and has no marketing budget included? And if they have no marketing budget then do they even have a customer support budget? { Mod Edit }
I didn't read all this thread,but I thought this was funny. Do you need a marketing budget when your website gets the same traffic as games with multimillion dollar marketing budgets?
I think the OP had a well written post. Although, you basically just said the game would be good, okay or bad and gave reasons that everyone agrees with and has stated before. It reminded me of an interview I saw on CNBC where the guy talked for about 5 minutes, but really all he said was he thought the market would go up unless it goes down. I guess that's why he gets paid the big bucks lol.
Your mind is like a parachute, it's only useful when it's open. Don't forget, you can use the block function on trolls.
I wish i could get a qoute, but Tasos clearly stated its not meant to take any of the WoW userbase, the game is made for people who want freedom in an mmo, but obviously didn't get it in WoW or any of its spin offs. And also the majority of those people are UO and AC players, who thrive on full loot and PvP.
Oh right. My "freedom" extends to punching you in the teeth with backing from my buddies if you don't like it. You are free to endure it.
Freedom in MMO's is nonsense. Not only do the developers set the parameters of said freedom, but if players have any degree of that "complete freedom", they will stretch its limits until there's one guy on top of an empty server.
Why can't Darkfall's rabid supporters (and apparently its developers) see that? You're free to punch me; I'm free to cancel.
P.S.: A preventive move on my part. World of Warcraft is annoyingly superficial and I can't stand that game.
I didn't read all this thread,but I thought this was funny. Do you need a marketing budget when your website gets the same traffic as games with multimillion dollar marketing budgets?
I saw nothing on there website that would make me want to spend money on this game.
Need more info please.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
The community will be DF's downfall and will most likely end up being a 2 at release and quickly fall to 3, unless the developers start making carebear changes in order to attract more players in order to continue funding the game as they will QUICKLY realized NICHE games have no room in todays market.
The community will be DF's downfall and will most likely end up being a 2 at release and quickly fall to 3, unless the developers start making carebear changes in order to attract more players in order to continue funding the game as they will QUICKLY realized NICHE games have no room in todays market.
Your quote, "NICHE games have no room in todays market.".... hahah... I guess Eve should just pack it's bags and shutdown its servers. Nice blanket statement.
The community will be DF's downfall and will most likely end up being a 2 at release and quickly fall to 3, unless the developers start making carebear changes in order to attract more players in order to continue funding the game as they will QUICKLY realized NICHE games have no room in todays market.
I'll disagree with this. There is plenty of room in the MMO genre for a wide variety of games. EVE, for example, is a niche title. It appeals to a very narrow segment of the gaming audience, but those players are dedicated to the game, and are having fun.
Heck, there are still folks playing games like Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online, and DAoC after all these years, so there's clearly a market for more than just the big titles.
What will be a problem for Darkfall is the absolute lack of developer information and interaction, especially once people start paying to play the game. If they stick to their current pattern of not giving out any real info and only throwing out the occasional bone, especially if stability or server issues become a problem, people will leave. A lousy community can be ignored unless there are roaming bands of PK's ruining everyone else's game time. A developer that treats their paying customers with contempt, or shuts them out completely, on the other hand, will lose business a lot faster.
I wish i could get a qoute, but Tasos clearly stated its not meant to take any of the WoW userbase, the game is made for people who want freedom in an mmo, but obviously didn't get it in WoW or any of its spin offs. And also the majority of those people are UO and AC players, who thrive on full loot and PvP.
Oh right. My "freedom" extends to punching you in the teeth with backing from my buddies if you don't like it. You are free to endure it.
Freedom in MMO's is nonsense. Not only do the developers set the parameters of said freedom, but if players have any degree of that "complete freedom", they will stretch its limits until there's one guy on top of an empty server.
Why can't Darkfall's rabid supporters (and apparently its developers) see that? You're free to punch me; I'm free to cancel.
P.S.: A preventive move on my part. World of Warcraft is annoyingly superficial and I can't stand that game.
A smart preventive move on your part. "Go back to WOW" is a favorite insult among the little droogs here.
All I can say to your stand on game freedom is that there will be quite a few people that will buy this game if/when it releases and realize they don't like FFA Full-Loot PVP. That is about the only consesus on the subject, some will like it and some won't. The argument has been rehashed so many times and it never ends.
