Daoc Europe keep losing players

[Xxcalibur]

Seriusly its time to debate this, 11:30 am prydwen players :100 excalibur players 200.

And the worst thing is.... this continue. Daoc is dying , and this is an evident fact. i think is the moment there is a change of policy in the programmers to make ppl come back to play DAOC. at this hour (11:30 am ) there are more players in thidranki server (freeshard) than in prydwen.... this is rly sad. Programers need to bost somehow our servers or this will be the end of daoc.

/lvl 40 to the ppl with 1 lvl 50
/lvl 30 to the newbies
make xp easy
NPC BUFFBOTS in the frontiers ( Lots of players cant use 2 pc or have a ubber pc)

DAOC always has been best PvP game, but lately the population of our servers is just a shi t compared with the past, its not about the playstyle of players, its about the dificulty to play rvr, with stupids boats, stupids water, stupids towers breaking teleport and hard way to compete due teh requirement of second pc and account to use a buffbot.

Discuss...

 

[Congax]

It's a weekday tho, but yeah, playerbase has lowered drastically.

 

[eggy]

Seriusly its time to debate this, 11:30 am prydwen players :100 excalibur players 200.

a) It's in work hours. A lot of people are working and therefore unable to log on!
b) It's only 10:30 in the UK. Kids tend to sleep in late on school holidays!
c) It's bloody hot - people are outside and enjoying the weather.
d) It's holiday season - you can assume a fairly large percentage of playerbase are away on vacation.
e) As people's friends belong in categories a) to d), incentives for logging on are lower - spiral effect.

 

[Xxcalibur]

a) It's in work hours. A lot of people are working and therefore unable to log on!
b) It's only 10:30 in the UK. Kids tend to sleep in late on school holidays!
c) It's bloody hot - people are outside and enjoying the weather.
d) It's holiday season - you can assume a fairly large percentage of playerbase are away on vacation.
e) As people's friends belong in categories a) to d), incentives for logging on are lower - spiral effect.

m8, this is a stupid excuse

freeshards have more players an iits holidays too ... dont wanna be hypocrit. we LOST a lot of players

 

[Thorwyn]

I kinda agree about the Buffbots, but

/lvl 40 to the ppl with 1 lvl 50
/lvl 30 to the newbies
make xp easy

is counterproductive.

People still fail to understand, that the PvE is a vital part of the game and that DAoC isn´t all about RvR.
If you want to cure the game, you need to get new players interested in the game and make them level their toons, because that´s 50% of the gamedesign. Insta-level-50-equip-everything-RR10 doesn´t help solving the problems. In fact, it´s fighting fire with fire.
You approach is ok for an instant fun server (and that won´t attract too many newbies). But for the existing servers, a temporary fix like this will kill the game faster than you know. Think about the impact of /level 20 on the PvE part.

 

[Pirkel]

Every year it's the same story.

See you next year with the same posts!

 

[Gamah]

Probably due to the fucking shit rvr for the past 5 months, a lot of people cba with it any more, me included.

 

[Dorimor1]

Threadstarter is right.

 

[Shike]

Probably due to the fucking shit rvr for the past 5 months, a lot of people cba with it any more, me included.

yup

 

[OohhoO]

/lvl 40 to the ppl with 1 lvl 50
/lvl 30 to the newbies
make xp easy
NPC BUFFBOTS in the frontiers ( Lots of players cant use 2 pc or have a ubber pc)

As Sanya said in last fridays grab bag, /level20 turned out to be a mistake in many ways, so them going further in that direction might be unlikely.
XP is easy.
With the repeated extention of RRs, the difference in killing/surviving-power between a low-RR & a high-RR is pretty much insurmountable for low-RRs. Together with the current preponderance of high-RRs this makes NF-RvR totally unattractive - at least for me & my friends. We'd rather PvE or BG or play another game than be nothing more than cannon-fodder for high-RRs.
<shrug>

 

[eggy]

m8, this is a stupid excuse

freeshards have more players an iits holidays too ... dont wanna be hypocrit. we LOST a lot of players

A stupid "excuse"?

Urm, they are all influencing factors (market drivers, if you will) which do impact significantly on the amount of players online.

Yes, the number of players is falling...this is natural. But in the middle of a working day, when it's hot and people are on vacation, you can't expect many people to be playing.

 

[Elrandhir]

I agree that something needs to be done, and I don't think getting higher /level for alts is bad, it wont help newcommers much to neways to have that lower, because those who have played for long will either PL, or already have friends etc to help them out.

