Population trend data

[Onorvele]

I quite enjoy Rift, and am looking forward to playing it more, going further. I know that an MMO needs people playing it, and that Trion is privately held. That makes getting subscription numbers a bit difficult to get.

However, I figure that unique visitors to the Trion website might be a useful proxy to understand the interest level that the internet has in Rift. Using Google Trends, and using eve-online.com as a comparison (due to similar scale, discovered thanks to experimentation), here's the picture:



Here's the full data.

I'm not super-excited about this, and I really hope that Storm Legion reverses this trend. I would also call on all of y'all who are passionate about Rift to continue talking it up to people who aren't playing.

[Puremallace]

huh oddly enough if you check that against swtor,aion, worldofwarcraft.com the trends actually match what you would expect. Very interesting chart.

That jump on October was around the release of patch 1.5 which was the release of Chronicles, Planar Attunement, and master mode instances.

[notorious98]

This graph doesn't represent unique visitors to the website. It merely registers unique google searches for that particular website.

[Puremallace]

SL is essentially the TBC of Rift and we all know what TBC did for WoW. They tripled the size of the world and added housing. That alone + the content release schedule spells population explosion.

[Onorvele]

This graph doesn't represent unique visitors to the website. It merely registers unique google searches for that particular website.

You're thinking about a different Google product - Zeitgeist.

Google Trends aims to show "a graph reflecting the number of daily unique visitors (the number of people who visit a website) to that website." The data is "from a variety of sources, such as aggregated Google search data, aggregated opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in consumer panel data, and other third-party market research." reference - points 1 and 2.

[Tarien]

Results for World of Warcraft search term.



Over time all search results become less popular, this is due to all sorts of factors such as people bookmarking sites, referral links, people typing in the url they want directly, and so typically search results or measured hits will decline.

That's not to say that there hasn't been a decline in overall population, there definitely has like all MMOs, but as I repeatedly tell people, as long as you have enough people to play with and the developer is still developing, that is all you need to worry about with regards population.

[Tankendog]

One of the major affects to this study is people also using google chrome and various other browsers that have auto fill in the top bar. If one simply starts typing in a word, they can scroll through the options in chrome. This drastically scales back on searches, due to googles learning algorithm of what sites a person visists most, and it will auto fill in with popular searches regarding the same first few letters.

Note, Im not a google pro, but i would hope i am learning something in my computer degree program.

---------- Post added 2012-09-25 at 09:29 PM ----------

Here is a site that has statues on rift population. Again, im not pro, but it tracks server population data from previous week to this week.

http://www.riftstatus.net/shards/na/stats

[RoninaThorstone]

I quite enjoy Rift, and am looking forward to playing it more, going further. I know that an MMO needs people playing it, and that Trion is privately held. That makes getting subscription numbers a bit difficult to get.

However, I figure that unique visitors to the Trion website might be a useful proxy to understand the interest level that the internet has in Rift. Using Google Trends, and using eve-online.com as a comparison (due to similar scale, discovered thanks to experimentation), here's the picture:



Here's the full data.

I'm not super-excited about this, and I really hope that Storm Legion reverses this trend. I would also call on all of y'all who are passionate about Rift to continue talking it up to people who aren't playing.

I wonder how many people were searching for adamandeve .com and were like "eve"... online store?

[Tankendog]

I feel like better search terms would just be rift, As usually if someone is searching the direct site, they know what they are looking for.

[notorious98]

You're thinking about a different Google product - Zeitgeist.

Google Trends aims to show "a graph reflecting the number of daily unique visitors (the number of people who visit a website) to that website." The data is "from a variety of sources, such as aggregated Google search data, aggregated opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in consumer panel data, and other third-party market research." reference - points 1 and 2.

No, I was looking at the information on Google Trend for Searches. Either way, they're both Google Trend. But I was mistaken, yes.

http://trends.google.com/websites?q=...ate=all&sort=0

Using the same website for Worldofwarcraft.com (which turned into us.battle.net), you can see that the graph gradually increased during periods of time that they were losing subscribers. Not particularly indicative of anything. Fact is, you don't need to visit the website at all, especially when you can get better information from 3rd party sites.

[Tarien]

Using the same website for Worldofwarcraft.com (which turned into us.battle.net), you can see that the graph gradually increased during periods of time that they were losing subscribers. Not particularly indicative of anything. Fact is, you don't need to visit the website at all, especially when you can get better information from 3rd party sites.

Bare in mind that with the launch of other games that use the battle.net service it is no longer indicative of the WoW audience. Honestly the information on the trends site isn't really conclusive of anything.

[Tonyctattoo]

Does it make a difference that you queried the main page instead of say the forums? Cause if I play a game I'll bookmark the forums but I almost never visit the main page of a site. If other people are like that also I think it might interfere with your statistics.

[Deleted]

Well for some reason hardcore raiding isnt as popular as the wow raiding community made it seem? :/ Otherwise I cant see why not every raider and their moms wouldnt play rift. Might be a marketing issue as well, not much info about Rift anywhere as well. And sure, I havent experienced for myself the quality of rift raids, but from reading what the players think it seems like the most epic raids ever to be found. You need to spread the word guys, catch up those lonely raiders that lure the webs, if trion cant afford marketing.. spreading words around forums is usually free and making vids to add on youtube is just the cheap cost of fraps.

