The_Brosteen wrote: »

Edit: The most I could find about providence is that through its investment of Zenimax media it owns at least a 25% stake in the company. So, they aren't the sole owners of it but after acquiring more stock in 2010 they probably own the biggest chunk. I doubt they would issue an IPO, but probably just sell their stake to various other entities at some point.

You are correct! Well, we both are, in a way...

1. I've looked further into this. A bit. It appears (based on Zenimax's own press releases) Providence has...let's call it around a third of the equity. They bought 25% in 2007 and then did a follow-on investment for $150 million on top of an original buy of $300 million. While we do not know what the 2010 valuation was, it is not unreasonable to suppose it wasn't that far from 2007 levels, since a) mid-2007 was the market peak (for PE valuations and LBOs in general, no-one cares about the stock market), and b) in 2008-2009 valuations fell across the board before rallying again in 2009-2010 (but not quite to pre-decline levels).

As such, the +$150 million investment probably (possibly? conceivably?) amounted to another 10%-12% of the equity, taking them up to ~35% economic interest (or roughly "a third"). I have no idea what the voting arrangements are between them and original owners, but obviously they shouldn't be in a majority, whereas I had - for reasons not clear to me at the moment - assumed they were in the >50% ownership range and thus had control. [That said, it is a rare thing that a PE firm comes into a company - twice! - with absolutely no control of any kind, so at the very least I'd expect them to be "consulted" on any major business decision.]

2. Let's now think about Providence's investment from another angle.

The original $300 million came in from one of its "pre-LBO-crash" (i.e. pre-2007-2008) funds, the ones that were marketed with a "20%-30% annualized return after seven years" sorts of promises. [Basically that meant doubling or tripling the money over that time period. A shorthand formula is (1 + %annual return) ^ years.]

Which means that unless Providence did some sort of a "roll an old fund into a new fund" deal, its ZOS investment is in "runoff" mode, meaning Providence is looking to liquidate it as soon as is practicable so that it could actually collect its incentive fee (and finish returning the old fund's cash to investors, naturally...but mostly collect the incentive fee). We know, based on what they (Zenimax) have said, that Providence is currently marking the valuation for the business as a whole at $2.5 billion vs. $1.2 billion in 2007, i.e. the portfolio they are showing to their investors has a >+100% return for their Zenimax position, so obviously if and when they do exit, they need someone to hit that level or better. Hence, irrespective of how much (or little) power they actually have in the boardroom, they would be exceedingly supportive of any positive "spin" on the business.

Unfortunately we do not know what they think their exit strategy should be. A private sale of their stake to, I don't know, The Trump Organization (ha!) at an inflated valuation is the most logical, but might run into issues with the other owners. If some of the other owners want to cash out, however, or (as an alternative) have a public equity out there so they could use that price to mark their positions vs. using Excel models and arguing why "this is just like Activision"...

The point is, yes, modify my original comment per the above, but I still think that on the whole the concept of - let's release positive news and spin it in the best possible way suits the end business goals certainly of Providence, and possibly of enough of the other owners to make the ESO game director give these quotes to the press (not something he just wakes up in the morning and does without higher-up involvement, I presume).

Korah_Eaglecry wrote: »

Jim_Pipp wrote: »

One quarter of the 10 million accounts sold are active?

Doesn't pass the common-sense test. Maybe 2.5 million is true but it doesn't sound likely.

1) more than three quarters of players I knew at launch have stopped playing. Many players have multiple accounts they log into occasionally because of horrible inventory management. Bots buy accounts that get banned. The game is 4 years old and has some terrible reviews, so I don't believe a quarter of all players are still playing.

2) interesting timing. Just after a competiton that was entered simply by logging in, an in-game event which rewarded crown store items for the first time, and a free-play weekend. Even IF (it's a big if) zos didn't count free play accounts in their 10 million players headline, I see no evidence they didn't count free play accounts in the 2.5 million active players claim.

It is quite possible that the 2.5 million includes free to play accounts. If the 2.5 million number was pulled from this months count it could include the free to play weekend for the PS4/PC. And if it was pulled from November it could include the X Box One F2P weekend. The downside to the numbers theyre giving us is that we dont know what is being used as the prerequisite to make an account an "active player".

oh i would put money they added free to play accounts, they still buy in the crown store, they are still players you see ingame. they don't have 2.5m subs

I have no idea what these acronyms are can someone give me a list of the commonly used ones here?

magictucktuck wrote: »

Korah_Eaglecry wrote: »

Jim_Pipp wrote: »

One quarter of the 10 million accounts sold are active?

