Just havinng an appropriately sized sample pool does not automatically make the poll an accurate representation. Take a political poll in the US that polls on a certain topic. If all of thier sample is in the same area in NYC it will have an entirely different outcome than the same sampling size from rural OK. The same is true with Xfire. True, you may have a decent sized polling group, but if all of the people who use Xfire have a particualr taste in games compared to those that do not use it, then you sample will be biased from the start.
Me, I dont use xfire, but I have been gaming since before the internet was born (yes I was gaming off tapes on PCs that didnt even have graphics yet, let alone a modem to connect to an internet).
Rules: Question applies to GW2 players only. This poll isn't made to be a representative of the whole community, just a sample of the current MMORPG.com members - players. No trolling, flaming - keep it clean and civil - it's not that hard, is it ?
Keep in mind scientific polls are being made with as low as 500-1000 people to represent opinions of millions of people. Even if only 1% use xfire in statistics it is more than enough.
Good, at least partially correct.
Scientific polls require proper selection of their sample pops. Self-selection is not good methodology.
Sample sizes are something that laymen tend to consider of paramount importance. Sampling methods are what statisticians would consider first when vetting each other's work.
Anyway, we risk the verbosity bludgeon monsters of the X-fire Megathreads awakening from their slumber. Let the sleeping dog lie.
YES. This ^
You cannot eliminate bias in your sample with self-selection.
Rules: Question applies to GW2 players only. This poll isn't made to be a representative of the whole community, just a sample of the current MMORPG.com members - players. No trolling, flaming - keep it clean and civil - it's not that hard, is it ?
Keep in mind scientific polls are being made with as low as 500-1000 people to represent opinions of millions of people. Even if only 1% use xfire in statistics it is more than enough.
Good, at least partially correct.
Scientific polls require proper selection of their sample pops. Self-selection is not good methodology.
Sample sizes are something that laymen tend to consider of paramount importance. Sampling methods are what statisticians would consider first when vetting each other's work.
Anyway, we risk the verbosity bludgeon monsters of the X-fire Megathreads awakening from their slumber. Let the sleeping dog lie.
YES. This ^
You cannot eliminate bias in your sample with self-selection.
You guys don't get it. A poll on a forum is self-selection. The metacritic/mmorpg.com user scores are self selection. Xfire is NOT self selection. The vast majority of people who use xfire don't give a rat's ass about game population statistics. People use xfire to enhance their gaming experience, not to "vote" for their favorite game. The few that do are statistically insignificant when you are looking at trends and population shifts.
Originally posted by wartyxwt You could give me a £10k PC and I still wouldn't use this or any of that bloatware crap companies use to measure their penis size with.
I've heard something similar from a lot of people. While I find Xfire, GamerDNA, PlayFire and other gaming networks to be an interesting source of information and a neat toy, I can completely see why gamers who aren't into these things would not want to waste their system's resources on it. It would be intersting to find what band of the gaming community comprises the majority of XFire users.
Hmmm... looking at XFire, I just noticed that since 2006 I have played almost 500 hours of Asheron's Call. Probably more since I don't always run XFire. I never realized how frequently I would resub to AC until now.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Originally posted by Damzilla Well, the numbers are really interesting at the moment... I reckon we will have a lot more votes when the NA players wake up in a few hours. I encourage anyone who didn't vote to do so, every vote counts !
considering xfire shows little under 9k people out of the over 2 mil who got this game it's not surprising most people here don'tuse it
It's amusing that 10% of 113 votes seem to use it though, meaning a far greater proportion of mmorpg.com forumites use x-fire than that of the actual player base (shock, horror).
Not surprising we see x-fire "trend" threads here ad-nauseum but nowhere else
This is a forum. People with an agenda will vote yes even if they never used XFire, just to prove some "point.
Talk about paranoid. Assuming that is the case then the other way around works as well. People with agenda will vote no, even if they use XFire, just to prove some "point".
Originally posted by Damzilla Well, the numbers are really interesting at the moment... I reckon we will have a lot more votes when the NA players wake up in a few hours. I encourage anyone who didn't vote to do so, every vote counts !
considering xfire shows little under 9k people out of the over 2 mil who got this game it's not surprising most people here don'tuse it
It's amusing that 10% of 113 votes seem to use it though, meaning a far greater proportion of mmorpg.com forumites use x-fire than that of the actual player base (shock, horror).
Not surprising we see x-fire "trend" threads here ad-nauseum but nowhere else
You are making two false conclusions here. First, that only 9k of XFire users are playing GW 2. 9k users are the number that are playing right now. That is not the same number as number of people playing at any time of day or week. That number is far larger.
Second, you are conclusing that this poll reflects how many who are using this site is also using XFire. That is again a false conclusion because this post is posted on the GW 2 forums. If it was posted on the main page then what you are concluding is correct, but it is currently not. That is actually an example of a disrepresented sample, one thing that people critical of XFire is doing where the truth is that no one know how representetive XFire is or not.
