How is ESO doing in Popularity?

Brizz

The only gauge I know of are number of viewers watching streamers play the game.


Funny that games like Pokemon and Mario Cart are always ahead of ESO....

Ragnar_Lodbrok

Look at how empty the zones are.

Tannakaobi

and EVE......

So what's your point?

Slash8915

Well, all I'll say is this... ZoS never mentioned any numbers as far as subscribers. If the game was doing well, you'd thing they would want to brag a little.

ThisOnePosts

The zones aren't empty. Sure the later VR zones are emptier than the others, but that will change with time. From what I see, I have 100 friends on my friend list and the longest someone has been offline is a few days --- one of my real life friends no less. If I had to say, the game is healthy and where it should be for an MMO that's only a few months old. By the time a lot more content, features, fixes, tweaks, and the likes are implemented.. this game will have an even more stable following. I've played enough MMOs to know how it goes and this one is doing quite well given the time it's been out.

The biggest issue is that for many this is their first real effort playing an MMO because they are Elder Scrolls fans and not fully adjusted to the combination. Also, forums and social media comments are typically the places you encounter the most negative perspectives because that's where people take to in order to vent if things aren't exactly how they want or if they are experiencing issues. The popularity will also increase when the console versions are released and despite what you may think, I really believe that will help more people find their way to the PC version as well (those who may be reading about it in a magazine, hearing from friends, etc.. and let's face it, consoles get the most mass-press these days so it will only help).

Ragnar_Lodbrok

ViciousWayz wrote: »

The zones aren't empty. Sure the later VR zones are emptier than the others, but that will change with time. From what I see, I have 100 friends on my friend list and the longest someone has been offline is a few days --- one of my real life friends no less. If I had to say, the game is healthy and where it should be for an MMO that's only a few months old. By the time a lot more content, features, fixes, tweaks, and the likes are implemented.. this game will have an even more stable following. I've played enough MMOs to know how it goes and this one is doing quite well given the time it's been out.

The biggest issue is that for many this is their first real effort playing an MMO because they are Elder Scrolls fans and not fully adjusted to the combination. Also, forums and social media comments are typically the places you encounter the most negative perspectives because that's where people take to in order to vent if things aren't exactly how they want or if they are experiencing issues. The popularity will also increase when the console versions are released and despite what you may think, I really believe that will help more people find their way to the PC version as well (those who may be reading about it in a magazine, hearing from friends, etc.. and let's face it, consoles get the most mass-press these days so it will only help).

If I could give you 10 LOLS for the straight pile of BS you wrote I would.

Slash8915

A "stable" following doesn't mean a "large" one. You can get hit by a car and be in stable condition. Doesn't mean you are doing well. I see more and more people quitting every day. I'm glad your friends still play, but NONE of mine do. They all left once they hit VR1. I have to join new guilds on a monthly basis due to people not coming back on.

Catches_the_Sun

Slash8915 wrote: »

A "stable" following doesn't mean a "large" one. You can get hit by a car and be in stable condition. Doesn't mean you are doing well. I see more and more people quitting every day. I'm glad your friends still play, but NONE of mine do. They all left once they hit VR1. I have to join new guilds on a monthly basis due to people not coming back on.

I guess it all depends on the kind of players you choose to "Friend". Much like @ViciousWayz my friends are still playing the game and my original Guild is not only still up, but remains in growth mode. If you make your friends in grind groups or dungeon boss exploit groups, don't expect them to hang around long...they're not in this game to experience it, they just want the VR12 next to their name.

Mujuro

If typical guild active members -- at least for guilds I'm in -- during "prime time" EST-PST is any indication of popularity, I'd say ESO is hemorrhaging subscribers. At least 80% of the members of (most) of my guilds haven't logged on in at least a month, and 75% of those haven't been on since the 30-day "included" playtime expired.

Shaun98ca2

Mujuro wrote: »

If typical guild active members -- at least for guilds I'm in -- during "prime time" EST-PST is any indication of popularity, I'd say ESO is hemorrhaging subscribers. At least 80% of the members of (most) of my guilds haven't logged on in at least a month, and 75% of those haven't been on since the 30-day "included" playtime expired.

I'd say its hemorrhaging players and gaining players simultaneously. The game has a LOT of competition out there. Some old some new. While people are leaving many are still showing up for the 1st time as that's what people do, they wait to get into MMO's right after release.

Game is a LOT of fun, but its not everybody's cup of tea. From basic design decisions down to actual play style.

