Seems like the game has peaked on XFire

JuJutsu · January 2012

Originally posted by Metentso

Originally posted by moosecatlol

To anyone who has followed this thread, does anyone have a TL;DR version of how this thread became 70 pages?

Xfire is good!

No xFire is crap!

No it's good!

No, go to college!

You go to college!

Hey guys i'm smart and it's good but just as one tool among many"

Shutup!

Shutup!

What's xfire?

Vato26 · January 2012

Originally posted by Distaste

Originally posted by Vato26

Originally posted by holdenhamlet

2 things- First, I'm not sure they have x-fire in China and that's where the majority of WoW's subs come from. The Eve thing is weird but nonetheless, x-fire has been the first indicator of the demise of every new MMO since AOC. It's not quite clear why it's so accurate, and hell if I know why anybody would use it for an MMO, but regardless, it has been very accurate.

The accuracy may diminish as time goes on and the game has been out for awhile, which would explain the Eve numbers.

Please provide proof of your statements.

A simple google search yields the EXACT same topics with the same arguments only with AOC, WAR, Aion, RIFT, etc instead of SWTOR.

http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?p=1391477

http://www.morpg.com/mobile/forums.cfm?ismb=1&threadId=310763

http://www.mpog.com/discussion2.cfm/post/2336697

http://www.mmorpg.com/mobile/forums.cfm?ismb=1&threadId=267455

As for the WoW claims, those are well known. Blizzard used to give out exact figures of NA, EU, and Asian markets. Jan 2008 is the last time they did so and it was 2.5 million in NA, 2 million in EU, 1 million in assorted other territories, and 4.5 million in Asia. The bulk of their sub numbers were definitely from Asia. However many speculate that the NA/EU started to peak/decline and the Asian market increased so they decided to just combine all figures. The reason for this is it gives a big number and makes them look awesome, when in reality the asian side doesn't make them a ton of money like the NA/EU side. This could actually support the X-fire theory above that has Xfire numbers dipping while WoW gained subs since I don't think the Asian market uses X-fire.

I don't get what is so hard to understand. We've established that Xfire has been accurate for multiple major releases so while it might not be 100%, it does give us a form of data. There is secondary data from SWTORArena and TORStatus that both back up that server populations have been on the decline. The argument that Bioware adjusted server population levels doesn't hold water as we would see a massive drop on the server population charts and we don't. Not to mention that the server population changes were made within the first 1-2 weeks, Jan 3rd is when declines started. The argument that Holidays caused the drop is also null. While they might have caused the initial big drop after Jan 2nd, the numbers should have evened out by now since it's been 3 weeks. The numbers continue to decline both on Xfire and the population checkers though, so it itsn't the holidays causing the continued decline.

SWTOR numbers are declining, whether it is subsriptions or time played, it isn't good. Players that play less and less eventually quit paying a sub. If you still think xfire isn't at least a half decent form of monitoring MMO populations then go read those threads I posted above. Plenty of people in those threads stating how Xfire isn't accurate, the game is fine, etc, its hilarious when you know the outcome. The writing is on the wall, if you choose to ignore it or not is up to you, it was known before SWTOR released that it would have retention issues since story is finite and they didn't promise much in the way of new retention mechanics.. Unless Bioware has a miracle patch in March the subs will continue to decline just like RIFT, WAR, AoC, and AION. The march patch might hold some but if it is anything like 1.1 it will be consumed long before new content can be implemented and we have D3, Secret World, and GW2 coming out to compete for players time.

Those links you post prove nothing. Just because people say something doesn't make it so. Please provide hard evidence. Actual links of X-fire statistics overtime of this supposed decline.

As to your last parts, that's just pure guesstimation on your part. There's no hard, statistical proof to prove any of that.

Vato26 · January 2012

Originally posted by holdenhamlet

Originally posted by Vato26

Originally posted by holdenhamlet

Originally posted by Cavod

Originally posted by nikoliath

Originally posted by smh_alot

Originally posted by Teala
No it wasn't good and you can stop trying to defnd it now because you yourself said it become untrackable accurately. Until you show me a game that is not got some weird glithc that doesn't allow it to be tracked accurately - you know a game like Aion, Warhammer, Rift, DDO, LoTR's, something of note that proves that xfire doesn't work I'll keep using it.

