Naturally MMO companies like Funcom will never tell us the truth about how many players are still subscribing to AoC and how many are actually playing on their servers. When they are not busy trying to shut criticism from unhappy forum posters.

I hate to break the bad news to Funcom but I’ve seen a couple of charts on Alexa.com that have analyzed the traffic that ageofconan.com has been getting in the past 12 months. Could these charts be predicting the decline of AoC?

Alexa Explained
Here’s my brief understanding of how Alexa.com works. Alexa.com is a company that ranks websites using various criteria such as of traffic rank, reach, pageviews, bounce rate, etc. Essentially these criteria determine the popularity of a website.

Rank – determines how popular a website is compared to other websites

Reach - determines how many visitors a website is getting

Pageviews – determine how many unique pages a visitor is viewing

Bounce Rate – determines how long a visitor is staying on your site

For purposes of this article I’m going to simply things and only look at 2 criteria: ranking and reach.
 

You will notice various spikes on the graphs. In most cases the spikes represent new patches released by Funcom for AoC. For example, there is another huge spike around the time of summer when the miracle patch was unleashed. The patch cause much damage and havoc to AoC engine and only increased decline of AoC.

So what does this all mean?. From the chart it looks as if interest in AoC website peaked in April of 2008 when Age of Conan was released and has been in steady decline ever since. The most shocking realization here is that despite a small bump in interest after its release, the patch 1.05 has not done anything to curb the steady downward trend of people interested in AoC.

Another possibility is that AoC players are not finding the official website as useful as it once was. The bounce rate (a measure of how long people are staying on the site) has been getting worse lately as well which tells us that people are heading to the site, finding nothing to their liking and abruptly leaving.

The poor quality of the content produced by Funcom and heavy use of moderation of the forums could also be part of the problem. Even xfire.com, arguably one of the most useful services that predicts AoC subscribers has started to see it’s numbers decline too.

In the mind of the public interest in AoC is waning and has been for a while, now we have some actual independent data from Alexa to prove it. While it’s not direct evidence that AoC is in decline it’s surely a harbinger of things to come for this young MMO.

Originally posted by Battlekruse

So what does this all mean?. From the chart it looks as if interest in AoC website peaked in April of 2008 when Age of Conan was released and has been in steady decline ever since. The most shocking realization here is that despite a small bump in interest after its release, the patch 1.05 has not done anything to curb the steady downward trend of people interested in AoC.

 

Probably because it hasn't been released yet :P

Who cares?

Given the trends we can plainly see in these charts, I believe there is a direct correlation between the popularity of their website and the popularity of AoC.

I think this is key,

ahhh no one who plays internet games ever go to the website Battle, they just spend all their time ingame. That is why Funcom had to have a contest out of game for the anniversary to get people to cruise forums a while .

On the serious side, yeah those charts indicate the rise and fall of AoC pretty clearly. Looks like the population has been pretty steady since late October though with some small spikes around the server merge and free trial  time frame.

1.05 will not bring anything new for long term players to experience.

I've been raiding for a year, a new zone to close a leveling gap doesn't give me reasons to log. After 1.05 I believe AoC will finally be what it should have been at launch.

At this point we should have a duel feature, cross-server pvp mini-games, and T3 should be alot closer than it is to releasing. Its a good game, but still has a ways to go as far as giving players reasons to log in and play and continue their subs.

Players need timesinks, and fun accessable pvp.

Originally posted by Battlekruse

Naturally MMO companies like Funcom will never tell us the truth about how many players are still subscribing to AoC and how many are actually playing on their servers. When they are not busy trying to shut criticism from unhappy forum posters.

 Naturally MMO companies like Blizzard will never tell us the truth about how many players are still subscribing to WoW and how many are actually playing on their servers. When they are not busy trying to shut down mom & pop companies that are making iPhone apps, webcomics and fan stores by sending cease and desist letters they seemingly find the time to make exuberant self-congratulatory press releases touting their recent millions served number of WoW subscribers.

I hate to break the bad news to Funcom but I’ve seen a couple of charts on Alexa.com that have analyzed the traffic that ageofconan.com has been getting in the past 12 months. Could these charts be predicting the decline of AoC?

I hate to break the bad news to Blizzard but I’ve seen a couple of charts on Alexa.com that have analyzed the traffic that WorldofWarcraft.com has been getting in the past 22 months. Could these charts be predicting the decline of WoW?

[Etc.  etc.]

Alexa Explained
Here’s my brief understanding of how Alexa.com works. Alexa.com is a company that ranks websites using various criteria such as of traffic rank, reach, pageviews, bounce rate, etc. Essentially these criteria determine the popularity of a website.

Rank – determines how popular a website is compared to other websites

Reach - determines how many visitors a website is getting

Pageviews – determine how many unique pages a visitor is viewing

Bounce Rate – determines how long a visitor is staying on your site

For purposes of this article I’m going to simply things and only look at 2 criteria: ranking and reach.
 

