I enjoy watching how MMOs are doing on xfire and I have never seen anything like this! Atleast CO had a steady decline down to around #200 not a major dip like this one. Sadly I think STO sold enough boxes and lifetime subs to clueless Star trek fans so Craptari will keep throwing crap on the wall to see whatever sticks...
After launching two MMOs in six months that both become ghost towns in two months, I'm not sure how long they can get away with that. Who is going to touch another Craptic MMO after CO and STO? Not many people will.
Just a sign, not an absolute, but a sign of much fail this game was. I'm actually thankful, b/c it gave me a chance to trial Fallen Earth, and the freedom is refreshing.
I enjoy watching how MMOs are doing on xfire and I have never seen anything like this! Atleast CO had a steady decline down to around #200 not a major dip like this one. Sadly I think STO sold enough boxes and lifetime subs to clueless Star trek fans so Craptari will keep throwing crap on the wall to see whatever sticks...
After launching two MMOs in six months that both become ghost towns in two months, I'm not sure how long they can get away with that. Who is going to touch another Craptic MMO after CO and STO? Not many people will.
The project they are currently working on needs to be outstanding, their reputation is shot enough as is. If it tanks? I wouldn't like to be Cryptic when Atari visit on that day.
The project they are currently working on needs to be outstanding, their reputation is shot enough as is. If it tanks? I wouldn't like to be Cryptic when Atari visit on that day.
After being disappointed twice by cryptic with CO and STO, the chances of me buying another cryptic product are between zero and none. I just don't have any faith that cryptic wouldn't produce something that felt like CO with a very thin covering of NWN or whatever genre they decide to produce next.
I liked both games...but they didn't learn from Champions...and did shite that pissed off me and many other players. Hey..it's their games...they can do whatever they wish. All I ask is they actually think about their decisions for more than a fleeting moment before they implement . Best thing they can do for both games is make them F2P and expand the cryptic store. That is an acceptable model...imo..for the casual gaming style that cryptic has provided with their last 2 efforts. I would even play them then..as long as the updates and content support continue.
Originally posted by Rocketeer To put this in perspective, between march 14th and march 18th there has been a decline of about 85% of people playing. Cant think of any sensible explanation for that, surely it cant be that 85% of the population had their 30 days run out in those 4 days? That doesnt even make remotely sense.
FYI my sub ran 'till the 13th, so it could very well be that that was indeed the period that the initial free month ran out for a lot of people !
Holy, if the xfire numbers indicate anything, then Star Trek Online won't survive for much longer! But it would make sense, since there one month is more than enough to see most of the content (or lack of).
Though I don't think they would really care, since they made enough money on box sales and lifetime subs and are now moving to the next game they can hype up and then drain for all it is worth.
Cryptic are offering all kinds of stuff with next "patch" to try to get ppl back PAYING for one more month. I doubt many will fall for it. But if they do ... then prepare to see alot of "offers" once per month in this title.....
Another MMO that was nothing but the hype. When will ppl learn ? I hope the lifetime subscribers are enjoying it !!
To put this in perspective, between march 14th and march 18th there has been a decline of about 85% of people playing. Cant think of any sensible explanation for that, surely it cant be that 85% of the population had their 30 days run out in those 4 days? That doesnt even make remotely sense.
FYI my sub ran 'till the 13th, so it could very well be that that was indeed the period that the initial free month ran out for a lot of people !
No im sorry this doesnt make sense. Im pretty sure more than 15% of the playerbase bought their subs at not exactly those 4 days. Nothing special about those 4 days that would explain why the vast majority bought the game exactly then, and not earlier or later. This drop is far greater than that around the beginning of march, which was when all the preorders and first couple day buyers subs ran out.
I wouldnt be as shocked if this drop had happened over the course of the entire march month, surprised yes, but not shocked. But this drop ... well i honestly never saw anything like it.
To put this in perspective, between march 14th and march 18th there has been a decline of about 85% of people playing. Cant think of any sensible explanation for that, surely it cant be that 85% of the population had their 30 days run out in those 4 days? That doesnt even make remotely sense.
FYI my sub ran 'till the 13th, so it could very well be that that was indeed the period that the initial free month ran out for a lot of people !
No im sorry this doesnt make sense. Im pretty sure more than 15% of the playerbase bought their subs at not exactly those 4 days. Nothing special about those 4 days that would explain why the vast majority bought the game exactly then, and not earlier or later. This drop is far greater than that around the beginning of march, which was when all the preorders and first couple day buyers subs ran out.