What I find so funny is you are trying your best to disprove that xfire doesn't work, yet for every game since AC2 that xfire can track it has been accurate at showing the health of a game. With that said, I am done with this thread for now. You still haven't pointed out one MMO that has performed differently than was projected by xfire.

I couldn't give a damn about disproving that Xfire works or whether you want to keep using it or not, I don't think in black & whites like you seem to do, 'XFire is ALWAYS representative for player activity!' or 'if others disagree with me, then they don't like Xfire!'

The reality is that Xfire is just a tool that a number of players use, and like any tool it has limitations and situations where it isn't representative. I use Xfire myself for trend analysis, but for me it's just ONE of the available tools with which such thing is possible, and I have no problem acknowledging that Xfire has its limitations and flaws and sometimes downright quirks, something that you almost desperately seem to want to ignore, probably because of that foolish bet/promise that you keep changing.

But you want some more examples to ignore? Fine:

- in 2009, EVE Online reported 300k subs. Xfire users for EVE during that time: 4500

- beginning 2011, EVE reported 360k subs. Xfire users for EVE during that time: 2000

Xfire: shows a drastic loss, almost 50% of its EVE players!

CCP and the real situation: an increase of 50-60k subs

- in end of 2008/beginning 2009, WoW shows somewhere around 400-450k hours for WoW. Subs around that time are around 11million

- beginning of 2011, WoW has somewhere around 11.5-12 million subs, Xfire registers around the 200k hours for WoW

WoW shows a slight increase or at least stability in actual subs, Xfire however shows a 50% decrease, if Xfire is to be believed WoW has lost more than half of its playerbase from 2009-2011.

There you go. I have no doubt though that you'll find new ways to negate your own promise and request for examples, seeing how unjust you treated the examples already given.

let me get you a drink sir.

I'll buy the desserts.

2 things- First, I'm not sure they have x-fire in China and that's where the majority of WoW's subs come from. The Eve thing is weird but nonetheless, x-fire has been the first indicator of the demise of every new MMO since AOC. It's not quite clear why it's so accurate, and hell if I know why anybody would use it for an MMO, but regardless, it has been very accurate.

The accuracy may diminish as time goes on and the game has been out for awhile, which would explain the Eve numbers.

Please provide proof of your statements.

I've been following MMOs for years now and with each new one, this x-fire debate always comes up. I've been on both sides of the fence, and I have argued against x-fires validity when I was a fan of a game (especially before seeing it be right so many times).

I still find it weird that x-fire is so accurate with new MMOs. I could never figure out why the people that use x-fire would be so representative of the overall playerbase, but nonetheless it has been the case.

SWTOR could be the first game to prove x-fire innacurate when reflecting lower numbers in newlly released MMORPGs, but there doesn't seem to be any reason to believe it will be. Plus, people have been reporting seeing less people on servers. If the opposite were true, maybe there would be a good reason to question x-fire.

If it's any consolation to fans of the game, the decrease shown by x-fire is not that much compared to dips I saw from games like AOC and Warhammer after the first month, on the x-fire charts. So it doesn't seem to be crashing and buring as bad as those games at least.

... so, you couldn't provide any hard, statistical proof of your statements about X-fire?

Vato26 · January 2012

Originally posted by Pelaaja

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by zymurgeist

The tldr would be:

Ha Ha see the game is dying!

Bullshit.

Lather, rinse, repeat 250,000 times.

Who is saying the game is dying in this thread? Not me atleast.

You're taking away old mans Netz Kewl, let him have it

There's certainly a trend for high peaks declining and lows going lower. It's following the trend other games have had so far.

January 23rd 2012 the number of XFire users playing is 8,637. While Rift is 463, Aion is 924 and WoW is 19,115.

