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anyone remember Daocs peak population?
Fensus
Member Posts: 211
title says it all, can anyone remember what the most subscribers Daoc had at any one point? was it like 100,000?
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Until WoW, DAOC was the fastest to reach 100,000 and 250,000 players. It had to double the number of available servers at the launch of the game because of how many people started. It reached 250,000 subscribers then sliped about 3 months after SI came out to around 200,000, then got between 250,000-275,000 subscribers after ToA came out. It then started to decline again and never really recovered.
The current subscriber esitimate is 60,000-75,000. So it is safe to say it is down about 200,000 from its peak. It is estimated that most games lost around 33% of their subscribers when WoW was launched. While no offical number was given, it is believed that within a month of so of WoW release, 75,000 accounts were closed to go to WoW. This droped DAOC population at that time to 150,000 accounts. Another 50,000 accounts left within the year of WoW's release droping DAOC to 100,000. Since then DAOC has slowly lost population until the begining of this year when the numbers seem to have leveled out around the current number.
The population should hold more or less steady until Oct. when Age of Conan comes out. There might be a drop in population then, and then around March of next year it could take another hit. The real question is if those currently playing will be willing to leave, or is that the 20% that sticks with a product .
In theory, a year from now DAOC population might actually have an increase. If a WAR combo option is offereed combined with some adtvertising and pushing of DAOC, then things might change. I am unsure how much of a "hit" WAR will be, but let us say that it has 500,000 players. Lets say that 10% of them decide to play DAOC as well. This would increase DAOC population to over 100,000.
Cool, thanks for the info, very interesting
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Final Fantasy 7
Put it this way- whern the game was doing well the servers each easily had over 2k people on during primetime. Now the clusters (which are 4-5 of the old servers a piece), can barely crest 1200, some can not even reach 1000. Each week less and less people seem to playing. I love the game, but I am about to cancel myself because of the lack of population, and Mythic keeps messing everything up.
Yea, they need to swallow their pride and cluster the clusters. Its no fun playing on a server with 1200 people and where most likely 25-30% are bots.
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I liked DAOC alot back in the day. i had quit due to not having much time to play but, it sucks to hear the population has gone to shit. it really is something i'd consider playing again. but in its peak popularity, because i remember in the end not really finding many people on any more. but like all games..... i guess they stray from their original product or people just get bored with it. because all the games i've played are probably so different from when i first played em, that i probably wouldnt enjoy them anywhere near as much as the times that i played em. which is unfortunate that developers dont keep a "mojo" for long.
starting from... Ultima Online, Odyssey Online Classic, Diablo, Faldon, EQ, Darkage of Camelot, Diablo II, EQ2, World of Warcraft, FFF, whats next for Moog? (trying EQ2 again...!)
I remember when they started the classic server and there was over 3K and you couldn't get on.
Now, even clustered there is about a 1k at peak times. There is some new people finding DAoC and it is still miles better better than any other MMO (IMHO). I'm just taking a holiday to try out LOTR for a few weeks, but I expect to be back as nothing has kept my interest like DAoC.
This is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. True the "classic" servers pops have dropped a lot. This is due more to the fact that when they were launched there were usually less than 20 people on every other server. People, realizing that the classic servers are not "all that" went back.
But, the classic cluster at its worse times only gets down to around 1200 people. During peak times it gets to around 2500. As I am posting this, there are 1800+ people on the cluster and all of the regular clusters have 1000-1200 people on them.
I believe DAoC had 250-275K like the other poster said. I remember back in the day when I joined and almost all the servers had over 1000 online off-peak time when I was making my first toon. Servel had over 2k. There were no clusters, there was no need, the frontier and BG's were always loaded with people. DF was wall to wall people and the capital cities were packed.
Those were the days..........
Unfortunately this games current pops are a shadow of what it was.
Now they need to cluster 3 or 4 servers just to get 1k people together. I always find myself coming back to take a look and it just makes me sad when I see how empty the game is now. There isn't really any real reason for it. Its still a solid game with much more to offer then most MMO's. If they would only do a true server merge and really pack the servers again.
JulianDracos' figures are spot on. Whilst ToA temporarily boosted populations, it also holed DAoC below the waterline, as it were, by changing the nature of the game, and destroying the hard loyalty a lot of people had to it. When WoW came along, there were a lot of bored, disenchanted DAoC players quite ready to change over to it, even with it's lack of "real" PvP/RvR.
One thing about the DAoC population numbers that you have to remember - you'll need to take the bot numbers into account.
Without any exaggeration, bots made up 10% to 15% of a server population any given night.
That being said, DAoC provided me with the best game play and memories of any MMORPG to date. I hated to see the population die out, which was my main reason for leaving.
< sigh >
Not only is that NOT an exaggeration, that's perhaps an understatement
I'd say at least 15-25% accounts at the height of ToA's success were "bot" accounts, in DAoC sense of the word "bot" (i.e. a towed or parked, semi-played character, not an automated one). I think that's one of the major reasons there were more accounts post-ToA than post-SI, because so many people had at least one, and in some cases, several, bot accounts.
