Lobotomist you're right up to a point: problem is xfire users are a very specific population. It's like taking the 1% richest people in a country and saying they represent the country (might work up to a point if you're a Republican though...): xfire users are dedicated enough to want to show off how many hours they played.
However, it should be indeed possible, by comparing with Diablo 3 percentages of retail/online to have a fair estimate of the number of online sales. I guess that's approximately the math they did at the consultant (maybe adding a "margin of error" due to the fact that an expac must have more online sales). In any case, not definitive by far, but we'll have to see
ps: on the xfire thing, look it up. Although the number of hours is big, there are nearly as many players in WoW as in GW2 (the pop of which has stabilised, although they play a small number of hours). It's certainly not a tsunami.
Originally posted by FrodoFragins Not including digital sales is a big problem with their assertion. I'll wait to hear blizzards release. If they don't release any numbers in the first month then that will be a major verification of lackluster numbers.
Of course it is. It's almost ignorant to release figures like they have when they don't have access to digital sales figures. Still though, I would imagine a lot of people are like me - This is the first time I have not purchased and participated in a World of Warcraft expansion. I've simply had enough of it. Level to new cap, grind for gear all over again and raid Dungeons like we've been doing since 2005.
It looks like it’s going to take more than kung fu fighting pandas to save Azeroth.
Sales of the World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria expansion have been disappointing, according to analysts at investment bank Lazard Capital Markets. The fourth expansion for Blizzard Entertainment’s massively popular online game has sold between 600,000 and 700,000 copies at retail since its launch earlier this week, Lazard estimates.
Historically, each new World of Warcraft expansion has outsold its predecessors, Lazard said, but sales of Pandaria are down 60 percent from the previous expansion pack, Cataclysm, which has sold 3.3 million units since its launch in December 2010. While these figures don’t take digital market performance into account, Lazard analysts believe Pandaria’s digital sales won’t make up for its poor retail performance.
A drop in subscription numbers is a possible explanation for Pandaria’s struggles. Back in August, publisher Activision Blizzard revealed World of Warcraft lost over one million subscriptions in the last fiscal quarter.
About 25 percent of Activision Blizzard’s revenue comes from World of Warcraft, along with 50 percent of its operating income, which has analysts concerned about the game’s continued longevity.
What I don't get if those figures are true. How does WoW have 9 million active subscibers if only 3.3 million copies of Cataclysm were sold?
/edit oh I see- retail vs. digital. You really need to include digital if you're making a point, imo.
Venturebeat kinda lost credibility for me as they're quoting Cata numbers incorrectly, Cata sold 3.3million in the first 24 hours and went on to sell 4.7 million in the first month.
so where are the other 5 million did they not buy it? the other 5million are in china where Cata wasn't avaliable at the time.
I had not heard of venturebeat until I started snooping around articles on the website. The second article I read after this horrid exageration was an article stating there are rumors of Nexon and NCsoft buying valve. They obviously just take anything that is even remotely able to be talked about and ramp it up, nobody can buy valve, gabe said it himself. This is just a really obnoxious news source that will bite at anything.
Massively bit as well, on both accounts. I consider them a pretty stand-up site personally.
I see you guys dont understand much about statistics .
Even if 1% of MMO players use Xfire. That data could be used to gauge game activity and popularity rise / drops.
Same goes for digital vs retail sales. You know what is the ratio of digital vs retail buyers. Than you use this ratio on retail sales data.
If the retail had disappointing sales - it points out poor interest in the game.
BTW - As someone who bought D3. I can tell you that I went for retail. Because Blizzard charges same for both (?).
But if you buy retail you get a very nice box.
No it couldn't. You would need to determine if that 1% is a true reflection of that particular MMO's playerbase and X-fire does not provide that explanation.
At best you could say that X-fire is a representative of people who know about games and play enough of them to have heard of X-fire. It is a whole different ballgame to say that that group is the same as a true reflection of the random person in the said game.
If you just go by X-fire you are looking at a skewed or misrepresentation of the population.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
This crap again. Everytime there a big launch of anything its this crap.
And please note that digital sales of games have increased a lot since 2010 (and box sales gone down).
Currently playing: AoC, RIFT, Champions Online, DDO, LORTO, STO and Tribes: Ascend Have Played: TSW, SWG, AO, EVE, WOW, EQ, EQ2, SW:TOR, GW,CoH, DCUO, RotMG, WAR,
Well today I walked into five stores all big box ones, EB games , gamestop , walmart , ect and I have noticed TONS of MOP expacs just sitting there ,I was like hmmm thats strange because the previous expacs were gone in a day or two now hell the one EB games I went too had 10 collectors versions still sitting there and at the other stores were alittle higher and some alittle lower , but not by much.
Even the reps at these places said that the game is not selling well at all , I think that the giant is taking a dive, and if that is'nt proof goto your retailer and check , still have some in stock yep! Hell I had a hard time trying to get borderlands 2 , took me five days to land me a copy!
Im not surprised at all that retail sales would be so low. In the UK at least, you'd struggle to find any retailer that would even sell PC games, you either bought online from amazon etc, or.. and this is probably what most did, upgrade your account directly at Battlenet, press a button vs mail order.. retailers have been losing out on game sales for PC's now for a good long time, and when Consoles finally catch up and start doing the same, then boxed games will most probably cease to exist. it would not surprise me in the least, if 95 percent of MoP sales were digital. Thats how i bought my 'copy' of MoP, and its also how i buy most of my games now, usually through Steam. When figures are finally released for MoP sales, including Digital ones, then i have no doubt we'll be seeing some very impressive figures. As for venturebeat, its for the kiddies, nobody with any sense takes them seriously, their a bit like the Sun newspaper, if it wasnt for the pictures on page 3, nobody would read it
I see you guys dont understand much about statistics .
Even if 1% of MMO players use Xfire. That data could be used to gauge game activity and popularity rise / drops.
Same goes for digital vs retail sales. You know what is the ratio of digital vs retail buyers. Than you use this ratio on retail sales data.
