This can't be true, can it? - TOR Has 350k Concurrent Players; Minimal impact on WOW

[harlekwin]

Don't know. I played SWTOR until last week.

 

ah makes a lot of sense then....

 

 

Can I haz your stuff?

[Kratuk]

@OP

 

Haven't been through the whole thread but here's my thoughts.

 

First, peak concurrent players is just the number of how many players have ever played at once, not how many are playing or subscribed to the game.

 

Second, I'm not surprised to see a dip on the sales charts post-launch. MMOs tend to either pick up steam or lose it over time. As it stands, BioWare has confirmed already that more than 1 million bought the game and subbed up. Does that mean they'll all be around after the free month? I doubt it but we'll see which way the game is headed population wise a few months out.

 

All in all, it's too early to say how it will do long-term, but short-term it seems to be doing just fine, especially if you want to gauge peak concurrent users against, let's say for example League of Legends, which claims to have over 15 million registered players and their peak concurrency at last check topped out at 500,000. In that comparison, SWTOR isn't doing too bad.

 

Still, time is the deciding factor for all MMORPGs. We'll have to wait and see.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Kratuk

[Tiron_Raptor]

Trying to use PCU as a measure of the playerbase has so many problems it's not funny. It measures exclusively the maximum people online at any one time on a given day.

 

Due to timezones alone, this is not going to be anything like the number of people that log in on a given day. Consider now, for example. 2:36pm US EST, Jan 5. It is currently 6:36 AM, Jan 6 in Sydney, Australia, 8:36 PM Jan 5 in Berlin, Germany, and 9:39 AM Jan 5 in Honolulu, Hawaii.

 

So in Australia, most people are probably still asleep, or just getting up to go to work. In Europe, it's just starting to get to peak hours. In the Eastern US, it's the middle of the day and many people are still at work or school (Most college students seem to finish on any given day at around 2 or 3 at the latest, on the days they even have class. High schools frequently let out around 2 or 2:30, with elementary schools being closer to 3 or 3:30). In Hawaii, almost everyone is either at work or school, and those that aren't probably haven't been up terribly long.

 

The chances of Europeans, Australians, and Americans all being on at once are fairly slim, barring a few nocturnal types like myself. For this reason, the number of UNIQUE users on a given day is higher than the PCU for that day.

 

And then you have to factor in days of the week: most people don't get on every single day. There are going to be people that only log in on particular days: the weekends are a typical example, but not exclusively, because not everyone is off on weekends, and some people DO things on weekends other than playing games! And then, stretching a bit, there's the fact that what days are 'the weekend' is different in some countries (Iran for example, considers the weekend to be Friday. Just Friday.)

 

Because of this, there are going to be some users that rarely, if ever, log in on the same day. When combined with the timezones, you'll find that generally, the list of people a given user is hardly ever online at the same time as is a VERY Large proportion of the overall population.

 

To the point that for a mere 1 million subscribers, 350k is exceptionally high. That would mean that at the peak point (and the peaks from all the different regions on here don't even close to overlap in many cases!), over a third of the userbase was online(Unlikely, but would go a long way to explaining the queues wouldn't it?) Even at 1.5 million subscribers, it'd still be over 20% of the total userbase, at one particular time on a given day.

 

A real world illustration that I can get good numbers for: Eve online.

 

mmodata.net 's last estimate of Eve Online's subscriber base was around 375,000. The data reliability is listed as grade A: "Most or all of the data points come from official or other reliable sources and are in line with other numbers and information." This is the highest number of subscribers they've ever had listed on the chart, to boot.

 

What makes this such a good illustration, however, is that Eve only uses one shard(except for a separate one for china), and makes the number of users logged into that shard at any given time available via an API, not just in the game client, and it is constantly being updated.

 

http://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility automatically tracks this for their main live shard.

 

http://eve-offline.net/?server=serenity is the tracker for the chinese live shard

 

The site overall has data going back many years, in viewer friendly graph form. They even have data for the two public testing shards, Singularity and Duality, but with a few rare exceptions those generally have miniscule populations at best.

