The only investments I care about, are the ones in my brokerage and 401k accounts respectively. After that, if anyone thinks of time invested in these games as a worthwhile, meaningful, cant let-it-go investment, really needs to do some soul searching.
...hope I'm quoting the right person, here.. ^^ This is very sensible, and the only way in which I'd disagree is to say that IF any portion of the time invested in these games ever seemed to me to be worthwhile or meaningful, it would still not be something I would not feel I could let go of; and, it would seem worthwhile or meaningful only at the time that the time was spent... not later, with regard to deciding whether to spend more time. There's a distinct difference between feeling that time was well-spent and feeling that time must continue to be spent in order to justify that already spent, and games are a fine place to make that discrimination.
Casilda Tametomo, Priestess of Soldeus | AKA Lepida Aegis-Imperium.com
«Si oblitus fuero usque ad finem omnia opera eorum»
WOW didn't have a simillar drop as these other games because WOW was first to market with a super polished linear themepark ride w/ no height limit. Come one, come all....something for everyone type of mold that has become the standard all the major publishers are reaching for.
Thats not true is it. Bugs and server problems is what I remember. My account was riddled with free playtime due to all the problems. It wasnt AO by any stretch, but super polished? No.
Was good strategy to hand out free days, nowadays WoW is way too big to hand out free playtime even tho sometimes your weekend is ruined by auth servers etc.
edit
ontopic: there are too many ppl in this thread who dont even play the game but still has an opinion on server pop and how it affects gameplay... how would they know? They dont ofc =P Its just the usual suspects trying to bring a game down that they didnt like for whatever reason.
Anyways, I play on EU whitefall and bloodiron. One is high and one medium. Questing and world pvping I see ppl all the time. Sure its not like a WoW expansion releaseday where every quest has 20 ppl on it. But Rift definately feels alive. Soon as I open a rift, ppl show up for it. When zone bosses are up, there's always 50-70 ppl on it etc.
Thats not true is it. Bugs and server problems is what I remember. My account was riddled with free playtime due to all the problems. It wasnt AO by any stretch, but super polished? No.
Was good strategy to hand out free days, nowadays WoW is way too big to hand out free playtime even tho sometimes your weekend is ruined by auth servers etc.
It was polished and had less gamebreaking bugs on release than Rift did, and Rift had very few.
The biggest problem with WoW's release was the sheer volume of people that bought the game, and Blizzard not having the servers to handle it. Thus the free time until it was brought under control.
These days Blizz will rarely hand out a free day because the game is rarely out for longer than a scheduled maintenance. Authentication issues rarely last longer than a few hours, never an entire weekend, and they have recently handed out a day when a patch took too long to apply to servers and were out for 18 or so hours.
Weather is getting better also, so those that actually venture outside for other reasons then just work or food tend to do that instead. So naturally numbers will get lower on all games even wow till winter starts to roll in again.
its a good point.. my own MMO useage is affected by the weather... ie.. if it rains its more likely i'll be playing.... must admit though i am curious to see how Rift is doing subs wise.. i don't believe the doom and gloom merchants, but there is always a fall off after the first month.. of any game.. the degree of fall off though..ah.. now thats usually the most telling figure.. useage though.. can be weather dependant.. so is there a fall off.. and are they no longer subbed.. or are they just getting a tan ?
I know this game will do awsome. I know because of the way people on this forum hate it. Anything you guys hate becomes popular. You all hate WoW. All of you thought WAR and AoC were going to be good but they died like the injured elk in the back of the herd. Sooooo if you hate Rift it must be good eh?
Am I seeing the number of user playing a day is 3,677? Thats rubish lol. Still ranked 7th tho. Those 4thousand people must be realy playing lol.
XFire shows a 20% drop of played hours compared to the peak one month ago. So as predicted this latest "great" game is starting to lose ground.
How much you wanna bet that by next month it will be at 50% of peak?
