How Many players in ESO currently?

AlexDougherty · September 2014

magnusnet wrote: »

Aett_Thorn wrote: »

magnusnet wrote: »

http://connachttribune.ie/galway-jobs-blow-300-gone-software-firm/

300 people fired by ZOS from Customer support.

(*) (*) Game is going peachy (*) (*)

Sigh. You know that this has been discussed and disregarded as an actually useful bit of info since it was first posted back in June, right? These people were hired to be customer support for the initial release, and the console release, which got pushed back. Why would you keep people on for the console release when it got pushed back?

SUuuuuuuurreeeee they hired them in APRIL on 6 months contracts. The game launched in April.

Releasing a game to console isn't done in 1 month or even 2. You gotta make the DVDs, ship them, get them to the stores. When they Hired those people, they already knew console was delayed.

Please tell me more stories .

Read up about that one, they really were hired for the console version, which was supposed to launch about the same time as the PC version. The delays were unexpected, just read the old threads about it.

Oh and sarcasm only works when you are right.

TehMagnus · September 2014

Neizir wrote: »

magnusnet wrote: »

Neizir wrote: »

ESO currently has around 800k subscribers, if a report from a reputed source in the industry is anything to go by.
Wildstar, on the other hand, has about 400k.

Link? .

eurogamer.net/articles/2014-07-18-elder-scrolls-online-has-775-000-subscribers-report
These were the subscribers in the month of June, so it makes sense they'd be at 800k now in September.

Now Wildstar, on the other hand...

https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/108290-wildstar-population-ncsoft-2nd-quarter-2014-earnings-report/

"It's not explicitly clear where the figure comes from but SuperData's MMO earnings data is compiled from "the monthly spending of 36.9 million digital gamers, worldwide, collected from developers, publisher and payment service providers". Presumably the ESO figure comes from the same place"

Once again, only a vague explanation about where the numbers come from and they even removed that data from their website (look at their website, search it, the data is gone). Probably happened after they realized that the numbers "collected from developers, publisher" (aka ZOS) where pure bs.

TehMagnus · September 2014

AlexDougherty wrote: »

magnusnet wrote: »

BBSooner wrote: »

magnusnet wrote: »

BBSooner wrote: »

magnusnet wrote: »

BBSooner wrote: »

So wait, a 3rd party counter said 750k + were playing (to which multiple people raced to the forums to post about). Which 3rd party are we supposed to trust again? Or do we just choose the one that fits our rhetoric and tout it as infallible.

The 3rd party who took numbers out of nowhere, refused to say where they got their numbers and everybody said you couldn't trust?

At least here we know how the numbers are retrieved: Hours played.

Hours played on 'raptr'?!? Are niche products with minute customer bases platforms for evidence regarding total population now? Pick your poison with 3rd party numbers, I'm sure yours is the one that's true ... lol.

If you care to read, there are also Xfire and Steam statistics (2k players peak last week xD) which all concur with Raptr's analysis. Moreover, League of Legends is (or at least was since DOTA 2 is catching up) the most played MMOG in the world and WOW the most player MMORPG which is shown in Raptr's statistics (So I guess the niche 3rd party product that gives statistics based on the user's playtime isn't totally wrong?).

Do YOU have any kind of survey that explains how they did their count that shows TESO having a healthy and high number of players?

I do not, numbers not taken from the source - especially with regards to how fragmented your evidence proves the process is - are unreliable at best. Like I said, grab whatever sources you need to spin your rhetoric, you can even bury your head when you come across the high counts, just don't fool yourself into thinking that "evidence" gives you a legitimate idea of how well or how poorly the game is doing.

It's not unreliable, once again it's just like a survey. You take small amounts of players from all horizonts and see what they play and how long. Numbers show that most popular games are on top and TESO is at thee bottom if even present.

NUMBERS from a % of players.

Not Denial bla bla without any proof.

Actually it is unreliable, yes I get that it's a survey, and they use proportional maths (not actual terminology but it's been over twenty years since I used correct terms, I remember the maths though). But the problem is they make assumptions, that's were it becomes unreliable, ie you can't rely on it for any sort of decision.

Even if they get the proportion of players using it right, which is hard to do in the first place (because nobody tracks the numbers of people who don't use it), it's still a shot in the dark about the rest.