If the retail had disappointing sales - it points out poor interest in the game.
BTW - As someone who bought D3. I can tell you that I went for retail. Because Blizzard charges same for both (?).
But if you buy retail you get a very nice box.
No it couldn't. You would need to determine if that 1% is a true reflection of that particular MMO's playerbase and X-fire does not provide that explanation.
At best you could say that X-fire is a representative of people who know about games and play enough of them to have heard of X-fire. It is a whole different ballgame to say that that group is the same as a true reflection of the random person in the said game.
There's common sense and mathematics that plays a large part you can't ignore or dismiss the data. It may not be a completely accuarate meausre but we just don't have that. 1% is pretty massive source. Consider typical statisctic polling 1000 particiapants with correct population representation. Consider how these 1000 people represent the opinions of millions. Also consider how two people with the same background ethnicty etc can have very different views. It's inherently flawed but it's about as accurate as we can get considering time and money constraints. Now consider a source of ten's/hundreds thousand's in comparison to a few million. It may not have ideal representation but the volume itself in comparison to the source does make up a fair bit of that. If you add in the correct margin's of error, and trends it's still a viable polling source.
I see you guys dont understand much about statistics .
Even if 1% of MMO players use Xfire. That data could be used to gauge game activity and popularity rise / drops.
Same goes for digital vs retail sales. You know what is the ratio of digital vs retail buyers. Than you use this ratio on retail sales data.
If the retail had disappointing sales - it points out poor interest in the game.
BTW - As someone who bought D3. I can tell you that I went for retail. Because Blizzard charges same for both (?).
But if you buy retail you get a very nice box.
You don't know much about statistics, either, it seems. Your argument is only valid if that 1% equals a random selection of MMO players. In my experience, it don't - XFire seems to mostly attract semi-experienced players, I've never heard anyone who consider him-/herself a vet claiming to use it.
Retail doesn't prove shit about the interest in the game. I have 7 friends who play WoW. When Cata released, at least 5 of them bought the retail (I didn't). None of them bought the MoP retail, we all bought digital. I'm pretty sure we're far from the only ones going completely digital.
Nice box? Well, I have bought quite a lot of games digitally, both on steam and others places. It suits me just fine NOT having 200+ boxes gathering dust in my shelves.
1 the actual source is Banque Lazard, which not is not above error but certainly reliable. These guys are investment banks, not your average mmorpg fan/"journalist". They tell people where to put their money, and don't give a **** about the actual future of the game apart from its financial reports, so I think they can be trusted. (And they very certainly aren't your average consultant: they are the real deal)
2 They predict a sales decrease of 60% from the record of Cata; 3.3*40%= 1.32, meaning they think digital sales make up 50% of sales, which given the broad appeal of WoW (not only guys like you who surf the internet all the time) and the "events" at launch in shops sounds reasonable (and is based on numbers from D3 and such; I downloaded D3 and so did most of you I guess, but 50% of people bought it retail -ps: younger crowds often get things bought in shops, by their parents)
So all in all maybe they are wrong and digitals make up twice as much as retail, in which case it goes up from 1.3 mill to to 1.8... in any case it's half of what Cata sold in the same period of time.
Oh other comparison: GW2 sold 1Mill retail (VGchartz numbers) and 2Mill in all. So 50% digital for an MMORPG seems to be a good estimate.
I see you guys dont understand much about statistics .
Even if 1% of MMO players use Xfire. That data could be used to gauge game activity and popularity rise / drops.
Same goes for digital vs retail sales. You know what is the ratio of digital vs retail buyers. Than you use this ratio on retail sales data.
If the retail had disappointing sales - it points out poor interest in the game.
BTW - As someone who bought D3. I can tell you that I went for retail. Because Blizzard charges same for both (?).
But if you buy retail you get a very nice box.
No it couldn't. You would need to determine if that 1% is a true reflection of that particular MMO's playerbase and X-fire does not provide that explanation.
At best you could say that X-fire is a representative of people who know about games and play enough of them to have heard of X-fire. It is a whole different ballgame to say that that group is the same as a true reflection of the random person in the said game.
There's common sense and mathematics that plays a large part you can't ignore or dismiss the data. It may not be a completely accuarate meausre but we just don't have that. 1% is pretty massive source. Consider typical statisctic polling 1000 particiapants with correct population representation. Consider how these 1000 people represent the opinions of millions. Also consider how two people with the same background ethnicty etc can have very different views. It's inherently flawed but it's about as accurate as we can get considering time and money constraints. Now consider a source of ten's/hundreds thousand's in comparison to a few million. It may not have ideal representation but the volume itself in comparison to the source does make up a fair bit of that. If you add in the correct margin's of error, and trends it's still a viable polling source.
True random sampling can correct as much as possible for true representation by giving everyone an equal shot at being selected. It never completely eliminates the x-variable but it does reduce it by again increasing the odds of everyone/anyone being selected.
X-fire is not random in any shape or form. It is inheriently biased towards a specific target of people those being that are interested in many different games, discuss games, and research games on the net - this was necessary for them to even find X-fire. Now if you take WoW for example, another common perception is that many WoW gamers are just Wow gamers, with no interest or even real knowledge of other games.
This alone makes the data flawed, and thus invalid. You cannot make any reasonable conclusions about a population based on that data.
edit - at best the only thing you could say is that the game is popular or unpopular among the people who are knowledgable enough about games and use X-fire. This would increase the odds then of the game being popular among the general population just from the word of mouth the people who do use X-fire would generate.
edit - however as with all case studies and data, ideas need to come from somewhere. Anyone looking at the date should have doubts about the validity, but it does have enough numbers, people and games to say, "This is interesting, a closer look and further work should be done."
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
I see you guys dont understand much about statistics .
Even if 1% of MMO players use Xfire. That data could be used to gauge game activity and popularity rise / drops.
Same goes for digital vs retail sales. You know what is the ratio of digital vs retail buyers. Than you use this ratio on retail sales data.
