Never did I say that Funcom was losing players.  And I understand that they removed the /search feature that showed all the players on each server.

So we take what we can get.

Did Funcom shoot themselves in the foot?  Of course...  is the hole too deep to get out of?  Possibly.  Do any of us know for sure?  Nope, only time is the true answer here.

But until that glourious moment, AoC is not what they promissed.  Which is truly sad. 

Originally posted by Ender4

Originally posted by BodyBuilder

I know a good number of people that DON'T use Xfire.  As it's stated about 1,000 times... it's not the best thing to judge.

 

But it is better than judging based on say the number of people you see near the trader in old tarantia... which many people seem fine with using.

Nobody is saying xfire is perfect but if it is trending down over that large of a sample it most likely is trending down overall.  The stock is down, xfire is down, the number of instances in the game at once is down, the forums have slowed down.  I mean you have to really be trying to ignore signs to think the game isn't losing players.

The problem with sentences that start 'Nobody is saying X is perfect but" is that they usually end with claiming that is somehow OK to infer virtually because of that.

Nobody is claiming that the game isn't losing players, but Xfire is unrepresentative, lots of stocks are down, there are plenty of other reasons for having less instances & since a lot of forum activity was from trolls, maybe it's good that is down too.

I agree with you that the game isn't doing well & that Funcom will have their work cut out to turn it around, but there isn't any real data available & everything else is just unreliable speculation.

Well 2.5 weeks ago I had server numbers to work with and the primetime population had dropped 40% over the previous month which more or less completely mirrored the xfire playtime drop.  I think the xfire trend is accurate even if the actual numbers aren't perfect.  As long as xfire keeps dropping in my mind the game is still losing players.

I don't think game card sales are an accurate estimate of AoC players either.  Since the game is targeted to the mature player, more debit/cc are being used.  WoW has many younger players who probably don't have a cc/debit card so they buy game cards.  Not to mention WoW game cards are probably fairly common gifts too.  With 10 million subs worldwide I'm sure everyone knows someone who plays.

By fall we should have a better idea of how the game is fairing.  Right now it's early stages of a new launch.  There are some people that may want to wait for bugs to get worked out or for better PC to run it.  Not to mention when it comes available for the Xbox 360, you'll see a spike in players. 

Looks like the trend is continuing downward another week.  WTH happen to the weekend spike that we normally see?

Originally posted by BodyBuilder

I know a good number of people that DON'T use Xfire.  As it's stated about 1,000 times... it's not the best thing to judge.

 

Heres the thing though.  You're taking a sample group.  Asking them if they like something, then repeatedly asking them if they like it over the course of months.  if the sample group changes from like to dislike, it's a pretty good representation of the whole.

That's really what XFire shows.  It shows that of this couple thousand sample.  People liked the game at first, and steadily they all left the game or stopped playing.

That's a pretty good representation of what's happening in AoC

Even if this is a sample group or not many use XFire or whatever other argument you bring forward to defend the obvious decline in game hours, here is some interesting fact i want you to explain.

Every weekend the numbers of hours played shot up at least 7k-10k. Last weekend however the peak was 2k, that is definately showing that the players are not playing anymore even on weekends.

Originally posted by taus01

Even if this is a sample group or not many use XFire or whatever other argument you bring forward to defend the obvious decline in game hours, here is some interesting fact i want you to explain.

Every weekend the numbers of hours played shot up at least 7k-10k. Last weekend however the peak was 2k, that is definately showing that the players are not playing anymore even on weekends.

 

 

Or it could be that a large number of people left the game just before the weekend started depressing the peak?  Didn't the second month renewal come due around now?  Maybe people just stoped playing because they didn't renew?

That or maybe there were server problems over the weekend?

FC stock has fallen to half its all time high  =  clue .

Originally posted by ethion

Originally posted by taus01

Even if this is a sample group or not many use XFire or whatever other argument you bring forward to defend the obvious decline in game hours, here is some interesting fact i want you to explain.

Every weekend the numbers of hours played shot up at least 7k-10k. Last weekend however the peak was 2k, that is definately showing that the players are not playing anymore even on weekends.

 

 

 

Or it could be that a large number of people left the game just before the weekend started depressing the peak?  Didn't the second month renewal come due around now?  Maybe people just stoped playing because they didn't renew?

That or maybe there were server problems over the weekend?

 

 

There was an emergency patch on saturday but not the whole day. Sunday also ha only a 2k peak as opposed to the last 4 weeks with 7k-10k peaks.

Not sure when renewal was up, i think you might be right though. In any case this does look like a real decline in interest and we all know that weekends are the busiest days for every MMO.

Stock has reached a resistance at around the 20 NOK mark as expected, the MACD and volume shows that it is now heading horizontal with only small decline and may be going up to 30 NOK in a few weeks unless the quarterly report is not as expected (eg. they expect $12 Million in revenue for Q2).

At this rate it'll be like #25 in a month.

It started August at #20

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Originally posted by pegleg
It started August at #20

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It's going to get over-taken by EVE Online at this rate. Let's hope the playerbase stabilises soon.