According hours are SW:ToR 44783 (5,2h per user), Rift 2280 (4,9h per user), Aion 3921 (4,2h per user), WoW 83313 (4,4h per user).

I think the question here should be how low will the graph and users number go?

Please show me statistical proof that shows the percentage that those players represent towards the total gaming population for their respective games. Also, please show me statistical proof that shows that these decreased hours are attributable to decrease in subscriptions rather than a decrease in number of hours played.

Otherwise, you have proven that you are misusing statistics for your own self-serving agenda.

potapithikos · January 2012

Originally posted by Vato26
Those links you post prove nothing. Just because people say something doesn't make it so. Please provide hard evidence. Actual links of X-fire statistics overtime of this supposed decline.

As to your last parts, that's just pure guesstimation on your part. There's no hard, statistical proof to prove any of that.

Hard evidence of what? that XFire numbers of the mentioned games were dropping? Or that the mentioned games lost players as was predicted using XFire numbers as a reference? They are both facts. You can ignore them, {mod edit} but that doesn't change reality.

What are you going to say in 3 months? that XFire again proves nothing it was a coincidence?... lol.

Vato26 · January 2012

Originally posted by potapithikos

Originally posted by Vato26
Those links you post prove nothing. Just because people say something doesn't make it so. Please provide hard evidence. Actual links of X-fire statistics overtime of this supposed decline.

As to your last parts, that's just pure guesstimation on your part. There's no hard, statistical proof to prove any of that.

Hard evidence of what? that XFire numbers of the mentioned games were dropping? Or that the mentioned games lost players as was predicted using XFire numbers as a reference? They are both facts. [Removed Flaming attempt] but that doesn't change reality.

What are you going to say in 3 months? that XFire again proves nothing it was a coincidence?... lol.

It is clear what I'm wanting. It is also the same standard as any legitimate researcher or statistician would have to provide when making a statement that is based on those statistics. That's a fact.

Again, just because people say something doesn't make it true. Undisputable statistical evidence is required when discussing statistics.

Also, your last bit, that is just wishful thinking on your part. You have no evidence that subscriptions will drop during that time frame. Nor do you have any evidence that, if subscriptions drop, by how much. You also have no evidence that X-fire is representative of the total gaming population. Again... those are facts.

Yamota · January 2012

Originally posted by Vato26

Originally posted by potapithikos

Originally posted by Vato26
Those links you post prove nothing. Just because people say something doesn't make it so. Please provide hard evidence. Actual links of X-fire statistics overtime of this supposed decline.

As to your last parts, that's just pure guesstimation on your part. There's no hard, statistical proof to prove any of that.

Hard evidence of what? that XFire numbers of the mentioned games were dropping? Or that the mentioned games lost players as was predicted using XFire numbers as a reference? They are both facts. [Removed Flaming attempt] but that doesn't change reality.

What are you going to say in 3 months? that XFire again proves nothing it was a coincidence?... lol.

It is clear what I'm wanting. It is also the same standard as any legitimate researcher or statistician would have to provide when making a statement that is based on those statistics. That's a fact.

Again, just because people say something doesn't make it true. Undisputable statistical evidence is required when discussing statistics.

Also, your last bit, that is just wishful thinking on your part. You have no evidence that subscriptions will drop during that time frame. Nor do you have any evidence that, if subscriptions drop, by how much. You also have no evidence that X-fire is representative of the total gaming population. Again... those are facts.

You can correlate the XFire trend with this data from http://www.mmo-junkies.net/statistics/:

And both seem to indicate a downward trend starting from a peak in late decembre. But yes, it is not proof of anything, but when you see two independant population data sets showing trends then that just might give you an idea what may be going on.

Keep in mind that I am not saying this game is failing or whatever, just that it seems to be following similar trends like other triple A Themeparks. A big initial peak and then a slow decline.

smh_alot · January 2012

Graphics chart has been proven to be wrong on multiple occasions, even the chart creators themselves have stated multiple times what the flaws or limitations of it were and that it wasn't measuring player population numbers. A simple example of it is that the status they're using to gather data isn't a constant, as it changes over time and it isn't the same for all servers, and that Xfire showed the peak to be in the first week of January, where those charts that use server status show a noticeable decrease for that period of time.

