Originally posted by openedge1

And you would be wrong, but that is ok. Read it as you will.

There is a problem with Xfire and AoC that I see. It may not be you, but for myself, and others it causes problems and in the end is a fallible tool. This was my main point.

(And I saw the little jokes at the end about your account. But, I can assume you have not been on the MMORPG forums in a while and seen the multitude of fake accounts that have been going this past week. For that, I forgive you...but, I can certainly tell you are not one of them)
 

I am sorry if I misunderstood your post, yet once again you state that Xfire is the fallible program of the two.

I think it is that statement (from your blog) and your second last paragraph in your orignal post: "AoC and Xfire = BURN!!" that hit my language barrier.

Oh - my last paragraph was not supposed to be a joke. And I have been reading the mmorpg forums... I just try not to post in those threads unless something sets me on fire. In my experience shouting for silence rarely leads the desired result. ;)

Nah EQ2 had about as many subscribers last year as AoC does now and the server equation worked for it.

It had 6 reasonable pop servers last year and about 60k or so players.  Actually, it seemed as if more people were playing on the server I was on, a PvE server, than they do AoC's Tyranny. Also just read this or other forums most people state they did not resub and give reasons unlike the army of sh#$**s that would make a new post about how awesome AoC is and they just started playing - which a new post like that would happen almost daily.

EQ2 is a fun soloing game as long as your playing a Necromancer and I grouped way more than I ever did in AoC, was more stuff 1st expansion content and dungeans, hell I raided something at level 40 with 3 groups. Though I didn't try that game until maybe 8 months before AoC came out and only played till level 60ish I think.

Your hypothisis is the population increased 30% during free trials and stuff and then all of them stopped using Xfire and visiting the AoC's official forum and gamespot forum and they all subscribed? I think not.  The sad thing is this game will now leak players with only the posability of the Xpansion bringing them back.

EDIT: I used Xfire during win back with no probs and did not resubscribe

Originally posted by Hokie

(As a follower of the game 2 years before it went live, I seen the writting on the wall, and decided to see if they could refloat that boat. Which it looks like they done.)

Totally agree.

You could see the pull AoC still has; when the free trials went live and fileplanet  / ausgamers and many other places such as mmorpg.com offered a trial key, from all those places not including Funcom's own website, there were sites that tracked downloads.

In the first 3 1/2 weeks AoC totally over 100k trial client downloads ( NA + EU clients) and those were from sites not even including big dealers like here, and Funcom itself whom didn't publish numbers.

Went FC talk about success in the trials the numbers match up and even best guestimations in adding the other sites in add up with an impressive amount.

Even with a 20 % retention rate you could very well look at an additional 30-50 thousand additional subs that month following on. I would still call half of that successful.

Throw the vet re-evaluation on top of that for extra boost and things do add up, surely acknowledged by the dearest detester.

Then you have a couple thousand copies of the game here with Eurogamer too as a gesture of goodwill in appreciation to the communities as a contest. They went fast.

This all goes nicely hand in hand with PC Gamer Disk with AoC client on it and in a weeks time we should see some exciting news from the GC in Germany.

Looks like a solid plan to me, and we may see some evidence of this 2 weeks today when the Quarter presentations come out.

When you have plenty of media from websites to established mags and independant industry writers/bloggers writing the same things in your quote something is happening.

1.05 Patch got some 'if's' and 'but's' but in the overal majority of many, many feedbacks read, across lots of forums and opinions on the whole of the Advocates it was well received although not near the finish many would like. Groundwork is layed in foundation the real content updates can now come through and be appreciated more.

Originally posted by Crashloop

Originally posted by LordBonezy

Nobody honestly cares about X fire, or X fire and AOC.

Nobody believes that X fire can tell us anything more about AOC than we already know except that the number of players playing AOC and using Xfire slightly rises or slightly lowers once in a while.

Nobody believes that you or anybody else can tell us with any accuracy using X Fire, what AOCs subscription numbers are.

Nobody cares about X fire because it is largely irrelevant

Nobody truly cares about AOCs subscription numbers because it is clear the game has already fallen off a huge cliff and is slowly bleeding to death from compound fractures of both legs.

Now pick up, shut up, stop posting or talking about X fire and AOC.

You care about AoC enough to keep trolling the forums. so people do care ;)

Don't know about the others, but I'm here for the drama you and other fanbois create over unfanbois :D

Sozialporno FTW!

Originally posted by Daffid011

I used to dismiss xfire as unreliable.  I still think it is to a certain degree, but it would be foolish to dismiss how accurately it detailed conan, warhammer and wow last year.

 

You could clearly see the steep decline in both conan and warhammer during their first few months.  It mirrored what a lot of departing players were saying of forums.  On the flip side it shows the upward trend in wow.  [I wonder what xfire says about eve.]

Fans of both games made many rational excuses as to why xfire is not reliable.  The most common was "I don't use it and don't know anyone that uses it" as well as "Many people uninstall it, because it creates lag or something else while playing mmos".

