Seriously you use Hello Kitty to make your argument that XFIRE is a valid tool? Seriously? Dude the demographic is not made up of people that WOULD use xfire. You know people under the age of freaking 14. They don't know or care what xfire is.
95% of the population doesn't use xfire, so why would it be a valid tool to measure anything.
Also, let's be honest the number of people login this weekend didn't show the reality of PEOPLE tryingto actually play the game. At one point there was a 3h queue on Brandywine on Sunday. These people would have been in game normalyl but they decided to greatly reduce cap of people in game to reduce lag.
So really most of these numbers right now don't reflect any reality
XFire is worthless for comparing game A to Game B because the demographiocs and propensity of different groups of players to be aware of or have a use for XFire is going to be different from game to game. However XFire can be used for seeing if game A's population is either rising or falling or maintaining a steady state
For example LoTRO's highest number ever before the F2P was #14 on a welcome back weekend and XFire promotion weekend the February after MoM released. For the past year or so it has ran in the mid to upper 20's until last week.
Only a fool or a troll would try and argue that F2P has not atttracted a substantial number of new and returning players. What remains to be seen is how many stay for 90 days or greater.
I bumped this up because I am asking for more info on the LOTRO Server Checker app. I thought it was an accurate tool for measuring logins. And is there any other tool out there that can help us gauge the games flow?
I bumped this up because I am asking for more info on the LOTRO Server Checker app. I thought it was an accurate tool for measuring logins. And is there any other tool out there that can help us gauge the games flow?
While Jackdog is right on Xfires accuracy and reliability, its still by far the best tool we have. There might be a difference in how many % of eve players use xfire compared to LotRO players, but its still by far more accurate than anything that Turbine/CM provides us with(which is pretty much nothing).
In the past i have found Xfire a reliable tool to gauge the populations of games like AoC, Warhammer or STO. You could clearly see the downfall of those games(and their fight back in case of AoC) on Xfire long before the general community stopped being in denial.
Edit: I spend probably more time studying xfire graphs than i should have, and i can tell you that right now it looks very good. Do you see that bump on 12 Sept, and how it looks just like a bigger version of the one on 29 august? There was a big rise with F2P launch on the weekend, but the follwing downturn on monday wasn't actually that much bigger than the one on 29th august. Thats uncommon and a very good sign, also its actually rising again even though we have only midweek, which again is a good sign after such a big increase.
I measured it up to about 400K over the past weekend. Still, I used to see this go into 1-2 million on weekends during P2P earleir this summer. Any thoughts as to why less people appear to be playing? Check the numbers for yourself:
The highlighted portion alone should tell you that this is a troll. LOTRO never got into the millions of subscriptions. It peaked at around 275,000 last summer.
Please don't feed the trolls. It only results in more baby trolls that will need to be fed later...
Unless that application counts each log in as a single unit. I play LoTRO and probably log in 3 times over the weekends and perhaps it counts me as 3 log-ins. See what I mean?
Its pretty clear that the OP have no idea what thoose numbers represent.
Here, let me quote the creator of the aplication:
"
Note: This number is not the number of players logged on.
When you logon, the server assigns you a queue number which indicates your position in the login queue. This queue plays a part when the server is full and you have to wait for some players to logout. So basically all this number shows is the last position in the queue that the server has assigned.
I'm not too sure how often the server clears the login queue number so it is kind of a pointless number for us to look at.
The one interesting thing about the queue number is that we can also get the last served queue number - i.e. the last player that was logged in. With this I can check whether the server is full or not and add another status for the server"
I give Papadam the honor of a double quote. According to this, the LOTRO server checker has no use as a tool for the public. It must be some inhouse tracking thing. As shown above it has nothing to do with player numbers logging in at all.
I measured it up to about 400K over the past weekend. Still, I used to see this go into 1-2 million on weekends during P2P earleir this summer. Any thoughts as to why less people appear to be playing? Check the numbers for yourself:
The highlighted portion alone should tell you that this is a troll. LOTRO never got into the millions of subscriptions. It peaked at around 275,000 last summer.
