Elder Scrolls Online passes World of Warcraft in active players

Wing

and I guess in house they are pretty upset about it.

*this is all inside sources and leaks with no official statements, obviously*

the went under 1mil right as ESO announced over 1 mil. I guess they also consider ESO to be their main competitor (they do mention FF14 but still consider ESO to be the direct competition)

supposedly they are going to level squish down to 60 and scale world content to this in a similar fashion to ESO. as they keep making their vast quantity of content obsolete every expansion / update. this is a huge downside compared to an MMO like ESO were all of its content is relevant. WoW has more content (as well it should) being the older game, however have actually negated their lifespans benefit of having all this content with a dated model of updates and expansions increasing levels and introducing higher level gear.

(note you see this same problem in games like Destiny 2, where they try to sell new content by making all previous content irrelevant and it ends up hurting their game as a whole)

so in reality ESO has more actionable and relevant content compared to WoW, they see this and plan on trying to fix it by adopting a similar system to ESO.

it took them 15 years but they finally discovered horizontal progression


source links, scroll down to wow
https://kiwifarms.net/attachments/blizzard-png.819183/

Bouldercleave

Interesting - it sounds like WoW is finally starting to reach its "end cycle". To be honest, I'm surprised it has taken so long.

In full disclosure - I have played WoW for a total of about 3 hours. I could never get past the graphics. It was always too cartoonish for me.

I'm a bit shocked to hear that they have gone under 1 mil active players. That is a gigantic amount from their prime.

Eraldus

No, this is a lie, didn't you heard about the 50 or so people saying ESO is dead, while they await for their dungeon queue?

Wing

Bouldercleave wrote: »

Interesting - it sounds like WoW is finally starting to reach its "end cycle". To be honest, I'm surprised it has taken so long.

In full disclosure - I have played WoW for a total of about 3 hours. I could never get past the graphics. It was always too cartoonish for me.

I'm a bit shocked to hear that they have gone under 1 mil active players. That is a gigantic amount from their prime.

I forget at what point they quit showing sub numbers (it was ages ago) but they have been on the decline for years, it was more about slowing it down then trying to bring in new players.

they refuse to drop the sub model. if they had a similar model to ESO or GW2 they might see an increase. because really the people still playing wow are only ever going to play wow, and will never move to another game.

Wing

Eraldus wrote: »

No, this is a lie, didn't you heard about the 50 or so people saying ESO is dead, while they await for their dungeon queue?

yeah ESO has some architecture to sort out, but they seem to know that and are working on it. ESO is still growing and making money hand over fist so I have no doubt they will invest in it to make it run better.

Agobi

The game that shall not be named has had a good run I think...still all things ends .....



/philosophy

Veinblood1965

Eraldus wrote: »

No, this is a lie, didn't you heard about the 50 or so people saying ESO is dead, while they await for their dungeon queue?

You have that backwards my good sir, it was posted as 50 or so people died of old age while waiting on their dungeon queue.

mystkldrgnb14_ESO

Bouldercleave wrote: »

they refuse to drop the sub model. if they had a similar model to ESO or GW2 they might see an increase. because really the people still playing wow are only ever going to play wow, and will never move to another game.

I agree with you on Blizz needing to drop the "only by full subscription" model if they want to be competitive in the bigger F2P/B2P market.

But the last sentence is beyond stupid. I play not only ESO and WOW (and pay a sub for both, both current) but also two other MMOS.

I know tons of WoW players who stopped playing WoW and play other MMOs. I know tons of WoW players playing WoW AND other MMOS - including this one.

bluebird

Got any actual proof for that? Or a link to the article or 'inside source' or wherever that info comes from? Because it's a long-established fact that ESO like to bloat their statistics. '1mil active players' for ESO might mean that somebody opened the Launcher on Steam and didn't log in, it would still count as an active player. Or if somebody logged in for one day at the start of the event, realized that there is nothing new to do and never logged back they'd be counted as an 'active player'.

Because being an 'active player' doesn't mean anything. It can be free to play people who log in to PvP only to ragequit after 10 minutes of not getting anywhere because of lag. It might be people who log in in their house for 5 seconds, collect the daily reward, then log out. In WoW you actually have subscribers which translate into revenue and thus success directly. Subscriber stats are still not meaningful to find out how many players actually play the game, but that's doubly true for ESO. Besides, they literally launched a new patch last week so it's hard to imagine that they'd be at their lowest right after a major content update.

