Remember when Massively was a solid MMO news site that reported all things MMO and did not Tobold its comments section? Good times back then.
Today, the site somehow misses reporting on the biggest MMO player event of the year, something even major non-MMO sites like PCGamer were able to cover. Worse still, once the event has passed, they link to CCP talking about the event and completely fail to mention who organized it and made it happen. I feel bad for Jef too, because somehow I doubt he is the one driving this ‘oversight’.
Scroll a bit further down, and we get this gem. Justin, I don’t believe this is what waxing looks like. Am I reading an independent news site, or an EAWare press release stream? How many successful, growing MMOs are planning server mergers ‘soon’?
Hardcore Casual 
I was kinda scared to click on that “this is what waxing looks like” link for a moment there…
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/05/02/ccp-analyzes-eves-jita-player-event/
?
Why are you linking something I linked in the post…?
It all depends on who plays the game at Massively I guess, and their schedule.
This also demonstrates a clear – if subtle – downward trend:
http://beta.xfire.com/games/eve
I suspect that EVE is going to be okay. I suspect the same of SW:TOR as well.
April 1st was a Sunday. Today is a Wed. As EAWare has informed me, Sunday is the most popular day of the week for an MMO.
That’s really bad for EVE then, right? Considering they have quite the dip on Sunday as well? ;)
If you only read Massively you missed this, but something was happening this weekend that disrupted casual play.
Actually, Syn, I get my CCP/EVE news directly from you. As you pointed out, Massively skimps on it.
At least you get one thing right :)
Hmmm. The day Eve posted that huge number of 6600 is the day when for some reason Xfire added 1 hour played to everyone’s time in game. And while that graph is for Eve it could represent MMORPGs on Xfire as a whole. From April 1st to last Sunday the time Xfire members played all MMORPGs declined by over 10%. Eve was actually trending better than the average game until Sunday when the GW2 beta kicked every games hours. Eve players are notorious for trying out other games and then returning. I think it has something to do with the time based skill system.
That’s a part of my skepticism, right there: “Eve was actually trending better”…I have only your say so (which, I’ve no reason to disbelieve at present, but bear with me) to go on. X-Fire shows us a very small window of recent play volumes. I’d like to see several years worth of X-Fire data for each game. I can’t help but think that somebody must have been scraping this data, but I have yet to find it. (And no, their single-figure ranking system isn’t sufficient for me.)
That’s my single biggest annoyance with Xfire; that you can’t zoom the graph out more. But as someone who is very entertained by success/failure in the genre, I often check Xfire. I don’t screen grab or blog about it though, so can’t link you anything direct. Trust me?
Re: Massively…I 100% agree.
No matter how many times you paste that xfire-link, it will still not get any more relevant.
Feel free to link me your trending source and I’ll be sure to link it next time.
And if he can’t link a different trending source, then that somehow suggests the truth and accuracy of x-fire?
No, then it’s the only available source for this info. Xfire might not be the most accurate, but it is what it is.
According to an Internet survey, 100% of the population uses the Internet.
It doesn’t need to get more relevant than it was before, to be more relevant than you will ever be.
He be trollin’. It’s what he does.
XFire’s numbers are dubious. They only reflect usage statistics for XFire users, and then only users who remember to flip XFire on before loading up.
So good news for EVE; despite a clear downward trend and a noticeable dip on Sunday, it probably has more users than it has XFire users in its clientele.
Yea it’s not like Xfire has a history of being statistically accurate for games like AoC, WAR, LoTRO, WoW, etc etc etc. Nope. Zero correlation. 100% inaccurate. SW:TOR is thriving! In EAWare we trust!
I wonder if you’re like this at home? Every conversation spinning into some sensationlistic troll spree must get very frustrating. I guess it can be funny in an ironic sense.
I’m trying to find XFire historic data for the games you listed, but their site and I aren’t getting along. Or they don’t provide that data?
Doubting Xfire numbers for trending at this point is silly, and I don’t expect silly statements from people who should know better. You doubting Xfire is trolling my friend.
Countless blogs have done weekly/monthly tracking that has lined up with official number releases or other indicators (server mergers for instance).
