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Seems like the game has peaked on XFire - Part 2

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  • GreyhooffGreyhooff Member Posts: 654

    Originally posted by RodimusPrime

    wow it's the same three to four haters pounding this horse into sludge. Wouldn't it be easier to take it to PM since tis basically the 4 of you bumping your on thread.  

     

    Maybe you should stick to the official SWTOR.com forums, where all the threads are nothing but paid EA shills and fanboys, and anyone who talks about the issues the game is facing gets banned.

    Sounds like the kind of place you'd enjoy.

    image

  • sirphobossirphobos Member UncommonPosts: 620

    Originally posted by Greyhooff

    Originally posted by RodimusPrime

    wow it's the same three to four haters pounding this horse into sludge. Wouldn't it be easier to take it to PM since tis basically the 4 of you bumping your on thread.  

     

    Maybe you should stick to the official SWTOR.com forums, where all the threads are nothing but paid EA shills and fanboys, and anyone who talks about the issues the game is facing gets banned.

    Sounds like the kind of place you'd enjoy.

    Right, that's why there's massive threads asking for server merges, cross server pvp, etc.  Why haven't all those people got banned?

  • GreyhooffGreyhooff Member Posts: 654

    Originally posted by sirphobos

    Originally posted by Greyhooff


    Originally posted by RodimusPrime

    wow it's the same three to four haters pounding this horse into sludge. Wouldn't it be easier to take it to PM since tis basically the 4 of you bumping your on thread.  

     

    Maybe you should stick to the official SWTOR.com forums, where all the threads are nothing but paid EA shills and fanboys, and anyone who talks about the issues the game is facing gets banned.

    Sounds like the kind of place you'd enjoy.

    Right, that's why there's massive threads asking for server merges, cross server pvp, etc.  Why haven't all those people got banned?

    They're getting infractions as we speak. Some will be banned this week, others the next, etc etc and so it goes.

    I personally know over a dozen people who have been banned and around 30 or so who get infractions every time they post any criticism of the game.

    The swtor.com forums are a marketing tool, nothing else. They get cleaned up reguarly, all negative posts get moved/deleted and infractions/bans handed out.

    It's also spammed with shilling EA employees since 1.2, marketing department is in overdrive.

    image

  • sirphobossirphobos Member UncommonPosts: 620

    Originally posted by Greyhooff

    Originally posted by sirphobos


    Originally posted by Greyhooff


    Originally posted by RodimusPrime

    wow it's the same three to four haters pounding this horse into sludge. Wouldn't it be easier to take it to PM since tis basically the 4 of you bumping your on thread.  

     

    Maybe you should stick to the official SWTOR.com forums, where all the threads are nothing but paid EA shills and fanboys, and anyone who talks about the issues the game is facing gets banned.

    Sounds like the kind of place you'd enjoy.

    Right, that's why there's massive threads asking for server merges, cross server pvp, etc.  Why haven't all those people got banned?

    They're getting infractions as we speak. Some will be banned this week, others the next, etc etc and so it goes.

    I personally know over a dozen people who have been banned and around 30 or so who get infractions every time they post any criticism of the game.

    The swtor.com forums are a marketing tool, nothing else. They get cleaned up reguarly, all negative posts get moved/deleted and infractions/bans handed out.

    It's also spammed with shilling EA employees since 1.2, marketing department is in overdrive.

    You are funny.  Though that's pretty much what I'd expect from someone who seems to spend all their time on forums talking about how much they hate TOR.  I guess GW2 needs to hurry up and come out so you have something else to do.

  • GreyhooffGreyhooff Member Posts: 654

    I just finished playing Tera all evening, quite enjoying it. Will play GW2 but might continue with Tera also.

    Both are really good, Tera is suprisingly fun and polished, kind of a shame it has had such a small release, the game definitely deserves better.

    Both are of course much better games than SWTOR, and that's only one of the reasons why SWTOR is below 400k subs at present.

