People are still talking about Xfire? Sheesh. If you think Xfire is a valid tool to estimate total populations, then you don't understand statistical bias or random samples.
Furthermore, the first big test of GW2 will obviously be the expansion. Retention of players until then is largely irrelevant due to the B2P model. Although my server is always packed with queues for WvW and people looking for dungeons *shrug*.
When people say "its losing players" and XFIre shows otherwise then XFire is right and they are wrong. When people say "its not losing players" and XFire shows otherwise XFire is right and they are wrong.
And it has been proven in practice, practice beats theory. You can theorise how much you want about it being "wrong" but its proven right every single time.
GW2 is pretty kid-friendly, due to its ease of use, general tone, and inexpense of having no sub. I think more parents have bought copes for their children, which probably has helped keep sales up.
Originally posted by ReeseFlame GW2 is pretty kid-friendly, due to its ease of use, general tone, and inexpense of having no sub. I think more parents have bought copes for their children, which probably has helped keep sales up.
Just otherwise i think all those kids got pandas not GW2.
This is one of most ridiculous arguments ive heard in a long time.
Originally posted by ReeseFlame GW2 is pretty kid-friendly, due to its ease of use, general tone, and inexpense of having no sub. I think more parents have bought copes for their children, which probably has helped keep sales up.
Just otherwise i think all those kids got pandas not GW2.
This is one of most ridiculous arguments ive heard in a long time.
Don't you see it's just a way to insult those who happen to enjoy GW2 without triggering moderation punishment?
Pretty obvious...
Yah i know, i just pointed out theres something far more kid-friendly, easier to use and actually kid oriented than GW2
Originally posted by jpnz
For a 'kid' friendly game, some of the things in GW2 is pretty violent.
I would seriously doubt anyone bougth this for their 'kid' below age 10.
However, pretty sure I won't take offense if I play a game and someone calls it 'kid friendly'.
I play Chess / Go / Tetris a lot and those are kid-friendly as you are going to get.
Mmmm, chess is not kid friendly... Well, actually figurines are kid friendly but they rarely got used for their intended purpose ;P
I have nevver run XFire, because I don't want any performnce drain while playing games that tax my system, I have no use for the XFire communications tools and I have no need to display my play habits to the masses. I don't personally know anyone that uses XFire and when the conversation comes up, most give similar reasons for not using it.
If XFire is under-representative of players who wish to maximize performance, have no use for XFire's communication tools and have no desire to display their game play habits to the world, then it's no longer a representative population of gamers.
Something like XFire gains more value if someone games with other people that also use XFire, so there is bound to be sampling bias related to which groups of players tend to gravitate towards and recommend XFire for others. Some non-MMO gaming site forums are repleat with XFire forum sigs, while other sites have few, if any X-Fire sigs in evidence. I have never seen anything but a sparse display of X-Fire sigs on any MMO based gamer forum.
Any survey with self selected participants is valueless at showing anything other than the opinions or habits of that group of people. X-Fire is a self selected group of people and shows nothing other than the habits/trends of X-fire users.
You do not have to display your playtime to the masses, you can opt to turn that off, and keep it private. You can also choose no to track a game, and although you may play a certain game, and use Xfire, it will show you not playing it when you are.
I use Xfire for a varity of reasons
Communicate with friends
Capture screenshots (and upload them which are not compreesed and can be seen in full glory). If I rely on the games built in screenshots then I can lose them, and I do not have anything currently to upload them and was more of a hassle.
Capture video
Record game time, and as time flies if I am playing muliple MMOs and one is not listed as platyed in a week but I am subbing to it, I best make that game a priorty.
It rarely does affect system performance, especially if you have the latest hardware, and if it does, then I do deactivate it, but that was only usually on SWG when running multiple clients (so my gametime in SWG was a lot more than 10K hours!). I use both Xfire and Steam together and see no difference in performance to worry about
Xfire is the only thing that seems to do it all, and I do not see to stop using it, until they start to stop supporting games. I use Steam, but they do not do all games, I even tried Raptr but it was a bit weird and did not work well, but if you switch then you lose all the history you have built up.
