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Fishermage
Member Posts: 7,562
Seen in this thread:
forums.station.sony.com/swg/posts/list.m
Now of course this is only the stats of officers in the GCW. But if you look closely you will see that the game flattens out and begins to decline again after the C6CD (Chapter 6 Combat Downgrade). It never recovers, and continues its decline.
I wish we had MORE information, but SOE insists on keeping that secret, but the only evidence we have reflects what I and others said at the time.
Told ya so, SOE.
Comments
10k divided by 2 toons per account =5k active officers? so we can postulate there are only about 5-8k players then.
Seriously SoE has to be the dumbest bastards in the game industry.
Just as a business guy I would have flipped the switch right after I saw the drop in subs after the NGE.
Took the servers off line for a week, brought the game back to Pre-CU status and given everyone a week free on thier accounts.
I truely believe thet SWG would be one of the top grossing games if they just took it all back and started work on improving Pre-Cu.
Bunch of morons
Playing: EvE, Ryzom
Heh...my sig statement says it all...
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"
--------
Ten Golden Rules Of Videogame Fanboyism
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"...daelnor
Yes, in fact, you most certainly did.
C6CD was the start of Lorin Jameson's and Blix's plan to "NGE" the game, yet again, only in monthly stages, this time. Appears that the "plan" ended around the end of the GU-whatevers as there really hasn't been any direction since. The new "mini-NGE" brought "buff-wars", WoW style profession balance (even if LS jedi were only designed for 1/2 the end game content), more very long boring grinds, the death of PVP with all the FOTM profession after re-vamps, more reasons to quit after the resulting NERFS, AFK and 3rd party exploits to the max, etc, etc, etc.
SOE Austin NEVER learned the lesson of CU/NGE even tho they have said they did, many times. They actually still believe that they can CHANGE the game enough to save it. And instead of some actual creative development, they continued the WoW-ification of SWG that the original NGE started.
I remember 88 pages of a thread that told SOE exactly what would happen, in fact all of this, after C6CD was on test.
At C6CD, Smedley came up with his 100K subs to SWG. Best estimates I've seen is somewhere around 20K to 30K subs (maybe lower, maybe higher) so, I would imagine that the "new mini-NGE" (C6CD thru GU-Whatever) cost the same percentages of subs that the original NGE did. 70+% loss! Only, this time, in increments also, right along with the development/CHANGES.
SOE Austin still continues the CU/NGE/C6CD style of development. Base busts and "bots". Even if these are actual exploits, then "fix" them when they are seen, not years after when the playerbase has come to see them as the norm and relys on such as gameplay. The "takeing-away" CU/NGE/C6CD development continues. More lost subs?
Imo the problem is that SOE management thinks they know what they're doing. They seem to rely on their own judgement and/or bad market research to make important decisions, and completely ignore the people that know the game the best.
Why would I say that? Well, when asked what players would prefer, fixes to the broken ground game or Jump to Lightspeed, I seem to remember a lot of support for fixing the ground game. There were so many bugs, incomplete quests, exploits etc. It was in a horrible state. What did SOE do? Well, they seemed to put more resources into JTL, leaving the ground game in a mess.
They did get back to ground game fixes and had a lot of players and devs working together on them. People were excited about the direction this was going. What did SOE do? They scrapped all this work and foisted the Wowified combat upgrade on us. It introduced levels, when people really seemed to enjoy the skill system. It made all our customized weapons generally useless as level dictated damage, and it introduced its own set of serious bugs and issues. Now we had a second broken ground game, lost the immersive skill system (with no levels), and had these goofy special effects. Some blinded everyone on use. Others had ridiculous circles every time you hopped on or off your speeder. Armour was broken in the conversion, and never fixed.
People literally begged SOE not to take a step backwards with this horrible, unwanted revamp that completely dismissed player input, but they wouldn't listen. Apparently, someone at the top of the food chain thought he knew what he was doing.
