Actually Amazing Avery already explained this.  All the xfire people have just gone on summer vacation.  Come september after summer they will all be coming back.

Originally posted by ethion

Kinda sad they might be topping the sales charts but it looks like they are sliding on keeping subs...  It will be interesting to see how th coming weeks shape up as accounts run out.

www.xfire.com/games/aoc/Age_of_Conan_Hyborian_Adventures/

I stoped using xfire when AoC was released.  Xfire IMO is the one dieing.

Originally posted by Natttas

Originally posted by ethion

Kinda sad they might be topping the sales charts but it looks like they are sliding on keeping subs...  It will be interesting to see how th coming weeks shape up as accounts run out.

www.xfire.com/games/aoc/Age_of_Conan_Hyborian_Adventures/

 

I stoped using xfire when AoC was released.  Xfire IMO is the one dieing.

LOL...... riiiiiight

FYI.... there are more Xfire users playing WoW each day..... than there are AoC players who DONT use Xfire...lol

Originally posted by mscouts77

Originally posted by Natttas

Originally posted by ethion

Kinda sad they might be topping the sales charts but it looks like they are sliding on keeping subs...  It will be interesting to see how th coming weeks shape up as accounts run out.

www.xfire.com/games/aoc/Age_of_Conan_Hyborian_Adventures/

 

I stoped using xfire when AoC was released.  Xfire IMO is the one dieing.

 

LOL...... riiiiiight

 

FYI.... there are more Xfire users playing WoW each day..... than there are AoC players who DONT use Xfire...lol

sry i forgot to care, *hugs* ;p

The only charts AoC is at the top of is worst MMo ever. Or the ones on internal memos in the Failcom office that Erling makes lol.

Originally posted by Natttas

Originally posted by ethion

Kinda sad they might be topping the sales charts but it looks like they are sliding on keeping subs...  It will be interesting to see how th coming weeks shape up as accounts run out.

www.xfire.com/games/aoc/Age_of_Conan_Hyborian_Adventures/

 

I stoped using xfire when AoC was released.  Xfire IMO is the one dieing.

Sorry but while AoC numbers are decreasing LOTRO numbers are growing

Yep, player base is growing for almost every major title on xfire except aoc which is STILL losing 15% of the playerbase every week.  At this point I'll be shocked if AOC has 200K players, it is losing subs faster than any other game except Vanguard.

Originally posted by Ender4

Yep, player base is growing for almost every major title on xfire except aoc which is STILL losing 15% of the playerbase every week.  At this point I'll be shocked if AOC has 200K players, it is losing subs faster than any other game except Vanguard.

Vanguard lasted like 3-4 months before the mass exodus began...

AoC lasted 1 month before they started....and continues to thid day

Vanguard > AoC

The point is... the ratio of AoC players with Xfire has no reason to be rapidly fluctuating.

If 1% of the players are on Xfire, and all of them are playing 40% less on average, it's reasonable to think that a similar trend is going on with the ones that aren't on Xfire. You can think of Xfire kinda like a random sample, as Xfire membership and AoC subscribership are independent of one another.

Kinda looking like AoC might be starting to level off.  They look like they had about the same number this friday as last friday.  Although right now it looks like the weekend isn't picking up very much...

Originally posted by ethion

Kinda looking like AoC might be starting to level off.  They look like they had about the same number this friday as last friday.  Although right now it looks like the weekend isn't picking up very much...

It took a big hit yesterday. On the 2nd they had 19315 and yesterday the 9th they rdopped to 16642 for a loss of 2873 hours or a 14% drop. Todays numbers should be about 17, 500 plus or minus 500. That would fall into the 10 to 15% drops it has had lately.

Originally posted by Jackdog

Originally posted by ethion

Kinda looking like AoC might be starting to level off.  They look like they had about the same number this friday as last friday.  Although right now it looks like the weekend isn't picking up very much...