Youre forgetting about the people who played the trail version of this game. Take in effect that people do have lives and responsiblites and people who get there accounts banned and so forth. Rift is here and its here to stay. Ive never seen a game trolled on as much as Rift.
I know this game will do awsome. I know because of the way people on this forum hate it.
Ha ha ha, so true!
FFXIV. They hate it.
There are more positive threads on the front page than negative ones.
Erm ... there is a slight difference with FFXIV, namely the game was utter garbage at release (do not know the state now), even the management conceded as much with all the position changes soon afterwards.
As we all know wow has like 13,000,000 people playing so
13,000,000 / 30,266 = 429 people for each 1 in x-fire
so times that into the rift number
3,677 x 429 = 1,577,433 people in rift!
So seems like rift is doing fine because I based it on x-fire
What a terrible way to do statistics.
Using that technique, if done correctly, rift would only have 200 000 players. However it is the worst way to compile numbers. Its a great way for a shill to lie to victims however since not many seem to know how to count.
Now if you do statistics for real you could come up with an estimated 618 200 players for rift. Even then, it is wrong, as we know how many players there were in WoW in their first 6 months, but we do not know how many of those were using Xfire during that time. So the best estimate that can be done is comparing WoW now, with Rift now, which due to the maturity of both games is one of the most flawed ways to do statistics.
So currently the best estimate would be to say that there are between 200 000 - 800 000 players in Rift, which is still nowhere close to the 1.5M you estimate as the over-inflation from asian players is far too great to even consider ignoring.
So, I'm a mathematics lecturer, and I'm trying to understand your point. I checked the calculations, they are good. The argument uses simple proportions. And I think that's "solid" too though it has a few assumptions underneath it including that X-fire users are a random sample of the true population of players.
As a "rough" calculation I don't think it is too bad.
Where do you get 200,000 players "if done correctly"? You then say "if you do the statistics for real" you come up with 618,200 players. lol which is it? And how did you get either?
The issue is...There wil be drop off just like every other mmo.
There are too many other AAA MMOs being released too soon.
Rift does not do anything different enough for it to compete in a world with WOW, GW2, and TOR. It just doesn't.
It's going to be a foot note, just like AoC, WAR, LOTRO, DDO, Vanguard, Tabula Rasa, CoX, CO, DCUO, FXIV, and AION.
Just wait we will be saying the same about GW2 and TOR after a couple of months being played , people are not just hapy with any games coming out right now and neither of those 2 games will change it.
Lose the WoW mindset ..... As long as this keeps up nobody is gonna be happy with any new MMO. Especially one that is original and innovative. WoW has brainwashed the masses to a certain defined way of playing. I have said it before and will say again, WoW has ruined the fun factor for many MMO players. Especially the people whose first MMO was WoW.
No suprises here to be honest. a lot of people play rift just to pass time. bad company 3 is out soon, kotor in 3 months time, thereafter gw 2. i think the drop rate will be more than 50 %.
No suprises here to be honest. a lot of people play rift just to pass time. bad company 3 is out soon, kotor in 3 months time, thereafter gw 2. i think the drop rate will be more than 50 %.
Bad company 3 will be released Q4 of 2011. I like your optimism regarding SW:TOR and GW2, especially about the later. I'll be happy if they get released by the end of 2011.
I'll give it atleast another 3 more months before the big dip happens.
Yes for sure, in 3 months I will be back and making a post of 50%+ drop and how the trend will be extremely similar to WAR/AoC.
How do I know? Well all of these WoW clones have really nothing big going for them that WoW does not have already so there is really no selling point to keep people subbed to this game.
And with some big titles coming out later this year... well lets just say that this game serves it purpose as a filler/passtime until the big boys come.
Agreed. I'm currently subbed to RIFT, but it's just something to play until SW:TOR comes out.
The issue is...There wil be drop off just like every other mmo.
There are too many other AAA MMOs being released too soon.
Rift does not do anything different enough for it to compete in a world with WOW, GW2, and TOR. It just doesn't.