Respectfully, I learned long ago to question data presented to me beyond face value. It’s one of the things that got me employed. <3
I'm not outright denying the statistics, though I am 1. cheekily poking fun at them re: EVE's "trending" and 2. questioning their validity. If you're sure they'd stand up to analysis, I respect that. But I still want to see them stand up to analysis. :)
Sorry, I know you are not new to MMOs or blogging, so I had assumed you had seen the various analysis of Xfire done on other blogs. If you have not seen any of that, my mistake.
Of course, one could always Google such things up to get information, especially when doubting why someone else is referring to something that you question, right?
I’ll get you started: http://simple-n-complex.blogspot.com/2010/05/gaming-xfire-latest-update.html
I did some Googling, of course. (Have a *tiny* bit of faith in me.) I however thought you’d have some insight on what sources I should start.
I also thought you’d welcome yet another opportunity to pwn me; it’s your schtick, after all. <3
I'll check that link and do some legwork, then give you further opportunities. Thanks, man.
xFire may have a relatively small sample size, but that doesn’t mean it can’t show trends. As long as the xfire client doesn’t cause a game to crash there is no reason to doubt it.
Trying to estimate actual numbers (e.g. “SW:TOR has x hundred thousand subscribers”) from Xfire is an exercise in ridiculousness.
Trying to detect trends, however – as is being done here – is not.
Sure you can say “they only reflect usage statistics for XFire users, and then only users who remember to flip XFire on before loading up” – but why would MORE TOR players have been using Xfire a few months ago than use it now? Why would more TOR players have remembered to flip XFire on before loading up a few months ago than remember to do so now?
As a simple, hypothetical example, Xfire users could have grown disinterested in TOR in greater proportion than other players. A cross-game communication system alone caters more to EVE than to TOR – after all, you’ve got to fire off those clarion calls to the corp across cyberspace for when the suicide target undocks.
It’s a tiny, non-random, self-selected sample. Statistically, it’s largely rubbish. But the link does make for a great rickroll. :)
Its a small population and sample, but it is what it is. Its gamers playing games, and also NOT playing games.
The fact that its one of the only tools to measure this kind of thing publicly makes it relevant.
Until steam starts doing something similar, or webservices publicly making traffic and behavior available, Xfire is the best non-biased indication we get, and that alone makes it superior to anyone elses gut feelings or personal opinions on the matter.
Is it great? absolutely not. Is it the end all be all for statistics? Nope. But is it a non biased sampling of certain kinds of gamers? Yes it is. Can you correlate that to all gamers? Maybe….
Its a tool, and right now its the only tool available to do its particular kind of job the community at large has access to.
I mean, it’s not non-biased at all (and I don’t think most of you are asserting that it is). I’ve seen nothing demonstrating that x-fire’s users are representative of the entire gaming populace. Case-in-point:
http://beta.xfire.com/games/wow
Hey look, a clear downward trend…which is utterly meaningless. Why? For starters, it’s only a month’s worth of data and – even more telling – it’s measuring on a scale up to 120k players.
How may people play WoW? 120k is a tiny, tiny, tiny subset of even half of their subs. WoW’s demographic is massive; it is, as we all like to riff, a “lowest common denominator game”. X-fire’s statistics do not avail us here at all.
It’s that kind of stuff that I’m talking about. Does it rule out x-fire? Not entirely. Does it inspire confidence in x-fire? Not a bit.
Wait so WoW dropping in Xfire at the same time that Blizzard reports that subs are dropping is proof that Xfire is inaccurate how…?
Correlation does not prove causation. I don’t mean to be didactic, but there it is. There’s probably a connection, but given that X-Fire gamers and the WoW populace at large may be dramatically different demographics, drawing the conclusion that it’s *proof* is folly.
Assuming that it’s proof is assuming that the X-fire sample set is representative of the entire WoW-player base…and that I find highly unlikely. That’s like saying everybody that plays Plants VS Zombies is on Steam, disregarding the very large iPhone/iPad contingent they have. Steam players are NOT representative of iPad owners..nor is the inverse true. It’s clear that there is (possibly massive) overlap…but what is that overlap? When you’re analyzing sample sets, this is what you need to be thinking.
You may be very right. I have doubts. I always do. I entirely agree that an ability to zoom out on those graphs would be very very interesting.
thade, the only logical conclusion from your persistent comments about X-fire’s stats is that we have no idea whether the game is doing fine or it’s dropping. I think you are exaggerating, maybe on purpose.
