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What are the pops like now?
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Member UncommonPosts: 2,329
The expansion has been out for 4 days now. I'm interested in knowing how much higher the populations are now. They still show the amount of players logged in at the character selection screen correct? What is the highest now and what was the highest before? I'd guess around 1000 peak logged in before expansion.
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The character selection screen used to tell you how many players were in the world. After the expansion pack, that screen was completely changed, and now there is no way to tell the number of players logged in. It feels like there are more newbs over the last 2 days. I thought the populations were fine even before the expansion, but it feels like more people are around.
But really, I don't think an expansion pack really blossoms in pops until at least 2 weeks after release. I also play AC2, and believe it or not the pops appear to still be climbing slowly. I'm sure AC has a lot of growing to do since this is only the first 2 real days, but it looks encouraging so far.
I started a new character with the new race, and teamed up with some other newbs on the beginner quests. The level 1-20 quests are much improved. All you have to do is visit Sanamar, Holtburg, Shoushi, and Yaraq and start talking to NPCs. I didn't need any quest guides, and I had fun. I got to level 15 pretty fast with no outside help just doing newb quests.
Bleh, weak. No doubt the expansion brought more people. I just wondered how much. I don't expect it to do a whole lot, much like the AC2 expansion did relatively little, at least not the miracle I think we or maybe just I was really hoping for.
Why does it matter? When I played over a year ago the population was pretty much the same as it is now. I agree, I had no problems finding people or enjoying them. Still, don't you think if there were a lot more players Turbine would go back to the monthly updates? I think they would and that would be my ideal. It seems to just be a cost cutting measure to me and rightfully so. Also obviously with more players the game will last longer before they finally shut it down, which still is far in the future but I always like to think about the long run.
Turbine is going back to content updates. According to Ibn, the first will be in August. He went on to say that they'll be releasing content for both the Dark Majesty landmass and the newer islands from Throne of Destiny, so those who didn't upgrade will still find new things to do. Now, as to whether the updates will be monthly or bi-monthly, I don't know. The live team hasn't called it quits, though; they were just shifted over to the Throne of Destiny team for a few months.
They will go back to monthly events for AC now. There was a stretch of time where they didn't have any updates about 4 months before the expansion because they had to fix up the expansion that the California office people screwed up. It's also why the expansion was pushed back. Now that the expansion is out, they are going back to an update each month.
AC2 went to an update every 2 months. I guess their team is smaller and AC2 is more challenging to update.
I would love pops to go up, but there's nothing I can do about it. The most we could do is invest in Turbine and hope they use it for advertising, but I can't afford that right now, and it's a long shot anyway. All I can say is wait 2 weeks and ask me again. AC2 pops look pretty decent from a player's perspective, but there is no way to get pop numbers on either game now. I don't think this game will die for at least 5 more years. There are still thousands of loyal fans like myself who think that nothing else on the market even matches AC.
Turbine is a company, and it would probably take other games failing like D&DO and LOTRO and an overall profit loss for them to start considering pulling the plugs on some games. From what I know, Turbine is more about passion for gaming than just pure profit. I mean, the company basically started with a couple of friends who wanted to program games. Look at it now. I think EA is more about profit, and that is why they like to pull the rug out from under games.