After telling everyone that the CU system was "here to stay" SOE management then started cooking up the NGE. All the while a new expansion was being created for the CU system. That's just craziness really. Why have one part of your organization make a CU based expansion (e.g. with tons of rewards for all the CU professions) while another part of your organization was working on eliminating all of those same professions? If this was going on in a person, he or she would have multiple personality disorder (D.I.D. for sticklers).
So, after the CU based expansion came out on pre-order, and people were loving it, they dropped the bomb that the whole game was being revamped again (the day after the expansion officially went live, if memory serves). If the CU protests were loud, the NGE protests were even louder. Allegations of bait and switch were made regarding the new expansion, and SOE instituted a refund campaign to try to appease the masses of angry customers. Many of these begged (again) SOE not to go through with this horrible, unwanted revamp (deja vu yet?), but someone making the big decisions seemed to think he knew better than the people that knew the game best.
So, the NGE went live. Bugs galore. Tbh it seemed like most of the game was simply deleted. What was left didn't work. Chat, movement and combat were all badly broken. We could only stand around and send mail to each other to try to figure out some work arounds to everything that was wrong with the game. We were asked for feedback on this new revamp by John Smedley himself, so many of us told him just how bad this was, and that we would really like a functional game back, especially one with all our profressions, and one that made all the new creatures and rewards in the new expansion actually worthwhile. His answer? No. I guess he thought he knew better than us what the game needed once again.
People then attended summits about the game. These seemed like damage control. What did many people ask for? Their old, functional game back. What did Mr. Smedley say? No. What did he and LEC do next? More market research. What did they do following this marketting research? Chapter 6 "combat downgrade." What did the players say? No, no, no; this is not the solution we are looking for.
Those that liked one of the two previous versions of the game wanted one of them back, still. Those that were recruited into the new game enjoyed the fast kill, no decay, easy combat, no need for groups, no need for buffs, etc. etc. etc. Did the people who still wanted pre-cu or even the cu back get what they asked for? No. Did the people who actually enjoyed the new style of the NGE get to keep what they enjoyed? No. Instead their game was changed as well. So now, every population that ever entered the game had it taken from them, against their wishes, admidst loud protests.
Players seemed to notice this too of course. What did they ask for? NGE servers alongside either pre-cu or cu servers. Everyone gets the game they enjoyed, and people can sample various versions of the game. What did SOE and LEC say? No. Apparently they know what players will enjoy more than they players themselves...again.
The latest big expansion to the game? A virtual trading card game that has players purchasing packs of virtual cards that they may never use, hoping to get exclusive loot for their characters in SWG. According to some press releases, apparently the players are very enthusiastic about this new addition to SWG. Of course, that's what SOE said about the CU, and then the NGE.
It seems that every time SOE does something to alienate their players, they also then seem to think that they've actually made them happy. Maybe they think they know how people feel better than the people themselves. Wouldn't surprise me.
Do the people making these decisions see how it seems they are making the same type of mistake over and over and over again? Tbh, I don't think they do. If they did, you'd think the pattern would stop, but I haven't seen anything remarkable in this regard yet.
testify, brother! i demand sticky!
Good read, as always, Arc!
By C6CD, personaly, I think LA had given up on SWG and bailed. We all know now, that they had been working on SW:TOR since 05 (post NGE). SOE knew of TOR long before the speculation ended as I was told as much via tel-con with Lorin Jameson, at about the time of C6CD. Possibly, LA told SOE to "get the lead out or close" and the mini-NGE (C6CD to GU-Whatever) was SOE's answer that was going to make everything OK.
