Originally posted by Phry

Originally posted by mikahr

Originally posted by Scorchien

 

Here is a margin for error for ya .. AoC , Warhammer, Aion , Hellgtae, DCUO, Dungeon Runner, Darkfall... etc , they all showed the same trends.. and the reult is always the same..  0 margin of error. in that... 

            Its only the Facts and never let it interfere with your perceived truth ...

   The game is dying and will be lucky to have 350k subs by Sept..

I think its a decnt tool, and like seeing people posting graphs, and would like them to continue :)

its an indicator perhaps, but, you really didnt need to look at xfire to see that there are people leaving the game, anyone who has played the game will have seen the numbers dwindling..  all xfire does is really confirm something we already knew anyway.

You don't need to play the game to see that there are people leaving the game, anyone looking at xFire will have seen it. All you do is confirm something we already knew anyway, and not conditioned to one server.

See what I did there.

Originally posted by Metentso

See what I did there.

You're doing it wrong.

---

Originally posted by Metentso
That makes sense yes.
In past experiences, how did it correlate? A 50% drop for instance, in xFire, would be also a 50% drop in the game, after a while?

---

2939 today.

I think we will see it constantly be under 3000 from now on.

Originally posted by Phry

 

its an indicator perhaps, but, you really didnt need to look at xfire to see that there are people leaving the game, anyone who has played the game will have seen the numbers dwindling..  all xfire does is really confirm something we already knew anyway.

The thread actually started before the XFire 'hours played' graph peaked.

Early on the thread recognised that simply looking at hours played - whilst an indicator of popularity and, perhaps, long term success - wasn't a good measure. People play a new game 'lots' and as the shiny wears off the XFire hours played graph declines - but subs/players could be increasing. And there is a graph in the thread that shows SWTOR average hours dropping until they broadly aligned with several other games.

So the key metric adopted was players.

What for me though suggests that the game has major subscription problems is the General Discussion on the official forum. Had a look the last few days and it seems very quiet and to have gotten even less active. One of the things I remember Mark Jacobs saying when asked if people complaining about Warhammer upset him was along the lines of no because it meant that people were interested and passionate about the game. Anyway a peg in the sand:

12.00 noon GMT 1st May: English forum: 83,203 threads, 1,268,859 posts.

Just another indicator of course.

Originally posted by gervaise1

Originally posted by Phry

 

its an indicator perhaps, but, you really didnt need to look at xfire to see that there are people leaving the game, anyone who has played the game will have seen the numbers dwindling..  all xfire does is really confirm something we already knew anyway.

The thread actually started before the XFire 'hours played' graph peaked.

Early on the thread recognised that simply looking at hours played - whilst an indicator of popularity and, perhaps, long term success - wasn't a good measure. People play a new game 'lots' and as the shiny wears off the XFire hours played graph declines - but subs/players could be increasing. And there is a graph in the thread that shows SWTOR average hours dropping until they broadly aligned with several other games.

So the key metric adopted was players.

What for me though suggests that the game has major subscription problems is the General Discussion on the official forum. Had a look the last few days and it seems very quiet and to have gotten even less active. One of the things I remember Mark Jacobs saying when asked if people complaining about Warhammer upset him was along the lines of no because it meant that people were interested and passionate about the game. Anyway a peg in the sand:

12.00 noon GMT 1st May: English forum: 83,203 threads, 1,268,859 posts.

Just another indicator of course.

Part of the reason for the lack of activity in the general forum is of course that they have banned every poster who posted up anything negative about SWTOR. I personally know a dozen people who are banned from those forums, most of them for posting mild criticism about Ilum or ranked warzones.

Now the swtor.com forums are pretty much just fanboys and EA shills exchanging kisses with moderators, with the occasional real player complaining about issues who fell through the ban-net.

---

Originally posted by Scorchien

---

Originally posted by lizardbones
 
... lots of snips, sorry ...

Please calculate the margin of error for XFire. Anyone please calculate a margin of error for XFire. Calculate anything really. There's too much guesswork involved with it. Even the statement "there are fewer players now than three weeks ago" has to be qualified with probably because you can't prove anything with it.