Xfire is a tool mainly used for playing games online, and people who play MMOs are most likely to use it, as that is what got me to use it. If I was just still playing single player games, like Tomb Raider 2 (The first PC game I played) I probably would not use it.
Xfire does not show total populations, but it does show how well a MMO is doing, and you need to take in some factors. You can not realiably look at stats from this year and compare it to last year, in case Xfire users has dropped or risen, but whenever there is a free weekend or the game goes F2P, there is usually a spike in populations. Basically it can never be exact but does give a pretty good guide. Future predictions will only more likely come true if the devs or other players do nothing to the games (devs improve / update game, players advertise and / or spread good vibes of the game), and it just stays like it is, but then future predictions are not based solely off X fire stats, but other observations too
I can understand it is not a tool for everyone, but it does have more things than you stated, you might not be aware of, and it is still being supported with each and every new PC release.
People are still talking about Xfire? Sheesh. If you think Xfire is a valid tool to estimate total populations, then you don't understand statistical bias or random samples.
Furthermore, the first big test of GW2 will obviously be the expansion. Retention of players until then is largely irrelevant due to the B2P model. Although my server is always packed with queues for WvW and people looking for dungeons *shrug*.
When people say "its losing players" and XFIre shows otherwise then XFire is right and they are wrong. When people say "its not losing players" and XFire shows otherwise XFire is right and they are wrong.
And it has been proven in practice, practice beats theory. You can theorise how much you want about it being "wrong" but its proven right every single time.
So yah, XFire is good to discuss.
No Xfire is flawed. Statistics isn't half as simple as your trying to make it out to be. Even a stopped clock is correct twice a day. That doesn't make it accurate. Going into anymore detail would be simply going around in circles, but even xfire has shown the player base as in number of people actually playing stabilised. No you could say xfire is wrong and player base is falling at an exponential rate, but my question is what are you discuss. This entire thing is biased. Due to who Xfire works people read what they want to read, that's pretty much it.
(Xfire) can be used to tell people that claim different, if game as obviously losing/gaining players and they disbelief it you can use XFire graphs to back up your claim.
Concretely for SWTOR population didnt settle till september/october. And in their Q report they reported it settled. But it settled on much lower value than their last reported numbers, and you can quite certanly claim that based on XFire graphs. Yet people said "Theres no proof" etc and XFire thread was closed by then and XFire discussions banned from forums.
Same with GW2, XFire graphs settled and now they officialy confiremd it settled some time ago (and even got growth in last month or so).
Just to proove all those that were saying it was still "losing players at rapid rate", XFire was right and they were wrong (once again), just like with SWTOR before when people claim its not losing players and XFire was right and they were wrong, and just like many games before it, its proven that it does show accurate trends.
Xfire:
WoW in January 2012 had 90K hours played.
Now WoW in January 2013 has 25K hours played.
what do you make of the wow discrepancy
where Xfire shows WOW having a 300% drop in played hours since a year ago?
despite still having 10 million subs? (as stated November 2012)
Originally posted by Volkon Still playing it, still loving it. Still hit queues in WvW, still overflows in L.A. Still find that events draw a crowd in PvE pretty much anywhere. Still a great game.
This post was unexpected...
Seriously though selling 3 million copies is great for investors but retention is the stat that matters most to the players. Would be nice to see the numbers for how many people log in daily now and compare that to 3-4 months ago.
SWtoR sold plenty of copies as did AOC and Warhammer Online. Since I am not an investor selling 3 million copies means little to me but logging in and seeing mostly empty zones does matter to me.
So that jo-schmo who pays $15 a month for WoW who logs on maybe once a month to chat in trade chat is considered a retention whereas that guy that does the same in a game with no sub does not?
Walk around the world in WoW for a second, you will find it very very empty 90% of the time... how is that supposed to be different than GW2? You pay a sub in WoW... you don't in GW2.
