Redoptic

Way, way, too reasonable and accurate.

But don't bother, just conclude the game's a perpetual subscription juggernaut with mythological anti-sub loss properties, and you'll find a much more friendly atmosphere in here.


Ponies and rainbows!

Heh, not really. The game is full of rainbows and money trees, and servers that run on perpetual motion founded on granite.
There, that make me less of a doooooooooomer to this fragile product.

Since double posts are the rage tonight..

The playoffs are underway and honestly parsing the reduced quarterly information to try and "maybe" "possibly" "I think" "probably" surmise the games subscription health is uninteresting and fruitless.


But in making your graph you believe that sales trump subscription numbers, which is a fallacy.
There's no model for a five year old mmo which relies on new sales over steady monthly subscriptions. None, that I'm aware of, maybe you are?


You also don't even touch the meandering exchange rate for the won, which has been a rollercoaster the past year and a half, hitting an abysmal 1,500 to the US dollar around Feb 09.

That would be like moving to Argentina with 30K US and feeling like you walked into Bill Gates pin number, in other wards it can inflate/deflate figures wildly.



NCSoft stopped reporting monthly access numbers, maybe because of lowering subscription numbers, or to keep that information from their new competitor, or, whatever.

That was the accurate way of knowing the actual number of subs month over month. Any other way of trying to get to those numbers is more guesswork then science.


But hell, everyone grab a beer and watch the Eagles get the feathers handed to them.

The playoffs are underway and honestly parsing the reduced quarterly information to try and "maybe" "possibly" "I think" "probably" surmise the games subscription health is uninteresting and fruitless.


But in making that graph your friend believes that sales trump subscription numbers, which is a fallacy.
There's no model for a five year old mmo which relies on new sales over steady monthly subscriptions. None, that I'm aware of.


He also doesn't even touch the meandering exchange rate for the won, which has been a rollercoaster the past year and a half, hitting an abysmal 1,500 to the US dollar around Feb 09.

That would be like moving to Argentina with 30K US and feeling like you walked into Bill Gates pin number, in other wards it can inflate/deflate figures wildly.



NCSoft stopped reporting monthly access numbers, maybe because of lowering subscription numbers, or to keep that information from their new competitor, or, whatever.
That was the accurate way of knowing the actual number of subs month over month.


But hell, grab a beer and watch the Eagles get the feathers handed to them.

My wife agrees with you.

There was no shadow boxing in my reply, very simply:
You supported exactly what I said, even an average black man from Bensonhurst can see that.


And you skipped over any of the ramifications brought on by the second worst financial crisis in US history, which I alluded to as a possible factor in subscription numbers from Sept 08 on.


September 08 (the last month the access numbers were reported) alone saw the collapse of the one hundred+ year old securities firm Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch, and the bailout of AIG to avoid bankruptcy.

That one quarter (sep-dec 08), without any of 2009s continuing declines, saw staggering job losses of 400,000+, 300,000+ and 500,000+ (sept-nov respectively).


In short, the worst wave of bankruptcies, job losses and wealth destruction any citizen under 90 has ever experienced.
Did you factor any of that into your equations my dear?


Length of time between updates, horrible marketing, and a direct (though awful) mmo competitor aside, sudden historic constraints on expendable income in the North American market will have effected this companies bottom line.


To what degree? I don't know, but what players are seeing on their servers is at least tangible anecdotal evidence of something other then frenzied activity.

You supported precisely what I said in that first quote, though the drop in subscriptions (always derived from the monthly access numbers, a big duh) was actually over ten thousand.
So what's your point, you trotted these numbers out to put someone in their place, and ended up illustrating their position.


Yes math is always infallible, just ask the University of East Anglia.



It could be, but I'm sure you wouldn't bet your career on it.


I don't recall the second "great depression" happening during the games prior quarters. Let's assume that had no sudden unexpected effect on peoples expendable income, and say you're right, as always.



Any guesstimates by players on low subscription numbers are purely anecdotal, unless they work in accounting at NCSoft.
70, 80, 90,000 current active subscribers, I don't know factually.
But many are experiencing light activity on their servers.