Its strange people SAY they like the game. Then bash it. OVER AND OVER AND OVER again everyday. Never hear anything constructive on how people can enjoy the game or make the game or enjoyable themselves.

All you get is extreme over exaggerations saying "the game is unplayable".......well that's wrong cause people are playing.

People say the Devs are incompetent and useless but they wanna hear from the Devs....WHY you say their incompetent so ANYTHING they say is worthless, best bet is to find a game where the Devs ARENT incompetent.

The haters do nothing but taint the community. Now it seems the forums aren't good enough so now they are looking for a wider base of people to taint so now this crap is actually bleeding into the /zone.

Its not good for the game its not good for the community so people say they are doing to help the game, but how does beating a dieing horse help it?

gorant1313ub17_ESO

I streamed when the FPS bug wasn't wrecking me. For now, I'm on DayZ with my guild members and leveling alts when we're all together. Not sure how much longer we're gonna wait around.

TheBull

Brizz wrote: »

The only gauge I know of are number of viewers watching streamers play the game.


Funny that games like Pokemon and Mario Cart are always ahead of ESO....

It's the most popular mmorpg on the most popular mmorpg site. That's pretty good I think.

http://www.mmorpg.com/

#1 Elder Scrolls Online 5,674,919 Unique Hits

#2 Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn 3,528,277 Hits
#3 WildStar 3,178,050 Hits
#4 Guild Wars 2 3,075,214 Hits
#5 EverQuest Next 2,578,259 Hits
#6 Star Wars: The Old Republic 1,934,572 Hits
#7 World of Warcraft 1,810,221 Hits
#8 Rift1,399,868 Hits
#9 Neverwinter 1,240,527 Hits
#10 ArcheAge 1,191,906 Hits
* Results based on unique hits over previous year

Cogo

There are several posts on reddit from players who asks if ESO is a good game to start with for someone who havnt played an MMO before.

Interesting that reddits community have almost the opposite reaction then here.

There 1 critical bug zeni needs to fix. When thats fixed, we'll go back to arguing why night blades can one-shot DKs with 2H swords.

ZoM_Head

Got hit with so many bugs today, im just out and uninstalled the game till they patch it honestly. Too fustrating for me right now, hope they get it fixed it is a good game. But i doubt they will adress the serious issues anytime soon.

Not sure if i will continue the sub or not.....

Fuzzylumpkins

Decent way to take a games temperature while you are playing is:

How active are your formerly filled guilds?
How often do you find useable items on your guilds g-stores?
Is zone chat filled with conversations or questions by multiple player names?
Is finding a pug easy for group quest?
Are all of the PvP instances busy with keep/resource trades?

Mine are:
-5 guilds at 500 player cap, not one of them has had more than 10 active players in a week- even 3 of the GMs have not logged into the trade guilds since the end of May
-Nothing in the stores changes or is updated, even considering the craglorn sellables or crafting mats/herbs (have changed 2 of my trade guilds in hopes of activity- still none)
-Zone in 2 Cyro campaigns and Crag are always the same few people, generally the long term trolls
- pug for grp quest? never. It was guild grps before they died out
- Aside from wabbalag, no solid activity in Cyrodil. And even at that Wabba has been reduced to being run by 2 realms of resource/title trading buddy guilds.

Not so healthy from experience.

I am sure someone will hop in below me to give their amazing fun filled group heavy always helpful experiences every log in But just asking about the game's popularity is certainly relative and mostly based on opinion. A million titles sales the month of release to what feels like a 90% drop off within a few months is a way of saying "sure it is popular, it sold a lot, just didn't hold on to anyone."

Fuzzylumpkins

TheBull wrote: »

Brizz wrote: »

The only gauge I know of are number of viewers watching streamers play the game.


Funny that games like Pokemon and Mario Cart are always ahead of ESO....

It's the most popular mmorpg on the most popular mmorpg site. That's pretty good I think.

http://www.mmorpg.com/

#1 Elder Scrolls Online 5,674,919 Unique Hits

#2 Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn 3,528,277 Hits
#3 WildStar 3,178,050 Hits
#4 Guild Wars 2 3,075,214 Hits
#5 EverQuest Next 2,578,259 Hits
#6 Star Wars: The Old Republic 1,934,572 Hits
#7 World of Warcraft 1,810,221 Hits
#8 Rift1,399,868 Hits
#9 Neverwinter 1,240,527 Hits
#10 ArcheAge 1,191,906 Hits
* Results based on unique hits over previous year

LOL sorry, when hyping a game pre-release, you would hope it had unique hits. Look up unique hits post release. I will even give you unique hits month of release. Vastly different looking at the same list for unique hits just in the month May. Wildstar was up next for release and ESO wasn't even in the top 5. Trends.