Ausare · January 2012

As was stated before server status can not really be used because they raised the limits on servers. So all the servers would look like they tanked in population levels shortly after launch. High because medium...medium became light.

Weretigar · January 2012

Did anyone actually stop and think why it peaked on x-fire? When everyone is new to a game they will use x-fire to speak to the general populous tell they find a guild at which time most of them will leave to teamspeak or vent, or even skype. x-fire does have good charts as far as %'s go but thats all.

The post is not misleading are hurtful to anyone. It says this game has peaked on x-fire and it has. Noones saying omg dead game its not in the op's main post. Don't worry about it. It just means the population died off because of the hardcore gamers running out of content and the looky loos are leaving, while most people are gathering into guilds.

ZizouX · January 2012

People leave after the first free month? (/Mind Blown)

Rusque · January 2012

Undisputable statistical evidence is required when discussing statistics.

Don't we all wish this is how statistics worked.

teoyaomiqui · January 2012

The game is for story loving people, and they don't use x-fire period. and there is enough story lovers to keep the game going...

Ausare · January 2012

What happens when the story runs out? Only took many a month to go through 2 stories.

Vato26 · January 2012

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by Vato26

Originally posted by potapithikos

Originally posted by Vato26
Those links you post prove nothing. Just because people say something doesn't make it so. Please provide hard evidence. Actual links of X-fire statistics overtime of this supposed decline.

As to your last parts, that's just pure guesstimation on your part. There's no hard, statistical proof to prove any of that.

Hard evidence of what? that XFire numbers of the mentioned games were dropping? Or that the mentioned games lost players as was predicted using XFire numbers as a reference? They are both facts. [Removed Flaming attempt] but that doesn't change reality.

What are you going to say in 3 months? that XFire again proves nothing it was a coincidence?... lol.

It is clear what I'm wanting. It is also the same standard as any legitimate researcher or statistician would have to provide when making a statement that is based on those statistics. That's a fact.

Again, just because people say something doesn't make it true. Undisputable statistical evidence is required when discussing statistics.

Also, your last bit, that is just wishful thinking on your part. You have no evidence that subscriptions will drop during that time frame. Nor do you have any evidence that, if subscriptions drop, by how much. You also have no evidence that X-fire is representative of the total gaming population. Again... those are facts.

You can correlate the XFire trend with this data from http://www.mmo-junkies.net/statistics/:

And both seem to indicate a downward trend starting from a peak in late decembre. But yes, it is not proof of anything, but when you see two independant population data sets showing trends then that just might give you an idea what may be going on.

Keep in mind that I am not saying this game is failing or whatever, just that it seems to be following similar trends like other triple A Themeparks. A big initial peak and then a slow decline.

As, has been stated a multitude of times, swtorarena, which mmo-junkies has the same data, is based off server loads, not server population.

As to the red, no, but you have stated on these very forums that you want the game to fail.

Vato26 · January 2012

Originally posted by Weretigar
Did anyone actually stop and think why it peaked on x-fire? When everyone is new to a game they will use x-fire to speak to the general populous tell they find a guild at which time most of them will leave to teamspeak or vent, or even skype. x-fire does have good charts as far as %'s go but thats all.

The post is not misleading are hurtful to anyone. It says this game has peaked on x-fire and it has. Noones saying omg dead game its not in the op's main post. Don't worry about it. It just means the population died off because of the hardcore gamers running out of content and the looky loos are leaving, while most people are gathering into guilds.

That is an overgeneralized statement. Not everyone uses X-fire. Not everyone that's new will use X-fire. I just started the game on the 18th and I haven't used X-fire for over two years.

Yamota · January 2012

Originally posted by Ausare
As was stated before server status can not really be used because they raised the limits on servers. So all the servers would look like they tanked in population levels shortly after launch. High because medium...medium became light.

Source?

