How many active players in ESO?

JKorr

Nerouyn wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

What decision are you making where the subscriber and active players numbers are important?

The reason numbers get don't get released when games underperform is that these numbers obviously do matter. If a game's performance is perceived to be poor then many potential customers will use that information to inform their decision about whether they buy it or not. And that is smart. Works the other way too, just as obviously.

I guess I'm older than the players who make their decisions about what they like based on whether or not other people like it too. Teh next shiny thing isn't attractive to me just because it might be teh next shiny thing that everyone is flocking to. Give it a couple of weeks, and they'll be running off to the next next shiny thing. Its why there is turnover on the f2p games. The players don't really care.

If I find a title that I think I might be interested in, I look for information. I check the developers' website. I check for review information. I make my own decision. If I hadn't, I'd never have looked at Morrowind. There were reviews that said the game had no direction and it was very easy to get distracted and forget what you were supposed to be doing. The review said that like it was a bad thing. I didn't think so. Went out and got Morrowind. Found out that I really liked it. Pre-ordered Tribunal. Not only pre-ordered Bloodmoon, but went out on my lunch hour to pick it up. Decided I liked the games and the world, and haven't really moved on yet. I still play Morrowind.

Lord_Kreegan

Well, I can conclude this much... I am a player. I used to be very active, but I'm an old dog now so I've had to slow down a lot... just can't catch those younger women any more, even with my running shoes on.

Oh... that's not what you meant by active players? Crap, I was looking foward to the conversation.

Elsonso

JKorr wrote: »

I still play Morrowind.

Honestly, I cannot play Morrowind anymore. The same goes for Oblivion. The TES line has advanced, and lost, with each iteration of game. Because each game is only connected by Lore, I find the older versions of the game to be difficult to play.

I always hated the "swing and a miss" combat from Morrowind. Even though I like the other parts of the game, now all I can think of is "swing and a miss" when I play.

I hated the monster scaling in Oblivion, and I really hate the grinding through the main quest to close all the gates. Now when I play I start getting technical about it. I keep my level low to prevent monster scaling and do the main quest at level 3 or 4 just to keep the monsters easy to kill.

Skyrim is still current, but it introduced that horrid constellation menu. I am also required to use UI mods to get away from the TV oriented GUI layout that still does not work well with a mouse.

[sarcasm] I am most excited that ESO gets a version of the constellation menu when the Champion System rolls out. [/sarcasm] I was hoping that guy would stay at BGS and not transfer to ZOS.

JKorr wrote: »

I guess I'm older than the players who make their decisions about what they like based on whether or not other people like it too.

No one has really answered the question I posed as to what decision people in the forum are making that requires they know subscription and active player numbers. Like you and @Nerouyn I suspect that it is people trying to flock to the popular places, or away from unpopular places.

In my mind, people who make decisions based on information like that aren't really making decisions. They are letting others make the decisions for them.

Lord_Kreegan

lordrichter wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

I still play Morrowind.

No one has really answered the question I posed as to what decision people in the forum are making that requires they know subscription and active player numbers.

Behavioral science, one of my minors at both the undergraduate and graduate level, answers that, reference Chris Argys' work...

There is something in all of us called a "pseudo-ego" (not the same as Freud's "super-ego"); it is in effect a false sense of self. Fundamentally, everyone wants to have an identity that they can deem to be important; that is, we want to matter.

Since the vast, vast majority of us are relegated to being "just your average human being" and aren't part of "the beautiful people" or "the movers and shakers"; we're not making movies in Hollywood or political ads as we run for office or big plays on the football field; we end up feeling lost as part of the great unwashed masses.

So, we create an identity for ourselves that is seperate and distinct from our reality. It is inherently a rationalization of "our faults" (which are not really faults) and we are desperate to defend that rationalization because we know it to be false. So, we seek confirmation of the rightness of that rationalization by seeking out groups that have similar perspectives.

In other words, we're human... and we're descended from pack animals, so we want to be members of the pack. The Internet is a "virtual pack" and in games we get to be the wolves bringing down the buffalo instead of nerdy "just your average human beings"...

Elsonso

Lord_Kreegan wrote: »

Behavioral science, one of my minors at both the undergraduate and graduate level, answers that, reference Chris Argys' work...