Now that it is released a better way to gage actual interest is add on downloads or look in the game (as you can post in forums you can log in) and see the activity (and lack there of) in peak times.


A few download stats for the most popular add ons (based on games you mentioned in your stats)

Most popular download for ESO month 1 (4.2 week cycle) 81,500
Most popular download for Wild Star (week 1 ONLY-) 597,000
Most popular download for WoW (May dls only for it) 1.2 million.

That is a decent way to measure interest. Not every player uses downloads, nice way to feel the pulse of the games without chasing unique hits to gaming sites.

discosoc

TheBull wrote: »

Brizz wrote: »

The only gauge I know of are number of viewers watching streamers play the game.


Funny that games like Pokemon and Mario Cart are always ahead of ESO....

It's the most popular mmorpg on the most popular mmorpg site. That's pretty good I think.

http://www.mmorpg.com/

#1 Elder Scrolls Online 5,674,919 Unique Hits

#2 Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn 3,528,277 Hits
#3 WildStar 3,178,050 Hits
#4 Guild Wars 2 3,075,214 Hits
#5 EverQuest Next 2,578,259 Hits
#6 Star Wars: The Old Republic 1,934,572 Hits
#7 World of Warcraft 1,810,221 Hits
#8 Rift1,399,868 Hits
#9 Neverwinter 1,240,527 Hits
#10 ArcheAge 1,191,906 Hits
* Results based on unique hits over previous year

That site is a complete cesspool of the worst this genre has to offer.

Lunerdog

Got my NB to level 40 and entered Bankori, by 11pm I was shocked at just how few people I was seeing, when my last char went through this area the place was busy everywhere and Evermore was a hive of activity at all hours of the day and night.

The only town I see constantly busy now is Riften as many folk seem to have made it their base town.

The fanboi's can mutter as much as they like but there's definitely less people in game.

Cously

Usually the most popular stuff lacks in quality. The real good taste is exclusive to some elites in our society. Like rap versus classical music. I put quality over quantity anytime, sadly it don't bring as much money as the trash stuff brought on MTV everyday. That said, popularity is the most stupid concept ever, sell low quality stuff in tons for people that lack the proper taste.

Alphashado

Joolio wrote: »

Usually the most popular stuff lacks in quality. The real good taste is exclusive to some elites in our society. Like rap versus classical music. I put quality over quantity anytime, sadly it don't bring as much money as the trash stuff brought on MTV everyday. That said, popularity is the most stupid concept ever, sell low quality stuff in tons for people that lack the proper taste.

That doesn't really apply here though. Because in order for ZoS (or any company trying to maintain an MMO) to keep this game "quality", it needs revenue. This isn't a single player RPG that gets developed then marketed as a finished product. An MMO is an evolving, living, breathing entity that requires a ton of money in order to develop new content and maitain/fix the content that already exists.

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO

Saying that this game is a luxury item for connoisseurs flies right in the face of the official marketing. Like it or not, popularity is the key defining factor for success in a mass market media product. If this were an indie game made on a small budget with a small team, your point would be valid, but it's not. This game had a huge budget, took years to make and involved hundreds of people. It needs to stay popular and retain a large enough subscriber base, or else it is a failure.

killedbyping

My friend list is all filled with over month of inactivity players....

GossiTheDog

Put it this way, the game is £17 on Amazon brand new now. The Imperial Edition with the statue is £25 in my local GAME, down from £90. 300 jobs in their Ireland office have gone.

Akhratos

GossiTheDog wrote: »

Put it this way, the game is £17 on Amazon brand new now. The Imperial Edition with the statue is £25 in my local GAME, down from £90. 300 jobs in their Ireland office have gone.

But they added the double-charged perk to the already forced first payed subscription!

So they are almost at the point of charging the first month and gifting the game. Worth a thousand words.

DMuehlhausen

discosoc wrote: »

TheBull wrote: »

Brizz wrote: »

The only gauge I know of are number of viewers watching streamers play the game.


Funny that games like Pokemon and Mario Cart are always ahead of ESO....