Best time to experience a game is at launch, not when the preponderance of the player base is at max level. True for WoW, true for GW2, true for any game.
The solution to make you happy is to make bot players... artificially created NPCs to act and play as players do... random "Yeah!s" in channel... doing the same quests as you... able to group when asked. It's not that far-fetched a thing to do since other games have done it in the past. World seems alive... but no real players to be had. You can't have a conversation with a bot, but it surely can fill up the space.
(Xfire) can be used to tell people that claim different, if game as obviously losing/gaining players and they disbelief it you can use XFire graphs to back up your claim.
Concretely for SWTOR population didnt settle till september/october. And in their Q report they reported it settled. But it settled on much lower value than their last reported numbers, and you can quite certanly claim that based on XFire graphs. Yet people said "Theres no proof" etc and XFire thread was closed by then and XFire discussions banned from forums.
Same with GW2, XFire graphs settled and now they officialy confiremd it settled some time ago (and even got growth in last month or so).
Just to proove all those that were saying it was still "losing players at rapid rate", XFire was right and they were wrong (once again), just like with SWTOR before when people claim its not losing players and XFire was right and they were wrong, and just like many games before it, its proven that it does show accurate trends.
Xfire:
WoW in January 2012 had 90K hours played.
Now WoW in January 2013 has 25K hours played.
what do you make of the wow discrepancy
where Xfire shows WOW having a 300% drop in played hours since a year ago?
despite still having 10 million subs? (as stated November 2012)
We all know WoW is a dying game. It's 8+ years old!
GW2's numbers should be rising, not dropping this early in the game's life.
No Xfire is flawed. Statistics isn't half as simple as your trying to make it out to be. Even a stopped clock is correct twice a day. That doesn't make it accurate. Going into anymore detail would be simply going around in circles, but even xfire has shown the player base as in number of people actually playing stabilised. No you could say xfire is wrong and player base is falling at an exponential rate, but my question is what are you discuss. This entire thing is biased. Due to who Xfire works people read what they want to read, that's pretty much it.
Except XFire trends have been proven right any time you look at them.
You can theorize all you want, practice proves your theory wrong, plain and simple.
Originally posted by Nadia
Xfire:
WoW in January 2012 had 90K hours played.
Now WoW in January 2013 has 25K hours played.
what do you make of the wow discrepancy
where Xfire shows WOW having a 300% drop in played hours since a year ago?
despite still having 10 million subs? (as stated November 2012)
mmm, did i mention NOt based on HOURS PLAYED but on INDIVIDUAL USERS LOG ON NUMBER.
Yes i did. Several times by now.
It simply says that same amount of players played heck out more hours/day in 2012 than in 2013.
If 10 players play 8 hours/day for 10 days at one time and then drop to 3 hours/day for 10 days? OMG how does it show such drop!
(Xfire) can be used to tell people that claim different, if game as obviously losing/gaining players and they disbelief it you can use XFire graphs to back up your claim.
Concretely for SWTOR population didnt settle till september/october. And in their Q report they reported it settled. But it settled on much lower value than their last reported numbers, and you can quite certanly claim that based on XFire graphs. Yet people said "Theres no proof" etc and XFire thread was closed by then and XFire discussions banned from forums.
Same with GW2, XFire graphs settled and now they officialy confiremd it settled some time ago (and even got growth in last month or so).
Just to proove all those that were saying it was still "losing players at rapid rate", XFire was right and they were wrong (once again), just like with SWTOR before when people claim its not losing players and XFire was right and they were wrong, and just like many games before it, its proven that it does show accurate trends.
Xfire:
WoW in January 2012 had 90K hours played.
Now WoW in January 2013 has 25K hours played.
what do you make of the wow discrepancy
where Xfire shows WOW having a 300% drop in played hours since a year ago?
despite still having 10 million subs? (as stated November 2012)
WOW had the annual pass throughout 2012. I even went for it, 6th Jan 2012 to 6th Jan 2013, where I was obligated to sub and could not cancel sub, but now taking a break, and will resub later.
