Average player count across euro servers nighttime?

[ghostspawn]

Hi all. I'm interested in knowing what a safe average player count would be atm, and if it has changed that much since the beginning?
I ask about night only as it would seem obvious to me thats when the vast majority of ppl play. If not, then a quick peek at the daytime figures reveals about 4000 lucky buggers playing whilst I'm at work.
I'm simply curious as to the cash generated from 'active' players.
(4000 day * £6 pounds head = £24,000/month. I'd say that GOA would need at least double that before they were happy)
Cheers,
Ghostspawn

 

[old.stroke]

I think it's difficult to estimate how much money GOA needs, since we don't know the size of the company or what contacts and contracts they have. Considering the lack of ingame GM's and the time translations take, i'd say they currently have a close to minimum staff. This will probably change after an evaluation period, when they know if it's worth expanding or closing down.

Also, from what i remember, it's usually 7000+ players during peak hours and weekend, so they have to have atleast that many subscribers.

 

[SFXman]

I could easily bet that the customer base is at least 10,000. It is not that many when you really think about it. This creates a nice ~100,000 euros a month which (considering the activeness of GOA) most likely covers all the expenses they have.... although running servers might always have some high fees and I suppose they have to pay something to Mythic, they after all are the creators of this great game.

 

[old.stroke]

Sheesh, maybe i should start some servers myself.

 

[SFXman]

Originally posted by stroke
Sheesh, maybe i should start some servers myself.

Hehe. Maybe if you got the cash to buy the servers... the 1gb line... the DAoC licensing fees... the few necessary staff etc.
Maybe then =)

 

[old.Wels]

Originally posted by SFXman

the few necessary staff etc.

Naaaah, just use right now

 

[SFXman]

Originally posted by Wels


Naaaah, just use right now

Hehe....
1. "Hello, how do I stop DoS attacks?"
"*shrug*"
2. "How do I patch my DAoC servers to 1.50?"
"*shrug*"
3. "How do I setup my own CS?"
"Ahhh! To this we know the answer. Have an automated reply system that sends a small FAQ to them or just leave them unanswered, good advertisement anyway to say that you "have" a CS."

 

[ghostspawn]

heh, cheers for the response.
Coming from 3+ yrs in online customer service I'd be up for the challenge
I've a few secret excuses up my sleeve, and should they fail my backup 'stealth and backstab' usually works...
<cackle>

 

[Cedig]

Think there were 16,000 people online at the weekend - accross all 8 EU servers

For GOA to make a decent profit they will prolly need 40,000

 

[old.stroke]

And on what do you base that assumption?

 

[Cedig]

Server costs say £15K each (8 of them)
Network costs (how much does a 1gb link cost to lease?)
Licence costs (Rightnow and DAoC)
Staff costs
Facilities costs (datacenter space, power, a/c, backups)
Staff :-
- 4 NT SysAdmins/Network Admins (to cover rotas, oncall etc)
- Team Leader / Manager
- 2 Rightnow support people
- Support Manager
- at least 2 marketing people
- marketing manager
- Senior Manager
Staff costs prolly around £300,000 per annum

16K users paying £5 per month (on the 6 month scheme) gets you £960,000 per annum

Its probably costing them around £500K for the above

and I've probably missed out network hardware costs, and loads of other stuff...

 

[Brannor McThife]

For someone who's bored or who really wants to know.
Open a webpage which makes use of the XML from GOA listing the server numbers. Have the numbers stored to a file everytime it updates and voila, you got a good recording. Leave this page open for a whole week (in the background) while you're playing or whatever, and you'll get more than enough info to create a funky looking graph too.



I don't have the time right now.

-G

 

[old.firebrace]

Cedig,

Yo seem to have overlooked that GOA = France Telecom.

Not that they have spare gigabyte lines etc hanging around, but all in all their network/isp/infrastructure costs are going to be low compared to a non-telecommunications company.

I'd go for more like 1mil per annum probably isn't far off a decent estimate though when you have to take into acocunt the programmers and translators they employ, advertising (What advertising I hear you UK subscriber ask?) Plus accountancy fees, external consultancy, lawyers etc

I think I remember seeing about 20k on at one time sometime in the past few weeks, even so if there were only 16k on at one time on the weekend you can probably assume that there are at least 20k subscribers.

you might want to also assume that only about a third of people at most have taken up the 6 month rate, so about £5.5 per month is probably a better figure to take.

So rough outgoings £1mil
approx income of 20k*5.5 = 1.1mil

thats about 10% profit on turnover on the first year. This isn't taking into account any profit on the box game either.

That's a so-so profit margin, however the outgoings estimates are on the high side, and a good 25% of that can go in startup costs.

You also have to possibility with a little more advertising they could at least up the subscriber base by 50%, however only if they improve the customer service, and start delivering some promises (and decent turnover on patches) will they actually be able to keep those subscribers.

This is where they could learn from Funcom. Whatever else could be said for AO's problems, customer service is not one of them. Also GOA could take another lesson from Funcom in how to really operate a set of official Forums, to get people involved and immersed in the DAoC world

 

[Alrindel]

Those NT admins won't have much to do. DAoC doesn't do windows.

Oh, just to comment on this.

Yo seem to have overlooked that GOA = France Telecom.

Not that they have spare gigabyte lines etc hanging around, but all in all their network/isp/infrastructure costs are going to be low compared to a non-telecommunications company.

Sounds logical but it doesn't work that way. Wanadoo actually pays more for its telco infrastructure (voice and data) from France Telecom (its parent company!) than their competitors. Other French ISPs like Club Internet and AOL France get hefty discounts on their base connectivity, but Wanadoo has to pay full price for everything. This is because, as a recently deregulated monopoly, the ART (L'Autorité de Régulation des Télécommunications) keeps a close eye on the prices FT is charging to make sure they're not unfairly using their position to stifle competition.

Politics makes some funny things happen sometimes!