Plain fact statistics are unreliable, no matter what the source or who does them.

Mayhaps, but they show a trend, and the trend doesn't favor the people who say there's a lot of subs.

AlexDougherty · September 2014

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

The only area where we have anything close to hard numbers is Cyrodiil. Each campaign is phase-less, and has a hard cap of 500 players per faction. Six campaigns per server, twelve in total, means a maximum of 18,000 players can be accommodated to do PvP in Cyrodiil. I have never seen all servers chock full for all factions at once. They can be pretty crowded, but if there was a clear and immediate need for more campaigns, they would have added them.

Now, how large is the portion of players doing PvP, and how many are mostly doing PvE? We have to leave that to guesswork, but if 1 in 20 thinks Cyrodiil is worth their time and all the others are doing PvE and trials, the game could have around 500,000 players. On the other hand, if the number of people doing PvP is comparable to the number of people doing PvE, we are looking at a game with only 50,000 active players

ZOS knows the true numbers, and could easily provide us with the exact number of unique logins for the past week if they thought it would do them any good. The true numbers probably aren't all that impressive, but that is pure speculation on my part.

Well some of us don't do PVP, so even those figures are the whole story.

But yeah the game probably isn't doing as good as it should, but probably not as bad as some are saying either.

ZOS knows that once you release figures you have to continue releasing figures, and in the long run it can only ever lead to negative PR. For example every time a new MMO comes out, every existing MMO has a slump in people logging in and even in subscriptions. A few weeks in, and most of those subs come back, but the figures paint a darker picture.

Sallington · September 2014

What this thread fails to point out is that you can have a thriving game and community with "only" 50k subscribers.

This is by far the best MMO I've been a part of since SWG.

TehMagnus · September 2014

AlexDougherty wrote: »

magnusnet wrote: »

Aett_Thorn wrote: »

magnusnet wrote: »

http://connachttribune.ie/galway-jobs-blow-300-gone-software-firm/

300 people fired by ZOS from Customer support.

(*) (*) Game is going peachy (*) (*)

Sigh. You know that this has been discussed and disregarded as an actually useful bit of info since it was first posted back in June, right? These people were hired to be customer support for the initial release, and the console release, which got pushed back. Why would you keep people on for the console release when it got pushed back?

SUuuuuuuurreeeee they hired them in APRIL on 6 months contracts. The game launched in April.

Releasing a game to console isn't done in 1 month or even 2. You gotta make the DVDs, ship them, get them to the stores. When they Hired those people, they already knew console was delayed.

Please tell me more stories .

Read up about that one, they really were hired for the console version, which was supposed to launch about the same time as the PC version. The delays were unexpected, just read the old threads about it.

Oh and sarcasm only works when you are right.

Time doesn't match. They hired them the same month the game came out. When you're 6 months behind on development you don't realize it just 1 month after supposed launch, you have burndown charts of #hours to work and #hours of work. You don't hire 300 people on 6 months contract to just realize 3 weeks later you don't actually need them because oh god, the dev is 6 months late.

Just plain excuses to avoid admitting they thought they'd need a lot more people to work customer service because they planed to have many more subs.

There where only 500K Hard Copy sales for the game a couple of months after launch and digital copy ratio is usually 4:1 which means ~2 million people bought the game (when ~5 million people participated in beta).

ZOS clearly thought the game would be a big hit with 5 million+ players and hired accordingly.

Sarcasm was justified. I work in IT project management & development, only idiots wouldn't realize they're 6 months behind on their development and start hiring people to lay them of 3 weeks later.

Talrenos · September 2014

Sallington wrote: »

What this thread fails to point out is that you can have a thriving game and community with "only" 50k subscribers.

This is by far the best MMO I've been a part of since SWG.

That's not saying much. SWG, really?

And what community do you mean? I have not found one as of yet. I see guilds where no one knows anyone, guilds of convenience for selling stuff. As far as a community here, well...

radiostar · September 2014

Talrenos wrote: »

No I have no idea how many players

Pseudonym · September 2014

I have to say, I love your math. You have absolutely no solid numbers. You've made up every single source of numbers in that post.