Excellent comment! Thanks!

leeux

In Morrowind, you only swing and miss if you're don't know what you're doing (that's in the first play-through, for most people.)

I mean, perhaps did you chose to start swinging a blade and didn't chose the Blade skill as Major? Or using magic skills without chosing the correct school as major too?

In all my time playing Morrowind, I never had the problem of missing all the time. I just always prepared my char to be good at what they'll be using.

You need to chose a weapon skill at the start (either major or minor) appropriate to the class you want to play... and chose that skill as major, so it starts at ~30-35 skill level.

And after that, you can pretty much be prepared to deal with anything the game throws at you, if you're careful, and stick to the progression... i.e. not raiding tombs with a L3 char

Elsonso

leeux wrote: »

In Morrowind, you only swing and miss if you're don't know what you're doing (that's in the first play-through, for most people.)

I mean, perhaps did you chose to start swinging a blade and didn't chose the Blade skill as Major? Or using magic skills without chosing the correct school as major too?

In all my time playing Morrowind, I never had the problem of missing all the time. I just always prepared my char to be good at what they'll be using.

You need to chose a weapon skill at the start (either major or minor) appropriate to the class you want to play... and chose that skill as major, so it starts at ~30-35 skill level.

And after that, you can pretty much be prepared to deal with anything the game throws at you, if you're careful, and stick to the progression... i.e. not raiding tombs with a L3 char

Swing and miss refers to the fact that you hit the target based upon a formula that was based on your weapon skill, along with a couple attributes. This was compared to the evasion that the target did to avoid your attack. The end result was a lot of swinging and a lot of missing, especially at low levels.

leeux

@lordrichter:

Yeah, I know... I was just mentioning in my post that the miss part can easily be avoided, even at the start of a new char.

You just need to chose skills you'll use at the start and Major, and be sure they start at >30

In fact, with certain combinations of race/class there's you can even push that to 50, for some skills (example: Bosmer+Acrobat starts with Marksman=50)

starkerealm

Lord_Draevan wrote: »

Even if ZOS released the numbers, the haters wouldn't believe them, so there's not much point in doing so :P

If the game is still getting updated on a weekly basis, it's safe to say it hasn't failed. Might not have set the world on fire, but it's doing well enough.

Look at SW:TOR for a good example, it's still being called a "failure" by haters... yet it's still active, coming up on 4 years, and it's getting a new expansion pack. People just like to call something a "failure" if they dislike it, no idea why, but there it is.

So, wait, December 2011 was 4 years ago? You're telling me I fell asleep and woke up in 2015?

Nerouyn

lordrichter wrote: »

Like you and @Nerouyn I suspect that it is people trying to flock to the popular places, or away from unpopular places.

In my mind, people who make decisions based on information like that aren't really making decisions. They are letting others make the decisions for them.

That's a very cynical view. Try thinking of it as social intelligence.

A single person can't experience and know everything. There's only so many hours in the day and only so much money in our wallets. So we look at others' reactions to their experiences and use that to make inferences about them.

That's not stupid. That's smart.

Yes, it's not 100% foolproof. If nothing else tastes vary. But unless you have very non-standard tastes more often than not using other peoples' reactions will pay off.

jeevin

Nerouyn wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

Like you and @Nerouyn I suspect that it is people trying to flock to the popular places, or away from unpopular places.

In my mind, people who make decisions based on information like that aren't really making decisions. They are letting others make the decisions for them.

That's a very cynical view. Try thinking of it as social intelligence.

A single person can't experience and know everything. There's only so many hours in the day and only so much money in our wallets. So we look at others' reactions to their experiences and use that to make inferences about them.

That's not stupid. That's smart.

Yes, it's not 100% foolproof. If nothing else tastes vary. But unless you have very non-standard tastes more often than not using other peoples' reactions will pay off.

Agreed. Lets not forget this game deserved a lot of the criticism reviewers leveled at it post launch. When there are a lot of people bemoaning the same game issues would it not be wise to listen to that feedback?

DirkaSnivels

Robocles wrote: »

Four.

Make that five. I'm DLing game now.

Off the topic question - why is the ESO client worse than uplay?

lorien1973

pecheckler wrote: »

Last time I logged in and went to a VR6 area I saw 1 other player in an hour of questing. That is just unacceptable.