 

They are both great opinions and make valid arguments.  However that has no bearing on the obvious decline both games went through in their first six+ months.  People uninstalling or not using xfire did not force both companies to merge servers in response to subscriber decline.  Both companies bragged about 7-800k subscribers and then a few months later it was less than half of that.  It didn't force either company to fire the game directors (both were original founders of the companies). 

 

As much as I didn't want to believe that xfire was accurately showing a trend, it is hard to dismiss it as anything other than accurate.  I'm sure a statistics professor or someone from the gallop polling agency could write a paper detailing how it theoretically shouldn't be accurate, but it was. 

For reasons I still have trouble accepting, xfire has shown to be pretty accurate in giving an overall view of the health of pvp games in its first year.  It may not show exact numbers, give details of how to calculate estamatied total subscribers and it may not be reliable beyond the first year, but it was spot on about both games. I can't explain it, but it was. 

 

This isn't me saying conan sucks or is going to die in any way.  It is just an honest look at what happened and not buying explainations as to why something didn't happen, when it did happen.

Nice post!

In order to add some figures to your post, here are xfire numbers for nuber of hours played in some populare games on sunday the 7th of december last year and last sunday, august 9th. 

                 07.des       09.aug
AoC           4819            9225
Lotro       14182         18156
WAR       19757          10517
EQ2          3082             3146
WOW    515021        600653
 

See how all games are experiencing growth except WAR which is still in trouble. This i beleive is the trend as all theses games work nicely now and have their followers. The total ammount of MMO players are growing steadily and that will influence any game that works in a positive way. Even "old timers" like WOW and EQ2 

In other words, xfire can spot a trend but not provide exact measures to it. 

Originally posted by Aceundor

In other words, xfire can spot a trend but not provide exact measures to it.  

Well that was my thing when people would bring up Xfire.

Sure its very accurate and shows trends.  With people who use Xfire.

These are the issues I see:

1) We don't know what the relative percentage of Xfire users is compared to non Xfire users. 

2) We don't know if the percentage of Xfire users is a constant across various MMO's.  (ie: 5% of players use Xfire in one game and 15% use it in another game.. thus hours per week are obviously skewed).

3) We don't know if non xfire users follow the same patterns as xfire users.  (ie: xfire numbers could go down but total number of subscribers can go up because most don't use it).

All of those things tie together.   The main thing is it IS very accurate for people who use it.  You can obviously track the play time for any paticular game among xfire users.  There is just no real way to compare those games to each other.  There is also no real way to know for sure that every game which has a drop on Xfire.. actually is seeing a drop in subs.  (aka this was the recap ;p)

Originally posted by openedge1

I have a blog post up on why Xfire is just not worth a darn when it comes to tracking how well Age of Conan is doing in scrips or time played.

http://simple-n-complex.blogspot.com/2009/08/putting-out-fire-with-gasoline-xfire.html

And check another users issues with Xfire and it's buggy background processing..

http://theblamefulgecko.wordpress.com/2009/08/11/misfire/

AoC and Xfire = BURN!!

(PS: Using Xfire, playing AoC and crashing...read this..)

 

great~is it your own exp?
 

Originally posted by Hokie

Edit* And about Xfire, if you reread my post, I dont think Xfire is accurate in any way of representing an MMO's subscription growth (or shrikage), as no one has posted hard data.

Its my opinon that Xfire players represent about only 2% of a MMO's player base. And you cant base anything concreate off of a percent so small.

You only need ... 1000 people to predict the elections of a complete US State up to 2% accurately.

The 20.000.000 registred Xfire players of which .... 200.000 to 300.000 are constantly on line (24Hr/7D) are a HUGE random sample of what is being played on our western PC's.

That's why Xfire doesn't only PREDICT the growth or downward trends of each MMORPG being played....

It is accurate as HELL when comparing games and their popularity in playing hours and players.

---- Example ----

War was 14 K Xfire at launch (Sep 2008: official player numbers 800K- total servers 113 of which 80 FULL...) WoW-War ratio on Xfire was 6 to 1

War was at 5.5 K Xfire players in Dec 2008 (official player numbers 300K (first server merges)
 

War was at 3.5 K Xfire in Mar 2009 (no longer official "subs" from EA, they only cited "players" and so including the free trials).

War is now at ... around 2.K Xfire players (and the number of US servers is now at ... 7 out of 15 servers total). WOW/War ratio is now at ... 50/1.

Now just compare the NUMBER War Xfire players (2 K) with the number ot total EVE Xfire players (5K), and you can see that the WAr game is around 120 K players with indeed around 15 (not even full) servers.

So only 3 things can hamper the stats:

1. When XFire ports would be blocked by a game. OR temporarely promoted through prices and promos in the Xfire website.

2. Random error (but with 300K Xfire players on line (and changing) this is minimal.

3. When the number of XFire players for a game falls way under the 1000 player numbers individually. Too small sample ....

---- It is so accurate ----

that even big launches of patches or weekly maintenance schedules for a game are being tracked on the graphs.

-----

If it weren't for Xfire .... fans of War and Aoc would STILL be argueing their game had 700K subs.

Just watch the Aion trends in 3 to 4 months to demistify the "4 millions of Lineage 2" (which is at around 50K western players at the most).

Couple Xfire to the number of servers X 10.000 and you have a perfect constant on line tracking tool of what is being played in the english language regions.

