13 Million Players and Counting

888and888 · August 2019

kylewwefan wrote: »

...

Performance is better than it has been...

Oh, really?

MLGProPlayer · August 2019

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

honestly even with 13m players the game feels empty outside of rush hours

the mega servers should mean there are always people around

am now in the game - ok its morning - but im queueing as a tank for a pledge dungeon - for 30 mins now and nothing...

even in the evening its really hard to find groups for the well played trials like SS or CR - yesterday i didnt find a single group for 2 hours and just left the game (and it was prime time in the evening)

i dont know if WOW is the reason or whats going on but on EU there are definitely not a lot of people around

It's 3:00 AM on a weekday on the east coast now in NA. It's 9:00 AM on a weekday in central Europe right now. Of course no one is on.

Finding trial PUGs always takes a while since there is no group finder for trials. Most players organize within their guilds, and most guilds have schedules of what trials they run on what nights.

You also never see all the players on the server. This game uses instances. It will only load a set number of character models. Players in other instances are invisible to you (you can still chat with them though).

MLGProPlayer · August 2019

One thing that ZOS should be concerned about though is that the Steam population hasn't changed with the free play event. You would expect it to spike, but daily population numbers are virtually unchanged from before the event started. The game has a front page advertisement on Steam right now too.

Reviews for the game have been tanking lately (mostly salty PvPers, and people legitimately complaining about poor performance), which might be turning new players off. It has a "mixed" rating among recent reviews, which is generally a red flag for new players.

Nemesis7884 · August 2019

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

honestly even with 13m players the game feels empty outside of rush hours

the mega servers should mean there are always people around

am now in the game - ok its morning - but im queueing as a tank for a pledge dungeon - for 30 mins now and nothing...

even in the evening its really hard to find groups for the well played trials like SS or CR - yesterday i didnt find a single group for 2 hours and just left the game (and it was prime time in the evening)

i dont know if WOW is the reason or whats going on but on EU there are definitely not a lot of people around

It's 3:00 AM on a weekday on the east coast now in NA. It's 9:00 AM on a weekday in central Europe right now. Of course no one is on.

Finding trial PUGs always takes a while since there is no group finder for trials. Most players organize within their guilds, and most guilds have schedules of what trials they run on what nights.

You also never see all the players on the server. This game uses instances. It will only load a set number of character models. Players in other instances are invisible to you (you can still chat with them though).

i call bs on everything you just said

6 months ago on a friday morning there were lots of people around and finding a trial group in the evening took about 10-15 mins... besides a lot of people are off on fridays in europe, students, northern countries or the dutch often dont work on friday etc...

imo there are definitely fewer players around regardless of what some marketing bs figures might say

MLGProPlayer · August 2019

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

honestly even with 13m players the game feels empty outside of rush hours

the mega servers should mean there are always people around

am now in the game - ok its morning - but im queueing as a tank for a pledge dungeon - for 30 mins now and nothing...

even in the evening its really hard to find groups for the well played trials like SS or CR - yesterday i didnt find a single group for 2 hours and just left the game (and it was prime time in the evening)

i dont know if WOW is the reason or whats going on but on EU there are definitely not a lot of people around

It's 3:00 AM on a weekday on the east coast now in NA. It's 9:00 AM on a weekday in central Europe right now. Of course no one is on.

Finding trial PUGs always takes a while since there is no group finder for trials. Most players organize within their guilds, and most guilds have schedules of what trials they run on what nights.

You also never see all the players on the server. This game uses instances. It will only load a set number of character models. Players in other instances are invisible to you (you can still chat with them though).

i call bs on everything you just said

6 months ago on a friday morning there were lots of people around and finding a trial group in the evening took about 10-15 mins... besides a lot of people are off on fridays in europe, students, northern countries or the dutch often dont work on friday etc...

imo there are definitely fewer players around regardless of what some marketing bs figures might say

These aren't marketing figures.

Kaartinen · August 2019

They have free game weekends like we currently do which create thousands upon thousands of accounts that barely see the light of day.

I'd be more curious at the number of concurrent players.

IwakuraLain42 · August 2019

To put these numbers into some perspective: SE recently announced 17 mio sold copies of FFXIV (all data is from before the latest expac launch). They don't publish active players numbers either (no MMORPG developer does) but an unofficial analysis of achievement data from the Lodestone (web mirror of game data) by a 3rd party site estimated the number of regular players at around 1 mio.