Please don't feed the trolls. It only results in more baby trolls that will need to be fed later...
QFT. There are nowhere near enough servers to handle 1-2 million concurrent players. WoW probably doesn't even have enough servers to handle this.
Since I started in April of last year, NEVER have I seen as many players on as I do now, and that's not taking into account the dynamic instance system. Whether a good chunk of them will stay is another question, but for now, the "triple" pop number from Xfire looks pretty modest compared to what you see ingame.
I measured it up to about 400K over the past weekend. Still, I used to see this go into 1-2 million on weekends during P2P earleir this summer. Any thoughts as to why less people appear to be playing? Check the numbers for yourself:
The highlighted portion alone should tell you that this is a troll. LOTRO never got into the millions of subscriptions. It peaked at around 275,000 last summer.
Please don't feed the trolls. It only results in more baby trolls that will need to be fed later...
Unless that application counts each log in as a single unit. I play LoTRO and probably log in 3 times over the weekends and perhaps it counts me as 3 log-ins. See what I mean?
Possible, but highly unlikely. The 400k is about right for the server queues this past weekend...most notably on Sunday when Turbine restricted the number of active users (someone posted the queues in a thread somewhere). So:
There has never been 1-2 million in queue
Even with multiple logins, highly unlikely to get to 1-2 million in a weekend...275k is subscriptions, not necessarily active players...1-2 million would mean at least 4 logins from absolutely every subscription every single weekend
Most tools that actually measure activity rely on lookups at a single point in time...so the OP isn't referring to any tool
Is it possible that the OP was trying to be on the level? Yes...but about as likely as there actually being 50 full sized planets in our solar system and we just happened to miss 42 of them...
I measured it up to about 400K over the past weekend. Still, I used to see this go into 1-2 million on weekends during P2P earleir this summer. Any thoughts as to why less people appear to be playing? Check the numbers for yourself:
The highlighted portion alone should tell you that this is a troll. LOTRO never got into the millions of subscriptions. It peaked at around 275,000 last summer.
Please don't feed the trolls. It only results in more baby trolls that will need to be fed later...
Unless that application counts each log in as a single unit. I play LoTRO and probably log in 3 times over the weekends and perhaps it counts me as 3 log-ins. See what I mean?
Possible, but highly unlikely. The 400k is about right for the server queues this past weekend...most notably on Sunday when Turbine restricted the number of active users (someone posted the queues in a thread somewhere). So:
There has never been 1-2 million in queue
Even with multiple logins, highly unlikely to get to 1-2 million in a weekend...275k is subscriptions, not necessarily active players...1-2 million would mean at least 4 logins from absolutely every subscription every single weekend
Most tools that actually measure activity rely on lookups at a single point in time...so the OP isn't referring to any tool
Is it possible that the OP was trying to be on the level? Yes...but about as likely as there actually being 50 full sized planets in our solar system and we just happened to miss 42 of them...
Unless that application counts each log in as a single unit. I play LoTRO and probably log in 3 times over the weekends and perhaps it counts me as 3 log-ins. See what I mean?
I think that ap counts every single log in so if I log in 5 times it would increase 5 units.
15 US servers now? I would think that 60 K logged in at one time would be about the max they could handle without major lag.
I have been playing LotRO since closed beta. It is my opinion based upon my own memory that the player population of LotRO has in fact increased sharply. The only other two times I remember seeing this many players ingame was original release and Mines of Moria release. Also at those two times there were no players in the high end areas.... because they hadn't reached them yet... and you begin to see that the overall population of LotRO may in fact be higher than it has ever been before. Everywhere I go in LotRO in the past week I am seeing many more players than I am used to, and I can not honestly remember a time when the population was this consistent across the regions.
