Declining interest and stats

[Michael Dorosh]

Related to the current discusion of declining interest in LOTRO, I just noticed the official website has stats on characters. I noticed the following for one of mine, my main, and out of curiousity noted mine down.

Aug 10, 2010	Reached level 57 
Jun 28, 2010	Reached level 56 
Apr 28, 2010	Reached level 55 
Feb 27, 2010	Reached level 54 
Feb 12, 2010	Reached level 53 
Dec 26, 2009	Reached level 52 
Dec 13, 2009	Reached level 51 
Dec  9, 2009	Reached level 50 
Dec  7, 2009	Reached level 49 
Nov 21, 2009	Reached level 48 
Nov 12, 2009	Reached level 47 
Nov  7, 2009	Reached level 46 
Nov  5, 2009	Reached level 45 
Oct 17, 2009	Reached level 44 
Oct  5, 2009	Reached level 43 
Sep  2, 2009	Reached level 42 
Aug 23, 2009	Reached level 41 
Aug 19, 2009	Reached level 40 
Jul 20, 2009	Reached level 39 
May 18, 2009	Reached level 38 
May 15, 2009	Reached level 37 
Apr  3, 2009	Reached level 36 
Mar 20, 2009	Reached level 35 
Mar 17, 2009	Reached level 34 
Mar  1, 2009	Reached level 32 
Feb 17, 2009	Reached level 31 
Feb 14, 2009	Reached level 30 
Feb  7, 2009	Reached level 29 
Jan 22, 2009	Reached level 28 
Jan 19, 2009	Reached level 27 
Jan 18, 2009	Reached level 26

Jan 10, 2009	Reached level 25 
Dec  7, 2008	Reached level 24 
Nov 30, 2008	Reached level 23 
Nov 24, 2008	Reached level 22 
Nov 12, 2008	Reached level 21 
Oct 28, 2008	Reached level 20 
Oct 11, 2008	Reached level 19 
Oct  4, 2008	Reached level 18 
Oct  3, 2008	Reached level 17 
Oct  2, 2008	Reached level 16 
Sep 29, 2008	Reached level 15 
Sep 28, 2008	Reached level 14 
Sep 27, 2008	Reached level 13 
Sep 27, 2008	Reached level 12 
Sep 26, 2008	Reached level 11 
Sep 22, 2008	Reached level 10 
Sep 21, 2008	Reached level  9 
Sep 21, 2008	Reached level  8 
Sep 21, 2008	Reached level  7 
Sep 21, 2008	Reached level  6 
Sep 21, 2008	Reached level  5 
Sep 21, 2008	Reached level  4 
Sep 21, 2008	Reached level  3 
Sep 21, 2008	Reached level  2

Some of the time between levels is naturally the relative ease of the lower levels, but the influence of F2P, Turbine Store, etc. and my declining interest is pretty much evident in the last year, not to mention my busy schedule - writing, publishing, the fact I bought a house (I mean, a real one) two years ago, etc.

Still, even I have a hard time believing I haven't done anything substantial with the character in almost a year, and my levelling in all of last year was quite minimal.

 

[Palantir]

Nice find :thumup: but...

Alright! :angry:
Fine!
You got me dang you MD! :blab:
Yes :argh:
I have to know about mine now... :hmmm:

Can you please add a link for me. :hail:

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Right in the forum headers, it's one of the dropdown menus. I'm at work now - see if you can find it. If not, I'll try and post a link tonight. I think you have to click on CHARACTERS. Bear in mind there are different filters; if you don't deselect it will list a bunch of other stuff mixed in - when you bought your houses, leveled up crafts, completed deeds and quests, etc. Actually a ton of stuf tracked there I had no idea was being tracked. Kind of neat, but I guess they are not doing it to be nice but to gather demographics and trends on us to sell us more stuff in the store, right? :laugh:

 

[Redwolf]

I wonder whether I still have logs of those login-counters...

 

[Palantir]

Right in the forum headers, it's one of the dropdown menus.

Dang it!
I can never find anything on those forums without an Idiots Guide in front of me and, of course I couldn't find the correct drop down or path this time either...

Lay out the path oh brilliant one :hail: for this obvious blind follower! aperbag:

 

[Michael Dorosh]

It's not you, it's the forum - it took me two days to figure out how to find my rep status there, and I still don't know if you can see who gave the rep to you or not. If so, I can't figure it out.

I'll take a screenie tonight and post it for you. The stats are pretty neat once you're into them and I'd be interested in seeing yours if you don't mind posting them here.

It's not like playing the game is much fun anymore anyway, may as well get some enjoyment from it...

 

[Palantir]

What, to show that I didn't have a life while LotRO was "Witch" king? :crosseye:

:laugh:

 

[Redwolf]

Allright, so here is what I got:

This is the closest measure I can come up for for popularity of LOTRO. I apologize for not labeling the y-axis in a useful way, I have to leave for a trip soon. The y-axis is time. Left it starts September 9, 2010 and to the right is today.

