Originally posted by Myrdek

Originally posted by Thachsanh 

You see, it's a guess. You actually have no base to call him a liar. Remember in the earning conference and MJ himself said the conversion rate was higher than 70%. They did not say it equal to 70%, yet you made it equal to 70% and call him a liar.

Next itme, chose your word carefully.

 

Actually hes still lying in the sense that he said that sales had been tremendous. That would imply that their at expection levels or higher, and their not. No one would mention server merges if it was the case. Of course, its not a "real" lie, its just the usual marketing, everything is rosy, stuff :)

But yes, I already backtracked on the 70%, it was my mistake. I didn't pay enough attention to my own statement and didn't see it was 70%+

The only one (purposedly or not, but judging byu the stubborness with which you're defending your educated guesses like they were fact, it definately seems intentional) spreading misinformation is you.

The 1.2 millions figure being sales to customers is the ONLY logical explanation, since it was stated quite clearly in an official communicate that the sell-in (sales to retailers) was 1.5 millions. No copy got "returned" by retailers. It doesn't even work like that. So 1.2 millions is obviously the sell-trough (copies sold to customers) numbers.

And that number is very realistic, because in this kind of report, despite them being relative to period that's relative to Q2, it's common practice to use PRESENT numbers at the moment of publishing, not at the moment of the expiration of Q2, for several reasons, expecially if release has been very near to the end of the quarter. Publishing numbers of sales (and even more account retention) in an earning report for just two weeks would be meaningless, and detrimental for the perception of the investors. The 1.2 millions box sales (and the 800000 active accounts) obviously refer to the sales to customers as of october 30th (or max a few days before), when the document has been published.

You don't work on marketing and admit having no experience in the field whatsoever, so maybe you shouldn't call people liars over your layman's educated guesses.

And yes, calling sales "absolutely fabulous" is definately appropriate, wheter you like it or not. In the PC market, 1.2 millions sell-through in little more than a month is most definately a very, very high number, which very few games (and even less MMORPGs) can boast.

Bottomline: Mark Jacobs didn't lie, you have absolutely no element to disprove what he says, and you seem to very intent in feeding us your educated guesses like they were fact (and they aren't), which is clear cut misinformation.

You didn't have to post on 2 forums., I already answered you on VNBoards

I post anywhere you try to spread your misinformation.

You can continue stubbornly defending your educated guesses as much as you want, but it's pretty clear that it doesn't stand:
http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080915005624&newsLang=en

This official press release explicitly states: "Overall, the company has sold 1.5 million units of WAR to retailers."

Can't get more clear than that, and since numbers don't go backwards, and retailers don't go around sending copies back to the publisher, the 1.2 millions figure can only be units sold to customers. There's no other option.

You mean that You don't want to see the other options

I'm not biased, I don't care either way. I just want to know the truth

If you prove me wrong then I'll gladly concede, I've done so with MJ earlier with the retention rate and I have no problem accepting my mistakes

Abriael and Myrdek;

So much energy for just a futile matter.

To me it's easy: as long as EA (I understand more and more these days why so much gamers don't like the company) doesn't publish the word "subscribers" in their report AND give a good definition of what is exactly a subscriber - just like some other company does - it is VERY clear both MJ and EA are playing a "word game".

The report is about the quarter results that ended on Sep 30th. Period. NO other information in that report can be considered valuable from a bookkeeping record.

So here are facts:

MJ talked first about "over 750K accounts created" at that time. Fact.

MJ said at launch - after 24 hours - they had 500 K "accounts created".  Sep 19th. Fact.

In the report : EA boasted it had added an extra 250K in 2 weeks. Fact
 

So I add it all up: and the situation on Sep 30th we had "over500K" + 250 K (according to their own sources). So where do the 1.2 million sales come in out of nothing ?????

It's easy: on Sep 30, just like EA stated in its quarter that ended Sep 30th, it had "800K players". They couldn't say more because the EU still was on playing for free thanks to the GOA guys.

Now the discussion is all about 1.2 Million EA boasted. THOSE are clearly SOLD units for EA as they are in their bookkeeping for that quarter, BUT it CLEARLY is in conflict with the 800K "players" thing, because that would mean the guys that bought the game (400K) hadn't even created an account to log on.

The reasoning is very simple: those extra 400K weren't WITH the players yet, because NOT counted on the "accounts created" on Sep 30th.

--------------------------------

Now to further put pressure on this theory : let's have some looks at THEIR own information.