Wing

bluebird wrote: »

Got any actual proof for that? Or a link to the article or 'inside source' or wherever that info comes from? Because it's a long-established fact that ESO like to bloat their statistics. '1mil active players' for ESO might mean that somebody opened the Launcher on Steam and didn't log in, it would still count as an active player. Or if somebody logged in for one day at the start of the event, realized that there is nothing new to do and never logged back they'd be counted as an 'active player'.

Because being an 'active player' doesn't mean anything. It can be free to play people who log in to PvP only to ragequit after 10 minutes of not getting anywhere because of lag. It might be people who log in in their house for 5 seconds, collect the daily reward, then log out. In WoW you actually have subscribers which translate into revenue and thus success directly. Subscriber stats are still not meaningful to find out how many players actually play the game, but that's doubly true for ESO. Besides, they literally launched a new patch last week so it's hard to imagine that they'd be at their lowest right after a major content update.

https://kiwifarms.net/attachments/blizzard-png.819183/

they go into details on all blizzard projects, scroll down to world of Warcraft.

MartiniDaniels

Eraldus wrote: »

No, this is a lie, didn't you heard about the 50 or so people saying ESO is dead, while they await for their dungeon queue?

Nobody said it is dead, it is broken due to influx of newbies for Elsweyr and insufficient hardware to handle it. And that internal sources are unclear, maybe it's 1 mil player simultaneously online in WoW in comparison to 1 mil logged during the day or week in ESO or whatever.

You can make simple calculation from trade spots numbers. I just recently evaluated number of guild traders in major points (i.e. where traders are in groups of 4-7) and it was only 140 points. Even if all guilds are fully packed and all members are active and no player are members of several guilds, it leads to only 140*500=70k players at PC EU. Ok, let's add backwater traders and round up this sum to 100k. 100k players max is PC EU trading capacity. Since any active player wants to sell his drops, and there is no shortage of free places for players who are ready to sell for at least 20-30-50k per week, you may deduct population of active players.

KerinKor

Wing wrote: »

and I guess in house they are pretty upset about it.

*this is all inside sources and leaks with no official statements, obviously*

the went under 1mil right as ESO announced over 1 mil. I guess they also consider ESO to be their main competitor (they do mention FF14 but still consider ESO to be the direct competition)

supposedly they are going to level squish down to 60 and scale world content to this in a similar fashion to ESO. as they keep making their vast quantity of content obsolete every expansion / update. this is a huge downside compared to an MMO like ESO were all of its content is relevant. WoW has more content (as well it should) being the older game, however have actually negated their lifespans benefit of having all this content with a dated model of updates and expansions increasing levels and introducing higher level gear.

(note you see this same problem in games like Destiny 2, where they try to sell new content by making all previous content irrelevant and it ends up hurting their game as a whole)

so in reality ESO has more actionable and relevant content compared to WoW, they see this and plan on trying to fix it by adopting a similar system to ESO.

it took them 15 years but they finally discovered horizontal progression

Clearly you know little about modern WOW .. level-scaling has been around since Legion and was expanded throughout most of the content with BFA.

Also, level scaling DESTROYS the RPG aspect of the game for many, like me, it totally eliminates the sense of 'power progression' when the same mudcrab that killed you in three hits at level 1 does the same at 50/810 .. being able to go everywhere at level 1 removes a lot of insentive to level-up and be able to see the areas where you get one-shotted at level 1.

Your comment about 'horizontal progression' also shows your ignorance of that game, characters themselves haven't progressed AT ALL since they hit level 100 in WOD, all 'progression' in terms of skills/abilities/etc. since then has been from gear which get replaced next expansion, the raising of level from 100 to 120 simply bumped attribute numbers there's not a single new skill obtained.

You try to distinguish between WOW's 'expansions' and ESO's 'chapters' ... you fail to do so, they're the same unless that doesn't fit your agenda in which case you try to make a case they're not.

I'm not at all saying WOW is better then ESO, modern WOW in the form of BFA is as bad as the game has ever been, but ESO is not as different and you'd like to think.

UrQuan

While it's clear that WoW has lost a lot of players since BFA and it's clear that quite a few of them have come to ESO, I wouldn't believe that ESO has surpassed WoW without actual proof.

I mean, I clearly believe that ESO is a better game (hence why I've been playing it steadily since launch), and that despite certain issues it's a much better game now than it was at launch, and it's obvious that the active player base is large... And frankly, I agree with the points about how ESO's current level-scaling makes sure that even old content is relevant, while WoW's model means that even though they have more content, they have less content that people will actually play.

