Why is DAoC population dropping?

gnomexxx · March 2006

I found a site that keeps track of the Camelot stats. Since Camelot is my favorite game, I hate to see what's been happening. As I look at the annual stats the server populations have been dropping steadily since January. And going down faster as time goes on. It doesn't make since to me because I am having more fun with the game than ever.

We need to promote our game. This sucks. ::::16::

Here is the annual graph and a link so that you guys can check out the more magnified times.

http://daoc.darkzone.net/region/us/

Dhaeman · March 2006

The population keeps dropping because the population is already so low. Once you hit a certain point in the population you will gradually lose people to not enough folks being online (and because of hot, new titles that get released). On top of that, not as many people will be interested in sticking with a game that does have that low population.

Low population is just a downward spiral that nothing can stop.

Slickinfinit · March 2006

I hope not I just started and realy like the game, it has the best rvr out there and my server seems ok in population with usualy 1000-1500+ and 2200+ at peak.

JulianDracos · March 2006

Contrary to what people think, DAOC population is not declining. It took a significant hit just before and for the first month or so after the release of WoW. After that time it held steady. With the release of the Classic servers the population increased by a decent number and the subscriber totals are increasing.

There is something that people do not realize. There is the amount of subscribers, and the amount of time actively played. The graphs that you have, and what most people see, list the active amount of people on at any given time. This traditionally drops throughout the year and picks back up starting in the fall.

Here are the reasons why you see fewer people logged in and that the number appears the drop every month:

1. School. In January more people are on break. As the year goes on, people are busier and thus login fewer.

2. It is getting warmer. As the temperature increases and the days get longer, people spend more time outside and less time in front of the computer.

3. No new servers. The classic servers were something "everyone" had to try out. Because of that, and the recent changes, many subscribers have come back. However, the newness as worn off and once you get to 50 and have gear, no need to login to do PvE. So you just log in when you want to RvR.

4. Aging population/game. Many, or perhaps most, of the current DAOC population has been playing for 3+ years. With little content left for people to do, there is less of an urge to login to the game. Further, this population has now graduated school, has jobs, has kids, etc. Simple put as you age you generally have less time to play. Further, you have less desire to play. I used to be logged into the game for 14 hours a day. Now I maybe play 14 hours a week. Part of it is I have less time, part of it is that there are other things I want to do. I could be playing now, but I really do not feel like it. I hate leveling my artifacts and that is what I need to do on a couple of toons. The only ML I need are on my animist and I am waiting until 50 to do that. I can't get a group in Thid with my Bainshee and have no desire to do the PvE grind to get another level. The few things I want to do I would not be able to do right now such as do the Co5 or Darkspire. So unless I want to go out to Leirvick there is little in the game for me to do right now.

New players are joining the game. Subscriptions are up. For example, lets say there are 1000 new players in a month spread out over the servers it does not seem like a lot. Then you take into account the different play times of those players. Then add into that most of the current players will generally spend less time playing each week as the months go on and you see that the servers looking empty.

I am all for increasing the population. I am not sure what can be done. But I do not want people to think the sky is falling or the game is dead. People were calling DAOC vaporware before it came out. Every game that has come out has been labeled the "DAOC killer." The server numbers drop a bit and everyone says the game is dead and they have been doing it for years.

It is not as though DAOC has 5,000,000 players, but 200,000 is a decent number. It is probably still down about 50,000 players from when WoW was launched, but that percentage was taken from almost every mmorpg that was currently out.

Do not worry about the subscriber numbers. The only DAOC killer is going to be Warhammer. Since it is an RvR game it will suck a huge portion of the DAOC playerbase over. Until then do not worry about if the game is going to be around because it will be.

reavo · March 2006

I hope you're right Julian.

I don't think I'd be into gaming 1/4 as much as I am if it weren't for DAoC. There's no other game like it.

I have never understood how a game like WoW sells so much and a game like DAoC has just a mediocre subscription base. Everyone who's ever played both, that I know of at least, says that DAoC is better. It just doesn't make sense.