EA clearly said (and MJ was clearly full of it) that NO other game - sorry EA game - ever had more copies shipped to dealers like War did in advance.. Check.

So WHY did PC Spore outsell Warhammer by a VERY wide margin: 2.000.000 million copies in that same 14 days period. You CAN NOT print another run in merely 14 days in this industry. Very very odd. It takes almost a month before having another "gone gold".

Now let's add some third party TRUTH into the discussion:

Here's the PC bestsellers list from Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/videogames/229575/ref=pd_nr_vg_mte

The last time I checked WAR is on ...70(!) something while Spore is on ...postition ... 4,  meaning more than 70 PC(!) products are outselling this "fabulous" PC game bestseller at the moment....

So I suppose ALL those 70+ PC games are selling into the millions? Of course not.

The famous comments of MJ behind all this, show me a man that is not capable of leading a company like Mythic (saying that he could go to prison if he would lie etc ...) Just childish.

And as you both don't accept www.xfire.com : well that's just your opinion.

---

I would VERY MUCH like to see both MJ and EA come out of this mess they created themselves in their NEXT financial report of the last quarter. Because be assured: explaining HOW they came up with 250K subs on their next quarter, coming from 800K will be a very interesting semantic excercise. And still not even talking of the dramatic drop in sales.

I say I am VERY happy with tools like Xfire and amazon.com: they show what game companies like to hide. But today we can check them. The WHOLE community condemned FUNCOM for lying about it. WHY is Mythic and EA still defended???

And I am very glad I can have this info as a gamer btw.

Looking past the sales numbers, there are other figures and commentary that is interesting. I take no credit for this, it's from http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/ but it's an interesting read nonetheless.

"Now, onto the operating loss. Here's the actual breakdown, and it's kinda interesting:
Three Months Ended September 302008 Net loss $ (310)
Change in deferred net revenue (packaged goods and digital content) 232
COGS amortization of intangibles 4
Amortization of intangibles 16
Stock-based compensation 53
Restructuring charges 3
Losses on strategic investments 34
Certain abandoned acquisition-related costs 21
Income tax adjustments (73)

The most interesting bit is highlighted in bold: $232m in 'Change in deferred net revenue.' If you look at the 6 month numbers, though, it's only $37m. So they'd booked some deferred revenue last quarter, and had to write off an enormous amount of it this quarter. Whatever could this be? Here's what the accompanying release has to say about this:
"Change in Deferred Net Revenue (Packaged Goods and Digital Content). Beginning in fiscal 2008, Electronic Arts was no longer able to objectively determine the fair value of the online service included in certain of its packaged goods games and online content. As a result, the Company began recognizing the revenue from the sale of these games and content over the estimated online service period. Although Electronic Arts defers the recognition of a significant portion of its net revenue as a result of this change, there has been no adverse impact to its operating cash flow. Internally, Electronic Arts' management excludes the impact of the change in deferred net revenue related to packaged goods games and digital content in its non-GAAP financial measures when evaluating the Company's operating performance, when planning, forecasting and analyzing future periods, and when assessing the performance of its management team. The Company believes that excluding the impact of the change in deferred net revenue from its operating results is important to facilitate comparisons to prior periods during which the Company was able to objectively determine the fair value of the online service and not delay the recognition of significant amounts of net revenue related to online-enabled packaged goods."

So I can't be 100% sure, but this almost certainly means that they've written off a ton of revenue they expected to get long term from Warhammer Online. It sold like gangbusters at release, but has been really poorly received since."
 

Essentially, it's quite possible that War isn't as big as EA had hoped it would be, hence the massive write-off. For a company to do that and, as a result, showing a huge hit on its 3Q report is pretty significant. Sure, perhaps EA overestimated how popular War might be but it's quite possibly an indication that all isn't well.

For the record, I played War but couldn't get into it. It felt like a major timesink disguised as PvP but it got boring when all I seemed to be doing was grinding scenarios. And yes, this is my first post ever on these boards but this topic has been an interesting one for me to follow.

What I see from all that is EA launched WAR too early and compromised its future (WAR's) in order to get a not-so-bad quarterly result.

Well, I suppose it's OK if a few more people could continue working in EA thanks to that. Or maybe the sacrifice has been too big.