I wouldnt be as shocked if this drop had happened over the course of the entire march month, surprised yes, but not shocked. But this drop ... well i honestly never saw anything like it.
Could be simpler explanation.It could be all that casual population finally reached the level cap and found that the end game wasn't to their liking or were satisfied with getting to cap and left.This is of course pure speculation.
I actually came to post this today... But STO's XFire numbers have plummeted (is there a better word for this?) to #152! This means that STO is now lower than City of Heroes (#147), Star Wars Galaxies (#128), Everquest II (#97), Warhammer Online (#67), DDO (#60) and Age of Conan (#56). I never, ever expected STO would ever dip so low. When I saw that it was #82, I thought it would hold steady and become a niche game that would stick around forever. Now I'm going to say that STO will be dead and gone in six months to a year. That death will be hastened by Atari losing the two lawsuits against them or the release of another sub-par MMO that fails in the same way as STO and CO.
That's it I watched the numbers and saw a steady decline and thought thats about right but then checking them this morning (UK time) I saw this 30 position drop I thought I'd make this thread. Now coming home from work and seeing another 70 position drop i'm gobsmacked. This is a very sad state for lifers, subcribers and also the employees of Cryptic. If starting at 19 on Xfire is a bad start to a fledgling MMO dropping 132 places in the space of 6 weeks is catastrophic.
I followed the develpment of this MMO in its last 6 months and sensed a bad smell coming out of the beta so decided to not purchase it even though I do like to make up my own mind about games rather than follow comments on gaming fora, but the smell was too bad. Now what gets me is the fact that Cryptic/Atari could be so short sighted in the develpment of this game, MMO's in my mind are about the long haul and as has been proved by the success of AION that you need more than just a few weeks of samey content to hold people in the long term. So now we know that people have been burned by this game and CO for their shallow repitive gameplay and the reputation of Cryptic is in the shiiter, its a wonder what their next MMO will be and will they learn their lesson, only time will tell I suppose.
Also I'm glad that people are not putting up with bad games just because they have a great IP backing them.
Looking at the Xfire numbers going from 82 to 152 is only roughly halving the number of people using Xfire, from the high 500's to mid 200's.
Cal..
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
#82 after just six weeks since launch of one of the biggest IP's in the world is astonishing to me.
Now I hope it sinks into oblivion because we might get a chance on a better depiction of the Star Trek universe, I'm glad that I held off on buying this game and find it equally astonishing that people, after reading this and the official forums, are defending this game. Now the numbers say it all can the people who think this game is great really admit to themselves that this is in reality true.
Cal...Dissapointed Star Trek Fan
Everyone who was enticed into purchasing a life-time suscription for this game has a couple hundred reasons (aka dollars) to defend the game, no matter what.
I'm sure some will still point out flaws (being people of integrity and what not) but others are going to want to protect their investment by doing damage control. Game companies understand this btw. People pay them for a lifetime sub to a crappy game, and then do free online marketting for them. Great deal, if you're the publisher, not the player. Well, until the house of cards collapses I guess.
After being disappointed twice by cryptic with CO and STO, the chances of me buying another cryptic product are between zero and none. I just don't have any faith that cryptic wouldn't produce something that felt like CO with a very thin covering of NWN or whatever genre they decide to produce next.
According to statements made in Atari's recent financial reports, they were working on a "D&D and AD&D inspired MMO." While it doesn't necessarily state that it was NWN, that was the most logical choice. However, with Hasbro's lawsuit to revoke that license away from Atari, whatever the D&D MMO was going to be is now hold pending the final outcome. I wouldn't want to be in Atari's shoes right now, as their own financial report statements give ammunition to both Turbine and Atari's lawsuits; while anything can still happen, it's a close to a sure thing as you can get in a lawsuit.
As for previous comments about Cryptic's name being toxic, I'm not so sure; if you look at most of the people talking about their games, the vast majority of it is completely blaming Atari for 'forcing' Cryptic into releasing CO and STO far too early. This is despite the fact that Cryptic was beating the short development cycle drum before Atari came on the scene. I think Cryptic will try to spin things so that it was all Atari's fault, when in truth both are to blame, and they may offer up Bill Roper as an additional sacrificial lamb. If they beat that drum enough, quite a few people will actually believe them.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
All of the people in my X-fire friends list are people I made contact with while playing mmorpg games, so I guess they should be typical mmorpg players. I did get into closed beta of STO myself shortly before it went open but after just a couple of hours realised it would never be a game I could enjoy and uninstalled it.
Once the game went live, I could see that several of the people on my X-Fire friends list were playing STO. They've all stopped now. I've not seen any of them login this week.
