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How many players has Warhammer lost since launch ?
admriker4
Member Posts: 1,070
I was just curious how the population for Warhammer is doing ? I have some friends (multi-mmo guild) that have a pressence there. One happens to be my daughter's pediatrician who we saw yesterday.
Anyway I asked her how was Warhammer. She told me its a terrible game and that she only checks in to chat for a bit. She says the falloff in players reminds her of Age of Conan where roughly 700,000 bought the game but maybe 75,000 remain if that.
She mentioned the endgame is just plain boring and no reason to stick around for years really. So when people reach the lvl cap they dont stay for long.
Is Mythic merging servers ? Are they losing masses like AoC did ?
Comments
Well, ignore my post if you want because I'm not sure about facts/numbers, but I can tell you what I've noticed personally. There was a huge number of players around launch for sure, and after about 2 weeks it stabilized. Then, during October and November, that's when you hear all these trolls saying "WAR is so lame, the game's dying, there's only 2 people left, blah blah blah". And I did notice a drop in players on my server - nothing significant, there were still plenty of people left to play with, but some of the High/High servers dropped down to Med/Med.
Then, in December, people started coming back. Some (US) servers started having queues again, and I noticed more toons in T1 than during Oct/November. Now after continued Mythic improvements, it seems like the pop is slowly rising. Granted, many of them are on the 7 day free trial and it remains to be seen if they'll stick around or not. However, I just sieged a T4 Keep and ranked 145th in contribution, and recieved 125th place. You can't recieve 125th place if there aren't 124 other people there. Yes, it was a great battle
WAR's endgame could use a little more content, I'll say that much. However, it only feels boring because it's what you've been doing since level 1 - that's WAR's strength and weakness at the same time, that you can play the game right from the start without having to "level up" necessarily. When Mythic adds more high-level only content, especially starting in T3, people will stop saying the endgame is boring.
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A human and an Elf get captured by Skaven. The rat-men are getting ready to shoot the first hostage with Dwarf-made guns when he yells, "Earthquake!" The naturally nervous Skaven run and hide from the imaginary threat. He escapes. The Skaven regroup and bring out the Elf. Being very smart, the Elf has figured out what to do. When the Skaven get ready to shoot, the Elf, in order to scare them, yells, "Fire!"
Order of the White Border.
Well said Ascension...
since launch? at least 85%. more than 20 servers at the start that had login ques for both factions that were often pass the 1 hour mark. as it is now, there is only 4 or 5 servers that make it to med/med and only for a short while. what ascnesion may have experienced was not a growning population, just a moved population from another server since about 20 of them can be transferred off of. could be wrong on that because he didnt say which server he plays on but i dont think i am.
this IMO is war's biggest problem because every MMO is constantly bleeding subs but can that MMO bring in and retain new people and WAR can't. T1 and T2 are ghost towns for most servers (skull throne is doing great because it has a lot of rerolls on it right now so T1 and T2 are good there) anyone buying the game on a whim or checking out a free trial because they want to see what this RvR massive battle mmo game is like gets smacked right in the face with a barren battlefield and choose not to stay. people arent enjoying tier 4 because its busted (hopefully fixed tommorow) and have quit. so war is not getting any new subs on the front end and losing them on the back end because they, just like AOC, refuse to swallow their pride and merge servers while they still have people to merge.
there is a reason Lotro has done well and stayed strong, they have as few servers as possible, condensing the playerbase, and putting a big emphasis on the first M in mmo and thats what mythic needs to do. drop the 35+ servers they have to 9. 1 rp server, the 2 Orvr servers, and 6 core servers. have the game sitting at med/med all day long and high/high in the evening so war is everywhere across all tiers. new people will stay, old people will stay. instead of the Renown Train going choochoo around barren battlefields we will have large armies going pew pew like the 2 weeks of open beta and the first month of the game.
all i know is that when i gave it a shot, the first tier areas were pretty much deserted. think i saw less than five players in the few hours it took for war to lose me. that says to me that new people aren't trying the game, and there aren't even old players around anymore to make for many alts.
I wonder if part of the problem with the empty starter areas has anything to do with the tier system. Most MMOs do seperate different level ranges, to varying extents, but the tier system is pretty extreme. New players don't even bump into advanced players anywhere, they don't see what sort of population the server has at all, aside from other newbies (Of which, there are ~none)
Seems like they should have had the tiers run alongside general all-level parts, maybe towns that players have reasons to be in, from the very beginning, to the very end. Maybe make them all-chaos, and all-order, too. Just to really put players together, so they aren't so isolated within each tier.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
I read somewhere that Mythic sold 800,000 copies total a few months after launch.
80% or more would mean they should have lost 640,000 players which would leave Warhammer with 160,000 players.
