Originally posted by Dreizack

The Xfire numbers for CO are pathetic, they aren't even close to reaching WoW's numbers.  The game is a failure.

You clearly do not know what you are talking about.  You think that  if a game does not reach Blizzard's WoW numbers,  it is a failure.  I am sorry to say but games that reach those numbers are very very few.  You do not understand that those "failures" that you talk about, are still profitable to these other companies.

Please use your brain next time :))

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Xfire is around 200.000 players on line 24/7 these days. That means in MMO terms a random changing sample of around 1M to 1.2 M players 24/24 hours.

Pure western players (as some games which do well in eastern markets don't show up at all in significant numbers).

As it is a constant sampling 24/24 7/7 it is extremely good to view trends - not only within a game but also between games. It can be compared with the TV broadcast sampling methods. As it only measure PC gamers ... gaming (it's not a social study).

2 constraints: games under 1000 Xfire players have less accuracy and watch out for xfire promoted games with prices on their websites.

But overall - certainly with the extreme 24/7 timing - it shows almost all you need to know how a game is doing.

One last remark: do only look at players (not at timed played) of a game.

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As a reference a safe bet to calculate the actual players of a game it is good to set out a reference. I use a 3 way point reference (and they all check out independant within a 2% bracket): WOW = 5.5 M, EVE = 0.3M, Lotro = 0.18M

With this you can see that CO for the moment has around 125K players at launch.

So the next 4 weeks will decide how much players will play this game in the long run as around 30% is the normal retention rate for a game past 2 months launch.

So CO will probably level out at around 60K-80K subs past its launch period.

 

Yeah we must really wait and see what happens over the next 4-8 weeks.  So far CO xfire numbers actually went up and getting a little under what lotro has.  As this is one of the games I am currently playing,  as long as they maintain that level or go up and stay profitable, then I am happy.   I want Cryptic to be able to support their game, add content ect....

Interestingly enough,  I was looking at the full xfire list and WAR and AOC are virtually tied, same amount of players probably.  With Aion launching, it will take more players from WAR than AOC, so don't be surprised if WAR drops below AOC. 

Originally posted by Pyrostasis

Originally posted by Ozmodan

The only players who use xfire are the console gamers.  Real gamers don't use it.  So why pick numbers from a site that everyone knows is meaningless?

 

Sorry ace, Im a "real" gamer and I have used it for 5 years.

Xfire cant be used to give a total population, but it is a nice population of people to gauge trends. In statistics, you ask a group of people questions, and then use that group of people to get an idea about what the whole is doing.

Xfire is kind of like the Gallop of MMO's. It wont give you the entire picture perfectly but it is fairly accurate in showing games that are increasing vs games that are on decline.

 

Pyrostasis --- nail on the head buddy.  I don't use xfire much anymore, but I will probably start again soon.  I like using it, I like the chat features in game, and it does show a nice correlation of the population.   Every trend I've seen so far on Xfire are the same trends I've seen in the actual games themselves...... server closings and all.  Don't know why people don't understand what "trend" means....   noone said Xfire numbers are exact.

xire fire numbers dont mean crap there are tons of people in every games that dont touch xfire including myself.

 xfire isnt widely adopted and some coutry use their own (asia)since lot dont bother with english

its a fair indicator of  AAA title in english speaking contry

but its just an average ranking take the number of hour do a -+ 10% and it give you a fairly good idea of the game position

take wow xfire say 275 ooo hours are played 

ya right we all know there way more hour played / day then that 

that being said its rank 1 in english speaking country is fairly accurate

um considering this is sordof an casual gamers heaven xfire numbers will have nothing to do with subscriptions... i dont know anyone who is casual and knows what it is let alone anyone who still uses it.. i can see maybe cod4 people and similar games but xfire is in no way a good way to judge numbers .. i would think if they wernt making enough money they wouldnt be putting out the patches they are doing so fast..

I'm tired of Xfire this, Xfire that, posts.  Not everyone uses Xfire, in fact the majority of players don't.  Perhaps people that are drawn to a certain type of game, also have the personality trait of not using Xfire.  I used to use it for about 6-7 years, then stopped after I quit DAoC.  Xfire doesn't prove anything.

Originally posted by Gravarg

I'm tired of Xfire this, Xfire that, posts.  Not everyone uses Xfire, in fact the majority of players don't.  Perhaps people that are drawn to a certain type of game, also have the personality trait of not using Xfire.  I used to use it for about 6-7 years, then stopped after I quit DAoC.  Xfire doesn't prove anything.

Just like how when they do market research they must get 100 percent of the population to know if something is good or bad. 

Prove that the trend so far is that CO is rising in players rather then falling and maybe we can stop using it to detect trends in popularity.

never used and never will use Xfire in my life and i've been playing games (console and mmo) since 1990...xfire means nothing

Originally posted by shamus252

xire fire numbers dont mean crap there are tons of people in every games that dont touch xfire including myself.

That is true, however, that doesnt matter.

When you take a survey, asking about elections, do they ask every person in america? No, they ask a few hundred thousand.

Xfire is a polling group so to speak for mmo's. While it doesnt show EVERY player, it does show trends. For those that are dense let me explain.

Lets say there is a steady drop in game activity on xfire, users drop, play time drops...etc. Does this mean players are leaving the game in droves? No not exactly, but it does show that a population in the game is prone to leaving, and hours are down. This could be due to downtime, patches, change in fees, etc etc.