Doesn't pass the common-sense test. Maybe 2.5 million is true but it doesn't sound likely.

1) more than three quarters of players I knew at launch have stopped playing. Many players have multiple accounts they log into occasionally because of horrible inventory management. Bots buy accounts that get banned. The game is 4 years old and has some terrible reviews, so I don't believe a quarter of all players are still playing.

2) interesting timing. Just after a competiton that was entered simply by logging in, an in-game event which rewarded crown store items for the first time, and a free-play weekend. Even IF (it's a big if) zos didn't count free play accounts in their 10 million players headline, I see no evidence they didn't count free play accounts in the 2.5 million active players claim.

It is quite possible that the 2.5 million includes free to play accounts. If the 2.5 million number was pulled from this months count it could include the free to play weekend for the PS4/PC. And if it was pulled from November it could include the X Box One F2P weekend. The downside to the numbers theyre giving us is that we dont know what is being used as the prerequisite to make an account an "active player".

oh i would put money they added free to play accounts, they still buy in the crown store, they are still players you see ingame. they don't have 2.5m subs

Well Matt just released a letter to the community that puts this into question. He brings up the 10 million milestone again and indicates that it does not include Beta Testers or Free to Play Accounts. So if theyre not using those to fluff their numbers, and they are being honest about it. Then the question becomes are they using it for the 2.5 million?

Korah_Eaglecry wrote: »

[

Magdalina wrote: »

ajdawson18ub17_ESO wrote: »

This is very curious and enlightening... I had a mind-numbing exchange with some... Person... Who was claiming the active play base was about 100,000 or so and ESO+ members were even less, so we can finally put to bed this much needed Revenue myth used to justify Price Gouging and Crime Crates.

That I actually would be more willing to believe than 2.5 million. I doubt we will ever know for sure though.

Why am I not surprised that you would believe a random person with no facts and no way to back up their claim. But you'll question actual numbers that ZOS is owning up to.

ZOS might be misrepresenting the numbers but it doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out why they would be misrepresenting. But why use these numbers and not drastically larger numbers if they are being completely dishonest? 2.5 million isnt even close to WoWs numbers at the same point in its lifecycle.

maybe because the random stranger has nothing to gain or lose but zo$ has alot to gain or lose by how successful eso is perceived to be

Korah_Eaglecry wrote: »

According to an article on MCV mcvuk.com/articles/publishing/ten-million-in-tamriel-the-slow-build-success-story-of-elder-scrolls-online published just 2 days ago indicates that the actual active playerbase month-to-month is in fact far smaller than the 10 million milestone ZOS likes to boast. The actual number is 2.5 million players, which is still a healthy number for an MMO, but by far nothing close to the very misleading number reflective of players that have made accounts over the life of the game.

Theres still a question of how many of those 2.5 million are actual players and not bots. But at least we now know that the game is indeed healthy.

EDIT: Fixed link to article.

I really don't believe 2.5 million people play this game actively every month across all six megaservers, and I'd very much like to know how they came to find that number. The 10 million number are accounts created if I'm not mistaken. Judging by the PC NA megaserver, it honestly seems like barely anyone plays the game actively, but I think we might also be one of the smallest megaservers in terms of population. You also have to take into account what is deemed an active account. They have done a lot of events, so the numbers could be inflated due to a lot of players returning to get 5 minutes of play in for free crates or something. I think if you measure the amount of people who log on at least once per week the number would likely drop significantly.
I've logged on 2 or 3 times in the past two months, but does that make me an active player? It's quite easy to skew metrics to paint a picture like that, and I'm sure it's a nice selling point, but if I had to guess, I'd say maybe somewhere between 10-50k people play actively on the PC NA server, that's at least what it seems like, considering how long the queue times are, how few people are in cyrodiil, and the number of people you find in any given zone/big city.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that this number also doesn't take in the amount of players who have alt accounts. It's quite common for those who have played for a long time to have maxed out one account already, and then making another. Most of the people I play with have at least two accounts, so it's a further example of how these numbers likely don't reflect the actual population.

