ESO Statistics do not look good

LalMirchi · December 2020

Well I've always been skeptical of the people quoting Steam statistics for ESO as this is logically only a small proportion of the players.

I looked at https://mmo-population.com/r/elderscrollsonline and found the results rather depressing as I really like this game.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sj5q99slhrcjp2z/eso-stats-2020.png?dl=0

Disclaimer: I do not know how accurate these statistics are.

Come on ZOS!!! Put you best foot forward.

Thundertalon · December 2020

Has it declined relative to others in recent months or weeks? Not clear from what's linked

Nestor · December 2020

Looking at the 5 year chart, there is an upward trend in daily logs. If you average out the peaks around new content releases.

LalMirchi · December 2020

Have allok at the World of Warcraft graph.

https://mmo-population.com/r/wow/

akdave0 · December 2020

You can see the sharp spike down when LA weaving bug and stability (crashing) to game happened in November. Once these things are returned to normal, you'll see the numbers go back up. Many raid groups are waiting for these things to happen.

scorpius2k1 · December 2020

Speaking the obvious here, but this is why I have an issue of the misrepresentation that is always being pushed.

ESO for example:
"Join over 16 MILLION players" => Accounts aka "Subscribers"

It's all for advertising clout, nothing more. 956,445 active players VS 16,779,739 total accounts is a stark difference. One could even say deceptive business practices since 5% of that entire account base is actually active and doesn't meet the expectation being broadcasted. Speaks for itself.

vestahls · December 2020

Good. Bad results can get Zeni motivated to do better. If not, then ESO will continue its downward trend and we will all, eventually, be liberated from its thrall.

Red_Feather · December 2020

Wow, the daily players is around what I'm told Destiny 2 has. I never would have thought that.

erio · December 2020

Am I crazy or is 500k monthly players bad?

Starlock · December 2020

Some people will warp any metric to suit their dim view of the state this game is in. I don't know how you look at the information presented on that page and conclude "oh, this doesn't look good!"

The game is listed at #6 of 129 competitors. The active player count predictably has upswings and downswings, and hasn't ever gone below around 400k. We're not talking about a game that is in the bottom 50% or even remotely struggles to keep an active player base. Come on, now.

zvavi · December 2020

That actually shows that it is doing quite well...

andreasv · December 2020

Interesting site. The estimated player numbers are just that - estimates. They've got Star Citizen at number 6 with 12m total players and 704k active players. Not sure how a game in alpha (beta?) has managed to get there.

The online sentiment however is really interesting with using AI-driven sentiment analysis. And holy *** does that look bad for ESO. 74% negative sentiment; the worst of the top 10. The internet is not nice to ESO it seems.

Chaos2088 · December 2020

Oh look another doomsday thread on how this game is going into the dumpster. yes performance is pretty bad. like really bad.

but we all know this game is going to be sticking around for years....

relentless_turnip · December 2020

It trends basically the same every year on the steam charts. It dips by relatively the same this time of year. It will pick up again in the new year and peak to its highest upon the release of the new chapter. To really understand the growth you need to compare year on year. If you compare November 2020 to November 2019 or November 2018 you will see the population has grown every year.

That isn't to say I am personally happy with the current state of the game, but those are the facts.

idk · December 2020

Nestor wrote: »

Looking at the 5 year chart, there is an upward trend in daily logs. If you average out the peaks around new content releases.

Very much this. The initial chart OP has linked is pretty much showing this year and a decline from the peak due to COVID. COVID has made much of this year an outlier that is useless for business analysis.

However, when you look at the five-year chart at the same MMO Popluaitons site it shows a very steady growth of ESO's population just like Steam Charts does. Of course, the peaks are a combination of seasonal fluctuations and releases of new content where we all play more, but even the valleys show steady growth. This is why we tend to compare one month to the same month the year before when analyzing business and economics. Essentially, a business analyst would consider that great growth.

Eedat · December 2020

Oh look, the population surges around new expansions and then dips back down like most gasmes. Better use it as fodder for the millionth "tHe gAmE iS dYiNg" thread. The first million were wrong but I'm sure it's true this time.

TwinLamps · December 2020

And out of that 900k ppl I am 5 myself cause that is how many accounts I have.

