A simple analysis of NW vs ESO: casual normies are keeping ESO alive?

moderatelyfatman · October 28

Yep, most of us have heard the news about New World and it seems like most MMOs are heading into maintenance mode right now.
The Data Scientist in me couldn't help but go to the steam charts and work out what's going on.

Thanks to @Gabriel_H for bringing this to light.
The TLDR looks like NW has massive population swings based around new content while ESO does not. In part I believe this is because ESO's endgamer population has bottomed out with many endgame players (who tend to obsessively farm new content leading to population spikes) having moved on.

So I'm guessing remaining ESO population is predominantly the casual players who log, do the dailies and random dungeons while chilling for an hour or two before going to bed? It seems that this is one part of the population that is least affected by the latest content, whether good or bad.

Anyway, thanks to all the casual players who probably will never read this because they don't go on the forums!

Orbital78 · October 29

I never played MW but it sounded like it was rebounding. It sounds like they made major cuts like Microsoft, so I'm guessing it won't get much more.

ESO was rebounding too it seemed them the same mistakes were made. Also I don't know that the season system is going so well so far.

propertyOfUndefined · October 29

It won't get any, if some news sources are to be believed. It's a pity. I had fun there. I'm just thankful the ESO wheel is still turning -- albeit more squeakily than any of us would like.

Stamicka · October 29

New World was a bit of a unique case. New World had great bones and it really could’ve been something great, but it never quite lived up to its potential.

I think that the massive swings in New World population come from the fact that people wanted to give it a 2nd or 3rd chance whenever they heard that a major overhaul/fundamental change was coming. It’s as if New World had multiple One Tamriel patches. Unfortunately something always went wrong (or wasn’t changed enough), so the game would lose players again.

You’re right that ESO is now mostly made up of casual players and it’s been going that direction for almost a decade. The end game population is unsustainably low. The thing is, I think that casual players are far more seasonal than end game players.

ESO doesn’t have population swings as dramatic as New World because ESO’s patches aren’t fundamentally changing people’s biggest complaints. In other words, nothing is being done to even cause people to want to give the game a 2nd (or 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th) chance.

If you look at Steam charts, you’ll notice that November 2016 had a 170%+ increase in average players. That increase corresponds with One Tamriel which actually WAS a patch that solved many fundamental issues that people had with ESO.

Unfortunately, in ESO each year less content is released, more stuff gets broken/unbalanced, and less changes for the better. If they released a patch that attempted to address major pain points we would see one of those huge jumps in population.

spartaxoxo · October 29

The lack of spikes is due to the lack of content. ESO population used to spike for new content just as much.

The population declined with the decision to cut the content of Q3 and Q4.

Personofsecrets · October 29

I think that the ESO devs have done good toward bringing ESO to a point that it offers a consistent experience. The player numbers in this recent month are sort of shocking. There is this new event and a low player boost? That may not bode well.

Erickson9610 · October 29

I'm thankful ESO is still successful. It really does have a lot going for it.

I've never played New World, but it doesn't seem like the kind of game I'd want to play.

spartaxoxo · October 29

Personofsecrets wrote: »

I think that the ESO devs have done good toward bringing ESO to a point that it offers a consistent experience. The player numbers in this recent month are sort of shocking. There is this new event and a low player boost? That may not bode well.

The real tell will be if people come back for April-June as chapter drop and run up to it is always ESO's biggest boost.

Zyaneth_Bal · October 29

Population won’t spike on new releases if there aren’t any.
Not to mention that the game would be better off without last 3 updates that didn’t bring any new content or improvements but instead only ruined the game further.

Radiate77 · October 29

Notice how every time New World released a major update, the average people playing each dry spell went up a few thousand.

Having been around for only 4 years, and only the last 2 of them having major updates, it’s impossible to say whether or not Nighthaven would have retained the numbers ESO had post-patch, but if not this year, the trajectory pointed to them eclipsing ESO.

Amazon just didn’t want to wait another year or two for that to happen, I wonder how long until end-of-service comes knocking for ESO.

