Xfire's Age of Conan statistics eschew easy classification

You can get a good idea of how the game is faring by these numbers. It's only a percentage of the playerbase that uses Xfire. But that sampling of people is showing that over time they are playing Aoc less and less. So why wouldn't this segment of the playerbase be representative of the entire playerbase as a whole?

You can't say it doesn't give a somewhat accurate picture of things... unless you're suggesting that about 1/2 of the Xfire users logging time in Conan decided to uninstall Xfire or stop submitting they're data. Doubtful.

It's funny that even when the picture is laid out in front of poeple they still don't want to see it.

You can't take the xfire-users demographic and extend it to all AoC gamers. There are bound to be some differences in preferences and personalities between people who make different decisions about a piece of software.

@royale - I'm one of those mystical people who don't run Xfire all the time even though I have it installed.

Also, 'somewhat accurate' statistics of a portion of the playerbase doesn't mean the truth is laid out in front of people... that means we get a pretty graph that doesn't show much of the big picture because of the selection bias due to the sample having to choose to install and run Xfire.

@Joe, Jezebeau

Re: Selection bias causing inaccuracy. I could belive that the results weren't proof of anything if they were less dramatic. I accept that Xfire stats have to be taken with a grain of salt. I just don't see how such a huge dropoff in numbers doen't tell us -something- about the state of the game.

These numbers can't be written off entirely just becaue 100% of the people didn't log 100% of their AoC time in Xfire.

How else could you explain it?

a) AoC players used Xfire less than they had been and caused a decrease in minutes logged, for some reason the Xfire users didn't want to log thier AoC time anymore

b) AoC players who use Xfire quit playing and new AoC players started that don't use Xfire, so there are just as many people playing the actual game, but not as many of them are Xfire users

c) around half of the people with Xfire decided to uninstall it over the past month and this is just a reflection of that.

Nah, I'll go with the simplest explanation and say less people are spending less time in AoC.

@Jobe497

You're completely missing the point. No one is saying this is a great representation of subscription numbers, what people are saying is that such a steady decline in numbers is a result of people not enjoying the game as they once were, or a lot of people just not running xfire anymore when they were weeks and a month ago (which i find unlikely).

Take a look at these games numbers on xfire. No it doesn't have anything to do with understanding subscription numbers, but it gives a decent overview of whether games are holding players attention, a very specific scope of players that is:

http://www.xfire.com/games/wow/World_of_Warcraft/
http://www.xfire.com/games/gw/Guild_Wars/
http://www.xfire.com/games/aoc/Age_of_Conan_Hyborian_Adventures/

(I'd list more but only 3 links are allowed in comments)

Notice one game that shows a unique trend unlike the others? Or any of the top played games on xfire.com website. I do, and so do many others.

Right, the type of person who uses Xfire is bored with AoC but everyone else is loving it? I didn't realize that "Xfire user" was such a narrow demographic of people with such specific tastes regarding fun games.

I agree with Brela. Xfire stats show are pretty indicative of a game gaining or losing popularity. It seems to represent gaming trends pretty well.

Look at Diablo II for another example. http://www.xfire.com/games/d2/Diablo_II/ The announcement of D3 spurred many people (myself included, though I haven't ever used Xfire) to log into Diablo II and give that game another spin. The Xfire numbers reflect that, as D2 numbers had a huge spike (doubled in only a couple days) after the Blizzard WWI weekend.

Imo, the "type" of people who uses Xfire are generally "Gamers". So we could pretty safely say that AoC is losing popularity with gamers.