In my opinion the engame is RvR, and I think that the easier it is to get ready for RvR, the more will play, because then even those with very little time will be able to do so rather fast.

one thing that I think should be changed more is ML's, Everything should be BG steps, Im so awfully tired of haveing to do groupsteps, and then BG steps, just make all into BG.

Make it even easier to lvl even though it's pretty easy right now also.

So I agree with Xxcal, game has been out for so long, if people get tired of their chars, they may just quit instead of getting an new char ready, so makeing it even easier to get RvR ready may help pop imo.

 

[RS|Phil]

Freeshards have done a lot of harm. It's exponential too - for example my mate Bob leaves and I want to play with him still, so I leave, then my mate Andy leaves to follow me and Bob - then my guild starts to die without a leader so people leave or follow to freeshard. It's a problem.

One idea GOA should really put into quickly is send out emails offering people a month free if they want to re-open their accounts plus all the expansions free to download if they resubscribe. What they got to lose if they do that? Even if 1% came back that's 1% in their pocket after the first month they'd not otherwise have.

 

[old.Whoodoo]

freeshards have more players an iits holidays too ... dont wanna be hypocrit. we LOST a lot of players

Theres where half the playerbase went, too tight to pay for it, so go tell them to get their arses back on the real servers.

Eggy's right, and you summed up the rest, its daytime, a work day, the weather outside is bringing out all the totty and their best features, freeshards tempt away the tight gits and Trisha is on TV, why play DAoC?

 

[Sparx]

i agree with eggy 100%

Besides the RvR has been great the past couple of weeks alot more happening that before imo

 

[Bahumat]

everyone should quit rvr and all roll /20 thuergs on camlann, then see if we can make the server explode with pet spam haha!

 

[Celestino]

People still fail to understand, that the PvE is a vital part of the game and that DAoC isn´t all about RvR.
If you want to cure the game, you need to get new players interested in the game and make them level their toons, because that´s 50% of the gamedesign. Insta-level-50-equip-everything-RR10 doesn´t help solving the problems. In fact, it´s fighting fire with fire.
You approach is ok for an instant fun server (and that won´t attract too many newbies). But for the existing servers, a temporary fix like this will kill the game faster than you know. Think about the impact of /level 20 on the PvE part.

Now, why would anyone want to do the PvE part if after it he still has to do masterlevels, artefacts, Champion levels etc if there is no good RvR at the end ?
PvE in DaoC is the road to RvR and nothing else, and that road has become too long for most new players coz whenever they think they are done (like when reaching level 50) a new door opens saying oops sry, u might be 50 but try rvr, u'll only be torn apart. And that keeps going on till they either quit or learn it the hard way over month of beeing zerged, dying to moc sorcs, buffboted stealthgrps or maybe just to a /use ability they don't know yet.

The cure for the game are not new players, but allowing those new players to get into the game more quickly. And the easiest and best way to do this is not another addon with yet another level system but by reducing the gap between a cl5 ml10 full toa equipped rr10 and a cl0 ml0 rog items rr1 to a healthy level.

 

[Eregion]

Sure there is summer and all that but threadstarter IS right, more and more ppl keep leaving, and I don't really see that much fresh ppl coming.

What this game would really need is some advertising, atleast here in Sweden I have practically never seen a sign or anything regarding daoc whatsoever. Dunno how it is in other countries, but I guess it's the same?

Just 4-500 more people to the cluster would make such a huge difference, and I don't think that would really be a problem getting if people were aware this game actually existed.

 

[Svartmetall]

pirate servers are stealing 5000 players daily, but you didnt notice cos your lacK OF knowledge

"5,000 players daily"...O RLY? I take it you've got some hard and fast data to back this claim up, right? Humph.

OK, let's discuss.

/lvl 40 to the ppl with 1 lvl 50
/lvl 30 to the newbies

Read the latest Herald, Mythic pretty much admit /lvl was a mistake. Here's Sanya's words on the subject: "we feel like /level was not the best move we ever made. It had a brief, quick, positive impact on the game, but in the long run, it emptied out the newbie zones, making them less than inviting for the true newbies that continue to buy and try out the game".
I agree, actually; it's nice, and convenient, being able to /lvl to 20, but it does mean that the newbie zones are empty. And the new underwater content is aimed squarely at those first 20 levels, by and large, and is very nice too; you can XP to 20 very fast indeed even when completely solo and unbuffed in crap gear...

make xp easy
NPC BUFFBOTS in the frontiers ( Lots of players cant use 2 pc or have a ubber pc)

Oh please...'make XP easy'? To make XPing any easier than it already is, they'd have to have NPCs coming up with a wheelbarrow of XP and dumping it over your head while you just sat there. Anyone who thinks XPing is hard nowadays is just too damn lazy to play the game at all.