WOW sub numbers need more recent figures than Nov 2012, as I would imagine others on the annual deal would have cancelled their subs too from Nov
Also as I stated in my previous post you can not comapre accurately when dealing with year gaps.
People want to use XFire trends as a tool of prediction.
But the XFire trends don't preceed in game trends.
Of course it doesnt. It cant show future ;P
But it can be used to tell people that claim different, if game as obviously losing/gaining players and they disbelief it you can use XFire graphs to back up your claim.
Concretely for SWTOR population didnt settle till september/october. And in their Q report they reported it settled. But it settled on much lower value than their last reported numbers, and you can quite certanly claim that based on XFire graphs. Yet people said "Theres no proof" etc and XFire thread was closed by then and XFire discussions banned from forums.
Same with GW2, XFire graphs settled and now they officialy confiremd it settled some time ago (and even got growth in last month or so).
Just to proove all those that were saying it was still "losing players at rapid rate", XFire was right and they were wrong (once again), just like with SWTOR before when people claim its not losing players and XFire was right and they were wrong, and just like many games before it, its proven that it does show accurate trends.
Losing players compared to what?
To a peak in August/september when 2 million players were rushing to get their names and servers?
To a peak in August/September when XFire was reporting 15K players logging 90K hours (6 hours/day)?
To a peak where GW2 was showing double the hours and almost twice as much players as WoW?
Sure, it had been like 9 months since WoW had patches, but it was end of summer.
That is the problem of XFire - you have no basis to calibrate it.
Of course, XFire was showing SWTOR losing hours, but there was also server merges, there was also layoffs.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
(Xfire) can be used to tell people that claim different, if game as obviously losing/gaining players and they disbelief it you can use XFire graphs to back up your claim.
Concretely for SWTOR population didnt settle till september/october. And in their Q report they reported it settled. But it settled on much lower value than their last reported numbers, and you can quite certanly claim that based on XFire graphs. Yet people said "Theres no proof" etc and XFire thread was closed by then and XFire discussions banned from forums.
Same with GW2, XFire graphs settled and now they officialy confiremd it settled some time ago (and even got growth in last month or so).
Just to proove all those that were saying it was still "losing players at rapid rate", XFire was right and they were wrong (once again), just like with SWTOR before when people claim its not losing players and XFire was right and they were wrong, and just like many games before it, its proven that it does show accurate trends.
Xfire:
WoW in January 2012 had 90K hours played.
Now WoW in January 2013 has 25K hours played.
what do you make of the wow discrepancy
where Xfire shows WOW having a 300% drop in played hours since a year ago?
despite still having 10 million subs? (as stated November 2012)
WOW had the annual pass throughout 2012. I even went for it, 6th Jan 2012 to 6th Jan 2013, where I was obligated to sub and could not cancel sub, but now taking a break, and will resub later.
WOW sub numbers need more recent figures than Nov 2012, as I would imagine others on the annual deal would have cancelled their subs too from Nov
Also as I stated in my previous post you can not comapre accurately when dealing with year gaps.
There was still a drop of around 50% compared to WoW MoP release.
And are subs really reflected in XFire?
A guy that play every single day count as a sub the same as someone that plays a couple days a week, but if both use XFire, one represents much more.
And who is more likely to use XFire?
The guy that plays the sub game all the time because he is hardcore, but on the other hand will only have friends in that sub game and doesn't need something to track his game time? Or the guy that only plays a couple of times a week, which mean he may be a softcore and so he doesn't show in XFire at all, or is he on the other hand a hardcore player but just plays a ton of different games?
Gw2 is less active now - true.
But by how much?
Looking at XFire to determin that will be a bit harder.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
No Xfire is flawed. Statistics isn't half as simple as your trying to make it out to be. Even a stopped clock is correct twice a day. That doesn't make it accurate. Going into anymore detail would be simply going around in circles, but even xfire has shown the player base as in number of people actually playing stabilised. No you could say xfire is wrong and player base is falling at an exponential rate, but my question is what are you discuss. This entire thing is biased. Due to who Xfire works people read what they want to read, that's pretty much it.