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  • MosesZDMosesZD Member UncommonPosts: 1,361

    Originally posted by pags411

    Originally posted by MosesZD


    Originally posted by gervaise1

    TUX426 posted:

    "Nice chart gervaise1!!!! REALLY appreciate the time and effort you've put into logging this data."

    The credit is Metentso's - and his table is much prettier; I just copied and pasted it from the old thread until Metentso posted an update.

     

    As for the data - well EA will be providing their quarterly results in a few days and I can't see them getting away with saying nothing. And given the free 30 day promotion how will they count them as they don't fall into the 'industry standard' definition of paid subscriber, 30 days included or current time card which is what they referred to yesterday.

    It will be interesting to see the questions they get from analysts and the answers they give. Will they spin it in a positive light or talk about 'intense competition'? Will they give an industry standard definition of subs as of 30th March = X? An industry standard definition as of the end-April = Y?

     

    Subscriptions are not players.   And it's important to remember that while you can't be player without a subscription (for accounting purposes) you can have a subscription without an active player.   A second thing ot remember is that they're accounting for SUBSCRIPTIONS, not active players.   

     

    So, what makes this tricky was the activation process.    You needed a game card or credit card.   Fine.    If you had a credit card, your sub (if chose not to renew) ended after the '30-day trial' period.

     

    However, because somewhere around 40% of gamers don't have credit cards and use time cards, they were all forced into 90-day minimum subscriptions.   So, anyone who bought/activated the game after January 4th will be on the books.   Even if they stopped playing months before their subscription ended.

     

    Because EA isn't going to tells us the renewal rates of the CC people (it would be too revealing) they're going to use that forced time-card activation as a 'renewal.'  And they're going to report it as an active sub.

     

    To understand this number...   Total sales from January 7th through the end of February were about 400,000K.   Meaning we've got somewhere around 160K 'subscriptions that automatically 'count' regardless of playing, until sometime after March 31st.    We've got another 60K 'subs' that cannot, credit-card or game-card activated, expire until April at the earliest as well.

     

    So just 1st quarter sales, regardless of account activity, is going to have a floor somewhere around 240K.    That's, essentially, inescapable.

     

    So, when the numbers come out.   I'm going to take them.   Subtract 240K.    Do some algebra and get the drop rate.  

     

    I'm honestly thinking it was close to 60% after first month for the credit card activators.    I can't be entirely sure.   But that's what my numbers were bouncing around.

    I could barely discern any language in this post, it was just marred in poop.  If you're going to throw up statistics, pull them from a hat or something less stinky.

    There's nothing complex in my post and anyone with HS level English skills, rudimentary algebra and some idea of accounting should be able to understand what I wrote, even if I was trying to keep it tight and not go into the multi-pages of depth it would take to explain it to those less intellectually gifted than the average forum poster.   I simply point out in my post that there will be an automatic floor to the subscriber numbers as an artifact of the intersection of GAAP accounting and subscription payment methods.   While the  floor assumes a fairly normal credit-card to game-card ratio we have in the adult world, there are issues with this assumption I did not bother to explore or disclose and the floor can, in theory, vary widely if the gamer population (for some strange reason) doesn't follow the norm.   

     

    However, because of these rules and payment methods it is inescapable that the subscriptions will be over-stated in relation to actual players playing.  That is, subscription termination/expiration is a lagging indicator to player base in game abandonment situations due to 90-day mandatory subscription for game card subscribers.   Ergo, when people are trying to fit XFire to subscriptions, their direct models will be wrong and understate the accounting-reported subscription base since most of them do not seem to be accounting for the rules of accounting.

     

    Its not, btw, their models are so wrong for players.   It's they're taking a short-cut that 'players = subscriptions.'   This, for accounting purposes, is not entirely true.   While, by-and-large you must subscribe to be a player, not all subscriptions have active players.  Therefore, it's obvious that subscriptions, baring 'freebies' will exceed players.   It is the nature of the beast.  Just as it is the nature of trolls, such as yourself, who must troll and insult people for their trollish-inability, or perhaps unwillingness, to understand anything that requires some basic level of education.