It is funny to note that the "mini-NGE" was made for "vets", by SOE's thinking. Harder combat, group content, multi-profession reliance, Creature Hand..... uhhhh Beast Master, etc, etc etc. There was no large marketing push aimed at new subs, only the free (many, MANY) trials for "vets" to get them to see the new (old) systems. The vets came and went, again and again. Most laughed at the game and made not so nice leaving posts on the O-Boards while on the way out. SO many, that SOE took away the ability for free trial accounts to post on the O-Boards for awhile. The consensus was, they did not want "some" of their old game back in a NGE skin. The existing players, that SOE never cared about in any of the game revamps, didn't like it and a bunch did the same as the vets did, post their CHANGED gameplay. That magical cancel button. SOE Austin's 3rd try at a revamp and resulting failures were now complete.
I doubt if LA could care less about SWG other than preaching at Bio-Ware not to make the same mistakes. I would imagine that LA put's it right up there with the Christmas Special. My best guess is, SWG is meat the minute TOR releases. As far as I'm concerned, the comic game can have Deadmeat, Blix, and most of the rest of them. Only one really worth their salt is Adept, but 1 dev can not a game, make.
Heh...my sig statement says it all...
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"
hahaha thats funnny. i LOL for like 5 mins andl link it to a few buddys of mine
Nasedoo: You said traders would get a revamp under my supervision.
Darth Lord Blixtev: I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.
I've been putting these stats together for a while and I would love for there to be some way to gauge the number of subs to SWG from it, as I'd like to know too, but because only a very small portion of the playerbase actually are Lieutenant Rank or above these stats dont provide any meaningful data in finding overall population.
A couple of things I have seen is peaks when returning vet trials are open, as players return, gain the 1 GCW point that they need to advance from Sergeant to Lieutenant, show up on the charts until the trial is over then disappear again, although some vets do seem to hang around.
Another important factor is that the GCW hasn't had much work done to it for a couple of years, players are getting bored of it. I think my Smuggler decayed out of the Officer ranks (Lieutenant and above) so I no longer show on the charts.
The fact that it still keeps 8k characters is a mystery to me, it seems new players who aren't yet burnt out are coming into the system all the time, I got the contact who hosts the stats website to set up tracking of new names for me so I can keep an eye on retention rates of the ranking system too.
Game Update 10 will be interesting stats wise I think, the fix to baseclubbing will mean players will actually have to gain and maintain rank through intended gameplay and the PvP update should breathe some new life into the GCW system.
I will certainly be PvPing again after GU10, what I've played of it on TC so far is very addictive indeed.
Alternatively it could backfire and cause another exodus.
edit: for typo.
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Ten Golden Rules Of Videogame Fanboyism
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"...daelnor
Alternatively it could backfire and cause another exodust.
Once people realize they can play TF2 or CounterStrike "battlefields" for free ;-)
How can someone not be able to gauge populations from those numbers, but at the same time you make a statement that only a small portion of the player base are being tracked by those numbers. For you to be able to make a comment like that it implies that you have somehow gleaned the overall population of the game to know what percentage of players are officers and being tracked.
If the number cannot be determined then perhaps you should not dismiss someone elses estimates as impossible and then replace it with your own to make the number appear more favorable.
How can someone not be able to gauge populations from those numbers, but at the same time you make a statement that only a small portion of the player base are being tracked by those numbers. For you to be able to make a comment like that it implies that you have somehow gleaned the overall population of the game to know what percentage of players are officers and being tracked.
If the number cannot be determined then perhaps you should not dismiss someone elses estimates as impossible and then replace it with your own to make the number appear more favorable.
Well, Badger is correct tbh. All you have to do is take a wander round any of the major cities, and you will see hundreds of toons without rank still trying to grind to 90. I have certainly seen (and helped) a lot of new players in the last couple of months, and they are not PVPers. Certain servers have higher PVP as the officer numbers imply, but it doesn't mean those servers have a higher population, as I have toons on all the main servers and see very little difference.