It's going to be a foot note, just like AoC, WAR, LOTRO, DDO, Vanguard, Tabula Rasa, CoX, CO, DCUO, FXIV, and AION.
Just wait we will be saying the same about GW2 and TOR after a couple of months being played , people are not just hapy with any games coming out right now and neither of those 2 games will change it.
Lose the WoW mindset ..... As long as this keeps up nobody is gonna be happy with any new MMO. Especially one that is original and innovative. WoW has brainwashed the masses to a certain defined way of playing. I have said it before and will say again, WoW has ruined the fun factor for many MMO players. Especially the people whose first MMO was WoW.
Exacly, wow has set the standards too high in new MMOS
The issue is...There wil be drop off just like every other mmo.
There are too many other AAA MMOs being released too soon.
Rift does not do anything different enough for it to compete in a world with WOW, GW2, and TOR. It just doesn't.
It's going to be a foot note, just like AoC, WAR, LOTRO, DDO, Vanguard, Tabula Rasa, CoX, CO, DCUO, FXIV, and AION.
Just wait we will be saying the same about GW2 and TOR after a couple of months being played , people are not just hapy with any games coming out right now and neither of those 2 games will change it.
Lose the WoW mindset ..... As long as this keeps up nobody is gonna be happy with any new MMO. Especially one that is original and innovative. WoW has brainwashed the masses to a certain defined way of playing. I have said it before and will say again, WoW has ruined the fun factor for many MMO players. Especially the people whose first MMO was WoW.
The same thing could be said for those of us who started gaming in MMO's long before WOW. The same inability to be happy with any other mmo is also an issue for UO vets or EQ vets or AC vets or..............Using WOW as the mmo scapegoat is getting a bit too predictable and over used.
Alot of people thought WoW was in a world that did not compete with EQ or AC. Well, WoW punched those 2 in the nuts then pissed on them. I'm sorry but if anything is even going to be close to WoW it will be another Clone.
EQ,AC,UO,WoW those are the type of games that have dominated the market sense MMOs went 3D they just work. Sandbox games don't they flop on there face not because the design of them game was bad, the players make sandbox games bad.
Originally posted by MMO.Maverick I myself don't even dislike sandbox MMO's, I like all kinds of MMORPG's, but I definitely despise the bitter, spiteful and downright hateful mentality a disgruntled and grumpy number of the sandbox crowd is showing continuously on these forums. It's like when you're at party or on a trip and there's this person who can do nothing but complain and whine about everything that he/she can complain about. After a while you start to wish you could drop something strong in their drinks so they'll drop as a log firm asleep or will be as high as a kite and no grinch anymore.
Maverick you are capable of intelligent posting therefore you should not continue to insult yourself by sticking to labelling people who said that "X will fail or X is failing" as haters. In the end you are the one coming off as bitter and spiteful.
The sandbox crowd reacts the same to sandbox games. Most of the people claiming Mortal would fail or Darkfall was going to be a mess or that Earthrise would be a joke were not Themepark Fans hating on the latest Sandbox, they were people who have more than 10 braincells and have spent 4 or more years as MMO users to have a good grasp of what is what.
All these people coming back with "In YOUR opinion" (which is the stupidest thing i see on forums btw) and "The game doesn't suit your playstyle so you claim it will fail" responces are incapable of rational thought. With that reasoning since i am a sandbox lover i am incapable of being able to deduce if a certain Themepark game will be successful or not.... where's the logic in that?
Because sandbox fans or vice versa themepark fans are not MMO players and couldn't possibly make negative predictions about an MMO without some negative hater agenda behind them.
The reality is very simple. The MMO's we've been getting since 2007 can be classified as MEDIOCRE at best when compared to the successful ones. The Subs are there to show it. It's natural that people are becoming more capable of spotting mediocre or bad games or design mistakes in unreleased games and calling them for what they are.