However, other MMORPGs often have players with multiple accounts, too. I mean, I know a lot of WoW players who don't play multiple accounts *simultaneously*, as with DAoC, but do pay for two+ accounts, neither of which are regularly played by other people.
DAoC, unfortunately, is a type of game that gets better with more people. As it loses subscribers this causes a cascade effect, because its just not as fun as when there were over 2k per server playing.
There are significantly fewer DAoC players than there are accounts. Many hardcore players have held multiple accounts, and active played bots are only part of the story. Its been that way for a long long time. Thats why there is such a discrepency between the number of people you see playing and the number of subscriptions.
Mythic made a deal with the devil a long time ago when they made a bot account not only helpful, but for some classes, almost essential to compete in PvP. They made a lot of short-term money that way, but it is one of the factors that really hurt the long run health of the game. They lost a lot of more casual players who simply couldnt compete in RvR. TOA and the realm point system that awarded RvR grinding only made that worse.
Elladan - ESO (AD)
Camring - SWTOR (Ebon Hawk)
Eol & Justinian - Rift (Faeblight)
Ceol and Duri - LotRO (Landroval)
Kili - WoW
Eol - Lineage 2
Camring - SWG
Justinian (Nimue), Camring - DAoC
I don't know the total number of accounts but shortly before the release of TOA there was a little over 100,000 people online at one time according to the herald.
I do not think there has ever been 100,000 people on at any one time. That is like 5,000 per server. Maybe if you take the EU numbers at 20K that leaves 80K and so that is still too many and that is counting the test server. I would say 60k was the peak for the US plus 20K in the EU for 80K total.
It's ok if you don't believe me. All I know is I played the game seriously up until the release of ToA. There was 104k-105k online at peak times shortly before the ToA expansion. This was according to the camelot herald and was the worldwide number. They had more servers running then they do now.
It is not that I do not believe you, it is that you are wrong.
1. There are 3 more servers now than then - the classic servers were added. There are 18 US servers.
2. The server cap is 3500.
3. This means a max of 63,000 US players. But I know it never got that high, because the server I played on, at its peak ( just before and 2 months after SI) only reached 2000 at most. The last servers added to DAOC were always low pop servers.
4, I do not have the EU server count total, but it has always been less than the US. If the US only got 45-50K max (which is around the most it would have had because only 2 servers really ever had population totals of 2800-3200 - Merlin and Lancelot) then there is no way that the EU could have had the same amount of players. So 75k around 5-6pm eastern would have been the most DAOC has ever had on at any given time. It is impossible for them to have had more given the server capacity.
It was over 100k, get over it. It was in October 2003. If you are serious and want to know the truth you contact Blizzard. They will probably cry as they tell you about it.
Seriously tho, it was over 100k online worldwide simulataneously according to Camelotherald.com. There I cited my source. Good luck
Wow, I think you just proved how stupid you are. First, you claim there were more servers then than there are now, second you said I should contact Blizzard. Why would I contact the makers of WoW instead of DAOC? You did know that is Mythic, now EA Mythic right? You can't count server, don't follow the game, and can't keep the developers straight. I think you have as much truth in your statements are Bush did when he talked about Iraq.
Julian is almost right, but not quite.
I don't know what game or servers ya'll have been playing on, but I distinctly remember (particularly when Gareth/Lamorak/Ector were released) that the servers have a max. number of people that can be logged into them of around 2500 or 2800 per server. Not 3,000, and definitely not 3,500.
Even if we included 2 PvP servers (because there used to be 2) and the 2 test servers (because there are 2 of those nowadays as well), we're talking about 24 or 25 servers at most (U.S.). Even at 25 servers and 2800 per max, that still barely gives us a maximum player capacity of 70,000 persons/accounts online at the same time. (And as mentioned, a percentage larger than anyone admits to were bot-humping, anti-social rejects.)
That being said, ya'll are smokin' some crack saying there was over 100,000 players in the game across all servers. I've been in the game since October 2001, and I don't recall ever seeing the population lists reporting more than 27,XXX players in the game at a single time, peak or not. (For the mentally challenged, that means 27,000-27,999 as I never once saw the totals break the 28,000 mark.)
It's funny to see the numbers ya'll pull out of your backside though.
You do realize that not everybody is playing the game at the same time as you? In fact, at the most the people online usually represent only about 1/3 the total people subscribing. Could be as low as 1/5 of the amount of people subscribing too.
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I believe the peak for DAoC was around 250k. If you ever need any of this type of information, check out www.MMOGData.com.
"Those who dislike things based only on the fact that they are popular are just as shallow and superficial as those who only like them for the same reason."
It is easily proven over at the mmochart sight. I don't know the exact address, but I'm sure you can google it if you wish to try and back your ridiculous claim.
Nothing like some faked up stats to get people talking. Nice of them to round the numbers off at whatever number they felt like.
Early DAOC was incredible. The PVE areas were full, and I remember folks hunting cockatrices near that little hamlet way north of Camelot. Never seen those things hunted since.
I still think DAOC had some of the best weapons and armor graphics around. Care nothing for their new character models, however; they all look like grunge rock stars.