I couldn't disagree more, I think it's a fair bet that a decent chunk of the playerbase have ranked officers, why? Well you get GCW from more sources than just pvp. You get GCW from all manner of pve, including the bullshit instance grinds I bet... and hell, space (which is one of the more popular features of the game now due to the fact it's the only one that's recognisable from when it went live)... I can even name you an Ent that hit General purely through playing JTL, not a single pvp kill if I remember right.....if that doesn't make a mockery of the whole damn game I don't know what does. But yeah, in summary, if it was purely pvp'ers, I'd somewhat agree with your statement, but as it stands even traders and ents can obtain officer ranks.
...The spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought.
How can someone not be able to gauge populations from those numbers, but at the same time you make a statement that only a small portion of the player base are being tracked by those numbers. For you to be able to make a comment like that it implies that you have somehow gleaned the overall population of the game to know what percentage of players are officers and being tracked.
If the number cannot be determined then perhaps you should not dismiss someone elses estimates as impossible and then replace it with your own to make the number appear more favorable.
Well, Badger is correct tbh. All you have to do is take a wander round any of the major cities, and you will see hundreds of toons without rank still trying to grind to 90. I have certainly seen (and helped) a lot of new players in the last couple of months, and they are not PVPers. Certain servers have higher PVP as the officer numbers imply, but it doesn't mean those servers have a higher population, as I have toons on all the main servers and see very little difference.
Those could be alts. Maybe the pvp players have no reason to hang around the same location where people who are still grinding up levels. Maybe those new players are a constant cycle of people who never make it to 90 so there always appears to be new people starting. Maybe things are different on other servers. Maybe people socialize on their non pvp characters in town. There are a million speculations, but even still seeing "hundreds" isn't a majority when we are looking at a chart of "thousands".
My point was that badger made the same claim as someone else did, when he had just dismissed it as being impossible.
He claims something is impossible, because (most likely) he doesn't agree with the conclusion someone else reaches and then turns around and makes the same impossible claim so that (most likely) it reaches a conclusion he agrees with.
(edit for clarity)
How can someone not be able to gauge populations from those numbers, but at the same time you make a statement that only a small portion of the player base are being tracked by those numbers. For you to be able to make a comment like that it implies that you have somehow gleaned the overall population of the game to know what percentage of players are officers and being tracked.
If the number cannot be determined then perhaps you should not dismiss someone elses estimates as impossible and then replace it with your own to make the number appear more favorable.
Well, Badger is correct tbh. All you have to do is take a wander round any of the major cities, and you will see hundreds of toons without rank still trying to grind to 90. I have certainly seen (and helped) a lot of new players in the last couple of months, and they are not PVPers. Certain servers have higher PVP as the officer numbers imply, but it doesn't mean those servers have a higher population, as I have toons on all the main servers and see very little difference.
Badgers guesses are no more accurate than anyone elses who monitors such things.
The fact is the GCW is the ONLY factual numbers that SOE provides and thus is a starting point to the estimates people make.
--------
Ten Golden Rules Of Videogame Fanboyism
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"...daelnor
How can someone not be able to gauge populations from those numbers, but at the same time you make a statement that only a small portion of the player base are being tracked by those numbers. For you to be able to make a comment like that it implies that you have somehow gleaned the overall population of the game to know what percentage of players are officers and being tracked.
If the number cannot be determined then perhaps you should not dismiss someone elses estimates as impossible and then replace it with your own to make the number appear more favorable.
Well, Badger is correct tbh. All you have to do is take a wander round any of the major cities, and you will see hundreds of toons without rank still trying to grind to 90. I have certainly seen (and helped) a lot of new players in the last couple of months, and they are not PVPers. Certain servers have higher PVP as the officer numbers imply, but it doesn't mean those servers have a higher population, as I have toons on all the main servers and see very little difference.
Badgers guesses are no more accurate than anyone elses who monitors such things.
The fact is the GCW is the ONLY factual numbers that SOE provides and thus is a starting point to the estimates people make.
