Originally posted by Alienovrlord

Originally posted by metalhead980

It doesn't really matter, you can't have a million players on a server anyway.

 

Please tell me this  was /sarcasm. 

Uh, pretty sure no game supports one million players on a single server, not even eve online.

Originally posted by Newhopes

Originally posted by Valentina

X-Fire numbers don't mean shit, What like 1/5th of the population might even use that? I don't know anyone who uses X-Fire.

 

I always laugh at people who say xfire doesn't mean anything.How the hell do you think they do polls for elections and things like that do you thing they go around and ask everyone in the country how they're going to vote, of course they don't do that they ask a small number of people often less than 0.01% of the population what there going to do and estimate the results from that small cross section of people and do you know what they get pretty damn close to the results 9 time out of 10.

Xfire works pretty much the same way as the polls it may not be a exact science but it can be used to see general trends in games.

XFire doesn't mean shit. Why? Cause XFire users are highly biased in their use of XFire ie you can start it, and stop it whenever you want, you can only let it collect that data you want it to collect. The poll example you throw around would be equally useless if they only asked, lets say farmers, or fishermen. They don't represent the majority of the population and any poll based on them is inherently flawed.

XFire doesn't work in the same way as polls do, and ain't an exact science and can't be used to see general trends in gaming habits. Only numbers that matter is the numbers the developers and publishers sit on. Rest is spectulation and the numbers can be turned either way when they are that inaccurate.

Polls are seldom accurate anyway. Only politicians, and people with an political agenda care about the polls when they argue about it on all those debate programs. The every day man or woman don't care jack about the polls and answer bullshit when asked just to fuck with the poll takers. I know I do the rare times I get contacted by those jackasses

OP is a bloody troll though with his flamebait thread. As the saying goes, especially in forums, link/picture or it didn't happen.

Originally posted by slask777

Originally posted by Newhopes

Originally posted by Valentina

X-Fire numbers don't mean shit, What like 1/5th of the population might even use that? I don't know anyone who uses X-Fire.

 

I always laugh at people who say xfire doesn't mean anything.How the hell do you think they do polls for elections and things like that do you thing they go around and ask everyone in the country how they're going to vote, of course they don't do that they ask a small number of people often less than 0.01% of the population what there going to do and estimate the results from that small cross section of people and do you know what they get pretty damn close to the results 9 time out of 10.

Xfire works pretty much the same way as the polls it may not be a exact science but it can be used to see general trends in games.

 

XFire doesn't mean shit. Why? Cause XFire users are highly biased in their use of XFire ie you can start it, and stop it whenever you want, you can only let it collect that data you want it to collect. The poll example you throw around would be equally useless if they only asked, lets say farmers, or fishermen. They don't represent the majority of the population and any poll based on them is inherently flawed.

XFire doesn't work in the same way as polls do, and ain't an exact science and can't be used to see general trends in gaming habits. Only numbers that matter is the numbers the developers and publishers sit on. Rest is spectulation and the numbers can be turned either way when they are that inaccurate.

Polls are seldom accurate anyway. Only politicians, and people with an political agenda care about the polls when they argue about it on all those debate programs. The every day man or woman don't care jack about the polls and answer bullshit when asked just to fuck with the poll takers. I know I do the rare times I get contacted by those jackasses

OP is a bloody troll though with his flamebait thread. As the saying goes, especially in forums, link/picture or it didn't happen.

Wrong X-fire is accurate
 

Originally posted by TheBrewer

Originally posted by slask777

Originally posted by Newhopes

Originally posted by Valentina

X-Fire numbers don't mean shit, What like 1/5th of the population might even use that? I don't know anyone who uses X-Fire.

 

I always laugh at people who say xfire doesn't mean anything.How the hell do you think they do polls for elections and things like that do you thing they go around and ask everyone in the country how they're going to vote, of course they don't do that they ask a small number of people often less than 0.01% of the population what there going to do and estimate the results from that small cross section of people and do you know what they get pretty damn close to the results 9 time out of 10.