The devs can say they plan for this to last 30 years, but Microsoft can pull up like the reaper and vacate the entire studio at any point.

Pepegrillos · October 29

NW biggest issue was its monetization system. It was great for players, but I suspect it didn't make a lot of money.

propertyOfUndefined · October 29

A lot of big tech companies are looking for ways to justify their AI spend. Billions of dollars burned on infrastructure and inference costs w/o any ROI in sight. Sad and infuriating that people's livelihoods get sacrificed...

Freelancer_ESO · October 29

I think some of the difference in swing is age. ESO was more swingy when it was a newer game.

I would also guess significant portions of the casual population play when an update drops for the story and then quit for a bit and repeat but, are not on Steam and thus not tracked by it.

Personally, I think that a big part of Amazon's problem with their efforts into video game development was that they came in with big titles with designs that were too niche in their appeal without an established IP to fall back on.

alternatelder · October 29

"Casual normies" have been the majority of the ESO playerbase since release. The huge dip in NW months before the rise was due to console development. The game honestly should have died years ago, it was console release that nearly saved it. Shame that Amazon turned its eye to AI instead. I hope MS is watching closely and not about to make another mistake.

fizzybeef · October 29

ESO is not really that sucessful anymore, multiple servers are empty and even the most populated servers, the pc servers are suffering.

No clue how they want to hit that 30y target.
Need crossplay urgently

Oblivion_Protocol · October 29

I was there for New World’s launch. Some of the issues with the game’s population boils down to losing the trust of the player base early on. From the jump, NW had a few bugs, a lot of exploits, OP weapons that made PvP a nightmare (*cough*muskets*cough*), and so little content that people essentially hit max level and finished everything in the game but crafting within the first week. From there, it only kept going downhill, and by the time they actually started getting together, the player base dropped to apocalyptically low numbers.

I’m concerned that a similar fate awaits ESO. The only difference is that ESO was at least a good and complete game during launch. It built up some goodwill rather than becoming a meme within the first two months.

Islyn · October 29

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

Yep, most of us have heard the news about New World and it seems like most MMOs are heading into maintenance mode right now.
The Data Scientist in me couldn't help but go to the steam charts and work out what's going on.

Thanks to @Gabriel_H for bringing this to light.
The TLDR looks like NW has massive population swings based around new content while ESO does not. In part I believe this is because ESO's endgamer population has bottomed out with many endgame players (who tend to obsessively farm new content leading to population spikes) having moved on.

So I'm guessing remaining ESO population is predominantly the casual players who log, do the dailies and random dungeons while chilling for an hour or two before going to bed? It seems that this is one part of the population that is least affected by the latest content, whether good or bad.

Anyway, thanks to all the casual players who probably will never read this because they don't go on the forums!

LONG A** UNNEEDED MAINTENANCES when that is crazy these days, for one.

RebornV3x · October 29

Casual normies is exactly what keeping this game alive the guys that play the game like a Skyrim adjacent chatroom, the people that log on to do writs maybe the occasional norm dungeon. The endgame scene in this game is functionally dead an each and every day those top 5% of players that do HM content and the like is getting less and less.

Radiate77 · October 29

Oblivion_Protocol wrote: »

…I’m concerned that a similar fate awaits ESO. The only difference is that ESO was at least a good and complete game during launch. It built up some goodwill rather than becoming a meme within the first two months.

Were you around for the first few months of ESO?

https://youtu.be/Ov3B26h12C4?si=Md5jLnWrONDcN7_K
The game was certainly not complete on launch, there were no trials, dungeons were trickling in, Veteran difficulty was added to the game later…

shadyjane62 · October 29

Oblivion_Protocol wrote: »

I was there for New World’s launch. Some of the issues with the game’s population boils down to losing the trust of the player base early on. From the jump, NW had a few bugs, a lot of exploits, OP weapons that made PvP a nightmare (*cough*muskets*cough*), and so little content that people essentially hit max level and finished everything in the game but crafting within the first week. From there, it only kept going downhill, and by the time they actually started getting together, the player base dropped to apocalyptically low numbers.