And since I was opposed to the Cash Shop arriving in LotRO... all I can say is that it feels like I got kicked in the brass cahonies... but at least there are a ton of Players around to laugh about my misfortune
I am the Player that wonders... "What the %#*& just happened?!" ............... "I Believe... There should be NO financial connection or portals between the Real World and the Virtual in MMOs. " __Ever Present Cockroach of the MMO Verses__ ...scurrying to and fro... .munching on bits of garbage... always under foot...
I am frankly surprised there is no real chat going here about whether this server checker app is worth even using for the average player. Pappadam showed us a Quote from the maker of the app and there is no sense in using it as a guide for login numbers. Yet there are still posts following that use the numbers, or seem to.
Maybe I am the only one concerned i Guess. the quote clearly refutes the claim I and others thought meant login numbers. They are just queue numbers that dont make sense unless used in an internal need to know. I wont keep posting if there is no response. Thought it was a juicy topic. Scroll up and read if you dont get what i am saying.
Originally posted by Jackdog I think that ap counts every single log in so if I log in 5 times it would increase 5 units.
The App counts nothing, the App "reads" the information from the loginservers. You can do the same by yourself using a Browser (e.g. firefox).
Queue-Example Server Brandywine:
Queue 11:00pm 10000 Queue 11:05pm 10010
So we know, that there are 10 Logins in the last 5 Minutes. We dont know how long the gamer will stay online. It is possible that there is one gamer who has logged in 10 times between 11:00pm and 11:05pm or that there are 10 gamers which has logged between the timestamps.
The Queue-ID can only increase. The Queue-ID will resset to 1 if Turbine reboot the server (mainanance).
You can only compare these numbers, if the servers has maintanace at the same time. But you can compare the difference of queue-IDs between two timestamps.
Example: Brandywine Maintanance Monday Queue-ID resset to 1 Imladris No Maintanance Monday Queue-ID: 100000
Brandywine No Maintanance Thursday, Q-ID: 120000 Imladris Maintanance Thursday, Q-ID BEFORE shutdown: 200000
So we can see: -Brandywine: 120000 logins -Imladris: 100000 logins
We are logging the queues since a few month and make some nice Login (or Population) charts on our fanpage: http://lux-hdro.de/hdro-live.php
Feel free to visit this page and take a look on the Server-Detail-Pages. Ask, if there are questions, we will try to give you an answer.
The lack of pvp itself makes milions not even think about playing this game if there are other options with it.
There is pvp...kinda.
Anyway. The numbers will fall by alot. You cant offer 1-2 days worth of content and expect that to hook people. A week of casual playing will run you out of the content they are offering before you have to start paying. Now I dont know about other people but if my "free" content runs out that fast I'm probably not going to pay for more content.
Having played LOTRO from launch through the mines of moria might just make me alittle more wise though since I know what the content is and how they are offering it for the price they are offering it for isnt worth it imo.
Not knowing what the numbers mean, one could access this site and think that is the playerbase.
heh, the servers would litte puddles of melted silicon if that many people were logged in at one time. What surpises me is Landroval, it has had a que symbol several times this week while Silverlode has not.
heh, the servers would litte puddles of melted silicon if that many people were logged in at one time. What surpises me is Landroval, it has had a que symbol several times this week while Silverlode has not.
The Queue-Symbol (and Queue-Position) in the Launcher is not the Queue-Number above. These are different numbers from the same source.
I know this is slightly off topic but the layering makes sense to me. I have a game running and expect a sharp increase in player population and then a fall off. I expect that initially all of the players or a good chunk will be in the starting zones. I can do what everyone else did and create double or triple the servers. . .deal with low population issues later and then merge them so everyone can say the game is failing. . .
OR
I can add layering expecting that once the players spread out and the initial interest tones down, that it will be a lot less common except in places like the Shire.
I would pick the second one.