If the retail had disappointing sales - it points out poor interest in the game.
BTW - As someone who bought D3. I can tell you that I went for retail. Because Blizzard charges same for both (?).
But if you buy retail you get a very nice box.
You don't know much about statistics, either, it seems. Your argument is only valid if that 1% equals a random selection of MMO players. In my experience, it don't - XFire seems to mostly attract semi-experienced players, I've never heard anyone who consider him-/herself a vet claiming to use it.
Retail doesn't prove shit about the interest in the game. I have 7 friends who play WoW. When Cata released, at least 5 of them bought the retail (I didn't). None of them bought the MoP retail, we all bought digital. I'm pretty sure we're far from the only ones going completely digital.
Nice box? Well, I have bought quite a lot of games digitally, both on steam and others places. It suits me just fine NOT having 200+ boxes gathering dust in my shelves.
How much do you actually know seriously. Anyone can state the other knows nothing about statistics (X fire threads are full of them), but how about you provide some of that indepth analysis, that isn't available to the average armchair analyst. Also stating university or job is worthless I want hard core stats and case studies, otherwise don't go stating someone else doesn't know much about statistics.
I see you guys dont understand much about statistics .
Even if 1% of MMO players use Xfire. That data could be used to gauge game activity and popularity rise / drops.
Same goes for digital vs retail sales. You know what is the ratio of digital vs retail buyers. Than you use this ratio on retail sales data.
If the retail had disappointing sales - it points out poor interest in the game.
BTW - As someone who bought D3. I can tell you that I went for retail. Because Blizzard charges same for both (?).
But if you buy retail you get a very nice box.
You don't know much about statistics, either, it seems. Your argument is only valid if that 1% equals a random selection of MMO players. In my experience, it don't - XFire seems to mostly attract semi-experienced players, I've never heard anyone who consider him-/herself a vet claiming to use it.
Retail doesn't prove shit about the interest in the game. I have 7 friends who play WoW. When Cata released, at least 5 of them bought the retail (I didn't). None of them bought the MoP retail, we all bought digital. I'm pretty sure we're far from the only ones going completely digital.
Nice box? Well, I have bought quite a lot of games digitally, both on steam and others places. It suits me just fine NOT having 200+ boxes gathering dust in my shelves.
How much do you actually know seriously. Anyone can state the other knows nothing about statistics (X fire threads are full of them), but how about you provide some of that indepth analyses, that isn't available to the average armchair analyse. Also stating university or job is worthless I want hard core stats and case studies, otherwise don't go stating someone else doesn't know much about statistics.
K gonna go grab some popcorn and a drink , anyone else want some? Because this is going to be one HELL OF A SHOW!
I see you guys dont understand much about statistics .
Even if 1% of MMO players use Xfire. That data could be used to gauge game activity and popularity rise / drops.
Same goes for digital vs retail sales. You know what is the ratio of digital vs retail buyers. Than you use this ratio on retail sales data.
If the retail had disappointing sales - it points out poor interest in the game.
BTW - As someone who bought D3. I can tell you that I went for retail. Because Blizzard charges same for both (?).
But if you buy retail you get a very nice box.
No it couldn't. You would need to determine if that 1% is a true reflection of that particular MMO's playerbase and X-fire does not provide that explanation.
At best you could say that X-fire is a representative of people who know about games and play enough of them to have heard of X-fire. It is a whole different ballgame to say that that group is the same as a true reflection of the random person in the said game.
There's common sense and mathematics that plays a large part you can't ignore or dismiss the data. It may not be a completely accuarate meausre but we just don't have that. 1% is pretty massive source. Consider typical statisctic polling 1000 particiapants with correct population representation. Consider how these 1000 people represent the opinions of millions. Also consider how two people with the same background ethnicty etc can have very different views. It's inherently flawed but it's about as accurate as we can get considering time and money constraints. Now consider a source of ten's/hundreds thousand's in comparison to a few million. It may not have ideal representation but the volume itself in comparison to the source does make up a fair bit of that. If you add in the correct margin's of error, and trends it's still a viable polling source.
True random sampling can correct as much as possible for true representation by giving everyone an equal shot at being selected. It never completely eliminates the x-variable but it does reduce it by again increasing the odds of everyone/anyone being selected.
Those polls of 1000 people if done properly randomly select people in the population they are looking at. Again if it is random than anyone has a chance of being selected and so it can accurately reflect a representative cross-section of that population.
X-fire is not random in any shape or form. It is inheriently biased towards a specific target of people those being that are interested in many different games, discuss games, and research games on the net - this was necessary for them to even find X-fire. Now if you take WoW for example, another common perception is that many WoW gamers are just Wow gamers, with no interest or even real knowledge of other games.
This alone makes the data flawed, and thus invalid. You cannot make any reasonable conclusions about a population based on that data.
You don't disregard something like that there's something call past and trends margin's of error. Correlations etc. X fire maybe incorrect (most data achieved in science is) what's important is not simply whether it's incorrect or not it's how much and whether you know how much of a difference between the the accurate mean is and your results. If Xfire is wrong by roughly by most a specific each time. If you calculate that amount and use margins of error you can use that data. It's not worthless. It's only worthless when there is no trend with the accurate mean data.
So saying you should just disregard it, is displaying a narrow understanding of statistics. Statistics isn't a cut and dry game. It's all about complex mathematics and models. Models by definition through use are rarely accurate by themselves.
Last I checked xfire, they still havent recovered from the loss of players when GW2 released even after MoP.
I dont think that article can really accuratly represent digital sales from the WoW main site so I'm sure its much higher than that. On active subscribers alone, even if they only sold MoP to half their subscribers it should still outsell GW2
WOW is back up to the #2 spot on Xfire, and hours played is almost double of GW2
Duh, of course it is. It just released the new expansion and if you want to compare it with GW2 semi fairly (to be fair you would have to compare it with GW2s fourth expansion) you would have to check MOPs numbers today with GW2s a month ago, players play more the first 2 weeks after an expansion.
