Originally posted by erictlewis

Originally posted by DeathTouch

Originally posted by Ikeda

Half the problem here, as I see it, are you people making excuses:

Oh the game is dropping because people have IRL issues (so do ALL games)

Oh the game is dropping because of school stuff (so do ALL games... and for that matter school finals and whatnot are staggered nationwide)

Oh the game is dropping because Japan got hit with an earthquake that knocked a butterfly off its flower that flapped its wings and caused a gust of air to knock my hands off the laptop preventing me from playing.

Stop making excuses as to WHY.  The fact is the numbers DO indicate a drop.  Just like the WoW numbers are showing a HUGE drop.  It is what it is.

I could care less that the number do shit, but for those that seem to think the numbers mean all, i just had to post that right now is a very busy time for some.

If for you its an excuse so be it, im my world i call them facts. I do remember quite a few posts from those that started rift saying they would play till it got nice out. some said as soon as the bikes could be ridden the games would go away. All wonderful little facts and reasons at this stage and game numbers might be going down, for those who cant seem to get over the numbers game.

 What does bikes be ridden have to do with games going away?  Care to explain that.

   Once again Deathtouch was only showing that there are other factors that go into a decline in numbers. One could throw up all sorts of activities that come along with spring and summer season to show why some might find other reasons to be doing something other than playing Rift or any game. I am pretty sure I read the same thing he did about a guy saying he would play until he could ride his bike meaning untill the weather was good for doing his other hobbie. Point is there are other factors that could play into a games declining (though not by much) population OTHER than that game is failing.

Some just really want to play the "I told you so" game and do their best to prove themselves right. Like has been said by others, it is still too early to tell but from somes standpoint, the game is not a failure.

Originally posted by erictlewis

Originally posted by DeathTouch

Originally posted by Ikeda

Half the problem here, as I see it, are you people making excuses:

Oh the game is dropping because people have IRL issues (so do ALL games)

Oh the game is dropping because of school stuff (so do ALL games... and for that matter school finals and whatnot are staggered nationwide)

Oh the game is dropping because Japan got hit with an earthquake that knocked a butterfly off its flower that flapped its wings and caused a gust of air to knock my hands off the laptop preventing me from playing.

Stop making excuses as to WHY.  The fact is the numbers DO indicate a drop.  Just like the WoW numbers are showing a HUGE drop.  It is what it is.

I could care less that the number do shit, but for those that seem to think the numbers mean all, i just had to post that right now is a very busy time for some.

If for you its an excuse so be it, im my world i call them facts. I do remember quite a few posts from those that started rift saying they would play till it got nice out. some said as soon as the bikes could be ridden the games would go away. All wonderful little facts and reasons at this stage and game numbers might be going down, for those who cant seem to get over the numbers game.

 What does bikes be ridden have to do with games going away?  Care to explain that.

He meant as soon as the weather became nice enough for outside activities giving people something to do besides sit in the house in front of a plastic box that goes bing. Not that hard to suss out really.

Originally posted by Tardcore

Originally posted by erictlewis

Originally posted by DeathTouch

Originally posted by Ikeda

Half the problem here, as I see it, are you people making excuses:

Oh the game is dropping because people have IRL issues (so do ALL games)

Oh the game is dropping because of school stuff (so do ALL games... and for that matter school finals and whatnot are staggered nationwide)

Oh the game is dropping because Japan got hit with an earthquake that knocked a butterfly off its flower that flapped its wings and caused a gust of air to knock my hands off the laptop preventing me from playing.

Stop making excuses as to WHY.  The fact is the numbers DO indicate a drop.  Just like the WoW numbers are showing a HUGE drop.  It is what it is.

I could care less that the number do shit, but for those that seem to think the numbers mean all, i just had to post that right now is a very busy time for some.

If for you its an excuse so be it, im my world i call them facts. I do remember quite a few posts from those that started rift saying they would play till it got nice out. some said as soon as the bikes could be ridden the games would go away. All wonderful little facts and reasons at this stage and game numbers might be going down, for those who cant seem to get over the numbers game.

 What does bikes be ridden have to do with games going away?  Care to explain that.

He meant as soon as the weather became nice enough for outside activities giving people something to do besides sit in the house in front of a plastic box that goes bing. Not that hard to suss out really.

Yes yes, we understand what he was saying, but what does that have to do with the discussion. Any excuse you make up for Rift numbers dropping would on average cause a similar drop in all MMOs. The discussion is pointing out that Rift has a 20% drop in hours while most other MMOs do not.

Yes yes, we understand what he was saying, but what does that have to do with the discussion. Any excuse you make up for Rift numbers dropping would on average cause a similar drop in all MMOs. The discussion is pointing out that Rift has a 20% drop in hours while most other MMOs do not.

   This is true but also you have to account that rifts is the new game out. So the loss of players is being analyzed to death. I am sure there are numbers declining in other games as well ( I know I play a lot less this time of year every year) Rifts' like  alot of mmos, is seeing a decline after the initial 30 days. The extra stuff to concidder aren't excuses, merely other factors into the loss of subs. No the other games may net be seeing a 20% drop (by Xfires count) in subs, but I am sure they fluctuate.

