Age of Conan

Originally posted by Abor

Originally posted by hdnine

You base your statistics on people using Xfire?!? Makes we wonder how many other that are playing - not using this program. I have never used it, not sure what it does or what it is good for so this doesn't say jack...

 

Do you know how statistics are determined from surveys?  You know, the ones you see on the news that says 45% people prefer this over that?  Do you think the companies actually go out and talk to 100,000 people or 2 million people to reach those numbers?  No, they take a sampling of people, and then based on the sample, apply it over a larger population.  That is why there is a +/- margin to the percentages to take into account the discrepency sampling 1000 over 10,000 might have.

Based on what the other guy said, xfire is a good reflection of subscriber numbers for many of the latest mmorpgs.  Bascilly it reflects a small group of xfire uses who play AoC but that small group reflects the entire AoC subscriber base.  It's not 100% correct but probably pretty damn close to what the actual numbers are.

Plus Aoc was released in during a lull in the mmorpg market.  WoW is out of content and nothing new has been our or is coming out.  Thus AoC enjoyed the huge spotlight and the attention.  It will definitely be interesting to see what happens when WotLK and Warhammer are released. 

Then AoC has around 750.000 players right now, if you use the numbers from LotR. That would be a 80-100% retention (depending on how many of the 1 milion shipped they sold), which seems to be too much.

lol are you serious? lol uhh right..

I turn off xfire before i start AoC, i used to run it, now it's annoying, all of my friends are either ingame or i make them talk to me through steam *so it DOESNT interupt me lol*

I'm sure my AoC xfire stats were higher before i started purposely closing it. Most of my frends that use xfire turn it off before they play most of their games. Mainly because ingame chat features work better.

Not to mention xfire has always been an annoyance, anytime my game crashes (any game) xfire tries to steal report priority, like i really care about giving Them the client crash info, lol if the client crash was their fault at all, i'd just rather uninstall it then help them fix it. It has become more annoying than it has a convenience lately.

I don't think the real numbers will be known for a few months to see where this game levels out. It shouldn't be any suprise that the highest numbers will most likely be the may numbers. FC really did it to themselves though by promising so much and then hiding all of the shortfalls by making the beta so limited and keeping the NDA up the whole time. They may have been successfull in boosting sales based on hype and the fact that so many people are looking for a new game, but I think in the long run that shitty marketing strategy will prove to hurt the game.

It seems to me like they would have better served by being up front about the limitations they realised a long time ago rather than to keep promising what they knew they couldn't deliver. I don't know how many more games have to go this way before something changes but it's pretty frustrating to say the least. It's like watching a bus drive off a cliff and you don't have any way of telling them they are about to drive off a cliff. Quite a few MMO's have driven off the cliff in the last few years and I guess the industry just wants to keep looking away and pretending they can keep cranking out garbage.

Originally posted by thamighty213

I realy do hope the game slide's for the condition it was released in perhaps this will finally send a message to MMO producer's that Joe Public will no longer accept beta retail releases with empty promises and half the box features missing.

I know this doesn't add much to the discussion, but:

A-*F*CK'N*-Men

Originally posted by afoaa

No its the completely unprofessional way funcom acts in regard to their customers. They keep stonewalling never ever engaging in meaningful communication. They never ever inform about what really happens and they keep the most basic game mechanics hidden which cause people to make choices that goes against what they really wanted.

Why does a company in 2008 think you can avoid talking to their customers? It makes them look like amateurs when they only come out with a controlled press release once in a while which is so far from the reality their players experience in the game that it just look like damage control, outright lies and untruthful hype.

People can easily forgive errors and problems. People will never forgive dishonesty.

They must have taken lessons from Flagship, because Hellgate London flopped after months of mega-hype, pushing out a mediocre shoot 'em up, and Flagship never bother to talk to their customers either.  One of the things that struck me as hilarious was that even THEY couldn't explain how the game mechanics worked!  Priceless  

lowest friday numbers yet in spite of this thread driving people to use xfire to bump the numbers up....

Originally posted by ethion

lowest friday numbers yet in spite of this thread driving people to use xfire to bump the numbers up....

XFIRE USERS: PUUUUSH!!!

Since it's currently a large part of my job in RL, I can't resist the obvious quote.

"There are Lies, Damn Lies & Statistics" 

xfire is not the whole player base.

xfire is not even a quarter of the player base...of any game

and those that use xfire (mainly) are the asswipes that i detest in games (to be cliche...the wow fanboi's)