On Topic:
I had not even heard of Xfire until I came to these forums. I think certain types of games might even be more likley to attract people to certain tools. I consider LOTRO a little more laid back where there are not as many people concerned about stats . . etc. etc. . maybe it is less likely to be used by LOTRO players compared to say CS players?
heh, the servers would litte puddles of melted silicon if that many people were logged in at one time. What surpises me is Landroval, it has had a que symbol several times this week while Silverlode has not.
I have always played on Landroval as it is the unofficial RP server. I don't do a lot of RPing but the community I find on these types of servers tends to be an older group and more mature if not a little picky.
Also articles about the game sometimes mention Landroval and the reason MMORPG article around in game communities suggested that it indeed was one of the better communities in an MMO. I would expect based on that alone new players might check it out. That and Riddermak .. because we all want to be cool.
I dont know what your applications are saying, but I played this game before F2P, and I have witnessed a doubling of population on gladden server, just last night I ran Great Barrows on an alt nonstop over 8 runs in a row, Tons of people in OOC chat. If you go up to combe they have multiple layers of people that you cant even see, but the place is packed solid.
Does your app also cover the people that are on other layers of the game?
My gf and I were excited to give LOTRO a shot, we weren't willing to pay for a boxed game or sub just to try it. Well it finally went FTP (or free to try at least, which is all we needed) and frankly, it's pretty bad. Sorry.
LOTRO is a tough game to say whether it's really "bad" or "good" at the initial levels.
It tends to do something well but can feel way too lackluster at the start, especially after the tutuorial instance. Which I believe people can opt out of. Thing is, the tutorial instances, in some cases can be compelling. But then the game dumps players in this larger starter instance which just feels to me t be very lacklluster. Espeically for Dwarves and Elves.
Unfortunately the game doesn't really ramp up for people until late teens and early 20's. Of course the next thing that people would say would be "a game should grab you from lvl 1". But LOTOR has its peaks and valleys.
There really is quite a lot to do when you look at it and in some cases quite a lot to do that isn't combat oriented. Last night, I think some of my kin were doing a chicken run where you play a session as a chicken.
It sounds silly but they were having a blast from what i could see in chat.
And to me that's what makes these games good. People being able to socialize in a way that is fun.
I am a happy and satisfied F2P player who intends to sub in the next week or two. Mission accomplished.
Important facts: 1. Free to Play games are poorly made. 2. Casuals are not all idiots, but idiots call themselves casuals. 3. Great solo and group content are not mutually exclusive, but they suffer when one is shoved into the mold of the other. The same is true of PvP and PvE. 4. Community is more important than you think.
The only way that you can possibly track numbers is to use the in game players too but it caps at 100. Sunday morning I was messing around on Dwarrowdelf and started seeing if i could see how many players are on a new server.
lvls 1-4 = 86
lvls 5-6 = 76
lvl 7 = 48
lvl 8 = 60
and so on...
with lvl 30+ = 91
I came up with1,382 players online.
So this number would no show players that are anonymous as they would not show up.
You really can't do this on any of the classic servers because lvl 65 is over 100+ with no way to track that. Just something to look at I suppose.
My gf and I were excited to give LOTRO a shot, we weren't willing to pay for a boxed game or sub just to try it. Well it finally went FTP (or free to try at least, which is all we needed) and frankly, it's pretty bad. Sorry.
LOTRO is a tough game to say whether it's really "bad" or "good" at the initial levels.
It tends to do something well but can feel way too lackluster at the start, especially after the tutuorial instance. Which I believe people can opt out of. Thing is, the tutorial instances, in some cases can be compelling. But then the game dumps players in this larger starter instance which just feels to me t be very lacklluster. Espeically for Dwarves and Elves.
Unfortunately the game doesn't really ramp up for people until late teens and early 20's. Of course the next thing that people would say would be "a game should grab you from lvl 1". But LOTOR has its peaks and valleys.
There really is quite a lot to do when you look at it and in some cases quite a lot to do that isn't combat oriented. Last night, I think some of my kin were doing a chicken run where you play a session as a chicken.
