Hooray for Blizzard lol are u happy now?

The game is decreasing, not increasing, or Blizzard (who've always been quick to publish growing sub numbers) would have told us themselves.

Originally posted by Kyleran

The game is decreasing, not increasing, or Blizzard (who've always been quick to publish growing sub numbers) would have told us themselves.

 

Blizzard mention sub numbers about once a year just prior to an expansion hitting stores.

And as explained as china was F2P (for existing players) up to two weeks ago it made no sense to release numbers as they would be inaccurate... and then peeps would be yelling "OMG blizzard now counts F2P accounts too".. blah blah.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by Kyleran

The game is decreasing, not increasing, or Blizzard (who've always been quick to publish growing sub numbers) would have told us themselves.

 

 

The only reason they didn't publish it ... is because they couldn't include the Chinese mainland numbers which were free to play in July and August and you know it.

They'll publish without doubt the new numbers a few weeks after they'll launch Wotlk in China.

The forbidden fruit is back on again since two weeks in China and the new added apple is a big one.

The above 2.000.000 computers in the year long study was clearly for the western part (probably Chinese who migrated to Taiwan too) like Coffee above mentioned.

 

Hello Zorndorf, since you are great at it, i was wondering if you could make some statistics about the western number of players based on XFire numbers since you defend it. Both for WoW and 2 or 3 other popular games, together with a brief explanation about your conclusions. Thank you

Originally posted by tryklon

 

Hello Zorndorf, since you are great at it, i was wondering if you could make some statistics about the western number of players based on XFire numbers since you defend it. Both for WoW and 2 or 3 other popular games, together with a brief explanation about your conclusions. Thank you

Don't encourage him.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by tryklon

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by Kyleran

The game is decreasing, not increasing, or Blizzard (who've always been quick to publish growing sub numbers) would have told us themselves.

 

 

The only reason they didn't publish it ... is because they couldn't include the Chinese mainland numbers which were free to play in July and August and you know it.

They'll publish without doubt the new numbers a few weeks after they'll launch Wotlk in China.

The forbidden fruit is back on again since two weeks in China and the new added apple is a big one.

The above 2.000.000 computers in the year long study was clearly for the western part (probably Chinese who migrated to Taiwan too) like Coffee above mentioned.

 

 

Hello Zorndorf, since you are great at it, i was wondering if you could make some statistics about the western number of players based on XFire numbers since you defend it. Both for WoW and 2 or 3 other popular games, together with a brief explanation about your conclusions. Thank you

 

Xfire is still very useful to view trends and the last figures were WOW at around 5M, EVE at around 260K and Lotro 160K players.

Play for all mmorpg's in Sep were less, mostly during the weeks because of school and Hi school activity. I would say they came from 5.5M, 300K and 180K respectively. Meaning 10% less activity.

But that doesn't mean the lesser activity would result in loss of subs.

As for Aion, the problem is that the Xfire stats for that game are way off due to the shops being used as logging keys. If you would simply divide the players bases, Xfire would show 900K+ players for Aion, but ... this is simply impossible due to the number of Aion servers in the west. Current servers are 14 NA/16EU and that's even still too few to host 400-500K without problems. (Aoin had 41 Korean servers for 400K Korean and 113 Chinese servers for 1M in May 2009).

You can easely trace the abnormal Xfire  playing time of that game in the last few day (between 6 and 7 hours on average). Meaning a lot of CPU' s are simply being logged in for 20+ hours per day.

The mechanism NCsoft introduced to diminish the effect of the shops simply raised the multiple connections players are using  now to bypass the time out.

I always said the server numbers are the backbone to control the number of players. And Xfire is very good to predict activity. It was I who said Aion would launch with far too few servers. I predicted the game needed 18 US and 20 EU servers based on Beta Xfire players.

The problem is that now the shops and apparently gold sellers are using the game on a 24/24 basis, which makes for a distorted number. A pity.

But a good thing is that NCSoft is keeping the exact server numbers up and they are doing a great job at player/faction balancing btw.

So the 30 Aion servers can host 200K players at the same time now (but like in Korea they would still need to add 10 IF they hold on to the 400K players at launch ).

Like I predicted the 400K launching figure, I still think the game will go to a usual 30% retention rate after 3 months.

We will see and will watch the servers.

 I see, so XFire is great to see that wow is on top, but Aion's data are incorrect and even when we clearly see a big hit on wow, especially on the market share that was as high as 60% and now is on 52%, XFire is wrong.... lol

 *mod edit*

 BTW: good for wow that it doesnt have gold sellers distorting numbers..... i could believe that, if it werent for the 5 in 5 econds whispers and the tens of bots dieing in Ironforge and other cities to form huge website names on the ground...

Originally posted by tryklon

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by tryklon

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by Kyleran

The game is decreasing, not increasing, or Blizzard (who've always been quick to publish growing sub numbers) would have told us themselves.

 

 

The only reason they didn't publish it ... is because they couldn't include the Chinese mainland numbers which were free to play in July and August and you know it.

They'll publish without doubt the new numbers a few weeks after they'll launch Wotlk in China.