Probably due to the fucking shit rvr for the past 5 months, a lot of people cba with it any more, me included

I suspect Trance Boy D) is right, and that dissatisfaction with the 'endgame' is a large part of it. Pretty much all my guild is currently holidaying in WoW and, by and large, having more fun than we were during the last few months in DAOC. Let's be honest - current RvR is stressful, very demanding, and not much fun at all for many, many people. If it was so much fun then more people would be doing it, and they're clearly not doing it; RvR has become the domain of l337 'you can't join if you're not RR5 and completely min-maxed' clique guilds and the very high RR. You can pretty much forget having much fun in RvR currently as a low RR...it's basically a high-RR circle-jerk.

With the repeated extention of RRs, the difference in killing/surviving-power between a low-RR & a high-RR is pretty much insurmountable for low-RRs. Together with the current preponderance of high-RRs this makes NF-RvR totally unattractive - at least for me & my friends. We'd rather PvE or BG or play another game than be nothing more than cannon-fodder for high-RRs.

OohhoO sums it up pretty well here. Nobody likes being farmed, and yet being farmed is pretty much all that's going to happen to you in RvR these days once you butt heads with the high-RR GGs out there. It's genuinely futile to even try, certainly if you want to have fun, at least. I believe Mythic are aware of the current malaise in RvR and will be doing everything they can to avoid the same thing happening to WAR's realm war. I certainly hope that they'll take steps in the next few patches to open DAOC's RvR up again - it's become PvP with nary a hint of 'realm war' in it, which was not what Mythic intended at all. And, from the current state of RvR populations, it clearly doesn't appeal to enough of the playerbase to make the RvR part of this game a viable reason to play DAOC at all.

...and Trisha is on TV...

Fuck, I'd rather subject myself to current RvR than watch Trisha

Why is the population low...? Hmm. There's no one answer, especially not given that just 4 months or so ago, the population was rising - we were seeing old faces coming back to the game after long absensces, and more than a few genuinely new players about the place. These are a few of the factors I think are playing a part right now:

1: It's a 4-year-old game. No matter how good it is, every now and again you just flat out need a change. I'm hoping that's what my guild's sojourn in WoW will turn out to be, and that you'll see us stomping the frozen ground of Midgard again.

2: It's summer; people are outside or on holiday.

3: It's the UK. GOA's abject failure to advertise DAOC in the UK in any meaningful way is now bearing the fruit it was always going to bear. Losing 1,000 players from a German server results in a slightly-less-populous server; losing that same number from the UK servers results in a blatantly underpopulated server. The only consolation we can draw from this is that at least EA Mythic are aware of the problem that happened with DAOC, and therefore we shouldn't see the UK being the red-headed stepchild when it comes to WAR promotion (and any possible future EA-pushed repromotion of DAOC).

4: On a related note, we now have the cluster. I voted against the clustering primarily because it means that any new account in the UK can only play in ONE realm; and that's a big turn-off. As soon as I saw that, I knew it would be a big problem/disincentive for new players. I can't really see any reason not to tell a new DAOC player wanting to play in English not to roll on the US servers anymore; and this is the main reason why. Why should you be expected to pay the same money for 1/3rd of the choice...? Plus, they get the co-op and RP server options we have always been deprived of here in Europe.

That's how I see it, anyway.

 

[cHodAX]

4: On a related note, we now have the cluster. I voted against the clustering primarily because it means that any new account in the UK can only play in ONE realm; and that's a big turn-off. As soon as I saw that, I knew it would be a big problem/disincentive for new players. I can't really see any reason not to tell a new DAOC player wanting to play in English not to roll on the US servers anymore; and this is the main reason why. Why should you be expected to pay the same money for 1/3rd of the choice...? Plus, they get the co-op and RP server options we have always been deprived of here in Europe.

That's how I see it, anyway.

Couldn't agree more, we are getting less game for more money, takes the piss.

 

[Kuhan]

Camlann pop reached 500 people few days ago, so people are moving from RVR - PVP

 

[eggy]

That's right .. I don't know shit.

Lovely to see you still think that insulting people will help you make your point.

Haha

 

[Thorwyn]

Now, why would anyone want to do the PvE part if after it he still has to do masterlevels, artefacts, Champion levels etc if there is no good RvR at the end ?