SO much better than the lies of FTP modules.

Its funny that Openedge1 used to use Xfire to show how LotrO was dying and that it was a bad game compared to GW and WoW because they were so high on Xfire and was always quoting Xfire stats...

Ironic ?

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by Hokie

Edit* And about Xfire, if you reread my post, I dont think Xfire is accurate in any way of representing an MMO's subscription growth (or shrikage), as no one has posted hard data.

Its my opinon that Xfire players represent about only 2% of a MMO's player base. And you cant base anything concreate off of a percent so small.

 

You only need ... 1000 people to predict the elections of a complete US State up to 2% accurately.

The 20.000.000 registred Xfire players of which .... 200.000 to 300.000 are constantly on line (24Hr/7D) are a HUGE random sample of what is being played on our western PC's.

That's why Xfire doesn't only PREDICT the growth or downward trends of each MMORPG being played....

It is accurate as HELL when comparing games and their popularity in playing hours and players.

 

I agree with your post on just about everything, however you need to consider that xfire users is NOT a random population of the player base.

If I recall my history lessons there was a major poll done for a US precidential election before WW 2 where they called a vast ammounts of people asking for who they would vote for. They results of the poll was that the Republican candidate would win with a large margin. However the Democrat won. The reason for this was that not everybody in the US had a phone at that time and the usually poorer people without a phone voted for "the other guy"

Same applies to xfire users, they are not a random selection of all gamers, the all have something in common as a population which makes them choose xfire as a tool. Your example of Linage is good, because even if this is a massive game it has almost no xfire players. Therefore you can conclude that the population in xfire is biased in one direction or another.

A change in the number of players in one game logged on xfire cannot give you any statistical certanty about how the game is doing and how large its playerbase is.

However i stand by my statement that its a nice tool to spot trends. WAR has been falling since releasce, AOC turned around about Christmas, LOTRO is slowly growing, EVE is pretty stable, WOW is slowly growing etc, etc etc. These are trends that I beleive in due to xfire, however i cannot say with any certanty that they are actually correct  or quatify them in any way.

Originally posted by Aceundor

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by Hokie

Edit* And about Xfire, if you reread my post, I dont think Xfire is accurate in any way of representing an MMO's subscription growth (or shrikage), as no one has posted hard data.

Its my opinon that Xfire players represent about only 2% of a MMO's player base. And you cant base anything concreate off of a percent so small.

 

You only need ... 1000 people to predict the elections of a complete US State up to 2% accurately.

The 20.000.000 registred Xfire players of which .... 200.000 to 300.000 are constantly on line (24Hr/7D) are a HUGE random sample of what is being played on our western PC's.

That's why Xfire doesn't only PREDICT the growth or downward trends of each MMORPG being played....

It is accurate as HELL when comparing games and their popularity in playing hours and players.

 

 

I agree with your post on just about everything, however you need to consider that xfire users is NOT a random population of the player base.

If I recall my history lessons there was a major poll done for a US precidential election before WW 2 where they called a vast ammounts of people asking for who they would vote for. They results of the poll was that the Republican candidate would win with a large margin. However the Democrat won. The reason for this was that not everybody in the US had a phone at that time and the usually poorer people without a phone voted for "the other guy"

Same applies to xfire users, they are not a random selection of all gamers, the all have something in common as a population which makes them choose xfire as a tool. Your example of Linage is good, because even if this is a massive game it has almost no xfire players. Therefore you can conclude that the population in xfire is biased in one direction or another.

A change in the number of players in one game logged on xfire cannot give you any statistical certanty about how the game is doing and how large its playerbase is.

However i stand by my statement that its a nice tool to spot trends. WAR has been falling since releasce, AOC turned around about Christmas, LOTRO is slowly growing, EVE is pretty stable, WOW is slowly growing etc, etc etc. These are trends that I beleive in due to xfire, however i cannot say with any certanty that they are actually correct  or quatify them in any way.

Two remarks.

The difference between a traditional poll and a random sample constantly sampled on line 24Hr/7D is that the error in the  random sampling is much less in the online system.

Because of the 24Hr/7D mechanism this system is no longer a one shot "poll" but a constant refreshment of new samples being held from the 20.000.000 registred users. It is how they measured TV broadcasts for 40 years btw (and put TV spots financing on it).

Those constant (changing) numbers are awesome. And it shows why Xfire is always "on spot" when viewing trends. I would guess that the real samples of Xfire players consist of around 1.5 M players (5 times the concurrent numbers on line). So this stuff is DYNAMITE.

Frightening accurate in fact.

---

Your remark on Lineage 2 is interesting as it shows Xfire is used in the western world (and for example not by Chinese users).

The WESTERN market of L2 is around 50K players and I am CERTAIN the number of NA/EU servers would confirm this (with the usual 10 K pleyers per server stats. So while not even knowing them, I bet L2 is being played on a maximum of around 8 western servers at the moment.

Xfire also works very well with tracking those so called FTP modules. Only weeks ago RoM announced they had 1 M "players". That of course means "accounts", while viewing at Xfire you can deduct they hover around the 200K active players on our western PC's. Not bad, but hardly 1M

I would go even further: because Xfire is .CONSTANTLY tracked it shows.... trends of a given MMORPG.

