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Is AoC larger in player numbers than LOTRO
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Btw LotrO have never merged servers. (and are planning to open new ones)
If WoW = The Beatles
and WAR = Led Zeppelin
Then LotrO = Pink Floyd
LoTRO has been in mid 20's forever it seems, ever since the leveling off after MoM's release. Curiously my kinship has had a few people resub since the upcoming F2P/P2P plan was announced. Looks like AoC is headed back to it's previous mid 50's position.
A week or so ago I could not sleep and logged into LoTRO at 3:30 am on a Monday morning and found over 40 people just in theBree Town area, not bad for Silverlode Server which is no where near the population of most of the servers.
Oh BTW for the OP AoC is still # 5 of P2P since LoTRO is still strictly a P2P game, the F2P option is still in beta
I miss DAoC
Good news for Funcom, looks like the exodus is slowing at least. XFire hours seems to have steadied at around 5600 only losing 200 hours since last Sunday. Back in May it was lost over 1000 hours from the 23rd to the 30th and another 900 from the 7th to the 13th.
At 5500 sunday hours thouh itr is still much better off than pre expansion where it was peaking around 3K to 4K hours each week so I guess it has retained some of the expansions returnees.
I miss DAoC
I agree. For me it seems that the population is either larger, or much more active than before the expansion. There are a lot more players running around in the hubs now (yesterday and today) than there were i march. I also get ganked more
Originally posted by BishopB:
Are a lot of the trolls just angry kids with old gaming hardware?
yeah as much as the fans here like to curse XFire, I would have to say that compared to pre expansion there are around 20% more players. After a XFire promotion you have to adjust downward a bit for a while. My estimates based on financial reports etc I would say somewhere between 50 to 75k between Europe and N American servers with probably 65% of that on the European side of the Atlantic.
I miss DAoC
It's pretty much what people have said all the time. If you want to compare population to before and after expansion you must let the gameplay stabilize. You have to let people go from crazy exited playing state as in >6 hours pr day (or till your GF start yelling at you). You have to let people normalize to post expansion condition, as in you are not logging on 7 out of 7 possible days a week anymore. Xfire numbers decreasing means one thing. It means that less people log on and that less hours are played. To interpret that as AoC have lost subscribers is the problematic part. I would say it's very likely that some subbers that came back now are gone again, but to start using words like exodus.... Now if numbers stabilize back at 400-500 xfire players logged in weekends (like a couple of months before the expansion), then I would say it's very likely that the expansion didn't pull in a single new player. I think it would be quite likely that such conclusions are right. But to start concluding even before the game has reached a post expansion steady state is waste of mmorpg.com forum space.
To me the best indication (and in fact the most important indication) of a substancial activity increase is what I see ingame. In particula I can mention how easy my items on the trader get sold. I have had over 20 G of equipment going out the door on the trader since expansion. That is more than what I have sold over the last year. Also, when I log on midnight and do a people search to do Quests with I easily find 25 characters pr 5 level interval (Aqulonia). Minigames are continously running... To us players there is no doubt in what the expansion have done for the game.
The Ultimate Breakdown
the reason I used the word exodus is simply because the Xpac has been out for over a month now and the XFire promotion ended a couple of weeks ago. I noticed activity picked up a week or so before the expansion released and I am sure a few people held off buying the expansion until after they had read a few reviews. Activity peaked the weekend after release and stayted up ythere pretty high throughout the promotion, took a big hit at the end of the promotion when it dropped over 100 hours from the 23rd to the 30th. Then from the 6th to the 9th there was a 900 hour drop which was probably people who had purchased the Xpac and their 30 had expired.
Same thing happens with most games Xpacs. I predict the numbers will be back in the 50's by mid July and will pretty much stabalize there until the next big game goes live or FC releases another Xpac.
just my 2 cents worth and speculation based on years of observation. Oh and you only need to track Sundays as they are traditionally the busiest server day.
I miss DAoC
Seriously? You have followed a game you don't like or play closely for years?!
I have been following all of the major MMORPG's since UO's release not just AoC LOL. Anyway the Sunday peak hours are generic , go to XFire and look at any games charts. Sundays are the main gaming day for all MMORPGs .
I miss DAoC
Strangely enough the ingame peak of numbers of concurrent players logged in lies consistently on weekday evenings, not on weekend days as XFire shows. Will be doing some more checks this week to see if that's still the case.
I've recently gotten curious about the figures and such of the several games too, also what a medium and high population of a server amounts to of the several MMO's separately.
I've become sceptic about the figures of mmochart or mmodata or whatever it's being called these days, I can't see how the creator of the charts has come up with the figures and how accurate they are.
Anyway, that's another topic.
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."
Well why couldn't you just say you agree with me. As I told you, if the steady state hours of gameplay and/or number of logged players go back to same levels as before the launch the X-pack have not retained any of the new customers. I think everyone could accept that (unless Xfire suddenly deduct another 30% of all games gamingtime simultanously). You say the same thing when you say that you base your arguments on your expectation of AoC to go back in the 50s.
Only problem is that you refuse to accept that it also could be plausible that AoC now perhaps could stabilize at the current level which would mean a doubling of subscribers. AoC X-fire numbers could even grow from now, as the X-pack craze have worn mostly off and any new players joining inn now would be much more visible.