The number presented is approximate new logins to Landroval per time interval. This is derived from the login sequence numbers. The number isn't absolute, but relative it will be valid. A 10% drop here means that 10% less people logged in in a given timeframe.

Ignore the red line, it's average to that time.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Allright, so here is what I got:

This is the closest measure I can come up for for popularity of LOTRO. I apologize for not labeling the y-axis in a useful way, I have to leave for a trip soon. The y-axis is time. Left it starts September 9, 2010 and to the right is today.

The number presented is approximate new logins to Landroval per time interval. This is derived from the login sequence numbers. The number isn't absolute, but relative it will be valid. A 10% drop here means that 10% less people logged in in a given timeframe.

Ignore the red line, it's average to that time.

Very interesting, but could the dip simply refer to redistribution of the population to newer servers?

I'm guessing the population of Landroval would be relatively stable with regards to this. I actually migrated TO Landroval, and once you're there you tend to stay there, right? New accounts would just start elsewhere, so these are almost all established players with a few new accounts who ignored the pleas to consider signing up on other servers?

 

[Michael Dorosh]

View attachment 33541

Here is how to get into it. Click MY CHARACTERS, then the server, character name, then activities.

 

[Redwolf]

Very interesting, but could the dip simply refer to redistribution of the population to newer servers?

I'm guessing the population of Landroval would be relatively stable with regards to this. I actually migrated TO Landroval, and once you're there you tend to stay there, right? New accounts would just start elsewhere, so these are almost all established players with a few new accounts who ignored the pleas to consider signing up on other servers?

Good point. This chart starts way after the new servers went online but it's difficult to estimate how people went back and forth. I might have data for all servers but that has to wait until next week.

I see reason why server shift could go from Landi to new servers (new toys) and vice versa (disappointed about new empty server, people starting fresh on landroval due to RP, Weatherstock etc).

 

[BlitzCanuck]

It might be partly due to redistribution but i don't think it's a major factor.
I don't have a graph to back it up, but I've noticed a similar decline on my server since the huge spike when the f2p update went live.
Every update seems to boost activity to some degree, for a while, and then it drops again.
It would be interesting to see a graph for the several months prior to the f2p update as i think it should reinforce my impression that Lotro logins were at an all time low just prior.
I recall how rare it was to see someone else roaming the countryside (in the original SoA area) outside of major outposts but since the f2p update it's quite common. In fact, now you have to sometimes wait for something to respawn just to complete a quest objective. That never happened before f2p.

 

[Palantir]

Well of course- I was looking in the actual Forum settings.
So how did you get the "code" look of dates & level reached, I see a more graphic display.

View attachment 33542


You know what I see in all those endless stats? WASTED TIME!
Them WASTING too much frigging time working on stupid stuff like that, that maybe only 05% of the players even care about when they should be fixing the housing issue and giving us new areas. :angry:

Ps- who were you interested in seeing since I have 4 lvl 65's?

 

[Palantir]

Population Graph-
Anytime a line continually goes down you have a falling population.
Landrovals pop had been steady forever since it was never a "new player" recommended server.
But with it declining & declining it means players, probably vets are leaving.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Well of course- I was looking in the actual Forum settings.
So how did you get the "code" look of dates & level reached, I see a more graphic display.

View attachment 33542


You know what I see in all those endless stats? WASTED TIME!
Them WASTING too much frigging time working on stupid stuff like that, that maybe only 05% of the players even care about when they should be fixing the housing issue and giving us new areas. :angry:

Ps- who were you interested in seeing since I have 4 lvl 65's?

I cut and pasted my stats into Excel (actually, Open Office - just a spreadsheet), then cut and pasted back here just to make it easier to read. The spread sheet I keep on my hard drive for interest's sake and future reference. Never know when their server will go down.

Who is your main character - the one that does the question with me? Arnhem (or whatever...that's what I always think of when I see his name, anyway). He's either a hunter or a burglar. No biggie if it is a pain, just curious how fast your main character levelled up. Might be fun to compare some of ours, just to benchmark a bit.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Oh, as for wasted time, I don't think Turbine spends any time on it - just a straight data transfer - it's all the same account. You can access your character screen from the forum, just the same as you would in game - I mean the one with your hitpoint display, what you're wearing, armour, etc. Kind of cool; you don't have to log into the game to do it. It's all the same database, just a different interface to access it.

 

[Palantir]

MD, your character most likely advanced faster than mine as I divided time between 8.

In real time to hit 65:

Arhem-Burglar (my first character) took 3 yrs 5 months (the longest time but I didn't play him for one 9 month stretch.)
Deryni-Hunter (#2) took 1 year 8 months (the fastest to hit 65.)
Palantier- Hunter (#3) took 2 ys 8 months.
Waryni- Warden (#4) took 2 yrs 3 months.

(I'll check later on how quickly to 57 though)
My second Warden (alt #8) took just 10 months to hit 51 but that was while I was playing my other alts lvl 50/45/44... as well.