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Seems like the game has peaked on XFire - Part 2
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This..
because Xfire is neither a precise nor accurate tool, it doesnt make sense to try to use it as if it was. It may indicate trends, but trying to read more from it than is really there.. is pointless.
Btw, my estimates for AoC that I mentioned previously were better than I stated. My estimate for Q4 2011 was 3500, the actual result was 3900. For Q1 2012 I estimated 2000, the actual result was 1990. I didn't do any estimates for Q3 because I had no previous data to extrepolate from. (Q3 had the F2P which greatly changed how much income Funcom had per xfire player). (Estimates in TUSD since Funcom doesn't release player/subscriber numbers). This shows that xfire can be used to make good estimates.
The thing here is that for SWTOR the population is changing very rapidly. The first few months had players playing a lot more than what they have done in the last few months. (You can verify that by looking at the number of xfire players at 1.7 million and 1.3 million reported subscribers).
Anyway, the xfire numbers aren't pure noise but hard to use to say anything exact. Another data point would help a lot, but I doubt we will get it as noted earlier. You will probably have to check the financial report for the income over a quarter instead - if they give them for individual games. My estimates for AoC shows that you can use them for some pretty good estimates, but you will have to take into account external factors like the reports of the remaining players being very casual.
Anyway, even with the remaining players being very casual, there is little doubt that the number of active players are falling and rapidly, although most likely not nearly as rapidly as the xfire numbers indicate.
Hot damn, is this thread still alive? Lol, people are so obsessed
Don't know if this chart guy was referring to it, but WoW's sub numbers have been consistently announced since 1-1.5 year now I think on every quarterly shareholders (or management board, don't know however those meetings are called) conference meeting of Activision Blizzard.
Btw, my estimates for AoC that I mentioned previously were better than I stated. My estimate for Q4 2011 was 3500, the actual result was 3900. For Q1 2012 I estimated 2000, the actual result was 1990. I didn't do any estimates for Q3 because I had no previous data to extrepolate from. (Q3 had the F2P which greatly changed how much income Funcom had per xfire player). (Estimates in TUSD since Funcom doesn't release player/subscriber numbers). This shows that xfire can be used to make good estimates.
The thing here is that for SWTOR the population is changing very rapidly. The first few months had players playing a lot more than what they have done in the last few months. (You can verify that by looking at the number of xfire players at 1.7 million and 1.3 million reported subscribers).
Anyway, the xfire numbers aren't pure noise but hard to use to say anything exact. Another data point would help a lot, but I doubt we will get it as noted earlier. You will probably have to check the financial report for the income over a quarter instead - if they give them for individual games. My estimates for AoC shows that you can use them for some pretty good estimates, but you will have to take into account external factors like the reports of the remaining players being very casual.
Anyway, even with the remaining players being very casual, there is little doubt that the number of active players are falling and rapidly, although most likely not nearly as rapidly as the xfire numbers indicate.
Where are you getting the quarterly earnings for AoC? Funcom publishes their overall quarterly earnings here:
http://www.funcom.com/investors/funcoms_first_quarter_financial_report_for_2012
But I do not see an AoC specific quarterly earnings statement. Or, I'm not seeing AoC's earnings in the report - which is possible because I haven't read the entire thing.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Let's see - could there possibly be something that has happened recently that could cause WoW numbers to drop .... although I do not know whether any subs numbers have been announced in the period you show ... and I am not sure how Blizzard will define sub-numbers going forward .... thinks ... Eureka! Diablo 3 and the introduction of the WoW + D3 pass. So you need to add an unknown percentage of D3 players to the WoW playerbase.
And the comment about the Nielsen ratings: Neilsen is America only and just another estimate at that as they have been "denounced" by EA and I am sure Activision as well, XFire is global. Doesn't mean you can't try to use the Nielsen data of course.
I fixed the picture for you, normalizing the scales, showing that they are not progressing the same way at all:
WoW has lost no subscribers going from 20k to 11k xfire players, loosing no players
SWTOR has gone from 10k to 1.5k xfire players.
Let's say the decline is due to fewer xfire players, you then end up with swtor loosing 73% of their players. (Remaining players = 1.5/10*(20/11))
How do you reconcile the downward trend in WoW's XFire figures with the flat trend in their actual subscriptions? Both games show a downward trend on XFire.
Why are you trying to relate WoW's figures with SWToR's figures? Why would there be a relation between the number of people playing WoW and the number of people playing SWToR?
** edit **
It doesn't make any more sense to assume a relationship between WoW numbers and SWToR numbers than it does to assume a relationship between Eve numbers and SWToR numbers. The graph is just showing how even XFire's trends can be misleading.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
How do you invent a flat trend with wow real numbers? They report 10.2 million once and all the sudden those numbers mean 10.2 million till they update them officially?
How do you invent a flat trend with wow real numbers? They report 10.2 million once and all the sudden those numbers mean 10.2 million till they update them officially?
They've reported them more than once. The person posting the graph posted their sources.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
So now you are saying that xfire numbers going down for WoW = Sub numbers going down?
I agree. Both are sloping down in people playing at this point. Both are losing subs.
How do you invent a flat trend with wow real numbers? They report 10.2 million once and all the sudden those numbers mean 10.2 million till they update them officially?
They've reported them more than once. The person posting the graph posted their sources.
So now you are saying that xfire numbers going down for WoW = Sub numbers going down?
I agree. Both are sloping down in people playing at this point. Both are losing subs.
I'm not even sure where to go with this. Someone has posted information, with sources, showing that Blizzard's subs are flat - not rising, not falling, compared to XFire's stats showing a decline in players. How does this translate into me saying WoW is losing subs? What am I supposed to respond with..."No, you!" or something similar?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Right, WoW stayed level from december 2011 till march 2012. SWTOR just went down from december 2011 to march 2012... and to this date. And at a faster rate.