Comments
If you've ever been part of the Darkfall forums for over a year you would know the amount of registered people was about 50k until August 2008. When the big trailers came out the forum population mushroomed.
Don't call someone an idiot unless you understand the metrics involved.
That's one opinion on why the population mushroomed.
Another opinion is that because the Forum name and registration of said forum was tied to getting a chance of being in Beta.
Not that ANYONE would EVER create multiple forum accounts to have a better shot at getting into Beta... Nope. I'm sure that all registered user there are unique posters, and only represent 1 person each.
Just like all the accounts here at mmorpg.com
They purge accounts made for increasing chances into getting into beta. They did that last time with the Clan beta registration.
I highly doubt that. In spite of Darkfall's past few months of activity search queries on google trends show the visibility of darkfall is low to the point of being pathetic.
Both Warhammer and Age of Conan had obvious spikes of interest three months prior to release.
Darkfall search queries three months prior to release are so low they don't trend higher than search queries for the two mentioned games long after they have released.
Link also includes Runescape and Wotlk.
It should be noted that the word warcraft is searched as frequently as Runescape.
Don't even bother......
These guys think Darkfall is going to have a million subscriptions and take over the world.
We know better, I will be right there with you as one of the 20k people that will enjoy this game.
PLaying: EvE, Ryzom
Waiting For: Earthrise, Perpetuum
With the exception of Ryzom all of those games earned more than 100k subs let alone 20k. What's even more silly is that ignoring UO the remaining two games made over 200k subs
Anyone who sites those games as evidence of Darkfall being a niche with X0,000 subs are the ones in denial of their own facts.
Come back to this thread after release, hell come back to this thread six months after release.
Necro my post I promise you DF will have under 100k subs and only a couple servers.
This is an indy dev team they can't possibly release a game with the features they listed on release.
With missing features and unforgiving gameplay (ffapvp) this game will be niche like the rest.
Also it took games like Eve a very long time to get to that 200k+ mark and that game is considered by most as the best sandbox since swg.
PLaying: EvE, Ryzom
Waiting For: Earthrise, Perpetuum
Come back to this thread after release, hell come back to this thread six months after release.
Necro my post I promise you DF will have under 100k subs and only a couple servers.
This is an indy dev team they can't possibly release a game with the features they listed on release.
With missing features and unforgiving gameplay (ffapvp) this game will be niche like the rest.
Also it took games like Eve a very long time to get to that 200k+ mark and that game is considered by most as the best sandbox since swg.
Best "since" SWG?
Eve was around long before SWG my friend. Fair to say Eve is a very niche game, but atleast it dared to be different. No goblins, orks, fairies or Elves!
This was a very well written post and was good to read. However without intending to sound mean it was rather pointless although I realise you probably had fun typing it.
Basicly your conclusion is that Darkfall will be good, average or crap.
Great.
Thanks for that.
I can't see it getting less than 100k downloads on launch unless they don't want that many. It's being discussed on every gaming forum I've looked at, even on the WoW forums and it was quite positive.
A new mmorpg only happens a few times a year and it normally garners a lot of interest. There are exceptions but I don't DF will be one of those.
I read the whole thing and then go to the end - The above sums it up.
Thanks for the prediction Nostradamus.
An 18G download is asking alot of people. That in itself is really going to hurt the overall subscriber numbers. Remember, not everyone has unlimited broadband. They really better be considering selling this on a disk.
The client size in itself is disturbing. The download has to be compressed, so what's the real size? Again, not everyone will have the hard drive space to run it, which will also limit the subscribers. Looking on my pc, the uninstall program shows WAR at 10.8 gig and LOTRO at 9.44 gig.
I'll say 50,000 - 75,000 subscribers, the top end of that is what Lineage 2 gets worldwide outside of Korea and Japan.
Come back to this thread after release, hell come back to this thread six months after release.
Necro my post I promise you DF will have under 100k subs and only a couple servers.
This is an indy dev team they can't possibly release a game with the features they listed on release.
With missing features and unforgiving gameplay (ffapvp) this game will be niche like the rest.
Also it took games like Eve a very long time to get to that 200k+ mark and that game is considered by most as the best sandbox since swg.
Best "since" SWG?