 

Today, the PCU On Tranquility was 41,498 and on Serenity was 8,564. Serenity unsurprisingly has a very different pattern of daily peaks, which are also much more pronounced.

 

The all time record PCUs are 63,170 for Tranquility (the world record for most people on a single shard), and 11,465 for Serenity.

 

Using the maximum values, both of which happened some time ago, compared to the highest subscription number reported (the most recent), yields a PCU-to-Subscriber ratio of about 21%. Using the maximum-ever values, which didn't happen simultaneously.

 

For a more accurate picture...the most recent MMOData chart was released in October. The subscription data is thus probably from September or possibly August. Unfortunately it's difficult to pick 'august' out of the 'past year' graph on eve-offline. 'October' However, is fairly trivial since there's a 3-month graph (3 months ago today was Oct. 5th, four days before the chart was released).

 

The first obvious daily peak on the 3-month chart is also the biggest for some time. It appears to be just under 40,000. There's a peak what appears to be at least two weeks later just over 40,000, with most of the intervening ones being around 35,000.

 

The first apparent daily peak on Serenity's three month graph is hard to pick out: the population of Serenity is much less consistent and more erratic. The first easily visible one appears to be around 7,500, but is far enough in that it could be several days between it and the start of the graph. There's large 'gaps' where the peaks just don't seem to happen as well (the daily graph shows large dropouts on a regular basis on serenity: stability or connection problems?)

 

I'll err on the side of using the higher numbers again: I'll use 39,000 and 7,500, the first visible peak on each 3 month graph, both slightly higher than their immediate vicinity.

 

This gives a maximum PCU of about 46500 for early October/Late September(the 24 hour graph is actually more like the past 52 hours, so the 3 month graph may run over too). Using the Subscription estimate of 375,000 from MMOData, as it's from a similar timeframe.

 

This gives a PCU to Subscriber ratio of just 12% for Eve Online

 

Yeah...you really can't use PCU (or even average CU), to estimate how many people actually play the game. It can indicate general trends, certainly: If there's a sustained dropoff, it's not unreasonable to presume there's been a general loss of interest.

 

Either way, 350k PCU is exceptionally high: Even at 1.5 million subscribes (a milestone they well may have announced) it'd be around 20% of the userbase. Given that the game just launched, during the holidays when many people have more than the usual amount of free time, an inflated PCU to Subscriber Ratio is not unexpected.

 

People have been playing more than they normally would, in part because it's new to them, and in part because they've had the time to. As people go back to work and school, and begin to settle in more normal usage patterns as the novelty starts to wear off, the PCU to subscriber ratio is almost certainly going to drop.

 

Even without those, Short-Term changes in PCU can be due to a variety of factors that may have nothing to do with the game itself: this is why only sustained variations are useful for gauging anything.

 

Ultimately, however, there are only two numbers that matter: The number of subscribers, and the number of UNIQUE Users logged in for a given time period: (a month would be good, since that's the length of a subscription period). Only Bioware has those numbers...and aren't likely to release them except in a processed format, edited by their marketing department, with the intent of making them look good.

 

So in short: PCU analysis is largely useless for determining the state of the game, several times more so than usual at this particular time as well.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Tiron_Raptor

[lykor]

ah makes a lot of sense then....

 

 

Can I haz your stuff?

 

No you can't. As I posted in another thread, I'm still interested in this game and maybe reactivate my sub in a couple weeks/months.

I don't know what's more annoying, the ''this game sucks'' trolls, or this mindfull ''can I has your stuff'' posters.

 

If you think this world doesn't feel empty, fine, good for you.

Edited January 5, 2012 by lykor

[djsmileey]

The above is only based upon the use of an add-on that many may not use. As described on their site: "This is a graphical display of data submitted from the Warcraft CensusPlus UI Mod. The collected World of Warcraft Census information gives a general view of server, faction and overall population trends. Only characters level 10 and up that have been seen in the past 30 days are included in this data."

 

The above is an estimate for a given population NOT actual population numbers. Thus there is a high degree of error in this number without having a clear understanding of the actual population as a whole and what percentage use this add-on and what do not. Therefore, this is not an authoritative source, but only one of many datapoints. This only shows a population that uses the CensusPlus UI Mod, NOT the total population.