I'm pretty sure ESO has a similar ratio, and I'm also very sure that both games servers would meld instantly if there were 15 mio active players :-)

Elsonso · August 2019

888and888 wrote: »

kylewwefan wrote: »

...

Performance is better than it has been...

Oh, really?

Actually, my latency in overworld has dropped a little bit since Elsweyr/Spring 2019. I don't know if I am seeing an aberration, or if something has actually changed.

However, I have had more problems loading a character into the game (long loading screen), primarily on EU, but even NA now takes longer to load the character into the world. I am hoping that the stuff they have planned for 1Q 2020 fixes this.

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Reviews for the game have been tanking lately (mostly salty PvPers, and people legitimately complaining about poor performance), which might be turning new players off. It has a "mixed" rating among recent reviews, which is generally a red flag for new players.

It is for me. If recent Steam reviews are "Mixed" for a game, and I see performance problem reviews in an online game, I typically move on. This game, for all the 13 million people, is not really in a good spot to attract new players. The tide of negative commentary is stacked against them. Sadly, ZOS was a little too leisurely about fixing ESO performance problems. What we are getting in 2020 should have been rolled out in 2018.

Kaartinen wrote: »

They have free game weekends like we currently do which create thousands upon thousands of accounts that barely see the light of day.

In the past, the numbers released by ZOS have only included paid accounts, not trial accounts. They also do not include new players who purchase an account from another player.

But... yes, the average concurrent player count, per megaserver, would be much more interesting.

Feric51 · August 2019

nafensoriel wrote: »

BNOC wrote: »

It's one of those though, when you look at percentages on achievements, it's seemingly much less.

Xbox stats:
Achieved level 50:
Only 7.25% of gamers unlocked this

Spend your first Champion Point:
Only 7.14% of gamers unlocked this

etc;

I suppose it helps when they do the F2p events, game pass and whatever on PC/PS4 that draws thousands of temporary accounts in.

That's still almost a million level 50s on Xbox alone. That jives with previous comments about the game having around 3m concurrent users a month. Also, I have to mention depending on how they set up the achievement it could be out of all possible characters and not purely account-based.

I think you misunderstand the Xbox stats there.

Achieved level 50:
Only 7.25% of gamers unlocked this

That's 7.25% of Xbox players only. Not 7.25% of the total playerbase across all three platforms. Now if you take the anecdotal PCMR comments that each console only makes up around 25% of the playerbase, then...

Actual Xbox numbers = (13,000,000*0.25)*0.0725 = ~236,000 level 50 players since 2015 (when it released on console).

Now you could extrapolate that out even further if you wanted to take a SWAG at the percentage of players who are still active among those 236k. But since I have no way of estimating what the turnover rate is, I'll stop here.

Numbers...

KappaKid83 · August 2019

BNOC wrote: »

It's one of those though, when you look at percentages on achievements, it's seemingly much less.

Xbox stats:
Achieved level 50:
Only 7.25% of gamers unlocked this

Spend your first Champion Point:
Only 7.14% of gamers unlocked this

etc;

I suppose it helps when they do the F2p events, game pass and whatever on PC/PS4 that draws thousands of temporary accounts in.

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

honestly even with 13m players the game feels empty outside of rush hours

the mega servers should mean there are always people around

am now in the game - ok its morning - but im queueing as a tank for a pledge dungeon - for 30 mins now and nothing...

even in the evening its really hard to find groups for the well played trials like SS or CR - yesterday i didnt find a single group for 2 hours and just left the game (and it was prime time in the evening)

i dont know if WOW is the reason or whats going on but on EU there are definitely not a lot of people around

It's 3:00 AM on a weekday on the east coast now in NA. It's 9:00 AM on a weekday in central Europe right now. Of course no one is on.

Finding trial PUGs always takes a while since there is no group finder for trials. Most players organize within their guilds, and most guilds have schedules of what trials they run on what nights.

You also never see all the players on the server. This game uses instances. It will only load a set number of character models. Players in other instances are invisible to you (you can still chat with them though).

i call bs on everything you just said

6 months ago on a friday morning there were lots of people around and finding a trial group in the evening took about 10-15 mins... besides a lot of people are off on fridays in europe, students, northern countries or the dutch often dont work on friday etc...

imo there are definitely fewer players around regardless of what some marketing bs figures might say

These aren't marketing figures.

