Well for Day one of the headstart CO jumped up in xfire to 15th place for MMOs.  It just passed AoC.  4583 xfire player hours played yesterday.  I wonder how it will look when the game launches. 

No offense or anything but Xfire is and never has been a varifable way to measure the size of the community.  Myself and all of my friends we've never once used it and I admit other than some epeeners that I've known I rarely meet anyone that uses it.  Thats not to say it doesn't give you some sort of estimated idea but it really seems to only apply semi accurately to non niche games.

Have to agree Xfire is not the end all be all gauge for games.  It is nice for a LARGE varable.  Don't take the numbers to seriously.  =)

It is the best measure we have and it is definitely good to see how the game is doing relative to itself.  ie when it peaks

15th already?

Its not even out in europe yet.

Originally posted by Manchine

Have to agree Xfire is not the end all be all gauge for games.  It is nice for a LARGE varable.  Don't take the numbers to seriously.  =)

I use xfire a lot to guage how well a game may be doing currently (even though it is pretty biased) and I was just curious if there was another source out there that guages the populations of said games? Rough estimates of course.

most games will ramp up pretty high the first week or two then kinda slow down and they drop after a month or two sometimes 4-5 before stabilizing.

What is Xfire? kidding....

 Sure everyone may not use it. I know I don't. Just like not everyone has their tele's hooked up to nielson ratings. But it's still fairly acurate as to what would rank where.

Originally posted by twiggy550

Originally posted by Manchine

Have to agree Xfire is not the end all be all gauge for games.  It is nice for a LARGE varable.  Don't take the numbers to seriously.  =)

 

I use xfire a lot to guage how well a game may be doing currently (even though it is pretty biased) and I was just curious if there was another source out there that guages the populations of said games? Rough estimates of course.

I do the same thing but I take with a grain of salt.  It has shown a decent accuracy at times.

Originally posted by Adokaum

15th already?

Its not even out in europe yet.

We europeans are in the head-start too.

Well day two and CO is upto 7200 hours and 10th on the list for MMOs.  It is approaching LoTR and has passed Warhammer.  Relative to other games at release like Warhammer and AoC these numbers are really low.  I think warhammer and AoC both spiked upto around 20K+ in the days following release.  But CO still hasn't actually been released.  Will be interesting to see how it looks in a week.

I wouldn't get too excited about CO passing certain games. It's a bit early isn't it? Come back in 6 months, when the post-launch numbers are more stable, and then we can look at popularity.

 Yeh everyone is testing it out but 15th is pretty good for pre release. Pretty sad  considering all of the other MMO's  out there.

*** 10th place now ***

Here we go with the Xfire noobs.

FUCK Xfire.

Xfire can be used to show trends. I cannot be used to compare different games. In 3 months or so you can let us know what Xfire says.

Originally posted by GaryM

Xfire can be used to show trends. I cannot be used to compare different games. In 3 months or so you can let us know what Xfire says.

Sure it can :)  You just gotta understand a few things about how the numbers are collected and factors that effect them. 

1. Games that drive people to xfire like AoC and Eve have artificially jacked their numbers up, although that was awhile back so isn't that significant anymore.

2. International game vs US only games will deviate due to distribution of players demographically affecting xfire usage skewing results.

3. Small samples have significant error rates.  The greater the sample size the better the accuracy.

4. Even in the best of cases it isn't 100% accurate but it is accurate within +- xx% where xx is probably not more then 20% but that is a guess :)

So in the end yes you can compare as long as you consider things and no that it is relative.

You can for example know that LoTR has more subs then EQ2 and has Less subs then Wow.  However comparing AoC and Warhammer becomes too close to call.  Although I'd probably guess that Warhammer has more subs then AoC since funcom did the push on xfire several months ago that probably artificially skews their numbers up a bit... Although I'd still not really say anything one way or another...

And of course you need to consider things like SWG numbers are artificially high because of people running SWG against non Sony servers.  

xfire... why should i install spyware?

Originally posted by brezel

xfire... why should i install spyware?

 

You shouldn't :P 

But xfire isn't spyware it is a nice tool that gives you a lot of features that are nice for a group of friends.  It gives you in game chat, voice, screenshots, video captures, even the ability to stream live video to the net, it also gives you game patch downloads, and more stuff in exchange for collecting data on game times you play which is of course voluntary since you can just close the app and it doesn't collect anything. 

Where I find it great is when I'm trying to interact with friends who are playing different games.  We used to use Vent but xfire has a service like vent but they provide the server.  It turns out it is just easier to use and more convenient.

Still early but so far the xfire numbers for CO on launch day are disappointing.

They were only in 11th space for MMOs and really unimpressive.  The numbers were higher for the headstart.  Guess we will really need to see how next weekend looks with school and people working maybe thats hurting the uptick you would expect.

It is #32 for all games right now.  Still pretty far from approaching LoTR.

If I remember correctly AoC was #4 sometime on xfire.

Seems its deceided by the  "staying power" powerset of CO.

Considering that Champions has just added steam achievements, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess they are struggling out the gates...

I may be wrong, the achievements may have been in the works for a while...but achievements have been used before to try and push less popular games, both on the pc through steam and on 360.

Also, its worth mentioning that the overall popularity of xfire has dwindled significantly from, oh, a year or two ago when it seemed like EVERYONE was running it all the time...

I wonder what actual percentage of gamers run xfire/steam/ect. now a days.

Originally posted by darksider27

Also, its worth mentioning that the overall popularity of xfire has dwindled significantly from, oh, a year or two ago when it seemed like EVERYONE was running it all the time...

I wonder what actual percentage of gamers run xfire/steam/ect. now a days.

Source of that statement?

Originally posted by darksider27

Considering that Champions has just added steam achievements, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess they are struggling out the gates...

I may be wrong, the achievements may have been in the works for a while...but achievements have been used before to try and push less popular games, both on the pc through steam and on 360.

Also, its worth mentioning that the overall popularity of xfire has dwindled significantly from, oh, a year or two ago when it seemed like EVERYONE was running it all the time...

I wonder what actual percentage of gamers run xfire/steam/ect. now a days.

It might be dwindling some but there isn't really any reason it wouldn't be dwindling uniformly.  Games like Warhammer and AoC which didn't launch to long ago both climbed up to the number 2 spot in the MMO list.  So CO not even getting into the top 10 MMO games is pretty poor...

Well I think this game is failing.  We are a few days into launch and it looks pretty flat and slow.  They aren't getting that surge you have seen in other games.

Yesterday it was 29th overall and still not in the top 10 MMOs.

So I'm gonna call it, this game is gonna die down to a very small niche and Cryptic is in major trouble.  They aren't going to make their 100K subs or at least not keep them past the first month.

Due to budget issues resulting from the fail of CO, Star Trek unfortunately is gonna be skimpy and probably fail badly if it even makes it out the door.  

I bought the game and wanted it to be good.  But I'm lvl 23 now and kinda discouraged with all the jerking around on powers and the inability to respec.  Not to mention I bought it through digital download from gamestop and so far they haven't been able to get me the final codes for the game.  They were able to charge my CC but I'm finding the whole experience upsetting.   It is all putting me in the frame to say to hell with it and have my CC company refuse the charges.

Well looks like Champions online has peaked at 10th spot for MMOs and 29th spot for overall.  Unfortunately it looks like CO is officially a flop.

With these numbers I'm kinda skeptical that STO will ever be released or if it is it will be a rush job and totally crap.  I'll frankly be surprised if cryptic is still in business a year from now.