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Rift Release Impact on the Acitivity of Various Games -Xfire
Based on the X-fire activity figures (which in such cases might not fully represent the subscribtion changes - as players might still be subscribed, during such release periods, to their previous MMOs, but they're just less active in it), here's a brief overview of the changes I noticed during the course of the last month.
Most affected seems to be the Aion - which dropped by about incredible 50% (from 20-25k hours down to 10-12k)
Another huge loss was recorded in WAR - that dropped also by about 40% (from 1300h down to about 800) and in LOTRO (from 13000-5000 down to little below 10,000)
Then comes the group of games mildly affected (within the range of 10-25% loss), to which belongs WoW (from about 200-250k down to 170k-190k), Age of Conan (1500-1600 down to about 1200), EVE (to my surprise has gone down from 10-11k to 7-8k), Global Agenda (from 1k down to 700-900), EQ2 (from also about 1k down to 700-900), DDO (2k down to 1500-1700)
Subsequently comes the group of games, which seems to be unaffacted for whatever reason - Champions Online (which even greatly improved due to its free launch), Fallen Earth (also mildly improved from about 150-220 to 200-250), Darkfall (still being around 150), Guild Wars (maintaing its 8k-10k figures), SW:Galaxies (balancing around 1k), STO (being within the range 1400-1700), Anarchy Online (with slight improvment similar to Fallen Earth from 150-220 to 200-250), Vanguard, DaoC, AC, EQ1 (all preserving the same low activity at around 50-100).
Given this activity figures, one can conclude that the majority of current RIFT players are previous Aion and WoW players (that might even represent 2/3 of the overall RIFT population). Probably no surprises there, what surprises me personally is the fact that EVE, which is a completely different genre, was also affected and that the Guild Wars seems to have no loss in its activity whatsoever. Note, that I am not a RIFT player and I do not plan to ever will be, I'm just taking an interest in these subscription and activity trends.
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Comments
not sure about daytime figures, but evening figures for Eve havent dropped below 55k, and as Eve does tell you exactly how many people are online.. its rather more reliable than an outdated model like XFIRE.. but then, xfire wasnt even relevant when it was new.. so... ??
Dragon Age 2 also came out during the same time period. It could be people getting their Dragon Age fix, then when they are done going back to their respective MMO of choice.
While I am not surprised that the release of a new game affect the old ones I do need to point out that you need to check if the games were down for some reasons a day or 2, it happens. If say, Aion had patches at the time it would explain the really huge dip at least partly.
It is not odd that MMO players buy and try out a new game that releases, I think WAR is the best example of this, it really affected all games including Wow for the first week.
If the players stay or not is something we will have to wait and see to be sure about.
I am sure TOR and GW2 will have an even bigger impact on the other games for the first week. Still, Rifts initial sales are impressive.
I didn't do any bombastic conclusion out of this, so let's say civil.
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given the 25 hrs of gameplay.. i would give them about 3 or 4 days to get through that and normal service to be resumed
Thillian I think there's one huge problem with your numbers:
Counting the total losses for all big games using the min. numbers you presented: Aion: 10k hours, Lotro: 3k hours, WoW: 30k hours, EVE: 3k hours.
Total would be: 46k hours played lost by those MMOs, counted using minimum numbers you presented.
The highest played for RIFT was 29K hours on march 13th. That explains only party the decline of other MMOS. This is just my theory, but I think DA2 (36K hours played on March 13th) also has much to do with the MMO drop. We don't really have any way of knowing which game lost its players to Rift and which to DA2.
EDIT: I didn't see any previous posts about DA2 while writing my post because it took 10 minutes to read the topic, then count numbers, and write my post /EDIT
Yes, definetly, but still the largest impact can be most probably accounted to Rift release.
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If you read my original post thoroughly (more specifically, the last sentence), I said i do not play Rift nor do I intend to, and in fact I'm criticizing the game as often as I can.
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I didn't know that a large portion of Aion's NA and EU playersbase(the only users of xfire)live in Japan, never mind that Japan have their own Aion version and servers.
Indeed, and the Aion drop happened about 3 weeks before the earthquake took place.
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Total pointless to speak about Rifts xfire number before first month ends. Its will be a big drop in subs also in activity (as in all mmos before), so compare the hyped start month number with old mmos dosnt give real numbers. All rift fun must wait 3 more weeks to see how they game success/fail.
It's funny because DA2 is likely the main cause of the dip as most I know are taking a minor break while playing it. But, when someone has their heart set on an idea logic isn't always enough to get them to consider an alternative.
Ironically, you missed out the hidden criticism of RIFT in my OP. I guess one has not shout out "this game is shite" for you to notice.
Additionally, mostly the trend shifts started prior to DA2 release.