 

It took a big hit yesterday. On the 2nd they had 19315 and yesterday the 9th they rdopped to 16642 for a loss of 2873 hours or a 14% drop. Todays numbers should be about 17, 500 plus or minus 500. That would fall into the 10 to 15% drops it has had lately.

The numbers for Sunday Aug 12 were ....drum roll please........17512 This is getting too predictable.

Originally posted by Natttas

Originally posted by ethion

Kinda sad they might be topping the sales charts but it looks like they are sliding on keeping subs...  It will be interesting to see how th coming weeks shape up as accounts run out.

www.xfire.com/games/aoc/Age_of_Conan_Hyborian_Adventures/

 

I stoped using xfire when AoC was released.  Xfire IMO is the one dieing.

Xfire is a very good tool in watching what is being played.

Exactly the same techniques are used to measure the popluarity of TV programs..

Did you know that a sample of 600 families is enough to measure the TV broadcasts in  a 6.000.000 wide audiance?

In this respect Xfire is a sure valid tool to what is being played, even between different games.

But as a tool to follow a specific game it's even more useful.

The trend for Conan now is that they will level out between 13K and 16K within the next 2-3 weeks.

It should be interesting what will happen when WAR and WotLK will launch.

If it would drop under 8K after this, I think there is a good chance FunCom would stop its costly activities.

Originally posted by hebeventijd

Originally posted by Natttas

Originally posted by ethion

Kinda sad they might be topping the sales charts but it looks like they are sliding on keeping subs...  It will be interesting to see how th coming weeks shape up as accounts run out.

www.xfire.com/games/aoc/Age_of_Conan_Hyborian_Adventures/

 

I stoped using xfire when AoC was released.  Xfire IMO is the one dieing.

 

Xfire is a very good tool in watching what is being played.

Exactly the same techniques are used to measure the popluarity of TV programs..

Did you know that a sample of 600 families is enough to measure the TV broadcasts in  a 6.000.000 wide audiance?

In this respect Xfire is a sure valid tool to what is being played, even between different games.

But as a tool to follow a specific game it's even more useful.

The trend for Conan now is that they will level out between 13K and 16K within the next 2-3 weeks.

It should be interesting what will happen when WAR and WotLK will launch.

If it would drop under 8K after this, I think there is a good chance FunCom would stop its costly activities.

Xfire is good at measuring one game against itself over time (ie to see a trend), but I don't think it's useful when comparing two games.  The reason I say this is because some games are much more casual then others.  Compare Eve to WOW.   Those are probably the two extremes.  Eve is very hard core and with only minimal advertising, it is kind of a gamers/cult game.  WOW on the other hand is the AOL of mmorpgs...   Xfire is clearly a product used by more hardcore gamers, the ones who are more likely to play Eve.

Now onto Xfire and AoC...  I hate defending AoC... but the Xfire numbers do probably show a more substantial drop then is the reality.     Serious gamers (the ones who would download xfire) are the ones who got to endgame first and quit.... more casual gamers probably took longer to reach endgame/deadgame.   Also people who never played a MMORPG before probably don't know how bad endgame is because they have nothing to compare it to....these players are less likely to have Xfire than players who have played multiple mmorpgs before.

I do think AoC is dying a fast death.   Sept 18th will probably be the last time any of it's devs get a paycheck.

Originally posted by Azrile

Originally posted by hebeventijd

Originally posted by Natttas

Originally posted by ethion

Kinda sad they might be topping the sales charts but it looks like they are sliding on keeping subs...  It will be interesting to see how th coming weeks shape up as accounts run out.

www.xfire.com/games/aoc/Age_of_Conan_Hyborian_Adventures/

 

I stoped using xfire when AoC was released.  Xfire IMO is the one dieing.

 

Xfire is a very good tool in watching what is being played.

Exactly the same techniques are used to measure the popluarity of TV programs..

Did you know that a sample of 600 families is enough to measure the TV broadcasts in  a 6.000.000 wide audiance?

In this respect Xfire is a sure valid tool to what is being played, even between different games.

