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noobleto
Member Posts: 33
WoW is behind Cod4 in total minutes played again on xfire. Yes, yes, yes I know, xfire comes under....fire.... a lot. It is a bit old and has lost most of its users. I prefer to see it in a different way though. I see it as somewhat of a microcosm of gaming in general, perhaps everyone isn't using it, but the people that are using it can represent the general market just on a smaller scale.
That being said, it appears that WoW is slowly losing its grip on the gaming world. I know it's been happening for a long time and this isn't really big news, but it's never been knocked from number 1 so many times in a week before (at least that I can remember). I don't know wether to blame the sudden decline in players on RIFT or it just meaning WoW's reign of supremacy is really over, and people are moving on. What do you think my mmorpg.com Brethren?
None of this is grounded in any fact, I'm just looking for some opinions.
Playing:
Lotro
Have Played:
EQII,DAOC,SWG,COH,EQ,DDO, Lotro,AoC, EvE,Guild Wars,
Silkroad Online,Aion,and WoW
Favorite of all time: WoW
Waiting on:Swtor,Gw2, and Tera
Comments
Would be great if you actually give us SOME info.
Seems like a lot of work for something I don't care about.
I accidently posted without putting any words in the thread. I edited it, sorry.
Playing:
Lotro
Have Played:
EQII,DAOC,SWG,COH,EQ,DDO, Lotro,AoC, EvE,Guild Wars,
Silkroad Online,Aion,and WoW
Favorite of all time: WoW
Waiting on:Swtor,Gw2, and Tera
In Wow, my guild has 161 unique accounts, with about 60 of those being regulars...not one uses Crossfire. In War..I know of one person in my guild, and 3 in my alliance that use it. It could hardly be called indicative. Could WoW be losing subs at this time? Of course. Is it going anywhere - even soon-ish? Not a chance. GW2 and ToR may tear into it quite a bit, Rift is hardly going to be a blip in the long run for them.
Significance? I suppose Xfire numbers will no longer be used as a tool by certain WoW cheerleaders ...
"represent the general market just on a smaller scale"
No.
people still use xfire? Steam has made it obsolete, the game detection is pretty crappy (I basically beat new releases before they even start tracking it), and they recently got bought out and laid off most of their development staff.
XFire seems to be mainly represented within multiplayer games. And now maybe slowly being replaced with Steam. I never hear about XFire in MMO's anyway.
Coming from a guy that still has xfire as a signature. I'm just saying......
Thing is, Xfire so far has the most 'checkable' (I suppose it's not a real english word, but you get the drift) data, you can the hours each game has for a period of a month, including trendlines, where as Raptr and I suppose also Steam (?) don't show such data publicly.
So for samples and observing trends, Xfire seems to be the only tool that's useful, however flawed it may be.
Unless somebody knows tools and sites that have more accurate and up-to-date data?
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Your signature says otherwise.
Xfire is an interesting thing to check for sure but I dont think it is a good idea to draw any conclusions about wow population of it.
Generic players don't use xfire, which is most of WoW's community.
I derive my strength from passion. Do you feel that? That is what seperates you and I, Jedi!
Hi Everyone,
Wall of text, inc. I woud be amazed if anyone read this, heh. It's long because if I'm going to give you stats on something, you deserve to know where and how I got them.
I'm John@Xfire. There is some really good unbiased stuff in this thread that I've passed onto our CEO, Dir of Marketing, and Dir of Engineering.
History of WoW on Xfire
For 6 years, World of Warcraft has held the #1 spot on Xfire. In the beginning, there were some games that userped it's position because it was new - but it has held the top spot very solidly.
Cataclysm
The first indication that we had that something was up with the trend was up was with the release of Cataclysm. This may shock you, but we didn't see NEARLY the jump we expected. Quite the opposite, it appeared that users did one of two things:
Level from 80 to 85 in 3 weeks - then throtlle back playing (including users who used to play wow and played other games)
Players who started a new character with a new class who either got to 80 or gave up--in both cases, their playtime dropped as well.
Far from scientific - but stil interesting. We don't know why. Some users say it's too difficult to get epic gear or raid. Others say they miss the 'old' wow. I play wow, and I have my own personal option (which is at the very bottom).
Stat considerations
There are two considerations when looking at our stats:
Are people still using Xfire? Maybe it's possible that they're playing, but not tracking...
Maybe generic players don't use xfire, which is most of WoW's community.
I'll address the first: any good marketing guy when replying to a thread about their product will tell you that everything is fine. Luckilly, i'm not a marketing guy, I'm a wow player. I'm not saying i'm not byist (because trust me, I am) - but want to present some data and not make any judgements.
Do people still use Xfire? Do wow players use Xfire?
If you drive a Chevy or GMC truck, do you notice how many people are driving them too? I'm sure one would also notice how many aren't driving Chevy or GMC. My point is, it is difficult for anyone to say what the majority of the wow users use. Curse is a pretty good measure of addons, but no one has quite mastered what all wow players use except, perhaps, blizzard themselves.
