Just stick a load of daoc videos on youtube, then your see a rise of population in daoc. I've noticed EA/Mythic have put Youtube clips up and the population for new players has risen. So just keep filming and keep reviewing. Soon your see Ywain overloaded

 

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lol do you know where the references are on Wikipedia? "16. ^ a b c "MMOG Active Subscriptions". mmogchart.com, Bruce Sterling Woodcock. 2008-04-01. Retrieved 2009-10-23."

How was the chart produced?

By entering the data that was retrieved from mmogcharts into excel and selecting line chart.

So why does the chart look different?

That data which was entered was not as frequent as that which was plotted at mmogcharts. The person only chose to enter that which they felt was important. nov03 point is 250,000. The next point is 2005 which is 175,000. Excel drew the line. **Please note that the vertical gridlines, when related to data points, are to the right side of the data.

The excel chart is to give you the general gist of what happened with daocs population. It went up! then it dipped, but it recovered! Then it started a long decline. This is all true, and is all you need to know when you are trying to get an idea of what daoc's pop was like.


^^

What does all this mean?

Learn 2 read?
Googling daoc, selecting the Wikipedia link, and then scrolling your mouse button down for about 2.5 seconds is not hard?

Or maybe we have waaaayyy too much time on our hands and are analyzing absolutely meaningless data. gg.

 

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the way the data was entered into the chart is misleading though, it makes it appear as if the population started dropping in 2003, when the population didnt drop untill late 2004...

and the source you referenced, #16, along with the following paragraph "When DAOC first launched, the subscriber base quickly rose up to almost 250,000[16] subscribers by July, 2002 and then started to fall off to about 210,000 subscribers by January 2003[16] where "Shrouded Isles" expansion was released and populations climbed back up slightly, then in November 2003 populations once again rose to 250,000 with the release of the "Trials of Atlantis" expansion and remained at that level until October 2004 when market competition caused these numbers to gradually decrease over time. As of January 2008, the estimated number of subscribers was 50,000.[16]"

is what are connected not the misleading data chart, i dont know who did the chart, but i'm the one that edited that paragraph into the wikipedia page citing sir bruce's site 4 years ago ... the rest of that section how ever has been touched up by other people...

both the line graph and the lil listing of dates/sub numbers are misleading, and outright incorrect... the game definately has more then 5k subscribers... theres over 2k players online at prime time, and population numbers are at LEAST minimumly 8 times higher then peak concurrent user count... making the subscriber number at least over 15k paying accounts...


source for the x8, is sanya thomas, she stated many years ago (sometime in 2002, or 2003) that subscriber numbers were generaly between 8 and 12 times the peak concurrent users online, so 8 times is the low end figure, upwards of still 20k active subs... but i'm thinking these days its probly closer to the low end.

 

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No it doesn't, pay more attention to the chart. It is almost 2005 when the drop off occurs. The gridlines are not by year.



Obviously, you did however miss the sentence afterwards. "Mythic won't announce subscriber or current user numbers however it is the general opinion of players and off the record staff that subscriber numbers are on the rise during 2011, with a lot of returning players and interest in the 10 year anniversary." Implying that the population is now up from previous lower limits. I am inclined to agree with you that I doubt it ever fell to 5000. The two points post 2008 are obvious estimates: one taken from an addition to your paragraph, the other probably added to make for smooth chart flow between 08 and 11. When dealing with hundreds of thousands, if a data point is off by 5k, it really does not matter when you are looking at a 10 year chart. The dates leading up to that are taken straight from your paragraph. All the chart creator did was put your dates, and the two estimates into an excel worksheet and insert chart.

 

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a more accurate chart, would be a steady line at 250k from 2003 to 2004, then a drop.

people will look at that chart and asume populations starting a decline in 2003, when they didnt, population was steady at 250k for a year.

 

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It should be noted that "subscribers" is NOT synonymous with "subscriptions".

Nor is "players" synonymous with "characters".

Since many DAoC subscribers run two or more subscriptions (main plus bot, at least), the number of DAoC subscribers will be considerably smaller than the number of subscriptions.

Likewise, the 2K characters logged on at primetime in no way implies that 2K PLAYERS are playing the game at primetime. More likely that ~1.2K players are playing and they have 800 or so bots between them.