Xfire works pretty much the same way as the polls it may not be a exact science but it can be used to see general trends in games.

 

XFire doesn't mean shit. Why? Cause XFire users are highly biased in their use of XFire ie you can start it, and stop it whenever you want, you can only let it collect that data you want it to collect. The poll example you throw around would be equally useless if they only asked, lets say farmers, or fishermen. They don't represent the majority of the population and any poll based on them is inherently flawed.

XFire doesn't work in the same way as polls do, and ain't an exact science and can't be used to see general trends in gaming habits. Only numbers that matter is the numbers the developers and publishers sit on. Rest is spectulation and the numbers can be turned either way when they are that inaccurate.

Polls are seldom accurate anyway. Only politicians, and people with an political agenda care about the polls when they argue about it on all those debate programs. The every day man or woman don't care jack about the polls and answer bullshit when asked just to fuck with the poll takers. I know I do the rare times I get contacted by those jackasses

OP is a bloody troll though with his flamebait thread. As the saying goes, especially in forums, link/picture or it didn't happen.

Wrong X-fire is accurate
 

Wow, your argument is well formulated and backed by reason, logic and facts.

That was sarcasm by the way.

      I guess what I find odd is that when I buy a game that has a monthly fee I usually do a little research before I buy......Apparently alot of people just go blindly buying games then if they dont like it they dont subscribe.......Id just as soon save the 50 bucks and not buy the game in that case......As for one million subs, maybe someday but right now I have my doubts.........I was thinking maybe half of that is more accurate.

Originally posted by slask777

XFire doesn't mean shit. Why? Cause XFire users are highly biased in their use of XFire ie you can start it, and stop it whenever you want, you can only let it collect that data you want it to collect.

Irrelevant to polling, you can answer those anytime you want as well and you don't have to answer questions you don't want to

The poll example you throw around would be equally useless if they only asked, lets say farmers, or fishermen. They don't represent the majority of the population and any poll based on them is inherently flawed.

That is the only real flaw of Xfire, it is mostly comprised of Hardcore gamers and guilds. But those are not really any different than the average gamer. They play and quit games for the same reasons as everyone else.

Your Farmer and Fishermen analogy is not accurate... I'd say its more like only polling people between 20-35 years old for an election. It's not a perfect sample but all it does is make the error margin higher

Polls are seldom accurate anyway. Only politicians, and people with an political agenda care about the polls when they argue about it on all those debate programs.

seldom accurate? You obviously never took a Statistics class because they are always within range if you follow the rules and are smart enough to interpret them. The problem is that most people aren't smart enough to do that, its not an insult but a simple fact I learned from that class. Which, btw, had a 69% failure rate in college, more than 2/3 of people who take it fail and the average grade is 51%. Most people in my class were taking it for the 2-3rd time :)

Originally posted by slask777

Originally posted by TheBrewer

Originally posted by slask777

Originally posted by Newhopes

Originally posted by Valentina

X-Fire numbers don't mean shit, What like 1/5th of the population might even use that? I don't know anyone who uses X-Fire.

 

I always laugh at people who say xfire doesn't mean anything.How the hell do you think they do polls for elections and things like that do you thing they go around and ask everyone in the country how they're going to vote, of course they don't do that they ask a small number of people often less than 0.01% of the population what there going to do and estimate the results from that small cross section of people and do you know what they get pretty damn close to the results 9 time out of 10.

Xfire works pretty much the same way as the polls it may not be a exact science but it can be used to see general trends in games.

 

XFire doesn't mean shit. Why? Cause XFire users are highly biased in their use of XFire ie you can start it, and stop it whenever you want, you can only let it collect that data you want it to collect. The poll example you throw around would be equally useless if they only asked, lets say farmers, or fishermen. They don't represent the majority of the population and any poll based on them is inherently flawed.

XFire doesn't work in the same way as polls do, and ain't an exact science and can't be used to see general trends in gaming habits. Only numbers that matter is the numbers the developers and publishers sit on. Rest is spectulation and the numbers can be turned either way when they are that inaccurate.

