Well for Day one of the headstart CO jumped up in xfire to 15th place for MMOs.  It just passed AoC.  4583 xfire player hours played yesterday.  I wonder how it will look when the game launches. 

No offense or anything but Xfire is and never has been a varifable way to measure the size of the community.  Myself and all of my friends we've never once used it and I admit other than some epeeners that I've known I rarely meet anyone that uses it.  Thats not to say it doesn't give you some sort of estimated idea but it really seems to only apply semi accurately to non niche games.

Have to agree Xfire is not the end all be all gauge for games.  It is nice for a LARGE varable.  Don't take the numbers to seriously.  =)

It is the best measure we have and it is definitely good to see how the game is doing relative to itself.  ie when it peaks

15th already?

Its not even out in europe yet.

Originally posted by Manchine

Have to agree Xfire is not the end all be all gauge for games.  It is nice for a LARGE varable.  Don't take the numbers to seriously.  =)

I use xfire a lot to guage how well a game may be doing currently (even though it is pretty biased) and I was just curious if there was another source out there that guages the populations of said games? Rough estimates of course.

most games will ramp up pretty high the first week or two then kinda slow down and they drop after a month or two sometimes 4-5 before stabilizing.

What is Xfire? kidding....

 Sure everyone may not use it. I know I don't. Just like not everyone has their tele's hooked up to nielson ratings. But it's still fairly acurate as to what would rank where.

Originally posted by twiggy550

Originally posted by Manchine

Have to agree Xfire is not the end all be all gauge for games.  It is nice for a LARGE varable.  Don't take the numbers to seriously.  =)

 

I use xfire a lot to guage how well a game may be doing currently (even though it is pretty biased) and I was just curious if there was another source out there that guages the populations of said games? Rough estimates of course.

I do the same thing but I take with a grain of salt.  It has shown a decent accuracy at times.

Originally posted by Adokaum

15th already?

Its not even out in europe yet.

We europeans are in the head-start too.

Well day two and CO is upto 7200 hours and 10th on the list for MMOs.  It is approaching LoTR and has passed Warhammer.  Relative to other games at release like Warhammer and AoC these numbers are really low.  I think warhammer and AoC both spiked upto around 20K+ in the days following release.  But CO still hasn't actually been released.  Will be interesting to see how it looks in a week.

I wouldn't get too excited about CO passing certain games. It's a bit early isn't it? Come back in 6 months, when the post-launch numbers are more stable, and then we can look at popularity.

 Yeh everyone is testing it out but 15th is pretty good for pre release. Pretty sad  considering all of the other MMO's  out there.

*** 10th place now ***

Here we go with the Xfire noobs.

FUCK Xfire.

Xfire can be used to show trends. I cannot be used to compare different games. In 3 months or so you can let us know what Xfire says.

Originally posted by GaryM

Xfire can be used to show trends. I cannot be used to compare different games. In 3 months or so you can let us know what Xfire says.

Sure it can :)  You just gotta understand a few things about how the numbers are collected and factors that effect them. 

1. Games that drive people to xfire like AoC and Eve have artificially jacked their numbers up, although that was awhile back so isn't that significant anymore.

2. International game vs US only games will deviate due to distribution of players demographically affecting xfire usage skewing results.

3. Small samples have significant error rates.  The greater the sample size the better the accuracy.

4. Even in the best of cases it isn't 100% accurate but it is accurate within +- xx% where xx is probably not more then 20% but that is a guess :)

So in the end yes you can compare as long as you consider things and no that it is relative.

You can for example know that LoTR has more subs then EQ2 and has Less subs then Wow.  However comparing AoC and Warhammer becomes too close to call.  Although I'd probably guess that Warhammer has more subs then AoC since funcom did the push on xfire several months ago that probably artificially skews their numbers up a bit... Although I'd still not really say anything one way or another...

And of course you need to consider things like SWG numbers are artificially high because of people running SWG against non Sony servers.  

xfire... why should i install spyware?

Originally posted by brezel

xfire... why should i install spyware?

 

You shouldn't :P 

But xfire isn't spyware it is a nice tool that gives you a lot of features that are nice for a group of friends.  It gives you in game chat, voice, screenshots, video captures, even the ability to stream live video to the net, it also gives you game patch downloads, and more stuff in exchange for collecting data on game times you play which is of course voluntary since you can just close the app and it doesn't collect anything. 

Where I find it great is when I'm trying to interact with friends who are playing different games.  We used to use Vent but xfire has a service like vent but they provide the server.  It turns out it is just easier to use and more convenient.

Still early but so far the xfire numbers for CO on launch day are disappointing.

They were only in 11th space for MMOs and really unimpressive.  The numbers were higher for the headstart.  Guess we will really need to see how next weekend looks with school and people working maybe thats hurting the uptick you would expect.

It is #32 for all games right now.  Still pretty far from approaching LoTR.

If I remember correctly AoC was #4 sometime on xfire.

Seems its deceided by the  "staying power" powerset of CO.