I’m concerned that a similar fate awaits ESO. The only difference is that ESO was at least a good and complete game during launch. It built up some goodwill rather than becoming a meme within the first two months.

We were there from Day one till a couple months later when we quit in disgust because of all the bots. If you think that was a good launch, I beg to differ.

Only came back in second year when One Tamriel was implemented.

colossalvoids · October 29

Incredibly sad as the game was just turning around and pretty successfully from all the feedback. For ESO, thankfully to the TES IP it would get a minimal participation more or less constantly no matter maintenance or not, lot of us who effectively moved on are still willing hostages to our raid nights with good people who are still around and Elder Scrolls franchise rather than ESO.

Gankform · October 29

eso is standalone game, new world its not and this is just steam numbers, yesterday they announced that the new world stops here..no more updates..game over!
steam page https://store.steampowered.com/app/1063730/New_World_Aeternum/
with 30-50k players u cant keep mmo...eso is still full

TwiceBornStar · October 29

I know an awful lot of people who don't log in via Steam, myself included..

Radiate77 · October 29

TwiceBornStar wrote: »

I know an awful lot of people who don't log in via Steam, myself included..

Yeah bro ESO is hella populated.

I’m sure ZOS adjusted the Writhing Wall percentage multiple times just for fun and it had nothing to do with how many people have been actually playing the game versus their expectations.

SerafinaWaterstar · October 29

Really dislike this division around ‘endgame’ and ‘casual’ players, with the implication that end gamers are somehow more important.

Most of the players I know work/have families, so none have the time to play for hours & hours in one sitting. They play a few hours in the evening, perhaps a bit more at weekend, but during that time they are running various content.

One of my guilds has 2 vet trial prog groups going on different evenings. I play in both plus also have an evening of vet/trifecta dungeon runs - am I still a casual then, even after 10 years?

GeneralGrundmann · October 29

Don't mind the wording, every successful game needs/has a stable base of gamers that are just paying.

Personally I don't mind if I am called casual, hardcore, endgame, veteran or whatever. I pay, I log in regularly, play the way I enjoy the game, log out.

My approach is, I work with what is given to me by the designers. Try to look at the good aspects of the game. To me, it looks like some/many people's focus on the bad aspects or whatever they see as bad aspects of the game. That's totally okay, but for me it would suck the fun and enjoyment out of the game. And yes, I started to play ESO before the infamous update 35.

Just trying to stay positive and thankful.

twisttop138 · October 29

I really dislike this sort of "my play style is the one keeping the game alive" "my play style buys more" "without my play style..." Stuff. It's the sort of nether measuring that never leads anywhere constructive. I'm in a couple large guilds and some smaller guilds on PS5 NA. Im an officer of a maybe 200 strong social guild. One constant I see is many players doing many things the game has to offer. We have Grandma's that love to putter around their many homes that never miss a raid night. Casual questers that get fired up for some battlegrounds. My content of choice is veteran and hard mode trials and dungeons. I have meta toons and I raid most weeknights. But you better believe I spend time doing fashion scrolls. I absolutely love hunting for the right furnishings to finish that housing project and on the weekends, when my wife and kids are asleep, I get up at 4am just to quest without interruptions. Real back to basics, listen to every dialogue and get into it.

The players of this game are diverse and many don't fit in pre designed boxes, all nice and neat. And I'm thankful for this. I just wish folks would stop. We need ALL the players to keep this thing moving forward.

Islyn · October 29

Strip miners (who spend 14 hours a day scouring tamriel) who basically play free/solo - as in don't really contribute to anyone/anything in game except crown buyers, and then use in game resources to sell for gold, and then buy crowns for gold from whales, who give them the next expansion etc so they can strip mine THAT.

Then those whales use that bought gold to control the price of things in game.

I bet we lose a lot of regular people who are really just stripmining bloat/equivalent of bots, if DLCs/Expansions/chapters etc weren't giftable.

SneaK · October 29

These summaries/theories just don’t seem correct to me.

