Originally posted by Snikz

who cares about xfire numbers?

 

If the person playing is haveing fun with the game, then the person will play the game.  Xfire numbers cant be counted on, because its 1 out 100000 that uses xfire!

You know of course that when polling results for presidential elections they generate the numbers based on samplings of say 1000 people.  Yet they indicate polling accuracies in the +/- a few percent...  So a poll of 1000 people can fairly accurately assess the standings of 350M people.  or 1 in 350000

Seems to me that even 1 in 100000 can be indicative of the larger group and with even greater accuracy than polling.  :)

This is interesting to read http://www.financialwebring.org/gummy-stuff/polling.htm

Course xfire even through higher then a normal poll can have some skew in the results.  Since it is a self selecting group it might be that xfire users tend to all be a certain age group or perhaps all live in a certain part of the country so maybe a greater number of xfire users like to play wow then other games or some other oddball selection.  This might skew numbers between games but much less so for a specific game.

Originally posted by Pelaaja

Jan 4th 2012: 60875

Down from 3rd (71154) 10279.

I suppose this is just because of the maintenances?

The key statistic isn't how many hours played but rather how many unique players.  They are upto 11052 vs 19933 for wow.

Just last week they were only around 40% and now they have climbed to well over 50%...

Unlike most games swtor is still gradually climbing after the initial burp.  This kinda implies that viral forces of friends talking to friends is bringing in more people.

just saw some interesting numbers.

Wow top concurrent user count was 800k in 2007 after the launch of burning crusade in china.

And I just saw this http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/01/03/research-firm-swtor-has-350-000-peak-concurrent-users/

Swtor has a peak of 350k concurrent users.  Given that wow has been in decline slightly anyone think that xfire showing swtor being about half as many users logged in in a day is not a good indicator of relative activity...

For the record yes I did log into all the servers on several games, eq2, and some other game that I'm not recalling, and I did count all the users that were logged in.  Wow numbers are public record.  And you used to be able to get peak users on some wow server for comparisons.  I even posted the results on this forum but a long long time ago.

Originally posted by Cthulhu23

49 pages arguing the relative merits of X-Fire.  

 

Solid work, guys.

 

 

Really what is the point.  If you don't think xfire stats mean anything what is your point?  Ok you don't believe xfire stats mean anything.  Got it so move on.  

From my point of view I have validated xfire stats by taking actual counts of players and comparing them to what xfire shows and found that the numbers not only correlate for the trend in an existing game but even when compared between games.  There is some error and it isn't perfect but it is good +/- 10%. 

Those of us that see it as a valid indicator or where swtor is going enjoy watching xfire ticking up and believing that swtor is growing and love to watch for the peak.

The number to really focus on is the number of unique players not minutes played per day.  Any new game will have a much higher than normal minutes played as people are playing a lot leveling up.  Rather look at the number of players.  Looking at that statistic there has been a gradual increase in numbers with yesterday being the highest count yet at 10,843.  It has only just recently broken through 10k.  By comparison wow was around 19k.  Wow numbers seems to have been going down a bit maybe some wow players are checking out swtor?  

In any event it is clear that swtor is doing very well.  The real question will be can it continue to do well.

it is already getting near impossible to do group quests at lower levels.  As the population moves up leveling it will get worse and worse.  If you think there isn't a problem go back and create a new character.  Getting groups in starting areas is becoming increasingly difficult and in the coming weeks it will get considerably worse.

Originally posted by wizyy

Raptr.com has similar numbers as well

http://raptr.com/dashboard/games

(on the right side of the page)

Raptr is very similar program to xfire

 

EDIT: eh, to see it seems that you have to be logged in, pity

so what does it say?

Originally posted by MMOExposed
How many subs does SWTOR have?

Not known

Originally posted by Vato26

Originally posted by Thillian

Originally posted by acerpg007

I don't use Xfire anymore since Aion, so Its really not that reliable since I know 7 other people that don't too. My brother, who took a week off just to try the game before we are preoccupied with the Holidays, spent so much time w/ the game w/o Xfire. Others are some of my friends that play the game and have zero knowledge of Xfire.