Why? Because starting a new game, learning things, defeating big, evul munstas and exploring a world is fun!
Don´t tell me that when you started playing the game, your main motivation was killing some juicy dwarfs and raiding other realms. When you start, you don´t even have an idea about how RvR is.

PvE in DaoC is the road to RvR and nothing else, and that road has become too long for most new players coz whenever they think they are done (like when reaching level 50) a new door opens saying oops sry, u might be 50 but try rvr, u'll only be torn apart.

I doubt that this is ultimately true because there are lots of other MMORPGs without a PvP content and they´re working just fine. But lets assume you´re right. Then what does that mean? It means that it´s also a problem of the community, not only a problem of the game. As a new player, you´ll have a hard time getting into a guild and if you´re lucky enough to finally find one, chances are that you´ll never be able to do all the neccessary things, MLs CLs and whatnot. Because all the old playes are sitting on their butts, picking their nose and complaining that NF is becoming sooo empty and boring.
Lets face it: the current community isn´t exactly helpful when it comes to new players.

The cure for the game are not new players, but allowing those new players to get into the game more quickly. And the easiest and best way to do this is not another addon with yet another level system but by reducing the gap between a cl5 ml10 full toa equipped rr10 and a cl0 ml0 rog items rr1 to a healthy level.

Or to find a system that´s allowing new players to get those MLs and CLs on their own, without having to rely on finding a 50 people zerg. The gaps between the chars aren´t the deciding factor. The chance to achieve the same level is. And as I mentioned above, there´s little or no support from the current community.
Whatever you do, neither /level 40 nor accelerated XP would help.

 

[crispy]

..., its about the dificulty to play rvr, with stupids boats, stupids water, stupids towers breaking teleport...

So you wanna ruin the fun for the soloers by giving perma irvr? ;<

Imo, people should whine less about boat rides - thats what hibs had to put up with in OF...

 

[Svartmetall]

Because all the old playes are sitting on their butts, picking their nose

Half-Ogre nostrils are bigger, allowing for easier picking.
Firbolg just get trained Luris to run up inside their noses and do the picking for them.
Trolls have tiny nostrils and huge paws, making nasal exploration very difficult.

It's a SLAP IN THE FACE and a direct nerf to Midgard yet again!

 

[Aran Thule]

main problem is the lack of advertising, if they did a big push and caught the interest of people you would get people joining and the low levels would have people there rather then being deserted.
what is the point of having special offers or movies if noone knows about them.
imo what would help is if they did a page advert in all the main magazines and put the movie on the coverdisks.
also make sure that full packs are available in shops.
no point in selling the expansions if people cant get the base packs easily.

 

[old.Whoodoo]

Its a shame that GOA didnt advertise in the UK more, or even now, as WoW for many is dwindling, so theres time to rekindle a little life in daoc before WAR comes out.

 

[Svartmetall]

If I put my Pollyanna head on, and slide the rose-tinted glasses up my nose a bit, I could hope for this: the delays with announcing the new expansion are because EA wants to use it as a platform to relaunch the game. Major advertising campaigns - 'cos hell, if there's one thing EA can do well, it's promote something - including actual promotion of the game in the UK, and an overall raising of the game's profile. I don't know how likely this is - the realist in me says EA only give a damn about the potential profits from WAR, which is why they bid for Mythic in the first place, and aren't all that fussed about "Mythic's other game" - but it's certainly possible.

Despite all the problems with RvR these days, I still think DAOC is the best MMORPG out there quality-wise, and I'd love to see it enjoying a new lease of life with an EA-funded push.

 

[Steveh]

main problem is the lack of advertising, if they did a big push and caught the interest of people you would get people joining and the low levels would have people there rather then being deserted.
what is the point of having special offers or movies if noone knows about them.
imo what would help is if they did a page advert in all the main magazines and put the movie on the coverdisks.
also make sure that full packs are available in shops.
no point in selling the expansions if people cant get the base packs easily.

That was completly GoA fault. The marketing is shit no advertising at all .I just surprised how much player interested for MMORPG ( WOW ) in my country ( Hungary ) and we have a huge player base here . I think about 10 % Hungarian WoW players know what is DAOC. And thats just one example.

 

[Congax]

That was completly GoA fault. The marketing is shit no advertising at all .I just surprised how much player interested for MMORPG ( WOW ) in my country ( Hungary ) and we have a huge player base here . I think about 10 % Hungarian WoW players know what is DAOC. And thats just one example.

10% is even optimistic. Say that you play DAoC in Belgium and they'll go like: "Is that a browsergame, like Runescape?"