Polls are seldom accurate anyway. Only politicians, and people with an political agenda care about the polls when they argue about it on all those debate programs. The every day man or woman don't care jack about the polls and answer bullshit when asked just to fuck with the poll takers. I know I do the rare times I get contacted by those jackasses

OP is a bloody troll though with his flamebait thread. As the saying goes, especially in forums, link/picture or it didn't happen.

Wrong X-fire is accurate
 

 

Wow, your argument is well formulated and backed by reason, logic and facts.

That was sarcasm by the way.

Sometimes explaining something for the 100th time is an exercise in futility.

Originally posted by b4t3m4n

And here is a little taste of reality...

 

http://www.xfire.com/games/who/Warhammer_Online_Age_of_Reckoning/

Huahuahua - lol, very good! Thank goodness we have Xfire for a bit of statistical comparison.

Originally posted by Myrdek

Originally posted by slask777

XFire doesn't mean shit. Why? Cause XFire users are highly biased in their use of XFire ie you can start it, and stop it whenever you want, you can only let it collect that data you want it to collect.

Irrelevant to polling, you can answer those anytime you want as well and you don't have to answer questions you don't want to

The poll example you throw around would be equally useless if they only asked, lets say farmers, or fishermen. They don't represent the majority of the population and any poll based on them is inherently flawed.

That is the only real flaw of Xfire, it is mostly comprised of Hardcore gamers and guilds. But those are not really any different than the average gamer. They play and quit games for the same reasons as everyone else.

Your Farmer and Fishermen analogy is not accurate... I'd say its more like only polling people between 20-35 years old for an election. It's not a perfect sample but all it does is make the error margin higher

Polls are seldom accurate anyway. Only politicians, and people with an political agenda care about the polls when they argue about it on all those debate programs.

seldom accurate? You obviously never took a Statistics class because they are always within range if you follow the rules and are smart enough to interpret them. The problem is that most people aren't smart enough to do that, its not an insult but a simple fact I learned from that class. Which, btw, had a 69% failure rate in college, more than 2/3 of people who take it fail and the average grade is 51%. Most people in my class were taking it for the 2-3rd time :)

 

If polls where as accurate as you claim them to be, the political climate in my country would've been quite different. Academics I long time ago learned to take with a grain of salt. They bury themselfes in their books and often forget there is a real world out there. Don't take anything a teacher tells you for granted. They can be wrong as well, so can research done on the matter be. Real world examples and experience have shown us this a thousand times over and over again. Polls are a poor guildeline to anything as they are highly inaccurate, and so is XFire. It just take 1 jackass to to make the poll show wrong values. For example, how many out of 10 000 people do you think is screwing with the poll takers? I know I would be one of them.

I think my farmer and fisherman example is a great example for this, as they are a special interest group, just as XFire users are. Anyway, what the hell am I doing awake at this hour??? I need to get to bed damn it. Time does fly when you're at the computer.

Originally posted by slask777 

If polls where as accurate as you claim them to be, the political climate in my country would've been quite different. Academics I long time ago learned to take with a grain of salt. They bury themselfes in their books and often forget there is a real world out there. Don't take anything a teacher tells you for granted. They can be wrong as well, so can research done on the matter be. Real world examples and experience have shown us this a thousand times over and over again. Polls are a poor guildeline to anything as they are highly inaccurate, and so is XFire. It just take 1 jackass to to make the poll show wrong values. For example, how many out of 10 000 people do you think is screwing with the poll takers? I know I would be one of them.

I think my farmer and fisherman example is a great example for this, as they are a special interest group, just as XFire users are. Anyway, what the hell am I doing awake at this hour??? I need to get to bed damn it. Time does fly when you're at the computer.