Except XFire trends have been proven right any time you look at them.
You can theorize all you want, practice proves your theory wrong, plain and simple.
Originally posted by Nadia
Xfire:
WoW in January 2012 had 90K hours played.
Now WoW in January 2013 has 25K hours played.
what do you make of the wow discrepancy
where Xfire shows WOW having a 300% drop in played hours since a year ago?
despite still having 10 million subs? (as stated November 2012)
mmm, did i mention NOt based on HOURS PLAYED but on INDIVIDUAL USERS LOG ON NUMBER.
Yes i did. Several times by now.
It simply says that same amount of players played heck out more hours/day in 2012 than in 2013.
If 10 players play 8 hours/day for 10 days at one time and then drop to 3 hours/day for 10 days? OMG how does it show such drop!
Tell me what was the drop on number of players in gw2 in the past 2 months. Because going by xfire gw2 has about 60% of Wow's user base. So what is your point precisely?
(Xfire) can be used to tell people that claim different, if game as obviously losing/gaining players and they disbelief it you can use XFire graphs to back up your claim.
Concretely for SWTOR population didnt settle till september/october. And in their Q report they reported it settled. But it settled on much lower value than their last reported numbers, and you can quite certanly claim that based on XFire graphs. Yet people said "Theres no proof" etc and XFire thread was closed by then and XFire discussions banned from forums.
Same with GW2, XFire graphs settled and now they officialy confiremd it settled some time ago (and even got growth in last month or so).
Just to proove all those that were saying it was still "losing players at rapid rate", XFire was right and they were wrong (once again), just like with SWTOR before when people claim its not losing players and XFire was right and they were wrong, and just like many games before it, its proven that it does show accurate trends.
Xfire:
WoW in January 2012 had 90K hours played.
Now WoW in January 2013 has 25K hours played.
what do you make of the wow discrepancy
where Xfire shows WOW having a 300% drop in played hours since a year ago?
despite still having 10 million subs? (as stated November 2012)
WOW had the annual pass throughout 2012. I even went for it, 6th Jan 2012 to 6th Jan 2013, where I was obligated to sub and could not cancel sub, but now taking a break, and will resub later.
WOW sub numbers need more recent figures than Nov 2012, as I would imagine others on the annual deal would have cancelled their subs too from Nov
Also as I stated in my previous post you can not comapre accurately when dealing with year gaps.
There was still a drop of around 50% compared to WoW MoP release.
And are subs really reflected in XFire?
A guy that play every single day count as a sub the same as someone that plays a couple days a week, but if both use XFire, one represents much more.
And who is more likely to use XFire?
The guy that plays the sub game all the time because he is hardcore, but on the other hand will only have friends in that sub game and doesn't need something to track his game time? Or the guy that only plays a couple of times a week, which mean he may be a softcore and so he doesn't show in XFire at all, or is he on the other hand a hardcore player but just plays a ton of different games?
Gw2 is less active now - true.
But by how much?
Looking at XFire to determin that will be a bit harder.
Subs show up on Xfire if people play, but if people do not have a sub, then they can not play, and do not show up on Xfire at all.
If people have bought GW2 then they can show up anytime, as do not have a sub to get in the way of playing.
If people signed up for the annual deal, then the times when most played would be at the start as that is when you decide to purchase the annual sub, and intend to play for the long haul. If you do not play much when taking out annual pass, then less chance you will take out annual pass. The other time you would play more is when it is running out, and you want to cancel, so that you can have another blast with it and see if it is worthwhile to sub.
There are many factors to take into consideration, but if you are after accuracy you will never get it, and that is the reason why Xfire gets bashed because people want perfection, but it is the best guide there is, as Xfire supports a lot of games and virtually every PC game from the past 8 years or so, whereas other things do not.
Tell me what was the drop on number of players in gw2 in the past 2 months. Because going by xfire gw2 has about 60% of Wow's user base. So what is your point precisely?