Professor78 · January 2012

Originally posted by Vato26

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by Vato26

Originally posted by potapithikos

Originally posted by Vato26
Those links you post prove nothing. Just because people say something doesn't make it so. Please provide hard evidence. Actual links of X-fire statistics overtime of this supposed decline.

As to your last parts, that's just pure guesstimation on your part. There's no hard, statistical proof to prove any of that.

Hard evidence of what? that XFire numbers of the mentioned games were dropping? Or that the mentioned games lost players as was predicted using XFire numbers as a reference? They are both facts. [Removed Flaming attempt] but that doesn't change reality.

What are you going to say in 3 months? that XFire again proves nothing it was a coincidence?... lol.

It is clear what I'm wanting. It is also the same standard as any legitimate researcher or statistician would have to provide when making a statement that is based on those statistics. That's a fact.

Again, just because people say something doesn't make it true. Undisputable statistical evidence is required when discussing statistics.

Also, your last bit, that is just wishful thinking on your part. You have no evidence that subscriptions will drop during that time frame. Nor do you have any evidence that, if subscriptions drop, by how much. You also have no evidence that X-fire is representative of the total gaming population. Again... those are facts.

You can correlate the XFire trend with this data from http://www.mmo-junkies.net/statistics/:

And both seem to indicate a downward trend starting from a peak in late decembre. But yes, it is not proof of anything, but when you see two independant population data sets showing trends then that just might give you an idea what may be going on.

Keep in mind that I am not saying this game is failing or whatever, just that it seems to be following similar trends like other triple A Themeparks. A big initial peak and then a slow decline.

As, has been stated a multitude of times, swtorarena, which mmo-junkies has the same data, is based off server loads, not server population.

As to the red, no, but you have stated on these very forums that you want the game to fail.

Well if my investments were doing that I sure as hell wouldn't be that happy

Yamota · January 2012

Originally posted by Vato26

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by Vato26

Originally posted by potapithikos

Originally posted by Vato26
Those links you post prove nothing. Just because people say something doesn't make it so. Please provide hard evidence. Actual links of X-fire statistics overtime of this supposed decline.

As to your last parts, that's just pure guesstimation on your part. There's no hard, statistical proof to prove any of that.

Hard evidence of what? that XFire numbers of the mentioned games were dropping? Or that the mentioned games lost players as was predicted using XFire numbers as a reference? They are both facts. [Removed Flaming attempt] but that doesn't change reality.

What are you going to say in 3 months? that XFire again proves nothing it was a coincidence?... lol.

It is clear what I'm wanting. It is also the same standard as any legitimate researcher or statistician would have to provide when making a statement that is based on those statistics. That's a fact.

Again, just because people say something doesn't make it true. Undisputable statistical evidence is required when discussing statistics.

Also, your last bit, that is just wishful thinking on your part. You have no evidence that subscriptions will drop during that time frame. Nor do you have any evidence that, if subscriptions drop, by how much. You also have no evidence that X-fire is representative of the total gaming population. Again... those are facts.

You can correlate the XFire trend with this data from http://www.mmo-junkies.net/statistics/:

And both seem to indicate a downward trend starting from a peak in late decembre. But yes, it is not proof of anything, but when you see two independant population data sets showing trends then that just might give you an idea what may be going on.

Keep in mind that I am not saying this game is failing or whatever, just that it seems to be following similar trends like other triple A Themeparks. A big initial peak and then a slow decline.

As, has been stated a multitude of times, swtorarena, which mmo-junkies has the same data, is based off server loads, not server population.

As to the red, no, but you have stated on these very forums that you want the game to fail.

What I have stated in another thread has nothing to do with this one. In this thread I am analyzing XFire trends and how I believe it shows the general trend. I have repeteadly, in this thread, said that the game seems to follow the same trends as other triple A themeparks, short of maybe Aion, and I still believe this to be true.

Now if that will be closer to LotrO or the WAR debacle remains to be seen. It all depends on when the population stabilises. For that to happen soon Bioware will have to start pushing out some high level content as more and more are hitting level 50 and realise that there isnt much to do at that level.