Defiantly a population drop.. The server i play on is still PACKED, but its not shoulder to shoulder like it was 2 weeks ago lol.. Which is good for me as i was tired of waiting in que's to get in on fri+sat nights, and the population is still healthy enough to be able to find people for instances and get quick que's for war fronts.. I'am also in probably the largest guild on Braircliff (100+ ACTIVE people) so it never feels empty..
I'd say a 20% decrease in population isn't far off though.
Currently Playing: Rift + Starcraft II + Gears Of War 3 Beta
I only recently started playing Rift but everytime a rift opens, I get lots of help. The game feels very populated for me and I'm only level 12 now.
"Sean (Murray) saying MP will be in the game is not remotely close to evidence that at the point of purchase people thought there was MP in the game." - SEANMCAD
Well, it's curious that no one pointed out that, according to the OP's XFire, WoW dropped for the first time in many many months from 1st to 2nd place http://www.xfire.com/games/wow/World_of_Warcraft/
Call of Duty 4 is now on top. It seems that it isnt Rift the one loosing the highes number of ppl after all =P
I can't help but wonder how many subs dropped after the first month of WoW. Thankfully we were not all so obsessed by sub numbers back then.
I'm not sure if wow ever had a drop in sub numbers And indeed, this obsession for sub numbers makes no sense at all!
WOW didn't have a simillar drop as these other games because WOW was first to market with a super polished linear themepark ride w/ no height limit. Come one, come all....something for everyone type of mold that has become the standard all the major publishers are reaching for.
The reason games like Warhammer, Aion, and Rift (all excellent games by the way) have the huge drop in subs is because its the same trick pony that you've already invested countless hours and dollars already in WOW. After the newness of the graphics and the thinly vieled gimmicks wear off......you wonder why your running another kill quest (for the 1000th time) to get this toon to lvl 40, when you could just log in your level capped character in WOW and jump right into endgame with all your pals you made over the last several years.
The reason there is such an obssession with sub numbers now is because Electronic Arts, NCSoft, BioWare, Sony, and Square Enix are looking at the sub numbers. They haven't touched a single sandobx MMO game in the last 5+ years because they have been creating games to go after that big ole 12,000,000 subscriber pie.
Before WOW, I think Ever Quest topped out at 1 million subs. Before that, Ultima Online held the Guiness Book of World Records title for most number of subs for a MMORPG at 200,000. No one was looking at the MMORPG genere at that time....or paying attention to subs.
Now that Blizzard has proved that you can tap into a larger section of the overall gamer market (casual gamers) and make away like bandits with this monthly fee + box sale pricing model.....all the AAA Publishers have stuck their big toe in the mix, and most have failed.
Yes because NCSoft clearly is a prime example of a company that is just "trying to chase after WoWs success". The company that actually brought, nearly half of these Millions of gamers, nowadays copy cats like WoW are constantly bragging about today, into the MMORPG genre in first place, either because NCSofts games have BEEN copied by Eastern and even some western publisher for +10 years or did draw them in themself with their major gametitles before WoW even existed. They are the least MMO publisher and developer on this planet, who has the need to "run after WoWs success" or even "copy WoWs ideas" because they are both dwarfing WoW in the East financially with their individual MMO title and WoW hardly could teach them anything new anymore aside from some marketing schemes.
Within the past 2 majorly successfull years of Aion NCSoft only once officially bragged about their sales in public PR, the boxsales of their western release. And thats only happend for the gamer who have been eager to know it solely, because WoW and no one else brought in all the subscribernumbers (no matter how) PR hype. All other known data has been eagerly gatherd by players, from subsidary sources or hidding inside shareholder reports..
No matter what ignorant and closeminded WoW fanbots frequently repeat to keep up the "All devs just try to clone WoW because that makes my game sound greater than it is!!!"-myth: Aion never was a copy, nor a clone attempt of WoW and would have been the pretty much the same game without WoW (nothing hard to achieve as WoW fans allways attempt to make it appear, because WoW just copied from the spectrum games that Aion also had its actual roots in or even personal experience from), except for some cosmetical UI and controll changes and more emphasis on contents like loredriven content demanded by the player of more important growing offshore target audiences like the West and for no other reason than the demand of it to be implemented, which isnt solely related to WoW, but on the history of western gamer used to games like EQ or AC.