It is still pointless since Xfire numbers not fairly can compare numbers between 2 different games. Some games have a lot higher needed use of voice chat than others which will give some games an advantage, and some regions have a lot more Xfire users than other further distorting the numbers.
I am sure Wow still have higher number of players than GW2 and I think it had it all the time, the GW2 players just played more the first weeks. But I dont think MOP can turn Wow around to gaining players again and beating CATAs sales number.
If they want to do that they either need to revamp the graphics and probably add new classes and DEs as well or release Wow2.
K gonna go grab some popcorn and a drink , anyone else want some? Because this is going to be one HELL OF A SHOW!
Appeal to Authority + Condescension arguments always get ugly.
Particularly on bluster-forums where volume and frequency often serve as substitutes for actual education or valid data.
But there've been two previous (massive) x-fire threads where people called each other stupid for literally hundreds of posts...couldn't ya'll use one of them?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I see you guys dont understand much about statistics .
Even if 1% of MMO players use Xfire. That data could be used to gauge game activity and popularity rise / drops.
Same goes for digital vs retail sales. You know what is the ratio of digital vs retail buyers. Than you use this ratio on retail sales data.
If the retail had disappointing sales - it points out poor interest in the game.
BTW - As someone who bought D3. I can tell you that I went for retail. Because Blizzard charges same for both (?).
But if you buy retail you get a very nice box.
No it couldn't. You would need to determine if that 1% is a true reflection of that particular MMO's playerbase and X-fire does not provide that explanation.
At best you could say that X-fire is a representative of people who know about games and play enough of them to have heard of X-fire. It is a whole different ballgame to say that that group is the same as a true reflection of the random person in the said game.
There's common sense and mathematics that plays a large part you can't ignore or dismiss the data. It may not be a completely accuarate meausre but we just don't have that. 1% is pretty massive source. Consider typical statisctic polling 1000 particiapants with correct population representation. Consider how these 1000 people represent the opinions of millions. Also consider how two people with the same background ethnicty etc can have very different views. It's inherently flawed but it's about as accurate as we can get considering time and money constraints. Now consider a source of ten's/hundreds thousand's in comparison to a few million. It may not have ideal representation but the volume itself in comparison to the source does make up a fair bit of that. If you add in the correct margin's of error, and trends it's still a viable polling source.
True random sampling can correct as much as possible for true representation by giving everyone an equal shot at being selected. It never completely eliminates the x-variable but it does reduce it by again increasing the odds of everyone/anyone being selected.
Those polls of 1000 people if done properly randomly select people in the population they are looking at. Again if it is random than anyone has a chance of being selected and so it can accurately reflect a representative cross-section of that population.
X-fire is not random in any shape or form. It is inheriently biased towards a specific target of people those being that are interested in many different games, discuss games, and research games on the net - this was necessary for them to even find X-fire. Now if you take WoW for example, another common perception is that many WoW gamers are just Wow gamers, with no interest or even real knowledge of other games.
This alone makes the data flawed, and thus invalid. You cannot make any reasonable conclusions about a population based on that data.
You don't disregard something like that there's something call past and trends margin's of error. Correlations etc. X fire maybe incorrect (most data achieved in science is) what's important is not simply whether it's incorrect or not it's how much and whether you know how much of a difference between the the accurate mean is and your results. If Xfire is wrong by roughly by most a specific each time. If you calculate that amount and use margins of error you can use that data. It's not worthless. It's only worthless when there is no trend with the accurate mean data.
So saying you should just disregard it, is displaying a narrow understanding of statistics. Statistics isn't a cut and dry game. It's all about complex mathematics and models. Models by definition through use are rarely accurate by themselves.
Yes you do and should disregard it until at the very least some information is given about the population of several games so a comparison can be made. You cannot use this as valid data in any sense until the data is validated as representative of the popuatlion. At best as I stated in the edit, all you would say it the numbers are interesting enough to warrant further study.
Anyone using this data without first concluding it's validty, reliability and accurace of the population would themselves be considered uncredible.
Yes there are margins of error - they are commonly given when the accuracy of hte data compared to the population is known. We do not even know if X-fire data is representative of populations in any game, therefore the margin of error is absolutely massive.
Yes there are correlations but correlation have a strength indicator. Again there is a very wide margine of error and a very low correlation strength becuase we do not have any idea how representative the data is.
If you know that it is wrong by a specific percentage, that alone gives it validity and you can adjust your measures to reflect this but you still need to have the population data to compare it to. Most games do not give out population data so there is nothing to compare X-fire too. It is specuation about what X-fire means compared to speculation about the total number of players. We can't take that level of guessing seriously at all.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
I see you guys dont understand much about statistics .
Even if 1% of MMO players use Xfire. That data could be used to gauge game activity and popularity rise / drops.
Same goes for digital vs retail sales. You know what is the ratio of digital vs retail buyers. Than you use this ratio on retail sales data.
If the retail had disappointing sales - it points out poor interest in the game.
BTW - As someone who bought D3. I can tell you that I went for retail. Because Blizzard charges same for both (?).
But if you buy retail you get a very nice box.
No it couldn't. You would need to determine if that 1% is a true reflection of that particular MMO's playerbase and X-fire does not provide that explanation.
At best you could say that X-fire is a representative of people who know about games and play enough of them to have heard of X-fire. It is a whole different ballgame to say that that group is the same as a true reflection of the random person in the said game.
There's common sense and mathematics that plays a large part you can't ignore or dismiss the data. It may not be a completely accuarate meausre but we just don't have that. 1% is pretty massive source. Consider typical statisctic polling 1000 particiapants with correct population representation. Consider how these 1000 people represent the opinions of millions. Also consider how two people with the same background ethnicty etc can have very different views. It's inherently flawed but it's about as accurate as we can get considering time and money constraints. Now consider a source of ten's/hundreds thousand's in comparison to a few million. It may not have ideal representation but the volume itself in comparison to the source does make up a fair bit of that. If you add in the correct margin's of error, and trends it's still a viable polling source.