Danikat · December 2020

I've seen this site quoted in a few places and as I understand it their 'statistics' are effectively guesses at the population based on comments they find online. They look for mentions of the game and if it seems like a lot of people like it then they assume a lot of people play it, but it's no more reliable than sticking a poll on a random forum somewhere.

They have at least finally updated the 'daily population' for Wildstar to 0, but if you look at the game's page they still show population changes over the course of 2020, for a game which shut down in 2018. (And no, it's not private servers - some people are hoping one will be set up eventually but it hasn't happened yet.)

They also give seperate total player, daily player and subscriber numbers for Guild Wars 2, a game which famously does not have (and has never had) a subscription.

Pauwer · December 2020

If that is so that almost 1m players play this daily, like, everyday, they really should invest in better hardware and programmers. It basically is bad service for 1m people everyday. Niiiiice.

idk · December 2020

Danikat wrote: »

I've seen this site quoted in a few places and as I understand it their 'statistics' are effectively guesses at the population based on comments they find online. They look for mentions of the game and if it seems like a lot of people like it then they assume a lot of people play it, but it's no more reliable than sticking a poll on a random forum somewhere.

They have at least finally updated the 'daily population' for Wildstar to 0, but if you look at the game's page they still show population changes over the course of 2020, for a game which shut down in 2018. (And no, it's not private servers - some people are hoping one will be set up eventually but it hasn't happened yet.)

They also give seperate total player, daily player and subscriber numbers for Guild Wars 2, a game which famously does not have (and has never had) a subscription.

To the contrary of what OP suggests, the data does fall in line with Steam Charts. Both show consistent growth over the years in a manner that business analysts would consider good growth.

For starters, OP only linked this years data which is skewed due to COVID. When looking at the five year data it shows amazing growth.

But you are correct, they take samples of data from in-game. The methodology site like this use are mostly central trading system data. However, since it does reflect similar growth that Steam shows the data seems good.

Linaleah · December 2020

scorpius2k1 wrote: »

Speaking the obvious here, but this is why I have an issue of the misrepresentation that is always being pushed.

ESO for example:
"Join over 16 MILLION players" => Accounts aka "Subscribers"

It's all for advertising clout, nothing more. 956,445 active players VS 16,779,739 total accounts is a stark difference. One could even say deceptive business practices since 5% of that entire account base is actually active and doesn't meet the expectation being broadcasted. Speaks for itself.

if you look at that WoW chart - the difference is exactly as stark. its just overall higher numbers, but we are looking at estimated 109 million total players, and yet only 4 million of those players play a day. which makes it roughly 5% of the accounts are actualy active daily. so... what say you?

TBH, almost 1 million daily active players is far more then I expected ESO to have. but it does explain, I guess, why I keep being able to sell older recipes and motif chapters.

that said... ZoS really needs to ramp up the maintenance of this game, cause it seems to develop new issues daily and there is only so far the momentum will take you before more and more players start giving up and moving on to greener pastures.

Raideen · December 2020

500k....not good. Other MMO's have shut down at the 300k mark.
I was telling my GF the other day that there is no way that this game has 3m players as some suggest.

WOW is kicking it though.

YstradClud · December 2020

Just put some servers in Asia if your sweating on numbers.

scorpius2k1 · December 2020

Linaleah wrote: »

scorpius2k1 wrote: »

Speaking the obvious here, but this is why I have an issue of the misrepresentation that is always being pushed.

ESO for example:
"Join over 16 MILLION players" => Accounts aka "Subscribers"

It's all for advertising clout, nothing more. 956,445 active players VS 16,779,739 total accounts is a stark difference. One could even say deceptive business practices since 5% of that entire account base is actually active and doesn't meet the expectation being broadcasted. Speaks for itself.

if you look at that WoW chart - the difference is exactly as stark. its just overall higher numbers, but we are looking at estimated 109 million total players, and yet only 4 million of those players play a day. which makes it roughly 5% of the accounts are actualy active daily. so... what say you?

TBH, almost 1 million daily active players is far more then I expected ESO to have. but it does explain, I guess, why I keep being able to sell older recipes and motif chapters.

that said... ZoS really needs to ramp up the maintenance of this game, cause it seems to develop new issues daily and there is only so far the momentum will take you before more and more players start giving up and moving on to greener pastures.