While I agree xfire numbers are not a random sampling like you'd want in a scientific poll, I think they tend to reflect overall trends.
The important thing is not to look at the rank, which is based on hours played. If you click on each game, you'll see, below the usage graph, the actual number of xfire players of the game.
When Aion released, it shot up to ~10% of the total hours played, but if you divided its total time played by number of Aion xfire users, you'd saw they were playing 3-4 times longer per player as the average for WoW.
Last week, the number of xfire STO players was around 1200. Today its at 259. The hours crashed, but so did the number of players registered thru xfire.
The other thing to know, xfire seems to do a rolling average of something like 3 days. You can tell this because the weekend spikes tend to actually show up on sunday and monday.
#82 after just six weeks since launch of one of the biggest IP's in the world is astonishing to me.
Now I hope it sinks into oblivion because we might get a chance on a better depiction of the Star Trek universe, I'm glad that I held off on buying this game and find it equally astonishing that people, after reading this and the official forums, are defending this game. Now the numbers say it all can the people who think this game is great really admit to themselves that this is in reality true.
Cal...Dissapointed Star Trek Fan
Everyone who was enticed into purchasing a life-time suscription for this game has a couple hundred reasons (aka dollars) to defend the game, no matter what.
I'm sure some will still point out flaws (being people of integrity and what not) but others are going to want to protect their investment by doing damage control. Game companies understand this btw. People pay them for a lifetime sub to a crappy game, and then do free online marketting for them. Great deal, if you're the publisher, not the player. Well, until the house of cards collapses I guess.
That is true but reality has to bite at some point and that will be even messier than it is today, watch out Cryptic, a spurned lover is a vicious nasty beast, just ask SOE.
Guys this Staggering its now #395 are the servers down thats just amazing truly amazing.
Cal..
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
Man I have been sitting on this for a month now. It's dead Jim.
With the new numbers Vagrant you can justifibly have....
/thread
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
So because it is the 'biggest' IP it has to be the 'biggest' game on market? IP is just a world and lore only, no more no less. It has no bearing on gameplay.
If it proves anything, its that IP is not a guarantee of success, and your right, it has no bearing on actual gameplay, which is probably why STO is crashing out of the charts at the moment. reminds me of AoC, i uninstalled the game after just 10 days, even though the sub was for a month, it was a game i desperately wanted to like, it was a good IP the graphics were awesome.. but, the gameplay itself, irritated the hell out of me...
According to statements made in Atari's recent financial reports, they were working on a "D&D and AD&D inspired MMO." While it doesn't necessarily state that it was NWN, that was the most logical choice. However, with Hasbro's lawsuit to revoke that license away from Atari, whatever the D&D MMO was going to be is now hold pending the final outcome. I wouldn't want to be in Atari's shoes right now, as their own financial report statements give ammunition to both Turbine and Atari's lawsuits; while anything can still happen, it's a close to a sure thing as you can get in a lawsuit. As for previous comments about Cryptic's name being toxic, I'm not so sure; if you look at most of the people talking about their games, the vast majority of it is completely blaming Atari for 'forcing' Cryptic into releasing CO and STO far too early. This is despite the fact that Cryptic was beating the short development cycle drum before Atari came on the scene. I think Cryptic will try to spin things so that it was all Atari's fault, when in truth both are to blame, and they may offer up Bill Roper as an additional sacrificial lamb. If they beat that drum enough, quite a few people will actually believe them.
Yeah, NWN as well as Fogotten Realms are the two names most talked about as their next project, I guess I should have just said D&D. I agree with your second paragraph, if you read the actual press releases when atari acquired cryptic, cryptic already had 3 mmo's in development, CO, STO, and another unnamed. As well, they list cryptic's points as being able to produce mmo's in 18-24 months which was a huge selling point for atari. I don't find cryptic entirely blameless in this, don't make claims you can't live up to. Atari is looking to make money, cryptic comes along a says they can do mmo's with 1/2 the time and money, of couse atari is going to snap them up. I don't get how people get the idea cryptic was an innocent lamb sacrificed by atari because of greed.
Comments
After launching two MMOs in six months that both become ghost towns in two months, I'm not sure how long they can get away with that. Who is going to touch another Craptic MMO after CO and STO? Not many people will.
Just a sign, not an absolute, but a sign of much fail this game was. I'm actually thankful, b/c it gave me a chance to trial Fallen Earth, and the freedom is refreshing.
After launching two MMOs in six months that both become ghost towns in two months, I'm not sure how long they can get away with that. Who is going to touch another Craptic MMO after CO and STO? Not many people will.