True random sampling can correct as much as possible for true representation by giving everyone an equal shot at being selected. It never completely eliminates the x-variable but it does reduce it by again increasing the odds of everyone/anyone being selected.
Those polls of 1000 people if done properly randomly select people in the population they are looking at. Again if it is random than anyone has a chance of being selected and so it can accurately reflect a representative cross-section of that population.
X-fire is not random in any shape or form. It is inheriently biased towards a specific target of people those being that are interested in many different games, discuss games, and research games on the net - this was necessary for them to even find X-fire. Now if you take WoW for example, another common perception is that many WoW gamers are just Wow gamers, with no interest or even real knowledge of other games.
This alone makes the data flawed, and thus invalid. You cannot make any reasonable conclusions about a population based on that data.
You don't disregard something like that there's something call past and trends margin's of error. Correlations etc. X fire maybe incorrect (most data achieved in science is) what's important is not simply whether it's incorrect or not it's how much and whether you know how much of a difference between the the accurate mean is and your results. If Xfire is wrong by roughly by most a specific each time. If you calculate that amount and use margins of error you can use that data. It's not worthless. It's only worthless when there is no trend with the accurate mean data.
So saying you should just disregard it, is displaying a narrow understanding of statistics. Statistics isn't a cut and dry game. It's all about complex mathematics and models. Models by definition through use are rarely accurate by themselves.
Yes you do and should disregard it until at the very least some information is given about the population of several games so a comparison can be made. You cannot use this as valid data in any sense until the data is validated as representative of the popuatlion. At best as I stated in the edit, all you would say it the numbers are interesting enough to warrant further study.
Anyone using this data without first concluding it's validty, reliability and accurace of the population would themselves be considered uncredible.
Yes there are margins of error - they are commonly given when the accuracy of hte data compared to the population is known. We do not even know if X-fire data is representative of populations in any game, therefore the margin of error is absolutely massive.
Yes there are correlations but correlation is not causation. Again there is a very wide margine of error and a very low correlation strength becuase we do not have any idea how representative the data is.
If you know that it is wrong by a specific percentage, that alone gives it validity and you can adjust your measures to reflect this but you still need to have the population data to compare it to. Most games do not give out population data so there is nothing to compare X-fire too. It is specuation about what X-fire means compared to speculation about the total number of players. We can't take that level of guessing seriously at all.
I love this because you basically contradict what you said and agreed with me while stating you aren't. Warranting further study is not disregarding, finding more information is not disregard. I am right you shouldn't disregard this information, may not be useable right now but you shouldn't disregard it. It can still be useful, making disregarding it the last thing you should do as a competant statician
I would say that you should admit you were wrong but who cares, really.
I see you guys dont understand much about statistics .
Even if 1% of MMO players use Xfire. That data could be used to gauge game activity and popularity rise / drops.
Same goes for digital vs retail sales. You know what is the ratio of digital vs retail buyers. Than you use this ratio on retail sales data.
If the retail had disappointing sales - it points out poor interest in the game.
BTW - As someone who bought D3. I can tell you that I went for retail. Because Blizzard charges same for both (?).
But if you buy retail you get a very nice box.
No it couldn't. You would need to determine if that 1% is a true reflection of that particular MMO's playerbase and X-fire does not provide that explanation.
At best you could say that X-fire is a representative of people who know about games and play enough of them to have heard of X-fire. It is a whole different ballgame to say that that group is the same as a true reflection of the random person in the said game.
There's common sense and mathematics that plays a large part you can't ignore or dismiss the data. It may not be a completely accuarate meausre but we just don't have that. 1% is pretty massive source. Consider typical statisctic polling 1000 particiapants with correct population representation. Consider how these 1000 people represent the opinions of millions. Also consider how two people with the same background ethnicty etc can have very different views. It's inherently flawed but it's about as accurate as we can get considering time and money constraints. Now consider a source of ten's/hundreds thousand's in comparison to a few million. It may not have ideal representation but the volume itself in comparison to the source does make up a fair bit of that. If you add in the correct margin's of error, and trends it's still a viable polling source.
True random sampling can correct as much as possible for true representation by giving everyone an equal shot at being selected. It never completely eliminates the x-variable but it does reduce it by again increasing the odds of everyone/anyone being selected.
Those polls of 1000 people if done properly randomly select people in the population they are looking at. Again if it is random than anyone has a chance of being selected and so it can accurately reflect a representative cross-section of that population.
X-fire is not random in any shape or form. It is inheriently biased towards a specific target of people those being that are interested in many different games, discuss games, and research games on the net - this was necessary for them to even find X-fire. Now if you take WoW for example, another common perception is that many WoW gamers are just Wow gamers, with no interest or even real knowledge of other games.
This alone makes the data flawed, and thus invalid. You cannot make any reasonable conclusions about a population based on that data.
You don't disregard something like that there's something call past and trends margin's of error. Correlations etc. X fire maybe incorrect (most data achieved in science is) what's important is not simply whether it's incorrect or not it's how much and whether you know how much of a difference between the the accurate mean is and your results. If Xfire is wrong by roughly by most a specific each time. If you calculate that amount and use margins of error you can use that data. It's not worthless. It's only worthless when there is no trend with the accurate mean data.
So saying you should just disregard it, is displaying a narrow understanding of statistics. Statistics isn't a cut and dry game. It's all about complex mathematics and models. Models by definition through use are rarely accurate by themselves.
Yes you do and should disregard it until at the very least some information is given about the population of several games so a comparison can be made. You cannot use this as valid data in any sense until the data is validated as representative of the popuatlion. At best as I stated in the edit, all you would say it the numbers are interesting enough to warrant further study.
Anyone using this data without first concluding it's validty, reliability and accurace of the population would themselves be considered uncredible.
Yes there are margins of error - they are commonly given when the accuracy of hte data compared to the population is known. We do not even know if X-fire data is representative of populations in any game, therefore the margin of error is absolutely massive.