But as a tool to follow a specific game it's even more useful.

The trend for Conan now is that they will level out between 13K and 16K within the next 2-3 weeks.

It should be interesting what will happen when WAR and WotLK will launch.

If it would drop under 8K after this, I think there is a good chance FunCom would stop its costly activities.

Xfire is good at measuring one game against itself over time (ie to see a trend), but I don't think it's useful when comparing two games.  The reason I say this is because some games are much more casual then others.  Compare Eve to WOW.   Those are probably the two extremes.  Eve is very hard core and with only minimal advertising, it is kind of a gamers/cult game.  WOW on the other hand is the AOL of mmorpgs...   Xfire is clearly a product used by more hardcore gamers, the ones who are more likely to play Eve.

Now onto Xfire and AoC...  I hate defending AoC... but the Xfire numbers do probably show a more substantial drop then is the reality.     Serious gamers (the ones who would download xfire) are the ones who got to endgame first and quit.... more casual gamers probably took longer to reach endgame/deadgame.   Also people who never played a MMORPG before probably don't know how bad endgame is because they have nothing to compare it to....these players are less likely to have Xfire than players who have played multiple mmorpgs before.

I do think AoC is dying a fast death.   Sept 18th will probably be the last time any of it's devs get a paycheck.

I think you are correct.  I did a look at the number of players and time played and found the average xfire player was playing 4-5 hours per session.  That seems like a pretty long time and I'd suggest that only fairly hard core gamers use xfire.  Also looking at different games the play time averages were similar.  So I would say that xfire numbers are good for comparing relative hard core gamer populations on different games. 

What would really be an interesting statistic is how xfire players compare to the total number of players.  Comparing LoTR and Eve for example.  I would have believed that LoTR would have far more players then Eve but Eve is winning in xfire.  Does this mean that Eve has more subs or is eve a more hard core game then LoTR?  Or has LoTR lost a lot of players since launch??

Another interesting one is final fantasy.  That game supposedly has around 1M subs but the numbers in xfire are really low.  However FF is definitely a hard core game so do the subs numbers lie?  Maybe xfire is only used by americans and europeans not asians??

Originally posted by ethion

 

I think you are correct.  I did a look at the number of players and time played and found the average xfire player was playing 4-5 hours per session.  That seems like a pretty long time and I'd suggest that only fairly hard core gamers use xfire.  Also looking at different games the play time averages were similar.  So I would say that xfire numbers are good for comparing relative hard core gamer populations on different games. 

What would really be an interesting statistic is how xfire players compare to the total number of players.  Comparing LoTR and Eve for example.  I would have believed that LoTR would have far more players then Eve but Eve is winning in xfire.  Does this mean that Eve has more subs or is eve a more hard core game then LoTR?  Or has LoTR lost a lot of players since launch??

Another interesting one is final fantasy.  That game supposedly has around 1M subs but the numbers in xfire are really low.  However FF is definitely a hard core game so do the subs numbers lie?  Maybe xfire is only used by americans and europeans not asians??

Xfire is of course US and EU based as Asians mostly use their own languages and so they are under represented.

Which is fine, because it shows what is being played in the Western world.

Those saying that it is not good in comparing games, should question ALL TV broadcasts polls then, because exactly the same technique is being used to watch the success of TV programs. (like I said a sample of 600 families is enough to measure an audiance of 6.000.000).

As a matter of fact: you could see a certain ratio between the numbers polled by Xfire playings and the subscription numbers of MMO's.

Example?: Conan had in its first three weeks launch a high quotum of 60.000 on Xfire. FunCom DID say there were 500 K sold in its first week alone.

This gives a VERY good impression that indeed the figures show a relation. Now this figure has been down to an average of 15.000. Meaning that these days the game is played only at 1/4 .

Does that mean the active subs (including first purchase free month) are down to 150 K?

You bet there is a relation. No one is going to pay if you don't play for a longer period.

