And let's not forget the huge seasonal variance in the daoc-population. Usually it picks up alot during summer. Euros stay up later, as well as US people - so action would be more spread out.

 

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At this point, is that honestly a bad thing?

 

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They need to get with the free to play market, if others are making money at it then so can EA.

I dont see the population ever winding down more than what it has. I think there will always be around 2000-3000 until they just cancel the thing. People will leave to try other games but at that same time people are coming back because they miss it or hate the other games. Ive quit probably 5 or so times and always come back, plan on coming back again in a few months.

 

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I see DAOC burning out rather than fading away. At some point in the next year the population will drop like a rock, probably when new AAA MMOs are released such as Guild Wars 2, The Old Republic, etc. I doubt EA will have any patience with the game (nor with WAR) when that happens and will rather abruptly shut it down.

 

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Probably not. It has gotten great mileage.

 

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As Semi4 described the game started to die early on - a lot of folks believing that things really started going downhill with SI.

And when people look at graphs it is (nearly always) always complicated by the fact that the graphs typically give worldwide numbers and you need to factor in that the EU launch and subsequent expansions happened after the US launch (about 6 months later on average) whilst GOA translated stuff into French, German, Spanish eventually - and there was an Italian aspect as well.

I always thought that Mythic made a mistake in not bringing the Spanish version over to the US as well - it could even have been promoted as a learning tool!

As the EU accounted for c. 50% of the population this time lag is significant. Example: 100 folks in the US buy the game and 6 months later 50 leave; game releases in the EU however and 100 people buy the game taking the total to 150. What looks like 50 new folks buying the game however hides the fact that half of the original US purchases left. These are not real numbers but highlight what Semi4 said. Th enumbers are not static.


And it highlights that it has been a bad year for DAoC.

Sure Ywain looks to have remained pretty static - although the averages have fallen and now regularly dip below 1,000.

What this masks however is that c. 18 months ago GOA pulled the plug leading to the remaining UK players being offered moves to Ywain and the opening of 3 new EU servers (even 18 months ago the EU player population seemed to be broadly the same as the US population). Presumably Mythic believed that the new servers were viable (at least I hope they made an assessment, as they were way to slow to take the action needed).

So early last year Ywain gained the remaining UK players.
Then Ywain gained the French players.
Now Ywain has / is gaining the remaining German players.

How many EU players took the transfer we don't know but various players said they did.
In any event either: EU players opted not to transfer and stopped playing = less money for DAoC.
Or, EU players transferred but - as Ywains numbers have not gone up - these 'new' Ywain players simply replaced US players who had left (billing fiasco maybe).
The reality will be a blend of the two obviously but not a good year.


Meddyck posted:
<<I see DAOC burning out rather than fading away. At some point in the next year the population will drop like a rock, probably when new AAA MMOs are released such as Guild Wars 2, The Old Republic, etc. I doubt EA will have any patience with the game (nor with WAR) when that happens and will rather abruptly shut it down.>>

This is ceratinly what happened to the UK servers; they had been bleeding slowly then in the space of less than a month 90%+ of the remaining population simply called it a day. The remaining guilds and alliances discussed stuff and simply called it a day.


And whilst one can say "it will never close" - and maybe it will soldier on - it obvioulsy came close at the time of the lay-offs.

IN regards to population graphs, it should be remembered also that a sizable number of bot accounts were opened as the game went along.

Those bot accounts hide, to some extent, the population losses in the game. And may imply population gains when there were no meaningful gains except that more current players were adding that bot account to make things easier.

 

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I doubt it costs EA a lot to run DAoC these days, everything is built and it shares payment infrastructure with other games.

As long as they're getting a few 100k $ per month why sweat it?

 

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I really believe if they got rid of botting somehow that the population would grow by quite a bit. There are a lot of people who left for the simple fact that they needed 2 accounts open to play. I understand you do not absolutely have to have 2 accounts but realm buffs are not great and pots are no where close to good. Full buffs are what you need. If they gave the realm buffers full buffs, this would fix things. Some would still have bots for PVE but you would not need them in RVR. Make the buffs cost more for full buffs or something, drop the economy a little, people are paying way to much for items.

 

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