It's just a poor tool to use to make any sort of point.
 

---

Here is a margin for error for ya .. AoC , Warhammer, Aion , Hellgtae, DCUO, Dungeon Runner, Darkfall... etc , they all showed the same trends.. and the reult is always the same..  0 margin of error. in that... 
            Its only the Facts and never let it interfere with your perceived truth ...
   The game is dying and will be lucky to have 350k subs by Sept..

---

---

Originally posted by gervaise1

---

Originally posted by lizardbones
 

---

Originally posted by gervaise1

---

Originally posted by ukforze

---

---

snip

---

---

 Not a single person in our TS/Guild uses it, so it can never be truely accurate unless
every gamer used it, simple.
 
 

---

Forgot to add explicitly that the whole concept of 'a margin of error' is that this allows for 'not every gamer using it'. This is behind every shopping survey, the research of new drugs involving patients (some get the new drug, some don't - oh deary me how can the results be accurate we didn't test it on every person with the disease it might not work on Fred ...) 

---

Please calculate the margin of error for XFire. Anyone please calculate a margin of error for XFire. Calculate anything really. There's too much guesswork involved with it. Even the statement "there are fewer players now than three weeks ago" has to be qualified with probably because you can't prove anything with it.

It's just a poor tool to use to make any sort of point.
 

---

I did 'have a go' a while - an estimate of the margin of error obviously because the EA data is a) scarce and b) fuzzy. It also depends on what you assume etc. but, if I recall correct;y, I looked at end of year numbers and the February numbers. Came out to about 20%. Is it right - no idea.
Does this - if it was correct - make it a poor tool. Arguably so - but a tool nevertheless that seems to reflect what is happening.
Before SWTOR launched it was going to have 2M subs on day 1 rising to 3M by summer etc. EA have not said anything to suggest this is not so - their actions suggest otherwise but they haven't said anything. The poor XFire tool suggests that numbers have tanked however; and that numbers are lower than last week that the patch + promotion hasn't hacked it. Now if you want to know the exact number - sorry wrong thread. 
 
Edit: Total hours are not very useful but the average hours played, as recorded by XFire, matched the numbers pushed out by EA as well - another example (as covered in this thread) that XFire is 'OK'.  

---

Originally posted by lizardbones

 

---

Originally posted by Scorchien

---

Originally posted by lizardbones
 
... lots of snips, sorry ...

Please calculate the margin of error for XFire. Anyone please calculate a margin of error for XFire. Calculate anything really. There's too much guesswork involved with it. Even the statement "there are fewer players now than three weeks ago" has to be qualified with probably because you can't prove anything with it.

It's just a poor tool to use to make any sort of point.
 

---

Here is a margin for error for ya .. AoC , Warhammer, Aion , Hellgtae, DCUO, Dungeon Runner, Darkfall... etc , they all showed the same trends.. and the reult is always the same..  0 margin of error. in that... 
            Its only the Facts and never let it interfere with your perceived truth ...
   The game is dying and will be lucky to have 350k subs by Sept..

---

That's not a calculated margin of error. You are trying to do the impossible. Take XFire information and derive actual subscriber numbers. You can't do it because there's not enough information to actually get a real number.

Again, XFire can't be used to prove anything. There's not enough information from XFire and not enough information coming from Bioware to substantiate anything.

 

True.  The only things Xfire can show us for sure are:

1) the exact average hours played on TOR of Xfire users. 

2) the raw amount of Xfire members that play TOR on a given day.

3) and if you were really bored... I think you could figure the % of overall Xfire hours played per day, used on TOR.

However... it's hard to deny there doesn't appear to be a strong >>> correlation <<< between Xfire results and subscriber levels - based on other data (behavior of previous games in relation to Xfire data, known subscription levels, torstatus, changes in business models, observed populations, historical trends, and on and on...)

Originally posted by fadis

Originally posted by lizardbones

 

---

Originally posted by Scorchien

---

Originally posted by lizardbones
 
... lots of snips, sorry ...