So people wanting to look into long term Xfire trackings (sadly they only display the last 4 weeks), can view MONTHS in advance how a commercial MMORPG is doing and "act accordingly".

Read buy or sell ... stocks...

It is like playing on the Roullette with knowing the numbers to fall in advance (I used it for 2 years now and it actually lets you make money).

 According to what I saw in the first Beta weekends of Aion, the maximum  number of Aion players at launch would be around 400K (60% of War and AoC). It reamins to be seen how much it could gather furthrer steam in the following weeks. But Xfire pulls the figures up to 1% accurate numbers.

EA didn't have to post 750 K War players at launch. I already knew it 10 days in advance. At the same time I saw how they twisted the number of players in Dec and Mar of War. I could even predict their "wording" in the press releases weeks in advance.

And the number of server merges were always WEEKS (if not even months) too late when you saw te daily Xfire players of War.

This tool is pure dynamite (but you need to have at least a 1000 individual Xfre players for a game).

Just watch it and test it all yourselves  in the next coming launches.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

 

Originally posted by Aceundor

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by Hokie

Edit* And about Xfire, if you reread my post, I dont think Xfire is accurate in any way of representing an MMO's subscription growth (or shrikage), as no one has posted hard data.

Its my opinon that Xfire players represent about only 2% of a MMO's player base. And you cant base anything concreate off of a percent so small.

 

You only need ... 1000 people to predict the elections of a complete US State up to 2% accurately.

The 20.000.000 registred Xfire players of which .... 200.000 to 300.000 are constantly on line (24Hr/7D) are a HUGE random sample of what is being played on our western PC's.

That's why Xfire doesn't only PREDICT the growth or downward trends of each MMORPG being played....

It is accurate as HELL when comparing games and their popularity in playing hours and players.

 

 

 

 

Two remarks.

The difference between a traditional poll and a random sample constantly sampled on line 24Hr/7D is that the error in the  random sampling is much less in the online system.

Because of the 24Hr/7D mechanism this system is no longer a one shot "poll" but a constant refreshment of new samples being held from the 20.000.000 registred users. It is how they measured TV broadcasts for 40 years btw (and put TV spots financing on it).

Those constant (changing) numbers are awesome. And it shows why Xfire is always "on spot" when viewing trends. I would guess that the real samples of Xfire players consist of around 1.5 M players (5 times the concurrent numbers on line). So this stuff is DYNAMITE.

Frightening accurate in fact.

Really good points. I think I will look more into it and make mor thorugh analysis of xfire figures for AoC i think.

Some elements to consider though when comparing one game to another in xfire.

1) I stand by the comment that the population is not random sample of gaming population. A western example is MMOs for kids vs MMOs for Mature users. I am guessing that a MMO towards young players would not show the correct population in xfire, however it would show a trend. But you are right the the error margin is smaller for a constant sampling.

2) Some games work better with xfire than others. This should be considered when comparing games xfire figures

3) Regional differences in user patterns. (as mentioned for Linage), but could also apply to US vs EU or Germany vs Spain for instance.

4) Competitions held for Xfire users change the reliablilyt of the data dramatically for a certain period after the competition starts up.

Originally posted by openedge1

Originally posted by Crashloop

You can bring up all kinds of threads and posts about xfire have potential issues with games, we all know it does. And it isn't just aoc that have had this issue, many other games too. I had no issues to get xfire to work with aoc. it was just install the program and voila.

I really wanted to believe this, but so far, the game is working much better since removal. I was having an issue with NPC's not loading in quick enough when I would enter the trader or other zones. Now, they load properly. As well, whenever I would quit AoC, it would go to a black screen and I had to CTRL ALT DEL to get out (in DX10)...this issue is now gone.

Say what you will, but I also see a noticeable difference without it loaded, and I will be removing it from all my systems.

Thus, the whole "Xfire can show a trend" is crap, and instead shows a trend in users "uninstalling" Xfire if anything.

Sounds like you have a problem with your computer. When I played Aoc I never had a problem with X-fire running in the background.

X-Fire does what it is supposed to do (give you an idea of how many people are playing and how well it ranks with other games). Just because it doesn't give you the results you want, doesn't mean it doesn't work.

Xfire was not designed to make AoC look better, it is a tool that can be used to see how "active" a game is.

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

 

In the first 3 1/2 weeks AoC totally over 100k trial client downloads ( NA + EU clients) and those were from sites not even including big dealers like here, and Funcom itself whom didn't publish numbers.

Went FC talk about success in the trials the numbers match up and even best guestimations in adding the other sites in add up with an impressive amount.

I am going to heavily dispute that figure, maybe the tracker was broken, counted failed downloads or modified:

1) How would 100,000 people even be aware of the free trials? It isn't like this game has any positive word of mouth advertising, AoC is usually uttered with disdain from it's target market: MMO players, and with the lack of buzz/hype how could they convince 100,000 people to download this game and jump through the hoops to try to play it. The free trials were for new players because we couldn't play our mains so 100,000 new players, really? At least for win backs they could spam old player's e mails.