The Ultimate Breakdown
Oh anything is plausable, I could win the lottery and purple pigs could fly from my butt LOL. As you pointed out the Xpac craze is mostly worn off. What I base my expectations as far as further decline is other games successful XPac population trends. EQ2's, LoTRO's etc. The trends seem to be a huge influx the first month after the XPac release tapering off followed by a sudden drop appx 30 days after release. Then for the next 60 days or so a gradual decline to a steady state pretty much equal to pre XPac levels.
RoTGS was a good XPac for the PvE crowd from all accounts but even the AA point grind will only hold players interest for so long. Any new players from here on out will be offset by players leaving for various reasons. I am waiting for a veteran promotion to go back and take a look see again. I figure that should be late summer or early fall
I miss DAoC
One thing is that would assume the game will develop as slowly as they did before, even with the expansion and Xfire promotion the number of users per day where much lower than they where during free trials and it was just after those that the numbers crashed. Right now it is right where it was before patch 1.05 and at the time it was semi stabalized with small declines every quarter but then 1.05 and Aion plummeted it.
However, since the expansion didn't tear up the charts and shoot up and stabalize it is doubtful that AoC will be able to develop on any reasonable cycle, the next quarter may be good but it won't recoup the costs of two years of development or even the 4 years of original development. AoC is probably second only to WoW for development budget and it was pretty close to WoW's. So it is unlikely they will keep doubling down and less development would mean it will fizzle much like Warhammer. When it is back down to 44 just a bit over a month after the expansion, something is critically wrong with the expansion. With all that development capital I am not sure why it can't develop as much and frequently as lower budget titles.
Funcom has reviewed all of its assets relevant for
impairment testing. This process has led to
recognition of an impairment loss of around
3,1 MUSD for Age of Conan due to a decrease in
numbers of subscribers for the game. Funcom Q4 10 report.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=2926123&postcount=7 500 mains/alts on Tyranny in past 30 days - instead of merge servers let's open a new PvP server, again! http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=106427
I cant remember when Funcom closed 60% of the Age of Conans servers (maybe around Jan), but the expand has not manage to open any new servers, so its fair so say the current base of subscribers remain the same, just the same people are playing more now. Let me remind that the Rise of the Godslaye didn’t really introduce anything innovative or new.
I dunno how you got to 60% maybe you might wanna check that.
Personally I have never said that AoC has more subs than Lotro, 2 different games appealing to different folks.
Here is something to ponder nearly 3 months ago on March 29th well before any hype of expansions or F2P talks.
march 29th was also a monday.
LOTRO March 29th 2010
LOTRO JUNE 22nd 2010
LOST 331 players and 163,000 hours
AoC March 29th
AoC June 22nd
GAINED 268 Players and gained 40k hours
I actually see an improvement 6 weeks after Godslayers launch, not because "the same people are playing more" I see new players. I see people leaving Lotro, probably more so now as F2P scares the uniformed.
Let me remind you of the Godslayer reviews:
10.0
Read review
8.6
Read review
8.0
Read review
-
Read review
8.5
Read review
8.5
Read review
8.0
Read review
9.0
Read review
6.0
Read review
8.0
Read review
Yes, it's quite sad, really.
Oh, not the game though. I was referring to people in general who feel the persistent urge to keep posting about a game they really, really hate and want to trash. That's sad and worthy of pity.
Reminds me so much of Teabaggers.
Ah well, let's continue this after a few months, it will be fun to quote people.
One general, well-meant advice: if people really hate or thoroughly dislike a game or the company that made it, stay away from the game, and play and post about the games that do fancy your interest. It's a lot healthier, and more fun. Unless you're the kind of person that enjoys trolling and trashing, of course.
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."
Avery as long as you are looking at those charts notice the June 22nd for LoTRO and for AoC and look at the slopes. Notice how LoTRO's is remarkably steady while each week AoC's is going consistently down?
By the way nice choice for the March 29th charts since that was the day before AoC released the 1.07 here in the US so the Euopean server were down
http://www.massively.com/2010/03/29/age-of-conan-1-07-update-coming-tomorrow/
and coincidentaly that was the same week that LoTRO had a welcome back week promotion going on LOL
http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/82666
Anyway looks like AoC is continuing it''s slide downward. Lost 300 hours between last Monday and yesterday again. If it drops back another 300 next Monday it wil be back in the 50's
What I find sad is that people really think that posting on forums influences the population of a game, that went out about the time Anarchy Online released. Astroturfing is sooooo 90's
I miss DAoC
Btw, LotrO had around 3,000 XFire users a year ago.
What I find sad is that people really think that posting a campaign of troll and hate posts on forums influences the population of a game.
Enthusiasm for a game I can understand. But keeping on posting hate and anti-posts of a game that they don't even play but only intensely dislike for months after months up to years. It sounds sooooo... childish and petty.
I often suspect those people to have sad, meaningless lives if this is what gives them enjoyment, hate ranting for years about merely a game and doing nothing else online. Sad, actually.
Ah well, to each their own life.
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."
on topic; please let this thread die. Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.
I need more vespene gas.
This talking points in this topic have gone full circle several times over now, let's go ahead and close this up.
On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.