Please calculate the margin of error for XFire. Anyone please calculate a margin of error for XFire. Calculate anything really. There's too much guesswork involved with it. Even the statement "there are fewer players now than three weeks ago" has to be qualified with probably because you can't prove anything with it.

It's just a poor tool to use to make any sort of point.
 

---

Here is a margin for error for ya .. AoC , Warhammer, Aion , Hellgtae, DCUO, Dungeon Runner, Darkfall... etc , they all showed the same trends.. and the reult is always the same..  0 margin of error. in that... 
            Its only the Facts and never let it interfere with your perceived truth ...
   The game is dying and will be lucky to have 350k subs by Sept..

---

That's not a calculated margin of error. You are trying to do the impossible. Take XFire information and derive actual subscriber numbers. You can't do it because there's not enough information to actually get a real number.

Again, XFire can't be used to prove anything. There's not enough information from XFire and not enough information coming from Bioware to substantiate anything.

 

 

True.  The only things Xfire can show us for sure are:

1) the exact average hours played on TOR of Xfire users. 

2) the raw amount of Xfire members that play TOR on a given day.

3) and if you were really bored... I think you could figure the % of overall Xfire hours played per day, used on TOR.

 

However... it's hard to deny there doesn't appear to be a strong >>> correlation <<< between Xfire results and subscriber levels - based on other data (behavior of previous games in relation to Xfire data, known subscription levels, torstatus, changes in business models, observed populations, historical trends, and on and on...)

 

 

 

 

Exactly.  Gravity is still only a theory not a proof but despite that I tend to rely on it working rather a lot.

Posted by LizardBones:

If the end result always depends on assumed numbers then nothing is proven. If you have to assume different numbers depending on which game you're trying to get information from, then again, nothing is proven. I can use every scrap of information I can pull out of XFire and derive two very different subscriber numbers, and both results will come from very sane assumptions. In fact, I did this. At the time I did it, SWToR either had 800,000 or 1.7 million subscribers. It's a poor quality tool to use the way many on these forums seem to want to use it for.

That said, most people can look at XFire and see that it's 'OK'. It shows a trend and the trend historically seems to jive with reality. Most people seem to realize you can't derive a real number (such as a subscriber count) from XFire without making something up in the calculations. We don't seem to have 'most people' on these forums though.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If I follow you correctly I think I agree. The numbers EA gave out weren't assumed, nor were the XFire data points we have, the assumption is in how you interpret them. Hence - as RefMinor said some posts back - it is more complicated than simply saying: XFire down 50%, SWTOR down 50% - or whatever.

What we get is a possible range - another way of interpreting a margin of error of course. But again, if I understand you right, a lot of people want absolutes. And for that XFire is a 'poor tool'. An old fashioned torch with a bulbous lens and yellowish light. It doesn't shine as brightly as modern LEDs but it does seem to shed some light on what is happening.

From looking at:

- the 75% drop in activity and how this has translated in the past to other MMO sub numbers

- the data from torstatus.net and the number of dead servers

- the testimonies of players

==> SWTOR subs are likely below 400k as of 1st May 2012

Originally posted by Metentso
Can't see the last page. Trying to post, maybe that fixes it.

 It looks like it is a problem with Firefox with high post counts. I tried Internet Explorer after, and it does not have the same problem.

SWTOR Official English Forum, General Discussion  (far and away the largest grouping):

1st May, Tuesday, noon GMT: 1,268,859 posts; 83,242 threads

2nd May, Wednesday, noon GMT: 1,272,144 posts; 83,449 threads.

3,385 posts; certainly well down on the average but you can't draw any conclusions. 

Would be just 0.2% of 1.7M subscribers ..... not as though there are any 'go to' unofficial forums either.

Originally posted by Rasputin

Originally posted by Metentso
Can't see the last page. Trying to post, maybe that fixes it.

 It looks like it is a problem with Firefox with high post counts. I tried Internet Explorer after, and it does not have the same problem.

iPad safari too