Billius8 · March 2006

The population is dropping because Mythic, like some other game companies I won't mention, has let the low-level game die out. By having artificial means of solo-levelling, from the old "/20" command to these solo instanced dungeons, there is no longer a need nor any joy in levelling, and certainly not in grouping while you level. It's just a solo grind to 50 so you can go play in battlegrounds and realm vs. realm P v P.

I remember when this game first came out; the low-level PvE experience was awesome. Now it's dead. How to revive that? Inject new low level content and shift the game back towards group-oriented gameplay.

Maybe add a new class or race every so often and revamp the low-level stuff. New players must have a reason to like the game and old players should have an interest in re-rolling once in awhile. The game cannot just be about level 50.

"Once the low-level game dies out, the MMORPG begins to die out."

JonMichael · March 2006

I can only comment on my experience so far (I've been playing only for 4 months).

There is *plenty* to do in your lower levels, solo and groupwise. I play on the Gaheris server (Co-op) and I must say I have never had a problem finding people to group with when I want to. The newbie towns always have low level toons running around, whether they be new players or seasoned players who are rolling other characters. Yes, you do see some running to do Dungeon Tasks, but I always see groups out in the open, in dungeons that are not instanced and gathering to do Epic quest, CL quests and so on. So, the low level PvE experience is not dead.. at least on my small server, it's not.

They key to playing any mmorpg is finding a good group of people to play with.. and that starts with finding a good guild.

Online experiences are what you make of them.

Telon · March 2006

Mythic started out with a hit on their hands. Over time they let the game get worse, it was like they were doing the "We know what the players want, they don't!!" People got tired of where DAoC was going and how Mythic kept doing it.

Vyava · April 2006

Originally posted by Telon
Mythic started out with a hit on their hands. Over time they let the game get worse, it was like they were doing the "We know what the players want, they don't!!" People got tired of where DAoC was going and how Mythic kept doing it.

ToA did hurt DAoC but I think it is dying out more because of it just being older. People left and find it hard to return basically because of all the changes and adapations it isn't quite the same. I bought the epic edition to catch up a few months ago, but it iddn't sing to me like it used to and I didn't renew a second month /shrug.

oliverc4 · April 2006

It always drops for awhile after a new game release. Give people
some time to get tired of WoW and they will all head back.

Trand · April 2006

DAOC was my first MMORPG, and it will always be the game I judge all others against. I played DAOC for four years and honestly it was just time to move on for me. It is still a great game and I can understand why alot of people still enjoy the game.

But for me it was just time to move on, still I do miss my Friar from time to time, best class ever created in any MMORPG

.

porgie · April 2006

I think the comment about the /20 command ruining the game might be correct.

I can't think of anything else that is doing it. The game looks good enough to hold it's own. The gameplay is nice. The RvR is exceptional. But when you go into the newbie dungeons they're empty. And anyone trying out the game for the first time is not going to stick with it if they find themselves alone.

It's obvious from the graph that something is wrong though. Nobody can ignore that. In two months the peaks went from 18000 to 14000. And I can draw a straight line down the peaks for those two months, which shows a steady pace. That's a huge percentage for two months. And the trend doesn't seem to be slowing.

Somebody do something!!!

Elnator · April 2006

IMO that 1 year trend line doesn't show much except that during school vacation times the game has higher logged on users than at other times of the year.

This isn't exactly rocket science. If you look at a longer trend line you'll see the population has remained steady for quite some time

porgie · April 2006

Originally posted by Elnator

IMO that 1 year trend line doesn't show much except that during school vacation times the game has higher logged on users than at other times of the year.

This isn't exactly rocket science. If you look at a longer trend line you'll see the population has remained steady for quite some time

Uhhhhhmmmm... I don't know Elnator.

The right side of the year long graph bumped up against the left side shows an April05/April06 comparison. Last year there were TONS more players at this time. About 6,000 more. That's a good bit to lose in one year (relatively). Nearly 1/3 of the people logged on.