Originally posted by Myrdek

You mean that You don't want to see the other options

 

I'm not biased, I don't care either way. I just want to know the truth

If you prove me wrong then I'll gladly concede, I've done so with MJ earlier with the retention rate and I have no problem accepting my mistakes

Oh but I already did. They announced 1.500.000 copies sold to retailers. Written very clearly in an official press release. A publicly traded company cannot release this kind of data if it isn't completely true, unless they want to undergo some serious legal problems.

This means that 300.000 copies cannot just "disappear". Your theory about them beiong "sent back" is honestly laughable.

Unfortunately your theory has so many gaping holes that it's actually too long to list them all, bottomline, With 750k copies sold to customers basically in one week, and the game staying over the top 5 in NPD sales charts for the rest of september, and the whole month of october, it's actually completely unrealistic (to the point that it's silly) to argue that it might have sold to customers less than 1,2 millions.

Originally posted by tirallum

What I see from all that is EA launched WAR too early and compromised its future (WAR's) in order to get a not-so-bad quarterly result.

Well, I suppose it's OK if a few more people could continue working in EA thanks to that. Or maybe the sacrifice has been too big.

Considering that WAR has had one of the smoothest and most bug-free launches in the last few years, and packs more content than any other mmo at the time of it's release, it's pretty evident that the game wasn't launched too early. Reading about "compromised future" honestly makes me giggle.

@Strategy: The 1.200.000 figure doesn't conflict at all with the 800.000 figure. The first is sales, the second is account retention after the first tree month. It doesn't mean players bought the game and didn't subscribe. It just means that those 800.000 players retained their sub when the published data was collected.

Also, are you really using amazon as your source of data (by the way, warhammer is on 51 now in that chart, not on 70, and that counts only the standard edition, not the CE)? because honestly that's pretty off-base. It just counts Amazon sales.

If you were to believe amazon, Warhammer Online is holding exceptionally well against WOTLK in comparison (as shown here), and anyone that can compare the massive wow userbase with warhammer knows that the percentages shown cannot be related to the overall reality of sales between WOTLK and Warhammer.

Considering that WAR has had one of the smoothest and most bug-free launches in the last few years, and packs more content than any other mmo at the time of it's release, it's pretty evident that the game wasn't launched too early. Reading about "compromised future" honestly makes me giggle.

Truth. How quickly we forget AoC and disasters like the SWG launch.

WAR had a great launch, and we knew that they sold over a million copies ages ago. Stop pretending there's a big conspiracy. EA isn't Funcom.

Originally posted by law90026

Looking past the sales numbers, there are other figures and commentary that is interesting. I take no credit for this, it's from http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/ but it's an interesting read nonetheless.

"Now, onto the operating loss. Here's the actual breakdown, and it's kinda interesting:
Three Months Ended September 302008 Net loss $ (310)
Change in deferred net revenue (packaged goods and digital content) 232
COGS amortization of intangibles 4
Amortization of intangibles 16
Stock-based compensation 53
Restructuring charges 3
Losses on strategic investments 34
Certain abandoned acquisition-related costs 21
Income tax adjustments (73)

The most interesting bit is highlighted in bold: $232m in 'Change in deferred net revenue.' If you look at the 6 month numbers, though, it's only $37m. So they'd booked some deferred revenue last quarter, and had to write off an enormous amount of it this quarter. Whatever could this be? Here's what the accompanying release has to say about this:
"Change in Deferred Net Revenue (Packaged Goods and Digital Content). Beginning in fiscal 2008, Electronic Arts was no longer able to objectively determine the fair value of the online service included in certain of its packaged goods games and online content. As a result, the Company began recognizing the revenue from the sale of these games and content over the estimated online service period. Although Electronic Arts defers the recognition of a significant portion of its net revenue as a result of this change, there has been no adverse impact to its operating cash flow. Internally, Electronic Arts' management excludes the impact of the change in deferred net revenue related to packaged goods games and digital content in its non-GAAP financial measures when evaluating the Company's operating performance, when planning, forecasting and analyzing future periods, and when assessing the performance of its management team. The Company believes that excluding the impact of the change in deferred net revenue from its operating results is important to facilitate comparisons to prior periods during which the Company was able to objectively determine the fair value of the online service and not delay the recognition of significant amounts of net revenue related to online-enabled packaged goods."

So I can't be 100% sure, but this almost certainly means that they've written off a ton of revenue they expected to get long term from Warhammer Online. It sold like gangbusters at release, but has been really poorly received since."
 