It's the most popular mmorpg on the most popular mmorpg site. That's pretty good I think.

http://www.mmorpg.com/

#1 Elder Scrolls Online 5,674,919 Unique Hits

#2 Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn 3,528,277 Hits
#3 WildStar 3,178,050 Hits
#4 Guild Wars 2 3,075,214 Hits
#5 EverQuest Next 2,578,259 Hits
#6 Star Wars: The Old Republic 1,934,572 Hits
#7 World of Warcraft 1,810,221 Hits
#8 Rift1,399,868 Hits
#9 Neverwinter 1,240,527 Hits
#10 ArcheAge 1,191,906 Hits
* Results based on unique hits over previous year

That site is a complete cesspool of the worst this genre has to offer.

Just behind this site I'm sure

Raash

I would say pretty well, 1 out of 10 players think everything is fine, 9 out of 10 players are annoyed with bugs, 10 out of 1 million players still play the game

DMuehlhausen

I believe when they have done the math before you actually only need around 200k subs/yr to make a AAA MMO profitable anyway. I mean Everquest 1 just went free to play last year. I believe there are still some p2p Ultima Online servers.

The game is definitely making money, which allow them to push out content. At this point though they are just pushing it out to quick aren't able to properly test it.

Pmarsico9

My best guess is that this game is at 250-300K subscribers right now.

http://www.vgchartz.com/game/70799/the-elder-scrolls-online/

VGChartz is showing 400K sold.

XBox and PS4 sales should be able to garner at least another 100K. Then take a static 20-25% of that off based upon people that sub at first but then evaporate. Meaning probably 350-400K subs total.

That's not bad.

Most people don't like to point this out:

The MMORPG market is a massive niche. It is not a market that is growing rapidly. In fact, the PC Gaming market is contracting due to the fact that the tablet and smartphone markets appeal more to today's ADD/Instant Gratification crowd. WoW owns the vast majority of it. This is not a game that is analogous with WoW at all. So you won't have crossover there.

Zenimax is the LARGEST private gaming company in the World. They are beholden to nobody. As long as that remains the case, then there is absolutely nothing to fear here.

If they do something terrible like merge with EA or Activision/Blizzard, that's when you worry. Because the content suffers. Severely.

Pmarsico9

DMuehlhausen wrote: »

I believe when they have done the math before you actually only need around 200k subs/yr to make a AAA MMO profitable anyway.

I don't think that's the case at all. Their original outlay is largely at least covered and they are turning a profit. The upkeep and generation of smaller, lower content patches will play much better than say, the Blizzard model of massive patches that take months (years for expansions) is harder to keep profitable.

Private gaming company with money > public juggernaut with 9001 layers of ***.

I don't know if they have a time frame for ES 6, either. Because you know that will be absolutely massive following Skyrim.

It's very important to remember that this isn't Blizzard, which charged WoW subs $100 to keep servers populated between Cataclysm and MOP and GAVE AWAY Diablo 3.

TL;DR: ESO can stay online as a HOBBY. ES Single Player games PRINT MONEY.

GossiTheDog

555 staff at Zenimax Online Studios purely working on Elder Scrolls Online. Let's say they earn $60k a year average salary. That wage bill is $33 million per year. Then there's expenses, the offices around the world, the servers, the datacenters, the bandwidth, the marketing etc. Say it's $50m per year they spend at present. They would need about 310k customers each month at $15 each to break even. That said, Zenimax Online Studios point out on their own website they were funded by a $300m investment from Providence Equity Partners. I doubt Providence invested that to break even (and by 'break even' I mean 'loose their money').

The elephant in the room is console release. Skyrim shipped 20m units on consoles - that by far dwarves the PC audience. Think it's a coincidence the interface in Elder Scrolls Online is very simple? Nope. They will have their eye on the prize. And rightly so. They just need to fix the game first.

TL;DR: ESO can stay online as a HOBBY. ES Single Player games PRINT MONEY.

Zenimax Online Studios is a privately owned, separately budgeted company. I don't know if you've ever worked for a large private investment company, but nothing happens "as a hobby" involving hundreds of people. They're a business. They make money, or go under.

DeLindsay

Tannakaobi wrote: »

and EVE......

So what's your point?

This is the only response needed. Eve Online has existed longer than WoW (about 6 months longer) with an average of maybe 650K subs. I'm not sure if it's ever been over 1 million in it's 11 years. ZoS also just released a multi year plan via Paul ZoS of upcoming content and items on their to-do list so you can bet from the company's side, they feel it's doing well enough to keep tossing money at it.

Gone are the days of MMO's with 10+ million subs and "servers/slivers/realms/shards" with a que to get in. There is simply too many MMO's out there and people actually jump around a lot these days.