Saturn wrote: »

Korah_Eaglecry wrote: »

According to an article on MCV mcvuk.com/articles/publishing/ten-million-in-tamriel-the-slow-build-success-story-of-elder-scrolls-online published just 2 days ago indicates that the actual active playerbase month-to-month is in fact far smaller than the 10 million milestone ZOS likes to boast. The actual number is 2.5 million players, which is still a healthy number for an MMO, but by far nothing close to the very misleading number reflective of players that have made accounts over the life of the game.

Theres still a question of how many of those 2.5 million are actual players and not bots. But at least we now know that the game is indeed healthy.

EDIT: Fixed link to article.

I really don't believe 2.5 million people play this game actively every month across all six megaservers, and I'd very much like to know how they came to find that number. The 10 million number are accounts created if I'm not mistaken. Judging by the PC NA megaserver, it honestly seems like barely anyone plays the game actively, but I think we might also be one of the smallest megaservers in terms of population. You also have to take into account what is deemed an active account. They have done a lot of events, so the numbers could be inflated due to a lot of players returning to get 5 minutes of play in for free crates or something. I think if you measure the amount of people who log on at least once per week the number would likely drop significantly.
I've logged on 2 or 3 times in the past two months, but does that make me an active player? It's quite easy to skew metrics to paint a picture like that, and I'm sure it's a nice selling point, but if I had to guess, I'd say maybe somewhere between 10-50k people play actively on the PC NA server, that's at least what it seems like, considering how long the queue times are, how few people are in cyrodiil, and the number of people you find in any given zone/big city.

idk where you play ingame but I always see players, even in a delve in some far off location i wouldnt expect to see anyone. maybe you have bad luck and get put into the low pop phases? but PC NA is booming

magictucktuck wrote: »

Korah_Eaglecry wrote: »

magictucktuck wrote: »

Korah_Eaglecry wrote: »

Jim_Pipp wrote: »

One quarter of the 10 million accounts sold are active?

Doesn't pass the common-sense test. Maybe 2.5 million is true but it doesn't sound likely.

1) more than three quarters of players I knew at launch have stopped playing. Many players have multiple accounts they log into occasionally because of horrible inventory management. Bots buy accounts that get banned. The game is 4 years old and has some terrible reviews, so I don't believe a quarter of all players are still playing.

2) interesting timing. Just after a competiton that was entered simply by logging in, an in-game event which rewarded crown store items for the first time, and a free-play weekend. Even IF (it's a big if) zos didn't count free play accounts in their 10 million players headline, I see no evidence they didn't count free play accounts in the 2.5 million active players claim.

It is quite possible that the 2.5 million includes free to play accounts. If the 2.5 million number was pulled from this months count it could include the free to play weekend for the PS4/PC. And if it was pulled from November it could include the X Box One F2P weekend. The downside to the numbers theyre giving us is that we dont know what is being used as the prerequisite to make an account an "active player".

oh i would put money they added free to play accounts, they still buy in the crown store, they are still players you see ingame. they don't have 2.5m subs

Well Matt just released a letter to the community that puts this into question. He brings up the 10 million milestone again and indicates that it does not include Beta Testers or Free to Play Accounts. So if theyre not using those to fluff their numbers, and they are being honest about it. Then the question becomes are they using it for the 2.5 million?

free to play accounts ARE included, its the free to play weekend players they didn't add. i believe he meant people who dont pay sub

Edit: i mean correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm 99% sure that's what was meant

Youre right it is Free Trial players, I typed that out too quickly and didnt realize I said accounts instead of Trials.

jssriot wrote: »

victoriana-blue wrote: »

Remember that ESO actively puts you in shards/instances with people you've played with: people on your friends list, in your guilds, who you've grouped with repeatedly...

So if you're seeing the same users over and over, that has nothing to do with population and everything to do with social design.

ESO uses instances, but uses a megaserver system, not a shard system. Instances are usually based on quest completion and solo player content, like the Main Quest line, and sometimes it seems related to player traffic in certain areas (namely cities), and not anything related to player interactions. I have no idea where you got this idea. The whole point of the megaserver system is to avoid being limited in which players you see in-game.

The point they are making is that if you log into Davons Watch, you are in 1 instance of Davons Watch. There are tons of other players in another instance of Davons Watch that you don't see. Number of instances are based off of population per instance.
Yes the "Mega-Server" did away with shards, but still you have to limit amount of population somehow.
Many times I have been "Toon Hopping" and left a town, logged into same town on a alt and there are a totally different player base and totally different zone chat going on.. Remember the "Phasing Bug" from launch?