2) X fire didn't seem to jive or activity would have more than doubled along with activity on other sites, forum posts would have dpoubled from the new players.

3) Are you saying the game was so empty that 100,000 players could fit on the six servers with reasonable populations with a minority of free trial players playing on dead servers?

IDK but whatever the number is if 20% of the new and returning players stayed it seems that 20% of the old timers just quit.  Funcom stated that most of them need to come back and stay a full year to make it profitable in last quarters report. This quarters report is due like now so I guess we will see.

Originally posted by finaticd

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

 

In the first 3 1/2 weeks AoC totally over 100k trial client downloads ( NA + EU clients) and those were from sites not even including big dealers like here, and Funcom itself whom didn't publish numbers.

Went FC talk about success in the trials the numbers match up and even best guestimations in adding the other sites in add up with an impressive amount.

 

I am going to heavily dispute that figure, maybe the tracker was broken, counted failed downloads or modified:

1) How would 100,000 people even be aware of the free trials? It isn't like this game has any positive word of mouth advertising, AoC is usually uttered with disdain from it's target market: MMO players, and with the lack of buzz/hype how could they convince 100,000 people to download this game and jump through the hoops to try to play it. The free trials were for new players because we couldn't play our mains so 100,000 new players, really? At least for win backs they could spam old player's e mails.

Maybe because more people then you might think are silently following AoC's progress? Or maybe because there has been intervies etc that has talked about it. You can dispute the figures all you want, but unless you can prove your points with facts other then assumptions. Oh and I the trials wasn't just new players, I spoke to a few people that were doing the trial and many of those I spoke with on fury was old players that didn't bother waiting for the veteran invoite so they tested out the game on a trial account to see how it had improved. I have done the same thing with other games I have played, instead of paying to test I simply made a trial account to see if I would get the feeling neededto play the game again.

2) X fire didn't seem to jive or activity would have more than doubled along with activity on other sites, forum posts would have dpoubled from the new players.

Forum posts is not necessarily a proof of increased activity, it seems to me that a minority of the MMO community are actually actively using the forums for a game. The reasons for this can be many, friends of mine do no longer use forums due to the way they are these days. Before forums was a good way to get information, today people seem to use forums more to get all the things that annoys them off the chest. Joining a forum today is like jumping into a den with 3 hungry bears, post something positive about the game and trolls will jump you call you a fanboi or accuse you for creating an account to hype the game. If you are posting your views that might not be positive the fanbois will jump you and tell you how you are another troll. Just look at these forums, now we have been correct 6 times in a row now about badboybilly. But other posters have come fresh out of the box and posting either positive or negative comments and they usually get flamed and told this and that. and how many of them have still continued posting? Can this be a reason many do not use forums since they often are dominated by a relatively unfriendly community? Xfire doesn't need to double either, simply because xfire can only show the trend accurate, it isn't accurate if you take a fixed amount of subscribers and try to compare the trend to the amount of players like you just did. Over the period with trials we did see a increase in activity on Xfire, this showed there was a interest. this interest is now declining back to normal levels. This only proves there was more people testing the game.

3) Are you saying the game was so empty that 100,000 players could fit on the six servers with reasonable populations with a minority of free trial players playing on dead servers?

Define empty, when the trialperiod and the veteran eval period was I did see loads of new names I never seen before. so there was a lot more players in the game. Also if 100k new playhers come to a game the servers won't automaticly go instantly full of players. People play at different times of the day, if a server can hold say maybe 10K players at the same time there might be possible for 50K players to be on the server, just not at the same time.

IDK but whatever the number is if 20% of the new and returning players stayed it seems that 20% of the old timers just quit.  Funcom stated that most of them need to come back and stay a full year to make it profitable in last quarters report. This quarters report is due like now so I guess we will see.

It will be ineresting to see the q3 and q4 report as that will show a better picture of how things are going. :)

Originally posted by finaticd

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

 

In the first 3 1/2 weeks AoC totally over 100k trial client downloads ( NA + EU clients) and those were from sites not even including big dealers like here, and Funcom itself whom didn't publish numbers.

Went FC talk about success in the trials the numbers match up and even best guestimations in adding the other sites in add up with an impressive amount.

 

I am going to heavily dispute that figure, maybe the tracker was broken, counted failed downloads or modified:

1) How would 100,000 people even be aware of the free trials? It isn't like this game has any positive word of mouth advertising, AoC is usually uttered with disdain from it's target market: MMO players, and with the lack of buzz/hype how could they convince 100,000 people to download this game and jump through the hoops to try to play it. The free trials were for new players because we couldn't play our mains so 100,000 new players, really? At least for win backs they could spam old player's e mails.

2) X fire didn't seem to jive or activity would have more than doubled along with activity on other sites, forum posts would have dpoubled from the new players.

3) Are you saying the game was so empty that 100,000 players could fit on the six servers with reasonable populations with a minority of free trial players playing on dead servers?

IDK but whatever the number is if 20% of the new and returning players stayed it seems that 20% of the old timers just quit.  Funcom stated that most of them need to come back and stay a full year to make it profitable in last quarters report. This quarters report is due like now so I guess we will see.