 

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Mythic's greatest failure was the lack of advertising. For whatever reason those choose not to advertise the game, and when they did do a little advertising it was poor targeting, they advertised in places where gamers were already playing the game such as the VN boards. 5 years ago I was at a game dev meeting in Denver with the discussion about MMORPGs, I was stunned to find out that only 1 person in the crowd had ever heard of DAOC. It may seem as relevant as WoW to people who play DAOC, but there are a large portion of gamers who have never heard of this game, much less RvR.

Also, you will never see a re-release of the game. From my understanding the code on the back end is very, very bad. For a long time there were only about 2 devs who could actually make changes to it and making any changes is painfully long. There comes a point where you just have to shoot the horse. Now why somebody isn't working on a brand new DAOC 2 type game is boggling to me. If there was ever a game that needed a sequel, it would be DAOC.

 

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you can argue that all you want, but theres no way to tell the % of bots vs regular players, so for all intents and purposes "scribers" and "players" = the visible numbers, not some unknown percentage of that number.

 

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DAoC used to advertise all kinds of places, they had videos that played before other games, ads in computer and gaming magazines, web ads on various webpages, i even saw them on msn back in 2002...

the had ad campaigns... they ran full scale ads for DAoC's initial launch, SI, TOA, and NF...

but they saw minimal subscription numbers and when polling the user how they heard about the game it was usualy always word of mouth, not via the ad campaigns.. so they scaled back ALOT for the advertising of Catacombs and DR, and while i saw some ads for lotm, it wasnt realy that much...

but either way.. in 2001 they ran the same type of ad campaign most other games ran... it wasnt untill after 2005, when the population numbers were already in the crapper that tv comercials became the normal thing for games, video game advertising was usualy always low key and low budget...

so, advertising is not to blame... its just a scape goat for simple minded people who want to look for a quick fix or a quick easy thing to try and blame when the reality is, it isnt.

 

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Re-release DAOC having this.


1. A Mail System (mailbox) similar to the one in today's MMOs. To be able to mail items and plat to your ALT characters would save alot of time and pain. Relying on other players to make a trade is too risky. Someone new to the game doesn't really want to take that risk. No need for an Auction House though. The Housing System and Merchants work great.


2. A UI that's more user friendly like the one's we see in today's MMOs, but not an exact clone. Seperating the buffs from the debuffs for starters. A Looting System that caters to the class to prevents ninjas. A Party/WarBand Grouping System to save hours of time looking for groups/warbands to join. A Layout Editor allows you to move, multiply or hide any object on your screen. An advanced chat system. Right click on names for menu options, join party, whisper, ect. BOB's UI is great and it's the best Usermade UI I've ever used, but its time for an overhual.


3. Ofcourse above all else I think having your characters move more limber and smooth is the most needed upgrade. The characters movement mechanics compared to today's MMO is like playing the original Vitual Fighter. Very robotic compared to today's MMO. Fixing this would make RvR a hundred times more fun and inviting for new subs.


4. How bout a port system to towers which you control so you can get back in the fight almost instantly. This running down to the dock, taking the boat, then trying to make it across miles of NF to get back to the fight is just stupid. For one, if you're a vizzy 9 times out of 10 you're toast. Plus the travel speed in NF is twice as slow as in PVE areas. So that makes it even harder.


5. Make normal travel speed in NF what sprint speed in NF is now. Or at the very least make the travel speed in NF as fast as it is in PVE areas. On top of that, they need to get rid of the movement reduction speed while in combat. Your speed in and out of combat should remain the same. (unless poisoned, snared, rooted or mezzed)


6. Upgrade the crafting window. If anything needs done to crafting it's this and nothing else.

http://thebigbearbutt.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/inscriptionwindow.jpg

With the above link, you have the option to craft multiple items with 1 click instead of 1 click per item created.

In other words, if you have enough for 100 items, then when you hit create all, it will create all 100 with that one single click.

Incase you are confused, this means you get 100 or more items created with one click insted of 1 item created per click.

Another way of putting it is, click once, go take a piss, come back and all your mats will be used up and your items in its place.


These are just 6 of my ideas that I believe would make the game much better.

In no way am I trying to insult anyone's intelligence. Thank you.

 

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