We Finally Know How Many Active Players Are Adventuring In Tamriel

BuddyAces · December 2017

Tandor wrote: »

SnubbS wrote: »

That 2.5 million number—I'm not sure how they've arrived at that, but I put no credence in it at all. Xbox NA is known to be the most populated of all the Servers, and there's probably not even 100,000 Unique Users per month.

Where do you get that particular gem of knowledge from? Last time I read about Xbox NA it was dead !

Right?? I mean I play on PC na and sit in dashaan all day and only see maybe fifty people. Game has to be on life support...

magictucktuck · December 2017

Saturn wrote: »

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.

So why would a company advertise to get bigger? that's how business works. the bigger you get the more you can advertise or do events for the community. all to GET MORE, I mean if they were not CONSTANTLY trying to IMPROVE sales, well then they are not a very good company..

i never heard of a business say "we make enough money lets not grow anymore"

how will employees get raises? they would just leave for a company they can eventually get paid more at. where do bonuses come in?

investors will find someone who will GROW their money, not keep it the same.

I mean just common sense..

and sorry poster i replied to, this isn't really directed at you i just see so many posts this last week about ZOS greed it makes me wonder if anyone here ever had a job besides at fast food.

/rantover

Saturn · December 2017

Kalante wrote: »

When developers start boasting about ridiculous numbers it's most likely not true at all. It's actually the opposite. "We are losing players, well we better lie about how many we have in order to make it feel that our game is not dying" If we actually had 10m active players, pure BS by the way and 2.5m which is doubtful then how come ZOS has been pushing for monetization so hard? and there is barely anything new? the events for the most part have been recycled and the DLC's were already designed a long time ago. The only thing you see being constantly updated is the crown store. They even update at same time across all platforms unlike patches were console have to wait one or two weeks. The base game barely gets any polishing because they can't put the needed resources and we barely get any game changing updates.

@Kalante
Honestly this is the exact same perception I have of numbers like these as well.

Things like alt accounts, bots, free-to-play-weekend accounts, how they measure activity, and such enlarges the true number, and developers rarely mention anything about the average daily playercount, nor a breakdown by server, which would reveal a more accurate number. Ultimately whenever an MMO's developers talk about player count it's for PR purposes, because they know that players don't want to buy an MMO that's dead. For example, when WoW lost a lot of its players they stopped even talking about numbers for a while, but then when there was a rise they brought it back.

I thought it would be quite common practice to take information like this with a pinch of salt, but it seems not. I think people just believe whatever suits their own opinions.

That said I don't think they are lying, I just think it's clever manipulation of the statistics. One of the first things you learn when dealing with statistics is that it's very easy to change the appearance of something by manipulating the variables like time-frame and how the numbers are collected. Like if their definition of an active player is just someone who logs on once within a 30 day time period (or an even bigger time-frame), then that means that 2.5 million might not be too far off, if they are smart about doing free weekends, limited give-away events and so on every month.

Varana · December 2017

The quote is (why do we have to quote this in a thread about a specific article that is linked in the first post, anyway???): "2.5 million monthly active users".

Nothing more, but also nothing less. We can speculate about what the definition of "monthly active" is but it sure doesn't mean 2.5 million PVE endgame players, PVP population, people I know, people active in chat, or whatever else.

"Accounts that have logged into the game at least once in the last month" is a fair assumption, I think, and to me, that quote never said anything else, and I thought it was actually quite clear. "2.5 million monthly active users" and "PVP is empty"* are not mutually exclusive statements, both can be true at the same time.

Does that help with determining the state of the game? Technically, not - it could be, theoretically, that 20k users are playing and the rest just had logged in in that specific month, for some reason. It's rather unlikely, though. And spreading that out a bit is a more realistic approach - some of those practically live in Tamriel, others log in once a day, or a few days a week, or very often in some weeks and not at all in others, and some have logged in once in that month and get counted, anyway.

With that in mind, it's a nice amount of people, and apparently, it's still very viable, financially.

* Not trying to pick on you, specifically, it's just a good example that can be expressed very concisely.

Kalante · December 2017

Tandor wrote: »

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!

I also believed Hilmar Veigar Pétursson when he said dust 514 had 300k unique monthly players and now that game has been shutdown.

lol

Doctordarkspawn · December 2017

Tandor wrote: »

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!

