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Originally posted by Icewhite

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Originally posted by mmojunkie5000 why do people not understand how polls work.   do you think everyone is polled in the polls you see on CNN? nope. they poll exactly 1000 people.   and a 100k xfire users are not enough for you?

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Apparently, because they're never entered or passed a first-year statistics course.  Not unusual, most Americans haven't.No matter how often its explained, it's still magic voodoo, unless you're educated to the math language required.  Reporters don't understand it either; why so many bad polls make it to the national news level.That's ok, reporters understand the hard sciences even less.  The "hype" for Kahoutek was generated in the media, not by the scientists.

Anyway, we don't need this thread again--the last one's still going.

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Originally posted by mmojunkie5000

Originally posted by Silok

xfire mean nothing, not everyone use it

why do people not understand how polls work.

 

do you think everyone is polled in the polls you see on CNN?

nope. they poll exactly 1000 people.

 

and a 100k xfire users are not enough for you?

no.. that still mean nothing, even you CNN polls argument mean nothing. this is hardly reflect the reality of how many people really play the game.

The issue with polls, any poll, is sampling bias, 1000, 0r 100,000 really doesn't matter if there is a bias.

With X-fire, are the X-fire uses a consistent and true representation of the the generall MMO playerbase, or are they representative only of a certain game, or are they representative of only one type of gamer.  This is why X-fire is not considered reliable, there is no clear way to answer those questions. 

Lets take a couple2 common or inferred stances on the market for argument sake. 

1.  X-fire is used by people who like games, are familiar enough with games and gaming to even know what x-fire is, let alone have downloaded and use it. 

2.  WoW - many people have stated over and over that many/most of WoW's playerbase play only wow, and have either no knowledge or very little knowledge of other games.

If those 2 statements are true, that alone invalidates X-fire's use when comparing WoW to any other game because, again if those statements are true, the majority of WoW's playerbase will not have even heard of X-fire.

Again I am not stating those statements are true, just using them as an example.  Until the question of sampling bias is clearly understood, X-Fire is not a valid or reliable source.

Originally posted by Gravarg

Originally posted by Gravarg
I'm better than Guild Wars 2.  100% of xfire users think I'm the sexiest man alive 1% of the time ;)

The problem with polls, xfire numbers, and anything else that doesn't consider the whole of something...It's easy to skew the numbers into whatever you want them to be.  So the demographic is WoW players with Xfire that are now playing GW2...I think that's a really really small portion of the MMO market. GW2 fanatics should go into Politics, they'd do great lol

Actually comparing X-fire stats is an excellent way of measuring activity. You learn this @ basic economics.

There have been a few post up that have popped up referring to GW2 and Xfire. These post have been locked by The Staff at MMOrpg.com  what they say is for good reason.  So my question is to the Staff that locked these and anyone else who would like to answer.  

What is the difference between people saying GW2 is the greatest, most popular MMO ever based on xfire numbers at the release and a post that ask the question has GW2 peaked on xfire?  The 1st part never got locked and The Staff allowed those post to continue.  The 2nd got locked within minutes.  

Also to the Staff that "loceked" those threads before you decided to delete  this thread and issue me a warning please explain your non-bias reasoning.  

Is MMORPG.COM BIAS?

Originally posted by Gaborik

There have been a few post up that have popped up referring to GW2 and Xfire. These post have been locked by The Staff at MMOrpg.com  what they say is for good reason.  So my question is to the Staff that locked these and anyone else who would like to answer.  

What is the difference between people saying GW2 is the greatest, most popular MMO ever based on xfire numbers at the release and a post that ask the question has GW2 peaked on xfire?  The 1st part never got locked and The Staff allowed those post to continue.  The 2nd got locked within minutes.  

Also to the Staff that "loceked" those threads before you decided to delete  this thread and issue me a warning please explain your non-bias reasoning.  

 

Is MMORPG.COM BIAS?

Simple. The reliability of XFire numbers is highly controversial, as shown by any discussion involving them, and as such these thread topics ultimately stop becoming about the game itself and instead become a discussion on the reliability of Xfire data on the whole. The SWTOR XFire thread has been restarted once after it got too large and at almost 700 new posts in its second incarnation people are still debating whether or not usage of XFire numbers to make these sorts of points is even a valid exercise. These particular forums are for the discussion of Guild Wars 2 and if these threads are just going to devolve into this same sort of back and forth (already seen in this very thread) there is really no reason for us to commit resources to dealing with multiples of them in different game subforums.

My best advice is to create an XFire thread in The Pub where you can discuss this topic and compare numbers from all the top MMOs in one shot. I'll even be glad to sticky it for you. There's simply no way we're going to be able to keep up with multiple 700+ post threads for each major MMO release going on simultaneously, especially when they all ultimately break down to the same thing: a debate over the use of XFire numbers.

Locking this.