Well it's hard to say what other players think of as for a game being live or dead. I guess it depends on what you like to do in MMO's. For a very social player who likes sitting around chatting about any and everything (these people I call the type that use MMO's as a virtual chat room...lol), you need lots of people usually to make a game feel alive. For someone who likes to engage in lots of pvp and simply do a lot of fighting, they need to be able to find teams fairly easy and quickly and as long as they can do that and find worthy opponents, then they may consider a game alive. Then there's the small group of people who play mmo's for the RP aspect. They may consider a game alive considering the level of freedom to get a good roleplay experience and that can range from having lot's of players online to having good content in the game and active developlers that keep pushing new things out.
Overall, in my experience, every game goes through it's dead zone where a game seems dead in all the above aspects. For AO, I find that certain times of the year (like Jan - May) is when the game seems to be most alive for me. Right now, it's not totally dead, but considering how it was when I first started playing (2006), It certainly is dead. However, I am not guild-less so im more or so soloing it at them moment. Also, I now have a good understanding of all the mechanics and stuff and am actively developing AO tools to help me do some of the tedious things (like mapping out how to twink...can take days to do sometimes)....so I spend a lot of my time flipping back and forth from the game.....sometimes my toon is standing around for hours while I'm doing research or programming and it's funny becuase I go back to the game and find people have sent /tells begging for wrangles or beach warp to COH (cause I've been playing my trader and engy lately).
When I decide to just play the game though, I have no problem finding things to do. It's easy to find teams because everyone always needs something from somewhere and with 200 or 220 levels to get, everyone needs XP.
Then there is the fact that the devs are still pushing new content with each new patch which seems to have been coming a bit faster this past year...and there's more coming. Then the fact they devs have upgraded the servers and are gonna put out a new graphics engine says the game must have some sort of alive feeling.
Really, though like any other MMO, the time of day you play will really dictate how alive a game is because I play late nights and I can go from city to city and not run into 10 players until I get to the city I'm headed to. then half of the ones there are AFK or dual logged on other toons. However, if I play earlier in the day (say between 2pm and 8pm my time) there are lots of people everywhere.
Oh and another thing is things are highly dependent on what level you are and will also play a huge role in how alive the game is for you. Basically, there are certain level ranges where there simply isn't enough people in your level range to do much. There are a few tight level ranges that players don't stick to for long and most of them are the levels where you title cap (anywhere from 10 - 20 levels before you reach the next title level). Because your skills (most of them) are title capped and can't increase until you reach the next title level, people tend to go and power level through such levels (like borgs or hecks) and get to specific level ranges for dungeon or raid access or they want to get to either a pvp or twink level.
For example, the roughest times I've had with the game feeling alive to me for the first time was between levels 80 - 100.....both my MP and Agent title capped in the mid 80's and I had a hard time on both....to the point I almost quit the game but I just made alts instead (got 12 of them now). So sometimes when the game feels dead on my 120+ Agent or MP, I can go to my level 60 GA fixer or my level 25 Enfo and then the game usually feels more alive because there are way more people in playing in those ranges than in the mid 100's. Most people don't have the patience it takes to get to level 150 or so and so there are less and less people around the higher level you get.
So if your new to a game, most of the time it won't become dead until you get bored with learning what the game has to offer. As long as there is more exiciting things to do or achieve, most of the time a game won't become dead for players. Just remember there are many aspects to what makes a game alive or dead. Certainly though, AO can use a few more players though.
Comments
Well it's hard to say what other players think of as for a game being live or dead. I guess it depends on what you like to do in MMO's. For a very social player who likes sitting around chatting about any and everything (these people I call the type that use MMO's as a virtual chat room...lol), you need lots of people usually to make a game feel alive. For someone who likes to engage in lots of pvp and simply do a lot of fighting, they need to be able to find teams fairly easy and quickly and as long as they can do that and find worthy opponents, then they may consider a game alive. Then there's the small group of people who play mmo's for the RP aspect. They may consider a game alive considering the level of freedom to get a good roleplay experience and that can range from having lot's of players online to having good content in the game and active developlers that keep pushing new things out.
Overall, in my experience, every game goes through it's dead zone where a game seems dead in all the above aspects. For AO, I find that certain times of the year (like Jan - May) is when the game seems to be most alive for me. Right now, it's not totally dead, but considering how it was when I first started playing (2006), It certainly is dead. However, I am not guild-less so im more or so soloing it at them moment. Also, I now have a good understanding of all the mechanics and stuff and am actively developing AO tools to help me do some of the tedious things (like mapping out how to twink...can take days to do sometimes)....so I spend a lot of my time flipping back and forth from the game.....sometimes my toon is standing around for hours while I'm doing research or programming and it's funny becuase I go back to the game and find people have sent /tells begging for wrangles or beach warp to COH (cause I've been playing my trader and engy lately).
When I decide to just play the game though, I have no problem finding things to do. It's easy to find teams because everyone always needs something from somewhere and with 200 or 220 levels to get, everyone needs XP.
Then there is the fact that the devs are still pushing new content with each new patch which seems to have been coming a bit faster this past year...and there's more coming. Then the fact they devs have upgraded the servers and are gonna put out a new graphics engine says the game must have some sort of alive feeling.
Really, though like any other MMO, the time of day you play will really dictate how alive a game is because I play late nights and I can go from city to city and not run into 10 players until I get to the city I'm headed to. then half of the ones there are AFK or dual logged on other toons. However, if I play earlier in the day (say between 2pm and 8pm my time) there are lots of people everywhere.
Oh and another thing is things are highly dependent on what level you are and will also play a huge role in how alive the game is for you. Basically, there are certain level ranges where there simply isn't enough people in your level range to do much. There are a few tight level ranges that players don't stick to for long and most of them are the levels where you title cap (anywhere from 10 - 20 levels before you reach the next title level). Because your skills (most of them) are title capped and can't increase until you reach the next title level, people tend to go and power level through such levels (like borgs or hecks) and get to specific level ranges for dungeon or raid access or they want to get to either a pvp or twink level.
For example, the roughest times I've had with the game feeling alive to me for the first time was between levels 80 - 100.....both my MP and Agent title capped in the mid 80's and I had a hard time on both....to the point I almost quit the game but I just made alts instead (got 12 of them now). So sometimes when the game feels dead on my 120+ Agent or MP, I can go to my level 60 GA fixer or my level 25 Enfo and then the game usually feels more alive because there are way more people in playing in those ranges than in the mid 100's. Most people don't have the patience it takes to get to level 150 or so and so there are less and less people around the higher level you get.
So if your new to a game, most of the time it won't become dead until you get bored with learning what the game has to offer. As long as there is more exiciting things to do or achieve, most of the time a game won't become dead for players. Just remember there are many aspects to what makes a game alive or dead. Certainly though, AO can use a few more players though.