Ok I just had a nice informative post wrote and browser crashed on me.

To keep this shorter, so far, from places that track the downloads of the TRIAL client I personally can add up 135k to date over about a dozen websites and not including torrent DL's.

I doubt the trackers for it are 'broken', count backwards or whatever. Maybe that is wishful thinking on your behalf IDK.

www.fileplanet.com/108621/0/0/0/1/section/Game_Clients shows quite a few eh ?

Ausgamers www.ausgamers.com/files/details/html/42739  and http://www.ausgamers.com/files/details/html/42738  in fact Ausgamers tracker IS broken and has stopped counting for a while now :)

About 6 weeks after availability just these two sites both clients were around 70k ( I made a post on it somewhere)

Since the trials were available the census on aoc.yg.com for player characters made went from 170k to 385k. Thats over 100% increase in new characters (and only ones picked up by the bots)

Does that support the point better? kinda shows some actual figures rather than " I simply can't believe it " attitude.

Not even considering Funcom (all the different language versions too) and mmorpg.com client downloads + many other places. How much more you think that would be?

Age of Conan has 26 servers worldwide last I checked. Right before re-eval campaign or around that time server xfer to Tyranny and Fury for example were not possible. I wonder why.. You say a server can hold 10k ppl and with some servers having 3 times that many characters made the math hold out that they are in actual fact quite healthy on the whole for those particular servers.

Actually in the last report presentation for Q1'09 said "with an increase in new customers in Q1
2009 has led to a stable and solid subscriber base for the Game" In the one prior Q4 08 they actually said "To be successful, large install MMOS must achieve > 10 months average subscription periods* / At these levels, trial marketing may lead to profitable growth for the game** ( * (average customer revenue > 150 USD) / ** (if conversion from trials to subscribers are significant and the converted trial customers also have extensive subscription periods) ) which is what I think your referring to. Just a quick add in that Q4 one they also said "Age of Conan is approaching the required subscriber retention for trial marketing to potentially be effective" when you see that and next time around them saying an Increase in CX's in Q1 kinda makes sense.

I wonder when the first reply that accuses fanbois for downoading the trial over and over just too boost numbers will appear. :P

Originally posted by Soupgoblin

 

Sounds like you have a problem with your computer. When I played Aoc I never had a problem with X-fire running in the background.

This would be the RIGHT answer if I did not have 3 different systems, with varying types of hardware (ATI, NVIDIA and one is even a laptop),with 2 different OS's exhibiting the same behaviors (better performance after unloading XFire) ...that and somone who has been building computer systems since 1995. Also, of note, I had "weird" issues, and it was not a constant. But, it sure does seem mysterious that after removal of just one program, that the improvements were almost immediate.

X-Fire does what it is supposed to do (give you an idea of how many people are playing and how well it ranks with other games). Just because it doesn't give you the results you want, doesn't mean it doesn't work.

I never said it did not do what it was suppose to. It actually did, and I am quite disappointed I cannot use it to track my gametime and connect with other players. But, I prefer my game running better than tracking some type of achievement that does not really mean that much.

Xfire was not designed to make AoC look better, it is a tool that can be used to see how "active" a game is.

Never said it did...where are you getting this stuff? Did you even read the post? Yes, I understand what it does. But, it is pure and simple what has happened. Less issues with Age of Conan and having Xfire uninstalled means it stays uninstalled (as well as Raptr, which I found out has issues with AoC and DX10 according to the Raptr team, and will suck up 50% of CPU processes if used)

I prefer a smoother running game.

O.K. I will take the 100,000k figure as valid but also remember that during the same time Funcom gave away free level 50s so many people probably cashed in on that.  When Funcom states that most players are not level 80 that is probably because they are counting the myriad of lower level alts that many players have ammassed just like the census sites.

I already admitted that the trials seemed to be popular going by stat trackers however much of the numbers have reverted to where they were prior, who knows maybe many subscribed and playtime is just way down.

Originally posted by finaticd

O.K. I will take the 100,000k figure as valid but also remember that during the same time Funcom gave away free level 50s so many people probably cashed in on that.  When Funcom states that most players are not level 80 that is probably because they are counting the myriad of lower level alts that many players have ammassed just like the census sites.

 

I already admitted that the trials seemed to be popular going by stat trackers however much of the numbers have reverted to where they were prior, who knows maybe many subscribed and playtime is just way down.

Would those be Xfire numbers? They are quite unreliable, and using those as any measure of overal scrips is still ridiculous. Thus the reason I started this op.

Wish I knew what numbers you feel "reverted". Search sites? Web traffic? All useless.

Basically there is one thing we DO know.

We know nothing.

And Funcom holds the cards to the overall data. If the game is not shutdown by now, then it will carry on.

Simple mathematics there.

Originally posted by finaticd

O.K. I will take the 100,000k figure as valid but also remember that during the same time Funcom gave away free level 50s so many people probably cashed in on that.  When Funcom states that most players are not level 80 that is probably because they are counting the myriad of lower level alts that many players have ammassed just like the census sites.