Thank You to @Jarryzzt for a awesome post to this thread.. More need to take time and read that!

FYI....2.5 million sounds right IMO.
At launch, they released that ZoS had 5 million beta key requests. So if there was that much interest in Beta, 2.5 or even 10 million doesn't seem too unreasonable..
My 2 Drakes! Huzzah!

jssriot wrote: »

victoriana-blue wrote: »

Remember that ESO actively puts you in shards/instances with people you've played with: people on your friends list, in your guilds, who you've grouped with repeatedly...

So if you're seeing the same users over and over, that has nothing to do with population and everything to do with social design.

ESO uses instances, but uses a megaserver system, not a shard system. Instances are usually based on quest completion and solo player content, like the Main Quest line, and sometimes it seems related to player traffic in certain areas (namely cities), and not anything related to player interactions. I have no idea where you got this idea. The whole point of the megaserver system is to avoid being limited in which players you see in-game.

I think you're talking about phasing (when the world changes based on quest stages), not instances. The mega-server means you have the potential to meet anyone, not that you will see everyone all the time - the population is divided into instances/shards, and the game tries to put you with people you've interacted with (ie make the game "stickier" by surrounding you with familiar faces).

Some quick Google results:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/3990351/#Comment_3990351
http://www.esohut.com/news/whats-mega-elder-scrolls-online-mega-server/
And I'm pretty sure it's in this interview, but I'm not watching an hour of twitch on my phone /shrug https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/299886/Elder_Scrolls_Online_dev_speaks_to_the_power_of_megaservers_in_MMO_game_design.php

wenchmore420b14_ESO wrote: »

jssriot wrote: »

victoriana-blue wrote: »

Remember that ESO actively puts you in shards/instances with people you've played with: people on your friends list, in your guilds, who you've grouped with repeatedly...

So if you're seeing the same users over and over, that has nothing to do with population and everything to do with social design.

ESO uses instances, but uses a megaserver system, not a shard system. Instances are usually based on quest completion and solo player content, like the Main Quest line, and sometimes it seems related to player traffic in certain areas (namely cities), and not anything related to player interactions. I have no idea where you got this idea. The whole point of the megaserver system is to avoid being limited in which players you see in-game.

The point they are making is that if you log into Davons Watch, you are in 1 instance of Davons Watch. There are tons of other players in another instance of Davons Watch that you don't see. Number of instances are based off of population per instance.
Yes the "Mega-Server" did away with shards, but still you have to limit amount of population somehow.
Many times I have been "Toon Hopping" and left a town, logged into same town on a alt and there are a totally different player base and totally different zone chat going on.. Remember the "Phasing Bug" from launch?

Yep, that's what I'm talking about. And on a practical level there has to be some division: can you imagine the army of black silhouettes if the game tried to show everyone in Rawl'kha at the same time? The gate to the Brass Fortress on release day was bad enough...

Korah_Eaglecry wrote: »

Saturn wrote: »

magictucktuck wrote: »

Saturn wrote: »

Korah_Eaglecry wrote: »

According to an article on MCV mcvuk.com/articles/publishing/ten-million-in-tamriel-the-slow-build-success-story-of-elder-scrolls-online published just 2 days ago indicates that the actual active playerbase month-to-month is in fact far smaller than the 10 million milestone ZOS likes to boast. The actual number is 2.5 million players, which is still a healthy number for an MMO, but by far nothing close to the very misleading number reflective of players that have made accounts over the life of the game.

Theres still a question of how many of those 2.5 million are actual players and not bots. But at least we now know that the game is indeed healthy.

EDIT: Fixed link to article.

I really don't believe 2.5 million people play this game actively every month across all six megaservers, and I'd very much like to know how they came to find that number. The 10 million number are accounts created if I'm not mistaken. Judging by the PC NA megaserver, it honestly seems like barely anyone plays the game actively, but I think we might also be one of the smallest megaservers in terms of population. You also have to take into account what is deemed an active account. They have done a lot of events, so the numbers could be inflated due to a lot of players returning to get 5 minutes of play in for free crates or something. I think if you measure the amount of people who log on at least once per week the number would likely drop significantly.
I've logged on 2 or 3 times in the past two months, but does that make me an active player? It's quite easy to skew metrics to paint a picture like that, and I'm sure it's a nice selling point, but if I had to guess, I'd say maybe somewhere between 10-50k people play actively on the PC NA server, that's at least what it seems like, considering how long the queue times are, how few people are in cyrodiil, and the number of people you find in any given zone/big city.