Second example: Wow is mostly around 420-440 K on XFire. Wow has between 4 and 4.5 million US/EU subscribers (depending on season).  Guess what ? We see the same ratio here as we saw with Conan.

Third example: On mmorpgchart.com, we saw in april that LOTRO was down to 150 K subs. These days LOTRO on Xfire is at 10K daily playings.

Fourth example: EVE is said to have at the very least 200K active subscribers. it's mostly stable at Xfire for around 12K daily playings.

So XFire stats (no matter what you think) shows very similar results for MMO's in their subscription numbers.

ONE remark though: the lower the sampled results, the more the measuring error will creep in (as with TV broadcast samples). So the higher the measured number, the lesser the deviation (or error of measurement).

But the top 20 should be fairly accurate in showing what is being played most in the western world.

Originally posted by Azrile

Serious gamers (the ones who would download xfire) are the ones who got to endgame first and quit.... more casual gamers probably took longer to reach endgame/deadgame. 

What are you smoking ?
Who wanna run some crappy app in the background ...
The people who run xfire are the ones who run whole bunch of other crap in the background and the ones who then post how their account was hacked etc...

AoC client is unstable as it is and what people do is CLOSE unnecessary applications they have and hope that conan.exe wont run out of memory

Those who run xfire probably have like 20 more apps in the background and then wondering why the hell is my computer running so slow and hogging as hell ( not meant just in aoc )

p.s. AoC is loosing lots of subscribers , you dont need xfire to know that.

They had a huge drop between Monday Aug 4th and yesterday. Over a 25 % drop from 17077 down to 12478. If this trend holds the rest of the week it will not surprise me if it drops below 10K before the week is out. To be fair though both EvE and LoTRO's numbers were down more than normal also so there are some other factors involved here. I suspect  back to school activities.

20 pages of xfire discussion, wtf

since when do ppl take stats serious (aoc is still in front of other big p2p mmos, its mostly WoW and f2p mmos on top in xfire, lol)

---

Originally posted by Jackdog
They had a huge drop between Monday Aug 4th and yesterday. Over a 25 % drop from 17077 down to 12478. If this trend holds the rest of the week it will not surprise me if it drops below 10K before the week is out. To be fair though both EvE and LoTRO's numbers were down more than normal also so there are some other factors involved here. I suspect back to school activities.

---

I notice that every weekend peak is lower than the previous weekend peak.

30487

27201

22180

20217

17512

That must be a 40% drop over the last month alone. If this continues then it'll definitely be at or below 10000 next month.

Originally posted by 3on1

20 pages of xfire discussion, wtf

since when do ppl take stats serious (aoc is still in front of other big p2p mmos, its mostly WoW and f2p mmos on top in xfire, lol)

If you pay close attention, you will notice...all of the games have some sort of "competitive" feel to them...those that are in the top anyways.

The tool is used by clans mostly, and tracks a ton of "PvP" activity.

The list shows Guild Wars in this top 10 consistently, Warcraft, WoW, etc...all competitive games...period.

The fact that AoC is moving DOWN the list shows that these players feel Age of Conan is NOT a good competitive game. AoC was made to be competitive with the PvP focus. They want it to look well here. If it does not, then the rest of the audience may also be seeing that the game is "Not that good"

I know a lot of people who feel just that way.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/191/view/forums/thread/194398

This made me really laugh on the Age of Conan page on XFire:

My guild in AoC had 25-30 of us at the launch day none of us use Xfire. 2weeks ago our guild had to merge with another because we are down to 5 players in our guild of the origional 25-30 players. Now after the merge this guild is dying off also, went from 20-25 online at prime time 2 weeks ago to around 10 - 15 at prime time now. 

Bottom line this game is sinking like a rock.

Originally posted by Guillermo197

This made me really laugh on the Age of Conan page on XFire:

Popular Tags: aoc , conan , age , glitch , fatality , bug , adventures , ageofconan , hyborian , lol

they should add fraud