As a westerner I could give a crap about NCSoft. In all honesty, all competitors learn from one another and use there wares. This is evident within activision-blizzard and ncsoft.
Comments
...hope I'm quoting the right person, here.. ^^ This is very sensible, and the only way in which I'd disagree is to say that IF any portion of the time invested in these games ever seemed to me to be worthwhile or meaningful, it would still not be something I would not feel I could let go of; and, it would seem worthwhile or meaningful only at the time that the time was spent... not later, with regard to deciding whether to spend more time. There's a distinct difference between feeling that time was well-spent and feeling that time must continue to be spent in order to justify that already spent, and games are a fine place to make that discrimination.
«Si oblitus fuero usque ad finem omnia opera eorum»
Thats not true is it. Bugs and server problems is what I remember. My account was riddled with free playtime due to all the problems. It wasnt AO by any stretch, but super polished? No.
Was good strategy to hand out free days, nowadays WoW is way too big to hand out free playtime even tho sometimes your weekend is ruined by auth servers etc.
edit
ontopic: there are too many ppl in this thread who dont even play the game but still has an opinion on server pop and how it affects gameplay... how would they know? They dont ofc =P Its just the usual suspects trying to bring a game down that they didnt like for whatever reason.
Anyways, I play on EU whitefall and bloodiron. One is high and one medium. Questing and world pvping I see ppl all the time. Sure its not like a WoW expansion releaseday where every quest has 20 ppl on it. But Rift definately feels alive. Soon as I open a rift, ppl show up for it. When zone bosses are up, there's always 50-70 ppl on it etc.
It was polished and had less gamebreaking bugs on release than Rift did, and Rift had very few.
The biggest problem with WoW's release was the sheer volume of people that bought the game, and Blizzard not having the servers to handle it. Thus the free time until it was brought under control.
These days Blizz will rarely hand out a free day because the game is rarely out for longer than a scheduled maintenance. Authentication issues rarely last longer than a few hours, never an entire weekend, and they have recently handed out a day when a patch took too long to apply to servers and were out for 18 or so hours.
.. But in a good way.
its a good point.. my own MMO useage is affected by the weather... ie.. if it rains its more likely i'll be playing.... must admit though i am curious to see how Rift is doing subs wise.. i don't believe the doom and gloom merchants, but there is always a fall off after the first month.. of any game.. the degree of fall off though..ah.. now thats usually the most telling figure.. useage though.. can be weather dependant.. so is there a fall off.. and are they no longer subbed.. or are they just getting a tan ?
I know this game will do awsome. I know because of the way people on this forum hate it. Anything you guys hate becomes popular. You all hate WoW. All of you thought WAR and AoC were going to be good but they died like the injured elk in the back of the herd. Sooooo if you hate Rift it must be good eh?
Am I seeing the number of user playing a day is 3,677? Thats rubish lol. Still ranked 7th tho. Those 4thousand people must be realy playing lol.
Ha ha ha, so true!
Youre forgetting about the people who played the trail version of this game. Take in effect that people do have lives and responsiblites and people who get there accounts banned and so forth. Rift is here and its here to stay. Ive never seen a game trolled on as much as Rift.
Edgar F Greenwood
FFXIV. They hate it.
There are more positive threads on the front page than negative ones.
.. But in a good way.
Erm ... there is a slight difference with FFXIV, namely the game was utter garbage at release (do not know the state now), even the management conceded as much with all the position changes soon afterwards.
So no ... do not compare FFXIV to rift.
Next try?
Does that not support my theory? You like it, it turns out garbage. You hate it turns out gold.