Ausare · January 2012

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by Ausare

As was stated before server status can not really be used because they raised the limits on servers. So all the servers would look like they tanked in population levels shortly after launch. High because medium...medium became light.

Source?

http://www.swtor.com/blog/working-reducing-queues Ever time they increase a server is would look like a sudden drop in people using that server because the load is based on percentages.

Sovrath · January 2012

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by Ausare

As was stated before server status can not really be used because they raised the limits on servers. So all the servers would look like they tanked in population levels shortly after launch. High because medium...medium became light.

Source?

well there's this:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-12-21-swtor-bioware-warns-against-creating-characters-on-high-population-servers

"We're monitoring all of our servers around the clock, and we're raising server population caps where required. "

zevian · January 2012

Im probably not the only one who is letting the game settle down a bit before i pick it up and give it a go. So while the bleeding edge folks might be tired still lots of us people puttering our way into the game.

teoyaomiqui · January 2012

Originally posted by Professor78

Originally posted by Vato26

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by Vato26

Originally posted by potapithikos

Originally posted by Vato26
Those links you post prove nothing. Just because people say something doesn't make it so. Please provide hard evidence. Actual links of X-fire statistics overtime of this supposed decline.

As to your last parts, that's just pure guesstimation on your part. There's no hard, statistical proof to prove any of that.

Hard evidence of what? that XFire numbers of the mentioned games were dropping? Or that the mentioned games lost players as was predicted using XFire numbers as a reference? They are both facts. [Removed Flaming attempt] but that doesn't change reality.

What are you going to say in 3 months? that XFire again proves nothing it was a coincidence?... lol.

It is clear what I'm wanting. It is also the same standard as any legitimate researcher or statistician would have to provide when making a statement that is based on those statistics. That's a fact.

Again, just because people say something doesn't make it true. Undisputable statistical evidence is required when discussing statistics.

Also, your last bit, that is just wishful thinking on your part. You have no evidence that subscriptions will drop during that time frame. Nor do you have any evidence that, if subscriptions drop, by how much. You also have no evidence that X-fire is representative of the total gaming population. Again... those are facts.

You can correlate the XFire trend with this data from http://www.mmo-junkies.net/statistics/:

And both seem to indicate a downward trend starting from a peak in late decembre. But yes, it is not proof of anything, but when you see two independant population data sets showing trends then that just might give you an idea what may be going on.

Keep in mind that I am not saying this game is failing or whatever, just that it seems to be following similar trends like other triple A Themeparks. A big initial peak and then a slow decline.

As, has been stated a multitude of times, swtorarena, which mmo-junkies has the same data, is based off server loads, not server population.

As to the red, no, but you have stated on these very forums that you want the game to fail.

Well if my investments were doing that I sure as hell wouldn't be that happy

but if those were only hardcore investments that were using xfire? )))

just for the laughs, is statistics, you cant beat them even if it xfire users dropping subs, or servers going light, it is representative... imho...

Ausare · January 2012

Originally posted by zevian
Im probably not the only one who is letting the game settle down a bit before i pick it up and give it a go. So while the bleeding edge folks might be tired still lots of us people puttering our way into the game.

for me the problem is not the quality of the game. It is...well for lack of a better word...quantity of the game. For a new off the shelf game getting to the end is very very fast. While people might say WoW is fast leveling....WoW did not increase leveling till the leveling cap got pushed out in WotLK. Up till then it still took a good bit for normal to semi-hardcores to level up through the basic content. I know my first 60 in WoW took me about 2-3 months of playing. In SWTOR it took me about 20 days playing about the same amount of time as WoW.

Rasputin · January 2012

Every single decline of games could be read on X-Fire, no matter how much both devs and fans whined. Soon after the stock price fell, and then the devs had to admit the truth.

It will be no different this time, where it looks like - as of writing - that SWTOR has dived by 1/4th of the population, from some 78.000 to some 59.000, on a still heftily declining curve.

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Seems like the game has peaked on XFire

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Seems like the game has peaked on XFire

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