Read whole thread before asking such questions.
Originally posted by Gaia_Hunter
There was still a drop of around 50% compared to WoW MoP release.
And are subs really reflected in XFire?
A guy that play every single day count as a sub the same as someone that plays a couple days a week, but if both use XFire, one represents much more.
And who is more likely to use XFire?
The guy that plays the sub game all the time because he is hardcore, but on the other hand will only have friends in that sub game and doesn't need something to track his game time? Or the guy that only plays a couple of times a week, which mean he may be a softcore and so he doesn't show in XFire at all, or is he on the other hand a hardcore player but just plays a ton of different games?
Gw2 is less active now - true.
But by how much?
Looking at XFire to determin that will be a bit harder.
To a degree subs are represented but with a time shift. Good example are annual passes (or any long term sub). Whie company will count long term subber as a sub een if he doesnt log in any more, XFire will actually show that he doesnt log in any more. Also you have to presume that people that dont log in any more wont continue to sub when sub runs out. Which is perfectly sound presumption.
How much can be determined but with very large margin of error so its pointless to discuss, one side will pull to one extreme, other to the other extreme and nothing can be actually discussed normally.
What you can say is that GW2 has seen dropoff, and by word of developer, stabilized, showed some growth after stabilization period. If that correlates to what XFire showed its yet another proof that XFire was right (and it did show that).
Obvious issue is demographic skews, if the majority of xfire players were pvp and they left, it would show a large dip. however if there were plenty of people who buy the game and play pve only and the pve players didn't leave, then it would show a large decrease in players for the game when the total number actually increased. That's the issue and why it's not considered accurate. As if the play styles of those players are skeweered then there would be large difference in predicted drop and actual drop.
Why would PVP players use it more?
That is hogwash, there is no indication whatsoever that shows what kind of people use Xfire more than others.
I am a PVE player mainly, and avoid PvP like the plague, and I still use Xfire religiously. I use it to capture screenshots and videos, as it is easier than using other tools, and uploading to a webapage, plus can use it to communicate with friends. Xfire is one programme and does it all, instead of using FRAP, Teamspeak, and a program to upload files to webspace when you have it all in one with Xfire
Why are you guys still attacking the numbers reported by xfire when no one said xfire is about the numbers, but the trends in pc gaming? Try to prove that xfire trends are no pc gaming trends, if you want to attack the topic at hand. Currently some of you guys are just ignorant of what is actually the topic here and keep spinning in circles.
So if the initial rush at launch equates into 2 million, and the four months after the first made up the next 1 million, than we should be seeing the 6 million mark by the end of 2013. Mind you, things will probably slow down a bit more, but even if it's only 4 or 5 million individual accounts, that's still great.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
Originally posted by IPolygon Why are you guys still attacking the numbers reported by xfire when no one said xfire is about the numbers, but the trends in pc gaming? Try to prove that xfire trends are no pc gaming trends, if you want to attack the topic at hand. Currently some of you guys are just ignorant of what is actually the topic here and keep spinning in circles.
The only people that really need to look at the XFire charts are those that don't own the game.
What did I see in my GW2 experience?
Huge packs of players during 3-day headstart, a small surge diuring 1-day headstart and a bigger surge at launch date.
The population spread and dwindle a bit.
In the Halloween and lost shores brought a ton of people (and you could clearly see the surge of the invitee playersin the starter areas).
Since that time and with December the numbers of players have be climbing up.
Sincerely I don't think XFire reflected the intensity of players joining in November and December I've experienced.
If all you want to say is "population went down", "population went up", "population is stable", sure XFire can track those tendencies.
But quantify those tendencies?
Nope.
And that is what many people have been trying to do with XFire, translating into number of players, % of retention and whatnot.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Comments
When people say "its losing players" and XFIre shows otherwise then XFire is right and they are wrong. When people say "its not losing players" and XFire shows otherwise XFire is right and they are wrong.
And it has been proven in practice, practice beats theory. You can theorise how much you want about it being "wrong" but its proven right every single time.