Hah, what a fabulous argument.

Now a bit more seriously, x-fire is a reliable sampling system with a huge sample size (about 2 milion gamers), which is about 200 times more than election estimates, which operate at regularly 2% statistical deviation. Hence, the accuracy of x-fire is probably somewhere around 99.99%, unless you can provide a reasonable argument why an average x-fire user would differ from a regular non-x-fire gamer.

To describe the game playing of users of X-fire within X-fire user base, that is acceptable.  To describe the game playing of users of X-fire as statistically significant or any relation to the total gaming population is statistically dishonest as no one knows the percentage of the total gaming population that uses X-fire.

Seriously thats rediculous.  What you say is completely true but absurdly so.  If everyone thought like that you wouldn't even have a computer to work with.  Seldom are things so consistant and precise.  You speak like a math professor but speaking as a engineer we work in a world of inprecise assumptions verified by experimental data.  Such is the case here. I've verified to a degree the validity of the xfire statistics so they are in fact a good guideline.

Originally posted by acerpg007

I don't use Xfire anymore since Aion, so Its really not that reliable since I know 7 other people that don't too. My brother, who took a week off just to try the game before we are preoccupied with the Holidays, spent so much time w/ the game w/o Xfire. Others are some of my friends that play the game and have zero knowledge of Xfire.

yeah I stopped eating at mcdonalds and my brother stopped over the holidays so McDonalds sales are plumeting.  Nobody really eat there anymore lots of my friends have stopped too.

http://retailsails.com/2011/01/24/mcdonalds-posts-another-year-of-stellar-growth-in-2010/

The message is it isn't what you do that matters but what everyone does...  Statistically what you and your friends do is insignificant to the larger population.  You stop eating mcdonalds and another person starts.  

xfire is a much bigger statistical sample then you and your friends.

Originally posted by falc0n

whatever the xfire number is triple it because yall xfire users are the minority

haha a lot more than tripple.  I wish I still had the numbers as I did one time quite awhile ago sit down and calculate the ratio of users based on data I collected from various sources.  Wow is a good example, there are places on the web that can give you accurate numbers of players during a day.  You can take the as a ratio of what xfire shows and compare it with multiple games.  I don't recall now for sure but I think it was something like 2%.  I do know that all the games I analyzed were very close to the same ratios.

Anyway say it is 2% that means the number of players actually playing wow yesterday rould have been something like 50*20k or 1M players.  And SWTor would have been something like 500k.  But thats just based on my faulty memory.  That number doesn't represent subs btw and sub ratios to daily player ratios is also not a constant.  For a new game the ratio is small since everyone who has an account is playing a lot.  Where for an older game it can be a lot larger. So for example it might be 3 for swtor and maybe 15 for wow.  So swtor subs might be something like 500k*3 or 1.5M where wow might be 1m*15 or 15M.  These are not suggested to be accurate numbers just an example NONE of these ratios are accurate and it has been years since I went and gathered all this data and it is long faded away into the cobwebs of my mind :P

In any event 3x is way way to high of a ratio for xfire users.

Originally posted by xS0u1zx

Using xfire to provide any sort of statistical information is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of...  Do people even use that junk anymore?  Like seriously...

Well what really counts is do the numbers make sense and for the most part they do..  So yeah saying that game a is 53% of game b population is rediculous.  But saying that game a is around half the population or even broader like saying it has less population then game b is probably inaccurate.  

The facts is that the general ranking of game popularity you see in xfire matches up with most information from other sources.   When expansions happen the numbers jump, when a game goes FTP it increases.  It shows most popular mmo games are maplestory, aion, eve, lotro after swtor and wow of course.  That pretty much makes sense although I got no idea what maplestory is other then free to play.  Most stuff below that is really too small a sample and the errors are gonna be increasingly large.  I calculated once upon a time the xfire percent of real player base and it is pretty small.  If I remember correctly it was something like 1-2 percent.  So with really small numbers of players on a game like 1000 xfire user percents can get skewed more easily.