     

    In short, for subscription (and barring free trials) games:  Subscriptions > players.       

     

    However, we can, in a ball park sort of way, use the credit-card drops as an analog.   We can't be exactly sure of somethings.  But we can come to a very reasonable  estimate.   When I did my first 30-day drop estimate I came in around 60%.   Depending on my assumptions, it would be as low as 40% an as high as 70%.   (That's not anything special or outrageous.   Eve Online has a 50% drop rate in its first month.  The WoW trial subscription program has a 70% drop rate.   AoC had somewhere around am 80% drop rate.   Warhammer was in the 60's if I remember right.)

     

    Therefore, by coming up with a reasonable estimate of the on-the-books noncancelable-before-April-1 subscription base (about 300K) and coming up with a reasonable estimate of the actual drop rate from the 30-day trials...   We can make a reasonable projection to how many 'dead' but on the books subscriptions the report will contain.    I'm thinking somewhere close to 150K - to - 200K overstatement of players will be extrapolated from the subscription numbers because people will unthinkingly assume a 'subscription equals an active player.'  When, in fact, the numbers will still be fairly divergent.

     

    Obviously all of this went right over your head.  Even though it's just Accounting 101 and Algebra 1.

     

    Perhaps I should have used crayon.   Drawn a picture with some flowers and a puppy on it.   Maybe in your native media, it would have been clearer.

  • gervaise1gervaise1 Member EpicPosts: 6,919

    For those new to 'this' thread there has been a serious and significant discussions about the data, statistics and what the data means; the data has been challenged come good. Anyone interested check out the link but be warned it was a long thread.

    Typically there are those who dismiss 'the data' - and the first point made is that what os being tracked primarily are player numbers not hours played. Second no one is/should be claiming the XFire data is perfect. A drop os X% does not mean a drop of X% in SWTOR players/subs. There is a margin of error. The bottomline however is that the data is to good to simply dismiss.

    Yes you may not use XFire but that doesn't diminish what is real data. I don't use Yahoo for example - doesn't mean it isn't a perfectly good search engine.

    A few points though.

    A final comment. Yes players are not subscribers. SWTOR isn't old enough to qualify for sleeper accounts however. Recent games - VSoH, AoC, WAR and others - have shown a very strong link between activity falling off and announced subs falling off (maybe a month or two behind). 

    Please feel free to challenge why the data is useless but please don't dismiss it. We have EA's results soon. Will be interesting.

  • superniceguysuperniceguy Member UncommonPosts: 2,278

    Originally posted by zymurgeist

    Oh, a continuation of a useless thread claiming the useless data from a useless application has meaning. How useless. Seriously is there anything left to be said?

    Yeah plenty, each day Xfire produces new stats. Until there is not new stats, then there will be nothing to be said!

     

  • superniceguysuperniceguy Member UncommonPosts: 2,278

    Originally posted by ktanner3

    Xfire rankings

     

    #3 World of Warcraft : 60410 h

    #7 Star Wars The Old Republic: : 12600h

    #13 Aion: 6851h

    #20 Eve Online: 4102h

    #22 Guild Wars: 3751h

    #46 Rift: 1687h

    #48 Star Trek Online: 1662h

    #61 TERA: 1276h

    #66 DCUO: 1182h

     

     

    You missed some

    #1 League of Legends

    #8 World of Tanks

    #14 Heroes of Newerth

    #19 Supreme Destiny

    #27 Metin 2

    #28 The Lord of the Rings Online especially this one - how could you miss this one?!