Partially. <3
My point is this: I don't feel we can draw hard and fast conclusions from X-fire's stats; I've tried to express some of the reasons I have for that (sort of spread all over the place here due to my using Reply instead of actually writing a blog post about it myself).
It's fine to take them into consideration (who wouldn't?) but I really find myself wondering how representative the X-fire community is of the greater community…and, as a result, whether we can use their graphs as predictors or not.
You can wonder, but consider that Xfire has been reflective of a games rise and fall countless times. When AoC sold a ton and started with 800k subs, Xfire reflected that. When AoC declined rapidly, Xfire reflected that. Same for WAR. Same for WoW. Same for LotRO. Same for EVE. Same for LoL.
At what point do you admit the odds are pretty damn good that if your graph on Xfire looks negative, your game is heading south? No, you won’t know the exact % of subs lost, or why. But do you honestly believe that a game with the sample size of a top 25 game on Xfire can trend negatively, yet overall be growing?
And more directly, that SW:TOR is that game?
I can’t consider how reflective it’s been as it doesn’t give me historical data; but let’s go with “I trust you” and I believe you’ve reliably seen downward trends in X-Fire over time leading to the death of games. I’ve explained why I’m skeptical; I seem to be the only one. :) I’m okay with that.
There’s a lot missing here, for me. Here’s more: third variables like demographics…EVE is the only real hard sci-fi space game with any longevity to it, where as there are plenty of fantasy MMOs and – honestly – Star Wars is a Fantasy MMO. How about competition for those demographics over time? Nothing’s really stepped up to challenge the EVE demographic’s love for their game, right? Can we count Notch’s theoretical sandbox space game? There are a few other tiny ones out there, but EVE’s the best maintained and best funded. Why jump ship to something you know will be worse? Meanwhile, if somebody gets mad at WoW or whatever and they’re waiting for the next big patch, why not try one of the dozens of other big studio “AAA” titles out there that are in the same genre and setting?
I think it’s probable that X-fire spikes *follow* usage trends, but I do not agree that they necessarily accurately model them. I.E. if X-fire has a steep, steep dip, probably the game did too. How steep does it need to be for that to be a correlation to the full community and not just “what the X-fire crowd did”? I don’t know the answer to that, so I maintain doubt.
There’s nothing wrong with doubt. Doubt is the default human condition. However, if all you have is doubt, then there’s no point in saying anything, because all you’re saying is that you are in the default human condition. Nothing you’re saying is strictly incorrect, but it doesn’t serve any purpose, you’re not making any point that anyone can get behind. You’ve been arguing for some vague purpose for days, and yet the discussion hasn’t moved in any significant way forward from “Feel free to link me your trending source and I’ll be sure to link it next time.” , which is exactly where it started.
“Human condition?” No offense is intended here – at all – but my arguments here are all at the level of sophomore science major stuff: seriously, taking some heavily biased sample set and using it to draw conclusions about a comparably massive population is folly. It is in fact more vague saying “Hey, X-fire activity dropped for Game X; must mean the entire population is bailing out.”
The argument I’ve been making is that the definition for “trending resource” is at best vague. Show me how the MMO player population for a given game is reducible to the X-fire population that plays that game (that the X-fire population is statistically representative of the pop. as a whole) and I will agree. Otherwise, I will not.
My entire hope here was to raise some questions in all of you about these things. Seems I’ve failed, but it was in my nature to try.
It is in fact more vague saying “Hey, X-fire activity dropped for Game X; must mean the entire population is bailing out.”
Useless straw man fallacy.
“The argument I’ve been making is that the definition for “trending resource” is at best vague. Show me how the MMO player population for a given game is reducible to the X-fire population that plays that game (that the X-fire population is statistically representative of the pop. as a whole) and I will agree. Otherwise, I will not.”
yes, it’s a bit vague. Fine, you won’t agree, who cares? The default human condition is that you don’t agree with other people, unless you say you do. Again, you write thousands of words, and say nothing more than if you’d remained silent. Seems like a bit of a waste to me.
“My entire hope here was to raise some questions in all of you about these things. Seems I’ve failed, but it was in my nature to try.”