You do realise that there are more than 40 cities in this game, each having different phases, then (where the majority of players are) there's Cyrodiil; which for each given Campaign there's a certain limit for each alliance (which is met each night)

The game isn't dying. Stop fear mongering and play the game already. If there were as many active subscribers as you've estimated in your post, they'd have shut the servers down weeks ago.

AlexDougherty · September 2014

magnusnet wrote: »

Sarcasm was justified. I work in IT project management & development, only idiots wouldn't realize they're 6 months behind on their development and start hiring people to lay them of 3 weeks later.

That's Management for you, at least according to Dilbert.

They were hired by HR, the development teams apparently didn't talk to HR to tell them delays were happening.

Talrenos · September 2014

I have had the same type of conversation on other games I have played. Tabula Rasa (oh wait, TR is gone now) and Earth & Beyond (Yep, gone too)

Pseudonym wrote: »

I have to say, I love your math. You have absolutely no solid numbers. You've made up every single source of numbers in that post.

You do realise that there are more than 40 cities in this game, each having different phases, then (where the majority of players are) there's Cyrodiil; which for each given Campaign there's a certain limit for each alliance (which is met each night)

The game isn't dying. Stop fear mongering and play the game already. If there were as many active subscribers as you've estimated in your post, they'd have shut the servers down weeks ago.

Use the math. I lowballed, even so they are still making a profit with a mere 75k subs. Not a great profit, but the lights are still on and everyones getting a paycheck. What makes you think there are more players? Every sign I see points to a decrease.

Pseudonym · September 2014

Talrenos wrote: »

I have had the same type of conversation on other games I have played. Tabula Rasa (oh wait, TR is gone now) and Earth & Beyond (Yep, gone too)

Pseudonym wrote: »

I have to say, I love your math. You have absolutely no solid numbers. You've made up every single source of numbers in that post.

You do realise that there are more than 40 cities in this game, each having different phases, then (where the majority of players are) there's Cyrodiil; which for each given Campaign there's a certain limit for each alliance (which is met each night)

The game isn't dying. Stop fear mongering and play the game already. If there were as many active subscribers as you've estimated in your post, they'd have shut the servers down weeks ago.

Use the math. I lowballed, even so they are still making a profit with a mere 75k subs. Not a great profit, but the lights are still on and everyones getting a paycheck. What makes you think there are more players? Every sign I see points to a decrease.

Just personal experience. I've recently had a bunch of names on my friend-list light back up, and my old guild is up and running again. A bunch of us (myself included) took a break after launch until they fixed some of their issues. It was nice to come back to the game now that most of the quests are fixed.

Not only that, but they've already mentioned that as soon as the game goes down hill, they'll go free-to-play. That hasn't happened yet, so I guess they're doing alright (which is fine by me).

snowmanflvb14_ESO · September 2014

Well lets see the last set of numbers (published in an article on mmorpg)have 750'000+ people subscribed in June. Just a bit higher than the OP thinks. The visual population seems to be pretty much the same as on launch. People have left and others have come. Since the op and anyone else does not know how many phases of an area are running at anyone time the op's method of calculation is flawed from the get go. let alone he presents no rational basis for his numbers.

They never said the digital collectors edition was for a limited sale duration.
a free vanity pet is not much of an enticement to keep people in the game as most already delete most of their pets to free up bank space.

Sallington · September 2014

Talrenos wrote: »

Sallington wrote: »

What this thread fails to point out is that you can have a thriving game and community with "only" 50k subscribers.

This is by far the best MMO I've been a part of since SWG.

That's not saying much. SWG, really?

And what community do you mean? I have not found one as of yet. I see guilds where no one knows anyone, guilds of convenience for selling stuff. As far as a community here, well...

Absolutely SWG. From release to CU was my favorite MMO experience, by far.

I understand you don't like ESO at all. I happen to love it, which is why I spend some time on the forums when I'm at work. Why do you spend time here if all you do is spread your negativity around?

ThePonzzz · September 2014

Y'all need Talos in yo life.

Potenza · September 2014

[/quote]

I understand you don't like ESO at all. I happen to love it, which is why I spend some time on the forums when I'm at work. Why do you spend time here if all you do is spread your negativity around?[/quote]

wow this statement could be used in about 100 other threads.

Elsonso · September 2014

magnusnet wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

magnusnet wrote: »

Even more people play Civilisation V than TESO.