I cant help but chuckle at all the corporate apologists. They're really having to scrape the bottom of the barrel to discredit those with a opinion differing from they're own.

Nobody likes a smug know it all, mate. From either side of the arguement.

And, for the record, Matt said that the total accounts do. But we dont know whether or not the ammount of active accounts do. We dont know by what metric that the active accounts thing was given by. I personally know, at least one person with an alt account. I know plenty of people with alt accounts, do you see how this number can be largely inflated, and the statistics would have no idea of it?

It's more wise to treat it less like gosspel, more like a ballpark estimate until we have more information to verify it, if we ever do. And even then, as people have discussed far into the future, that certain audiences have grown smaller. The hardcore raider crowd has shrunk for example due to specific balance changes they absolutely hated. It's absolutely valid for some people to claim they're guild roster has gone kaput when they themselves are part of that audience. The 'nobody on' thing can largely be timezones, I know as someone up all hours some times are just unpopulated. It friggin' happens.

But then, what do you expect from apologists? Self indoctrination and the cult of ESO plagues these forums and this game more than any balance issue. If your not willing to convert, you leave. That, is what's causing most of the hemmorage. People like you, are what's causing most of the hemmorage.

Saturn · December 2017

magictucktuck wrote: »

Saturn wrote: »

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.

So why would a company advertise to get bigger? that's how business works. the bigger you get the more you can advertise or do events for the community. all to GET MORE, I mean if they were not CONSTANTLY trying to IMPROVE sales, well then they are not a very good company..

i never heard of a business say "we make enough money lets not grow anymore"

how will employees get raises? they would just leave for a company they can eventually get paid more at. where do bonuses come in?

investors will find someone who will GROW their money, not keep it the same.

I mean just common sense..

and sorry poster i replied to, this isn't really directed at you i just see so many posts this last week about ZOS greed it makes me wonder if anyone here ever had a job besides at fast food.

/rantover

I think you might be misunderstanding. Of course it's common sense. But when ZOS has never given *** away before (unless you were a subscriber back before update 6) and then they suddenly start giving out free mounts, free crown crates, etc., all within a short amount of time, then it just seems like they are trying to make up for a deficiency in numbers. And then they immediately release numbers right after doing all of that, and it seems like a move to buff their numbers to draw more people in, which is why I don't believe this 2.5milly number, but you glossed over that part I suppose and just focused on something without including the context.

Companies that aren't greedy and heartless won't succeed, that seems to be the norm, so I'm not questioning whether they should try to expand or not. I honestly want them to grow bigger and invest more money into the game, but they aren't doing that, and they are delivering a lot of poorly-coded content that isn't thought-out and ignores the bigger picture, so I don't believe they are doing as well as some might say, or if they are they are not putting the money to good use.

I don't understand why you would get so adamant about something like this. You don't gain anything from it, and honestly as a consumer you should be critical of what your money goes towards. Personally I think ZOS ignoring long-standing parts of their playerbase is a bad move and I think the game itself is being neglected in favour of the crown store.

Also, ZoS is greedy, but all corporations are greedy, that's how you win in that world. However, that doesn't mean we should indulge them when their greed overshadows and degrades the quality of the product they offer. Do you honestly believe ESO is thriving? Do you think they are making the right decisions with the game? I honestly don't, and I think them ignoring all the feedback back in the Morrowind Beta was the first sign of real trouble.

BlazingDynamo · December 2017

Magdalina wrote: »

I think some console people shared some console statistics a while ago and it was like 10% had first mainquest done or something.

PS4 has an 89% completion rate for the first main quest lol

Korah_Eaglecry · December 2017

BlazingDynamo wrote: »

Magdalina wrote: »

I think some console people shared some console statistics a while ago and it was like 10% had first mainquest done or something.

PS4 has an 89% completion rate for the first main quest lol

People tend to take these achievements too seriously as evidence of a dying game or a game on life support. If someone was to look at my PS4 ESO achievements out of the three years Ive played the game on console. It would leave in question what I do with a lot of my time.