    #30 APB: Reloaded

    #37 Atlantica Online

    #39 Need For Speed World

    #55 Silkroad Online

    #58 Vindictus

    #60 Maplestory

    #63 Runescape

    #870 Star Wars Galaxies 10h

     

  • BlackbrrdBlackbrrd Member Posts: 811

    Originally posted by MosesZD

    However, we can, in a ball park sort of way, use the credit-card drops as an analog.   We can't be exactly sure of somethings.  But we can come to a very reasonable  estimate.   When I did my first 30-day drop estimate I came in around 60%.   Depending on my assumptions, it would be as low as 40% an as high as 70%.   (That's not anything special or outrageous.   Eve Online has a 50% drop rate in its first month.  The WoW trial subscription program has a 70% drop rate.   AoC had somewhere around am 80% drop rate.   Warhammer was in the 60's if I remember right.)

    Where do you have the AoC numbers from?

    Btw, it doesn't look like the numbers presented have been adjusted for the amount of people using xfire. I don't have the complete data set, but in February 15th there were 231k xfire players and on March 28th there were 161k xfire players.

  • RefMinorRefMinor Member UncommonPosts: 3,452
    Originally posted by zymurgeist

    Oh, a continuation of a useless thread claiming the useless data from a useless application has meaning. How useless. Seriously is there anything left to be said?

     

    Yes, what a useless comment.
  • RasputinRasputin Member UncommonPosts: 602

    2541.

    Is there a reason for such an extreme drop in one day?

  • MetentsoMetentso Member UncommonPosts: 1,437

    Wow also had a huge drop, bigger than SWTOR. I don't know if there is a reason. Tera went up, which is normal yesterday being launch, Aion went down but not so much as SWTOR, distance between SWTOR and Aion has been halved in a couple of months, now it's 1.100 players.

  • JakardJakard Member Posts: 415

    We really just have no way of knowing how many subscribers the game has. We can take Bioware at their word when they say they haven't lost any subscribers or we can make our assumptions that they're lying. To be honest, I think Bioware has integrity. But at the same time, I play the game.... and on my server which is low population.... no planet ever reaches 20 on the Republic side. It's possible everyone migrated to other servers. I'm just not sure.

  • FadedbombFadedbomb Member Posts: 2,081

    Originally posted by Jakard

    We really just have no way of knowing how many subscribers the game has. We can take Bioware at their word when they say they haven't lost any subscribers or we can make our assumptions that they're lying. To be honest, I think Bioware has integrity. But at the same time, I play the game.... and on my server which is low population.... no planet ever reaches 20 on the Republic side. It's possible everyone migrated to other servers. I'm just not sure.

    Bioware actually doesn't exist anymore. It's a "Label" for games to sell them now for EA. Most of the staff for Bioware, similar to Mythic, have been canibalized for other projects. Most of the work for EA is outsourced to Indian & Asian companies. Only a TINY portion of each team for a project are still housed in EA staffed offices. MOST of the "heavy lifting" programically are done overseas now for pennies on the dollar :(.

     

     

    The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
    Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.

  • gervaise1gervaise1 Member EpicPosts: 6,919

    I read the PCGamer article a bout "Bioware saying they hadn't lost any subscibers" and there was no quote from the lead designer person they interviewed that said that. The designer talked about server populations etc. and what could be sone.

    I believe that the statement - no loss of subs - is down to what JR said in early March when he re-affirmed that the game had 1.7M the same as what was said a month earlier. Still in the free month + 3 month window when that was said that of course.

     

    As to subs being greater than players ordinarily yes but given the number of free trials ... who knows.

  • Blackwater56Blackwater56 Member Posts: 122

    Originally posted by superniceguy

     

    #870 Star Wars Galaxies 10h

     

    ;_;

  • Blackwater56Blackwater56 Member Posts: 122

    Originally posted by RefMinor

    Originally posted by zymurgeist

    Oh, a continuation of a useless thread claiming the useless data from a useless application has meaning. How useless. Seriously is there anything left to be said?

     

    Yes, what a useless comment.

    Hey Ref, did you like GW2? I was looking for your opinion on it. All I saw was something about Salem 

  • MetentsoMetentso Member UncommonPosts: 1,437

    Originally posted by zymurgeist

    Oh, a continuation of a useless thread claiming the useless data from a useless application has meaning. How useless. Seriously is there anything left to be said?