Here is real world experience

stolenthunder.blogspot.com/2004/09/poll-accuracy-national.html

Political polls often only take 1-5k people out of 350 millions, its a seriously tiny sample and has a pretty big error margin. That said, they are still very accurate if done right and I have just given you proof

1 jackass to screw up polls? You don't seem to realise that there are around 50 formulas (that i learned) used in statistics to "weed out" those people

XFire cannot be lied to, its a program that does everything automatically. It's not a bunch of people writing down what they played and how many hours, its a computer with no emotions doing it.

Warhammer had 13k people out of a max of 750k accounts logged on at its peak. Thats a freaking huge sample and if it would be a perfect sample, it would have a 0.5% error margin

The only real problem we have is that it only shows a graph of the number of hours, not the amount of users. You'd have to write the number of people everyday yourself to truly be accurate

If polls are not accurate then why does every politician, company (games companies too) do it? Do you really think they'd waste money doing them if they weren't useful? Why was it a mandatory class when I was studying computer programming in college?

yes, when Warhammer gets up to 1 or 1.5 million subscribers, I will get back into this game and if it doesn't reach that then this game is simply a waste of time

Originally posted by Xenosaiyan

yes, when Warhammer gets up to 1 or 1.5 million subscribers, I will get back into this game and if it doesn't reach that then this game is simply a waste of time

No western MMO to date has EVER achieved that many subs in under 60 days

750K subscribers no one has ever reached that either but there's more and more mmoers these days

Originally posted by Xenosaiyan

750K subscribers no one has ever reached that either but there's more and more mmoers these days

more and more mmoers spread over more and more games -- your point sir ?

Originally posted by Xenosaiyan

750K subscribers no one has ever reached that either but there's more and more mmoers these days

750k accounts created actually. Which , by now probably will at least be 750k sold, however that still doesn't mean there's 750k subs, it's actually very unlikely unless they got somewhere near or over a million sold by now. (considering players who cancel)

Originally posted by teiohFromSWG

It was just announced that WAR has 1 million CURRENT SUBSCRIBERS. This does not include any canceled/banned accounts or accounts in their first free month. This only includes accounts which have been subscribed after their free month and are as of the announcement, still active.

Bullcrap.  Unless all the million subscribers were playing on different servers to me.   If you said that 10% played at any given time  (which is very low) That would average around say 8-10k players playing at any given time on each server?  So you can see how some of us may be a little negative about that kind of announcement.  

whatever, if WAR wants to reach WoW's level....... there is a long run

Originally posted by Azrile

Originally posted by Dreamagram

I'd call the comment from MJ about concurrency only dropping 3% a smoke screen. The concurrency has no relevance in this case, as - like some already said - the people who didn't subscribe after the free month already stopped playing. Presenting such an irrelevant number as great news has me worried about what the real numbers show.

I hope the numbers are good though. I really hope WAR does very well. But this kind of comment from the CEO makes me think it unfortunately doesn't. :-(

 

Thats one of the things that bugs me about MJ..   He is very deceitful.  Not as much as AOC... but just in the way he twists things. 

1.  He says they can't give subscriber information because of being a publicly traded company - This is false.. Blizzard is a publicly traded company and in July gave the 10.7M number and in Jan gave the 10.0 number.  He then gives stuff like the 3% number and lets the reader 'assume' that retention rate was really high.

Yes, in July and Jan SEC filings, then press release...EA didn't do an October SEC fiiling last I checked so they can't do an October press release with that kind of information.

2. He chooses to give the numbers that aren't very descriptive -   He gave 750k accounts created, which deceptively includes people who preordered, created an account, but never bought the game.  Why not give total game sales? Other companies have done it and it must be a fairly easy number for them to get  Blizzard announced they sold 2.4M copies of BC in one day only a few days later.   Instead, MJ used 'accounts created' and implies it means 'games sold'.

Blizzard's numbers were equaly deceptive; they mixed Asian/NA/EU numbers all together which tells you nothing about their revenue since Asian players don't provide them with anything close to the revenue that NA and EU do.

At this point, Xfire and Amazon sales charts are probably more accurate then the spin that MJ is using.  The point is, if he had good numbers, he would use them.  The fact that he is using vague or misleading numbers is an indication that the real numbers (box sales, subscribers) aren't very good.