It sounds silly but they were having a blast from what i could see in chat.
And to me that's what makes these games good. People being able to socialize in a way that is fun.
The Human/Hobbit starter area has been much improved; more streamlined. I hope they get to the elf/dwarf area, soon.
So far folks seem to be pretty positive, and the community doesn't seem to have suffered. Though there were a couple idiots telling Chuck Norris jokes in the LFF channel on Sunday... the game is hoppin' like I've never seen it in the past 18 months I've been playing...
Comments
XFire is worthless for comparing game A to Game B because the demographiocs and propensity of different groups of players to be aware of or have a use for XFire is going to be different from game to game. However XFire can be used for seeing if game A's population is either rising or falling or maintaining a steady state
For example LoTRO's highest number ever before the F2P was #14 on a welcome back weekend and XFire promotion weekend the February after MoM released. For the past year or so it has ran in the mid to upper 20's until last week.
Only a fool or a troll would try and argue that F2P has not atttracted a substantial number of new and returning players. What remains to be seen is how many stay for 90 days or greater.
.
I miss DAoC
I bumped this up because I am asking for more info on the LOTRO Server Checker app. I thought it was an accurate tool for measuring logins. And is there any other tool out there that can help us gauge the games flow?
While Jackdog is right on Xfires accuracy and reliability, its still by far the best tool we have. There might be a difference in how many % of eve players use xfire compared to LotRO players, but its still by far more accurate than anything that Turbine/CM provides us with(which is pretty much nothing).
In the past i have found Xfire a reliable tool to gauge the populations of games like AoC, Warhammer or STO. You could clearly see the downfall of those games(and their fight back in case of AoC) on Xfire long before the general community stopped being in denial.
Edit: I spend probably more time studying xfire graphs than i should have, and i can tell you that right now it looks very good. Do you see that bump on 12 Sept, and how it looks just like a bigger version of the one on 29 august? There was a big rise with F2P launch on the weekend, but the follwing downturn on monday wasn't actually that much bigger than the one on 29th august. Thats uncommon and a very good sign, also its actually rising again even though we have only midweek, which again is a good sign after such a big increase.
Thank you Rocketeer! Much appreciated! Comments on the LOTRO server checker anyone?
Unless that application counts each log in as a single unit. I play LoTRO and probably log in 3 times over the weekends and perhaps it counts me as 3 log-ins. See what I mean?
I give Papadam the honor of a double quote. According to this, the LOTRO server checker has no use as a tool for the public. It must be some inhouse tracking thing. As shown above it has nothing to do with player numbers logging in at all.
QFT. There are nowhere near enough servers to handle 1-2 million concurrent players. WoW probably doesn't even have enough servers to handle this.
Since I started in April of last year, NEVER have I seen as many players on as I do now, and that's not taking into account the dynamic instance system. Whether a good chunk of them will stay is another question, but for now, the "triple" pop number from Xfire looks pretty modest compared to what you see ingame.
Possible, but highly unlikely. The 400k is about right for the server queues this past weekend...most notably on Sunday when Turbine restricted the number of active users (someone posted the queues in a thread somewhere). So:
There has never been 1-2 million in queue
Even with multiple logins, highly unlikely to get to 1-2 million in a weekend...275k is subscriptions, not necessarily active players...1-2 million would mean at least 4 logins from absolutely every subscription every single weekend
Most tools that actually measure activity rely on lookups at a single point in time...so the OP isn't referring to any tool
Is it possible that the OP was trying to be on the level? Yes...but about as likely as there actually being 50 full sized planets in our solar system and we just happened to miss 42 of them...
Sorry...the OP was just a troll.
Where are you getting the numbers from?
I think that ap counts every single log in so if I log in 5 times it would increase 5 units.
15 US servers now? I would think that 60 K logged in at one time would be about the max they could handle without major lag.