Casual players aren’t carrying ESO. CP 1000+ players that consistently show up are. Be it, PvErs, PvPrs, RPrs, Housing junkies, or gold farmers. The consistency echoes MMO people playing MMOs, these are not “casual” gamers. I fall into this trap myself, I work, have a family, mortgages, etc., I can play about 3-4 hours a day depending on how tired I want to be in the morning. I’m not logging in to “chill”, im logging in to either min/max a subclassed mutt character that I’ll never play again or I’m in Cyro/BGs still on a script grind cause I took a long break and am trying to catch up.

We need to be careful with pushing this “casual” narrative stating that casuals are people that don’t do or at least strive to be in the endgame. It’s simply not the case. There’s plenty of people like me, we only have 2-4 hours to play but we’re not solo questing in first person oblivious to the MMO WORLD around us.

DaveMoeDee · October 29

shadyjane62 wrote: »

Oblivion_Protocol wrote: »

I was there for New World’s launch. Some of the issues with the game’s population boils down to losing the trust of the player base early on. From the jump, NW had a few bugs, a lot of exploits, OP weapons that made PvP a nightmare (*cough*muskets*cough*), and so little content that people essentially hit max level and finished everything in the game but crafting within the first week. From there, it only kept going downhill, and by the time they actually started getting together, the player base dropped to apocalyptically low numbers.

I’m concerned that a similar fate awaits ESO. The only difference is that ESO was at least a good and complete game during launch. It built up some goodwill rather than becoming a meme within the first two months.

We were there from Day one till a couple months later when we quit in disgust because of all the bots. If you think that was a good launch, I beg to differ.

Only came back in second year when One Tamriel was implemented.

I thought launch was great. But I finished the game and wasn't going to pay a sub to stick around and repeat content.

Regarding OP, Steam is not a useful barometer for ESO players when so many aren't on Steam. One thing ESO has going from them is purposefully making inventory management suck to sell subs. And a top tier IP. I am here because it is Tamriel, though I miss the early days when the game wasn't so cluttered and busy with low effort repetitive filler. And whales are free to spend in ESO.

I've had arguments in the past about player count being a bad proxy for revenue in games like these. You don't need a lot of players. You need a lot of revenue.

Islyn · October 29

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

shadyjane62 wrote: »

Oblivion_Protocol wrote: »

I was there for New World’s launch. Some of the issues with the game’s population boils down to losing the trust of the player base early on. From the jump, NW had a few bugs, a lot of exploits, OP weapons that made PvP a nightmare (*cough*muskets*cough*), and so little content that people essentially hit max level and finished everything in the game but crafting within the first week. From there, it only kept going downhill, and by the time they actually started getting together, the player base dropped to apocalyptically low numbers.

I’m concerned that a similar fate awaits ESO. The only difference is that ESO was at least a good and complete game during launch. It built up some goodwill rather than becoming a meme within the first two months.

We were there from Day one till a couple months later when we quit in disgust because of all the bots. If you think that was a good launch, I beg to differ.

Only came back in second year when One Tamriel was implemented.

I thought launch was great. But I finished the game and wasn't going to pay a sub to stick around and repeat content.

Regarding OP, Steam is not a useful barometer for ESO players when so many aren't on Steam. One thing ESO has going from them is purposefully making inventory management suck to sell subs. And a top tier IP. I am here because it is Tamriel, though I miss the early days when the game wasn't so cluttered and busy with low effort repetitive filler. And whales are free to spend in ESO.

I've had arguments in the past about player count being a bad proxy for revenue in games like these. You don't need a lot of players. You need a lot of revenue.

And u need players who *play* not ones who just farm stuff and do nth else - even if they at least sold the mats but they hang onto it all except designs they can sell - people in one of my guilds brag constantly that they have never paid for anything but base game and multiple accounts - but farm all day and just buy their whatever from whales who buy crowns. That's literally just basically bots who don't contribute to the game's well-being other than through buying crowns from people who do buy them - so at least they're causing actual money to be spent.