But I'd need to either see hard numbers or some very well sourced proxies before I'd be comfortable with the conclusion that ESO has more active players than WoW. Especially if we're taking into account classic WoW (that's what they're calling it right?) as well as whatever patch they just released for the main game.

bluebird

Wing wrote: »

bluebird wrote: »

Got any actual proof for that? Or a link to the article or 'inside source' or wherever that info comes from? Because it's a long-established fact that ESO like to bloat their statistics. '1mil active players' for ESO might mean that somebody opened the Launcher on Steam and didn't log in, it would still count as an active player. Or if somebody logged in for one day at the start of the event, realized that there is nothing new to do and never logged back they'd be counted as an 'active player'.

Because being an 'active player' doesn't mean anything. It can be free to play people who log in to PvP only to ragequit after 10 minutes of not getting anywhere because of lag. It might be people who log in in their house for 5 seconds, collect the daily reward, then log out. In WoW you actually have subscribers which translate into revenue and thus success directly. Subscriber stats are still not meaningful to find out how many players actually play the game, but that's doubly true for ESO. Besides, they literally launched a new patch last week so it's hard to imagine that they'd be at their lowest right after a major content update.

https://kiwifarms.net/attachments/blizzard-png.819183/
they go into details on all blizzard projects, scroll down to world of Warcraft.

Thanks for the info. Though all I see is an Anonymous post allegedly from a disgruntled employee that was fired. And even if they are legit and not lying, clearly their information isn't up to date since they talk about possible changes that might come out in 8.2 (even though 8.2 launched a week ago and if somebody has recently worked on it they would know what it includes and what it doesn't, it was already released to the public for testing 3 months ago).

Edit: Forgot to add, but the 'leak' does indeed talk about active subcribers not users as I assumed earlier. WoW also has a f2p version (up to level 20) but they're clearly not including that because it's a useless metric that generates 0 revenue. ESO is f2p so their 'users' are meaningless, let's see ESO+ sub numbers and then we can compare that to the WoW numbers, until then this whole discussion is disingenous. (And before someone mentions that f2p players may be generating money through the crown store, WoW has a store that sells mounts and pets and ingame character services too, on top of the subscription, so that point is moot.)

Delparis

I think there is a lot of *** in this

i only cares about numbers and till now FF14 is doing really well

https://ffxivcensus.com/

Wing

KerinKor wrote: »

Wing wrote: »

and I guess in house they are pretty upset about it.

*this is all inside sources and leaks with no official statements, obviously*

the went under 1mil right as ESO announced over 1 mil. I guess they also consider ESO to be their main competitor (they do mention FF14 but still consider ESO to be the direct competition)

supposedly they are going to level squish down to 60 and scale world content to this in a similar fashion to ESO. as they keep making their vast quantity of content obsolete every expansion / update. this is a huge downside compared to an MMO like ESO were all of its content is relevant. WoW has more content (as well it should) being the older game, however have actually negated their lifespans benefit of having all this content with a dated model of updates and expansions increasing levels and introducing higher level gear.

(note you see this same problem in games like Destiny 2, where they try to sell new content by making all previous content irrelevant and it ends up hurting their game as a whole)

so in reality ESO has more actionable and relevant content compared to WoW, they see this and plan on trying to fix it by adopting a similar system to ESO.

it took them 15 years but they finally discovered horizontal progression

Clearly you know little about modern WOW .. level-scaling has been around since Legion and was expanded throughout most of the content with BFA.

Also, level scaling DESTROYS the RPG aspect of the game for many, like me, it totally eliminates the sense of 'power progression' when the same mudcrab that killed you in three hits at level 1 does the same at 50/810 .. being able to go everywhere at level 1 removes a lot of insentive to level-up and be able to see the areas where you get one-shotted at level 1.

Your comment about 'horizontal progression' also shows your ignorance of that game, character themselves haven't progress AT ALL since they hit level 100 in WOD, all 'progression' since then has been from gear .. the raising of level from 100 to 120 simply bumped attribute numbers there's not a single new skill obtained.

You try to distinguish between WOW's 'expansions' and ESO's 'chapters' ... you fail to do so, they're the same unless that doesn't fit your agenda in which case you try to make a case they're not.

I'm not at all saying WOW is better then ESO, modern WOW in the form of BFA is as bad as the game has ever been, but ESO is not as different and you'd like to think.

and there not as close as you would like us to think.

therift

UrQuan wrote: »

While it's clear that WoW has lost a lot of players since BFA and it's clear that quite a few of them have come to ESO, I wouldn't believe that ESO has surpassed WoW without actual proof.

I mean, I clearly believe that ESO is a better game (hence why I've been playing it steadily since launch), and that despite certain issues it's a much better game now than it was at launch, and it's obvious that the active player base is large... And frankly, I agree with the points about how ESO's current level-scaling makes sure that even old content is relevant, while WoW's model means that even though they have more content, they have less content that people will actually play.