Yes there are correlations but correlation is not causation. Again there is a very wide margine of error and a very low correlation strength becuase we do not have any idea how representative the data is.
If you know that it is wrong by a specific percentage, that alone gives it validity and you can adjust your measures to reflect this but you still need to have the population data to compare it to. Most games do not give out population data so there is nothing to compare X-fire too. It is specuation about what X-fire means compared to speculation about the total number of players. We can't take that level of guessing seriously at all.
I love this you basically contradict what you said and agreed with me while stating you aren't. Warranting further study is not disregarding, finding more information is not disregard. I am right you shouldn't disregard this information, may not be useable right now but you shouldn't disregard it.
I would say that you should admit you were wrong but who cares, really.
Um no. You disregard the current data until it can be validated. But you don't ignore the idea. There is enough numbers and interest to warrant a closer look.
Thats the way research works. Out of millions of things to study, you choose one that 1. Seems to have some interest behind it, and 2. Has at least a rudimentary of numbers/logic/understanding.
You then do the work and get the real information.
edit - admit I'm wrong about what?
I"m wrong that they haven't released information on X-fire's representation of a population?
I'm wrong that most game companies dont' release player stats?
Without those 2 bits of information there really is nothing to discuss.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
I never post on the forums this might be my 3rd post in 6 years.
I had to say that your link was the most stupidest shit i have ever read. 600k-700k sales in 2 DAYS of MOP versus 3.3 million copies since Dec 2010 for Cataclysm = MOP not doing well? WTF hahaha stupid link.
Not you I repeat I am not calling you stupid or cussing at you. Just had to clear that up.
And I think it's best that you stay away. You obviously don't get the point and your sentences are poorly constructed so the point you're trying to make is lost. I'm sure you have a point, but somewhere between "the most stupidest" and "stupid link" the point seems to be diluded. That and your language is foul at best.
I see you guys dont understand much about statistics .
Even if 1% of MMO players use Xfire. That data could be used to gauge game activity and popularity rise / drops.
Same goes for digital vs retail sales. You know what is the ratio of digital vs retail buyers. Than you use this ratio on retail sales data.
If the retail had disappointing sales - it points out poor interest in the game.
BTW - As someone who bought D3. I can tell you that I went for retail. Because Blizzard charges same for both (?).
But if you buy retail you get a very nice box.
No it couldn't. You would need to determine if that 1% is a true reflection of that particular MMO's playerbase and X-fire does not provide that explanation.
At best you could say that X-fire is a representative of people who know about games and play enough of them to have heard of X-fire. It is a whole different ballgame to say that that group is the same as a true reflection of the random person in the said game.
There's common sense and mathematics that plays a large part you can't ignore or dismiss the data. It may not be a completely accuarate meausre but we just don't have that. 1% is pretty massive source. Consider typical statisctic polling 1000 particiapants with correct population representation. Consider how these 1000 people represent the opinions of millions. Also consider how two people with the same background ethnicty etc can have very different views. It's inherently flawed but it's about as accurate as we can get considering time and money constraints. Now consider a source of ten's/hundreds thousand's in comparison to a few million. It may not have ideal representation but the volume itself in comparison to the source does make up a fair bit of that. If you add in the correct margin's of error, and trends it's still a viable polling source.
True random sampling can correct as much as possible for true representation by giving everyone an equal shot at being selected. It never completely eliminates the x-variable but it does reduce it by again increasing the odds of everyone/anyone being selected.
Those polls of 1000 people if done properly randomly select people in the population they are looking at. Again if it is random than anyone has a chance of being selected and so it can accurately reflect a representative cross-section of that population.
X-fire is not random in any shape or form. It is inheriently biased towards a specific target of people those being that are interested in many different games, discuss games, and research games on the net - this was necessary for them to even find X-fire. Now if you take WoW for example, another common perception is that many WoW gamers are just Wow gamers, with no interest or even real knowledge of other games.
This alone makes the data flawed, and thus invalid. You cannot make any reasonable conclusions about a population based on that data.
You don't disregard something like that there's something call past and trends margin's of error. Correlations etc. X fire maybe incorrect (most data achieved in science is) what's important is not simply whether it's incorrect or not it's how much and whether you know how much of a difference between the the accurate mean is and your results. If Xfire is wrong by roughly by most a specific each time. If you calculate that amount and use margins of error you can use that data. It's not worthless. It's only worthless when there is no trend with the accurate mean data.
So saying you should just disregard it, is displaying a narrow understanding of statistics. Statistics isn't a cut and dry game. It's all about complex mathematics and models. Models by definition through use are rarely accurate by themselves.
Yes you do and should disregard it until at the very least some information is given about the population of several games so a comparison can be made. You cannot use this as valid data in any sense until the data is validated as representative of the popuatlion. At best as I stated in the edit, all you would say it the numbers are interesting enough to warrant further study.
Anyone using this data without first concluding it's validty, reliability and accurace of the population would themselves be considered uncredible.
Yes there are margins of error - they are commonly given when the accuracy of hte data compared to the population is known. We do not even know if X-fire data is representative of populations in any game, therefore the margin of error is absolutely massive.
Yes there are correlations but correlation is not causation. Again there is a very wide margine of error and a very low correlation strength becuase we do not have any idea how representative the data is.
If you know that it is wrong by a specific percentage, that alone gives it validity and you can adjust your measures to reflect this but you still need to have the population data to compare it to. Most games do not give out population data so there is nothing to compare X-fire too. It is specuation about what X-fire means compared to speculation about the total number of players. We can't take that level of guessing seriously at all.
I love this you basically contradict what you said and agreed with me while stating you aren't. Warranting further study is not disregarding, finding more information is not disregard. I am right you shouldn't disregard this information, may not be useable right now but you shouldn't disregard it.
I would say that you should admit you were wrong but who cares, really.
Um no. You disregard the current data until it can be validated. But you don't ignore the idea. There is enough numbers and interest to warrant a closer look.