idk where you play ingame but I always see players, even in a delve in some far off location i wouldnt expect to see anyone. maybe you have bad luck and get put into the low pop phases? but PC NA is booming

Well. Having played since launch, it's fairly easy to tell when there are a lot of people or not. We've got a large pvp community on the PC NA megaserver, but only one campaign is ever pop-locked during prime time, compared to when you'd have 5 simultaniously pop-locked campaigns back before Update 6. There also aren't that many problems with phasing, which is usually an easy way to tell if any given zone is being overloaded with players. If there truly are as many people playing ESO as OP claims, then one has to wonder what they are all up to..

The PvP community is a terrible method of measure for population in the game. PvP communities are notoriously minorities in MMOs with an abundant PvE scene. We know that the PvP community has had its ups and downs and was pretty healthy at one point. Its also important to note that while one server might not be going strong PvP wise, it doesnt mean others arent. I would be absolutely shocked to find all Megaservers suffering from the same issues. Including PvP inactivity. But PvPers can be a fickle bunch and will move on to a more robust and enjoyable PvP experience if they can find one. So even if PvP is left in disrepair and only continues to lose activity. The overall game can still continue on. Other MMOs have survived PvPer exodus and with the amount of content ESO has it could definitely survive one itself.

And Im not the one claiming 2.5 million are playing. I am citing the Director of the game. These are numbers he is giving. You can read the article yourself. And it doesnt matter what the players are up to, what matters is that they log, they spend money and that the continue to return month to month. It doesnt matter what you see with your eyes in the game because it is never actually reflective of the population of a whole. Its like living in a small town of 500, never leaving that town and then arguing that the total population of the country is not infact over 300 million because you only ever see the 500.

Well, that's not really the point I was trying to get across. Mostly just that it seems very inactive from my point of view, and I've heard the same echoed in other threads and from people who play more than me. My main point was that I just wonder how they come up with this figure. And while you say you are not the one "claiming" this, you did make a thread enforcing that claim, and I'm just here to question it, because I find it hard to believe. But who knows, it could be that PC NA is just a tiny portion of the overall population. I do know that PS4 and PC EU have more players, but I just can't help but wonder if this number is real.

Like just look at the past few months, they've done two free crown crates events within a short span of time and a free to play weekend. Maybe I'm just very cynical, but I feel like a company which doesn't need to buff its active player numbers or encourage more people into playing would try so hard to lure people online.

Also, my point in mentioning the PvP community is that it used to be thriving not so long ago, but a lot of them have quit because of the changes brought with Morrowind. I could also have told you how the endgame PvE community on my server has barely had any people swapped out in the past 3 years, and that a lot of prominent players have stopped as well. The vast majority of ESO's population are casual players, who are hard to really judge the numbers of, which is why I just mention the things I do know.

I think your analogy kind of misses the point. Because it's like if I judge the entire population just off my own guild, which is not what I did. The stuff I'm talking about is more like going to the capital and noticing how all the popular shops and restaurants have been closed down. Sure there might still be a lot of tourists in this analogical town, but you don't base a town's population off the tourists, you base it off the people who live there.

Now don't get me wrong, I want ESO to do well, but I am of the impression that ever since they screwed the endgame crowd over with Morrowind, the numbers have been dwindling. I doubt ZOS will ever release the actual metrics, so all we can do is decide whether we believe in the numbers they give us or not. I clearly do not.

ALSO: I cannot read the article since it has an insecure connection which my browser has blocked.

danno8 wrote: »

People saying bots make up a large amount of users...lol.

Even if bots opened 1000 new accounts daily, that would only be 30,000 unique logins per month by bots. Bringing the 2.5 million number down to 2.47 million.

"It's just the festivals..." There is almost always some festival going on.

"I don't see 2.5 million people on my platform..." :rolling_eyes:

I know it's cool to bash on big companies (and games you are secretly bitter towards) but come on.

You forgot to mention "Most of the players on my friends list don't log in any more" and "My guild is empty these days" !

I can't help but chuckle at all the doomsayers, they're really having to scrape the bottom of the barrel when trying to find reasons to disbelieve the figures they've been given. Matt Firor has even confirmed now that the account totals don't even include beta or free trial accounts, so there go some more conspiracy theories!