This link should be one of the big one that matters for PC players. Steam has always done a great job tracking concurrent players and this chart is great. Now add maybe 7-10k players per month not using steam launcher(myself included) and it puts us somewhere between 20-25k players per month that are active?(I may be lowballing but over 30k seems unrealistic to me)

MajBludd · August 2019

@Vlad9425 what else is on the market?

nafensoriel · August 2019

Feric51 wrote: »

/snip

You're right. Good catch there my napkin math failed me.

It doesn't change the fact that the publically stated(by ZOS) concurrent users are at 3m/m as of the latest expansion.
It's really easy for people to think there aren't any players with how shards work though. Even if you try to look at trials it is not a good metric since most ESO players have no interest in trials whatsoever and will probably never step foot in one.

Hashtag_ · August 2019

TwIsTeDReDQuEeN wrote: »

IMHO this generations proof of how well a game is doing, can be measured by its social media streaming presence. ESO presence and viewership on platforms such as Twitch, YT, Mixer, Dlive seems to drop in numbers as time passes (compared to other games) the numbers don't seem realistic to us when compared to the interest/viewership on social media platforms.

This is a fair way to “guestimate” the health of a game IMPO (obviously our best efforts here are all CONJECTURE).

My example: the rise of Minecraft grew in popularity once again as its presence and viewership grew on social media platforms. What has made it popular aside from the “free marketing” by “super streamers” is the enjoyable ALMOST bug free experience!

Imagine if ESO had minimal game/experience/immersion breaking bugs 5 yrs after its inception? What would that game look like and how would its popularity be reflected? Whats more important for the health of a game, copies sold or active players? Whats behind the numbers?

I wish I could be a vamp in that board room!

Now don't get me wrong, I love this game and have played for 5yrs since launch, I will continue to support it when possible and in hopes it becomes an even greater game as time moves on. But while they work on all the performance issues, Ill enjoy what other games have to offer.

To me a major reason why people play games is for enjoyment. If the game lacks functionality you lose the enjoyment. I hope that the performance roadmap they have planned goes well and we can actually “see” the millions of happy players across all servers, and social media platforms!

But ESO’s numbers on Twitch are a farce.

There are 4-5 streamers who embed viewership and inflate the ESO numbers there. I won’t name and shame them but it’s obvious and I can provide proof as well

Drachenfier · August 2019

This game isn't dying. I just recently returned, and there's more people in the lower level zones than I've ever seen before, reminds me of launch.

wenchmore420b14_ESO · August 2019

Just gonna throw my 2 drakes in about "Numbers".
First off, Zeninmax Media, which ZoS is a part of, is a "Private Company". They do not have to release exact numbers of anything to anyone and will share only what they want.

Activision Blizzard is a public company. They are part of the Fortune 500 and the S&P500, which means besides the BOD, they have public shareholders, and are required to release ALL numbers quarterly to its Board and share holders.

STEAM numbers have been thrown around a lot in many threads. But Steam ESO was not available till over 6+ months after ESO launched and many players, like me, don't use Steam and the figures generated there are a small fraction of the true total.

XBOX and PS4 achievements? Well, I am on PC, but I have 9k hrs played and have not finished a majority of vet dungeons and maybe 1 vet trial. Lots of players are not meta end gamers and play casually. Going off of vet achievements is in no way a reliable gage of player base.

TWITCH Numbers? Come on. These are streamers that talk about people who WATCH others play the game. Twitch numbers have no place in a discussion about player base numbers at all. How Twitch viewers is relevant is beyond me.

Matt and Rich have both stated that the 3 platforms are pretty much equal in player base. When they throw figures out like "13 Million Players", what they mean is "The Number of Copies Sold". So take it as a grain of salt as to actual accounts that still play.
At Beta, 2012-2013, ZoS announced that 5 Million people had applied for a beta key. If true, that is a large base of interest of players for launch.

My opinion, yes I'm sure there are "millions" still playing, but 13 mill? Nay. We don't know, ZoS isn't gonna tell us, and all these sources of player numbers can not and will not tell us how many active accounts there are or how many are playing each day.
So I'm just going back home to Tamriel and enjoy the ones that are there...

Huzzah!

Hashtag_ · August 2019

Drachenfier wrote: »

This game isn't dying. I just recently returned, and there's more people in the lower level zones than I've ever seen before, reminds me of launch.

https://youtu.be/Af7OVeMxRh4

No where close

Hashtag_ · August 2019

Discounting a games presence on Twitch is asinine in this day and age.