I voted no. I tried it a few years back ... but I never stuck with it. Most guilds I've been in use Teamspeak or Vent for voice communication and do not use XFire. For text communication out-of-game, I've found that the people I know or play with use Steam.
Originally posted by Damzilla Of course, to reveal my answer : I voted no. Never really had contact with Xfire accept on this site. Seeing so many posts about it sparked my curiosity and I made this poll, especially since people tend to study these statistics quite a bit.
People use XFire numbers because so many people do use XFire that it makes it easy to compare one game to another and to apply the downward trends on XFire to the broader audience of the whole game.
It is no different then when CNN does a poll to see who is more likely to get voted for. They don't poll the over 330 million americans, they poll a couple thousand people and those results are applied to the whole of the nation.
The main argument against ever using XFire numbers for anything is that there are gamers who don't use it so it can't possibly be representative of anything. That argument completely misses how scientific studies and polls are done. You never need the entire group, only a small piece of the group.
But yes GW2 had dropped down to 4th on the XFire chart and isn't far from 5th. WoW has gone back up to 2nd and is almost twice the game hours now as GW2 has. GW2, like all MMOs in recent years, has a steadily declining population as it will for the first 2/3 months and then the decline will slow down, as it does for all MMOs. This isn't something to be defensive about, it is the nature of the industry and how gamers currently approach it.
Originally posted by Damzilla Well, the numbers are really interesting at the moment... I reckon we will have a lot more votes when the NA players wake up in a few hours. I encourage anyone who didn't vote to do so, every vote counts !
considering xfire shows little under 9k people out of the over 2 mil who got this game it's not surprising most people here don'tuse it
It's amusing that 10% of 113 votes seem to use it though, meaning a far greater proportion of mmorpg.com forumites use x-fire than that of the actual player base (shock, horror).
Not surprising we see x-fire "trend" threads here ad-nauseum but nowhere else
This is a forum. People with an agenda will vote yes even if they never used XFire, just to prove some "point.
And no fan would ever possibly vote no even if they do use XFire to help show how "meaningless" the declining GW2 numbers are on XFire.
I installed it once way back when it first started. I only ever used it once, possibly twice, and honestly since then I couldn't see the point of it so never installed again. For one thing I like to conserve space, also I like to keep running processes to a minimum to increase game response.
Nope. Find it and similar products to be absoloutely useless. Though I do love how it continually gets trotted out as accurate when someone wants to crow "Woot! My game is beating your game", but then holds zero meaning when it shows the contrary.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
Originally posted by BrooksTech Funny. A few weeks ago, the GW2 fans were bragging about how high their xfire numbers were. Now you can't run away from the stats fast enough.
The numbers were high just as you expect when a new expansion or game hits the market. Now they are going down a bit and will rise back up if the game is good and as soon as the shiny wears off the panda.
But yes GW2 had dropped down to 4th on the XFire chart and isn't far from 5th. WoW has gone back up to 2nd and is almost twice the game hours now as GW2 has. GW2, like all MMOs in recent years, has a steadily declining population as it will for the first 2/3 months and then the decline will slow down, as it does for all MMOs. This isn't something to be defensive about, it is the nature of the industry and how gamers currently approach it.
news flash, Blizzard just released an expansion yesterday. What surprised me is that WoW's numbers were not in the high 80's or low 90's. Wasn't but a year or two back WoW never dipped below 125 - 150 K hours.
I try to keep my PC as clean as possible. There are far too many programs like XFire or the various downloaders that use resources or just impact performance for my taste.
All in all I have no need for the extras. I have found that sooner or later they miss updates or cause conflicts or crashes.
Rules: Question applies to GW2 players only. This poll isn't made to be a representative of the whole community, just a sample of the current MMORPG.com members - players. No trolling, flaming - keep it clean and civil - it's not that hard, is it ?
Keep in mind scientific polls are being made with as low as 500-1000 people to represent opinions of millions of people. Even if only 1% use xfire in statistics it is more than enough.
Scientific polls makes use of a large pool of different groups. Xfire is a group on its own and as such unrepresentive of everything except it's own populace.
But yes GW2 had dropped down to 4th on the XFire chart and isn't far from 5th. WoW has gone back up to 2nd and is almost twice the game hours now as GW2 has. GW2, like all MMOs in recent years, has a steadily declining population as it will for the first 2/3 months and then the decline will slow down, as it does for all MMOs. This isn't something to be defensive about, it is the nature of the industry and how gamers currently approach it.
news flash, Blizzard just released an expansion yesterday. What surprised me is that WoW's numbers were not in the high 80's or low 90's. Wasn't but a year or two back WoW never dipped below 125 - 150 K hours.
And your point is that GW2 people jumped ship to WoW which cause WoW's numbers to pop back up and GW2 numbers to drop significantly?
I don't see how that helps the GW2 fan's point of view.