Eve was around long before SWG my friend. Fair to say Eve is a very niche game, but atleast it dared to be different. No goblins, orks, fairies or Elves!
Alot of the players that were turned away by SoE NGE turned to Eve same thing happened when E&B closed down they went to eve. thats what made Eve so cool the population was a combo of UO, Swg and E&B mixed with a few sci-fi geeks.
I know thier just as old as on another but until SWG changed eve was very small. If Swg didnt change and E&B didnt close down Eve wouldn't be as big today im sure.
Edit: Im getting old I actually had to check wikis when the two games released (children are destroying my brain). Eve online released May 03, SWG release june 03. lol so eve was born 1 month before swg. 30 day mean squat so lets just say they came out during the same time lol.
anyway SWG was the better game until it changed once it did Eve took the title.
PLaying: EvE, Ryzom
Waiting For: Earthrise, Perpetuum
I didn't read all this thread,but I thought this was funny. Do you need a marketing budget when your website gets the same traffic as games with multimillion dollar marketing budgets?
I think the OP had a well written post. Although, you basically just said the game would be good, okay or bad and gave reasons that everyone agrees with and has stated before. It reminded me of an interview I saw on CNBC where the guy talked for about 5 minutes, but really all he said was he thought the market would go up unless it goes down. I guess that's why he gets paid the big bucks lol.
Your mind is like a parachute, it's only useful when it's open.
Don't forget, you can use the block function on trolls.
Oh right. My "freedom" extends to punching you in the teeth with backing from my buddies if you don't like it. You are free to endure it.
Freedom in MMO's is nonsense. Not only do the developers set the parameters of said freedom, but if players have any degree of that "complete freedom", they will stretch its limits until there's one guy on top of an empty server.
Why can't Darkfall's rabid supporters (and apparently its developers) see that? You're free to punch me; I'm free to cancel.
P.S.: A preventive move on my part. World of Warcraft is annoyingly superficial and I can't stand that game.
I didn't read all this thread,but I thought this was funny. Do you need a marketing budget when your website gets the same traffic as games with multimillion dollar marketing budgets?
I saw nothing on there website that would make me want to spend money on this game.
Need more info please.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
The community will be DF's downfall and will most likely end up being a 2 at release and quickly fall to 3, unless the developers start making carebear changes in order to attract more players in order to continue funding the game as they will QUICKLY realized NICHE games have no room in todays market.
10 print "go home"
20 goto 10
Your quote, "NICHE games have no room in todays market.".... hahah... I guess Eve should just pack it's bags and shutdown its servers. Nice blanket statement.
I'll disagree with this. There is plenty of room in the MMO genre for a wide variety of games. EVE, for example, is a niche title. It appeals to a very narrow segment of the gaming audience, but those players are dedicated to the game, and are having fun.
Heck, there are still folks playing games like Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online, and DAoC after all these years, so there's clearly a market for more than just the big titles.
What will be a problem for Darkfall is the absolute lack of developer information and interaction, especially once people start paying to play the game. If they stick to their current pattern of not giving out any real info and only throwing out the occasional bone, especially if stability or server issues become a problem, people will leave. A lousy community can be ignored unless there are roaming bands of PK's ruining everyone else's game time. A developer that treats their paying customers with contempt, or shuts them out completely, on the other hand, will lose business a lot faster.
Oh right. My "freedom" extends to punching you in the teeth with backing from my buddies if you don't like it. You are free to endure it.
Freedom in MMO's is nonsense. Not only do the developers set the parameters of said freedom, but if players have any degree of that "complete freedom", they will stretch its limits until there's one guy on top of an empty server.
Why can't Darkfall's rabid supporters (and apparently its developers) see that? You're free to punch me; I'm free to cancel.
P.S.: A preventive move on my part. World of Warcraft is annoyingly superficial and I can't stand that game.
A smart preventive move on your part. "Go back to WOW" is a favorite insult among the little droogs here.
All I can say to your stand on game freedom is that there will be quite a few people that will buy this game if/when it releases and realize they don't like FFA Full-Loot PVP. That is about the only consesus on the subject, some will like it and some won't. The argument has been rehashed so many times and it never ends.
------------------
Originally posted by javac
well i'm 35 and have a PhD in science, and then 10 years experience in bioinformatics... you?
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/218865/page/8