Originally posted by Kokushibyou

Originally posted by Azrile

Originally posted by Dreamagram

I'd call the comment from MJ about concurrency only dropping 3% a smoke screen. The concurrency has no relevance in this case, as - like some already said - the people who didn't subscribe after the free month already stopped playing. Presenting such an irrelevant number as great news has me worried about what the real numbers show.

I hope the numbers are good though. I really hope WAR does very well. But this kind of comment from the CEO makes me think it unfortunately doesn't. :-(

 

Thats one of the things that bugs me about MJ..   He is very deceitful.  Not as much as AOC... but just in the way he twists things. 

1.  He says they can't give subscriber information because of being a publicly traded company - This is false.. Blizzard is a publicly traded company and in July gave the 10.7M number and in Jan gave the 10.0 number.  He then gives stuff like the 3% number and lets the reader 'assume' that retention rate was really high.

Yes, in July and Jan SEC filings, then press release...EA didn't do an October SEC fiiling last I checked so they can't do an October press release with that kind of information.

2. He chooses to give the numbers that aren't very descriptive -   He gave 750k accounts created, which deceptively includes people who preordered, created an account, but never bought the game.  Why not give total game sales? Other companies have done it and it must be a fairly easy number for them to get  Blizzard announced they sold 2.4M copies of BC in one day only a few days later.   Instead, MJ used 'accounts created' and implies it means 'games sold'.

Blizzard's numbers were equaly deceptive; they mixed Asian/NA/EU numbers all together which tells you nothing about their revenue since Asian players don't provide them with anything close to the revenue that NA and EU do.

At this point, Xfire and Amazon sales charts are probably more accurate then the spin that MJ is using.  The point is, if he had good numbers, he would use them.  The fact that he is using vague or misleading numbers is an indication that the real numbers (box sales, subscribers) aren't very good.

 

No offence... but I care way more about the number of people that play the game per month (which Blizzard's method described just fine) than how much revenue they get from that, which all turns into guesswork anyway since we don't even know how much they actually have in costs and expenses and how much ends up being profit.

All i expect/want from companies is to be upfront about how many people are playing their game. Should it really matter? To an extent yes since I can at least predict the kind of support I can expect or longevity based on game health and financial health.

Should it matter to me personally in game? Not one iota but then don't give out deceiving numbers either because well, numbers attract my attention, that's why I liked the rpg genre to begin with (although unfortunately it's disappearing out of it :( )

EA/Mythic, so far has only given us    "accounts created", fair enough, their free month wasn't even over yet, there aren't really that many significant numbers to give so at least they gave us something. I would to be honest have preferred  ""boxes sold" as we can all tell the accounts created number is kind of deceptive as it does not necessarily equal the number of boxes sold.

They'll probably argue boxes sold falls under the same mysterious   ""We can't tell you because of EA"" thing, which I somehow doubt as EA's other games seem to have no problem giving out those numbers. It's probably more along the lines of ""We can't tell you unless EA allows us to tell you"" which can be conveniently phrased differently to allow them to not have to name the numbers.

I  think they'll come with some new numbers soon though, although depending on the good or the bad result the game has had so far it will probably be *subscriptions* IF it's a good result (meaning anywhere near or over the 750k) or *accounts created*  IF the sub numbers have been less say 500k, which would not necessarily be a bad number considering the 750k accounts but it *could* give the (right or wrong) impression that the game hasn't particularly grown since their announcement of that number either.

I don't think they'll want to name subs under 500k because I think that would give a negative vibe to the people that heard 750k first and then the second number, no matter *how* unrelated both those numbers are because unconsciously a *lot* of people will give that a negative connotation, especially people that don't forum dwell like the rest of us.

Originally posted by Pheace

Originally posted by Kokushibyou

Originally posted by Azrile

Originally posted by Dreamagram

I'd call the comment from MJ about concurrency only dropping 3% a smoke screen. The concurrency has no relevance in this case, as - like some already said - the people who didn't subscribe after the free month already stopped playing. Presenting such an irrelevant number as great news has me worried about what the real numbers show.