Odovacar · August 2019

Hashtag_ wrote: »

Drachenfier wrote: »

This game isn't dying. I just recently returned, and there's more people in the lower level zones than I've ever seen before, reminds me of launch.

https://youtu.be/Af7OVeMxRh4

No where close

Coolest part of this video is seeing the Imgakin Monkey's

Drachenfier · August 2019

Hashtag_ wrote: »

Drachenfier wrote: »

This game isn't dying. I just recently returned, and there's more people in the lower level zones than I've ever seen before, reminds me of launch.

https://youtu.be/Af7OVeMxRh4

No where close

I was talking about leveling areas, not cities. Last night there were so many people on Bleakrock I had to wait in line for mob kills. Haven't seen that in a long, long time.

Feric51 · August 2019

wenchmore420b14_ESO wrote: »

Just gonna throw my 2 drakes in about "Numbers".

XBOX and PS4 achievements? Well, I am on PC, but I have 9k hrs played and have not finished a majority of vet dungeons and maybe 1 vet trial. Lots of players are not meta end gamers and play casually. Going off of vet achievements is in no way a reliable gage of player base.

I agree that using vet, end-game content achievements numbers are not a good way to gauge population, but I would think that something as basic as making level 50, which someone reported earlier stands at a mere 7.25% of the Xbox population tells me that there are a lot of accounts that either; 1.) temporarily tried the game and quit before reaching 50 (likely); 2.) just started with the most recent update announcement and haven't gotten there yet (unlikely) or; 3.) are one of the many bot accounts that get banned before reaching level 50 (highly likely).

I've been playing since April 2016 and have never ran a vet trial nor a vet DLC dungeon to completion. I don't PvP so those achievements wouldn't represent my fraction of the population either, but I do have 13 characters that have reached level 50 and share a combined 980CP. So, while I agree that certain achievements are relatively poor at judging active population, something as easy to achieve as reaching level 50 does hold statistically more weight.

wenchmore420b14_ESO · August 2019

Feric51 wrote: »

wenchmore420b14_ESO wrote: »

Just gonna throw my 2 drakes in about "Numbers".

XBOX and PS4 achievements? Well, I am on PC, but I have 9k hrs played and have not finished a majority of vet dungeons and maybe 1 vet trial. Lots of players are not meta end gamers and play casually. Going off of vet achievements is in no way a reliable gage of player base.

I agree that using vet, end-game content achievements numbers are not a good way to gauge population, but I would think that something as basic as making level 50, which someone reported earlier stands at a mere 7.25% of the Xbox population tells me that there are a lot of accounts that either; 1.) temporarily tried the game and quit before reaching 50 (likely); 2.) just started with the most recent update announcement and haven't gotten there yet (unlikely) or; 3.) are one of the many bot accounts that get banned before reaching level 50 (highly likely).

I've been playing since April 2016 and have never ran a vet trial nor a vet DLC dungeon to completion. I don't PvP so those achievements wouldn't represent my fraction of the population either, but I do have 13 characters that have reached level 50 and share a combined 980CP. So, while I agree that certain achievements are relatively poor at judging active population, something as easy to achieve as reaching level 50 does hold statistically more weight.

True.. ^ I agree.

What_In_Tarnation · August 2019

Drachenfier wrote: »

I was talking about leveling areas, not cities. Last night there were so many people on Bleakrock I had to wait in line for mob kills. Haven't seen that in a long, long time.

There're several possibilities why people forming big groups in this game.
1. dolmen group (Not in bleakrock)
2. world boss group (Not in bleakrock)
3. guild event group (RP or skyshard hunting maybe?)
4. botting train group

If you see something like this, then...

Drachenfier · August 2019

What_In_Tarnation wrote: »

Drachenfier wrote: »

I was talking about leveling areas, not cities. Last night there were so many people on Bleakrock I had to wait in line for mob kills. Haven't seen that in a long, long time.

There're several possibilities why people forming big groups in this game.
1. dolmen group (Not in bleakrock)
2. world boss group (Not in bleakrock)
3. guild event group (RP or skyshard hunting maybe?)
4. botting train group

If you see something like this, then...

Bot trains are pretty obvious. There were just a lot of players running around, and I was pleasantly surprised to see it, considering the occasional "game is dying" thread or post.

What_In_Tarnation · August 2019

Drachenfier wrote: »

Bot trains are pretty obvious. There were just a lot of players running around, and I was pleasantly surprised to see it, considering the occasional "game is dying" thread or post.