My PS4 ESO Trophies By Percentage Accomplished

Tamriel Unlimited: 54%
Imperial City: 69%
Orsinium: 84%
Thieves Guild: 76%
Dark Brotherhood: 92%
Shadows of the Hist: 0%
Morrowind: 0% (Ive actually gotten quite far in the storyline on Morrowind on my Warden)
Horns of the Reach: 0%
Clockwork City: 15% (Im quite far into this storyline as well)

What I do a lot of is participating in events with my Guild. And those events might net me quite a bit of in game achievements but they dont always reflect on the PS4 Achievements. I probably would of never gotten so much done in IC without my Guilds Sewer Saturdays. And Im in Cyrodiil every Wednesday, as long as my schedule allows it, with the Guild as well. Which I need to complete all the Cyrodiilic Quests and well, Ill never get the Emperor achievement. Dont know enough people to crack those politics and Im definitely not paying for it.

lazerlaz · December 2017

100% referring to downloads or copies sold. Absolutely not active players. The active player base probably doesn't even exceed 100k between all platforms.

Talk about misleading information.

Mangybeard · December 2017

Kalante wrote: »

When developers start boasting about ridiculous numbers it's most likely not true at all. It's actually the opposite. "We are losing players, well we better lie about how many we have in order to make it feel that our game is not dying" If we actually had 10m active players, pure BS by the way and 2.5m which is doubtful then how come ZOS has been pushing for monetization so hard? and there is barely anything new? the events for the most part have been recycled and the DLC's were already designed a long time ago. The only thing you see being constantly updated is the crown store. They even update at same time across all platforms unlike patches were console have to wait one or two weeks. The base game barely gets any polishing because they can't put the needed resources and we barely get any game changing updates.

That's just one falsehood after another. Which MMO has more consistent content updates? ESO is updated every 3 months. The content isn't substantial compared to a wow expansion but if you compare it on a 2 year schedule ESO has many more hours of content and gameplay enchancements.

You also can't just make assumptions based on anecdotal nonsense you simply make up in your head. If you're not playing the game why attempt to analyze it so much? If you are have fun and stop trying to nitpick criticisms towards it.

The plan over the next year looks good. Try some enthusiasm or stop wasting your time.

Ratzkifal · December 2017

I am more concerned that the article refers to crowns as "in-game currency" as in gold. Last time I checked people couldn't buy DLCs with gold. I usually call things like crowns real-money-currency, because you spend real money on it.

Saturn · December 2017

Mangybeard wrote: »

Kalante wrote: »

When developers start boasting about ridiculous numbers it's most likely not true at all. It's actually the opposite. "We are losing players, well we better lie about how many we have in order to make it feel that our game is not dying" If we actually had 10m active players, pure BS by the way and 2.5m which is doubtful then how come ZOS has been pushing for monetization so hard? and there is barely anything new? the events for the most part have been recycled and the DLC's were already designed a long time ago. The only thing you see being constantly updated is the crown store. They even update at same time across all platforms unlike patches were console have to wait one or two weeks. The base game barely gets any polishing because they can't put the needed resources and we barely get any game changing updates.

That's just one falsehood after another. Which MMO has more consistent content updates? ESO is updated every 3 months. The content isn't substantial compared to a wow expansion but if you compare it on a 2 year schedule ESO has many more hours of content and gameplay enchancements.

You also can't just make assumptions based on anecdotal nonsense you simply make up in your head. If you're not playing the game why attempt to analyze it so much? If you are have fun and stop trying to nitpick criticisms towards it.

The plan over the next year looks good. Try some enthusiasm or stop wasting your time.

If you compare actual content, ESO has barely anything, like actually try to compare it to WoW over the last two years. More consistent updates don't really mean anything if there's nothing in them. I would honestly prefer to wait longer for a much bigger, better thought-out update, than having a bunch of small ones you finish in a week or two. If you take WoW as an example, each update, which is now nearly 1 per year, adds more content than ESO gets in two years, and all at the same time. I personally think that would be preferable, because quite often not all ESO updates interest the entire community, so you have the various communities being active/inactive out of sync with each other, instead of all active at once. Further, ESO has only had 8 new dungeons and 6 raids released since its launch in 2014, that is not a lot, and most of their replay value isn't that great. Face it, the ESO updates are made for the casual player who dips his/her toe in every part of the content, but never fully commits, and when a few do actually commit to PvE or PvP, they find that ZOS no longer caters to them. ESO is a game for people who like to try everything, which is evident from the way they do updates.