You say that like Civilization V is a bad game. I play Civilization V. I also play ESO. I also play Minecraft.

I cannot tell you that there are hundreds of thousands of players in the game. I can tell you that I see more players in the game now than I did in the first week of May.

Yeah, people are just playing more a 5y old solo game than a 5 month old game that was supposed to be the "next big thing"

All of the games I mentioned above allow play with other players. None of them are entirely solo. Each of the three are different type of games.

The last time that this Raptr stuff came up, it was obvious that there was not a clear correlation between Raptr users and ESO players. The only thing that can be said about the Raptr numbers is that it reflects people who have Raptr installed. They even say as much in their own description.

I am not defending ESO numbers as much as I am rallying against the use of statistics outside of the scope that they apply to.

Raptr might be spot on correct, but you cannot tell that from their numbers.

Cherryblossom · September 2014

magnusnet wrote: »

People asking for numbers:

June 2014:
http://www.lazygamer.net/general-news/these-are-the-most-played-pc-games/

July 2014:
http://caas.raptr.com/most-played-pc-games-july-2014-summers-winners-and-losers/

Statistics taken from Raptr'. Not all the gamers use Raptr, just as not all TV watchers have the box that tells what they are watching and gives rating information, still it's like a survey, and to some extend represents the % of people playing each game. As you can see, TESO is at the bottom of the chart in June and isn't even in the chart in July.

No indication on numbers of how many player are actually playing ESO but, WIldstar's population has been estimated to be around 600k to 1 million players.

Eso is clearly under that. Even more people play Civilisation V than TESO.

Tell me again there are hundreds of thousands playing this please.

I can only assume you are advertising for this platform, as I don't think many here have ever heard of it!

You would do better looking at Enjin and seeing how many TESO Guilds there are and how many active members they have. As this would probably represent about 5-10% of the population.

And as for Civ V being higher than ESO points to the fact that they are not good figures. I play Civ V and struggle to find games! Also League of legends has more players than WOW the highest subscribed MMO (8 millionish) so League of Legends has 16 million!!!! I'm sure this would of been reported by Riot Games!!!

Nocturnalis · September 2014

@Talrenos @magnusnet‌

So what are us forum people supposed to do if your numbers are correct?

Repent? Unsubscribe? Resign to our fate? Say you are right, we are wrong? Join you in declaring the end times? Cry?

I have adopted this quote, to recite to myself as I cry into my pillow each night:

“The illusion of freedom ESO will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion ESO. At the point where the illusion ESO becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”

-Frank Zappa

--Thank you for opening our eyes.

LariahHunding · September 2014

Will everyone just "admit" that the OP is correct and bow down to OP's awesomeness? Maybe OP will go away then.

Neizir · September 2014

magnusnet wrote: »

Neizir wrote: »

magnusnet wrote: »

Neizir wrote: »

ESO currently has around 800k subscribers, if a report from a reputed source in the industry is anything to go by.
Wildstar, on the other hand, has about 400k.

Link? .

eurogamer.net/articles/2014-07-18-elder-scrolls-online-has-775-000-subscribers-report
These were the subscribers in the month of June, so it makes sense they'd be at 800k now in September.

Now Wildstar, on the other hand...

https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/108290-wildstar-population-ncsoft-2nd-quarter-2014-earnings-report/

"It's not explicitly clear where the figure comes from but SuperData's MMO earnings data is compiled from "the monthly spending of 36.9 million digital gamers, worldwide, collected from developers, publisher and payment service providers". Presumably the ESO figure comes from the same place"

Once again, only a vague explanation about where the numbers come from and they even removed that data from their website (look at their website, search it, the data is gone). Probably happened after they realized that the numbers "collected from developers, publisher" (aka ZOS) where pure bs.

False. It's because this report is from July, and thus outdated. Why do you think the rest of their archives are deleted?