I miss DAoC
I have been playing LotRO since closed beta. It is my opinion based upon my own memory that the player population of LotRO has in fact increased sharply. The only other two times I remember seeing this many players ingame was original release and Mines of Moria release. Also at those two times there were no players in the high end areas.... because they hadn't reached them yet... and you begin to see that the overall population of LotRO may in fact be higher than it has ever been before. Everywhere I go in LotRO in the past week I am seeing many more players than I am used to, and I can not honestly remember a time when the population was this consistent across the regions.
And since I was opposed to the Cash Shop arriving in LotRO... all I can say is that it feels like I got kicked in the brass cahonies... but at least there are a ton of Players around to laugh about my misfortune
I am the Player that wonders... "What the %#*& just happened?!"
...............
"I Believe... There should be NO financial connection or portals between the Real World and the Virtual in MMOs. "
__Ever Present Cockroach of the MMO Verses__
...scurrying to and fro... .munching on bits of garbage... always under foot...
I am frankly surprised there is no real chat going here about whether this server checker app is worth even using for the average player. Pappadam showed us a Quote from the maker of the app and there is no sense in using it as a guide for login numbers. Yet there are still posts following that use the numbers, or seem to.
Maybe I am the only one concerned i Guess. the quote clearly refutes the claim I and others thought meant login numbers. They are just queue numbers that dont make sense unless used in an internal need to know. I wont keep posting if there is no response. Thought it was a juicy topic. Scroll up and read if you dont get what i am saying.
Queue-Example Server Brandywine:
Queue 11:00pm 10000
Queue 11:05pm 10010
So we know, that there are 10 Logins in the last 5 Minutes.
We dont know how long the gamer will stay online.
It is possible that there is one gamer who has logged in 10 times between 11:00pm and 11:05pm or that there are 10 gamers which has logged between the timestamps.
The Queue-ID can only increase. The Queue-ID will resset to 1 if Turbine reboot the server (mainanance).
You can only compare these numbers, if the servers has maintanace at the same time. But you can compare the difference of queue-IDs between two timestamps.
Example:
Brandywine Maintanance Monday Queue-ID resset to 1
Imladris No Maintanance Monday Queue-ID: 100000
Brandywine No Maintanance Thursday, Q-ID: 120000
Imladris Maintanance Thursday, Q-ID BEFORE shutdown: 200000
So we can see:
-Brandywine: 120000 logins
-Imladris: 100000 logins
We are logging the queues since a few month and make some nice Login (or Population) charts on our fanpage:
http://lux-hdro.de/hdro-live.php
Feel free to visit this page and take a look on the Server-Detail-Pages. Ask, if there are questions, we will try to give you an answer.
Sorry about my bad english
Greetings from Germany
Agra
There is pvp...kinda.
Anyway. The numbers will fall by alot. You cant offer 1-2 days worth of content and expect that to hook people. A week of casual playing will run you out of the content they are offering before you have to start paying. Now I dont know about other people but if my "free" content runs out that fast I'm probably not going to pay for more content.
Having played LOTRO from launch through the mines of moria might just make me alittle more wise though since I know what the content is and how they are offering it for the price they are offering it for isnt worth it imo.
I dont think the OP trolled us. Heres why.
LOTRO Server Checker
server
status
Arkenstone
last queue: 168407
Brandywine
last queue: 190357
Crickhollow
last queue: 233330
Dwarrowdelf
last queue: 260181
Elendilmir
last queue: 164480
Firefoot
last queue: 177382
Gladden
last queue: 242104
Imladris
last queue: 265288
Landroval
last queue: 133161
Meneldor
last queue: 213456
Nimrodel
last queue: 229933
Riddermark
last queue: 200819
Silverlode
last queue: 173998
Vilya
last queue: 173410
Windfola
last queue: 208243
Bullroarer
last queue: 2037
total assigned queue numbers: 3036586
Not knowing what the numbers mean, one could access this site and think that is the playerbase.
heh, the servers would litte puddles of melted silicon if that many people were logged in at one time. What surpises me is Landroval, it has had a que symbol several times this week while Silverlode has not.
