AOC - General Discussion II

[woqqqa]

Originally Posted by Borzak

Because of the way the game works early on how could you even tell if no one was left playing? Serious question.

At least up till lvl 20 you don't see anyone anyway.

Which server did you play on? I've rolled toons on three servers (the 2 RP ones and Deathwhisper) so far, and in each of them, Tortage was packed. I ended up in quite a few fights once I hit my mid-teens, as some gankers started running around Underhalls and White Sands, soon to be followed by anti-gankers trying to gank them.

[Jaded]

Which server did you play on? I've rolled toons on three servers so far, and in each of them, Tortage was packed. I ended up in quite a few fights once I hit my mid-teens, as some gankers started running around Underhalls and White Sands, soon to be followed by anti-gankers trying to gank them.

So you're saying the only newbie area in the game is still packed after one month when by all accounts there's very little to do once you hit cap? I, for one, am shocked at this revelation.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Senen

So your saying you took the time to sit at the screen and over a 24 hr + period of time do random player searches thru all the lvl ranges and cover all time zone variables? Because I was thinking it was common sense that not everyone plays at the same time.. or maybe I'm wrong on that one.. Seems like you have a reasonably scientific approach there mind posting your results when your done some time next month...

No, you don't take measurements that way. I didn't think something like this would have to be explained, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised by any retardation on the internet.

If you want to gauge activity you take samples at the same time on the same day on the same server. Sunday at 7pm, then the next sunday at 7pm then the next. If the numbers get lower then activity is down. It's pretty damn simple.

As for my personal server when I played it started off pretty solid. 2500ish early on. It's down to 1300ish now.

[Pyros]

One thing to consider is, AoC would hardly feel empty at any time anyway(unless you play very underpopulated servers such as 2nd gen pve stuff or whatever), because of the instancing system and the fact zones support very small numbers of people to begin with. You'd just see less instances, but that doesn't affect your gameplay at all. And currently, all the middle zones do look less crowded than they used to be(in number of instances), while the higher ones haven't gained much. On a weekday we hardly get more than 4 keshatta on my server, and it's been that way since I hit 80, a long time ago. You'd think it'd increase since it's the only zone you can pvp decently in, even accounting for rerolls and such.

Overall, I don't think the game is failing or whatever. But it will soon if they don't pump content out, simply because there's a limit to how many new players you get, and how long it takes them to get to the part it starts sucking. It's especially true with keshatta mobs buff, leveling became much harder and the zones are packed with full 80 groups roaming looking for fights. I pity anyone who starts doing keshatta just now on a pvp server without a full guild backup.

[Gecko]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

No, you don't take measurements that way. I didn't think something like this would have to be explained, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised by any retardation on the internet.

If you want to gauge activity you take samples at the same time on the same day on the same server. Sunday at 7pm, then the next sunday at 7pm then the next. If the numbers get lower then activity is down. It's pretty damn simple.

As for my personal server when I played it started off pretty solid. 2500ish early on. It's down to 1300ish now.

Wait, are you saying you paid for an additional month, after crying how bad the game was? Har.

These numbers are bullshit. Even taking a same sample time stamp you can't get an accurate reading due to the way the search mechanism works and truncates at times and the fact on PVP servers a lot of people via anon, when it works, or other things are not showing up. Show me exact numbers and breakdowns daily or we'll know you are just full of shit, as usual.

[Grumpy Old Fart]

If they'd assign one of their total staff of two GMs to spend a day changing retarded, non-RP names and temp-banning the 25%+ of those idiots on the RP server that think they're cute or are just plain too stupid to read the rules, they'd save a few thousand of their ever-declining subscriber base.

The game is still an interesting setting for role playing (which, I admit, won't supply enough subs to pay the bills), but spending one night in the game's cities amongst a parade of "Killunow" and "Deathmasterone", etc. is pretty much a guaranteed cancellation within a short period of time for anybody who knows what the word "immersion" means.