Also "many more gameplay enhancements" makes me laugh, because they are not all enhancements, they are eclectic changes made without any consideration of the players. Do you honestly think the Morrowind sustain / combat changes were "enhancements"?

Just because people have negative thoughts about ESO doesn't mean they can't play it. I think it's fair to say that ZOS isn't exactly catering to their veteran players, which is why a lot of us turn to the forum to express our annoyances.

Mettaricana · December 2017

The 7.5 million bots dont count

I_killed_Vivec · December 2017

Ratzkifal wrote: »

I am more concerned that the article refers to crowns as "in-game currency" as in gold. Last time I checked people couldn't buy DLCs with gold. I usually call things like crowns real-money-currency, because you spend real money on it.

I'm so glad someone else picked up on this! Forget the numbers, let me buy Chapters and DLC with in-game gold

As we can't, does he think "housing" is additional content?

Or was he just lying?

[I agree, crowns aren't in-game currency. I can't buy anything from an in-game vendor with crowns...]

wenchmore420b14_ESO · December 2017

danno8 wrote: »

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?

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!

I think you are wrong about the chat part. Pretty sure chat is shared across all instances/phases/shards/whatever you want to call it.

It would be a real problem otherwise in a situation where lots of people are in one phase, so the game creates another phase and plops a single new log-in in there all by themselves with no one to chat with.

No, many times while doing my crafting writs, I will be in a chat about lore with a group, log out to a alt, log back in to same town and there is a totally different group in chat and those I was chatting with no where to be found, so yes chat is instanced too. But chat is Zone wide...

Sevn · December 2017

Ohtimbar wrote: »

I'm not sure why anyone cares about specific numbers. The game is obviously healthy and profitable. If it was bleeding money or barely staying afloat it would already be dead, or in maintenance mode awaiting death at a later death.

From my observations it seems to be mainly individuals who are modern day chicken littles looking for any confirmation to justify their constant declarations the game is dead/dying.

As a bonus, these individuals will of course always disregard provided numbers in favor of their own calculations as it's obvious they have access to more information than Zos. In a nutshell.

dirklemonjellob14_ESO · December 2017

This company lies about everything. It is nearly the misinformation equivalent of Funcom and Wargaming which is nearly criminal. Well Funcom IS criminal as its in international court nearly every year for fraud. WG somehow escapes that.

But grats to ESO, ran by a company that doesn't have to go to court as much but lies nearly as well.

Tasear · December 2017

Cadbury wrote: »

I wonder sometimes if every player I see is a bot and I'm the only human player left...

I wonder about this in reality.

Tandor · December 2017

Sevn wrote: »

Ohtimbar wrote: »

I'm not sure why anyone cares about specific numbers. The game is obviously healthy and profitable. If it was bleeding money or barely staying afloat it would already be dead, or in maintenance mode awaiting death at a later death.

From my observations it seems to be mainly individuals who are modern day chicken littles looking for any confirmation to justify their constant declarations the game is dead/dying.

As a bonus, these individuals will of course always disregard provided numbers in favor of their own calculations as it's obvious they have access to more information than Zos. In a nutshell.

Agreed. Not a single rejection of the official figures has been accompanied by a shred of evidence to support that view. It's just the usual haters' parade.

Vizier · December 2017

There's no way in **** there are 10Million playing this game. I'm beyond skeptical of even the 2.5 million told as well.

I suspect there will be even more massive drops in player base if they do not implement some major changes to the overall AVA campaign, balance and quality of the battle experience. Being a die hard ES fan has it's limits. When there are competing games that offer better experience, it's only a matter of time.

Vaoh · December 2017

FloppyTouch wrote: »

The devs could link a graph showing the active players on all systems at different times of the day to the exact number and you people will still find a way to argue that it’s not true.

I remember this happening with a graph about the amount of players in pvp that wear heavy and you all lost ur minds that it’s not true.

I login every day and see people on every map and every part of the world and I know I’m in different instances at the same time. The game is doing great get the hell over it.

^^^^^yup

So many ppl are like that in games though. It’s the “this game is dead” mentality.