The project they are currently working on needs to be outstanding, their reputation is shot enough as is. If it tanks? I wouldn't like to be Cryptic when Atari visit on that day.
After being disappointed twice by cryptic with CO and STO, the chances of me buying another cryptic product are between zero and none. I just don't have any faith that cryptic wouldn't produce something that felt like CO with a very thin covering of NWN or whatever genre they decide to produce next.
There's got to be some error at work here, I've never seen a drop like this on Xfire before.
I liked both games...but they didn't learn from Champions...and did shite that pissed off me and many other players. Hey..it's their games...they can do whatever they wish. All I ask is they actually think about their decisions for more than a fleeting moment before they implement . Best thing they can do for both games is make them F2P and expand the cryptic store. That is an acceptable model...imo..for the casual gaming style that cryptic has provided with their last 2 efforts. I would even play them then..as long as the updates and content support continue.
FYI my sub ran 'till the 13th, so it could very well be that that was indeed the period that the initial free month ran out for a lot of people !
Holy, if the xfire numbers indicate anything, then Star Trek Online won't survive for much longer! But it would make sense, since there one month is more than enough to see most of the content (or lack of).
Though I don't think they would really care, since they made enough money on box sales and lifetime subs and are now moving to the next game they can hype up and then drain for all it is worth.
Cryptic are offering all kinds of stuff with next "patch" to try to get ppl back PAYING for one more month. I doubt many will fall for it. But if they do ... then prepare to see alot of "offers" once per month in this title.....
Another MMO that was nothing but the hype. When will ppl learn ? I hope the lifetime subscribers are enjoying it !!
FYI my sub ran 'till the 13th, so it could very well be that that was indeed the period that the initial free month ran out for a lot of people !
No im sorry this doesnt make sense. Im pretty sure more than 15% of the playerbase bought their subs at not exactly those 4 days. Nothing special about those 4 days that would explain why the vast majority bought the game exactly then, and not earlier or later. This drop is far greater than that around the beginning of march, which was when all the preorders and first couple day buyers subs ran out.
I wouldnt be as shocked if this drop had happened over the course of the entire march month, surprised yes, but not shocked. But this drop ... well i honestly never saw anything like it.
FYI my sub ran 'till the 13th, so it could very well be that that was indeed the period that the initial free month ran out for a lot of people !
No im sorry this doesnt make sense. Im pretty sure more than 15% of the playerbase bought their subs at not exactly those 4 days. Nothing special about those 4 days that would explain why the vast majority bought the game exactly then, and not earlier or later. This drop is far greater than that around the beginning of march, which was when all the preorders and first couple day buyers subs ran out.
I wouldnt be as shocked if this drop had happened over the course of the entire march month, surprised yes, but not shocked. But this drop ... well i honestly never saw anything like it.
Could be simpler explanation.It could be all that casual population finally reached the level cap and found that the end game wasn't to their liking or were satisfied with getting to cap and left.This is of course pure speculation.
That's it I watched the numbers and saw a steady decline and thought thats about right but then checking them this morning (UK time) I saw this 30 position drop I thought I'd make this thread. Now coming home from work and seeing another 70 position drop i'm gobsmacked. This is a very sad state for lifers, subcribers and also the employees of Cryptic. If starting at 19 on Xfire is a bad start to a fledgling MMO dropping 132 places in the space of 6 weeks is catastrophic.
I followed the develpment of this MMO in its last 6 months and sensed a bad smell coming out of the beta so decided to not purchase it even though I do like to make up my own mind about games rather than follow comments on gaming fora, but the smell was too bad. Now what gets me is the fact that Cryptic/Atari could be so short sighted in the develpment of this game, MMO's in my mind are about the long haul and as has been proved by the success of AION that you need more than just a few weeks of samey content to hold people in the long term. So now we know that people have been burned by this game and CO for their shallow repitive gameplay and the reputation of Cryptic is in the shiiter, its a wonder what their next MMO will be and will they learn their lesson, only time will tell I suppose.
Also I'm glad that people are not putting up with bad games just because they have a great IP backing them.
Looking at the Xfire numbers going from 82 to 152 is only roughly halving the number of people using Xfire, from the high 500's to mid 200's.
Cal..
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wow .. this is BAD
A while back, when i checked, it was like #30 .. i just checked 5 min ago, it is #152.
Everyone who was enticed into purchasing a life-time suscription for this game has a couple hundred reasons (aka dollars) to defend the game, no matter what.