They are the only figures, but it is a nonsense to use them as a basis to estimate population. As a guild leader I can tell you out of 80 guildees I have one officer, who ping pongs between officer rank and non-officer. I have 16 toons and not one of them is officer rank and the majority of them are factionally aligned. Out of all my guildees only 3 have 2 accounts, so the numbers are not being boosted in that way either. I have multiple ace pilots and you will find that the pilot community is made up predominantly of neutral pilots, therefore not getting GCW. That is a fact and SOE have released figures of the pilot faction ratios, with nearly 2 thirds neutral. So tell me how using figures that don't represent anything meaningful can help you estimate population? If you can I would be happy to hear.
How can someone not be able to gauge populations from those numbers, but at the same time you make a statement that only a small portion of the player base are being tracked by those numbers. For you to be able to make a comment like that it implies that you have somehow gleaned the overall population of the game to know what percentage of players are officers and being tracked.
If the number cannot be determined then perhaps you should not dismiss someone elses estimates as impossible and then replace it with your own to make the number appear more favorable.
Well, Badger is correct tbh. All you have to do is take a wander round any of the major cities, and you will see hundreds of toons without rank still trying to grind to 90. I have certainly seen (and helped) a lot of new players in the last couple of months, and they are not PVPers. Certain servers have higher PVP as the officer numbers imply, but it doesn't mean those servers have a higher population, as I have toons on all the main servers and see very little difference.
Badgers guesses are no more accurate than anyone elses who monitors such things.
The fact is the GCW is the ONLY factual numbers that SOE provides and thus is a starting point to the estimates people make.
They are the only figures, but it is a nonsense to use them as a basis to estimate population. As a guild leader I can tell you out of 80 guildees I have one officer, who ping pongs between officer rank and non-officer. I have 16 toons and not one of them is officer rank and the majority of them are factionally aligned. Out of all my guildees only 3 have 2 accounts, so the numbers are not being boosted in that way either. I have multiple ace pilots and you will find that the pilot community is made up predominantly of neutral pilots, therefore not getting GCW. That is a fact and SOE have released figures of the pilot faction ratios, with nearly 2 thirds neutral. So tell me how using figures that don't represent anything meaningful can help you estimate population? If you can I would be happy to hear.
But yet you are ok with badgers estimates? You and he are no more accurate than anyone else. Nothing wrong with having an opinion though.
Not many people fully participate in JTL...never did really. Please cite the source on the pilot thing though as that is interesting.
--------
Ten Golden Rules Of Videogame Fanboyism
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"...daelnor
How can someone not be able to gauge populations from those numbers, but at the same time you make a statement that only a small portion of the player base are being tracked by those numbers. For you to be able to make a comment like that it implies that you have somehow gleaned the overall population of the game to know what percentage of players are officers and being tracked.
If the number cannot be determined then perhaps you should not dismiss someone elses estimates as impossible and then replace it with your own to make the number appear more favorable.
Well, Badger is correct tbh. All you have to do is take a wander round any of the major cities, and you will see hundreds of toons without rank still trying to grind to 90. I have certainly seen (and helped) a lot of new players in the last couple of months, and they are not PVPers. Certain servers have higher PVP as the officer numbers imply, but it doesn't mean those servers have a higher population, as I have toons on all the main servers and see very little difference.
Badgers guesses are no more accurate than anyone elses who monitors such things.
The fact is the GCW is the ONLY factual numbers that SOE provides and thus is a starting point to the estimates people make.
They are the only figures, but it is a nonsense to use them as a basis to estimate population. As a guild leader I can tell you out of 80 guildees I have one officer, who ping pongs between officer rank and non-officer. I have 16 toons and not one of them is officer rank and the majority of them are factionally aligned. Out of all my guildees only 3 have 2 accounts, so the numbers are not being boosted in that way either. I have multiple ace pilots and you will find that the pilot community is made up predominantly of neutral pilots, therefore not getting GCW. That is a fact and SOE have released figures of the pilot faction ratios, with nearly 2 thirds neutral. So tell me how using figures that don't represent anything meaningful can help you estimate population? If you can I would be happy to hear.