I call this a good day, personally. LOL.

I hate when I'm doing a quest or a solo dungeon and someone else wanders in and ruins my experience. :P

Voodoo

...6 months later they are still producing (one of, if not..)the largest semi-monthly updates in the MMO genre. That has to say something towards having a successful revenue stream.

..of course all of these kind of threads are purely nothing but alot of...

Theosis

about

Potato

ers101284b14_ESO

1 Billion Players!!!


Seriously though. Enough to make a profit, enough to continue putting out huge content updates, and more than there was in June. I have met tons of new players needing advice or help who just started. I have also met a lot of players returning. So no matter which way you spin it enough to keep going and enough for ZOS not to be in panic mode.

pecheckler

Resubscribed and played several times this weekend. Simply not enough players. Couldn't do a single dolmen or world boss. Not once did I see another player in a world dungeon. Encountered up to one other player outside of towns at most once per 45 minutes. In town the number of players averaged 4 in bank and 1 at each crafting station. This all in VR zones. Gave up after 20 minutes in a dungeon queue.

These numbers are less than 1/10th of what I saw two months after launch. That population drop game breaking...

Please, PLEASE, let there be cross-platform play. Without an influx of console gamers we will never have enough players to make the game enjoyable again.

hutchinsonhatch

pecheckler wrote: »

The biggest problem is that Zenimax hides this information from players. Other AAA mmo games let that information be freely available, including means to take census.

Which ones do that during the first couple of years?

Divad Zarn

Regarding what i see in game.. About 100-200k, maybe.

Zavus

I'd say 10k

Louis

the sites have been so one sided that most of them have hardly tried to play ESO. this is all bias, i for one am enjoying the game as much as the people that are still currently playing though it may seem some people dont admire the beauty of ESO i admit it may have its flaws here and there but it surely is a magnificent MMo

people should stop comparing this to Single Player games like Skyrim.

Audigy

Lord_Draevan wrote: »

Even if ZOS released the numbers, the haters wouldn't believe them, so there's not much point in doing so :P

If the game is still getting updated on a weekly basis, it's safe to say it hasn't failed. Might not have set the world on fire, but it's doing well enough.

Look at SW:TOR for a good example, it's still being called a "failure" by haters... yet it's still active, coming up on 4 years, and it's getting a new expansion pack. People just like to call something a "failure" if they dislike it, no idea why, but there it is.

SWTOR is a failure and people who realized this are not haters but people with some experience in MMO gaming.

I give you a few things that you might not know yet.

- Thousands of players lost their chars while EA decided to close down all servers than 2-3 selected ones. People with early game access lost their whole progress and were left behind with an empty char that had no name anymore, whole guilds were destroyed in that process.
- EA shipped SWTOR without HD textures, even though those were advertised on screen shots.
- The customer support had no solutions to all the problems players had, instead they were rude in their responses

SWTOR didn't fail and go F2P because of haters but because of the horrible marketing strategy and extremely poor quality assurance.

ESO however is none of what SWTOR was.

ESO has a great community team, very helpful customer support, a well performing game client, HD textures like advertised and all chars are still alive and not lost in Nirvana after moving the servers.

ZO has work to do no doubt but the game is in a much better state than any MMO was in the past 5-6 years at release.

Divad Zarn

Audigy wrote: »

Lord_Draevan wrote: »

Even if ZOS released the numbers, the haters wouldn't believe them, so there's not much point in doing so :P

If the game is still getting updated on a weekly basis, it's safe to say it hasn't failed. Might not have set the world on fire, but it's doing well enough.

Look at SW:TOR for a good example, it's still being called a "failure" by haters... yet it's still active, coming up on 4 years, and it's getting a new expansion pack. People just like to call something a "failure" if they dislike it, no idea why, but there it is.

SWTOR is a failure and people who realized this are not haters but people with some experience in MMO gaming.

I give you a few things that you might not know yet.

- Thousands of players lost their chars while EA decided to close down all servers than 2-3 selected ones. People with early game access lost their whole progress and were left behind with an empty char that had no name anymore, whole guilds were destroyed in that process.
- EA shipped SWTOR without HD textures, even though those were advertised on screen shots.
- The customer support had no solutions to all the problems players had, instead they were rude in their responses

SWTOR didn't fail and go F2P because of haters but because of the horrible marketing strategy and extremely poor quality assurance.