Which is why I started a new character without using /20. Am I insane? Just about. I just wanted to keep some of the new folks around. I thought maybe if they had someone to level up with they wouldn't quit. Plus it reminds me of when I started.

Elnator · April 2006

Just a point of fact:
That's a "players online" graph, not a "subscriber" graph.

I'm not going to argue whether the game is growing, shrinking, or whatever but I will simply observe that the game, at last quote I was able to find, has had over 200k users since the day it came out, practically. That is a pretty rock-solid trend.

Mythic also recently stated that their SUBSCRIBER numbers are going up. Now, that could have changed but as of November I had heard that numbers were up from our very own Mythic rep who posts here

Remember also that this time last year a LOT of the folks who now play on CLASSIC servers (which means bots are a lot less useful) were on 'normal' servers where the use of Bots is almost a requirement.

Could it be that a big part of the drop in activity that you've seen is the reduction in people using BOT characters? (The population of the 3 "Classic" servers)?

Like I said, I'm not going to discount the chart. But 1 year's data isn't exactly a trend. You'd have to see at least 2 years of steady overall decline before you could really call it a trend. At least, with the *very slight* decline this site is reporting considering all the other factors that could have impacted how many accounts are actively logging in. Also, all this shows is peak times. It's not showing the average trend. If the PEAKS are coming down but the AVERAGE is staying the same then there's no drift in activity other than populations are levelling out across time zones.

In short: The data on the site provided is inconclusive, at best. Just not enough data points to make any real determination whatsoever.

Trending is part of my job. This site doesn't show enough data to determine what the trend is, if any.

RJCox · April 2006

Subscriber numbers are indeed up. Naturally they're down from pre-WoW numbers, every MMO on the market took some kinda hit when WoW came out, trust me, not all of those 5 million plus subscriptions they brag about were people completely new to the genre. DAoC, just like every other game on the market at the time, lost some folks to them. However since then we've been on a pretty steady climb back up.

As El pointed out, that is players online, not subscribers, huge difference there. I'm not arguing that we don't have less than we did a year ago, we might, we might not, I don't have those numbers in front of me, all I do know is that are numbers are currently climbing, not dropping.

Raver · April 2006

To me biggest thing to bring new players in would be a total revamp of interface. I played WOW/EVE/EQ2 and loading up this game. Tried a few times and could not get over the way the interface is years behind.

Not being a troll or something just saying it was so bad compared to what I am used to I couldnt even give the game a decent try.

If there are many more out there like me you lose potential hardcore player who just expects mastering the game is not one about mastering the keys/shortcuts etc. In EQ2 for example Ive never really struggled with UI and have focused on the game itself.

jeep21243 · April 2006

Originally posted by Elnator

Could it be that a big part of the drop in activity that you've seen is the reduction in people using BOT characters? (The population of the 3 "Classic" servers)?

its funny you should mention this point. this is the very reason i left DAoC so long ago. like a previous poster daoc was my first mmo, and has since, been my favorite. i have tried swg (twice), l2, wow, ffxi and am in the beta stage of another mmo. and of all of them i still have to say daoc was my favorite. its just things got out of hand with the bots. it became not fun for me when 1v1 duels were determined by who had the better bot.

id also like to note that i quit, and came back after the platinum edition was released, played for a few weeks then quit again, and not because of the bots this time, but because of the ToA expansion, which, in my opinion was a travesty to mmo's. say what you want about ffxi's NM campers, they got nothing on ToA. you can get by without NM loot in ffxi's endgame, good F-in luck rvr'ing against a guy playing 40 hour a week camping for relics then leveling them, i got two words for that S**t ~ F*** that. i got a dog, cat, african grey and a full time job, i cant keep up with these people anymore. with WoW i can casually hit 60 and show up twice a week for 3 hours at a time and participate in my guilds raids and thats it. DAoC is dying because of the choices they made to shift the game into the power gamers hands rather than keep things balanced to the casual player. up until that expansion i though Mythic was a world class company with a superior product, but i really worry what they are going to do with warhammer given these choices

Bent · April 2006

Originally posted by Slickinfinit
I hope not I just started and realy like the game, it has the best rvr out there and my server seems ok in population with usualy 1000-1500+ and 2200+ at peak.