So it's some indication of how things are looking.  Certainly better than anything else thats available :).  And right now what it says is that swtor has been the most successful mmo game launch since wow.  I think that is a pretty accurate assessment and I'm sure we will see that in a press release from bioware before long.

Now will swtor stay that way?  given trends for most games probably not.

Originally posted by Vato26

Originally posted by Teala

Originally posted by Satarious

Originally posted by ethion

I don't see it in top spot... It is number 4 overall and wow is still number 3 for all games.  So it is still trailing on minutes played but that isn't the key stat as any new game will have a real high number minute played relative to numbers of users.  The ratio yesterday for users is closer to 50% of wow which is still amazing compared to any other mmo game launch in history.

Here is the URL I look at http://www.xfire.com/genre/mmo/massively_multiplayer_online/

 

It was literally at the top spot last night.  The thing fluctuates throughout the day.

 

It hasn't hit #1 yet, if it had xfire would indicate it. Xfire tracks a games ranking. SWTOR hasn't gotten past #4. With that said, I'd like to remind you and others that according to some we cannot use xfire ad a way to measure how good a game is doing. In the past when I and others brought it up as a measure of a games health we were told we couldn't use it. Also anyone that uses xfire knows that new games always rank high at first. Rift hit pretty high at first, ad did many new MMORPG titles, then over a 3 month period the game declined. SWTOR may do the same.

Exactly.  No one knows the percentage of the gaming population that actually uses xfire.  Therefore, using xfire figures for a basis of "statistics" to describe the total gaming population is beyond flawed and should be taken with a grain of salt.  However, usage of xfire figures as a basis to describe the xfire population is acceptable.

it isn't rocket science and it isn't going to give you any accurate measurements.   However if one assumes that the xfire user  population is randomly distributed amoung all MMO players then it will give you a relatively good measure of relative populations.  I think for games like MMOs thats reasonable.  Of course for small games the relative error likely increases.  

It probably isn't as reasonable for other games genres compared to mmos since xfire does offer some services that make it more useful to players playing peer to peer strategy type games.  Although I'm not sure how useful that is anymore since I don't play those types of games.

The top games right now from xfire are League of Legends, call of duty 4, wow, swtor.  These are the hours and number of players.

Name                                                        Hours    Players

As to what xfire is, it generally provides functionality like ventrilo without the need for a server.  So you can get your friends in xfire and setup a voice chat room to talk for free.  You can also do text chats.  upload pictures.  stream live video.  download patches automatically.  And of course track your game usage over time and have a cute xfire signature like mine ;)  It tends to integrate reasonably well with most games.  It runs in the backgrounds and starts when your computer does so it is generally always running.

Originally posted by Teala

Originally posted by Satarious

Originally posted by ethion

I don't see it in top spot... It is number 4 overall and wow is still number 3 for all games.  So it is still trailing on minutes played but that isn't the key stat as any new game will have a real high number minute played relative to numbers of users.  The ratio yesterday for users is closer to 50% of wow which is still amazing compared to any other mmo game launch in history.

Here is the URL I look at http://www.xfire.com/genre/mmo/massively_multiplayer_online/

 

It was literally at the top spot last night.  The thing fluctuates throughout the day.

 

It hasn't hit #1 yet, if it had xfire would indicate it. Xfire tracks a games ranking. SWTOR hasn't gotten past #4. With that said, I'd like to remind you and others that according to some we cannot use xfire ad a way to measure how good a game is doing. In the past when I and others brought it up as a measure of a games health we were told we couldn't use it. Also anyone that uses xfire knows that new games always rank high at first. Rift hit pretty high at first, ad did many new MMORPG titles, then over a 3 month period the game declined. SWTOR may do the same.

I think all games spike up initially but thats what you would expect with a new game and the real measure of success is how it is doing after several months.  

