Did the last patch drive away that many people? Age of conan is 46 up from 47 yesterday!. At rock bottom it was 44 a few months ago.

The X fire contest and free trials wore off and it looks as if this game is DOA again. Correct  me where I'm wrong.

up from #47 yesterday
Highest: #4 on 2008-06-01

Source:

www.xfire.com/games/aoc/Age_of_Conan_Hyborian_Adventures/

Let's face it once a game has gone to the dogs free trials or wonder patches never turn the tide of leaving players. People may cite EVE as an example of a game winning back players but EVE never had any to start with, it didn't earn itself a bad rep first and it gained subs over a long time slowly bit surely.

AoC has a very bad reputation now amongst most MMORPG gamers due to failure to deliver features they described in hype before launch. Although they mentioned before launch many of the features "Would be added laterTM" it was just too late as they'd spent a year or so hyping them. The mass hype resulted in high expectations which were dashed at launch and the game a year later still doesn't meet those expectations.

In my opinion wonder patches and free trials to bring in lots of new subscriptions are just urban myths, alongside the fat woman who flushed the airplane toilet while sitting on it and had her guts sucked out. Interesting story and easy to convince children of its validity but it never has happened nor will it.

Therefore King Conan is destined to live out his days on his throne never coming out even for live events *chuckle* with close to 50,000 subjects by this time next year. Some would say I'm being negative but I'm just being realistic, AoC already has below 100k subs and has been steadily falling this year. I don't think there is anything more Funcom can do except balance classes and add dungeons and instances which is why the last producer walked out.

However it could be a nice niche game if it went F2P and had only a few servers, then it might gain players.

 Finanticid You are the most persisten basher I have ever seen

Now, to answer your question. All time low was in desember with about 800 hours played and AoC at place 58th. So no AoC is very far from all time low on xfire.

The work they have been doing the last year has paid off both game wise and playerwise

so xfire keeps track of those that doesnt use it?cause if  that is the case that means thers only 130 people playing everquest an their actualy is only 87,355 players for WoW not the millions (what is it 8 or 11 million now?)

or would that mean actual player use of xfire is only a % a small % of the playerbase.i like the idea of the program an such but never has any one said in any mmo i have played " jump on xfire for chat",they just use ventro,hell eq even has its own voice chat in game now.so basiclay as said many times before xfire numbers means not a lot over all.intresitng to look at but not a real snap shot of how the health of a game is.

aoc seems fairly active when i log on raids going on .seiges  takeing place people asking to be in guilds ooc rolls text at a fairly rapid pace.or it could be call of duty 4 is just so good at number 2 on xfire it will be the wow killer!

 You people and your xfire stats are borderline embarassing.

naw they are embarising cause  just went to eq forums an oddly enuf their was 162 vistors 55 were registerd rest were guests,an xfire shows only 130 people ..again the idea behind xfire seems kinda cool but its not even close to a true look at the health of mmo games. if it is than call of duty 4 is shaping up to be THE wow killer.

"corect me where im wrong " um ok ... here we go.

1 by numbers gave before xfire is not a large % or a majority of any games player base.

2 big balance patchs always lose some people .but gain some as well.

3 xfire  does not seem to show mmo players that well over all. as shown by their top games list  at 7/9/09...

GAME                                                     MINUTES PLAYED
World of Warcraft                                      23,968,425
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Multiplayer 15,397,823
Call of Duty 2 Multiplayer                           8,948,290
Counter-Strike: Source                                3,441,623
Warcraft III - The Frozen Throne                   2,621,515
Battlefield 2                                                 2,248,358
Guild Wars                                                   1,496,367
Call of Duty: World at War Multiplayer          1,381,323
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory                       1,281,748
Silkroad Online                                              1,176,993         

    only one pay to play mmo rest are free to play or not mmo's. best yet one person afk in any game can net 1440 minutes per day ..over all we learn xfire is not the be all of game stats..an  would in fact make incorect  veiw of aoc or any other game.

that or i just learned call of duty 4 is THE wow killer !eq has over 100% of its players vist its fourms, an theirs only    87,355 players for WoW !   
 