Saturn · December 2017

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

I am more concerned that the article refers to crowns as "in-game currency" as in gold. Last time I checked people couldn't buy DLCs with gold. I usually call things like crowns real-money-currency, because you spend real money on it.

I'm so glad someone else picked up on this! Forget the numbers, let me buy Chapters and DLC with in-game gold

As we can't, does he think "housing" is additional content?

Or was he just lying?

[I agree, crowns aren't in-game currency. I can't buy anything from an in-game vendor with crowns...]

It's likely a way to make it seem like crowns aren't real money, which makes the crown crates seem less like gambling or something like that.

Saturn · December 2017

Tandor wrote: »

Sevn wrote: »

Ohtimbar wrote: »

I'm not sure why anyone cares about specific numbers. The game is obviously healthy and profitable. If it was bleeding money or barely staying afloat it would already be dead, or in maintenance mode awaiting death at a later death.

From my observations it seems to be mainly individuals who are modern day chicken littles looking for any confirmation to justify their constant declarations the game is dead/dying.

As a bonus, these individuals will of course always disregard provided numbers in favor of their own calculations as it's obvious they have access to more information than Zos. In a nutshell.

Agreed. Not a single rejection of the official figures has been accompanied by a shred of evidence to support that view. It's just the usual haters' parade.

To be fair, the same can also be said of the provided numbers. It just falls to which stance you, whether you believe ZOS tells the truth or not. Since they don't provide actual stats, graphs, and so forth, I think it's a healthy move to take it with a pinch a salt. No game would mention player numbers if it wasn't for PR.

Tandor · December 2017

Saturn wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Sevn wrote: »

Ohtimbar wrote: »

I'm not sure why anyone cares about specific numbers. The game is obviously healthy and profitable. If it was bleeding money or barely staying afloat it would already be dead, or in maintenance mode awaiting death at a later death.

From my observations it seems to be mainly individuals who are modern day chicken littles looking for any confirmation to justify their constant declarations the game is dead/dying.

As a bonus, these individuals will of course always disregard provided numbers in favor of their own calculations as it's obvious they have access to more information than Zos. In a nutshell.

Agreed. Not a single rejection of the official figures has been accompanied by a shred of evidence to support that view. It's just the usual haters' parade.

To be fair, the same can also be said of the provided numbers. It just falls to which stance you, whether you believe ZOS tells the truth or not. Since they don't provide actual stats, graphs, and so forth, I think it's a healthy move to take it with a pinch a salt. No game would mention player numbers if it wasn't for PR.

Outside of small independent developers who are very much exempt from any real responsibility in law, I think it unlikely that reputable medium/large developers with statutory duties to shareholders and the markets etc are going to make the figures up as they go along. If, however, some people are going to claim that that is what they are doing then I think the onus is on those people to provide some sort of evidence for their claim. Nobody has to look at a developer's statement and find proof that it is well-founded, but those who are going to challenge it need to have some sort of a position from which to do so.

I don't doubt that like all statistics the figures developers come up with will be interpreted by them to shine the best light on their game, but that is very different to lying and providing totally false figures which is what ZOS are being accused of doing by some here with absolutely no evidence to back it up.

Jarryzzt · December 2017

Tandor wrote: »

Outside of small independent developers who are very much exempt from any real responsibility in law, I think it unlikely that reputable medium/large developers with statutory duties to shareholders and the markets etc are going to make the figures up as they go along...

1. To be completely fair, a) Zenimax is currently private and thus has no regulatory reporting requirements (they might, however, have some such in their various creditor agreements, to the extent they have debt or lines of credit); and b) having regulatory reporting requirements, e.g. what the SEC requires of public companies in the US, does not necessarily stop even large firms with many, many shareholders from...bending the facts, shall we say. Anything from relatively "white lie" spin to make the earnings look good to full-on evasion. For just one fairly egregious example of the latter, see Lehman's Repo 105 scheme, exposed after it had gone bankrupt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repo_105).

One might also quote Alan Greenspan circa 2008: "Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity – myself especially – are in a state of shocked disbelief..." This is talking about Wall Street, of course, but is readily applicable to the entire corporate "concept", if you will.