Has the exodus been that bad ? Losing 640,000 seems extreme.
well since you put it that way, it may be even higher percentage. highly doubt 160k people are playing atm.
lets be generous and say a server holds 20k players.
lets say the 6 servers that actually reach med/med has 10k people per.
lets say the other 10 on the login screen that stay low/low have 5k.
thats 110k people.
but the servers are probably around 4k max capacity. only 5 ever consistantly reach med/med, only two of which hit med/med during the day and past midnight pacific. only 2 ever hit high on either side and thats very rare. the rest stay low/low and they have about 20 servers that dont even show up on the server select screen unless you click "more" at the bottom. these are hidden because they are all transfer servers and have been that way for quite a while so we can safely assume that they are empty.
how many still active accounts? who knows. i know there are a lot of people still active but arent playing, just waiting for mythics next move. people regularly playing? my guess is about 30k (US)
1/29 is the most important day ever for warhammer's future. if they can pull the rabbit out, people that have active accounts will stay and keep playing and some may resub. if what they announce tommorow is just more fluff or anything of substance is more than a month away expect a lot of mass cancels, myself included.
Analysts had predicted WAR would settle around 250-300k subs a few months ago. This was back in September during launch when everything was peachy:
"Edge Online stated that Arvind Bhatia at Stern Agee has predicted that the game will settle with between 250,000 and 300,000 subscribers after the first six months or so. He also states after in checking with retailers, sales of the game have met, but not exceeded, expectations.Agee predicts Warhammer Online will bring in between $55 million and $60 million in revenue for September."
That prediction was made in the end of September, long before people had gotten to the endgame and saw it what a mess it was.
After September, WAR had been losing plenty of subs and the sales numbers for November and December didn't crack the Top 20 games sold. So you figure they lost quite a bit of traction since launch. I think right now its around 220k maybe based on how you read whole guilds are disbanding, but new ones aren't forming with success. Guilds are just absorbing players but no guilds are replacing the lost ones, especially the higher ranked guilds. War lost subs, but they did get some back during the free trial thing (another sign it was losing subs early on). Even if they lost 85%, they would have made some of that back, so I'd say higher than 160k probably.
How many? Mythic won't say. MJ said on another site he would release numbers when/if EA "allows" him to do so because he said he REALLY wants to, but EA won't let him. (***See below to see what MJ said to Pheace about sales numbers and stuff). So people can only speculate until then based on what they see. He did say something to the effect of (or hinted) that more people signed up in January than either November or October. Based on how poorly they did during those two months, thats not hard to argue with because they finished out of the Top 20 both times.
The thing is, analysts had already predicted its settling point, so we already know that they aren't OVER 300k, even though people on some of the better servers think so.
***MarkJacobs: LOL. Actually, it won't be a press release this time (at least that's not the plan). I promise you this (and you know I don't do that often), after the earnings call I'll be happy to scream out what our sales were if it doesn't make the call. How's that?
As to subscriber numbers, that I can't talk about yet. Sales != subscribers of course and I know I can't talk about that right now. Again, as part of EA I'm not allowed to talk about that stuff right now. I wish that wasn't the case but if you look at every other MMORPG, the vast majority only talk about subscribers at certain milestones/certain times of the year if they talk about them at all. I happily did so when we were independent and if I was still independent today I'd talk about them as well but as part of a publicly traded company I can't.
"TO MICHAEL!"
I read somewhere that Mythic sold 800,000 copies total a few months after launch.
80% or more would mean they should have lost 640,000 players which would leave Warhammer with 160,000 players.
Has the exodus been that bad ? Losing 640,000 seems extreme.
You have to remember the biggest drop is usually in the first month. Those 800k "Accounts created" will probably have translated into maybe 60-80% subs or so (random guestimation). That's the number you should work with really.
Here are some facts:
- Servers: in EU at launch 56, and after a week added 7 more to 63. 80% of those servers were FuLL/Med at the time. the rest were Med/low.
- Now : 50% drop in EU servers - no longer used - and you have to wait to see a few full servers on prime time.
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Number of Xfire players of War in the first weeks of launch time (Sep) at prime time was between 13K and 15 K (players).
Now it is between 3.3K and 3.9 K.
The ratio between Wow players and War XFire players was 6 to 1 at the end of September.
The ratio between Wow and War Xfire players tumbled to 12 to 1 in October, 22 to 1 in November.
Ratio was still 25 to 1 at the beginning of Jnuary
Today the ratio of Wow and War on Xfire reached 29.6 to 1 (last week of January).
-----
Now make the two calculations: server wise: 14.000 (average) at launch against 3.500 now= 4: 25% of the number of players it had in September: 25% of 800K "accounts" = 200 K players
Now do the calculations on the ratio Wow - War: 5.000.000 western players (Xfire based) divded by the ratio of 29.6 = about 170 K players.