Thats the way research works. Out of millions of things to study, you choose one that 1. Seems to have some interest behind it, and 2. Has at least a rudimentary of numbers/logic/understanding.
You then do the work and get the real information.
Umm no you look into current data to see if it can be validated, or not. If you make a scientific discovery you don't ignore it and says it false until someone else proves it. You look into it yourself to see if the data is correct/useable. You don't disregard something unless that data is empirically anomalous and has been proven as such over several instances/experiments. You don't disregard it when you have nothing else to compare it to. At that point it's simply raw data waiting to be analysed.
Also facts and case studies my friend your talking like your an authority without substantiating yourself I hate when people do that, I'm a mathematician and engineer, if you want me to substiant myself ask me, but you should also do the same. Either do it or stop acting as if your an authority.
The sergeant-at-arms will be issuing a e-credentials check before this argument is allowed to proceed. So do be sure to make up an impressive curriculum vitae.
I'm sorry, I shouldn't poke fun. I'm just in awe (literally) of how readily x-fire arguments just keep Energizer Bunnying along.
Will stop now, promise.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Comments
Lobotomist you're right up to a point: problem is xfire users are a very specific population. It's like taking the 1% richest people in a country and saying they represent the country (might work up to a point if you're a Republican though...): xfire users are dedicated enough to want to show off how many hours they played.
However, it should be indeed possible, by comparing with Diablo 3 percentages of retail/online to have a fair estimate of the number of online sales. I guess that's approximately the math they did at the consultant (maybe adding a "margin of error" due to the fact that an expac must have more online sales). In any case, not definitive by far, but we'll have to see
ps: on the xfire thing, look it up. Although the number of hours is big, there are nearly as many players in WoW as in GW2 (the pop of which has stabilised, although they play a small number of hours). It's certainly not a tsunami.
Of course it is. It's almost ignorant to release figures like they have when they don't have access to digital sales figures. Still though, I would imagine a lot of people are like me - This is the first time I have not purchased and participated in a World of Warcraft expansion. I've simply had enough of it. Level to new cap, grind for gear all over again and raid Dungeons like we've been doing since 2005.
Massively bit as well, on both accounts. I consider them a pretty stand-up site personally.
No it couldn't. You would need to determine if that 1% is a true reflection of that particular MMO's playerbase and X-fire does not provide that explanation.
At best you could say that X-fire is a representative of people who know about games and play enough of them to have heard of X-fire. It is a whole different ballgame to say that that group is the same as a true reflection of the random person in the said game.
If you just go by X-fire you are looking at a skewed or misrepresentation of the population.
This crap again. Everytime there a big launch of anything its this crap.
And please note that digital sales of games have increased a lot since 2010 (and box sales gone down).
Currently playing: AoC, RIFT, Champions Online, DDO, LORTO, STO and Tribes: Ascend
Have Played: TSW, SWG, AO, EVE, WOW, EQ, EQ2, SW:TOR, GW,CoH, DCUO, RotMG, WAR,
Well today I walked into five stores all big box ones, EB games , gamestop , walmart , ect and I have noticed TONS of MOP expacs just sitting there ,I was like hmmm thats strange because the previous expacs were gone in a day or two now hell the one EB games I went too had 10 collectors versions still sitting there and at the other stores were alittle higher and some alittle lower , but not by much.
Even the reps at these places said that the game is not selling well at all , I think that the giant is taking a dive, and if that is'nt proof goto your retailer and check , still have some in stock yep! Hell I had a hard time trying to get borderlands 2 , took me five days to land me a copy!
P.S and the giant takes a dive!
There's common sense and mathematics that plays a large part you can't ignore or dismiss the data. It may not be a completely accuarate meausre but we just don't have that. 1% is pretty massive source. Consider typical statisctic polling 1000 particiapants with correct population representation. Consider how these 1000 people represent the opinions of millions. Also consider how two people with the same background ethnicty etc can have very different views. It's inherently flawed but it's about as accurate as we can get considering time and money constraints. Now consider a source of ten's/hundreds thousand's in comparison to a few million. It may not have ideal representation but the volume itself in comparison to the source does make up a fair bit of that. If you add in the correct margin's of error, and trends it's still a viable polling source.
You don't know much about statistics, either, it seems. Your argument is only valid if that 1% equals a random selection of MMO players. In my experience, it don't - XFire seems to mostly attract semi-experienced players, I've never heard anyone who consider him-/herself a vet claiming to use it.
Retail doesn't prove shit about the interest in the game. I have 7 friends who play WoW. When Cata released, at least 5 of them bought the retail (I didn't). None of them bought the MoP retail, we all bought digital. I'm pretty sure we're far from the only ones going completely digital.
Nice box? Well, I have bought quite a lot of games digitally, both on steam and others places. It suits me just fine NOT having 200+ boxes gathering dust in my shelves.
So why are we throwing around accusations without complete statistics?
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development
OK little additional facts
1 the actual source is Banque Lazard, which not is not above error but certainly reliable. These guys are investment banks, not your average mmorpg fan/"journalist". They tell people where to put their money, and don't give a **** about the actual future of the game apart from its financial reports, so I think they can be trusted. (And they very certainly aren't your average consultant: they are the real deal)
2 They predict a sales decrease of 60% from the record of Cata; 3.3*40%= 1.32, meaning they think digital sales make up 50% of sales, which given the broad appeal of WoW (not only guys like you who surf the internet all the time) and the "events" at launch in shops sounds reasonable (and is based on numbers from D3 and such; I downloaded D3 and so did most of you I guess, but 50% of people bought it retail -ps: younger crowds often get things bought in shops, by their parents)
So all in all maybe they are wrong and digitals make up twice as much as retail, in which case it goes up from 1.3 mill to to 1.8... in any case it's half of what Cata sold in the same period of time.
Oh other comparison: GW2 sold 1Mill retail (VGchartz numbers) and 2Mill in all. So 50% digital for an MMORPG seems to be a good estimate.