I agree with this. It doesn't matter how many people own the game or p2p. It matters how many people are on you server at the times you play. Once a server starts hitting numbers of 800-1200, it is almost reverse peer pressure to leave. It's worse for PvP games that have different races or faction fighting since an already low population is further divided over the different factions.

It is honestly the reason I left. I was at end game and got tired of logging on at 11am and their being like two peole in the frontier. I was on nimue though, so we were ahead of the curve as far as low pop servers went.

Maldach · April 2006

Ahh Nimue. I used to play Alb/Nimue to get away from the PvP grind on Hib/Perc. I've tried twice to go back to DAoC since I left after the TOA debacle. The interface is clumsy now, compared to the newer games and the characters feel sludgy and slow as well, not as fluid as the newer games. For me, DAoC was the best MMO ever made, but we've grown apart. It was a fun run though, really fun.

Elnator · April 2006

Originally posted by jeep21243

Originally posted by Elnator

Could it be that a big part of the drop in activity that you've seen is the reduction in people using BOT characters? (The population of the 3 "Classic" servers)?

its funny you should mention this point. this is the very reason i left DAoC so long ago. like a previous poster daoc was my first mmo, and has since, been my favorite. i have tried swg (twice), l2, wow, ffxi and am in the beta stage of another mmo. and of all of them i still have to say daoc was my favorite. its just things got out of hand with the bots. it became not fun for me when 1v1 duels were determined by who had the better bot.

id also like to note that i quit, and came back after the platinum edition was released, played for a few weeks then quit again, and not because of the bots this time, but because of the ToA expansion, which, in my opinion was a travesty to mmo's. say what you want about ffxi's NM campers, they got nothing on ToA. you can get by without NM loot in ffxi's endgame, good F-in luck rvr'ing against a guy playing 40 hour a week camping for relics then leveling them, i got two words for that S**t ~ F*** that. i got a dog, cat, african grey and a full time job, i cant keep up with these people anymore. with WoW i can casually hit 60 and show up twice a week for 3 hours at a time and participate in my guilds raids and thats it. DAoC is dying because of the choices they made to shift the game into the power gamers hands rather than keep things balanced to the casual player. up until that expansion i though Mythic was a world class company with a superior product, but i really worry what they are going to do with warhammer given these choices

Ohhh.... I think it's safe to say that Mythic learned their lesson on TOA

They've been toning it down about every other patch. Personally I still hate it but it's not nearly as bad as what it was when they first released it. A LOT of folks who hated it when it came out don't mind it now. And the classic servers don't have it at all so I play there. As a bonus the classic servers have a fairly 'anti bot' ruleset which is SWEET

Hardly any bots at all on the classics. There's a FEW but they are few and far between.

Naitakal · May 2006

Originally posted by Raver
To me biggest thing to bring new players in would be a total revamp of interface. I played WOW/EVE/EQ2 and loading up this game. Tried a few times and could not get over the way the interface is years behind.Not being a troll or something just saying it was so bad compared to what I am used to I couldnt even give the game a decent try.If there are many more out there like me you lose potential hardcore player who just expects mastering the game is not one about mastering the keys/shortcuts etc. In EQ2 for example Ive never really struggled with UI and have focused on the game itself.

I couldn't agree more with what you wrote.

A few months ago I was going to give DAoC another try after leaving it for WoW, but I couldn't get used to the UI anymore. Now I'm thinking about going back to DAoC again but I fear the UI will make me leave quickly again.

A new user interface would do this game good, I'm sure!