Essentially, it's quite possible that War isn't as big as EA had hoped it would be, hence the massive write-off. For a company to do that and, as a result, showing a huge hit on its 3Q report is pretty significant. Sure, perhaps EA overestimated how popular War might be but it's quite possibly an indication that all isn't well.

For the record, I played War but couldn't get into it. It felt like a major timesink disguised as PvP but it got boring when all I seemed to be doing was grinding scenarios. And yes, this is my first post ever on these boards but this topic has been an interesting one for me to follow.

I think this is a bomb. In plain English it says that EA has an EXTRA loss of 195 million(!) US dollars calculated because they can no longer determine the fair value (revenus) of the online services they estimated for the future. While initially they had previewed a loss of ...37 million, they raised it to 232 million... in the last quarter.

What OTHER ON line game was launched in the last quarter ... and corrections had to be made in (over estimation) this field by EA.

It's a legal practice, but it explains it all. Even the downgrade of first 1.5 million shipped copies to retailers to 1.2 million is explained by it.

So puzzle solved. All figures are correct and the OP was right. Grtz  OP.

well serval friends of mine from warcraft just came over to warhammer and all agree its better for pvp . its important to remember a lot of people dont buy a game for the first two-three months so they can read review , some will wait for a free trial . the thing is warhammer is just as good as warcraft was when it first was released . its a good strong game its addictive and its a lot of fun and no amount of trolling in forrums will hide that .

if you have any doubts wait for a buddy key or a free trial . i m betting once such this are available and wow players get bored with the lich king content that warhammer will pick up a lot of players from them .

nothing wrong with warhammer its not a mess like age of conan or vanguard and its not a decent niche game like lord of the rings.

this is the most accessable mmo since wow and its going to be extremly popular . its a winner .

Originally posted by googajoob7

well serval friends of mine from warcraft just came over to warhammer and all agree its better for pvp . its important to remember a lot of people dont buy a game for the first two-three months so they can read review , some will wait for a free trial . the thing is warhammer is just as good as warcraft was when it first was released . its a good strong game its addictive and its a lot of fun and no amount of trolling in forrums will hide that .

if you have any doubts wait for a buddy key or a free trial . i m betting once such this are available and wow players get bored with the lich king content that warhammer will pick up a lot of players from them .

nothing wrong with warhammer its not a mess like age of conan or vanguard and its not a decent niche game like lord of the rings.

this is the most accessable mmo since wow and its going to be extremly popular . its a winner .

So that's why EA already added an extra loss of 195 million dollars in its 3rd quarter for the estimated loss of revenues in on line gaming ?? Overshadowing any of your "prognoses" isn't it ?

I say this is THE bomb for Mythic and EA.

bodypass, you know that EA has TONS of online services (and that includes digitally distributed goods), from which that statement can come? Attributing it to warhammer online is completely laughable.

Bomb defused (no need actually, it was a dud). You're wrong, OP is massively wrong. End of story.

It's so fun to witness the absolute cluelessness of doomsayers.

Originally posted by SignusM

Considering that WAR has had one of the smoothest and most bug-free launches in the last few years, and packs more content than any other mmo at the time of it's release, it's pretty evident that the game wasn't launched too early. Reading about "compromised future" honestly makes me giggle.

 

Truth. How quickly we forget AoC and disasters like the SWG launch.

WAR had a great launch, and we knew that they sold over a million copies ages ago. Stop pretending there's a big conspiracy. EA isn't Funcom.

   Since War has had one of the most successful launches in MMO history and is growing, a lot of people are seeing War as a threat (and rightly so) to pull subscribers from their favorite MMO. So we are going to see a lot people spreading misinformation and starting crazy conspiracy theories to try and limit the damage War is causing to their favorite MMO.

Originally posted by bodypass

Originally posted by law90026

Looking past the sales numbers, there are other figures and commentary that is interesting. I take no credit for this, it's from http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/ but it's an interesting read nonetheless.

