Originally posted by Vhaln

Only if all other upcoming big-budget MMOs also fail.  Not that I'm thinking of any one in particular, but if they all fail?  Yeah, that would be pretty pathetic, and maybe giving up on the genre entirely would be the only logical conclusion.  I don't think that will be what actually happens, but we'll see.

Well, most of the bigger titles as of late haven't been faring real well. Least not to the expectations I would imagine the company or investors have been hoping for. Some have been an absolute bust.

Yes, there are still a few coming down the pipeline. We'll see how those fare. My only warning is that some may want to be careful what they wish for.

Originally posted by rznkain

Originally posted by Yamota

http://www.xfire.com/games/swtor/Star_Wars_The_Old_Republic/

No real change during the christmas holidays so it seems this game has reached its peak which is about the same like Aion had during its release. No the question is how it will retain its subscribers. My guess is that same day next month it will have dropped 10-20%.

   

       Oh no xfire says it so must be true.I never have used that junky service and none of my friends that I know of use it.But yea all over for Bioware/EA they should just close up shop.Maybe they can hire you since you apprently know so much you can CEO from your moms basement and make the bestest game evahh

does the word 'sampling' mean anything to you?

look it up.

i personally have never met anyone who uses xfire.

Originally posted by xLith

Originally posted by Rohh

It's something that nobody uses

Yeah it basically slowed down when Steam got really popular and added a lot of features. Most of the people that used it were FPS gamers. I haven't touched it since CS 1.6 / early CS:S. Just another wasteful piece of software with all the other methods of communication now.

Honestly the stat-tracking would be a bit more accurate I bet if the game was on Steam, considering how many people actually use it versus Xfire.

Heh it means just the same as any other type of on-line numbers keeper. That, of the people that HAVE it and USED it, the number for THEM are slowly declining.

So yes it can be useful for that segment of people only.  But, it can show trends.  Does not matter if the segment is 1000 or 1 million, if it declines or goes up, it is just another way to search for trends.

But it is still early days, the game released in the middle of the holidays, people have lot's of things to keep them occupied right now. I would not excpect to have any numbers mean anything till the end of January at the earliest. End of February even maybe.

Originally posted by Robokapp

Originally posted by rznkain

Originally posted by Yamota

http://www.xfire.com/games/swtor/Star_Wars_The_Old_Republic/

No real change during the christmas holidays so it seems this game has reached its peak which is about the same like Aion had during its release. No the question is how it will retain its subscribers. My guess is that same day next month it will have dropped 10-20%.

   

       Oh no xfire says it so must be true.I never have used that junky service and none of my friends that I know of use it.But yea all over for Bioware/EA they should just close up shop.Maybe they can hire you since you apprently know so much you can CEO from your moms basement and make the bestest game evahh

does the word 'sampling' mean anything to you?

 

look it up.

 Sample all you like I could care less if it's huge or it slides into Rift like status I am enjoying it atm I do not focus my life around it I have no investment tied up in it.Only ppl it seems to be bothering is you nerd ragers who will have to soon move over to GW2 and cry and complain about it when it ends up not being the next big thing.

I've seen this thread before.......

But, Xfire said so...

To put things into perspective i am not allowed to buy TOR until mid January as i have holiday obligations lol. But i can play MW3 and BF3 to my hearts content what a crock lol

In theory, XFire could be wildy inaccurate for all sorts of reasons, and yet oddly enough, the trends its shown in the past have turned out to be pretty close to the truth, at least in terms of how popular games are compared to one another, and which direction a game is trending.

Originally posted by hercules

Actually its a bit of a misinformation that people play more during xmas/new year.Not saying swtor might not have peaked but i used to think holidays were for gaming myself and more people will play but after becoming a family man i found out rarely do you game during the holidays if at all ,i personally only logged in first time today (just before patch) since the 24th.

People come from all walks of life, you are not representative of the general population, nor am I.

Sadly, yes the holidays ARE a time for gaming, if you don't think so then you havn't tried to log on to WoW or SWTOR or any popular gaming site, they are crammed with people on vacation, adults take breaks too.

I know quite a few people who are on vacation for SWTOR's launch, a few of them are over 30 and have kids.

Just sayin...

Oh also, Xfire number measuring is fail.