I miss DAoC
The Queue-Symbol (and Queue-Position) in the Launcher is not the Queue-Number above. These are different numbers from the same source.
I know this is slightly off topic but the layering makes sense to me. I have a game running and expect a sharp increase in player population and then a fall off. I expect that initially all of the players or a good chunk will be in the starting zones. I can do what everyone else did and create double or triple the servers. . .deal with low population issues later and then merge them so everyone can say the game is failing. . .
OR
I can add layering expecting that once the players spread out and the initial interest tones down, that it will be a lot less common except in places like the Shire.
I would pick the second one.
On Topic:
I had not even heard of Xfire until I came to these forums. I think certain types of games might even be more likley to attract people to certain tools. I consider LOTRO a little more laid back where there are not as many people concerned about stats . . etc. etc. . maybe it is less likely to be used by LOTRO players compared to say CS players?
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
I have always played on Landroval as it is the unofficial RP server. I don't do a lot of RPing but the community I find on these types of servers tends to be an older group and more mature if not a little picky.
Also articles about the game sometimes mention Landroval and the reason MMORPG article around in game communities suggested that it indeed was one of the better communities in an MMO. I would expect based on that alone new players might check it out. That and Riddermak .. because we all want to be cool.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
I dont know what your applications are saying, but I played this game before F2P, and I have witnessed a doubling of population on gladden server, just last night I ran Great Barrows on an alt nonstop over 8 runs in a row, Tons of people in OOC chat. If you go up to combe they have multiple layers of people that you cant even see, but the place is packed solid.
Does your app also cover the people that are on other layers of the game?
LOTRO is a tough game to say whether it's really "bad" or "good" at the initial levels.
It tends to do something well but can feel way too lackluster at the start, especially after the tutuorial instance. Which I believe people can opt out of. Thing is, the tutorial instances, in some cases can be compelling. But then the game dumps players in this larger starter instance which just feels to me t be very lacklluster. Espeically for Dwarves and Elves.
Unfortunately the game doesn't really ramp up for people until late teens and early 20's. Of course the next thing that people would say would be "a game should grab you from lvl 1". But LOTOR has its peaks and valleys.
There really is quite a lot to do when you look at it and in some cases quite a lot to do that isn't combat oriented. Last night, I think some of my kin were doing a chicken run where you play a session as a chicken.
It sounds silly but they were having a blast from what i could see in chat.
And to me that's what makes these games good. People being able to socialize in a way that is fun.
"Chicken Run"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9HQk4IWqck
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I am a happy and satisfied F2P player who intends to sub in the next week or two. Mission accomplished.
Important facts:
1. Free to Play games are poorly made.
2. Casuals are not all idiots, but idiots call themselves casuals.
3. Great solo and group content are not mutually exclusive, but they suffer when one is shoved into the mold of the other. The same is true of PvP and PvE.
4. Community is more important than you think.
The only way that you can possibly track numbers is to use the in game players too but it caps at 100. Sunday morning I was messing around on Dwarrowdelf and started seeing if i could see how many players are on a new server.
lvls 1-4 = 86
lvls 5-6 = 76
lvl 7 = 48
lvl 8 = 60
and so on...
with lvl 30+ = 91
I came up with1,382 players online.
So this number would no show players that are anonymous as they would not show up.
You really can't do this on any of the classic servers because lvl 65 is over 100+ with no way to track that. Just something to look at I suppose.
The Human/Hobbit starter area has been much improved; more streamlined. I hope they get to the elf/dwarf area, soon.
So far folks seem to be pretty positive, and the community doesn't seem to have suffered. Though there were a couple idiots telling Chuck Norris jokes in the LFF channel on Sunday... the game is hoppin' like I've never seen it in the past 18 months I've been playing...