You will notice various spikes on the graphs. In most cases the spikes represent new patches released by Funcom for AoC. For example, there is another huge spike around the time of summer when the miracle patch was unleashed. The patch cause much damage and havoc to AoC engine and only increased decline of AoC.

 

So what does this all mean?. From the chart it looks as if interest in AoC website peaked in April of 2008 when Age of Conan was released and has been in steady decline ever since. The most shocking realization here is that despite a small bump in interest after its release, the patch 1.05 has not done anything to curb the steady downward trend of people interested in AoC.

 

Another possibility is that AoC players are not finding the official website as useful as it once was. The bounce rate (a measure of how long people are staying on the site) has been getting worse lately as well which tells us that people are heading to the site, finding nothing to their liking and abruptly leaving.

 

The poor quality of the content produced by Funcom and heavy use of moderation of the forums could also be part of the problem. Even xfire.com, arguably one of the most useful services that predicts AoC subscribers has started to see it’s numbers decline too.

 

In the mind of the public interest in AoC is waning and has been for a while, now we have some actual independent data from Alexa to prove it. While it’s not direct evidence that AoC is in decline it’s surely a harbinger of things to come for this young MMO.

Unless you're the original blogger you should at least have linked where you got the original text from.

http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/?p=2217

Ohhh my my. Well atleast the chart is different.

Originally posted by Shangala

Originally posted by Battlekruse

Naturally MMO companies like Funcom will never tell us the truth about how many players are still subscribing to AoC and how many are actually playing on their servers. When they are not busy trying to shut criticism from unhappy forum posters.

 Naturally MMO companies like Blizzard will never tell us the truth about how many players are still subscribing to WoW and how many are actually playing on their servers. When they are not busy trying to shut down mom & pop companies that are making iPhone apps, webcomics and fan stores by sending cease and desist letters they seemingly find the time to make exuberant self-congratulatory press releases touting their recent millions served number of WoW subscribers.

I hate to break the bad news to Funcom but I’ve seen a couple of charts on Alexa.com that have analyzed the traffic that ageofconan.com has been getting in the past 12 months. Could these charts be predicting the decline of AoC?

I hate to break the bad news to Blizzard but I’ve seen a couple of charts on Alexa.com that have analyzed the traffic that WorldofWarcraft.com has been getting in the past 22 months. Could these charts be predicting the decline of WoW?

[Etc.  etc.]

Alexa Explained
Here’s my brief understanding of how Alexa.com works. Alexa.com is a company that ranks websites using various criteria such as of traffic rank, reach, pageviews, bounce rate, etc. Essentially these criteria determine the popularity of a website.

Rank – determines how popular a website is compared to other websites

Reach - determines how many visitors a website is getting

Pageviews – determine how many unique pages a visitor is viewing

Bounce Rate – determines how long a visitor is staying on your site

For purposes of this article I’m going to simply things and only look at 2 criteria: ranking and reach.
 

You will notice various spikes on the graphs. In most cases the spikes represent new patches released by Funcom for AoC. For example, there is another huge spike around the time of summer when the miracle patch was unleashed. The patch cause much damage and havoc to AoC engine and only increased decline of AoC.

 

So what does this all mean?. From the chart it looks as if interest in AoC website peaked in April of 2008 when Age of Conan was released and has been in steady decline ever since. The most shocking realization here is that despite a small bump in interest after its release, the patch 1.05 has not done anything to curb the steady downward trend of people interested in AoC.

 

Another possibility is that AoC players are not finding the official website as useful as it once was. The bounce rate (a measure of how long people are staying on the site) has been getting worse lately as well which tells us that people are heading to the site, finding nothing to their liking and abruptly leaving.

 

The poor quality of the content produced by Funcom and heavy use of moderation of the forums could also be part of the problem. Even xfire.com, arguably one of the most useful services that predicts AoC subscribers has started to see it’s numbers decline too.

 

In the mind of the public interest in AoC is waning and has been for a while, now we have some actual independent data from Alexa to prove it. While it’s not direct evidence that AoC is in decline it’s surely a harbinger of things to come for this young MMO.

 

Unless you're the original blogger you should at least have linked where you got the original text from.

http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/?p=2217

 

Good catch.  Yay for the OP committing plagiarism.  OP credibility takes a CRITICAL hit!

Oh dear someone got caught out.

No offense but even I don't visit ageofconan.com front page, people on trial get linked elsewhere.

To keep this short and sweet, if you want to know the population of a server yourself, log in and see on the free trial. Otherwise website traffic doesn't mean anything or AoC would have 5 million unique hit / subs like pre launch. You will notice that for the launch of all recent games shows something similar. Infact if DF has only 18k ppl why was it pulling more traffic than lotro + aoc + EQ2 + WAR earlier in the year? I know the answer - just saying.

So average joe looks at the chart and see that there was massive hype for AoC, translates well here at launch. Also looks pretty much the same as lotro, conclusion nothing to worry about. Yep.

You mean decrease in activity since the massive launch spike. Yeah way to state the obvious.

Thread locked, trolling.