I could honestly care less if the game goes down to 100 subs.  It's a Star Wars MMO with story, great sound, action, tons of features, and it's brand new.  I will be playing for at least a few thousand hours.

That said, Xfire has never been a good metric.

Originally posted by Robokapp

Originally posted by rznkain

Originally posted by Yamota

http://www.xfire.com/games/swtor/Star_Wars_The_Old_Republic/

No real change during the christmas holidays so it seems this game has reached its peak which is about the same like Aion had during its release. No the question is how it will retain its subscribers. My guess is that same day next month it will have dropped 10-20%.

   

       Oh no xfire says it so must be true.I never have used that junky service and none of my friends that I know of use it.But yea all over for Bioware/EA they should just close up shop.Maybe they can hire you since you apprently know so much you can CEO from your moms basement and make the bestest game evahh

does the word 'sampling' mean anything to you?

 

look it up.

I suggest YOU look up "sampling bias" before posting... I swear folks, I don't care one iota about SWTOR (heck, I haven't played it nor have no plans of purchasing it in the near future) but as someone who performs data analysis for a living, chaps my hide when people bring up X-Fire (or forums posters) as an example of a random unbiased population. I mean, I know people want to add "facts" behind their argument but don't bring statistics in if you don't know how they work...

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by onthestick

Originally posted by Vhaln

A few days isn't a trend.  I know, we're all dying to say "I told you so!" but really need to wait a month at least, to see any real indication of the game popularity increasing, decreasing, or even leveling off.  Three months to be sure it won't turn around, and six months before it'll really be indisputable.

Really people actually wait for that? makes me just sad thinking about the mentality some people have.

Why? The game is a shallow Themepark and there are a lot of us who are tired of lack of innovation in the genre. A failure on SW:TOR would give a signal to the industry that they cannot copy paste game mechanics and need to start thinking outside of the box.

Hehe how very wrong you are, games are already a really bad investment, and I mean really bad, if an investor with some serious cash wants to make money they would not invest in games at all. EA is kept afloat by its creditors that have already injected money onto it and probably have other more profitable ventures.

If this game fails with this abysmal amount of investment, then what is gonna happen is no one is going to invest in MMOs anymore cause its just too risky, you will only be left with the subpar Darkfall, Mortal Online sort of development milking whatever ppl are left in the MMO space that arent playing Blizzard games.

It is pretty simple and sorry to be blunt, I dont care if this fails or not tbh, I like the game and I will be playing it for as long as I  think it is fun, as I would any other MMO that would I be having fun in. But MMORPGs existance is really hanging by a thread whether or not SWTOR was/is successful and was even released.

Since before WoW was released MMORPGs have been hanging by a thread and I doubt without WoW we would even have any real investment in the MMO space at this present day whether its sandbox or theme park, I really see this year probably being the last full of non korean releases if these games really dont pickup more attention and interest (i.e. make the investors some money). It will darkfall after darkfall from the western market.

But hey on the bright side I love korean mmos aswell so for me all good, and they are pretty successful over there so as long as that happens they wont close over here.

Originally posted by kakasaki

Originally posted by Robokapp

Originally posted by rznkain

Originally posted by Yamota

http://www.xfire.com/games/swtor/Star_Wars_The_Old_Republic/

No real change during the christmas holidays so it seems this game has reached its peak which is about the same like Aion had during its release. No the question is how it will retain its subscribers. My guess is that same day next month it will have dropped 10-20%.

   

       Oh no xfire says it so must be true.I never have used that junky service and none of my friends that I know of use it.But yea all over for Bioware/EA they should just close up shop.Maybe they can hire you since you apprently know so much you can CEO from your moms basement and make the bestest game evahh

does the word 'sampling' mean anything to you?

 

look it up.

I suggest YOU look up "sampling bias" before posting... I swear folks, I don't care one iota about SWTOR (heck, I haven't played it nor have no plans of purchasing it in the near future) but as someone who performs data analysis for a living, chaps my hide when people bring up X-Fire (or forums posters) as an example of a random unbiased population. I mean, I know people want to add "facts" behind their argument but don't bring statistics in if you don't know how they work...

    There you go talking common sense to the trolls you will have a riot on your hands.