But that aside it is still fun to watch to see if any game will pass wow in numbers.  Keep in mind that the primary stat xfire shows is how many hours xfire player play.  That number isn't the best to look at but if you click on the game it shows how many unique xfire users played the game in that day.  Thats a better number to compare since with a new game everyone tends to play a lot more than normal.

I don't see it in top spot... It is number 4 overall and wow is still number 3 for all games.  So it is still trailing on minutes played but that isn't the key stat as any new game will have a real high number minute played relative to numbers of users.  The ratio yesterday for users is closer to 50% of wow which is still amazing compared to any other mmo game launch in history.

Here is the URL I look at http://www.xfire.com/genre/mmo/massively_multiplayer_online/

Pretty impressive numbers.  The ratio of swtor to wow is about 40%.  Not a wow killer but better then any other game I can recall.  Will be interesting to see how it looks in the coming week.

Originally posted by MMOExposed
What's wrong with skipping level? Why we need low level contents? If you know how to play your class from the beta, you should be allowed the optoon to skip to endgame were the real game starts. That doesnt effect anybody other than themselves. I don't see the issue here

I completely agree.  There are many people that just have no interesting in playing anything except the end game.  It might be best to just have an endgame server where everyone starts at max level.  Frankly for PvP this makes great sense, normally I hate PvP because of the inherent imbalance but this might be good.   also for people that live to raid etc.

I think different strokes for different people.  Personally I enjoy playing through the game but I can see that there are some people that see that as a pointless bother.   

Originally posted by MMOExposed
What's wrong with skipping level? Why we need low level contents? If you know how to play your class from the beta, you should be allowed the optoon to skip to endgame were the real game starts. That doesnt effect anybody other than themselves. I don't see the issue here

I completely agree.  There are many people that just have no interesting in playing anything except the end game.  It might be best to just have an endgame server where everyone starts at max level.  Frankly for PvP this makes great sense, normally I hate PvP because of the inherent imbalance but this might be good.   also for people that live to raid etc.

I think different strokes for different people.  Personally I enjoy playing through the game but I can see that there are some people that see that as a pointless bother.   

Originally posted by DOGMA1138

So far the only annoying thing i've seen with flashpoints is the "heat" you can get with some groups for not 1+spacing trough the story and making them "wait" and peopple who intentionally do stupid things in the dialog. Also during the stress test i've noticed some issues with "asemble your part to venture forth" during phases... I only hope that you cant get light/dark points for stuff that was forced on you due to a roll and a player playing a diffrent style, i've havent seen that happening so far and hope it cant hapen.

each light dark choice is individual.  So while the person speaking's choice may dictate the outcome of the discussion your choice gives you light or dark points.  One cool thing is you can get titles for different story outcomes.  I'm not sure if your individual choices affect the title awards...  I know that I didn't get an aware if the story didn't take the dark side path even if I picked it, so I'm guessing when I did get the dark side choice and it affected the story that everyone must have gotten the title.

Originally posted by monoth

Unlike AOC where the story basicaly ends at lvl 20 and all the NPC's go mute, the story and VO's in SWTOR continue all the way to the end....

You say you like all the story content in Black Talon and Esseles, I agree it's pretty cool at first, but once you start running them several times it starts to become a drag... I'm glad they made some instances straight forward dungeons, they give you enough story at the beginning when you take the quest and when you turn in the quest to let you know whats going on...

That said there is another Flashpoint you pick up on the main floor of the space station where you go talk to a NPC that looks like Yoda it has quite a bit of story in it...

If they did make all flashpoints story intensive like Black Talon/Essles people would be complaining about it....  after my 5th run through on Black Talon I was begging people to hit there space bar...

 

Don't think that the only group stuff is flashpoints.  On each planet there are numberous group dungeon like instances which are more straight forward dungeons.

Flashpoints all should have been like Ess in my opionion.  For one thing none of the next two give you any social xp at all.  or maybe just a few points.  With like maybe 8 or so flashpoints for your entire experience leveling up I definitely don't think thats too many to have them all be interesting and scripted....