 

It's the best graphical and most accurate representation out there, and even if it's been adjusted incorrectly or is off by 50,000 people. It's still not this overwhelming number people are talking.

[archifikoss]

Trying to use PCU as a measure of the playerbase has so many problems it's not funny. It measures exclusively the maximum people online at any one time on a given day.

 

<snip>

 

So in short: PCU analysis is largely useless for determining the state of the game, several times more so than usual at this particular time as well.

 

What saddens me is that probably most people won't read this post despite all the effort you put in... Still it was a good read, backed up with some figures, and it gave me (a complete newb in all this concurrent to total ratio business) a good indication of how things work. Thank you for this

[Xugos]

Funny thing about TOR "dropping" sales in the UK. EVERY game higher than it on the list is a console or SP game.

 

TOR is still the top selling MMO in the UK.

 

350K concurrent players isn't too shabby to be honest.

 

Maybe that's because it has been the only MMO-related game released within the past year.

 

 

 

You'll always be first...and last...in a race with 1 person.

[grandmthethird]

i don't think TOR devs ever thought they would destroy WoW. the market is big enough for both to live side by side. coca-cola and pepsi both do well and you don't here pepsi drinkers saying coca-cola will be shut down with-in a year

 

the problem i see is alot of WoW fanboys feel threatened by any new MMO. don't believe me wait till GW2 comes out. all the WoW fanboys will flock to their forums to proclaim the impending doom of that game

 

the real deciding factor in TORs success, is if they can make money after paying lucas-arts. there will never be an issue with the number of players playing just look a the server list and see full full full heavy, etc

[Forsbacka]

It's the best graphical and most accurate representation out there, and even if it's been adjusted incorrectly or is off by 50,000 people. It's still not this overwhelming number people are talking.

 

Or by 400k people. Who knows.

[Syylara]

You need daily/weekly/monthly "uniques" (number of accounts that logged in during that time) along with peak and average concurrency figures all together to start extrapolating an idea of the general health of an MMO.

 

Also, holiday and launch activity levels are anomalous and tend to produce statistical outliers not consistent with other figures.

 

As others have said, the real trends will start to emerge a) after the free month is over and b) during the 3-6 month window.

[Codexena]

Here's a more trusted article on the topic: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/star-wars-the-old-republic-sees-early-success/2012/01/03/gIQAVpKvYP_story.html

 

Well at least the Washington Post did list where they received their numbers. Although the original source seems to come from Baird Research, but you have to be a paid customer to see how they derived their numbers. Therefore, I will still discount the figures until I can see how Baird obtained their data, what sources they used, how did they define the variables used in their analysis, and what was their methodology used in their analysis. It also refers to the source of GamesIndustry.biz, that I do not have an account, so the same questions come into play. I am sure that BioWare has submitted a press release to all the media and a lot of the media's analysis is based upon the press releases and other released data from BioWare to some extent. However, without paying out the wazoo and registering for a zillion accounts it is hard to determine the validity of any numbers presented outside of BioWare as the authoritative data source. Therefore, I do not believe any of these numbers for good or ill and neither should we all.

[Tiron_Raptor]

What saddens me is that probably most people won't read this post despite all the effort you put in... Still it was a good read, backed up with some figures, and it gave me (a complete newb in all this concurrent to total ratio business) a good indication of how things work. Thank you for this

 

Oh I know. Even for me it's almost TLDR, and I wrote the thing...which took about an hour as it turns out. Lol.

 

I don't know of a game out there that's got better data available on the Concurrent Users, peak or otherwise, so that's the one I used.

 

You need daily/weekly/monthly "uniques" (number of accounts that logged in during that time) along with peak and average concurrency figures all together to start extrapolating an idea of the general health of an MMO.

 

Also, holiday and launch activity levels are anomalous and tend to produce statistical outliers not consistent with other figures.

 

As others have said, the real trends will start to emerge a) after the free month is over and b) during the 3-6 month window.