2008 Dec no more reporting
2009 Mar no more reporting
2009 Jun no more reporting
2009 Sep no more reporting
2009 Dec no more reporting

Yes, it is.

And PvP'ers leaving in droves over i13 is a myth...



BaBs is quoted as saying at least one thousand players quit over ED, so whatever numbers of new subscribers were generated by a new game release is irrelevant to ED's negative impact on subscriptions at the time.

Another way to look at that would be that many of those subscribers could've been retained had ED and GDR been implemented better (minus the "no more changes guys, we promise! >>>>> BAM! >GDR!!!<).

-ahem

It's always popular to decry the doooomers on these boards, but since we're bandying the topic around, are there any actual numbers to solidifie Co* solid standing, instead of just the gut feeling that it's doing well?


I mean the last time subscriber numbers were revealed it wasn't a trickle of player loss it was a lump sum of ten thousand subs Q to Q lost.
And then the subscription information was hidden, for the first time.


While I don't wish for an end to peoples pastime, denouncing any negativity about the games health with such certitude is just silly given the omissions in the quarterly reports.

Because we know there is nothing more then anecdotal information, basically an individuals 'feeling', from which to base a conclusion anymore.

Which is no different from subscribers who believe the game is steadily losing players who are not in turn being replaced by new ones, as in Co* earlier seasons.

Which is also why many of them bemoan the horrible job the marketing department does in trying to stem the losses by keeping players interest piqued.

Zombie always has facts on his side, unlike the posters who reply with their emotional attachment to Co* in tow.

Shame he has none here.

Since the last quarterly report, before NCSoft removed the long included subscriber numbers from it, showed a drop of ten thousand subs if I recall, bringing the game to the lowest numbers it's had.


That was over a year ago, since then do you think the subscriber numbers have rebounded?

Personally based on the slow forum traffic and what I see on the four servers we have characters on, the active subscriber base is below ninety thousand, maybe around seventy or eighty.

But there are no actual current subscriber numbers to prove or disprove that.

So the doooooom criers are equipped with the same accurate information to support their conclusion as the diligent Co* defenders. lol

Couldn't help myself. But really I agree with most of what he said, and IO's and sets can make up for a lot weaknesses, of course at a price.
SD with whatever is the fotm, if you're unsure how dedicated you're going to be sticking with your fire tank through 50 and buying sets, roll a shield tank and don't worry about it.

Ow son. Nothing like an mmo woman putting an mmo man in their place.

Report them and Move On dear. Life is much, much harsher then this princess.

Just asking, your forums have 'recent' replies from Dec, Jan and May.
Is this just being propped up for old times sake or is it actually still active..

There we go.

qft.

Now I can read it.








What was your original point again?

I read this as "Signs This Game's Getting Too Old To Play."

Filtering through what players would submit would be time intensive I'm sure. I wonder if assuming some of the content is of high enough quality, whether that would be an offset to having a developers time involved.



Where game publishers have opened their product to modding by that games community, it's not uncommon for the player generated content to be more popular then the updates by the developers.

The Battlefield and Star Wars Battlefront series of games are just one small example of that, with modding communities continuing to create quality updates to the original games even long after the manufacturers stopped.




Imagine the devs sponsoring some contest for revamping various maps, like Perez Park, with the winning submission actually making it into the game, can you imagine what could be possible given the pool of talent in most mmo communities.



Most modern games require a lot of hard drive space, and most pc users have upped their storage capacity. The days of 25 gigs taking care of everything you do with your pc are long gone, especially for any kind of gamer.

My City of Heroes folder sits at 3.16 gigs, my Champions Online folder (from beta don't subscribe) sits at 5.82 and that only has 5 maps so far, and my demo of Batman: Arkham Asylum with not even one full mission sits at 2.03 gigs for a demo.


I think we would all drool over some of the things skilled players could submit if they were allowed to mod certain parts of this game, even if that were limited to only maps.

No interest in taking you up on your offer. Apparently.

Case in point.