Hope this helped get the conversation straight
True random sampling can correct as much as possible for true representation by giving everyone an equal shot at being selected. It never completely eliminates the x-variable but it does reduce it by again increasing the odds of everyone/anyone being selected.
X-fire is not random in any shape or form. It is inheriently biased towards a specific target of people those being that are interested in many different games, discuss games, and research games on the net - this was necessary for them to even find X-fire. Now if you take WoW for example, another common perception is that many WoW gamers are just Wow gamers, with no interest or even real knowledge of other games.
This alone makes the data flawed, and thus invalid. You cannot make any reasonable conclusions about a population based on that data.
edit - at best the only thing you could say is that the game is popular or unpopular among the people who are knowledgable enough about games and use X-fire. This would increase the odds then of the game being popular among the general population just from the word of mouth the people who do use X-fire would generate.
edit - however as with all case studies and data, ideas need to come from somewhere. Anyone looking at the date should have doubts about the validity, but it does have enough numbers, people and games to say, "This is interesting, a closer look and further work should be done."
LOL No idea :P
How much do you actually know seriously. Anyone can state the other knows nothing about statistics (X fire threads are full of them), but how about you provide some of that indepth analysis, that isn't available to the average armchair analyst. Also stating university or job is worthless I want hard core stats and case studies, otherwise don't go stating someone else doesn't know much about statistics.
K gonna go grab some popcorn and a drink , anyone else want some? Because this is going to be one HELL OF A SHOW!
You don't disregard something like that there's something call past and trends margin's of error. Correlations etc. X fire maybe incorrect (most data achieved in science is) what's important is not simply whether it's incorrect or not it's how much and whether you know how much of a difference between the the accurate mean is and your results. If Xfire is wrong by roughly by most a specific each time. If you calculate that amount and use margins of error you can use that data. It's not worthless. It's only worthless when there is no trend with the accurate mean data.
So saying you should just disregard it, is displaying a narrow understanding of statistics. Statistics isn't a cut and dry game. It's all about complex mathematics and models. Models by definition through use are rarely accurate by themselves.
Duh, of course it is. It just released the new expansion and if you want to compare it with GW2 semi fairly (to be fair you would have to compare it with GW2s fourth expansion) you would have to check MOPs numbers today with GW2s a month ago, players play more the first 2 weeks after an expansion.
It is still pointless since Xfire numbers not fairly can compare numbers between 2 different games. Some games have a lot higher needed use of voice chat than others which will give some games an advantage, and some regions have a lot more Xfire users than other further distorting the numbers.
I am sure Wow still have higher number of players than GW2 and I think it had it all the time, the GW2 players just played more the first weeks. But I dont think MOP can turn Wow around to gaining players again and beating CATAs sales number.
If they want to do that they either need to revamp the graphics and probably add new classes and DEs as well or release Wow2.
Appeal to Authority + Condescension arguments always get ugly.
Particularly on bluster-forums where volume and frequency often serve as substitutes for actual education or valid data.
But there've been two previous (massive) x-fire threads where people called each other stupid for literally hundreds of posts...couldn't ya'll use one of them?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Yes you do and should disregard it until at the very least some information is given about the population of several games so a comparison can be made. You cannot use this as valid data in any sense until the data is validated as representative of the popuatlion. At best as I stated in the edit, all you would say it the numbers are interesting enough to warrant further study.
Anyone using this data without first concluding it's validty, reliability and accurace of the population would themselves be considered uncredible.
Yes there are margins of error - they are commonly given when the accuracy of hte data compared to the population is known. We do not even know if X-fire data is representative of populations in any game, therefore the margin of error is absolutely massive.
Yes there are correlations but correlation have a strength indicator. Again there is a very wide margine of error and a very low correlation strength becuase we do not have any idea how representative the data is.
If you know that it is wrong by a specific percentage, that alone gives it validity and you can adjust your measures to reflect this but you still need to have the population data to compare it to. Most games do not give out population data so there is nothing to compare X-fire too. It is specuation about what X-fire means compared to speculation about the total number of players. We can't take that level of guessing seriously at all.
I love this because you basically contradict what you said and agreed with me while stating you aren't. Warranting further study is not disregarding, finding more information is not disregard. I am right you shouldn't disregard this information, may not be useable right now but you shouldn't disregard it. It can still be useful, making disregarding it the last thing you should do as a competant statician
I would say that you should admit you were wrong but who cares, really.
Um no. You disregard the current data until it can be validated. But you don't ignore the idea. There is enough numbers and interest to warrant a closer look.
Thats the way research works. Out of millions of things to study, you choose one that 1. Seems to have some interest behind it, and 2. Has at least a rudimentary of numbers/logic/understanding.
You then do the work and get the real information.
edit - admit I'm wrong about what?
I"m wrong that they haven't released information on X-fire's representation of a population?
I'm wrong that most game companies dont' release player stats?
Without those 2 bits of information there really is nothing to discuss.
And I think it's best that you stay away. You obviously don't get the point and your sentences are poorly constructed so the point you're trying to make is lost. I'm sure you have a point, but somewhere between "the most stupidest" and "stupid link" the point seems to be diluded. That and your language is foul at best.
Umm no you look into current data to see if it can be validated, or not. If you make a scientific discovery you don't ignore it and says it false until someone else proves it. You look into it yourself to see if the data is correct/useable. You don't disregard something unless that data is empirically anomalous and has been proven as such over several instances/experiments. You don't disregard it when you have nothing else to compare it to. At that point it's simply raw data waiting to be analysed.
Also facts and case studies my friend your talking like your an authority without substantiating yourself I hate when people do that, I'm a mathematician and engineer, if you want me to substiant myself ask me, but you should also do the same. Either do it or stop acting as if your an authority.
The sergeant-at-arms will be issuing a e-credentials check before this argument is allowed to proceed. So do be sure to make up an impressive curriculum vitae.
I'm sorry, I shouldn't poke fun. I'm just in awe (literally) of how readily x-fire arguments just keep Energizer Bunnying along.
Will stop now, promise.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.