Part of reason why I consider it's a bot train is because
1. New player with new chapter will starts at chapter area
2. New player without new chapter will start at Auridon, Glenumbra and Stonefalls.
3. Bleakrock, Khenarthi's Roost and Stros M'Kai are no longer as starting area anymore.

That's why I think these players aren't legit at all.

Drachenfier · August 2019

What_In_Tarnation wrote: »

Drachenfier wrote: »

Bot trains are pretty obvious. There were just a lot of players running around, and I was pleasantly surprised to see it, considering the occasional "game is dying" thread or post.

Part of reason why I consider it's a bot train is because
1. New player with new chapter will starts at chapter area
2. New player without new chapter will start at Auridon, Glenumbra and Stonefalls.
3. Bleakrock, Khenarthi's Roost and Stros M'Kai are no longer as starting area anymore.

That's why I think these players aren't legit at all.

Bleakrock, Khenarthi's Roost and Stros M'Kai are the direct stop after Coldharbour. People without a sub and without the paid DLC's will start in Coldharbour.

Bot trains are painfully obvious. Even the noobiest of noobs can tell the difference between bot trains and random players running around.

What_In_Tarnation · August 2019

Drachenfier wrote: »

Bleakrock, Khenarthi's Roost and Stros M'Kai are the direct stop after Coldharbour. People without a sub and without the paid DLC's will start in Coldharbour.

Bot trains are painfully obvious. Even the noobiest of noobs can tell the difference between bot trains and random players running around.

Ctrl + F search After that tutorial mode, you go to your Start Town:

You'll see they change the starting area (way before murkmire, just let you know), that's why I doubt "many players" will teleport to Bleakrock and gathering around kill mobs. Bots can even move, not just stay at specific fixed location fyi.

Ash_In_My_Sujamma · August 2019

Clickbait title?

Drachenfier · August 2019

What_In_Tarnation wrote: »

Drachenfier wrote: »

Bleakrock, Khenarthi's Roost and Stros M'Kai are the direct stop after Coldharbour. People without a sub and without the paid DLC's will start in Coldharbour.

Bot trains are painfully obvious. Even the noobiest of noobs can tell the difference between bot trains and random players running around.

Ctrl + F search After that tutorial mode, you go to your Start Town:

You'll see they change the starting area (way before murkmire, just let you know), that's why I doubt "many players" will teleport to Bleakrock and gathering around kill mobs. Bots can even move, not just stay at specific fixed location fyi.

And at your start town, the Main Quest sends you to Coldharbour, which then sends you on to one of the three starting zones. I'm not going to argue with you about it, because I'm smart enough to know the difference between bots and players.

What_In_Tarnation · August 2019

Drachenfier wrote: »

What_In_Tarnation wrote: »

Drachenfier wrote: »

Bleakrock, Khenarthi's Roost and Stros M'Kai are the direct stop after Coldharbour. People without a sub and without the paid DLC's will start in Coldharbour.

Bot trains are painfully obvious. Even the noobiest of noobs can tell the difference between bot trains and random players running around.

Ctrl + F search After that tutorial mode, you go to your Start Town:

You'll see they change the starting area (way before murkmire, just let you know), that's why I doubt "many players" will teleport to Bleakrock and gathering around kill mobs. Bots can even move, not just stay at specific fixed location fyi.

And at your start town, the Main Quest sends you to Coldharbour, which then sends you on to one of the three starting zones. I'm not going to argue with you about it, because I'm smart enough to know the difference between bots and players.

Funny enough you're assuming once they drop at glenumbra, auridon, stonefalls, they'll just do hood figure quest. Cause hood figure quest isn't the only one quest that'll approaching new player first.

Maybe the so called "many players" are like 4 or 5, then you're probably right then.

Gonna edit one more time, cause I'm not even arguing with you. Just a legit question cause bleakrock is a popular botting area.

GhostofDatthaw · August 2019

CreamedPieYum wrote: »

Vlad9425 wrote: »

I think it’s hilarious when people go out of their way to try and convince others that this game has some kind of ridiculously high playerbase when most of us already know this game is pretty unpopular compared to what else is out there on the market 😂

Oh yeah, because these stupid ADHD catering battle royale Fortnut games are SO much better. I’d say there’s a few million on each platform playing actively. People need to stop being so negative

Lol, few million? How you come up with that number ?

*Reaches behind the belt and inside the seat of pants

*Pulls out number