In your own words, you’re saying stuff covered in basic science classes. If trying to raise some questions by saying basic things we’ve all heard before is your nature, then your nature is “fail”.
Um. Trololol?
Using assertions on human nature in a statistics discussion; how is that working out for you in other venues? (See what I did there?)
other venues? You mean, like explaining to other trolls why they are trolls, and what they should do differently to be less wrong? Generally speaking, it doesn’t work, can’t change people.
You should read that comment of yours a few times back to yourself. Both a tautology and a paradox; very rare to see that.
Sorry, but the whole “I know you are but what am I” thing stopped interesting me in kindergarten.
You claim this is a statistics discussion, I claim it isn’t. Fine, restate your argument in entirely mathematical terms, which will A. prove your point and B. avoid pointless insults. Come on, nothing but numbers, hit me with it :) I love math.
I don’t think that’s really what you want. What you want is for me to say *anything* so you can continue to troll me. So, really, anything I say is good, right?
Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring. Banana phone.
Here we are on Syncaine’s site, a site I regularly read because I appreciate and agree with his viewpoint, and a site you visit, in your OWN WORDS, to play devil’s advocate. An objective observer might well term that coming here to troll, eh?
Again, if this truly is a statistical discussion in your mind, feel free to put it in purely mathematical terms, and I’ll reply in kind. Or, reveal your true purpose here through either silence or more cracks about banana phones, and we’ll end it there :)
It’s been a looong time since Massively was on my blog reader. I got fed up for the very reason you allude to – it seemed they turned into more of a marketing tool for big-name MMO companies rather than being an unbiased *news* service for MMO players. I remember reading several articles over a few days that essentially dismissed player criticism of a particular issue (so long ago I can’t even remember what issue) that read like they were handed straight from the owning company’s PR department.
It’s reached the point where I only go to Massively to laugh at the comments section, while occasionally being inspired to pull some comment out and rant about it on my own blog. Otherwise, most of their stories are just write-ups of PR releases, and not worth the time it takes to read them.
Isn’t that sad, though? It’s such a waste. For any post they have telling me about some new or quirky unknown MMO that might be interesting to read about, there are a dozen more that whine, tirade, or spin. I have posted three comments there to day and all of them vanished within two days of my posting them.
I don’t think they like me either. :(
I thought I had some comments get deleted once, and then the next day they were back. That was the old comment system though.
Syncaine seems to be saying the same thing, that they “Tobold their comments” now — I’d be curious to know if anyone else has had that happen to them. I swore off ever posting on MMORPG.com because of heavy-handed moderation, and that’s despite the only post I ever made that was mod edited was one asking why another was mod edited. I don’t like that Tobold shit — it’s why I rarely read his blog and have only commented once.
Tobold hates PvP in all its forms, which includes comment section PvP.
Don’t you find an aggregator of MMO press releases useful, though? I’ve found out about lots of MMOs I wasn’t aware of and developments in others that I’d missed that way. I prefer reading information that comes directly from the company that makes the games, at least in the first instance. If I’m interested beyond that, then I can go search out opinion pieces but the company information is where I want to start.
Is there a better aggregator for MMO Press Releases than Massively? I’ve tried several others but they didn’t seem to have as many updates.
As for the comment threads, I much prefer Massively now that I can’t see them under the bizarre new comment system they moved to. As for articles there I read maybe one in 20 these days.
You’ve got a point, and that’s probably why I still go there. Though I do find I hear most of these things through just socializing with other gamers when playing.
Omali’s MMOFallout.com blog pretty much covers anything Massively covers — I think he moved it off the wordpress reader or something, and I’m too lazy to find another way to follow it, but I remember him being pretty darn thorough and less irritating than Massively.
Don’t get me wrong, I do follow Massively; they get lucky occasionally and there are a few writers on there still that have interesting things to say. There is a LOT of crap though. A bi-product of having to be so prolific; you basically have to post just to post (which is the bane of any forum, let alone a blog).
Yes, while generally Syp and I are very different people, I do read the Game Archeologist. I also read most things posted by Jef and Beau, even if I don’t always agree with either of them. Other than that, most of it I just scroll on past.
I got bored of Beau’s incessant paid trolling after a while (don’t get me wrong, he’s nice to read and he’s got the odd sparkle of greatness).