 

I already admitted that the trials seemed to be popular going by stat trackers however much of the numbers have reverted to where they were prior, who knows maybe many subscribed and playtime is just way down.

The problem with xfire is that it only show's the trend and not the real true picture of subscribers. Across Europe we have from July to September different countries having their summer vacation for people working in those countries. Norway have most of it in July, many other seems to have it in August. This can of course affect the total amount of timed played, or it could be that simply less players are playing aoc these days due to boredom or whatever. I know with my own gaming time during the summer and the days where the weather is warm and sunny is that I do often do other things then sit inside and play game. I doubt I'm the only one who does this, but it is not a proof of why xfire numbers have dropped either. I think in September/October we will have a more clear picture of how the trial's and veteran period have gained the game. Then most of the vacations are over and the autumn starts to arrive and that usually means more rain and weather that is perfect for enjoying games indoor. The polls that were about the aoc community both from Funcom and from players did indicate the masses of players in AoC being from 18-35, with a large group from 25-35 years old. If they have families and things like that vacation usually means that they will spend more time with their family then playing a game. How much % this affects xfire is impossible to say it could be none it could be a lot or anywhere between those 2 options.

One thing is for sure all MMO's I have played and all guilds I have been in, summertime means the guilds are running on low power since people are on vacations and a lack of interest in gaming in general within many guilds. Every summer I played WoW was the same, people started to talk about leaving for other guilds as the guild was dead etc. once most people were done with vacations we were back in full force tho.

Originally posted by openedge1

Originally posted by finaticd

O.K. I will take the 100,000k figure as valid but also remember that during the same time Funcom gave away free level 50s so many people probably cashed in on that.  When Funcom states that most players are not level 80 that is probably because they are counting the myriad of lower level alts that many players have ammassed just like the census sites.

 

I already admitted that the trials seemed to be popular going by stat trackers however much of the numbers have reverted to where they were prior, who knows maybe many subscribed and playtime is just way down.

Would those be Xfire numbers? They are quite unreliable, and using those as any measure of overal scrips is still ridiculous. Thus the reason I started this op.

Wish I knew what numbers you feel "reverted". Search sites? Web traffic? All useless.

Basically there is one thing we DO know.

We know nothing.

And Funcom holds the cards to the overall data. If the game is not shutdown by now, then it will carry on.

Simple mathematics there.

Google Trends

Xfire hour logs

Official forums

Mmorpg posts

They've all dropped off and dried up somewhat since the trial ended. The trial was extended in order to get more players because it was so underwhelming in the first 2 weeks. If only 1:20 or 1:15 actually resub, well there is a reason for that and its not because the players are wrong about the quality of the product, it is because the quality of the product has not improved substantially and if the AOC dev team didn't understand that before the trials they sure as hell do now.

Originally posted by openedge1

Originally posted by finaticd

O.K. I will take the 100,000k figure as valid but also remember that during the same time Funcom gave away free level 50s so many people probably cashed in on that.  When Funcom states that most players are not level 80 that is probably because they are counting the myriad of lower level alts that many players have ammassed just like the census sites.

 

I already admitted that the trials seemed to be popular going by stat trackers however much of the numbers have reverted to where they were prior, who knows maybe many subscribed and playtime is just way down.

Would those be Xfire numbers? They are quite unreliable, and using those as any measure of overal scrips is still ridiculous. Thus the reason I started this op.

Wish I knew what numbers you feel "reverted". Search sites? Web traffic? All useless.

Basically there is one thing we DO know.

We know nothing.

And Funcom holds the cards to the overall data. If the game is not shutdown by now, then it will carry on.

Simple mathematics there.

I find it strange that you discount xfire as being unreliable due to all these speculated unknowns, but you are perfectly willing to take giant leaps of faith to back up your opinions.

You have no idea how many people uninstalled xfire or have problems with it, but you have concluded that it must be the problem and makes xfire invalid.

You say conan hasn't shut down yet, so it will carry on.  For all we know Funcom could be posting the closure message right this very second. 

In the end you make some viewpoints that in any other situation would make some logical sense.  However, when you look at the history of AoC and the trending of xfire the only conclusion available is that it was accurate.  It doesn't matter what rational arguements can be dug up to prove that xfire isn't random, isn't representative or has some other problem, when it can be clearly seen that it was accurate about the trend of conan among others.  This isn't saying it will be accurate going forward, but it was accurate enough the first year for anyone to see. 

Furthermore it could be evidenced that funcom supports the xfire trending, because they held a promotion for players to download, install and use xifre in a video capture contest.  They could have chosen a number of venues to do this, but they chose xfire and the results of the contest would be an upward swing in xfire usage.  You can say xfire is meaningless in relationship to conan, but Funcom doesn't appear to think so. 

Not to mention the fact that Funcom is supporting xfire use withing conan pretty much negates your theory that xifre doesn't work in conan.  Unless you want to claim that Funcom is advocating the use of software in their game that will break it or render it unplayable, you have to admit it must work for the company to do this. 

Again, I am not saying conan is dead or sucks.  What I am saying is that you are running a huge circle trying to disprove something as impossible, when the fact is it happened.   You can't rewrite history. 