In AoC's case I have the impression that a lot of the bashers are people who generally felt tricked when the game did not deliver what they expected, and especially because of the problems the game suffered in the weeks and months after release, so it has little to do with how the game is now.

Actually, I think the worst case scenario for the most bitter ones is if the game keeps improving like it has. If it went under, then at least they get a sense of revenge, and the old "I told you so".

Most bashers have long gone though. We only get to enjoy some of the more hard-core ones.
 

Originally posted by Barteaux

In AoC's case I have the impression that a lot of the bashers are people who generally felt tricked when the game did not deliver what they expected, and especially because of the problems the game suffered in the weeks and months after release, so it has little to do with how the game is now.

Actually, I think the worst case scenario for the most bitter ones is if the game keeps improving like it has. If it went under, then at least they get a sense of revenge, and the old "I told you so".

Most bashers have long gone though. We only get to enjoy some of the more hard-core ones.
 

The game did not deliver on what was ADVERTISED, the developer created those expectations. You can try to pretend that the fault lies with the players, but if that were true they would not have had to add several huge content patches over the last year and give away free time hoping the players they lost will maybe subscribe again.

I get that fans don't enjoy people slamming the game they like, but Age of Conan earned it's bad reputation. Trying to deny that makes you look foolish.

 Let me just throw this out there. I never liked AoC. Never bought into the hype, not a fan of Conan, and picked it up and played through the free month until I hit the well known level 20ish quest barrier and then left. It was somewhat enjoyable. About two months ago I decided "hey, it's been a while, maybe its kinda neat now."  I didn't even play more than two days out of the month I paid for before dropping it again. There is absolutely nothing engaging about the game that I could find. I don't know what it is, but the game has no soul. 

Originally posted by Kordesh

 Let me just throw this out there. I never liked AoC. Never bought into the hype, not a fan of Conan, and picked it up and played through the free month until I hit the well known level 20ish quest barrier and then left. It was somewhat enjoyable. About two months ago I decided "hey, it's been a while, maybe its kinda neat now."  I didn't even play more than two days out of the month I paid for before dropping it again. There is absolutely nothing engaging about the game that I could find. I don't know what it is, but the game has no soul. 

Know what you mean. Some games simply do not trigger my buttons. No matter how much people scream and shout. I felt the same way about WAR as you felt about conan. I think I got to lvl 12 before I quit. Simply didnt catch. Also I never got into the lore.

However other smaller titles have kept me playing a lot more. POTBS and Tabula Rasa had me for a while eventhough I would argue that the games are not as good as WAR. 

Well i dont know about you lot but i actively play the game in the EU on the Crom server and the server is far from empty, if anyhting it is growing, numerous areas require more than one zone to accomdate the number of players. And i have chars ranging from 40 to 75, all areas from low to high have decent amount of players.

"well known level 20ish quest barrier " Never ever heard of this so called "well known" quest barrier lol, maybe you are talking about when you leave Tortage, where there are 3 X times the number of quests required to lvl from 20 to 30, so i am at a complete dead loss as to why anyone would use the above phrase!!

servers were down basher. (http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=127528) also the all time low was 58.

next!

I think the truth is somewhere in between. The game is just hanging in there by the skin of it's teeth. As far as I can tell the growth is just flat and has been for the last three months. The servers are not packed, by any means but then they are not deserted by any means. Doing the vet retry thing right now so yeah I can look around. I just think the game has found it's level at around 50 - 75 K population and now it looks as if nothing will change that much one way or the other.

Originally posted by Jackdog

I think the truth is somewhere in between. The game is just hanging in there by the skin of it's teeth. As far as I can tell the growth is just flat and has been for the last three months. The servers are not packed, by any means but then they are not deserted by any means. Doing the vet retry thing right now so yeah I can look around. I just think the game has found it's level at around 50 - 75 K population and now it looks as if nothing will change that much one way or the other.

Based on the financial analysis i have seen in Norway the population at the moment is around 120K . It also corresponds to my general impression that it has grown since december where the population was below 90K. 

50 - 75 K would not give the 1q financial result they presented in may, so I am afraid thats number is off. 