It was fun to rage at for a spell, but that gets old after a while; even pointing out on the Diablo 3 article about nightmare mode that they were blatantly misquoting and then denying that it mattered was quite a romp, but lately there’s been nothing that even BioWare could describe as intelligent analysis.
Which is a pity, because I used to really like Massively (especially before its comments threads got flooded with cretins like Dunraven).
Someone should hold a funeral.
Yeah, I read Beau most because he checks out games I’ve never heard of. But sometimes, when he starts talking about how great it is for games to sell “I pwn you” buttons, I want to slap him.
Beau’s columns become a lot more interesting (and understandable) when it clicks that he plays every F2P game out there, and has never once stated that he got anywhere near any sort of “endgame” activity in ANY of them.
“Pay to win” isn’t a big deal if you never spend more than a smidgeon of time on any one game before moving on to the next.
I disagree, plenty of newpapers have shown that being prolific does not mean you have to devolve to sensationalist tabloid crap that gets the retard(s) (masses?) clapping their hands/slitting their wrists over an issue they’ll forget about in an hour/day/week.
I really, really wish there was an equivalent of The Economist in the gaming media spectrum; hell, I’d take pretty much anything like The Guardian/Independent/Times, but, alas, it seems that the market or drive for that is severely limited.
Perhaps we can blame ourselves. Well, not those of us interested and informed enough to complain about Massively, but I certainly run into a number of MMO gamers that feed into the sensationalist tabloid crap.
Oh, undoubtedly. Months (years?) ago I commented on Massively (heh) that WoWInsider’s community was pretty much trash because the authors at the time had turned the blog into their personal meme/pop culture/C-grade humour pits and, unsurprisingly, the comments that got upvoted more and more were those that linked a “funny” vid. This all started from the odd thing here and there, but when the majority of the blog’s content becomes focussed on it, the audience changes fairly quickly.
Same thing with Massively: once they saw sensationalist headlines with no actual analysis began to pull in more comments and page hits (because thinking is hard, and hard isn’t accessible), the audience gradually shifted towards people who liked that sort of thing, so we end up with the vicious cycle of it getting worse and worse; indeed, I’d suggest it got much worse once the TOR/GW2 hype trains started and the articles became PR releases.
I miss it too. Almost every reliable mmo news source goes this way eventually. I remember back when mmorpg.com really went to shit, not that they were great to start with, but it was just ugly..
I miss when they used to plug MMO bloggers. Those were good times.
I remember a Syncaine versus Tobold article that I enjoyed long long long before I was ever googling Darkfall and ended up hanging around here permanently.
While I agree with you about Massively, I would take the numbers from Xfire with a grain of salt.
A grain of salt? Fine. However, the problem is that you and all the other Xfire doubters keep saying “take Xfire with a grain of salt” while not mentioning that the data arguing the other side, in this case an EA press release, should be taken with a metric shit-ton of salt. Lying by omission, or are you just being careless?
The takeaway is that there isn’t a lot of data either way, but you’d expect a themepark game to lose hardcore players quite quickly so that’s pretty much an expected trend. If xfire shows it, that’s reasonable data, but skewed hard towards one segment of the player base.
I will be v interested to see how xfire shows GW2 popularity once that is released, as that may trend more towards xfire users.
This is what I’m talking about. X-fire shows trends for X-fire players; anything else is a dodgy extrapolation.
We’d expect a themepark to lose hardcore players quite quickly, BECAUSE every themepark since WoW has failed to live up to projections/expectations. Your point is deceptive since it implies that we have some concrete examples where themeparks lose the hardcore players, yet remain commercially successful and relevant after that. Or perhaps you are thinking that some themepark other than WoW is commercially relevant at this point? We might have different standards for this.
While I do agree, and there’s only a few elements of Massively that I continue to enjoy/consume beyond the headline announcements, I think the point on SWTOR and the comments section doesn’t ring true.
Every positive spin trash post on Massively is inundated with negative SWTOR comments, which most of the time agree with you Syncaine. The CCP/EVE posts tend towards the things you complain about – the Tobold style comments.
Aside from whether or not Massively is circling the drain, the nature of Eve’s game and game design is such that news about the game is even less interesting to outsiders than for other current or upcoming MMOs. As a result, it isn’t tough to understand why the coverage they get from third party sources is weaker than fans of Eve believe it should be.