Take a 10% error and you get between 180K and 200 K max.
So the two methods were used (server wise and Xfire player ratios).
End result: the number of players is dropping far under the "target" subs EA set out to break even (250K -350 K).
All we have to do is wait for the spring and summer numbers and ... the next quarterly losses of EA.
PS. War is definitely no longer the 2nd MMORPG being played at Xfire.com. That was another "target".
Oh god the word facts in the same sentence as x fire=not even close. It has 200-300k is a guess of course, but server pops have been increasing quite alot recently.
Out of all my time spent gaming through various online titles I can honestly say that I probably have only met one-two people who used X-Fire and surprisingly, there's a lot of people who have no idea what the hell it is, ala the more casual gamers. I don't think I've ever even thought about installing.
Anyways, just purchased WAR. Enjoying it at the moment, that's all that matters. Has my attention moreso than other MMOs currently out right now. Everyone who bashes an MMO yet still frequents the forums might as well just go cancel your subscription and continue in your search for the Holy Grail of MMO in which everyone believes will exist that will cater 100% to every type of gamers needs and just never get old. Good luck.
the consensus seems to land between 180-250k players. Putting aside wow and the fact that its a pvp focused game Id say those are pretty decent numbers.
Before wow anything above 200k was a big hit.
I'm curious..
How is it that you personally can say Xfire is not even close, but then your view is "server pops have been increasing quite a lot recently"? If we say his Xfire numbers are no good, what could we say about your guess when all you have is little more than a "feeling"? Saying its increasing quite a bit but you give no evidence of that. I'm not sold on all Xfire stats, but at least he is giving stats.
People who say what you say never have any numbers... its all based on what you "feel". Do you have anything more substantial other than "I killed three more people than I did last week, so I know more people are playing"..?
"TO MICHAEL!"
I'm curious..
How is it that you personally can say Xfire is not even close, but then your view is "server pops have been increasing quite a lot recently"? If we say his Xfire numbers are no good, what could we say about your guess when all you have is little more than a "feeling"? Saying its increasing quite a bit but you give no evidence of that. I'm not sold on all Xfire stats, but at least he is giving stats.
People who say what you say never have any numbers... its all based on what you "feel". Do you have anything more substantial other than "I killed three more people than I did last week, so I know more people are playing"..?
I'd say it's safer to gather an opinion on population based on what one sees ingame opposed to numbers from a client that half the playerbase doesn't use, especially when there's more gamers that don't use it than ones that do.
I'm curious..
How is it that you personally can say Xfire is not even close, but then your view is "server pops have been increasing quite a lot recently"? If we say his Xfire numbers are no good, what could we say about your guess when all you have is little more than a "feeling"? Saying its increasing quite a bit but you give no evidence of that. I'm not sold on all Xfire stats, but at least he is giving stats.
People who say what you say never have any numbers... its all based on what you "feel". Do you have anything more substantial other than "I killed three more people than I did last week, so I know more people are playing"..?
I'd say it's safer to gather an opinion on population based on what one sees ingame opposed to numbers from a client that half the playerbase doesn't use, especially when there's more gamers that don't use it than ones that do.
Exactly, this x fire stuff is so far off it s not even funny in my experience. In a guild i ve had in WAR of 100+ people not 1 used it, in WOW i was in a guild with about 50 ish people and 30ish used it. X fire to me can t be used at all, if everyone who installed a MMO had x fire installed with the game and had to be used to access every MMO out there then yes it would be bang on accurate, but from my experience it varies HUGELY from game to game.
I'm curious..
How is it that you personally can say Xfire is not even close, but then your view is "server pops have been increasing quite a lot recently"? If we say his Xfire numbers are no good, what could we say about your guess when all you have is little more than a "feeling"? Saying its increasing quite a bit but you give no evidence of that. I'm not sold on all Xfire stats, but at least he is giving stats.
People who say what you say never have any numbers... its all based on what you "feel". Do you have anything more substantial other than "I killed three more people than I did last week, so I know more people are playing"..?
I'd say it's safer to gather an opinion on population based on what one sees ingame opposed to numbers from a client that half the playerbase doesn't use, especially when there's more gamers that don't use it than ones that do.
So the naked eye is a better gauge of server populations than a tracking program? Even a program that not everyone uses? Thing is, even if everyone didn't use it, a program like that would still more accurately be more reliable to gauge totals than your naked eye. Your eye only sees what you see, but you're busy playing, chatting, etc. You could be in one zone and see 5 people and think the server is dead. Then another guy is in another zone sees a 75 v 75 battle and says the server was packed tonight. Perception is really worthless in most cases.
It's like the guy late for work. To him, it seems like he hits every damn redlight down the road, making him later. But the same guy going down the same road when he's off, he seems to hit every green light. Then he wonders why the greens only comes when he's not in a hurry. Because its his perception.