I'm sure some will still point out flaws (being people of integrity and what not) but others are going to want to protect their investment by doing damage control. Game companies understand this btw. People pay them for a lifetime sub to a crappy game, and then do free online marketting for them. Great deal, if you're the publisher, not the player. Well, until the house of cards collapses I guess.
According to statements made in Atari's recent financial reports, they were working on a "D&D and AD&D inspired MMO." While it doesn't necessarily state that it was NWN, that was the most logical choice. However, with Hasbro's lawsuit to revoke that license away from Atari, whatever the D&D MMO was going to be is now hold pending the final outcome. I wouldn't want to be in Atari's shoes right now, as their own financial report statements give ammunition to both Turbine and Atari's lawsuits; while anything can still happen, it's a close to a sure thing as you can get in a lawsuit.
As for previous comments about Cryptic's name being toxic, I'm not so sure; if you look at most of the people talking about their games, the vast majority of it is completely blaming Atari for 'forcing' Cryptic into releasing CO and STO far too early. This is despite the fact that Cryptic was beating the short development cycle drum before Atari came on the scene. I think Cryptic will try to spin things so that it was all Atari's fault, when in truth both are to blame, and they may offer up Bill Roper as an additional sacrificial lamb. If they beat that drum enough, quite a few people will actually believe them.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
All of the people in my X-fire friends list are people I made contact with while playing mmorpg games, so I guess they should be typical mmorpg players. I did get into closed beta of STO myself shortly before it went open but after just a couple of hours realised it would never be a game I could enjoy and uninstalled it.
Once the game went live, I could see that several of the people on my X-Fire friends list were playing STO. They've all stopped now. I've not seen any of them login this week.
Man I have been sitting on this for a month now.
It's dead Jim.
Alltern8 Blog | Star Wars Space Combat and The Old Republic | Cryptic Studios - A Pre Post-Mortem | Klingon Preview, STO's Monster Play
While I agree xfire numbers are not a random sampling like you'd want in a scientific poll, I think they tend to reflect overall trends.
The important thing is not to look at the rank, which is based on hours played. If you click on each game, you'll see, below the usage graph, the actual number of xfire players of the game.
When Aion released, it shot up to ~10% of the total hours played, but if you divided its total time played by number of Aion xfire users, you'd saw they were playing 3-4 times longer per player as the average for WoW.
Last week, the number of xfire STO players was around 1200. Today its at 259. The hours crashed, but so did the number of players registered thru xfire.
The other thing to know, xfire seems to do a rolling average of something like 3 days. You can tell this because the weekend spikes tend to actually show up on sunday and monday.
Everyone who was enticed into purchasing a life-time suscription for this game has a couple hundred reasons (aka dollars) to defend the game, no matter what.
I'm sure some will still point out flaws (being people of integrity and what not) but others are going to want to protect their investment by doing damage control. Game companies understand this btw. People pay them for a lifetime sub to a crappy game, and then do free online marketting for them. Great deal, if you're the publisher, not the player. Well, until the house of cards collapses I guess.
That is true but reality has to bite at some point and that will be even messier than it is today, watch out Cryptic, a spurned lover is a vicious nasty beast, just ask SOE.
Guys this Staggering its now #395 are the servers down thats just amazing truly amazing.
Cal..
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
So because it is the 'biggest' IP it has to be the 'biggest' game on market?
IP is just a world and lore only, no more no less. It has no bearing on gameplay.
Amazing... its down to rank 395 now. There must be somethng wrong here, never seen anything remotely like this before.
It has dropped more than 200 ranks since YESTERDAY!
lol, picking the moment well, it's all in the timing
-----
The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.
With the new numbers Vagrant you can justifibly have....
/thread
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
If it proves anything, its that IP is not a guarantee of success, and your right, it has no bearing on actual gameplay, which is probably why STO is crashing out of the charts at the moment. reminds me of AoC, i uninstalled the game after just 10 days, even though the sub was for a month, it was a game i desperately wanted to like, it was a good IP the graphics were awesome.. but, the gameplay itself, irritated the hell out of me...
Yeah, NWN as well as Fogotten Realms are the two names most talked about as their next project, I guess I should have just said D&D. I agree with your second paragraph, if you read the actual press releases when atari acquired cryptic, cryptic already had 3 mmo's in development, CO, STO, and another unnamed. As well, they list cryptic's points as being able to produce mmo's in 18-24 months which was a huge selling point for atari. I don't find cryptic entirely blameless in this, don't make claims you can't live up to. Atari is looking to make money, cryptic comes along a says they can do mmo's with 1/2 the time and money, of couse atari is going to snap them up. I don't get how people get the idea cryptic was an innocent lamb sacrificed by atari because of greed.