ESO however is none of what SWTOR was.

ESO has a great community team, very helpful customer support, a well performing game client, HD textures like advertised and all chars are still alive and not lost in Nirvana after moving the servers.

ZO has work to do no doubt but the game is in a much better state than any MMO was in the past 5-6 years at release.

Agree, I want to add about WoW, everyone saying that ESO not such great game like wow, but seems like just few remember what WoW was at release time, when for example shamans had more damage with autoattack then paladins with full dps rush, ESO is best MMO with such short date after release and it have great future if things will be right, thats why i still in game besides of i dont have something to do in game and entering game like 15 minutes per day, keeping my sub up to give others hope

Kego

You can`t compete ESO to WoW at launch cause both games had different approaches.

ESO wants to be a Solo RPG with low interaction between players up to VR1 and since the VR changes up to VR 14.

WoW released at a time where MMOs was games that was only played in Groups. Playing Solo? Well gtfo to Offline Games.

WoW had a lot of Group Content at Release be it Instanced Dungeons or the Elite Group Areas in each zone.
End game even more showed that Blizzards intention was a classic Trinity where Healer and Tanks did no DMG and DDs couldn`t survive agains a single Elite Monster.

This was kept until BC Release where Blizzard moved more to Singleplayer experience during leveling.

JKorr

lordrichter wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

I still play Morrowind.

Honestly, I cannot play Morrowind anymore. The same goes for Oblivion. The TES line has advanced, and lost, with each iteration of game. Because each game is only connected by Lore, I find the older versions of the game to be difficult to play.

I always hated the "swing and a miss" combat from Morrowind. Even though I like the other parts of the game, now all I can think of is "swing and a miss" when I play.

I hated the monster scaling in Oblivion, and I really hate the grinding through the main quest to close all the gates. Now when I play I start getting technical about it. I keep my level low to prevent monster scaling and do the main quest at level 3 or 4 just to keep the monsters easy to kill.

Skyrim is still current, but it introduced that horrid constellation menu. I am also required to use UI mods to get away from the TV oriented GUI layout that still does not work well with a mouse.

[sarcasm] I am most excited that ESO gets a version of the constellation menu when the Champion System rolls out. [/sarcasm] I was hoping that guy would stay at BGS and not transfer to ZOS.

JKorr wrote: »

I guess I'm older than the players who make their decisions about what they like based on whether or not other people like it too.

No one has really answered the question I posed as to what decision people in the forum are making that requires they know subscription and active player numbers. Like you and @Nerouyn I suspect that it is people trying to flock to the popular places, or away from unpopular places.

In my mind, people who make decisions based on information like that aren't really making decisions. They are letting others make the decisions for them.

A lot of the games involve personal preferences. I can still play Morrowind. It is its own kind of creature. It was, for me, the first ES game I've played, so I will probably always keep it.

Oblivion, for me, was both good and annoying. They *really* should have done the scaling thing better. Having the bandits wearing glass and mauraders wearing allegedly rare daedric armor at high levels was bad. I could deal with the creatures, but the npcs irritated the heck out of me. I still appreciated the story and thecharacters, though.

The constellation menu didn't bother me. I was more mildly annoyed with the map, actually. Not to the point its stopped me from playing, however.

Some people do base what they like, watch, or listen to on how popular it is with others. I guess that could be why numbers are important for them. As long as the numbers are good enough for Zenimax to continue to work on content and keep the game running, I don't care whether other people are playing or not. My guilds are still here; people I play with are still here, I intend to stay for the foreseeable future.

Blade_07

LeoRJBrazil wrote: »

I have been reading a lot of bad/critical evaluations about ESO in the specialized games website but I think the game is pretty much fun and entertainment, in a complex game scenario and char developments. Just out of curiosity, anyone knows or have an idea how many active players ESO has up to date?

Well, I can say there has not been a lot of players on cuz most of the VR zones are almost empty. Cant even do the group dungeons cuz there is almost no players in the zone. Sucks because there is content I wanna experience but cant do to there not enough people around! >..>

Elsonso

Blade_07 wrote: »

LeoRJBrazil wrote: »

I have been reading a lot of bad/critical evaluations about ESO in the specialized games website but I think the game is pretty much fun and entertainment, in a complex game scenario and char developments. Just out of curiosity, anyone knows or have an idea how many active players ESO has up to date?