But I'd need to either see hard numbers or some very well sourced proxies before I'd be comfortable with the conclusion that ESO has more active players than WoW. Especially if we're taking into account classic WoW (that's what they're calling it right?) as well as whatever patch they just released for the main game.

Agree with this well-reasoned statement.

MartiniDaniels

Wing wrote: »

bluebird wrote: »

Got any actual proof for that? Or a link to the article or 'inside source' or wherever that info comes from? Because it's a long-established fact that ESO like to bloat their statistics. '1mil active players' for ESO might mean that somebody opened the Launcher on Steam and didn't log in, it would still count as an active player. Or if somebody logged in for one day at the start of the event, realized that there is nothing new to do and never logged back they'd be counted as an 'active player'.

Because being an 'active player' doesn't mean anything. It can be free to play people who log in to PvP only to ragequit after 10 minutes of not getting anywhere because of lag. It might be people who log in in their house for 5 seconds, collect the daily reward, then log out. In WoW you actually have subscribers which translate into revenue and thus success directly. Subscriber stats are still not meaningful to find out how many players actually play the game, but that's doubly true for ESO. Besides, they literally launched a new patch last week so it's hard to imagine that they'd be at their lowest right after a major content update.

https://kiwifarms.net/attachments/blizzard-png.819183/

they go into details on all blizzard projects, scroll down to world of Warcraft.

"Starcraft 2 is dead" lol. Meanwhile popular SC2 youtubers even on non-English languages receive more views/like/stream viewers for daily video then worldwide ESO youtubers... "Hearthstone is dead". Lol. What is ES:Legends then? 100 times dead probably, though I played Legends for 3 last days, like 100 matches and no single time opponent was repeated.
"OW is dying". This is simply one big LOL. I logged in it couple weeks ago just to check how things are and it was working amiably and flawlessly like before, returning to ESO was like pain in terms of responsiveness, lag and speed. If ESO had OW graphics and network code it would be probably best game on the market indeed, but unfortunately I need to turn off EVERYTHING possible in graphics settins on 1080Ti to have more or less stable FPS in PVP and trials.

KerinKor

Wing wrote: »

and I guess in house they are pretty upset about it.

Yes they are .. but it's not because ESO is growing by any meaningful numbers, it's because WOW's player-base has crashed and they're now hoping 'Classic' will save them.

KerinKor

Wing wrote: »

and there not as close as you would like us to think.

Core WOW: a phat lewt grind to run dunegons to get more phat lewt to run raids once the story is completed.
Core ESO: a phat lewt grind to run dunegons to get more phat lewt to run raids once the story is completed.

Same for every expansion/chapter ... very similar if you take your blinkers off I suggest.

Oh yes, to the OP's comment about 'horizontal progression' .. the CP system is NOT such a system, your character gets ZERO new skills, abilities or powers from CPs, they're entirely passive boosts and some non-combat buffs like gathering speed etc.

My character that hit 50 before Unlimited, naked, is no more powerful and knows no more skills now, thus he hasn't 'progressed' in 4 1/2 years!

To that extend ESO post-50 is no more progression than WOW post-120.

Wildberryjack

KerinKor wrote: »

Wing wrote: »

and I guess in house they are pretty upset about it.

Yes they are .. but it's not because ESO is growing by any meaningful numbers, it's because WOW's player-base has crashed and they're now hoping 'Classic' will save them.

^So much this. I'd be shocked if retail WoW got another patch this year. They are relying on Classic to save their butts.

ChunkyCat

ESO wins. Wooo, let’s celebrate, nerds!

What_In_Tarnation

By reading the comment here that I'm certainly sure the source is from 4chan. I would suggest you all read the whole article, you'll probably find out there're many bs in it.

bluebird

KerinKor wrote: »

Wing wrote: »

and there not as close as you would like us to think.

Core WOW: a phat lewt grind to run dunegons to get more phat lewt to run raids once the story is completed.
Core ESO: a phat lewt grind to run dunegons to get more phat lewt to run raids once the story is completed.

Same for every expansion/chapter ... very similar if you take your blinkers off I suggest.

Oh yes, to the OP's comment about 'horizontal progression' .. the CP system is NOT such a system, your character gets ZERO new skills, abilities or powers from CPs, they're entirely passive boosts and some non-combat buffs like gathering speed etc.

My character that hit 50 before Unlimited, naked, is no more powerful and knows no more skills now, thus he hasn't 'progressed' in 4 1/2 years!