The forbidden fruit is back on again since two weeks in China and the new added apple is a big one.

The above 2.000.000 computers in the year long study was clearly for the western part (probably Chinese who migrated to Taiwan too) like Coffee above mentioned.

 

 

Hello Zorndorf, since you are great at it, i was wondering if you could make some statistics about the western number of players based on XFire numbers since you defend it. Both for WoW and 2 or 3 other popular games, together with a brief explanation about your conclusions. Thank you

 

Xfire is still very useful to view trends and the last figures were WOW at around 5M, EVE at around 260K and Lotro 160K players.

Play for all mmorpg's in Sep were less, mostly during the weeks because of school and Hi school activity. I would say they came from 5.5M, 300K and 180K respectively. Meaning 10% less activity.

But that doesn't mean the lesser activity would result in loss of subs.

As for Aion, the problem is that the Xfire stats for that game are way off due to the shops being used as logging keys. If you would simply divide the players bases, Xfire would show 900K+ players for Aion, but ... this is simply impossible due to the number of Aion servers in the west. Current servers are 14 NA/16EU and that's even still too few to host 400-500K without problems. (Aoin had 41 Korean servers for 400K Korean and 113 Chinese servers for 1M in May 2009).

You can easely trace the abnormal Xfire  playing time of that game in the last few day (between 6 and 7 hours on average). Meaning a lot of CPU' s are simply being logged in for 20+ hours per day.

The mechanism NCsoft introduced to diminish the effect of the shops simply raised the multiple connections players are using  now to bypass the time out.

I always said the server numbers are the backbone to control the number of players. And Xfire is very good to predict activity. It was I who said Aion would launch with far too few servers. I predicted the game needed 18 US and 20 EU servers based on Beta Xfire players.

The problem is that now the shops and apparently gold sellers are using the game on a 24/24 basis, which makes for a distorted number. A pity.

But a good thing is that NCSoft is keeping the exact server numbers up and they are doing a great job at player/faction balancing btw.

So the 30 Aion servers can host 200K players at the same time now (but like in Korea they would still need to add 10 IF they hold on to the 400K players at launch ).

Like I predicted the 400K launching figure, I still think the game will go to a usual 30% retention rate after 3 months.

We will see and will watch the servers.

 

I see, so XFire is great to see that wow is on top, but Aion's data are incorrect and even when we clearly see a big hit on wow, especially on the market share that was as high as 60% and now is on 52%, XFire is wrong.... lol

 

*mod edit*

 

BTW: good for wow that it doesnt have gold sellers distorting numbers..... i could believe that, if it werent for the 5 in 5 econds whispers and the tens of bots dieing in Ironforge and other cities to form huge website names on the ground...

Wanna stretch the truth a little more? I have gotten maybe 3-4 whispers in the last month from gold sellers and seen one "website" on the ground; however, it was so poorly done, you couldn't make it out. And yes I am a highly populated East coast server.

See you ignore the bigger issue and counter your own argument.....why have gold sellers gone to the trouble of craving out website names in bodies on the ground in the major WOW cities? Maybe its because the traditional methods are not working anymore. Maybe because gold seller numbers in WOW are not like they use to be and are only considered valid by those who wish to hate the game.

Aion has the problem much, much worse right now, which is to be expected. And of course Aion took numbers from WOW...as did AOC and WAR...but those numbers returned. Let's see where Aion is in 2 months or so.

TBH Ive not noticed gold farmers/bots since TBC launched, vanillia Wow the botting spots was hinderland and the elite dragons in Ashara and erm.. that other place by Blackrock.

TBC I honestly didint see ant bots in the 60-70 zones and the same in 70-80 in wrath.

I do see the odd godl spam in general but i right clcik > report and away it goes, oddly Ive had 2 players over lvl 40+ /w me asking if I want to buy gold.. thought that was odd, I guess they were stolen accounts.

Originally posted by Eben

Yes yes, that makes sense.  I should pay a monthly fee to play a garbage sandbox game, to show companies that more people want garbage sandbox games? (excluding EVE, which I play off-and-on)

The numbers don't lie; people don't want to subscribe to -shit games-.  Period.  It's not the WoW players that are to blame, or Blizzard for giving people what they want.  It's the fault of all these little shitty companies putting out broken and half-assed games then expecting people to want to pay recurring fees to play them.  I'm sorry, I won't pay a monthly fee for something I think is utter shit. 

The whole genre is in the toilet, and as long as these niche fanboy freaks are willing to sub to this garbage, and make excuses for these shitty little games, the genre will remain that way. 

Its not that these games are shit, because you may think they are but I like them.  They are making games for the niche because they are not out to make a game for the masses ala WoW. Which in my opinion is probably the worst P2P MMO ever made. And all these game devs are trying to cash in on wows success and fail. But the few companies that try to put out something different will most likely fail because people are afraid to step out of their comfort zone and try a new game with an open mind and not compare it to WoW. That is the problem with this genre.

