Monday, May 16, 2011

The X-Fire Game: Trial (s) and Errors

What a great title for this weeks X-Fire game.

Trials due to Rift's push to be the best #2 MMO out there, and SOE's error and their progress to be the lowest dev on the totem pole.

The previous results we're comparing are from the weekend of 5/1/2011 - Lets see how the 2 weeks have changed.

  1. Rift - 3325 ( 2973  )
  2. EvE Online - 2005 ( 1928  )
  3. Aion - 1988 ( 1929  )
  4. Lord of the Rings Online - 1800 ( 1859 ↓ )
  5. Star Trek Online - 327 ( 345 ↓ )
  6. Age of Conan - 287 ( 280  )
  7. Dungeons & Dragons Online - 277 ( 324 ↓ )
  8. Champions Online - 217 ( 235 ↓ )
  9. Warhammer Online - 133 ( 155 ↓ )
  10. Final Fantasy XIV -112 ( 122 ↓ )
  11. DC Universe -  57 ( 25  )
First off, nice job to Rift. The upswing this week is something most of the MMO's from the last few years have NOT been able to do. New content, new updates, new trials all add up to a game that is flourishing.


Looking at the graph for Rift, we can see the standard drop most MMO's experience. But, we also see a stabilization there. Then the upswing toward the end. Will see how this looks in two weeks.

Other games of note: EVE broke 2000. First time in a while. Aion over takes Lord of the Rings Online to become this weeks #3. Excitement must be building for Aion thanks to the paid transfer service and the upcoming patch 2.5 with major graphics enhancements and new content.

I really need to note here: Sub games are NOT dead, and Free to play, though a help to games suffering, is not the panacea of sub-dom some believe it to be. Just IMO.

Age of Conan has also moved up the charts. Major buzz is going on with this game, with the upcoming movie reboot, discussion of new land masses and overall satisfaction with the new engine changes. We will watch this one in the coming months.

SOE games are back, but of course, DC Universe still trails the bottom. But, note more players. I assume that free time is helping. Not going to help much when someones ID is stolen though. 

Overall quite a few games down this week.

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  1. Rift -  2366 ( 2394  players
  2. EvE Online - 803 ( 1010  ) 
  3. Lord of the Rings Online - 771 ( 766  )
  4. Aion - 418 ( 530 ↓ )
  5. Champions Online - 232 ( 192  )
  6. DC Universe - 182 ( 136  )
  7. Dungeons & Dragons Online - 167 ( 173 ↓ )
  8. Final Fantasy XIV - 142 191  )
  9. Star Trek Online - 110 ( 96  )
  10. Age of Conan - 83 ( 89 ↓ )
  11. Warhammer Online - 56 86 ↓ )
What drives me nuts right off the bat...Raptr has Rift with MORE players on a Saturday (2426)...I mean, WTH? Raptr and reliability of stats is really starting to irritate me. But, I will still post them....just expect me to bitch about them EVERY time also.

Ah well, lets take a look at what else is happening.

As we can see, Raptr still plays "Opposites" day of X-Fire with their stats. EVE and Aion are both down, yet LOTRO is up. Of note, like Rift, Aion is UP on Saturday...just down on Sunday, which has not been par for course for ANY game.

Champions is up? LOL. And look at how many slots DC Universe moved up. Interesting bunch of users, these Raptr players.

The biggest travesty here is Age of Conan. All anecdotal evidence points to a rise in activity, yet in Raptr it still runs at the bottom of the pack, with even a LOSS this week. Raptr is just not telling the full story here.

****

Before I forget, lets take a look at Blizzard and their beast of an MMO.

World of Warcraft X-Fire chart May 15th - players  33,787 (33,611 ↑ )

So, WoW is still on the rise back up. People just cannot let this game go, and it is truly sad to see no other game even has a chance.

Nuff' said here

****

So, some good numbers for several games, with Rift really showing it can hold on, and could be our number two game in MMO's for a while.

Raptr though is becoming suspect in tracking, and I am about ready to throw it out. It keeps having strikes against it in regards to how their numbers work. When games we know show anecdotal evidence of upswings, yet fall on Raptr...I have to question their systems. Time is ticking down for Raptr stats.

Until next time...Cheers.

3 comments:

Angry Gamer said...

Since you have been analyzing these stats for awhile I was wondering your opinion on something...

Does the fact that Fantasy Themed MMOs are always in the top (except EVE of course) argue that Fantasy themed games are the more popular than all other genres?

And given your analysis and 100 million dollars would you suggest making a sci-fi MMO, a superhero MMO, a survival post-nuclear war MMO or a fantasy MMO?

(you get a big share of the profits by the way)

Elementalistly said...

A good question, and actually I have discussed it before.

From what we can see first off from "failures"...Sci-Fi is hard....as an MMO.

Tabula Rasa, Auto Assault are just two examples. Yes, EVE seems to always hold a top spot...but, when we look down the list (of just MMO's on Xfire), Star Trek Online is the next most successful...but, at #85 on the list (EVE is at #17). And STO started life low, and fell horribly. Just recently has it had ANY leeway on the charts.

Look also at other genres...like the APB failure. Run and gun ala Grand Theft Auto style...bad. Superheroes? too meh and too niche. Their numbers also lag behind most Fantasy MMO's.

BUT, we need to really see one more entry before I pass final IMO judgement.

The Secret World.

Why no one has approached Horror Survival as an MMO confuses me. But, if TSW bombs (even though it may be good...lets forget about the fact it is Funcom and may be a buggy mess)...if it can at least spot in the top 10, then I think MMO devs need to get creative.

So, in a nutshell: If you are not Fantasy, you will probably need to go Free to play or live with a niche crowd.

For now...

NoizyGamer said...

I have found your posts interesting where Eve Online is concerned. Since Fanfest in late March the server concurrency numbers are down yet the X-Fire numbers continue to rise. CCP has been engaged in a War on Bots™ since then and the X-Fire numbers suggest that CCP is banning more accounts for botting than they are attracting people to play the game.

Also, if Raptr is telling you that more people play Eve on Saturday than Sunday, you need to stop using Raptr. There is a site called Eve-Offline.net that publishes the concurrency numbers and Sunday is definitely the busiest day.