I hate WoW and don't play it. I tried GW2 and it sucks to be blunt. I don't care which one does better, I just like XFire arguments because it is amazing the things people will come up with to explain why their game isn't doing so well.
The user and all related content has been deleted.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Comments
Just havinng an appropriately sized sample pool does not automatically make the poll an accurate representation. Take a political poll in the US that polls on a certain topic. If all of thier sample is in the same area in NYC it will have an entirely different outcome than the same sampling size from rural OK. The same is true with Xfire. True, you may have a decent sized polling group, but if all of the people who use Xfire have a particualr taste in games compared to those that do not use it, then you sample will be biased from the start.
Me, I dont use xfire, but I have been gaming since before the internet was born (yes I was gaming off tapes on PCs that didnt even have graphics yet, let alone a modem to connect to an internet).
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
YES. This ^
You cannot eliminate bias in your sample with self-selection.
You guys don't get it. A poll on a forum is self-selection. The metacritic/mmorpg.com user scores are self selection. Xfire is NOT self selection. The vast majority of people who use xfire don't give a rat's ass about game population statistics. People use xfire to enhance their gaming experience, not to "vote" for their favorite game. The few that do are statistically insignificant when you are looking at trends and population shifts.
I've heard something similar from a lot of people. While I find Xfire, GamerDNA, PlayFire and other gaming networks to be an interesting source of information and a neat toy, I can completely see why gamers who aren't into these things would not want to waste their system's resources on it. It would be intersting to find what band of the gaming community comprises the majority of XFire users.
Hmmm... looking at XFire, I just noticed that since 2006 I have played almost 500 hours of Asheron's Call. Probably more since I don't always run XFire. I never realized how frequently I would resub to AC until now.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Which is ironic considering the Android is a far inferior product.
Burgers vs Steak, Burgers vs Steak.
Talk about paranoid. Assuming that is the case then the other way around works as well. People with agenda will vote no, even if they use XFire, just to prove some "point".
My gaming blog
You are making two false conclusions here. First, that only 9k of XFire users are playing GW 2. 9k users are the number that are playing right now. That is not the same number as number of people playing at any time of day or week. That number is far larger.
Second, you are conclusing that this poll reflects how many who are using this site is also using XFire. That is again a false conclusion because this post is posted on the GW 2 forums. If it was posted on the main page then what you are concluding is correct, but it is currently not. That is actually an example of a disrepresented sample, one thing that people critical of XFire is doing where the truth is that no one know how representetive XFire is or not.
My gaming blog
I voted no. I tried it a few years back ... but I never stuck with it. Most guilds I've been in use Teamspeak or Vent for voice communication and do not use XFire. For text communication out-of-game, I've found that the people I know or play with use Steam.
One does not simply telnet into Mordor.
People use XFire numbers because so many people do use XFire that it makes it easy to compare one game to another and to apply the downward trends on XFire to the broader audience of the whole game.
It is no different then when CNN does a poll to see who is more likely to get voted for. They don't poll the over 330 million americans, they poll a couple thousand people and those results are applied to the whole of the nation.
The main argument against ever using XFire numbers for anything is that there are gamers who don't use it so it can't possibly be representative of anything. That argument completely misses how scientific studies and polls are done. You never need the entire group, only a small piece of the group.
But yes GW2 had dropped down to 4th on the XFire chart and isn't far from 5th. WoW has gone back up to 2nd and is almost twice the game hours now as GW2 has. GW2, like all MMOs in recent years, has a steadily declining population as it will for the first 2/3 months and then the decline will slow down, as it does for all MMOs. This isn't something to be defensive about, it is the nature of the industry and how gamers currently approach it.
And no fan would ever possibly vote no even if they do use XFire to help show how "meaningless" the declining GW2 numbers are on XFire.
Yeah... it goes both ways.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
I miss DAoC
The numbers were high just as you expect when a new expansion or game hits the market. Now they are going down a bit and will rise back up if the game is good and as soon as the shiny wears off the panda.
I miss DAoC
news flash, Blizzard just released an expansion yesterday. What surprised me is that WoW's numbers were not in the high 80's or low 90's. Wasn't but a year or two back WoW never dipped below 125 - 150 K hours.
I miss DAoC
I try to keep my PC as clean as possible. There are far too many programs like XFire or the various downloaders that use resources or just impact performance for my taste.
All in all I have no need for the extras. I have found that sooner or later they miss updates or cause conflicts or crashes.
Ok, so Vanguard is truely the most played mmo?
What are you saying?
What is the purpose of the poll in the OP?
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
And your point is that GW2 people jumped ship to WoW which cause WoW's numbers to pop back up and GW2 numbers to drop significantly?
I don't see how that helps the GW2 fan's point of view.
I hate WoW and don't play it. I tried GW2 and it sucks to be blunt. I don't care which one does better, I just like XFire arguments because it is amazing the things people will come up with to explain why their game isn't doing so well.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."