Originally posted by cukimunga

Originally posted by Eben

Yes yes, that makes sense.  I should pay a monthly fee to play a garbage sandbox game, to show companies that more people want garbage sandbox games? (excluding EVE, which I play off-and-on)

The numbers don't lie; people don't want to subscribe to -shit games-.  Period.  It's not the WoW players that are to blame, or Blizzard for giving people what they want.  It's the fault of all these little shitty companies putting out broken and half-assed games then expecting people to want to pay recurring fees to play them.  I'm sorry, I won't pay a monthly fee for something I think is utter shit. 

The whole genre is in the toilet, and as long as these niche fanboy freaks are willing to sub to this garbage, and make excuses for these shitty little games, the genre will remain that way. 

 

Its not that these games are shit, because you may think they are but I like them.  They are making games for the niche because they are not out to make a game for the masses ala WoW. Which in my opinion is probably the worst P2P MMO ever made. And all these game devs are trying to cash in on wows success and fail. But the few companies that try to put out something different will most likely fail because people are afraid to step out of their comfort zone and try a new game with an open mind and not compare it to WoW. That is the problem with this genre.

It doesn't matter what your personal preference in gameplay is, wow is a quality product and other companies are having trouble measuring up.  That is why there is an almost endless cycle of people returning to wow or just flat out getting super angry at it when they can't find a decent replacement mmo to play.

People are not afraid to try something new as can be evidenced by the huge volumes that tried conan, warhammer and now aion.  The problem was that companies have been rushing out unfinished rushed poorly made mmos for far to many years. 

People will try new games, but those new games better have a compelling reason for people to pay money for.  If they can find a better experience in their old mmo, they will simply return to that.  The days of paying for potential and waiting years for it to maybe happen are gone.  Companies need to release their games when they are ready to compete.  Not release them and then spend the entire first year rebuilding all the broken systems and mechanics that either don't work or just are not fun.

Blizzard released a better game than anything on the market at the time and they walked away with millions of subscribers.  There is nothing stopping another company from doing the same thing.  It doesn't matter what type of game either: sandbox, themepark or something completely different. 

The problem is NOT the players.  They are not the ones releasing sub standard games. 

Its quite simple to anyone with any sence . When and if Blizzard release official subscriber numbers again we will know for certain whether they have risen or fallen . If Blizzard does nt we can assume the news is nt good . I wish they would so we could put this issue to bed . If we get to the new year without any official word from Blizzard (thier last statement was in december 2008) then i think the writing is on the wall and the loses proberbly are several million and to release them would be deamed so damaging that it be stupid to make them public .

Thats fact . Xfire numbers,third part interviews and obsure links to websites are all open to some degree of doubt .

I ll only believe it when it comes from Blizzard .

Wizards 101 is at 5 mill so I'm guess people went to a Wizards for more of a challenge :)

 The only reason people are demanding official numbers is because they want to be able to say, SEE SEE, FINALLY IT IS DYING!!!

The King is dead, long live the King!

No ones demanding official figures but they really are the only ones i will trust . If Blizzard dont release them by the begining of next year it ll be more than obvious why . In a way thier silence will eventually be more damaging than the truth .

So when Blizzard finaly does admit they're losing subs, what are people going to do?  Yell, Nya, nya, I told ya so?  After 6 or so years a MMO loses some subs...HOLY $%#^@&. hehe  Its like proclaiming its going to rain while everyone is holding an umbrella because its starting to drizzle..  No duh sherlock!  You're not brilliant for predicting the obvious.

I think the numbers have always been heavily inflated. Not that I really care. Guess I'm just a pessimist when it comes to stuff like that. I haven't trusted that company since they nerfed Prayer of Mending.

Originally posted by ronan32

This just more fanboi marketing trying to get people to re-sub...the sheep will see that wow has 13.1 million players and start playing again. Wow sub numbers are like videos of osama bin laden, used to win over the people and get them back on their side.

That's an awful example, Osama bin Laden makes a lot of videos that are just critiques/interviews of his feelings about the United States that are legitment concerns, not that I agree with the way he has gone about business, but he makes good points none-the-less..

Also, I never knew people subbed to a game just because of sub numbers, that's the craziest idea I have ever heard.

If this is anything to go by I cant see how there became a sudden boom of subscribers

Originally posted by Josher

So when Blizzard finaly does admit they're losing subs, what are people going to do?  Yell, Nya, nya, I told ya so?  After 6 or so years a MMO loses some subs...HOLY $%#^@&. hehe  Its like proclaiming its going to rain while everyone is holding an umbrella because its starting to drizzle..  No duh sherlock!  You're not brilliant for predicting the obvious.

So if its so obvious why did nt you say it rather than coming on here trying to look smart by being sarcastic . Using no duh sherlock in your post really show you as being a very immature individual  . It is a thread about Blizzards amount of current subsribers which is open to debate . You thought your post would make you look witty and clever but all it does is show you as stupid and sarcastic . The only people it would appeal to are those as pathetic as you are .

 No doubt they have a crap load of subscribers. But, numbers have little to do with gameplay, not to mention, I'm sure there's a good some odd million spread across other games that dislike it.

In the end, I don't care if the whole freaking world is subscribed, I don't like the game and I don't like Blizz pushing their subscriber numbers over gameplay features.