Two statements that I think are good issues to address (not defensivly, but because it is related to the topic: how accurate are WoW stats on Xfire.
50% of our Xfire numbers leaving
That topic is true, but not quite accurate. We have competition and recently were sold to Titan Gaming. In recent years, Xfire has had it's share of issues and has been in an all around decline. This is part of the reason it was sold - but we don't think it's 50%. There are two types of Xfire users: Those who use it long term and those who register for a week or two and forget about it. 50% assumes that 50% of the staying users have left - and that's a stat we track (how many logins, time logged in).
It's true some users have left, but what we're finding is people are just playing more games. We see a little above 200k users online at one time per day, with our most active day being Saturday - when it's not usual to get close to (or sometimes even cross) 300k users online at one time.
Then we have registration stats. We recently just passed 18 million users and have an internal idea of how many of them are unique accounts. Like all services, we're not immune, but we track stats, so it's relevent.
I can, however, tell you that in recent months (since Xfire left MTV), we have seen less SPAMMY accounts and the registration trend has accelerated. (End of stats)
Lots of companies have done really well after being divested (sold). Most notibly:
Lenovo (From IBM)
Keyhole (what google maps is based on) (from NVidia/Sony Capital)
Zimbra (A server company I worked for as a startup) Sold to Yahoo, then divested to VMWare - achieving amazing sucess now
Bungie (Sold to Microsoft, then left)
Is Xfire another lenovo or Bungie? Dunno - but you know: in a large company, it's really hard for a smaller company to innovate. Trust me, I know (See list above).
Recently, we introduced a plan to support every PC game made. HUGE goal, but we decided that game updates were going to slow, so we developed a plan for users to submit games. We track YOUR stats, we should give you control over what we detect.
This month, we're on track to release over 70 new game updates. If you know Xfire, you know that's alot. That's NEW games every day -- so not only can you track games, but discover cool ones.
"Hey Holder, what's your point? You're rambling!" heh, my point is, we're gamers. But more importantly- we know Xfire can do better, and that is what our vision is.
WoW - I think Rift and LoL are a real threat.
*My thoughts on why wow is declining (IMO)-While the dungeon finder introduced a faster way to run dungeons, I really think it took away from an important social aspect of groups: Finding new friends. So it's less....friendly (imo) - but not only that, but the economy really sucks. People are tryin to save, and for those people without work, 15/mo is a lot.
latz
If more and more games are being added, doesn´t that , in fact, make the 60ish% harder to maintain?
All things being equal, if you are tracking 3 games, you would expect them to have around 33% If you are tracking 100 games, you would expect them to have 1% share. As you add more and more games to the mix, WOW´s percentage will naturally go down.
Rift is in it´s honeymoon period (free month, no real endgame balance demanded, everything feels new and fresh). It is a good game, but any MMORPG has a huge decrease in overall played time after the first month.
You also have all the games that are going F2P.. which again greatly bumps their playtime.
What am I saying? Pay attention to the time played from wow more than you pay attention to the percentage. Every new game that gets added to Xfire, by mathmatical definition, will cause WOW´s percentage to go down without really indicating anything about WOW.
Firstly, there are actually two forces at work that i can see at the moment, the honeymoon is over for the Cataclysm release and as with every expansion, burn out occurs for the more 'hardcore' membership until the next expansion patch so the figures usually drop off after the first month or so over the next 5-6 months.
Add to that the release and honeymoon period for Rift (only released this month, so still has a month or two togo of that), then there is a double whammy 'probably' affecting the WoW figures.
But........and this is the big question, who actually know for 100% sure?? You don't, i don't and as far as i know, no-one else on here or anywhere else knows for sure what the real figures are, how the game is being effected and what the long term results will be. Unless Blizzard actually release some figures to confirm what is happening either way it is all speculation, rumour and conjecture on anyones part what is happening.
Some are claiming to see a decline in numbers, i personally claim a rise in guild memberships like i have never seen before (took us two years to grow to 370, less than two months to grow from there to nearly 500), ok the guild levelling helps with that, but we have members joining at all levels, not just capped out.
What does that prove......well.....nothing other than we seem to run a guild that people like to be a part of, other than that it says nothing about the game itself, subscription numbers or longevity of those subs.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
I don´t think you understand statistics, but nice try. The total number of games is increasing as well as a new mmorpg just released this month. The % for WOW can go down without the actual number of players playing WOW going down. If the denominator gets bigger, but the numerator stays the same, the % decreases.
I don't see where these percentages are coming from, but I did notice hard figures. During 2010 the number of hours for WoW on Xfire has been around 220-270k. It peaked with CATA to 300-340k, but now it's been hovering around 140-180k hours.
There used to be a big gap between the number 1 and number 2 on the list, but now WoW is almost surpassed by CoD:MW.
That said, this only says something about the players that use Xfire, it's hardly an accurate science.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Wow census is bit more accurate if you notice WoW player population has dipped from all time to back to 3.3 level which is probably bigged drop in WoW population, will it continue who knows?
http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weeklyfactionactivity.php