Completely agree 100%. Those aren't bad numbers for Tamriel, but they could and should be a LOT better. ESO isn't in a "GREAT" place right now and I doubt anyone here can truthfully disagree. Even if they don't personally experience the problems, they are still present and a big issue. As you said by comparison, using the same chart for WoW which had 100M+ players, roughly ~4% were active players...3.8M active players still a LOT of activity but just really makes you see what actually is being broadcasted by corporate vs reality for players. Competitively speaking, that would put ESO at ~23% of WoW's player base. Yes, WoW has been around for 10 years longer than ESO but the fact still stands. I don't see this as another doomsday thread like some are saying here to seemingly discredit and dismiss it. There are some good points being made in this thread. These numbers tell an important thing to all of us; one major detail is ESO can do much better than it is, in fact, I wish it would already. ZOS can do better than this. Imho, ESO should be the #1 MMO, but due to <insert things we already know here>, it hasn't. I just hope ZOS has a solid plan for the future and executes it carefully because the last few years have been especially rough as a whole. After almost 7 years of playing ESO and seeing this game continually progress through it's lifecycle, I am highly apprehensive that much will improve drastically for the better and bring this game to it's true potential. As always, crossing my fingers in hopes that I'm terribly wrong.

Dracane · December 2020

scorpius2k1 wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

scorpius2k1 wrote: »

Speaking the obvious here, but this is why I have an issue of the misrepresentation that is always being pushed.

ESO for example:
"Join over 16 MILLION players" => Accounts aka "Subscribers"

It's all for advertising clout, nothing more. 956,445 active players VS 16,779,739 total accounts is a stark difference. One could even say deceptive business practices since 5% of that entire account base is actually active and doesn't meet the expectation being broadcasted. Speaks for itself.

if you look at that WoW chart - the difference is exactly as stark. its just overall higher numbers, but we are looking at estimated 109 million total players, and yet only 4 million of those players play a day. which makes it roughly 5% of the accounts are actualy active daily. so... what say you?

TBH, almost 1 million daily active players is far more then I expected ESO to have. but it does explain, I guess, why I keep being able to sell older recipes and motif chapters.

that said... ZoS really needs to ramp up the maintenance of this game, cause it seems to develop new issues daily and there is only so far the momentum will take you before more and more players start giving up and moving on to greener pastures.

Completely agree 100%. Those aren't bad numbers for Tamriel, but they could and should be a LOT better. ESO isn't in a "GREAT" place right now and I doubt anyone here can truthfully disagree. Even if they don't personally experience the problems, they are still present and a big issue. As you said by comparison, using the same chart for WoW which had 100M+ players, roughly ~4% were active players...3.8M active players still a LOT of activity but just really makes you see what actually is being broadcasted by corporate vs reality for players. Competitively speaking, that would put ESO at ~23% of WoW's player base. Yes, WoW has been around for 10 years longer than ESO but the fact still stands. I don't see this as another doomsday thread like some are saying here to seemingly discredit and dismiss it. There are some good points being made in this thread. These numbers tell an important thing to all of us; one major detail is ESO can do much better than it is, in fact, I wish it would already. ZOS can do better than this. Imho, ESO should be the #1 MMO, but due to <insert things we already know here>, it hasn't. I just hope ZOS has a solid plan for the future and executes it carefully because the last few years have been especially rough as a whole. After almost 7 years of playing ESO and seeing this game continually progress through it's lifecycle, I am highly apprehensive that much will improve drastically for the better and bring this game to it's true potential. As always, crossing my fingers in hopes that I'm terribly wrong.

That is true. ESO could easily be the biggest and most popular. That however requires better care, investment, more patch activity and more will to add exciting content rather than a few quests 2 times a year.

Sephyr · December 2020

scorpius2k1 wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

scorpius2k1 wrote: »

Speaking the obvious here, but this is why I have an issue of the misrepresentation that is always being pushed.