So, I'm a mathematics lecturer, and I'm trying to understand your point. I checked the calculations, they are good. The argument uses simple proportions. And I think that's "solid" too though it has a few assumptions underneath it including that X-fire users are a random sample of the true population of players.
As a "rough" calculation I don't think it is too bad.
Where do you get 200,000 players "if done correctly"? You then say "if you do the statistics for real" you come up with 618,200 players. lol which is it? And how did you get either?
Lose the WoW mindset ..... As long as this keeps up nobody is gonna be happy with any new MMO. Especially one that is original and innovative. WoW has brainwashed the masses to a certain defined way of playing. I have said it before and will say again, WoW has ruined the fun factor for many MMO players. Especially the people whose first MMO was WoW.
No suprises here to be honest. a lot of people play rift just to pass time. bad company 3 is out soon, kotor in 3 months time, thereafter gw 2. i think the drop rate will be more than 50 %.
Which FF Character Are You?
Bad company 3 will be released Q4 of 2011. I like your optimism regarding SW:TOR and GW2, especially about the later. I'll be happy if they get released by the end of 2011.
Agreed. I'm currently subbed to RIFT, but it's just something to play until SW:TOR comes out.
Exacly, wow has set the standards too high in new MMOS
Free to play means pay to win.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
Alot of people thought WoW was in a world that did not compete with EQ or AC. Well, WoW punched those 2 in the nuts then pissed on them. I'm sorry but if anything is even going to be close to WoW it will be another Clone.
EQ,AC,UO,WoW those are the type of games that have dominated the market sense MMOs went 3D they just work. Sandbox games don't they flop on there face not because the design of them game was bad, the players make sandbox games bad.
Maverick you are capable of intelligent posting therefore you should not continue to insult yourself by sticking to labelling people who said that "X will fail or X is failing" as haters. In the end you are the one coming off as bitter and spiteful.
The sandbox crowd reacts the same to sandbox games. Most of the people claiming Mortal would fail or Darkfall was going to be a mess or that Earthrise would be a joke were not Themepark Fans hating on the latest Sandbox, they were people who have more than 10 braincells and have spent 4 or more years as MMO users to have a good grasp of what is what.
All these people coming back with "In YOUR opinion" (which is the stupidest thing i see on forums btw) and "The game doesn't suit your playstyle so you claim it will fail" responces are incapable of rational thought. With that reasoning since i am a sandbox lover i am incapable of being able to deduce if a certain Themepark game will be successful or not.... where's the logic in that?
Because sandbox fans or vice versa themepark fans are not MMO players and couldn't possibly make negative predictions about an MMO without some negative hater agenda behind them.
The reality is very simple. The MMO's we've been getting since 2007 can be classified as MEDIOCRE at best when compared to the successful ones. The Subs are there to show it. It's natural that people are becoming more capable of spotting mediocre or bad games or design mistakes in unreleased games and calling them for what they are.
Defiantly a population drop.. The server i play on is still PACKED, but its not shoulder to shoulder like it was 2 weeks ago lol.. Which is good for me as i was tired of waiting in que's to get in on fri+sat nights, and the population is still healthy enough to be able to find people for instances and get quick que's for war fronts.. I'am also in probably the largest guild on Braircliff (100+ ACTIVE people) so it never feels empty..
I'd say a 20% decrease in population isn't far off though.
Currently Playing:
Rift + Starcraft II + Gears Of War 3 Beta
I only recently started playing Rift but everytime a rift opens, I get lots of help. The game feels very populated for me and I'm only level 12 now.
Well, it's curious that no one pointed out that, according to the OP's XFire, WoW dropped for the first time in many many months from 1st to 2nd place http://www.xfire.com/games/wow/World_of_Warcraft/
Call of Duty 4 is now on top. It seems that it isnt Rift the one loosing the highes number of ppl after all =P
As a westerner I could give a crap about NCSoft. In all honesty, all competitors learn from one another and use there wares. This is evident within activision-blizzard and ncsoft.