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First of all not everybody uses xfire. I know they say you can tell a trend, but thats only those who use it. I know plenty of folks who dont.
Second lets check those numbers in 3 months and see whats up.
I can tell there was a decrease in eq2 as some of the well know rear ends seam to have disapeared. Quite frankly I hope they left to go to rift, and just not a temp ban like they normaly get for chat violations.
and every mmo gamer has xfire installed ?
kinda makes those % pointless only takes a few 10,000's who dont have xfire to play say swg <insert any mmo> and xfire numbers would be very wrong :P and out of the millions who play makes it very likely xfire numbers are way off the mark :P
myself i cant see the point of all the stats play what you enjoy not what some crappy % suggests is most popular
No offense, but that's not very smart to say. I don't use x-fire either, but it's a sample of the playerbase.
Just like they make voting estimates (based on the sampling procedure of the population) prior to the actual votings. In fact, sampling happens in pretty much every area I can think of.
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xfire is an outdated and almost unused program, though im sure if there were other utilities around that gave similarly favourable statistics on demand, they'd be used as well or instead of... it doesnt really get around the fact that xfire has no relevance and even as long ago as 5 years ago, it wasnt reliable, now its even less, i have no idea who uses it personally as no-one i know does, so i would be in a way, a bit curious to see what country is most represented by xfire statistics, i have a feeling its not a global one by any means.
Fact is, x-fire is used by approx. 2% of the PC playerbase. Which is a huge sample size, many more times bigger than the sample size that's used to make political voting estimates.
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2 percent.. personally i would find 0.2 percent more believable.. as 2 percent probably represents a few million players .. which i just don't see happening.. but if your stating a fact i would be interested on the resource its based on ? link please
It's statistics. When they do the polls with the elections to see how many people will vote this or that party, then they don't do a total population interview, no, they take a portion of the population and asks them for their opinion.
Those polls aren't regarded fake, in fact such samples and polls are used for a lot of valid research projects and demographic and commercial studies.
There'll always be an element of inaccuracy in the Xfire figures, but if enough people use it, certain trends per game can be observed. For example, WoW on Xfire figures peaked towards 300-340k, while now it's hovering around 160-200k.
Other trends can be seen too, like when LotrO went F2p etc.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Based on the calculations of daily logged users (as stated on x-fire site - next to the hours played per day), and the actual official (and sometimes unofficial but seemingly accurate) figures and comparing it to the internet survey and polls which asked how many times per week you log in, you can calculate the approximate ratio. Based on my calculations I got to number 1,6% (but note that in reality it might be anywhere between 0,5-3%), which regardless would represent a huge sample size, many times exceeding the sample size of political voting estimates (the sample size to do a political voting estimates has as many as 1000 respondents - with standard deviation of 7% - i.e. pretty accurate).
X-fire has hundred times more "respondents" and the accuracy of such estimation is thus many times more accurate.
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well the thing about statistics.. always ends with a quote.. lies, damned lies, and statistics.. you can prove anything you like with them.. if you apply them creatively.. as usually is the case.. for the record though, the number of people playing online games in 2007 was estimated to be 217 million.. http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2007/07/Worldwide_Online_Gaming_Grows im guessing there are a few more these days... at that point xfire had 18 million registered users, though only 200,000 were concurrent, or .. using the software.. if you base xfire on registered accounts (not actual users however) they had around 4 percent of the online community.. though interms of actual concurrent users, they only in fact.. had.. about 0.4 percent of the online community.. however that was 4 years ago.. is xfire more relevant to today.. or less... or was it ever?
I don't see why you want to compare Xfire concurrent users with total number of people playing online games, unless that was 217 million players that were concurrently playing games at that moment? Else you're comparing apples with oranges.
On the whole discussion of relevancy of statistics or samples etc... well, you can make it into a whole philosophical discussion about 'what is truth?' and such just for amusement, but sampling is being used in all kinds of studies and research projects, scorn or ridicule those people and studies all you like
The heart of the matter is interpretation, and how 'clean' your data is.
For example, I think it's fair to say that WoW and LotrO have taken a decline among Xfire users, and that Rift is played more than Aion or LotrO among XFire users.
The real question is, how representative are the Xfire figures and users for the whole playerbase?
Do they only represent the NA and EU players? Or also Asian players?
Does one game have more people among its playerbase that use Xfire than another game?
Or could more conclusions be drawn from the fact that LotrO has like 5% the number of Xfire users that WoW has, and Rift 15% of the number of XFire users that WoW has?
Questions like that
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Finally a smart question, whether x-fire community does have same or similar tendencies and preferences as non-xfire community. In my opinion, they do have very similar preferences, as no reason whatsoever aroused yet to think otherwise.
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