Originally posted by Aceundor

Originally posted by Jackdog

I think the truth is somewhere in between. The game is just hanging in there by the skin of it's teeth. As far as I can tell the growth is just flat and has been for the last three months. The servers are not packed, by any means but then they are not deserted by any means. Doing the vet retry thing right now so yeah I can look around. I just think the game has found it's level at around 50 - 75 K population and now it looks as if nothing will change that much one way or the other.

Based on the financial analysis i have seen in Norway the population at the moment is around 120K . It also corresponds to my general impression that it has grown since december where the population was below 90K. 

50 - 75 K would not give the 1q financial result they presented in may, so I am afraid thats number is off. 

the game did indeed grow during January and February and during the first quarter it may have very well indeed topped 100 K with a possible high of around 120K for a couple of months due to server merges and free trials. However the population started another decline in late February or early March which has not really stopped.

 As near as I can tell the free trials were pretty much a wash and and 1.05 seems to have triggered a fairly hefty drop in the vets which was not countered sufficiently by returns or new interest hence my estimate of sub 100K population. 50K may be a bit low but almost certainly 75 - 80 K would be the high. I think it has fallen to somewhere around the range it was early last December, although to vets it would not appear so because that population is contained on half as many servers as it was in December.
 

To me the vet trials is really the last hurrah until the expansion. Don't get me wrong I don't think the game is dying by any means but I don't foresee it ever topping 100K again. It is what it is and while I still don't think it is the game for me I am sure that many enjoy it. I am not the typical gamer anyway since I could not stand WoW or Guild Wars, and the good Lord only knows millions of people enjoy those games

Originally posted by finaticd

Did the last patch drive away that many people? Age of conan is 46 up from 47 yesterday!. At rock bottom it was 44 a few months ago.

The X fire contest and free trials wore off and it looks as if this game is DOA again. Correct  me where I'm wrong.

up from #47 yesterday
Highest: #4 on 2008-06-01

Source:

www.xfire.com/games/aoc/Age_of_Conan_Hyborian_Adventures/

 

 

 

 

 

Acutally 6500 PEAK is where it was at during most of Feb-March.

It's been slowing increasing since 1.04x was released from 7500 now to 8500.

The trials we should see 10k+ possibly.

honestly, the game did improve, i used my free 2 weeks last night. But the population is still an issue. I have 2 toons, a lvl 28 on wiccanna (population was ok there) but on cimmeria (where my main toon is) i ran into 3 people the 1.5 hours i was online, and cimmeria used to be packed :(

Originally posted by miagisan

honestly, the game did improve, i used my free 2 weeks last night. But the population is still an issue. I have 2 toons, a lvl 28 on wiccanna (population was ok there) but on cimmeria (where my main toon is) i ran into 3 people the 1.5 hours i was online, and cimmeria used to be packed :(

Wiccana seems ok to me, lots of people in Tortage at least. Probably returns like me who started a new toon because they have forgot how to play their old ones. Even at 9am EST I saw half a dozen players in and around Tortage.

Xfire... lol...   

Anyhow...
As Jackdog said, Wicanna seems to have a nice population.   
Plenty of people in Tortage, plenty of people around lvl 50-60 (I know, free characters.. blah blah..)  and plenty around lvl 80 since there is a good amount of raiding / pvp going on.

The server seems a lot more lively than my LOTRO server (Gladden)  and not so many people bashing that game.

Originally posted by sigurd57

Xfire... lol...   

Anyhow...
As Jackdog said, Wicanna seems to have a nice population.   
Plenty of people in Tortage, plenty of people around lvl 50-60 (I know, free characters.. blah blah..)  and plenty around lvl 80 since there is a good amount of raiding / pvp going on.

The server seems a lot more lively than my LOTRO server (Gladden)  and not so many people bashing that game.

 

I don't  think I would go quite that far. I just logged into my LoTRO server ( Silverlode) for a quick look and there were over 40 people in the Bree area. 8 in the AH, and 10 in the crafting hall just for example.

Not quite apples to apples since Bree will have people levels from 5 or so up to 60 but still it gives more of a sense of larger community  than the way AoC does it. I think the heavy instancing AoC really makes it seem more deserted than it really is.