[Antipathy]

Well for some reason hardcore raiding isnt as popular as the wow raiding community made it seem? :/ Otherwise I cant see why not every raider and their moms wouldnt play rift. Might be a marketing issue as well, not much info about Rift anywhere as well. And sure, I havent experienced for myself the quality of rift raids, but from reading what the players think it seems like the most epic raids ever to be found. You need to spread the word guys, catch up those lonely raiders that lure the webs, if trion cant afford marketing.. spreading words around forums is usually free and making vids to add on youtube is just the cheap cost of fraps.

I'm not sure I would classify Rift as an exclusively "hardcore" raiding MMO - but I agree with the rest of the sentiment of your post. I've personally gotten my friends to Rift, only for them to admit that despite the superiority of certain aspects of the game, they want to stay with their existing guilds in their current MMO's. too many people are far too invested in their existing characters and communities to consider switching, unless that takes place en mass, and there are always a few in any community who suffer from tunnel vision and aren't willing to even try something different, let alone recognizing its value.

[Azuri]

I'm not sure I would classify Rift as an exclusively "hardcore" raiding MMO

I'd tend to agree on that statement. Rift is far from an exclusively raiding only game other then it does raiding well with both 10 and 20 man options and both being completely different encounters. Many of the people I know don't play Rift for hardcore raiding since the game in the PVE sense offers so many paths to gear up for the casual raiders and with the upcoming player and guild housing another avenue of game play other then raiding will be soon available to gamers. I myself haven't stepped foot in the latest raid tier by choice and cleared the last one in (HK) December of last year and I've had plenty to do.

I've been focusing my time since my last blast of hardcore raiding in PVE since I in fact enjoy the PVP in the game and I don't play PVP on real competitive level. The gear grind in PVP is huge which I don't mind to be honest it gives me something to shoot for and I actually enjoy getting that new piece of gear that looks cool and slight bumps my power level each time.

[Antipathy]

I'd tend to agree on that statement. Rift is far from an exclusively raiding only game other then it does raiding well with both 10 and 20 man options and both being completely different encounters. Many of the people I know don't play Rift for hardcore raiding since the game in the PVE sense offers so many paths to gear up for the casual raiders and with the upcoming player and guild housing another avenue of game play other then raiding will be soon available to gamers. I myself haven't stepped foot in the latest raid tier by choice and cleared the last one in (HK) December of last year and I've had plenty to do.

I've been focusing my time since my last blast of hardcore raiding in PVP since I in fact enjoy the PVP in the game and I don't play PVP on real competitive level. The gear grind in PVP is huge which I don't mind to be honest it gives me something to shoot for and I actually enjoy getting that new piece of gear that looks cool and slight bumps my power level each time.

Absolutely this. I'd add that my experience has (up until a few weeks ago) been entirely raid free. The raids I have done have been mostly old tiers (GSB, RoS, DH, GP and 2-3 bosses in HK) and that was only to help my guildies out when GW2 launched and attendance was down by 1-2 regulars who were trying the game. for the entire year I've been playing I've mostly done random experts, chronicles, IA's, world events, Daily Raid Rifts, Zone invasions, and daily reputation quests, and I've been enjoying conquest since launch (the nightfall zerg mentality on EU servers means that we never win, but so much favor and prestige flies your way and you rarely die :P).

It's a testament to the game that a player can not set foot in a raid and still have so much to do.

[notorious98]

Bare in mind that with the launch of other games that use the battle.net service it is no longer indicative of the WoW audience. Honestly the information on the trends site isn't really conclusive of anything.

This is true, but I was looking at their site after Cata came out and months before Diablo 3 dropped. If you'll notice, there's the sharp increase just past April, which would be right around the D3 release. I'm talking more the slight increase in October of 2011 when there was nothing from Blizzard and during the period of time they reported 100k lost subs.

---------- Post added 2012-09-26 at 09:43 AM ----------

Well for some reason hardcore raiding isnt as popular as the wow raiding community made it seem? :/ Otherwise I cant see why not every raider and their moms wouldnt play rift. Might be a marketing issue as well, not much info about Rift anywhere as well. And sure, I havent experienced for myself the quality of rift raids, but from reading what the players think it seems like the most epic raids ever to be found. You need to spread the word guys, catch up those lonely raiders that lure the webs, if trion cant afford marketing.. spreading words around forums is usually free and making vids to add on youtube is just the cheap cost of fraps.

Who needs fraps to make vids? Trion already included the ability to record video in game and automatically post it to your Youtube account.

[Deleted]

Might want to add in storm legion in there that is the main search for rift atm

[ChariotOfFaith]

Well for some reason hardcore raiding isnt as popular as the wow raiding community made it seem? :/ Otherwise I cant see why not every raider and their moms wouldnt play rift. Might be a marketing issue as well, not much info about Rift anywhere as well. And sure, I havent experienced for myself the quality of rift raids, but from reading what the players think it seems like the most epic raids ever to be found. You need to spread the word guys, catch up those lonely raiders that lure the webs, if trion cant afford marketing.. spreading words around forums is usually free and making vids to add on youtube is just the cheap cost of fraps.

Yeah your right actually. Although the thing is WoW came out in 2004 and RIFT came out when 2011?
I hadn't heard about RIFT until about towards the end of last year and am now playing but thought DAMN if only I'd known earlier I would of QUIT WoW heaps earlier and gotten straight into it.

[RoninaThorstone]

Yeah your right actually. Although the thing is WoW came out in 2004 and RIFT came out when 2011?
I hadn't heard about RIFT until about towards the end of last year and am now playing but thought DAMN if only I'd known earlier I would of QUIT WoW heaps earlier and gotten straight into it.

This. I know rift didn't start strong but I really wish I had been here the past 3 years.