Or just delayed reaction ...
Before I begin I would like to state that I'm not an statistician or analyst and what follows is not 100% accurate. But I believe in the data collected.
Tuesday, the 30th, I got this idea about monitoring the number or players that registered since Open BETA (a.k.a. OBT), since the number of active players in the game was removed (I will not discuss the reason) the only way was to monitor the number of total accounts created.
1st I had to verify that a new account is also given automatically a forum account, I did and it's verified.
I know it's 1 day late, but still ..
Also note that I didn't collect the data on regular intervals.
Starting on 30th 5PM my local time (GMT+2), the number of total users was 386256; to the moment of posting this, the number is 393378.
From that day, there are 7122 new user accounts created.
Now the growth per day is as follows, starting day 2 obviously:
- 983
- 873
- 576
- 777
- 1285
- 1082
- 892
- 654 (at the time of posting)
you can see a somewhat substantial increase during the weekend
this is how it looks from a daily perspective:
What do I make from all of this? two things:
- MWO OTB was launched prematurely
- PGI and IGP created a hype around the game and at the launch of the global open beta it did not lived to expectations.
The 1.81% that account for the users created since OBT started, from the total of accounts, is the sword MWO fell into.
I would not comment on what sould've been done differently or what PGI/IGP should do from now on, the damage is done and they need to "fix" it; damage control mode ON
Today is the patch day, and hopefully some of the issues will get addressed, and also maybe interest in the game will rise.
This is why I will continue to monitor the number of user accounts; I will return in 1 week with another batch of data collected starting today.
If you find an irregularity or have some comment, please do tell.
Continued - 15/11/2012
By the time I'm done posting this it's already the 15th for me
So .. I'm back with a new batch of data gathered from 6 (completing the day) to 15 of this month.
Nr of accounts to date are 399674, out of which 13418 were created since OBT launched - they now account for 3.36% of total registered users.
The number of new accounts created / day, starting with day 2 (30th of Nov) are as follows:
- 983
- 873
- 576
- 777
- 1285
- 1082
- 892
- 976
- 936
- 800
- 727
- 873
- 846
- 638
- 610
- 544
The number of new accounts created / day is "going down" and despite what Mr. Russ Bullock said in the N.G.N.G. podcast, it doesn't look encouraging at all !!
Maybe this is the real reason for pushing 3rd person view?! I would say yes.
Also you can notice that today (well yesterday for me) the DB hit a new low in nr of registrations.
You don't include the hugely important fact that Open Beta wasn't the beginning of allowing non-CB players to register for the site. It was just the beginning of allowing registered users to play the game. So you're looking at people who didn't know about MWO prior to OB and hadn't registered for the site who are now registering. There were thousands of people who already had forum accounts but weren't in CB.
ReplyDeleteThe number of players in-game has increased a whole lot since OB started, but launching OB doesn't make people magically appear who didn't know about the game before.
Your conclusions do not follow from your data. Nowhere in your data is the claim "MWO OTB was launched prematurely" supported. How do you know your data don't imply that it was launched late? You're making that conclusion up out of nowhere.
Your second conclusion is equally invalid and seems to contradict the first. If they created a hype around the game, people would have to play the game to know it didn't live up to expectations. This would NOT be reflected in the number of accounts registered but in the number of active players, which you don't describe.
Sword falling, damage control mode, these phrases are meaningless without any insight into whether PGI are retaining players and making money.
the game has been advertised by their publisher, no?
ReplyDeleteand I would've loved to have started this a lot sooner but I didn't ...
the number of active player is not known! Piranha decided to remove the counter of players from the game!
retaining players, sorry .. players are going away, numbers are dwindling based on the fact that on some hours and days it's hard to find a match
I am a CBT and in my entire period of testing in the Closed BETA I did not received a cound not find match error like I do since it went OBT
also, the game is launched based on 2 very important facts
no1 - there will be no more database wipes, so everything you gain since OBT you keep
no2- game is accepting $ payments
I haven't logged in once due to all the excitement being offered by World of Tanks. British tank tree and the weekend Golden Joystick event were better than the idea of trying a new game. I wonder if this is a bit more universal than just one guy ?
ReplyDelete