 

Exactly. And the particular thing that's going to give us our first real idea of how it's doing is the summer: in no small part due to school being out for most people (Including College Students), there's frequently a lot more regular users in the summer than any other time of year (Check out tranquility's 'past year' map on eve-offline.net for a good example of this).

 

The other thing that could substantially affect it is the inevitable release of some kind of limited free trial or somesuch. Let's face it... right now, everyone here is, on some level, a fanboy/girl. We're the ones who were so interested in the game we were willing to buy it right off without a particularly good idea of what the game was like or how it'd hold up. There isn't a lot of in-depth information out there even now.

 

Most more 'normal' people aren't going to buy a game until they have a better idea what it's like. In depth information, word of mouth, and reviews can cover this to some extent... but some people won't even consider buying it until they can try it first. There will be other people who won't even get the idea of playing it at all until they see somewhere that they can try it for free.

 

Seriously: Right now, very little about how the game is or will do is known, and nothing at all is certain. Anyone trying to make guesses about the future of the game now is shooting in the dark.

 

Not to mention that if the '1 million subscribers' number is true and holds out, it'll put SWTOR right on MMOData's top chart, which has only five games on it right now, three of which have no data since 2009.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Tiron_Raptor

[Fnordian]

The real question is that, due to beta timing and NGE, what is the impact of TOR on LOTRO.

[Freeball]

That is concurrent dude, WoW usually has less than that. Players that are playing at the same time.

[Caelrie]

I always laughed when the SWTOR community insisted SWTOR would kill WoW. Nothing will kill WoW until Blizzard pulls the plug.

[Conarr]

Trying to use PCU as a measure of the playerbase has so many problems it's not funny. It measures exclusively the maximum people online at any one time on a given day.

 

...

 

So in short: PCU analysis is largely useless for determining the state of the game, several times more so than usual at this particular time as well.

 

Now! An informed opinion. I've read through every post and reply in this thread. Most were more or less equally ridiculous. Even if I didn't agree with it completely, I can respect the time you took to think it through. (too much time IMO, but hey! I read the entire post.)

 

Where I don't agree completely is when you say PCU is largely useless. I agree that it has problems, you summed them up well, but if you compare PCU for two different games at a given time and location, it's a fair comparison despite the issues - assuming you collect the numbers the same way. I know that isn't supported statistically, but based on an intuitive comparison, it could work.

[Dodia]

I guess you missed what everyone has already posted that "concurrent" players mean how many play at the same time.

 

WOW only has 250 K "concurrent" players. Meaning its doing better then WOW. Some people are... well.. ignorant...

 

Wrong.

 

First of all, warcraft realms isn't known to be accurate whatsoever. And even if it was, it says AVERAGE concurrent players, while the 350k concurrent users for TOR is at PEAK times. There is a huge difference.

 

TOR isn't going to hurt WoW whatsoever and if people think so then I am afraid they are delusional as they come.

[Mannic]

Pretty sure at least half of TOR's concurrent users right now are WoW subscribers so...

[Freeball]

The inability of people in this thread to separate "concurrent" from "total" users is both baffling and alarming. I barely passed Grade 11 Math and haven't sat in a math class in almost 20 years, and yet I understand it. You guys have no excuse, and should be embarrassed.

 

Steam has over 35,000,000 users. It just recently set a record by passing the 5,000,000 concurrent user mark, bolstered by a huge influx of people on Skyrim's launch day.

 

350,000 concurrent users a couple of weeks after launch is huge.

 

The quality of discourse in this forum is absolutely execrable. Some of you might as well be slinging poop at one another for all the accurate information that's being exchanged.

 

You are awesome.

[krakken]

Source: http://furiousfanboys.com/2012/01/tor-has-350k-concurrent-players-and-minimal-impact-on-wow/

 

Can't be right...right?

 

"After only a couple weeks online, the news for The Old Republic has gone from good to bad. Following some drama over the weekend, news has come out that after one week on the UK charts the game dropped from #10 to #38. Now the analysts are stepping in and while they see a healthy MMO market, they don’t think that TOR is hurting WoW at all:

 

Baird Equity estimates that the game has peak concurrent users of roughly 350,000 players.