Here's the only graph that matters (and is factual) in this entire thread.
How do you invent a flat trend with wow real numbers? They report 10.2 million once and all the sudden those numbers mean 10.2 million till they update them officially?
They've reported them more than once. The person posting the graph posted their sources.
So now you are saying that xfire numbers going down for WoW = Sub numbers going down? I agree. Both are sloping down in people playing at this point. Both are losing subs.
I'm not even sure where to go with this. Someone has posted information, with sources, showing that Blizzard's subs are flat - not rising, not falling, compared to XFire's stats showing a decline in players. How does this translate into me saying WoW is losing subs? What am I supposed to respond with..."No, you!" or something similar?
Right, WoW stayed level from december 2011 till march 2012. SWTOR just went down from december 2011 to march 2012... and to this date. And at a faster rate.
Feb. 9, 2012:
http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/02/09/world-of-warcraft-subscriber-numbers/
May 9, 2012:
http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/05/09/world-of-warcraft-subscriber-numbers-remain-at-10-2-million/
From February to May, XFire has shown a downward trend which doesn't exist.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
1425 for 6/6.
I normalized the numbers to show that the decline in xfire players for SWTOR is about 3x steeper than the xfire numbers for WoW, which your graph fails to show.
Normalizing is something you normally do when you want to compare datasets, for instance if you want to compare the growth of Norways GDP vs USA GDP. If you don't normalize the data you can't compare incline/decline, which is what you are doing.
Normalizing is something you normally do when you want to compare datasets, for instance if you want to compare the growth of Norways GDP vs USA GDP. If you don't normalize the data you can't compare incline/decline, which is what you are doing.
I think you missed the point. WoW's population has not declined for four months. It's remained steady. XFire shows a downward trend in WoW's numbers. There is only a downward trend in WoW's XFire numbers, not WoW's subscriber numbers.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
The problem with WoW population and Xfire trend it is cause the majority of WoW's population is on the east, and Xfire doesnt reach these people. Xfire trend is good to measure WoW west trend and only that.
Graph Wars!!!
I changed the top value for the y axis so you can see the lower MMOs clearly (bigger), although WOW data is lost.
He he kidding... I did it to make you guys think that WoW line is flat.
Or any other obscure reason you can make up.
I also changed Eve color to confuse you.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
Actually I haven't missed the point, it's that the frequency people play games over time on xfire (and in real life) changes. Typically right after a game is launched people are maybe play 3x a week, but after a while they might only play it 2x a week. With new content, they play it more.
Because of this, the xfire number of players for a game like WoW can decrease while they have the same actual number of players.
I am not saying this is irrelevant for the numbers here, it's actually highly relevant. At the same time, when SWTOR is loosing xfire players at a rate 3x that of WoW, I am inclined to think that SWTOR is loosing real players as well. There are several other indicators that shows that the xfire trend is reflects player loss.
You might never have managed to get anything useful out of xfire, but it doesn't mean you can't get anything out of it. As I stated earlier, I have used xfire to correctly estimate the income of AoC for Funcom for Q4 2011 and Q1 2012 within 12% and 1% respectively.
I wouldn't get anywhere near as good a result if I was predicting for SWTOR, the margin of error would probably be very large.
For funs sake, here is my way of calculating it:
February 7th: 7000 xfire players, 1.7 million subscribers
May 8th: 2600 xfire players, 1.3 million subscribers
June 6th: 1400 xfire players, ??? subscribers.
The decline from February to May was 24% in subscribers for a 63% drop in xfire players, giving a ratio of 1:0.38
The decline from May to June was a drop in xfire players of 47%, using the ratio from above we get decline in players of 18%, or 1.06 million subscribers currently. It comes out a lot higher than I would have thought, by just eyeballing the numbers.
Are you sure that's accurate?
SWTOR had 1400 players on xfire but this graph shows them around 1800
I think you missed the point. WoW's population has not declined for four months. It's remained steady. XFire shows a downward trend in WoW's numbers. There is only a downward trend in WoW's XFire numbers, not WoW's subscriber numbers.
Actually I haven't missed the point, it's that the frequency people play games over time on xfire (and in real life) changes. Typically right after a game is launched people are maybe play 3x a week, but after a while they might only play it 2x a week. With new content, they play it more.
Because of this, the xfire number of players for a game like WoW can decrease while they have the same actual number of players.
I am not saying this is irrelevant for the numbers here, it's actually highly relevant. At the same time, when SWTOR is loosing xfire players at a rate 3x that of WoW, I am inclined to think that SWTOR is loosing real players as well. There are several other indicators that shows that the xfire trend is reflects player loss.
You might never have managed to get anything useful out of xfire, but it doesn't mean you can't get anything out of it. As I stated earlier, I have used xfire to correctly estimate the income of AoC for Funcom for Q4 2011 and Q1 2012 within 12% and 1% respectively.
I wouldn't get anywhere near as good a result if I was predicting for SWTOR, the margin of error would probably be around 50%.
Where are you getting the income earned exclusively by Age of Conan? Funcom publishes their income information on their investor relations page, but I haven't seen any Age of Conan earnings information separate from their overall earning information.
The system used to compile this data is either accurate, or it's not. It's right or it's wrong. WoW doesn't use a different system from SWToR or AoC. If the same system that doesn't work for WoW at all worked for AoC, it's chance. It certainly doesn't imply that XFire is applicable to SWToR or any other game for that matter.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
SWTOR had 1400 players on xfire but this graph shows them around 1800
That 1800 number is for the end of last week. The current week's numbers don't have a displayed value, but they look like they're around 1400. At least from what I can see in the tiny, tiny picture.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Great job! Keep up the good work.
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