Blizzard needs to do this as well, and maybe WoW's RP servers wouldn't all be declining in population so badly.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Gecko

Wait, are you saying you paid for an additional month, after crying how bad the game was? Har.

Nope, but I had a friend get charged after he cancelled and he sort of continued where I left off.

[Necrolyte]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

Nope, but I had a friend get charged after he cancelled and he sort of continued where I left off.

Still slightly ironic that you would even ask a friend to bother to log in, and report numbers for the sake of game you don't even play anymore.

---

Regardless, are "active" numbers declining? Sure, they are. But I certainly would not argue this point by using polls from the FoH forums, or even the official forums. They are inaccurate by a large margin at best. You might think that players on the FoH forums are skewed in favor of Funcom, but there are just as many people who would say the FoH forums are 99% skewed against Funcom. Most of the players on these forums would have been the first ones to see the bugs and lack of end-game content, and be disgusted enough to quit.

Just look at the number of posters here who posted great comments, then a month later posted how disgusted they were with the lack of polish. If I were given a choice, I'd say these forums were skewed completely against Funcom. There aren't that many players here that can say "Hey I started at launch but my main character is still < L50." For the general population that is around L50 or lower (who knows) and never visit online forums, they probably don't have a clue about a majority of the negatives we talk about on these forums.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Necrolyte

Still slightly ironic that you would even ask a friend to bother to log in, and report numbers for the sake of game you don't even play anymore.

I didn't ask him to do shit. He was curious and did it himself. Thanks for playing.

[Necrolyte]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

Actually that poll shows 60% of the respondents who purchased the game have cancelled. 1300 of them.

You probably misunderstood the poll.


1300 people bought the game.
518 subscribed.
788 canceled.
-----

847 people didn't buy the game at all.

-----

Using the numbers, about 40% subscribed, 60% canceled. Again, I'm arguing these forums are heavily biased against Funcom. Most of the players here are fielding 80s and have been for weeks--which means we're more likely to see more flaws, see more bugs, and be more frustrated since we've been playing with these bugs longer. I highly discount any bullshit that we somehow are more tolerant of flaws as a demographic

[Necrolyte]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

I didn't ask him to do shit. He was curious and did it himself. Thanks for playing.

Still didn't bother to answer the content of my post, considering my first 2 sentences were just an ironic jab.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Necrolyte

Still didn't bother to answer the content of my post, considering my first 2 sentences were just an ironic jab.

No, it was just retardation. And I understood the poll just fine. 1300 people purchased the game. 60% of them cancelled. Isn't that what I said? Anyway...

Oh, and nice -internets Troll comment. Couldn't handle being exposed as an idiot?

[Mogley]

Originally Posted by Necrolyte

Just look at the number of posters here who posted great comments, then a month later posted how disgusted they were with the lack of polish. If I were given a choice, I'd say these forums were skewed completely against Funcom.

Errr, what? That doesn't show the forums were against Funcom.

More like it shows a lot of people enjoyed the early game and were willing to give Funcom the benefit of the doubt until they experienced the high level problems for themselves.

[Necrolyte]

Originally Posted by Mogley

Errr, what? That doesn't show the forums were against Funcom.

More like it shows a lot of people enjoyed the early game and were willing to give Funcom the benefit of the doubt until they experienced the high level problems for themselves.

The reason it shows these forums might be skewed against Funcom is because a high majority of the players here are all MMO veterans, and all somewhat hardcore--even if the players here aren't bleeding edge, they still level faster. This means the posters here are more likely to field 80s by now or have fielded 80s for weeks, and are more likely to see all the lack of content at high-levels, the broken siege content, broken raid content, etc.

In 1 month, players on these forums went from L1-L80 and saw all the content in the game, bugged or non-bugged. That's far faster than the "general populace" whatever that might be. The general populace most likely have not seen any of the 80s bugged / missing content, and thus these forums are skewed against Funcom.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Necrolyte

In 1 month, players on these forums went from L1-L80 and saw all the content in the game

The fact that this is even possible doesn't seem like a problem to you?