Originally posted by LordBonezy

Originally posted by openedge1

Originally posted by finaticd

O.K. I will take the 100,000k figure as valid but also remember that during the same time Funcom gave away free level 50s so many people probably cashed in on that.  When Funcom states that most players are not level 80 that is probably because they are counting the myriad of lower level alts that many players have ammassed just like the census sites.

 

I already admitted that the trials seemed to be popular going by stat trackers however much of the numbers have reverted to where they were prior, who knows maybe many subscribed and playtime is just way down.

Would those be Xfire numbers? They are quite unreliable, and using those as any measure of overal scrips is still ridiculous. Thus the reason I started this op.

Wish I knew what numbers you feel "reverted". Search sites? Web traffic? All useless.

Basically there is one thing we DO know.

We know nothing.

And Funcom holds the cards to the overall data. If the game is not shutdown by now, then it will carry on.

Simple mathematics there.

Google Trends

Xfire hour logs

Official forums

Mmorpg posts

They've all dropped off and dried up somewhat since the trial ended. The trial was extended in order to get more players because it was so underwhelming in the first 2 weeks. If only 1:20 or 1:15 actually resub, well there is a reason for that and its not because the players are wrong about the quality of the product, it is because the quality of the product has not improved substantially and if the AOC dev team didn't understand that before the trials they sure as hell do now.

Yet, what is amazing is I can whip out any data I wish to and show something like...oh say...this?

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/ageofconan.com/

Which shows a massive upswing...compared to say...oh...this

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/warhammeronline.com/

Now THAT is a downswing...

I guess what I see is growth for AoC. 

Weird how that works to anyones favor that wishes it.

Originally posted by Daffid011

Originally posted by openedge1

Originally posted by finaticd

O.K. I will take the 100,000k figure as valid but also remember that during the same time Funcom gave away free level 50s so many people probably cashed in on that.  When Funcom states that most players are not level 80 that is probably because they are counting the myriad of lower level alts that many players have ammassed just like the census sites.

 

I already admitted that the trials seemed to be popular going by stat trackers however much of the numbers have reverted to where they were prior, who knows maybe many subscribed and playtime is just way down.

Would those be Xfire numbers? They are quite unreliable, and using those as any measure of overal scrips is still ridiculous. Thus the reason I started this op.

Wish I knew what numbers you feel "reverted". Search sites? Web traffic? All useless.

Basically there is one thing we DO know.

We know nothing.

And Funcom holds the cards to the overall data. If the game is not shutdown by now, then it will carry on.

Simple mathematics there.

I find it strange that you discount xfire as being unreliable due to all these speculated unknowns, but you are perfectly willing to take giant leaps of faith to back up your opinions.

You have no idea how many people uninstalled xfire or have problems with it, but you have concluded that it must be the problem and makes xfire invalid.

You say conan hasn't shut down yet, so it will carry on.  For all we know Funcom could be posting the closure message right this very second. 

 

In the end you make some viewpoints that in any other situation would make some logical sense.  However, when you look at the history of AoC and the trending of xfire the only conclusion available is that it was accurate.  It doesn't matter what rational arguements can be dug up to prove that xfire isn't random, isn't representative or has some other problem, when it can be clearly seen that it was accurate about the trend of conan among others.  This isn't saying it will be accurate going forward, but it was accurate enough the first year for anyone to see. 

Furthermore it could be evidenced that funcom supports the xfire trending, because they held a promotion for players to download, install and use xifre in a video capture contest.  They could have chosen a number of venues to do this, but they chose xfire and the results of the contest would be an upward swing in xfire usage.  You can say xfire is meaningless in relationship to conan, but Funcom doesn't appear to think so. 

Not to mention the fact that Funcom is supporting xfire use withing conan pretty much negates your theory that xifre doesn't work in conan.  Unless you want to claim that Funcom is advocating the use of software in their game that will break it or render it unplayable, you have to admit it must work for the company to do this. 

 

Again, I am not saying conan is dead or sucks.  What I am saying is that you are running a huge circle trying to disprove something as impossible, when the fact is it happened.   You can't rewrite history. 

Isn't it amazing to know that for example, I have already pulled 3 systems from using the software (and I already know of two other systems not using the software), but the game is already peaking back up into the high 30's now.

Isn't that quite unreliable?

People will come and go, and my only statement with this is that for people wishing to use Xfire as a reliable source to compute users is pretty foolish as it IS unreliable software for some to use.

As to Funcom promoting it...well duh, you think their promotions with Xfire is not paid somewhere and does not help someone? And really...what other tool can you name that will record video and then give you a site to freely upload it? We are guaranteed people are getting back patting and butt slapping somewhere, and some one is getting paid somewhere. 

I am not stating everyone is having an issue which you also claim. What I AM stating is that Xfire as a tool for reliable number crunching is going to be a failure. Just like right now...people are using the fact that it dropped down to #44 to show people left..

But, why is it going back up then if so many left?

I rest my case.

I know this much. The game is performing flawlessly on my 3 systems now since Xfire removal. So, there is already 3 players times not being calculated, that probably could push the game even further up the Xfire pole..but, hey, please feel free to use it to trend..

Did you know the trend is upward ? Weird how that works out.