There are no excuses, it is common sence that people leave after trial periods of games they decided weren't worth the sub and clearly Rift is no different.

Originally posted by Rhoklaw

Yes yes, we understand what he was saying, but what does that have to do with the discussion. Any excuse you make up for Rift numbers dropping would on average cause a similar drop in all MMOs. The discussion is pointing out that Rift has a 20% drop in hours while most other MMOs do not.

Negating for a moment the fact that all figures can only partially be trusted and should be regarded in perspective: I didn't take daily samples, but I do have some figures that I noted.

I took a sample of sunday, Feb 20th and compared to yesterday's sunday, this is how they compare:

               Feb 20th - Apr 12th -  % change

- WoW     224k (hrs)   174k         - 22.5 %

- Aion       14k                11.1k       - 21    %

- LotrO      10.4k              9k           - 13.5 %

- GW          8.6k                7.2k        - 16    %

- EVE         9.9k                9.5k          - 4    %

The major MMO's seemed to have experienced a drop off as well in that timeperiod.

Originally posted by MMO.Maverick

Originally posted by Rhoklaw

Yes yes, we understand what he was saying, but what does that have to do with the discussion. Any excuse you make up for Rift numbers dropping would on average cause a similar drop in all MMOs. The discussion is pointing out that Rift has a 20% drop in hours while most other MMOs do not.

Negating for a moment the fact that all figures can only partially be trusted and should be regarded in perspective: I didn't take daily samples, but I do have some figures that I noted.

I took a sample of sunday, Feb 20th and compared to yesterday's sunday, this is how they compare:

               Feb 20th - Apr 12th -  % change

- WoW     224k (hrs)   174k         - 22.5 %

- Aion       14k                11.1k       - 21    %

- LotrO      10.4k              9k           - 13.5 %

- GW          8.6k                7.2k        - 16    %

- EVE         9.9k                9.5k          - 4    %

 

The major MMO's seemed to have experienced a drop off as well in that timeperiod.

EVE numbers fluctuate often because so many people use multiple accounts so there's bound to be spikes of lost subs due to people letting one or two of their alt accounts expire. Next month might see an increase, that's how often the numbers change. lol

Originally posted by Hekket

Originally posted by MMO.Maverick

Originally posted by Rhoklaw

Yes yes, we understand what he was saying, but what does that have to do with the discussion. Any excuse you make up for Rift numbers dropping would on average cause a similar drop in all MMOs. The discussion is pointing out that Rift has a 20% drop in hours while most other MMOs do not.

Negating for a moment the fact that all figures can only partially be trusted and should be regarded in perspective: I didn't take daily samples, but I do have some figures that I noted.

I took a sample of sunday, Feb 20th and compared to yesterday's sunday, this is how they compare:

               Feb 20th - Apr 12th -  % change

- WoW     224k (hrs)   174k         - 22.5 %

- Aion       14k                11.1k       - 21    %

- LotrO      10.4k              9k           - 13.5 %

- GW          8.6k                7.2k        - 16    %

- EVE         9.9k                9.5k          - 4    %

 

The major MMO's seemed to have experienced a drop off as well in that timeperiod.

 

EVE numbers fluctuate often because so many people use multiple accounts so there's bound to be spikes of lost subs due to people letting one or two of their alt accounts expire. Next month might see an increase, that's how often the numbers change. lol

   This is true, but also what some on this forum are calling an excuse.  Seems like a logical factor to me, though I could care less about any games numbers, ratings, etc.. If I went by what the majority say about games on these forums, I wouldn't ever try a new game out. They are all doomed.

A new restaurant open for business.

Many people go check it out after seeing the attractive flyer

Some like it a lot

Some prefer their old restaurant

It's common to see this declining trend....not just in mmo

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by Zorgo

Every single mmo released into this market will drop noticably in subs after the first month of free play. /thread

That only holds true for WoW clones. Alot of old MMORPGs did not lose subs but rather slowly gained.

Eve, EQ, DAoC, Asherons Call, UO, FF IX, Lineage 2 all of them gained subs months after release and in some cases maintained them for YEARS before starting to drop. Check out http://www.mmodata.net/ to see yourself.

Even LOTRO gained subs for over a year before starting to slowly drop. It is rather WAR and AoC (and other WoW clones) which dropped significantly in subs.

EVE, EQ, DAoC, AC, UO, FF IX and L2 were not released into this market now were they? They were all released into a market without near infinite mmo choices - other than EVE; what has happened to the population of all of those other games? Population continues to drop in them all as more and more choices are available.

We used to continue to sub after our first month because....heck, what else are we going to play? We drop our subs after our first month now because we KNOW there are other things on the market we like better. That simply wasn't the case in the early days.

I stand by my statement. All mmo's released into this market will show a noticable drop after the first free month. In addition, my guess is that even WoW, EVE and the other heavier population games have a more people who don't sub than sub - you simply don't know how many people use free trials and then don't sub - retention rate in every game could be similar to Rift, however, it is much easier noticed after a new release's first month has passed; much harder to notice after free trials start.