As for Xfire data: Sure, it can sometimes point out a trend. But it can just as easily be completely off and wrong. It isn’t just the sample size, but the type of sample.
There are national polls that only poll ~5,000 people and yet they can be scientifically accurate within a few percentage points. But a poll of 5,000 white males between the ages of 18 and 32 is no longer scientifically accurate despite it being the same sample size.
Sure, there are times where the opinion of 5,000 white males 18-32 are about the same as a poll of the whole nation. But just as often (and perhaps more often), it won’t be the same.
The type of gamer that uses Xfire is not reflective of a cross section of the entire gaming market, or even the cross section of a specific game. That’s why the data is suspect for more than just back of the envelope navel gazing.
But as someone else noted, there are times where its the best we have due to the fact that EA and other companies lie their asses off. Sadly, the gaming industry has not matured to the point where businesses report information accurately for the good of the entire industry (which even benefits them in the long run). So unfortunately, we make do with what we have.
-Michael Hartman
@frogdiceinc
http://www.frogdice.com
If you made a list of the top 10 player-driven MMO stories of all time, how many times would EVE be on that list? Would any other game make it more than once?
As for Xfire; why when WoW was losing subs did Xfire stats for WoW drop if you believe Xfire is some subset of gamers that can’t be relied upon? Why did LotRO spike after the F2P transition? Why did the stats perfectly track the decline of AoC and WAR? Why do they line up so well with EVE sub numbers?
If *I* made that list of the top 10 player driven MMO stories? Eve would probably be on there zero. Why? Because every big time Eve story I have ever read about sounds like griefing to me, not interesting gameplay.
I’ve seen far more interesting stories on other, albeit smaller, MUDs/MMOs where people can affect the game world far more significantly – and permanently.
Burn Jita is neat and all, but it mostly didn’t affect people and once it was over the game world was instantly right back the same.
Contrast that to say, Threshold RPG (bias) where players have done things that killed off, resurrected, or created new gods, permanently transformed the face of the planet, altered the way the universe functioned, and more. So much so that it was literally a very different world as a direct result of what players did or didn’t do.
I’m not saying Threshold RPG is better than Eve, but I am saying there have been countless events that changed the world and the game far more significantly than the latest grief play con job on Eve.
I’m glad people love Eve. But honestly, clever scams that affect tons of people aren’t very interesting to me and in the grand scheme of things in the genre just aren’t memorable or meaningful.
Heck, I can recall relic raids on DAoC that were more meaningful in a POSITIVE WAY than all these big nasty scams you read about on Eve. I just don’t get excited about player driven stories that – at their core – are about screwing people over in a way that affects them beyond the game.
Its funny you should mention national polls of 5000 relevant people, because not once in my life have i ever knowingly been “polled” before.
In NYC, if someone stops me on the street for something, i don’t have the time for it.
But I am a gamer, who has used crossfire before.
Which one should be more relevant to me? Food for thought.
A few years ago when I started reading/blogging MMO stuff, I read a comment on Massively. The comment decried the site as being in the pocket of CCP because all they ever post about was EVE-related things.
I shit you not.
I remember complaining about every third post being about Second Life at one point. It used to out post WoW. As you said, I shit you not.
http://commonsensegamer.com/?p=640
BTW, the comments on that post are wonderful in retrospect. There is Syp smacking down Massively for not enough WAR coverage!
As much as I’d like to see more EVE coverage, the game is so niche that it’s extremely hard for an outsider to understand, even if he’s an MMO veteran.
I was reading the comment section on the Eurogamer article you posted a while back (the one that had CCP commenting on the Jita event) and most of them were of the “I have no idea what I just read” sort.
Are you really surprised about this?
I don’t think it’s been the same since Michael Zenke left tbh. Not that they don’t have decent writers, but they don’t put the same effort into original posts that they once did.
I agree with you. The majority of what gets posted, doesn’t have a writer actually saying much of anything at all….
Then as for the comment sections, every single discussion unravels into one that involves how the game is monetized… The least interesting thing going for games right now is how you PAY for them in my opinion.
No one even asks if or why its fun, its just a discussion about F2P vs Subscription, or Pay2Win vs blehh bleh derp derp.
Well said.
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