None of this is to say that I believe Zenimax is lying viz. the 2.5 million number. I just wouldn't automatically assume complete and selfless honesty - from any corporation - based on it having "statutory duties to shareholders and the markets".

2. I believe it is useful to reiterate Activision's (WoW) definition of "monthly active users" (MAU) from its SEC filings that I had posted earlier in the thread. Specifically:

We monitor MAUs as a key measure of the overall size of our user base and its regular engagement with our portfolio of games. MAUs are the number of individuals who played a particular game in a given month. We calculate average MAUs in a period by adding the total number of MAUs in each of the months in a given period and dividing that total by the number of months in the period. An individual who plays two of our games would be counted as two users. In addition, due to technical limitations, for Activision and King, an individual who plays the same game on two platforms or devices in the relevant period would be counted as two users. For Blizzard, an individual who plays the same game on two platforms or devices in the relevant period would generally be counted as a single user.

Notice how different divisions of the same company count MAUs differently because one can recognize a single account logging in from multiple platforms, and the others apparently cannot (and hence double-count their MAUs). I doubt this specific item is applicable to ESO in particular, but the point is to show that one can imagine a number of variables that can go into putting together a MAU count, and changing each of these can produce significant variations in the end results. To pose just one hypothetical, consider how in EVE certain users run multiple user accounts in parallel so as to, essentially, give themselves "assists" in-game. Do you then count each such individual as one MAU or several MAUs? [And from a strictly legal standpoint, either approach would likely be acceptable as I do not believe there are any regulatory rulings on MMO MAU accounting in the EU or the US.]

And so yes, I believe the ESO MAU methodology likely has some built-in variability - how do we count this, how do we treat that. I also strongly suspect that in order to hand out the 2.5 million number to the press, ZOS adopted a less than puritanically strict methodology viz. their MAU count, though at this stage we do not know for sure unless they have disclosed it somewhere. This does not make the number false per se, so long as we all understand that MAU in general is a relatively malleable concept that can be, sometimes, interpreted fairly loosely. But then from a revenue side (see my earlier post in this thread, on page two, I think), this is part of the reason why one would assume that some significant percentage of the 2.5 million MAUs represents non-paying users (whether because they do not really play, or because they are somehow double-counted, or whatever else). On top of the standard F2P model already assuming a fairly large number of "freeloaders" to begin with.

Korah_Eaglecry · December 2017

Vizier wrote: »

There's no way in **** there are 10Million playing this game. I'm beyond skeptical of even the 2.5 million told as well.

I suspect there will be even more massive drops in player base if they do not implement some major changes to the overall AVA campaign, balance and quality of the battle experience. Being a die hard ES fan has it's limits. When there are competing games that offer better experience, it's only a matter of time.

Youre more than welcome to be the first in the exodus. You can take all the disbelievers with you.

wenchmore420b14_ESO · December 2017

But, but, but, but,,,,,,,,,,,
ESO Died Christmas of 2014 didn't it?????

Lmao!!
Remember just after launch? "This game will be dead by X-Mas!!"
Nay sayers and doomsday proclamations have been here since day one.
Games still here.

As far as Player Population, that has been in speculation since launch too.
Here is a thread from a 5 month old ESO, before Steam, before consoles, before B2P.......
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/130993/how-many-players-in-eso-currently
Side Note... So Many familiar names in that thread that we never see anymore...

ComboBreaker88 · December 2017

2.3 million of those 2.5 active monthly users are the bots and as for the 10 million registered users... keep in mind most players have more than on account just for selling. Not to mention all the users that have been banned for broken mechanics and oversights pushed to the live server by ZOS. Legitimate or Not.

idk · December 2017

BuddyAces wrote: »

idk 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 do not think anyone thought for a moment there were 10 million active players in any given month, even a given year. Zos' statements have always been clear that it was based on sales and never suggested they were all active players at the time.

Since they are not publicly traded I am actually surprised Zos would state how many active players the game has. Heck, probably the most successful MMO, let along MMORPG that is privately owned.

This right here. I never figured, outside of that 10 million number they love to throw around every chance they get, they would ever release numbers of actively playing users for a month.

BTW, that number is atrociously f'ing high for no g'damn tanks in Q. SERIOUSLY.

ESO has plenty of tanks. Many do not do random groups due to higher chance of low dps.