    Yes: that is your useless opinion :)

  • ktanner3ktanner3 Member UncommonPosts: 4,063

    Originally posted by ktanner3

    Xfire rankings

    #3 World of Warcraft : 60410 h

    #7 Star Wars The Old Republic: : 12600h

    #13 Aion: 6851h

    #20 Eve Online: 4102h

    #22 Guild Wars: 3751h

    #46 Rift: 1687h

    #48 Star Trek Online: 1662h

    #61 TERA: 1276h

    #66 DCUO: 1182h

     

     

    5/4/2012

    #3 WOW                45585h

    #8 TOR                  9079h

    #13 Aion                5589h

    #20 TERA              3490h

    #22 EVE                 3291h

    #24 Guild Wars      3003h

    #29 LOTRO            2278h

     

     

     

    Currently Playing: World of Warcraft

  • Blackwater56Blackwater56 Member Posts: 122

    Originally posted by ktanner3

    5/4/2012

    #3 WOW                45585h

    #8 TOR                  9079h

    #13 Aion                5589h

    #20 TERO              3490h

    #22 EVE                 3291h

    #24 Guild Wars      3003h

    #29 LOTRO            2278h

     

     

     

    Wow Guild Wars 1 still has 1/3 the activity of SWTOR.

     

    I was just on farming some Z-keys. I knew a lot still played it but damn...

  • gervaise1gervaise1 Member EpicPosts: 6,919

    I really want to help Zymurgeist understand what we have so I looked back at his first post:

    27th December:  Self selected polling methods are irrelevant. Random polls, which xfire is not, are sometimes useful but not always. After all Dewey deated Truman right?

    And in case you missed the answer I provided a while back I will repeat it briefly. People do choose to use XFire but we are not looking at "XFire users" but at "XFire users who play SWTOR". Whether those XFire users decide buy/play SWTOR is best described as random. Think of it like medical research. You might have to have cancer to join the new drug trial - that doesn't make the research irrelevant; within the group of patients some get the new drug some don't. And yes XFire may be biased towards young/old, male/female - whatever -  but that is why we assume it has a margin of error. Even if it was a self-selected sample however all you end up doing is discussing how good/bad the data is. And the bottomline is: the data isn't out of the ballpark.

     

  • OldsaltOldsalt Member Posts: 41

    According to those numbers,for whatever value you give them, it looks like the WoW people are going back home from other games and betas for now.

    The sooner you fall behind the more time you have to catch up.

  • TheLizardbonesTheLizardbones Member CommonPosts: 10,910


    Originally posted by RefMinor
    Originally posted by BadSpock
    Originally posted by MMOExposed

    Wow GW2 had a population drop in beta?


    We are really going to have a conversation about population in a game's beta?
    Really?


     
    It is good thing to keep it on the graph to show the flat earthers that XFire does mirror trends, beta weekend finishes population drops to 0. Some of them are quite stubborn because they cannot string thoughts together so well.


    Calculate any actual numbers from XFire without assuming some additional numbers. You can't. There is no way to get from XFire's numbers to an actual subscriber count, actual hours played by the player base or any other actual number. You can't even say that the total number of players dropped by a certain percentage. The closest you can get is "Less" or "More" or "No Change".

    It's just a poor quality tool to use the way many people on these forums use it.

    I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.

  • Blackwater56Blackwater56 Member Posts: 122

    Originally posted by lizardbones





    Calculate any actual numbers from XFire without assuming some additional numbers. You can't. There is no way to get from XFire's numbers to an actual subscriber count, actual hours played by the player base or any other actual number. You can't even say that the total number of players dropped by a certain percentage. The closest you can get is "Less" or "More" or "No Change".



    It's just a poor quality tool to use the way many people on these forums use it.

     

    Were not looking for actual numbers, were looking for trends

This discussion has been closed.