You then go to the game website, and notice that they just consolidated 30% of their servers, this would then back up xfire numbers.

So yes, while Xfire does not show all of a games population, it is a good litmus test for a games success. If xfire stats grow, odds are the game is growing, if xfire stats begin to drop, then odds are the population of the game is dropping.

However, that being said, it is very hard to gauge with simple xfire numbers HOW much of the population is represented. For instance, xfire numbers may double one week when a major advertising campaign goes on, then drop significantly the following week. This simply shows more people tried the game, and not all of them stayed, it doesnt mean that the sub numbers doubled and then dropped.

So you do have to use your head a bit with these stats, but they are fairly accurate stats that have shown the trends of Lotro, AoC, WAR, WoW, and many other games pretty accurately.

Originally posted by grunty

Originally posted by grndzro

This is hillarious....no where did I say most gamers have x-fire on all the time. But almost everyone has made a X-fire account at some time, and used it.

Most people use it occationally.

When did it become popular to hate x-fire? I'v never had a problem with it. it just works.

 

I have never used X-fire. I will never use X-fire. I personally do not know anyone in real life that uses X-fire. I don't hate it. I see no functional use for it.

This

I have never downloaded X-fire, and don't know anyone that uses it.

Well there are at 15,000+ player online at this moment (between Milenium city, Desert and Canada) keep in mind there are start zones and high level zones. WAR would kill for those numbers right now. Keep in mind CO budget is probably not even 1/4th as much as WAR or AoC.

Well it does look like CO is improving it's standing.  It is upto 8th on the list and very close to matching LoTR.  It's overall standing has gotten upto 26th. 

So it does look like CO is still growing albeit slowly.

Still maintaing its ground would be intresting to see how it does this weekend.

A lot of people that I know are saying they'll revisit the game down the road. But as-is it's far to lacking in content, adn WAY to many knee-jerk "balance" moves on powers being made. Which wouldn't be bad if there were a relatively cheap way to undo something that's worked for a week, but is now rendered all but useless to their playstyle.

should be really interesting to see where CO is in 6 months.

Originally posted by Jpizzle

A lot of people that I know are saying they'll revisit the game down the road. But as-is it's far to lacking in content, adn WAY to many knee-jerk "balance" moves on powers being made. Which wouldn't be bad if there were a relatively cheap way to undo something that's worked for a week, but is now rendered all but useless to their playstyle.

should be really interesting to see where CO is in 6 months.

Yep, that's my plan.  I checked it out in beta and it was fun but needed a lot of work.  They've already started making improvements in areas that I found lacking so down the road I will be probably be picking the game up.

Oh, as for X-fire I don't know anyone that uses it either. 

Originally posted by Jpizzle

A lot of people that I know are saying they'll revisit the game down the road. But as-is it's far to lacking in content, adn WAY to many knee-jerk "balance" moves on powers being made. Which wouldn't be bad if there were a relatively cheap way to undo something that's worked for a week, but is now rendered all but useless to their playstyle.

should be really interesting to see where CO is in 6 months.

They are looking to fix retcon system but they don't want people to stop lvling other characters and simply switch from one build to another very easily.

Well from looking at xfire it looks like champions online has peaked in terms of subs.  Really not a good sign as when the first month ends you will see a drop. 

Do people think this game will be able stay above CoX?  Right now xfire shows CO about 4x the number of players that CoX has.

Day one and Aion rockets past CO to number 4 on the MMO list on xfire.

Originally posted by ethion

Well from looking at xfire it looks like champions online has peaked in terms of subs.  Really not a good sign as when the first month ends you will see a drop. 

 

Day one and Aion rockets past CO to number 4 on the MMO list on xfire.

These two are certainly related and even if you can gather meaningful user data from xfire what happens on the weekend of a major release is not going to give you useful long term data.

Xfire is a completely useless tool to measure the amount of players because the numbers are not statistically valid. Both the cross sectional data and the timeline data have pretty much all the errors you can run into using statistics.

Originally posted by Aercus

Xfire is a completely useless tool to measure the amount of players because the numbers are not statistically valid. Both the cross sectional data and the timeline data have pretty much all the errors you can run into using statistics.

We've heard it a million times.  If you don't believe the numbers then just move along.  Nobody will try to convince you of anything if you can't see any value in the statistic. 

lol. People still listen to Xfire posts. rofl.

Originally posted by ethion

Originally posted by Aercus

Xfire is a completely useless tool to measure the amount of players because the numbers are not statistically valid. Both the cross sectional data and the timeline data have pretty much all the errors you can run into using statistics.

 

We've heard it a million times.  If you don't believe the numbers then just move along.  Nobody will try to convince you of anything if you can't see any value in the statistic. 

Quoting Xfire numbers just prove you have absolutely no idea of statistics. Go to college a few years please.

Originally posted by Aercus

Originally posted by ethion

Originally posted by Aercus

Xfire is a completely useless tool to measure the amount of players because the numbers are not statistically valid. Both the cross sectional data and the timeline data have pretty much all the errors you can run into using statistics.

 

We've heard it a million times.  If you don't believe the numbers then just move along.  Nobody will try to convince you of anything if you can't see any value in the statistic. 

 

Quoting Xfire numbers just prove you have absolutely no idea of statistics. Go to college a few years please.

uh I TAed a Statistics class in college and even tutored people.