Csub · September 2014

From the title I didn't expect a funny post but the OP surprised me, well played!

mutharex · September 2014

j.murro2ub17_ESO wrote: »

I understand you don't like ESO at all. I happen to love it, which is why I spend some time on the forums when I'm at work. Why do you spend time here if all you do is spread your negativity around?[/quote]

wow this statement could be used in about 100 other threads.[/quote]

That's unfortunately not saying a lot about this forum, sigh

Sindala · September 2014

About half as many as when this post was created.
Good lord people, stop dragging up dead posts. This one is almost as bad as the Kuta one that wont die even though we all know the answer 100x over by now...

c0rp · September 2014

This is a troll post right? 33k...lmfao. I have never seen such a display of made up, flying by the seat of my pants math for determining a games population in my life. HAHA.

About as funny as people who think that twitch views or how many people playing a game on some "game reporting website" determine if a game is good or not.

Give me a break.

I can guarantee you, that the largest base of people playing this game dont have RAPTR or XFIRE on their PCs either.

AngryNord · September 2014

ThePonzzz wrote: »

Y'all need Talos in yo life.

Too bad Tiber Septim didn't appear on the scene until 300 years post ESO's story, and became a saint at an even later date... :P

ThePonzzz · September 2014

AngryNord wrote: »

ThePonzzz wrote: »

Y'all need Talos in yo life.

Too bad Tiber Septim didn't appear on the scene until 300 years post ESO's story, and became a saint at an even later date... :P

I know! Hence the turmoil on the forums! #SecondEraProblems

nerevarine1138 · September 2014

Talrenos wrote: »

Sallington wrote: »

What this thread fails to point out is that you can have a thriving game and community with "only" 50k subscribers.

This is by far the best MMO I've been a part of since SWG.

That's not saying much. SWG, really?

And what community do you mean? I have not found one as of yet. I see guilds where no one knows anyone, guilds of convenience for selling stuff. As far as a community here, well...

[Snip]

The community in this game is actually pretty darn good. The community on these forums? Let's just say that "Lord of the Flies" would be an accurate model for this sham of a community.

[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Flaming]

dragonhawk · September 2014

I had read awhile ago (so dont ask me where) that the magic number most MMOs need to make a monthly profit is about 200k subscribers. Now that was awhile ago (back around when WoW was young) and I am sure salaries have gone up since then, not to mention added costs if your game has voice overs and higher production costs (like ESO and SWTOR) so a more accurate present number for ESO is probably closer 300k-400k needed to remain profitable. After that its more of how much effort the developers and publishers want to put into the game. If it is a high profit game (like WoW) or a labor of love (like CoH was for its devs) then they will keep working on it. If it doesnt fall under these areas and it is just business, then if it is low profit and the company needs funds then I would expect to see the game shut down at some point (like what NCsoft did to CoH). I also do agree with an earlier poster, that when a company doesnt want to publish its numbers it isnt a good sign that the game is doing well from a business standpoint.

All MMOs have their loyalists who will stay with the game till the end, but for many players out there if a game isnt turning out how they hoped, and it doesnt look like the devs are doing anything to address the issues the players see they will move on. The MMO market place is too crowded at this point for any company to think that they will get a large customer base to stick around if your game is screwed up like it used to, there are just too many alternatives.

After playing a variety of MMOs developed/published by a variety of companies, it is in my opinion that Zos bit off more than it could chew. Just look at the last update (and the next one), instead of addressing the plethera of issues that the game has with gameplay/bugs they spent their time making what is already considered to be one of the best looking MMOs look better. And in the next update we get another level cap bump (thats 2 in 6 months), which looks like nothing more than attempt to buy time to try and fix endgame. When Bioware/EA screwed up SWTOR I think it showed that just cause you can make a great single player RPG, it doesnt mean you can make a great MMO. That is something that any developer should take into account if they try to make a single player franchise an MMO. If you are going to do it bring in people who have been involved with MMOs for years and know what you need to save and what you need to throw out/change from the single player game.

On a side note since it was brought up as a reference. Wildstar is going to a mega server which we can safely assume occurred because the population loss in the game. They have way to many dead or low pop servers and need to merge them all to avoid further sub losses.

Rodario · September 2014

Ok, I'm gonna fabricate some wild estimates based purely on assumptions as well. 83'525 people currently have the first comment badge. Lets assume that only active accounts are counted. Say there's another 16'475 lurkers to get to an even 100k accounts. Assume only 10% of players participate in the forums. That means 1'000'000 active accounts! Not bad at all. Probably wildly inaccurate, but not bad at all.