I still think this thread should close. This is normal for all mmo's and all evidence shows that Rift has a very strong showing when compared to VG , WAR and AoC's pop drops.

imo, when a new game starts and they have to create more server for demand i'd split em with names like "Monsterous Lore Name Server A' and 'Monsterous Lore Name Server B'- then when they have to remerge - remerge to just one "monsterous lore name server' - i think it would take a bit of the sting out.

They had to have that many servers in Rift to handle the initial population; they should have known it would drop after month 1 - they should have thought of a way of handling it that didn't make forum idiots cry that the sky is falling - when it is clearly doing better than most games recently released into this oversaturated market.

Originally posted by Yamota

This is after 1 month mind you and also quite similar to the drops AoC and WAR experienced. After three months they were down to less than 50% of peak and where are they now?

Rift is going the same route, trust me on this.

I haven't slept in 3 weeks worrying about the possibility of a rise in the population of Rift.  Tonight, I'll sleep like a baby.

Thank you for this service.

lol xfire . if u go on the main page of xfire right now there is only 67.909 people playing game. and there is alot of game

iam playing Rift right now and xfire is not  even open

i dont know how many people play Rift and i dont care but the 67.909 people playing game right now are certainly not all playing RIFT

each day  Xfire reset the Minute played by player 

(or week)

People still use xfire?

Originally posted by channel84

A new restaurant open for business.

Many people go check it out after seeing the attractive flyer

Some like it a lot

Some prefer their old restaurant

It's common to see this declining trend....not just in mmo

Well, somethinbg like that.

About 60% of the people buying a MMO pays for more playtime after the free month is up. Wow actually didn't have so much more after that time either but got new players as the word spread.

That could happen with Rift even if I think Rift will be like EQ2 and LOTRO. A medium sized game with it's own fans and enough money to go buy, but no match against the largest game.

Trion have some rather competent people but I don't see them truly go up against Blizzard, Bioware and Arenanet with their first MMO. For a second game when they got the experience from Rift things might be very different.

Rift is a fine game and it will be around for a long time but it wont be the next Wow.

Heh. There's people that have been posting in the Rift section at regular short intervals(including this thread) since 8 AM my time. It's now 11:22 PM.

People seriously need to do something else. I'm all for forum discussions and what not, but people (on both sides) are getting a little obsessed.

Doesn't mean anything, all games fluctuate with sub peeks and drops.

Originally posted by channel84

A new restaurant open for business.

Many people go check it out after seeing the attractive flyer

Some like it a lot

Some prefer their old restaurant

It's common to see this declining trend....not just in mmo

However the name of the game is to keep those customers from going back to their favorite restaurant and making your restaurant their future favorite.

I'm glad they released 1.1 before the 30 days were up. Seeing them fall into the balance tar pit and slowly sinking before they charged me for a 3-month founders price was a good for me. I really liked the game, but another PvE dominant game being balanced around PvP is another MMO I'm not playing. Reaver/Pally/Beast was my main, btw. Not Riftblade :)

Originally posted by blueturtle13

Originally posted by metalguy23

We're not in Azeroth anymore! LMAO. They should have never called out WOW in their ad campaign and they should marketed it differently. Actually they should have made the main gameplay designed around Rifts and invasions no quests. Make the endgame bigger and much harder insane sized rifts with huge invasion. Throw in some RVR type areas where each side uses the rifts against the other to take over landmarks, the game would have been amazing. Instead we have Azeroth 2.0 with human looking characters built on a crappy gamebryo engine, sorry but it's not a good game, its decent but not good or very good. 

 in your opinion

 Obviously in their opinion since they stated this. It also happens to be the opinion of every person that subbed to the game that I know ranging from EQ guys, DAOC guys, WoW guys and people that hadn't played WoW since Burning Crusade.  Guess how many out of my friends are still subbed?  0 out 9.  That my friends is a trend.  People want depth, they want skills on their character that do something other than bash skulls and they want a good story and freedom to move around (yes sandbox AND story can you imagine?).  Build it and they will come like no game has since WoW's inception.  10 million subs? nah but 2 million+ is not out of the question. 

Haha, I wonder what would these forums would be like if people had factual numbers to discuss instead of "feeling" and "beliefs".

Bah, I need more sleep, too much time spent on Rift.

Originally posted by Yamota

XFire shows a 20% drop of played hours compared to the peak one month ago. So as predicted this latest "great" game is starting to lose ground.

How much you wanna bet that by next month it will be at 50% of peak?

 you could say it different.....the mmo hoppers that play EVERY mmo when it comes out are gone and whats left now is the real player base.

Many players dont use Xfire to brag about how many hours they game (read: have no social life)

I play rift myself and still enjoying it alot (but then....i didnt rush to endgame.

When logging in, the game isnt even near empty.

And if you are right......they just merge some servers and its fixed.

In trion we trust :p hehe (what do you know.....i am a fanboy)

greetz

sloeber