To that extend ESO post-50 is no more progression than WOW post-120.

Yeah, WoW and ESO are pretty similar in their progression tbh. ESO does absolutely have vertical (NOT horizontal) progression in CP and gear. A cp810 player with BiS trial gear is more powerful than a cp810 player with crafted gear and certainly more powerful than a cp160 player in literally any gear. That's a vertical power progression. If ESO didn't add more powerful item sets to their new dungeons and trials, there would be no reason to get those items - just as there is less reason to grind cp now that they stopped increasing the cap every patch like they used to.

Apart from getting all your skills and talents unlocked at max level (same in ESO and WoW), ESO has raw cp stats (which WoW gives players through ilvls) and WoW even has extra max level skills on top of those (active skills and passive synergies with your class spells in Azerite traits and essences). So ESO progression isn't any less vertical, but WoW's progression could arguably be considered more relevant.

Also, story zone scaling is absolutely no progression, it's RP fluff. And story zones in ESO aren't any more relevant than old zones in WoW. I can go out in the world with my 700+ cp character and annihilate everything, but I can do the quests for the story. That's the same in WoW where I can smash my way through old story zones for the story or for achievements or rep or mounts or whatever.

Sure ESO has variety, with its leveling zones scaling up to level 50 (they do NOT scale with you even up to cp160, let alone cp810 and the power difference between a fresh 50 and a cp810 is so significant you might as well call them separate levels entirely like WoW does), but WoW also introduced leveling zone scaling, only in brackets (1-60 zones scale to 60, 70-80 zones scale to 80, 85-90 zones scale to 90, etc.).

And when you actually look at the zones, it certainly doesn't make ESO look all that great. WoW has 45 leveling zones in its 1-60 bracket alone while ESO has 32 in total (and before someone tells me that Chapter zones are huge and should count twice, 32 includes minimaps like Bal Foyen and Bleakrock). Not to say that quantity is better than quality, but with several expansions worth of zones that all scale within their level bracket, WoW has 97 questing zones so players have a lot more new paths to choose from while in ESO you'll find yourself running through the same zones after you make your 4th alt or so.

That is not to say that WoW doesn't have its flaws, but misinformation and hearsay don't really make ESO look better. I'd rather praise ESO for its actual achievements (immersive fully voiced storylines with choices) rather than try to criticize WoW on false premises (both games have heavily vertical not horizontal progression). There are heaps of content to do both while leveling and at endgame, and it's quite telling that ESO never talks about their subscriber number, while all these 'WoW is dying posts never look at their f2p playerbase. So I have to agree that this thread is rather pointless and ESO isn't all that different, nor is it doing better than WoW.

Linaleah

I would be VERY careful about taking anonymous leaks as any sort of reliable information. the only thing that leak has that has any sort of actual confirmation is a level squish. and that is because people have been receiving official surveys as to how they would feel about it, and there was official discussion on twitch about it, apparently https://clips.twitch.tv/AmorphousWrongBarracudaNotATK

everything else ... eh. could be true, could be complete fabrication. not something to take as gospel

MaxJrFTW

I was a long time WoW player and active reader of MMO champion(old habits die hard). Not once has one of these "leaks" turned out to be true, and every years there's half a dozen of them.

Only an idiot would believe ESO has a larger active playerbase than WoW. Just look at twitch and youtube. There's wow videos with 100k within a day of release, there's maybe one ESO youtuber getting 10k views within a day. On twitch ESO streamers struggle to get 100 viewers, while on primetime there's 20+ wow streamers with 1k+ viewers.

valeriiya

The bots shouldn't count towards the ESO numbers

Gandrhulf_Harbard

MaxJrFTW wrote: »

Only an idiot would believe ESO has a larger active playerbase than WoW. Just look at twitch and youtube.

^ This.

Reality hits hard.


All The Best

JKorr

Delparis wrote: »

I think there is a lot of *** in this

i only cares about numbers and till now FF14 is doing really well

https://ffxivcensus.com/

Going by your other thread you won't be happy until you go back to your happy place. Bonus- you'll make the numbers even better.....

Vlad9425

LOL never believed the "1 Million active players" statement and never will. 95% of the people I see in game are the same usernames I've been seeing for years.

wolf486

Just looking at Twitch streaming and viewership alone, I say this isn't anywhere close to being true.
WoW is nearly always a top 8 game, currently with 71.4K. ESO lately has more often than not been below Final Fantasy and BDO. The only reason ESO is so high currently is 10K watching ESO Live stream.

If WoW dumped the mandatory monthly sub I'd jump on board with it. Actually, same with FF.