Harafnir · May 2006

It is all about age. I still see DaoC as one of the best games up to date, if not the best game so far, but... Age is showing in a big way, the interface is medieval and... Its a bit like making 3D Pacman, it would be goodlooking and all, but still only a yellow ball eating dots. To put new paint on an old barn does not make it a skyscraper. I love the game to death, but I think most people feel the age of it, and... well today people want more. And... Well, what they should have done is DaoC 2. They really should have. Now.. We can only hope they have kept the beauitful Realm v Realm in WAR.

Lasraik · May 2006

Originally posted by JonMichael

I can only comment on my experience so far (I've been playing only for 4 months).
There is *plenty* to do in your lower levels, solo and groupwise. I play on the Gaheris server (Co-op) and I must say I have never had a problem finding people to group with when I want to. The newbie towns always have low level toons running around, whether they be new players or seasoned players who are rolling other characters. Yes, you do see some running to do Dungeon Tasks, but I always see groups out in the open, in dungeons that are not instanced and gathering to do Epic quest, CL quests and so on. So, the low level PvE experience is not dead.. at least on my small server, it's not.
They key to playing any mmorpg is finding a good group of people to play with.. and that starts with finding a good guild.
Online experiences are what you make of them.

You have plenty of options in PvE because the server you play on is PVE ONLY. Try rolling a character on a regular server, the low level xp spots are ghost towns. /level 20 killed off the lowbie xp spots, and theres no help for a new player to get assistance because those areas are empty.

DAoC population is declining, it's because of imbalance and low populations. Mythic has a track record of applying band aids to problems, instead of fixing them. No new servers was a good choice, why would they water down already low populations with MORE servers? It makes no sense. They continue to show an inability to balance classes and realms. Because populations are so low, RvR has become a mess. No communication, hardly any players are looking for PUGs and those who aren't in guilds or alliances that help each other are left spamming LFG at the frontier keeps. If you do find a PUG, you're likely to be run down by an organized 8 person group in no time. The gap between the casual player and powergamer are whats hurting the game. Been to the frontier keeps lately? They are ghost towns too, even with 5-6 servers on one cluster. EVE Online has been going 3 years, and their population is growing while DAoCs is shrinking.

Remember that a good portion of the current population are bot accounts. For some classes to compete, you *NEED* to have another account and a bot. Thats one of the big reasons I cancelled, because it requires you to pay for two accounts just to compete in RvR. If what the Mythic rep in this thread said is true about subs being up, you sure don't see that in NF. Just like someone else said, it's not that subs are up, it's how many people are actually playing when you are. Overpowered classes that don't get addressed and buggy expansions = not good.

I doubt we'll see DAoC population get a boost. Most players are waiting for Warhammer to be released. At that point, DAoC is going to take a huge hit of what little is left of the playerbase.

Effect · May 2006

I think as others have suggested that DAoC never really recovered from Trials of Atlantis. The game took a big hit I feel when that was released and I like to think that Mythic learned their lesson from that mess. With the creation of the classic servers I think they very did which is a great sign. When you try to increase the grind like that and try to make a game that raid focused the backlash will take place and it did with DAoC. Especially since they already had the endgame of RvR. I like to think that if Mythic had to do it all over again they'd have dropped ToA before development even began on it and just moved to the other expansion ideas.

DAoC is a great game but the newness did seem to wear off for me after I came back and got my first 50 and did a LOT of RvR. I'm hoping the new expansion (need more info) will cause it to gain a lot of attnetion.

Cause of right now the game seemed somewhat dead in terms of updates and news in general. Which is somewhat understandable with Mythic making WAR. Almost all of their support and focus would be on that but it is disappointing that it seems that DAoC was being ignored and no longer seems important to Mythic. Even when WAR is released I'm pretty sure all attnetion will be on it and DAoC will end up getting scraps and leftovers after devs put in full time work on WAR.

Lasraik · May 2006

It did never recover from ToA. The Classic servers were a good idea, but they really put a huge dent in the population of other servers. So they plugged one hole and opened 3 more.

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