So yah, XFire is good to discuss.
Played: UO, DAoC, Shadowbane, DDO, LOTRO, Aion, Rift, TERA
Sampled: WoW, AoC, GW2, Vanguard, FF XIV, Neverwinter
Playing: ESO
Just otherwise i think all those kids got pandas not GW2.
This is one of most ridiculous arguments ive heard in a long time.
For a 'kid' friendly game, some of the things in GW2 is pretty violent.
I would seriously doubt anyone bougth this for their 'kid' below age 10.
However, pretty sure I won't take offense if I play a game and someone calls it 'kid friendly'.
I play Chess / Go / Tetris a lot and those are kid-friendly as you are going to get.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
Yah i know, i just pointed out theres something far more kid-friendly, easier to use and actually kid oriented than GW2
Mmmm, chess is not kid friendly...
Well, actually figurines are kid friendly but they rarely got used for their intended purpose ;P
You do not have to display your playtime to the masses, you can opt to turn that off, and keep it private. You can also choose no to track a game, and although you may play a certain game, and use Xfire, it will show you not playing it when you are.
I use Xfire for a varity of reasons
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
No Xfire is flawed. Statistics isn't half as simple as your trying to make it out to be. Even a stopped clock is correct twice a day. That doesn't make it accurate. Going into anymore detail would be simply going around in circles, but even xfire has shown the player base as in number of people actually playing stabilised. No you could say xfire is wrong and player base is falling at an exponential rate, but my question is what are you discuss. This entire thing is biased. Due to who Xfire works people read what they want to read, that's pretty much it.
Xfire:
WoW in January 2012 had 90K hours played.
Now WoW in January 2013 has 25K hours played.
what do you make of the wow discrepancy
where Xfire shows WOW having a 300% drop in played hours since a year ago?
despite still having 10 million subs? (as stated November 2012)
EQ2 fan sites
So that jo-schmo who pays $15 a month for WoW who logs on maybe once a month to chat in trade chat is considered a retention whereas that guy that does the same in a game with no sub does not?
Walk around the world in WoW for a second, you will find it very very empty 90% of the time... how is that supposed to be different than GW2? You pay a sub in WoW... you don't in GW2.
Best time to experience a game is at launch, not when the preponderance of the player base is at max level. True for WoW, true for GW2, true for any game.
The solution to make you happy is to make bot players... artificially created NPCs to act and play as players do... random "Yeah!s" in channel... doing the same quests as you... able to group when asked. It's not that far-fetched a thing to do since other games have done it in the past. World seems alive... but no real players to be had. You can't have a conversation with a bot, but it surely can fill up the space.
We all know WoW is a dying game. It's 8+ years old!
GW2's numbers should be rising, not dropping this early in the game's life.
DAoC - Excalibur & Camlann
Xfire numbers should not be dropping by 300%
when Blizzard claims they have same amount of active players
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/120552-World-of-Warcraft-Subscriptions-Rise-to-10-Million
EQ2 fan sites
Except XFire trends have been proven right any time you look at them.
You can theorize all you want, practice proves your theory wrong, plain and simple.
mmm, did i mention NOt based on HOURS PLAYED but on INDIVIDUAL USERS LOG ON NUMBER.
Yes i did. Several times by now.
It simply says that same amount of players played heck out more hours/day in 2012 than in 2013.
If 10 players play 8 hours/day for 10 days at one time and then drop to 3 hours/day for 10 days? OMG how does it show such drop!
WOW had the annual pass throughout 2012. I even went for it, 6th Jan 2012 to 6th Jan 2013, where I was obligated to sub and could not cancel sub, but now taking a break, and will resub later.
WOW sub numbers need more recent figures than Nov 2012, as I would imagine others on the annual deal would have cancelled their subs too from Nov
Also as I stated in my previous post you can not comapre accurately when dealing with year gaps.
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
Losing players compared to what?
To a peak in August/september when 2 million players were rushing to get their names and servers?