"Now, onto the operating loss. Here's the actual breakdown, and it's kinda interesting:
Three Months Ended September 302008 Net loss $ (310)
Change in deferred net revenue (packaged goods and digital content) 232
COGS amortization of intangibles 4
Amortization of intangibles 16
Stock-based compensation 53
Restructuring charges 3
Losses on strategic investments 34
Certain abandoned acquisition-related costs 21
Income tax adjustments (73)

The most interesting bit is highlighted in bold: $232m in 'Change in deferred net revenue.' If you look at the 6 month numbers, though, it's only $37m. So they'd booked some deferred revenue last quarter, and had to write off an enormous amount of it this quarter. Whatever could this be? Here's what the accompanying release has to say about this:
"Change in Deferred Net Revenue (Packaged Goods and Digital Content). Beginning in fiscal 2008, Electronic Arts was no longer able to objectively determine the fair value of the online service included in certain of its packaged goods games and online content. As a result, the Company began recognizing the revenue from the sale of these games and content over the estimated online service period. Although Electronic Arts defers the recognition of a significant portion of its net revenue as a result of this change, there has been no adverse impact to its operating cash flow. Internally, Electronic Arts' management excludes the impact of the change in deferred net revenue related to packaged goods games and digital content in its non-GAAP financial measures when evaluating the Company's operating performance, when planning, forecasting and analyzing future periods, and when assessing the performance of its management team. The Company believes that excluding the impact of the change in deferred net revenue from its operating results is important to facilitate comparisons to prior periods during which the Company was able to objectively determine the fair value of the online service and not delay the recognition of significant amounts of net revenue related to online-enabled packaged goods."

So I can't be 100% sure, but this almost certainly means that they've written off a ton of revenue they expected to get long term from Warhammer Online. It sold like gangbusters at release, but has been really poorly received since."
 

Essentially, it's quite possible that War isn't as big as EA had hoped it would be, hence the massive write-off. For a company to do that and, as a result, showing a huge hit on its 3Q report is pretty significant. Sure, perhaps EA overestimated how popular War might be but it's quite possibly an indication that all isn't well.

For the record, I played War but couldn't get into it. It felt like a major timesink disguised as PvP but it got boring when all I seemed to be doing was grinding scenarios. And yes, this is my first post ever on these boards but this topic has been an interesting one for me to follow.

 

I think this is a bomb. In plain English it says that EA has an EXTRA loss of 195 million(!) US dollars calculated because they can no longer determine the fair value (revenus) of the online services they estimated for the future. While initially they had previewed a loss of ...37 million, they raised it to 232 million... in the last quarter.

What OTHER ON line game was launched in the last quarter ... and corrections had to be made in (over estimation) this field by EA.

It's a legal practice, but it explains it all. Even the downgrade of first 1.5 million shipped copies to retailers to 1.2 million is explained by it.

So puzzle solved. All figures are correct and the OP was right. Grtz  OP.

Wow. People are stupid.

I think we are all forgetting EA is a MASSIVE company. Warhammer is just a ripple in the pond.

Originally posted by Abriael

bodypass, you know that EA has TONS of online services (and that includes digitally distributed goods), from which that statement can come? Attributing it to warhammer online is completely laughable.

Bomb defused (no need actually, it was a dud). You're wrong, OP is massively wrong. End of story.

Well my dear, that statement comes from EA itself. A Blogger just happened to stumble upon it. Read the source.

As the 195 million extra losses (coming from no longer expected revenus in the field of on line gaming) were added in the last quarter, the analist clearly said they were just recently added...

EA only had ONE new online MMO launched, so the explanation is there already. Now we finally understand why 1.5 million is now 1.2M sold to retailers and WHY the low/low servers are showing up AND of course the XFire show a downfall as big as AoC had.

Again THIS monday Xfire stats show that WAR has 20% LESS players than a week ago on monday. 20% less players in ONE week and half of the servers on low

.....and EA substracting an extra 195 million dollars in their prediction on on - line revenues....

If THIS doesn't all convince you. Well good luck. But all of the other readers over here can draw up their own conclusions.

Originally posted by Abriael

bodypass, you know that EA has TONS of online services (and that includes digitally distributed goods), from which that statement can come? Attributing it to warhammer online is completely laughable.

Bomb defused (no need actually, it was a dud). You're wrong, OP is massively wrong. End of story.

It's so fun to witness the absolute cluelessness of doomsayers.

LOL you know whats fun? watching you run around like a chicken with his head cut off all over this post! best part of my day man.

In the end I thought Warhammer was pretty poor for me, I dropped the game and unistalled after 2 weeks, but thats my taste not everyone elses. Honestly I dont give a rats behind how many subs the MMO I play has, unless it creates a real population problem. At the moment, im not subbed to any mmo, none of the new ones have had anything to offer me thats been very interesting or grabbed my attention for very long. Im sure once the new Star Wars MMO comes out i'll finaly be able to get back to one of the only MMO ip's that have given me any kind of satisfaction for my monthly subscription. PEACE!

What, so now not being completely insane is the same as "running around like a chicken with your head cut off"?

Originally posted by bodypass

Well my dear, that statement comes from EA itself. A Blogger just happened to stumble upon it. Read the source.

As the 195 million extra losses (coming from no longer expected revenus in the field of on line gaming) were added in the last quarter, the analist clearly said they were just recently added...

EA only had ONE new online MMO launched, so the explanation is there already. Now we finally understand why 1.5 million is now 1.2M sold to retailers and WHY the low/low servers are showing up AND of course the XFire show a downfall as big as AoC had.

Again THIS monday Xfire stats show that WAR has 20% LESS players than a week ago on monday. 20% less players in ONE week and half of the servers on low

.....and EA substracting an extra 195 million dollars in their prediction on on - line revenues....

If THIS doesn't all convince you. Well good luck. But all of the other readers over here can draw up their own conclusions. 

You seriously understand nothing lol. EA has a massive array of digitally distributed and online services, Warhammer Online is a drop in that ocean. Also, 1.5 millions sold to retailers (just before release, and it means that the product was ready for shipping already) do NOT turn into 1.2 millions. videogame retailers don't "return" merchandise, 300.000 already sold copies don't just disappear, despite what headless doomsayers like you would desire. 

And just LOL at xfire. Even not considering that those numbers have very little touch with reality (being an opt-in pollling for which you have to download and use a software) if not supported by hard data, which you don't have. People pulling xfire numbers out of their rear normally forget to do make appropriate comparisons.

In the xfire charts, the next subscription based MMO is LOTRO, with less than one third hours played a day that warhammer. And LOTRO is a very healthy MMO with a solid userase. Warhammer Online is played (by xfire users) three times as much as LOTRO, so here's you're little doomsayer speech collapsing. Bye bye.

Originally posted by Ixnatifual

What, so now not being completely insane is the same as "running around like a chicken with your head cut off"?

Don't worry, trolls are like that :D

Originally posted by Abriael

Oh but I already did. They announced 1.500.000 copies sold to retailers. Written very clearly in an official press release. A publicly traded company cannot release this kind of data if it isn't completely true, unless they want to undergo some serious legal problems.

This means that 300.000 copies cannot just "disappear". Your theory about them beiong "sent back" is honestly laughable.

Unfortunately your theory has so many gaping holes that it's actually too long to list them all, bottomline, With 750k copies sold to customers basically in one week, and the game staying over the top 5 in NPD sales charts for the rest of september, and the whole month of october, it's actually completely unrealistic (to the point that it's silly) to argue that it might have sold to customers less than 1,2 millions.

Not really, the X-fire statistic is not a perfect way to measure numbers of players but it does give a good hint on how a game is doing. If war have sold so many more accounts the turnover must be incredible high since people play it less.

That is a possibility off course, maybe they sold 1,2 millions but in that case the game is dropping a lot faster than I thought. That is not good news but bad, I was hoping they had stopped losing players but if what you say is true the are both gaining and losing a lot of players at the same time. Sales can't keep that up on the long run so I really hope you are wrong and that the current number of players are there from start and have decided to stay.

But there is something fishy about those numbers, we must have missed something here...

Originally posted by Abriael

And just LOL at xfire. Even not considering that those numbers have very little touch with reality (being an opt-in pollling for which you have to download and use a software) if not supported by hard data, which you don't have. People pulling xfire numbers out of their rear normally forget to do make appropriate comparisons.

In the xfire charts, the next subscription based MMO is LOTRO, with less than one third hours played a day that warhammer. And LOTRO is a very healthy MMO with a solid userase. Warhammer Online is played (by xfire users) three times as much as LOTRO, so here's you're little doomsayer speech collapsing. Bye bye.

It is true, X-fire numbers are not exact. And comparing a PvP game like WAR with a PvE game is worthless, you can only compare WAR with WAR.

And LOTRO ain't doing that well BTW. A lot of empty servers there.

But really, would they have so empty servers in WAR that forced Mythic to give away free transfers to the low one if the game sold really well? I have no grudge against Mythic but you ain't closing servers on a game that sells really great.

Originally posted by Ixnatifual

What, so now not being completely insane is the same as "running around like a chicken with your head cut off"?

Posting about every second message in a thread is what I call running around liek a chicken with your head cut off, as well as aparently following someone to another forum as well LOL priceless.

Originally posted by Abriael

Originally posted by bodypass

Well my dear, that statement comes from EA itself. A Blogger just happened to stumble upon it. Read the source.

As the 195 million extra losses (coming from no longer expected revenus in the field of on line gaming) were added in the last quarter, the analist clearly said they were just recently added...

EA only had ONE new online MMO launched, so the explanation is there already. Now we finally understand why 1.5 million is now 1.2M sold to retailers and WHY the low/low servers are showing up AND of course the XFire show a downfall as big as AoC had.

Again THIS monday Xfire stats show that WAR has 20% LESS players than a week ago on monday. 20% less players in ONE week and half of the servers on low

.....and EA substracting an extra 195 million dollars in their prediction on on - line revenues....

If THIS doesn't all convince you. Well good luck. But all of the other readers over here can draw up their own conclusions. 

 

You seriously understand nothing lol. EA has a massive array of digitally distributed and online services, Warhammer Online is a drop in that ocean. Also, 1.5 millions sold to retailers (just before release, and it means that the product was ready for shipping already) do NOT turn into 1.2 millions. videogame retailers don't "return" merchandise, 300.000 already sold copies don't just disappear, despite what headless doomsayers like you would desire. 

And just LOL at xfire. Even not considering that those numbers have very little touch with reality (being an opt-in pollling for which you have to download and use a software) if not supported by hard data, which you don't have. People pulling xfire numbers out of their rear normally forget to do make appropriate comparisons.

In the xfire charts, the next subscription based MMO is LOTRO, with less than one third hours played a day that warhammer. And LOTRO is a very healthy MMO with a solid userase. Warhammer Online is played (by xfire users) three times as much as LOTRO, so here's you're little doomsayer speech collapsing. Bye bye.

Originally posted by Ixnatifual

What, so now not being completely insane is the same as "running around like a chicken with your head cut off"?

Don't worry, trolls are like that :D

PS you need to learn what a troll is lol I didnt bash the game at all, I said I didnt like it, but thats it. It was bad for me, but I didnt knock it beyond that.

Originally posted by Loke666

Not really, the X-fire statistic is not a perfect way to measure numbers of players but it does give a good hint on how a game is doing. If war have sold so many more accounts the turnover must be incredible high since people play it less.

Well, according to xfire numbers warhammer is doing three times as good than the third ranked subscription based MMO out there, which incidentally happens to be a very healthy MMO with a solid userbase.

Even not considering that WAR is not costantly dropping in the charts, but has been picking up costantly since free transfers were offered (was 14th a few days ago, then went up to yesterday, now 10th), there are several things that you didn't take in account:

1: xfire caters to a quite hardcore userbase, most of casual players don't have the slightest idea of what xfire is, if not by reading some random people pulling out baseless predictions from their rear on forums. The kind of userbase that uses xfire is that kind of players that buy a game at release. This means that xfire numbers don't mirror very well continuated sales (which are done to a more casual playerbase that notices and buys game weeks or even months after release) and users flow-in after release.

2: Tons of xfire users (me included) keep xfire on just during the first few days/week of playing a new game, to show what they're playing to friends and contacts and to use the screenshot/movie/live broadcast function while the game is still a novelty. Then they start turning it off when they turn on the game, because xfire is a big resource hog.

3: People play a new game a TON after it's released, many even recur to getting days off to get an headstart, then the game slowly goes into a rutinary state, and playtime lowers, as new games are released (and people don't play ONLY mmorpgs, the console market saw a whole slew of AAA titles released lately) and people still play, but less time a day. This doesn't mean that many of those that play less a game that isn't new anymore, don't play it anymore at all.

In fact xfire numbers drop a LOT in the first few weeks/months of a game lifespan for basically ALL games.

Originally posted by ianicus

Posting about every second message in a thread is what I call running around liek a chicken with your head cut off, as well as aparently following someone to another forum as well LOL priceless.

It's what I call being bored at work, and tsking some amusement in witnessing how clueless trolls and doomsayers are about how the market works.

Originally posted by Abriael

 

Originally posted by ianicus

Posting about every second message in a thread is what I call running around liek a chicken with your head cut off, as well as aparently following someone to another forum as well LOL priceless.

 

It's what I call being bored at work, and tsking some amusement in witnessing how clueless trolls and doomsayers are about how the market works.

 

 

You need to do more work and less posting if thats the case....or im gonna tell your boss on you!!! lol