Well, I can say there has not been a lot of players on cuz most of the VR zones are almost empty. Cant even do the group dungeons cuz there is almost no players in the zone. Sucks because there is content I wanna experience but cant do to there not enough people around! >..>

I don't think that this is due to an extremely low population of active players.

I think this is a lack of design on the part of the end-game. All of those VR players are out there. I see them constantly in the leveling zones.

When Zenimax decided to reuse the Alliance leveling zones and relabel the content "Veteran" they ended up spreading the Veteran players all across Tamriel. Now players in an Alliance can be found in all three leveling paths instead of just one. When you factor that in with individual tendencies regarding grouping and solo play, along with different play times and a broken LFG, you end up where we are today.

One of the guilds that I am in routinely organizes excursions into various Veteran level content. Right now, this seems to be the way to go. We will see what happens later today when Update 5 is out.

wafcatb14_ESO

I don`t think they have more than 20k-30k player per faction per server ,

So 20k-30k EP, 20K-30k AD, 20K-30k DC on NA server , and the same on EU server.

So around 120k - 180k total still playing , that may go up after 5 and 6 updates or down if it screws up the game, like the Lightning patch did months ago .

infraction2008b16_ESO

Audigy wrote: »

Lord_Draevan wrote: »

Even if ZOS released the numbers, the haters wouldn't believe them, so there's not much point in doing so :P

If the game is still getting updated on a weekly basis, it's safe to say it hasn't failed. Might not have set the world on fire, but it's doing well enough.

Look at SW:TOR for a good example, it's still being called a "failure" by haters... yet it's still active, coming up on 4 years, and it's getting a new expansion pack. People just like to call something a "failure" if they dislike it, no idea why, but there it is.

SWTOR is a failure and people who realized this are not haters but people with some experience in MMO gaming.

I give you a few things that you might not know yet.

- Thousands of players lost their chars while EA decided to close down all servers than 2-3 selected ones. People with early game access lost their whole progress and were left behind with an empty char that had no name anymore, whole guilds were destroyed in that process.
- EA shipped SWTOR without HD textures, even though those were advertised on screen shots.
- The customer support had no solutions to all the problems players had, instead they were rude in their responses

SWTOR didn't fail and go F2P because of haters but because of the horrible marketing strategy and extremely poor quality assurance.

ESO however is none of what SWTOR was.

ESO has a great community team, very helpful customer support, a well performing game client, HD textures like advertised and all chars are still alive and not lost in Nirvana after moving the servers.

ZO has work to do no doubt but the game is in a much better state than any MMO was in the past 5-6 years at release.

Swtor "was" a failure due to the fact there wasn't much worth the sub for at launch. The game now is much better since it went F2P, population is healthy, plenty of guilds still standing unlike this game.

Dalexx

pecheckler wrote: »

Resubscribed and played several times this weekend. Simply not enough players. Couldn't do a single dolmen or world boss. Not once did I see another player in a world dungeon.

Oddly, I thought the game was completely dead too while leveling in V5-9 zones. So I started a new Character and noticed the starter 1-20 are crammed back and actually turned off Zone chat because of the non-stop streaming.

I'd say that the fairly empty VR zones are mostly because it seems most everyone has packed up and moved on to grinding in Craglorn. Never seems to be a problem finding a grind group

I don't like questing and so it's really tough to continue questing when you can power level ranks faster by just running around with 10-15 others killing the same World bosses over and over with half the effort.

In other words, we're human... and we're descended from pack animals, so we want to be members of the pack. The Internet is a "virtual pack" and in games we get to be the wolves bringing down the buffalo instead of nerdy "just your average human beings"...

Isn't the point of a MMO to be full of people? Or at least enough people that you can do various things whenever? Coming from a semi dead server in WoW, I can see why someone would care about many Active players a game has and how that would affect their decision. MMORPGs, tend to be time sinks (not counting money) Why invest in something that appears to be dying?

Battlefield 4 is an good example. It went from having dozens of severs to choose from to something having only 2-3 servers, often playing maps or game modes I'm not interested in. Unless it was 75% off, I can't recommend that kind of game to anyone.