ESO for example:
"Join over 16 MILLION players" => Accounts aka "Subscribers"

It's all for advertising clout, nothing more. 956,445 active players VS 16,779,739 total accounts is a stark difference. One could even say deceptive business practices since 5% of that entire account base is actually active and doesn't meet the expectation being broadcasted. Speaks for itself.

if you look at that WoW chart - the difference is exactly as stark. its just overall higher numbers, but we are looking at estimated 109 million total players, and yet only 4 million of those players play a day. which makes it roughly 5% of the accounts are actualy active daily. so... what say you?

TBH, almost 1 million daily active players is far more then I expected ESO to have. but it does explain, I guess, why I keep being able to sell older recipes and motif chapters.

that said... ZoS really needs to ramp up the maintenance of this game, cause it seems to develop new issues daily and there is only so far the momentum will take you before more and more players start giving up and moving on to greener pastures.

Completely agree 100%. Those aren't bad numbers for Tamriel, but they could and should be a LOT better. ESO isn't in a "GREAT" place right now and I doubt anyone here can truthfully disagree. Even if they don't personally experience the problems, they are still present and a big issue. As you said by comparison, using the same chart for WoW which had 100M+ players, roughly ~4% were active players...3.8M active players still a LOT of activity but just really makes you see what actually is being broadcasted by corporate vs reality for players. Competitively speaking, that would put ESO at ~23% of WoW's player base. Yes, WoW has been around for 10 years longer than ESO but the fact still stands. I don't see this as another doomsday thread like some are saying here to seemingly discredit and dismiss it. There are some good points being made in this thread. These numbers tell an important thing to all of us; one major detail is ESO can do much better than it is, in fact, I wish it would already. ZOS can do better than this. Imho, ESO should be the #1 MMO, but due to <insert things we already know here>, it hasn't. I just hope ZOS has a solid plan for the future and executes it carefully because the last few years have been especially rough as a whole. After almost 7 years of playing ESO and seeing this game continually progress through it's lifecycle, I am highly apprehensive that much will improve drastically for the better and bring this game to it's true potential. As always, crossing my fingers in hopes that I'm terribly wrong.

That's pretty much what I've been saying. It's definitely not a doomsday thing, but statistically speaking ZOS should really be trying to take the pulse of the playerbase and find out why there's an issue with player retention. @ZOS_GinaBruno is a community manager. She's supposed to be the bridge between us and the brand, but the transparency issue is only one facet of an overall larger problem. Sure we don't have to be here, but without us where would they be? 2021 should be a year of reflection for ZOS. While this year is an outlier year, it accurately depicted how unprepared they are with issues they've been complacent with over for the last six or so years. All I can tell them is good luck. It's going to be hard to restore the trust that was lost after this year and I can only hope they at least try.

Miszou · December 2020

And without any indication of revenue or profit margins, this entire thread is pointless.

scorpius2k1 · December 2020

Miszou wrote: »

And without any indication of revenue or profit margins, this entire thread is pointless.

I respectfully disagree. Just because the information herein this topic doesn't contain certain details, or maybe you just don't like the content, doesn't mean what others discussing here is pointless or irrelevant. If that were true, then agree that 100% of the topics in these forums are pointless as well. This place is quite obviously for discussing topics publicly, I don't see why player statistics aren't a fair and interesting point to talk about. There are surely other topics far worse, "pointless", and less productive, but they are still discussed.

SydneyGrey · December 2020

The population dipped significantly after they took Rapid Maneuver away from people.
Although, it seems like the rise and fall in gamer population might be cyclic, though, at least to a degree.

Here's the Steam charts for comparison: https://steamcharts.com/app/306130

Shantu · December 2020

As long as there is a core group of players throwing money at the Crown Store, these statistics don't really mean much.

Sju · December 2020

relentless_turnip wrote: »

It trends basically the same every year on the steam charts. It dips by relatively the same this time of year. It will pick up again in the new year and peak to its highest upon the release of the new chapter. To really understand the growth you need to compare year on year. If you compare November 2020 to November 2019 or November 2018 you will see the population has grown every year.

That isn't to say I am personally happy with the current state of the game, but those are the facts.

Sure, there's an increase over the last years but that's just because more people at home due to covid. If you look at previous Novembers, there was an increase in players during the last dlc, this is the first November showing a big drop.