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Official Xfire Topic - Population is declining
Monorojo
Member UncommonPosts: 411
in Guild Wars 2
Hey all, I remember a lot of GW2 fans posting a xfire topic on swtor board. Well I searched this forum I found it odd that there wasn't a topic for this game regarding xfire!?!
Well here is the Guild Wars 2 page on xfire
http://beta.xfire.com/games/gw2
As you can see, game is experiencing a steady decline in players and playing time. I will keep track of the decline here to raise awareness about the games health.
At launch (last week of August) - GW2 had about 14,000 players.
September 27th - Players: 9,063
You are all welcome to join me in the discussion 
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
1) remake the thread without the spelling error (pupulation -> population)
2) add that gw2 had 14k+ in the first 1-2 weeks
Done sir. Thank you.
I wouldn't be overly concerned about GW2 population fluctuations right now. It has no sub, so it's always going to swing low whem new stuff comes out (like MoP this week). Its strength will be in its staying power.
That being said, I personaly don't think the game is all that great, so don't take this post as me being some fanboi just denying statistics that don't agree with my opinion. Just stating that a drop in numbers right now isn't much of a surprise.
You make me like charity
If we going to add stats, add these as well:
At GW2 launch: GW2 95K hours 14K players - WoW 25K hours 5K players.
At WoW MoP launch: WoW 10K players 60K hours GW2 35K hours 9K players.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
There are actually several threads about it.
The problem is that the first 2 weeks players generally play any new MMO more. Heck, I called in sick myself and played 8-12 hours a day the first week but I just cant keep that up.
So to be fair you really shouldnt count the first 2 week of any game, TOR, GW2, MOP or whatever. The real trend starts after that and it will take you at least 3 months to get a fair curve for a game.
Just look on TOR and you talked about, if you would have predicted how the game would do after 6 weeks you could more or less guess anything if you ignored the first 2 weeeks. After 3 months on the other hand you could see where things were going.
And that goes for every game, 3 months is minimum to get a good stat since Xfire have a rather small sample of the players and not a random one either. Comparing GW2s numbers with Wows, TORs or any others is not really working at all since Xfire is more useful in some games than others. You can easily prove that by taking 5 MMOs with known sub numbers and control the numbers with the Xfire numbers, some games are just over represented.
And I funny enough wrote about the same post a month after TORs release, Xfire is good for seeing long term trends in a MMO, but short term or comparing other games is close to guessing.
Probably due to lack of interest. Further, if you can't find a thread devoted to GW2 and Xfire, you ain't looking very hard.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/365932/GW2-Players-do-You-use-Xfire-Poll.html
It was only posted 2 days ago...
i dont know if these numbers are correct but if they are it sure dont look good for wow
[mod edit]
And for the record, GW2 doesn't need millions and millions people playing their games for 10 hours a day. It only needs the box sales and the cash shop which can't be tracked at all by these Xfire stats.
SW:ToR needed the subs, because the game was also much more expensive to make. I'm sorry but it's hard not to see or talk about hte failure that SW:ToR has become. Even though I have no intent to troll the game or it's players.
I fail to see why people keep hating on GW2 and using those stupid Xfire numbers. There could be 0 people playing, if 2 million buy the next expantion ist's again the best cash for the game they could have hoped for. WoW on the other hand doesn't need the subscription either, but they are greedy for $$$. People can troll WoW all the same, it makes no sence. They made back their mony for every expantion by box sales alone. The sub fee is extra $$$ because they are a greedy company, which GW2 isn't and which we should cheer. And that's the big difference with SW:ToR being the most expensive game ever, falling below expections of the developers & EA Games, it will never make back it's investment... not even to think of the profit they hoped to make from it.
So yes, Xfire holds no value for GW2, it did however (in some way) show a "trend" for SW:ToR's success (or failure) and chance to be really profitable.