I hope the numbers are good though. I really hope WAR does very well. But this kind of comment from the CEO makes me think it unfortunately doesn't. :-(

 

Thats one of the things that bugs me about MJ..   He is very deceitful.  Not as much as AOC... but just in the way he twists things. 

1.  He says they can't give subscriber information because of being a publicly traded company - This is false.. Blizzard is a publicly traded company and in July gave the 10.7M number and in Jan gave the 10.0 number.  He then gives stuff like the 3% number and lets the reader 'assume' that retention rate was really high.

Yes, in July and Jan SEC filings, then press release...EA didn't do an October SEC fiiling last I checked so they can't do an October press release with that kind of information.

2. He chooses to give the numbers that aren't very descriptive -   He gave 750k accounts created, which deceptively includes people who preordered, created an account, but never bought the game.  Why not give total game sales? Other companies have done it and it must be a fairly easy number for them to get  Blizzard announced they sold 2.4M copies of BC in one day only a few days later.   Instead, MJ used 'accounts created' and implies it means 'games sold'.

Blizzard's numbers were equaly deceptive; they mixed Asian/NA/EU numbers all together which tells you nothing about their revenue since Asian players don't provide them with anything close to the revenue that NA and EU do.

At this point, Xfire and Amazon sales charts are probably more accurate then the spin that MJ is using.  The point is, if he had good numbers, he would use them.  The fact that he is using vague or misleading numbers is an indication that the real numbers (box sales, subscribers) aren't very good.

 

 

No offence... but I care way more about the number of people that play the game per month (which Blizzard's method described just fine) than how much revenue they get from that, which all turns into guesswork anyway since we don't even know how much they actually have in costs and expenses and how much ends up being profit.

 

All i expect/want from companies is to be upfront about how many people are playing their game. Should it really matter? To an extent yes since I can at least predict the kind of support I can expect or longevity based on game health and financial health.

LOL, you just contradicted yourself; you say you don't care about revenue but then go on to say you can predict the kind of support you can get based on financial health!  Duh, revenue is going to predict financial health better than subscriber numbers.

Should it matter to me personally in game? Not one iota but then don't give out deceiving numbers either because well, numbers attract my attention, that's why I liked the rpg genre to begin with (although unfortunately it's disappearing out of it :( )

EA/Mythic, so far has only given us    "accounts created", fair enough, their free month wasn't even over yet, there aren't really that many significant numbers to give so at least they gave us something. I would to be honest have preferred  ""boxes sold" as we can all tell the accounts created number is kind of deceptive as it does not necessarily equal the number of boxes sold.

Actualy, accounts created will tell you a lot more.  Boxes sold numbers from EA (or any publisher) is the number of boxes they shipped to stores, since the publisher sells to stores not consumers.  Accounts created tells you how many boxes were bought, loaded onto a PC and used to play the game.

They'll probably argue boxes sold falls under the same mysterious   ""We can't tell you because of EA"" thing, which I somehow doubt as EA's other games seem to have no problem giving out those numbers. It's probably more along the lines of ""We can't tell you unless EA allows us to tell you"" which can be conveniently phrased differently to allow them to not have to name the numbers.

 

I  think they'll come with some new numbers soon though, although depending on the good or the bad result the game has had so far it will probably be *subscriptions* IF it's a good result (meaning anywhere near or over the 750k) or *accounts created*  IF the sub numbers have been less say 500k, which would not necessarily be a bad number considering the 750k accounts but it *could* give the (right or wrong) impression that the game hasn't particularly grown since their announcement of that number either.

 

I don't think they'll want to name subs under 500k because I think that would give a negative vibe to the people that heard 750k first and then the second number, no matter *how* unrelated both those numbers are because unconsciously a *lot* of people will give that a negative connotation, especially people that don't forum dwell like the rest of us.