Originally posted by onthestick

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by onthestick

Originally posted by Vhaln

A few days isn't a trend.  I know, we're all dying to say "I told you so!" but really need to wait a month at least, to see any real indication of the game popularity increasing, decreasing, or even leveling off.  Three months to be sure it won't turn around, and six months before it'll really be indisputable.

Really people actually wait for that? makes me just sad thinking about the mentality some people have.

Why? The game is a shallow Themepark and there are a lot of us who are tired of lack of innovation in the genre. A failure on SW:TOR would give a signal to the industry that they cannot copy paste game mechanics and need to start thinking outside of the box.

Thanks for just confirming what i said earlier.

People will play games to have fun - period. I'm sorry to break this to you but SWTOR is NOT shallow - for a just released MMO it is crammed full of stuff to do. I've played A LOT of different MMO's from EQII to SWG to Eve, Darkfall Online, City Of Heroes, Fallen Earth, Wow...and on and on so I'm not new to MMO gaming.

I think all of the SWTOR doomsayer blowhards need to get together - get financial backing and create their "perfect" innovative MMO and show all of us morons who don't understand how an MMO should be. I mean...how dare any of us have fun in SWTOR when it's obviously for mindless dolts?

How dare you state the trend  of most MMO games released in today's market! In a months time its pretty much a certainty the population will jump. The biggest factor is how much retension th game has. I have a feeling if most people continued to 'zoom zoom' through content and reach end game ToR population will drop pretty drastically due to the lack of content at the end. particularly if they don't have any planned releases announced to quickly for the end game player. 

If most players can take hold of the whole 'story focused' world and continue through that way, I'd say the time before people start becoming iffy will take 2-3 months longer of a steady drop.

It's dropped because when early access ended you needed to have a retail cd-key to continue playing, you also needed to enter payment info.  A lot of people won't have done that yet.  Also as Xfire is a 3rd party program you never know how accurate it is.

What's Xfire?

Originally posted by kakasaki

Originally posted by Robokapp

Originally posted by rznkain

Originally posted by Yamota

http://www.xfire.com/games/swtor/Star_Wars_The_Old_Republic/

No real change during the christmas holidays so it seems this game has reached its peak which is about the same like Aion had during its release. No the question is how it will retain its subscribers. My guess is that same day next month it will have dropped 10-20%.

   

       Oh no xfire says it so must be true.I never have used that junky service and none of my friends that I know of use it.But yea all over for Bioware/EA they should just close up shop.Maybe they can hire you since you apprently know so much you can CEO from your moms basement and make the bestest game evahh

does the word 'sampling' mean anything to you?

 

look it up.

I suggest YOU look up "sampling bias" before posting... I swear folks, I don't care one iota about SWTOR (heck, I haven't played it nor have no plans of purchasing it in the near future) but as someone who performs data analysis for a living, chaps my hide when people bring up X-Fire (or forums posters) as an example of a random unbiased population. I mean, I know people want to add "facts" behind their argument but don't bring statistics in if you don't know how they work...

Heh, who said anything about "as an example of a random unbiased population"?

You can twist anything to mean anything in the end eh?

The number for x-fire users today compared to the x-fire users 2 weeks from now and again in 1 month can show statistics for x-fire users yes?

Of the "as an example of a random unbiased population" naw we will leave that to you "Pros"

Originally posted by Yamota

Originally posted by OkhamsRazor

 I went to get a copy in Game at lunchtime today for my wife . They told me they had sold out every copy they had in stock withing three hours today .50 copys in three hours in one shop . Fortunatly I managed to get one in the local gamespot where they had a couple left .

Peaked dont make me laugh this games nowhere near peaking . It could take months before it reaches its peak or even years like WoW did .

This games going to be a massive success . I wont go so far as to say it will be on a par WoW yet but if the momentum keeps up and when servers are opened in China and Russia etc then it is by no means impossible .

 

And why exactly is that? The game does not have one single feature that makes it stand out from others. Unless you consider single player storylines, in an MMORPG, to be that feature.

WoW has already filled the casual MMORPG market pretty well. What is left is being filled by Rift, Aion, WAR and all the other score of WoW clones.

But I digress, may be too early to say the game has peaked. I will give it a couple of weeks more...

Yes it does..it DOESN'T have Elves, Orcs, Trolls, Fairies, Dragons and every other overused fantasy characters in every other MMO on the market. What is does have is Star Wars - and this you still don't understand.