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Official Xfire Topic - Population is declining
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If you honestly break down most MMO's and look at it you spend most of your time preping for content.
FFXI - You spend the bulk of your time lfg to level, then when you get to endgame you spend most of your time farming so you can join in the endgame activities.
WoW - You run dungeons over and over to get gear so that you can go on raids, when it's time to go on the raid you don't simply run in then either theres even more prep that needs to be done.
DarkFall - you prepare for a siege before declaring it, then you spend a lot of time waiting for the siege to start all the while prepairing lol.
What MMO can you think of that doesn't have you spend a considerable amount of time prepairing to do content? GW2 you jump in, do the content, then your back out. 2 hours of play time actually equals 2 hours of play time.
Supporters are right for the wrong reasons. Yes, after the first month, the amount of time spent logged in and the frequency of logging in drops. While there can be decline, this does not indicate decline as it is the natural pattern of player behaviour for every popular video game on every platform ever released. Ever.
For a sub MMO, a much more valid assessment - not to say XFire is a total authority here - would be to compare numbers on days 30, 35*, 90, 95*, 180 and 360. Since GW2 isn't sub based, comparing monthly data over the course of six months or a year would offer far greater insight. In either case, claiming the population is declining during Week 5 of an MMO is a sophmoric display of a lack of understanding of the available data or even history itself.
*to account for lapsing/cancellation of 30-day and 3-month subs.
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
And they're usually started and kept going by people who hate themeparks and want everyone else to share in their misery. Some people just can't stand to see others enjoying games that they don't like.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
Agreed for the most part, I don't think we need 6 months to see a trend though. I do think GW2 needs to bottom out to get a stronger corralation between hours and players.
Can I get a smart person with a niffty application to overlay GW2s graph with RIFT, SWTOR and TSW's graphs please?! It would be neat to compare first month slides.
That's not a bad idea. I would also include LOTRO in that, and the two overlays i would do:
- the first six months of each game after their release
- the past six months
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
You seriously believe gw2 is dropping faster than Swtor?
That's some bloody excellent LSD there son.
I did not say that....
To be fair though, it did seem like swtor's drop came at about the 2 month period. The cliff came at 3, from what I remember. So is it within the realm of speculation that GW2 atm is sliding faster than swtor during the same time frame? Yes, I think it is. I wouldn't make that claim though.
Just show me the overlay!
edit - here is an article talking about swtor's one month xfire numbers. We all know what happened soon after
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-03-03-star-wars-the-old-republic-could-secure-1m-long-term-subscribers
"DFC, which conducted the study in conjunction with Xfire, tracked game usage data from the launch of the MMO on December 20, 2011 through February 20, 2012 and also surveyed over 4,000 Xfire users in January 2012. Based on this data, DFC believes that Star Wars can indeed reach over one million long-term paying subscribers (defined as a subscriber that pays for over six months)."
No graph though..
Since they cant go free 2 play then what can they do ?
drop box prize ? maybe even make it completely free?
add weapons and armors to cash shop ?
lower gold gain for people who play and lower other drop rates so they use cash shop more ?
or what?
Let's internet
The XFire numbers which were collected daily for SWTOR correlated pretty well with the reports from EA to their shareholders over a period of 6 months.
They also showed larger drops around the 2 and 4 month periods when single and 3 month subs expired. They even showed the peaks when the trial weekends were originally on offer, peaks which declined over time as people stopped using the free trial in such large numbers.
You cannot use XFire to predict actual population numbers or to compare populations between games but anyone denying their statistical relevance in showing the population trend for a single game is, quite frankly, a fool.
According to this. GW2 looks almost EXACTLY like swtor as far as xfire is concerned, through the first month.
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/view/forums/post/4748640#4748640
I'm still looking for the actual graph.
Add to it the overall XFire population, so you can see how each game's population is changing in relation to the overall population. Perhaps you could even just show the overall population for the games being represented in the report.
** edit **
XFire has a set of XML feeds, but I haven't found anything more than general game information. Nothing on number of hours played or number of logged in players. Nothing about historical information either.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
How about continue to add new content and polish existing, continue to refine the game based on sensible user feedback (crafting pulling from banks... BRILLIANT!), continue with plans to release expansions periodically (that's right Jormag, we'll be coming for you soon...), wow us with amazing holiday events (using GW1 as a baseline there) and ride on the fact that they've created a great game that continues to hold a huge population?
45 minutes last night to get into a Borderlands for WvW, and I entered at 10PM eastern US time from Jade Quarry. In the meantime, I got 100% completion on the map zone with the Arah dungeon (forget the name). Everywhere I went there were plenty of people about helping out with skill challenges, etc. I reluctantly logged out near midnight and you know... I had as much fun last night as the others.
I'm really looking forwards to the Halloween event.
Oderint, dum metuant.
http://i.imgur.com/NVi0R.png here is something similar I just made.
I found a swtor 1st month graph. Notice something similar?
Nearly the exact same Xfire numbers at laucnh and after 1 month.
This is so silly to me...
So according to this Xfire which a poll has been illustrating barely anyone who plays the game even uses (myself included) GW 2 is declining since launch. But also according to these forums and xfire or merely posts TSW is declining or merely not gaining any new players, WoW has not had no increase and SWToR is dying.
If that is the case where is everyone then? Or maybe it could be that most of this is really not much in regards to trending information like some wish to believe. Or there are other factors like GW2 released before school started for many people. Polls (since folks seem to enjoy them around here) illustrated a majority of the playerbase was in the age of the average college student. Within a month time school starts which means less gaming (well unless you don't like to give your studies as much time) and less hours that go to that xfire thing for the few handful that even bother to use it.
Guys really...not sure why this deserves yet another multi-page thread when according to everything from polls, xfire and posts all the newly released games and WoW itself are in a decline or seeing no increase in activity/numbers. So all this information in the end provides absolutely nothing.
wow so swtor had a much better retention rate than gw2 in the first month.
Yes. 30 days free. Just like GW2. The difference is people played swtor the first 30 THEN did not resub. GW2 has had a constant slide.
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