Programs don't use perceptions, even if everyone didn't use them. Again, I am not totally sold on everything about Xfire or another program, but they are way more reliable 99.9% of the time than the naked human eye, mainly because the numbers don't root for the game or against it. It's not personal.
"TO MICHAEL!"
I'm curious..
How is it that you personally can say Xfire is not even close, but then your view is "server pops have been increasing quite a lot recently"? If we say his Xfire numbers are no good, what could we say about your guess when all you have is little more than a "feeling"? Saying its increasing quite a bit but you give no evidence of that. I'm not sold on all Xfire stats, but at least he is giving stats.
People who say what you say never have any numbers... its all based on what you "feel". Do you have anything more substantial other than "I killed three more people than I did last week, so I know more people are playing"..?
I'd say it's safer to gather an opinion on population based on what one sees ingame opposed to numbers from a client that half the playerbase doesn't use, especially when there's more gamers that don't use it than ones that do.
So the naked eye is a better gauge of server populations than a tracking program? Even a program that not everyone uses? Thing is, even if everyone didn't use it, a program like that would still more accurately be more reliable to gauge totals than your naked eye. Your eye only sees what you see, but you're busy playing, chatting, etc. You could be in one zone and see 5 people and think the server is dead. Then another guy is in another zone sees a 75 v 75 battle and says the server was packed tonight. Perception is really worthless in most cases.
It's like the guy late for work. To him, it seems like he hits every damn redlight down the road, making him later. But the same guy going down the same road when he's off, he seems to hit every green light. Then he wonders why the greens only comes when he's not in a hurry. Because its his perception.
Programs don't use perceptions, even if everyone didn't use them. Again, I am not totally sold on everything about Xfire or another program, but they are way more reliable 99.9% of the time than the naked human eye, mainly because the numbers don't root for the game or against it. It's not personal.
Everybody's yanking numbers out of their **ses on this thread, but Xfire is probably useful for trends if not absolute numbers. And by that measure, WAR can initially be assumed to have lost about 2/3rds of it's peak subscriber numbers - so roughly 250k can probably be assumed on that basis. But Xfire only shows hours played, and when WAR was new we can also assume that subscribers were putting a lot more time into it too, I know I was. So if the average play time per subscriber has also dipped, it may have lost less than the 2/3rds number. This is all speculation anyway: if your server is busy you probably think the game is doing great, if it's not then you think it's dead.
I *would* have agreed with this, if this wasn't 2009, the market is vastly bigger these days as shown by the initial sales numbers yet they had roughly those same numbers with Daoc 10 years ago and that game probably cost less than a 10th of what they spent on this game.
I recently bought this on Steam. Loaded it up and was killing other players my first night. That pretty much works for me. With all the classes to choose from, things to see in the world and I can pop into a RvR scenario from where ever I am I pretty well satisfied with this one.
They SHOULD merge severs, but they don't want to; due to the imbelic statements made by a certain dev, also "Warhammer losing 80% of it's servers" isn't a very good headline, even if the descision does make sense!
So instead what do they do? What do they focus their efforts on? HEY GUYS TWO NEW CLASSES AGAIN! The kitchen sink strategy. Goodie.
the game is doing fine. yes there was a drop off when wotlk came out but every game took a hit when wotlk came out. i play on vortex which isn't the most populated server(usually runs med. for both sides) and the lower teirs have plenty of people running around doing pqs and rvr. it really picked up once they introduced the rvr rewards. the game is fine they are constantly fixing content and adding new content as well.
Also on Vortex - seen sufficient numbers to keep my interest.
High-Elf ... Twanger is the name
The subscriber base is pretty huge, but it's hard to guess at the exact subscriber base. We know they initially sold 1.2 million boxes and had 800k subscribers after the first month. Their retention rate is over 70% (or was at one point, at least).
In Europe, we've got roughly:
20 Med/Med servers
45 Low/Low servers
This is a massive amount of servers, but there's too many. Say we merge the Low/Low and end up with
40 Med/Med servers.
Now compare with a game like LotRO which is very succesful, yet only has 11 servers live in Europe, and has been out for a long time now, while WAR is still a very new game. Hard to predict how large WAR will be a few years down the road. But it seems like Mythic currently has a lot of money flowing in. WAR hasn't even expanded to Asia yet.
WoW has well over 200 servers (almost 300?) in Europe I believe.
Your math is based on the fact that the players are playing 24/7. Your 110k number is based off of people online at one time, which really isn't that bad at all; if you do that with the fact that maybe only %20 of an MMOs subscribers are playing at the same time, that'd mean a current of 550k subs. Of course, I don't think it's that high, but I don't think it's as low as what you are suggesting either.