But yet you are ok with badgers estimates? You and he are no more accurate than anyone else. Nothing wrong with having an opinion though.
Not many people fully participate in JTL...never did really. Please cite the source on the pilot thing though as that is interesting.
I am not okay with any estimate when you have no frame of reference. Badger was saying you can't use these figures to estimate population and you can't. All it does is tell you how many officers there are per server, and that is all. If you want to infer that it relates to population figures, that is mathematically incorrect. That is what I am saying. I will see if I can dig out the link for the pilot stats, but I think it would be on the Pilot forums if you take a look.
Found the link http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/posts/list.m?topic_id=876356
How can someone not be able to gauge populations from those numbers, but at the same time you make a statement that only a small portion of the player base are being tracked by those numbers. For you to be able to make a comment like that it implies that you have somehow gleaned the overall population of the game to know what percentage of players are officers and being tracked.
If the number cannot be determined then perhaps you should not dismiss someone elses estimates as impossible and then replace it with your own to make the number appear more favorable.
Well, Badger is correct tbh. All you have to do is take a wander round any of the major cities, and you will see hundreds of toons without rank still trying to grind to 90. I have certainly seen (and helped) a lot of new players in the last couple of months, and they are not PVPers. Certain servers have higher PVP as the officer numbers imply, but it doesn't mean those servers have a higher population, as I have toons on all the main servers and see very little difference.
Badgers guesses are no more accurate than anyone elses who monitors such things.
The fact is the GCW is the ONLY factual numbers that SOE provides and thus is a starting point to the estimates people make.
They are the only figures, but it is a nonsense to use them as a basis to estimate population. As a guild leader I can tell you out of 80 guildees I have one officer, who ping pongs between officer rank and non-officer. I have 16 toons and not one of them is officer rank and the majority of them are factionally aligned. Out of all my guildees only 3 have 2 accounts, so the numbers are not being boosted in that way either. I have multiple ace pilots and you will find that the pilot community is made up predominantly of neutral pilots, therefore not getting GCW. That is a fact and SOE have released figures of the pilot faction ratios, with nearly 2 thirds neutral. So tell me how using figures that don't represent anything meaningful can help you estimate population? If you can I would be happy to hear.
But yet you are ok with badgers estimates? You and he are no more accurate than anyone else. Nothing wrong with having an opinion though.
Not many people fully participate in JTL...never did really. Please cite the source on the pilot thing though as that is interesting.
I am not okay with any estimate when you have no frame of reference. Badger was saying you can't use these figures to estimate population and you can't. All it does is tell you how many officers there are per server, and that is all. If you want to infer that it relates to population figures, that is mathematically incorrect. That is what I am saying. I will see if I can dig out the link for the pilot stats, but I think it would be on the Pilot forums if you take a look.
I agree...however badger stated and you agreed that "only a very small portion of the playerbase actually are Lieutenant Rank or above" when he didn't have any frame of reference to how many actual subs/players there are.
Was that not an inference related to population figures and thus mathematically incorrect?
Of course SOE could just publish the sub numbers but we all know that will never happen so we are left with specualtion based upon the numbers given and what people see.
--------
Ten Golden Rules Of Videogame Fanboyism
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"...daelnor
How can someone not be able to gauge populations from those numbers, but at the same time you make a statement that only a small portion of the player base are being tracked by those numbers. For you to be able to make a comment like that it implies that you have somehow gleaned the overall population of the game to know what percentage of players are officers and being tracked.
If the number cannot be determined then perhaps you should not dismiss someone elses estimates as impossible and then replace it with your own to make the number appear more favorable.