 

According to analysts at Cowen and Company the uptake of The Old Republic has had “minimal apparent impact” on Blizzard and Activision’s market-leading World of Warcraft.

 

Hopefully things pick up and the concurrent player base grows, otherwise the game will become like Warhammer Online in a few months."

 

 

Definition of CONCURRENT

1: operating or occurring at the same time

2a : running parallel b : convergent; specifically : meeting or intersecting in a point

3: acting in conjunction

4: exercised over the same matter or area by two different authorities <concurrent jurisdiction>

 

 

 

Considering the game sold like hot-cakes and IS much better than anything currently out there (at least in my experience) ... 350k concurrently at PEAK times or what? who knows *shrug* I'm taking this with a grain of salt.

 

I told you so.....and have been telling you so for almost 2 years. I have quoted over and over this game wont have better than SWG numbers. The actual numbers have even been more dismal by about 20% of mine. All this millions and millions of players was a bunch of bull from the start. When it got down to pay to play or leave people voted wth their wallets.

[Petrolhead]

Lots of people are referring WoW concurrent players stats from WarcraftRealms.com. As former WoWCensus user I can tell you that these numbers are far from accurate. There is tons of realms that doesn't have anyone running census on them and that means there is lot of players missing from the charts.

[Karast]

i don't think TOR devs ever thought they would destroy WoW. the market is big enough for both to live side by side. coca-cola and pepsi both do well and you don't here pepsi drinkers saying coca-cola will be shut down with-in a year

 

the problem i see is alot of WoW fanboys feel threatened by any new MMO. don't believe me wait till GW2 comes out. all the WoW fanboys will flock to their forums to proclaim the impending doom of that game

 

the real deciding factor in TORs success, is if they can make money after paying lucas-arts. there will never be an issue with the number of players playing just look a the server list and see full full full heavy, etc

 

Coke > Pepsi! Pepsi will be shutdown in a year!

 

Being a Warhammer player I fear not the fluctuation of population which leads to the desolation of server realms!

 

If the servers empty out just RP it! and if your the last one on the server you've won the game! Because you obviously own everyone else so hard in PvP that they quit and rerolled to Hello Kitty Online Island Adventure ((that games has intense PvP servers though, I hear they are getting a Kangaroo expansion to counter WoW's Panda's!))

[Bollah]

Wrong.

 

First of all, warcraft realms isn't known to be accurate whatsoever. And even if it was, it says AVERAGE concurrent players, while the 350k concurrent users for TOR is at PEAK times. There is a huge difference.

 

TOR isn't going to hurt WoW whatsoever and if people think so then I am afraid they are delusional as they come.

 

TOR already delivered the knock out punch. And you can see WoW fans are getting very desperate.

 

Rift hurt WoW with 2 million subs gone. SWTOR, won't? Keep dreaming.

[Codexena]

It's the best graphical and most accurate representation out there, and even if it's been adjusted incorrectly or is off by 50,000 people. It's still not this overwhelming number people are talking.

 

I would disagree. Where did you get your 50,000 number? What source did you get this figure from? Also what percentage or total number of the total WoW population is not using this mod? What is your source for this answer? I cannot believe the numbers presented personally due to the large error that is very possible if compared to the total WoW population of active players. Therefore, it is only one data point, but is NOT an authoritative source of information for the total WoW population. It is however authoritative for the use of this mod ONLY. The graph only shows accounts that use the mod in their User Interface thus is not representative of the total population as a whole. Unless you can point me to an authoritative source that states that all WoW players use this mod in all their access. I fear you will not be able to find this source from an authoritative data source. An authoritative data source would be the company that provides the game WoW. No other source is authoritative and is **** with error, bias, and perception of the author.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Codexena

[Bollah]

I told you so.....and have been telling you so for almost 2 years. I have quoted over and over this game wont have better than SWG numbers. The actual numbers have even been more dismal by about 20% of mine. All this millions and millions of players was a bunch of bull from the start. When it got down to pay to play or leave people voted wth their wallets.

 

Someone that doesn't know what concurrent means. lol