For GW2 all that counts is:
- box sales (+2 million in first 3 weeks after launch, SW:ToR needed 4 months to get 2 million sales which was then the MMO with most copies sold since WoW which can't be called a failure by initial sales)
- cash shop sales (currently no details on this)
- expantion sales (we don't even know yet when firxt expantion will be)
- for the players that's there enough people around to enjoy the game (which is the case, WvW is even still 100% full on most servers during peak times untill late in the night)
I see a different trend here:
MORE & MORE PEOPLE DITCHING XFIRE
used xfire for a bit in the past, and it adds absolutely NOTHING.
There are tons of programs that do the job better, all Xfire does is soncume memory, which could be better used elsewhere.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
https://ashesofcreation.com/r/Y4U3PQCASUPJ5SED
I would wager that Xfire is not that useful in a MMO.
Additionally subscriptions is a different measure than actively playing every day.
If you just log in WoW 2 nights a week you still need to pay a monthly fee.
More, while I think Xfire is not a representative sample of gamers daily habits, I seriously doubt that a certain game, especially one of the top 5-10 MMOs, is over represented in Xfire.
We look at the list of the games most played and we look at the number of players of each of those games and I don't see any obvious outlier there.
Now, I don't think GW2 population is equivalent to WoW Global population, but GW2 pop vs WoW Western population I think Xfire is probably a fair representation of it.
And has someone pointed out, without comparasion between games ofthe same genres we can't really distinguish between Xfire population decrease or game population decrease.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Oderint, dum metuant.
I self identify as a monkey.
I'm wondering when it will bottem out.
GW2 is losing 10k hours per week. Sounds silly, but at this rate it will fall behind SWTOR in about 3 weeks.
I'm still wondering why there is such a high disportionate amount of GW2 xfire user too.
Can't say for others, but my hours/day has levelled off somewhat to a more... sane... number than what they were shortly after release. Aside from simply not being able to keep up release-pace, other things are creeping in, such as my kids getting more homework from school now etc. I'm not using XFire now, so those numbers won't be reflected there, but I suspect that since the number of hours is decreasing much faster than the number of XFire users playing there's a good chance I'm not the only one who's still active, enjoying the game immensely and simply putting in less hours/day.
Oderint, dum metuant.
You mean the same pattern that we have seen exhibited at every MMO release, whether the MMO is successful or not? The predictable player behaviour that extra servers, queues and the overflows have been implemented to address for about a decade now?
Yeah, you're spot on, but history and fact aren't anything that will ever sway the Google-challenged doomsayers.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I will tell the GW2fanboi/XFire deniers exactly the same thing as I told the SWTORfanbois repeatedly.
You cannot use XFire to extrapolate subscriber/user numbers with any accuracy at all. What XFire is useful for is to monitor a trend in population in a game over a decent period of time.
The first few weeks will start off very high as people log in daily, this will then settle down as people log in in their usual patterns. If you record the figures daily for 3 months like we did with SWTOR you will have a good idea of what is happening. In the SWTOR thread it was amusing hearing the squeals of denial of the Fanbois as the evidence mounted up.
I know right? I mean WoW is only an 8 year-old game with around 10 million paying players. Blizzard must really be hurting.
Cue eyeroll.
it's just strange that GW2 has as many users as a game with a reported 9 million users, that would mean GW2 players only play a fraction of the time WoWs player play.
*eye roll*
Xfire is more for the Co-Op and FPS gamers. It offers a form of fraps, VC, and friends list, etc. Typically it doesn't serve much of any purpose for MMO players. We have friend lists in game, usually we have our own VC such as Ventrillo, Teamspeak, Mumble, etc. Most of us use Fraps or a similar free program.
In the MMO space there is little to no point in having Xfire which is why I continue to say (Even when numbers favor my game of choice) That Xfire stats are meaningless. The only thing they show is trends for those type of players that use Xfire which again aren't generally MMO players.
It is a sample, like any poll