Well, Badger is correct tbh. All you have to do is take a wander round any of the major cities, and you will see hundreds of toons without rank still trying to grind to 90. I have certainly seen (and helped) a lot of new players in the last couple of months, and they are not PVPers. Certain servers have higher PVP as the officer numbers imply, but it doesn't mean those servers have a higher population, as I have toons on all the main servers and see very little difference.
Badgers guesses are no more accurate than anyone elses who monitors such things.
The fact is the GCW is the ONLY factual numbers that SOE provides and thus is a starting point to the estimates people make.
They are the only figures, but it is a nonsense to use them as a basis to estimate population. As a guild leader I can tell you out of 80 guildees I have one officer, who ping pongs between officer rank and non-officer. I have 16 toons and not one of them is officer rank and the majority of them are factionally aligned. Out of all my guildees only 3 have 2 accounts, so the numbers are not being boosted in that way either. I have multiple ace pilots and you will find that the pilot community is made up predominantly of neutral pilots, therefore not getting GCW. That is a fact and SOE have released figures of the pilot faction ratios, with nearly 2 thirds neutral. So tell me how using figures that don't represent anything meaningful can help you estimate population? If you can I would be happy to hear.
But yet you are ok with badgers estimates? You and he are no more accurate than anyone else. Nothing wrong with having an opinion though.
Not many people fully participate in JTL...never did really. Please cite the source on the pilot thing though as that is interesting.
I am not okay with any estimate when you have no frame of reference. Badger was saying you can't use these figures to estimate population and you can't. All it does is tell you how many officers there are per server, and that is all. If you want to infer that it relates to population figures, that is mathematically incorrect. That is what I am saying. I will see if I can dig out the link for the pilot stats, but I think it would be on the Pilot forums if you take a look.
I agree...however badger stated and you agreed that "only a very small portion of the playerbase actually are Lieutenant Rank or above" when he didn't have any frame of reference to how many actual subs/players there are.
Was that not an inference related to population figures and thus mathematically incorrect?
Of course SOE could just publish the sub numbers but we all know that will never happen so we are left with specualtion based upon the numbers given and what people see.
Yes, but I am not giving figures. If someone says there are 5 officers therefore there are 5 players they are wrong. You do not need stat analysis for that, but plain eyesight to see this. Most of the cl90 people I run instances with are not officer rank, a lot of people don't care about the GCW and only like PVE or RP. I am saying that with the listed figures you cannot tell how many people subscribe, and it is only a fraction of the playerbase. I play on 4 of the 5 most populated servers and I am in guilds on all of them. Apart from the few, and I mean few, sole PVPers, there are not lots of officers running round. This may well change with the advent of Battlefields, but I wouldn't count on it. There are too many people who do not like PVP, and never will. You do not need a frame of reference if you are not giving a percent or figures. To use an analogy a paper shop sells out of a particualr paper, and using those stats it must be the most popular, no it isn't, it just happens to have sold out in that shop. If you still have a live account please just log on and have a look yourself. You can radial people and see their rank. I check most cl90s as I am a BH and curious. The proportion is low.
But you do not know to any degree of certainty just like everyone else...that is the whole point.
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Ten Golden Rules Of Videogame Fanboyism
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"...daelnor
Not know what? That the officer stats shouldn't be used as a rule of thumb for population statistics? Yes I do know, and they shouldn't.
Not a rule of thumb...but simply one indicator used for speculating...speculating like people above in this thread...including badger and yourself.
--------
Ten Golden Rules Of Videogame Fanboyism
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"...daelnor
Yes, but people are using the stats 1:1, and that is not right. Using your argument, I can say the figures represent 0.001% of the subs, but I would be wrong. It is a fraction, which is correct. Officers do not and never will represent 100% playerbase, or even close to it. If you cannot see this, I am afraid I will leave it there. I do not give figures (except my own guild and those published for pilots) but say a fraction, which could be 1/1000th or 999/1000th. I am not speculating on figures, because I give none. Others do, I am just pointing out that it is not a viable argument to use the figures given in this way.