To a peak in August/September when XFire was reporting 15K players logging 90K hours (6 hours/day)?
To a peak where GW2 was showing double the hours and almost twice as much players as WoW?
Sure, it had been like 9 months since WoW had patches, but it was end of summer.
That is the problem of XFire - you have no basis to calibrate it.
Of course, XFire was showing SWTOR losing hours, but there was also server merges, there was also layoffs.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
WOW Jan 2012 players - 20,600
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3269838728
WOW Jan 2013 players - 5,600
http://beta.xfire.com/games/wow
Blizzard Q4 2012 will be announced in a few weeks
EQ2 fan sites
There was still a drop of around 50% compared to WoW MoP release.
And are subs really reflected in XFire?
A guy that play every single day count as a sub the same as someone that plays a couple days a week, but if both use XFire, one represents much more.
And who is more likely to use XFire?
The guy that plays the sub game all the time because he is hardcore, but on the other hand will only have friends in that sub game and doesn't need something to track his game time? Or the guy that only plays a couple of times a week, which mean he may be a softcore and so he doesn't show in XFire at all, or is he on the other hand a hardcore player but just plays a ton of different games?
Gw2 is less active now - true.
But by how much?
Looking at XFire to determin that will be a bit harder.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
Tell me what was the drop on number of players in gw2 in the past 2 months. Because going by xfire gw2 has about 60% of Wow's user base. So what is your point precisely?
Subs show up on Xfire if people play, but if people do not have a sub, then they can not play, and do not show up on Xfire at all.
If people have bought GW2 then they can show up anytime, as do not have a sub to get in the way of playing.
If people signed up for the annual deal, then the times when most played would be at the start as that is when you decide to purchase the annual sub, and intend to play for the long haul. If you do not play much when taking out annual pass, then less chance you will take out annual pass. The other time you would play more is when it is running out, and you want to cancel, so that you can have another blast with it and see if it is worthwhile to sub.
There are many factors to take into consideration, but if you are after accuracy you will never get it, and that is the reason why Xfire gets bashed because people want perfection, but it is the best guide there is, as Xfire supports a lot of games and virtually every PC game from the past 8 years or so, whereas other things do not.
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
Read whole thread before asking such questions.
To a degree subs are represented but with a time shift. Good example are annual passes (or any long term sub). Whie company will count long term subber as a sub een if he doesnt log in any more, XFire will actually show that he doesnt log in any more. Also you have to presume that people that dont log in any more wont continue to sub when sub runs out. Which is perfectly sound presumption.
How much can be determined but with very large margin of error so its pointless to discuss, one side will pull to one extreme, other to the other extreme and nothing can be actually discussed normally.
What you can say is that GW2 has seen dropoff, and by word of developer, stabilized, showed some growth after stabilization period. If that correlates to what XFire showed its yet another proof that XFire was right (and it did show that).
Why would PVP players use it more?
That is hogwash, there is no indication whatsoever that shows what kind of people use Xfire more than others.
I am a PVE player mainly, and avoid PvP like the plague, and I still use Xfire religiously. I use it to capture screenshots and videos, as it is easier than using other tools, and uploading to a webapage, plus can use it to communicate with friends. Xfire is one programme and does it all, instead of using FRAP, Teamspeak, and a program to upload files to webspace when you have it all in one with Xfire
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
The only people that really need to look at the XFire charts are those that don't own the game.
What did I see in my GW2 experience?
Huge packs of players during 3-day headstart, a small surge diuring 1-day headstart and a bigger surge at launch date.
The population spread and dwindle a bit.
In the Halloween and lost shores brought a ton of people (and you could clearly see the surge of the invitee playersin the starter areas).
Since that time and with December the numbers of players have be climbing up.
Sincerely I don't think XFire reflected the intensity of players joining in November and December I've experienced.
If all you want to say is "population went down", "population went up", "population is stable", sure XFire can track those tendencies.
But quantify those tendencies?
Nope.
And that is what many people have been trying to do with XFire, translating into number of players, % of retention and whatnot.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders