Virtue went splat.
It's the Unity Rally all over again!!
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/33551029/Capture1.12.2012.-6.15.56.jpg)
Twice.
Some may not be able to get back in. While that's a shame, we ought to use this final queue to show everybody who would listen that this game did not go quietly, apathetically, or with no great love. This game has a following, and a strong one; a following that will potentially be a big bonanza for anyone willing to be a steward for this service.
People writing letters to Disney should mention this. The loyalty of the fan base is the game's biggest asset, from their point of view.
from what ive seen ALL servers except EU and exalted servers were in yellow tonight
someone should get some screenshots of the server list before the lights go off to show how much support it has
Thrice.
Definitely a muchness of servers going splat.
I have decidedly mixed feeling about this. :o
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.eskimo.com%2F%7Eepawtows%2FPlanZ_stuff%2FCoH_pics%2FServer1025lastday3.jpg)
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.eskimo.com%2F%7Eepawtows%2FPlanZ_stuff%2FCoH_pics%2FServer1025lastday4.jpg)
And this is with an hour and a half to go.
Actually we have now crashed it completely it seems, i don't even get a que now it just kicks ya back out to the log inscreen when you try to access virtue GOOD JOB PEOPLE!
this continually brings up more questions about why ncsoft would be wanting to shut coh down
i think if coh actually changed hands and got into someone who actually marketed it well, it could be as big as WoW
Quote from: NecrotechMaster on December 01, 2012, 06:57:55 AM
this continually brings up more questions about why ncsoft would be wanting to shut coh down
i think if coh actually changed hands and got into someone who actually marketed it well, it could be as big as WoW
While I agree the shut down is a dumbass idea this game wouldn't be as big as WoW and frankly I am happy with that...
Quote from: Xenophage on December 01, 2012, 07:00:46 AM
While I agree the shut down is a dumbass idea this game wouldn't be as big as WoW and frankly I am happy with that...
true, although i think it would have been the best competitor, this game had so much potential and ncsoft just continually neglected it until it cut it off like a dead limb
Quote from: NecrotechMaster on December 01, 2012, 06:57:55 AM
this continually brings up more questions about why ncsoft would be wanting to shut coh down
i think if coh actually changed hands and got into someone who actually marketed it well, it could be as big as WoW
Honestly.....don't you think the only reason the servers were this busy was due to game closure. I can't remember the last time we had that many yellow dots, let alone a red one.
Too bad the only time the community rallied was to attend a funeral.
Quote from: Tommy2Toes on December 01, 2012, 02:44:16 PM
Honestly.....don't you think the only reason the servers were this busy was due to game closure. I can't remember the last time we had that many yellow dots, let alone a red one.
Too bad the only time the community rallied was to attend a funeral.
Virtue had red dots all the time.
Quote from: Tommy2Toes on December 01, 2012, 02:44:16 PM
Honestly.....don't you think the only reason the servers were this busy was due to game closure. I can't remember the last time we had that many yellow dots, let alone a red one.
Too bad the only time the community rallied was to attend a funeral.
Okay, some of the other servers weren't usually yellow. But I'm an 8 1/2 year vet of Virtue, and in fact Virtue was frequently red throughout its entire lifespan, even in the end days. So much so that whenever new issues would hit, it would often crash from the overload. I'm EST- maybe you're not, or maybe you just didn't create half as many toons as I did (I've had all 48 slots going on Virtue for as long as you could do that many) so maybe you weren't logging on nearly as much to see the continual server list or something.
And Freedom was almost always yellow if not red, and Justice and Infinity could get to yellow status before the End of Days hit.
So I guess it just depends upon how often and when you were logging on.
Oh no, not TommyTwoTongues again! Leave him be, he's one of those.
Sadly, I was unable to end where I wanted - with my main toon on Virtue - Lamera Long. I was where I wanted to be with her but I was mapserved out of Virtue with 2 minutes left along with my long-time CoH companion - Colbolt Avenger. We were unable to get back in.
I was able to log back in to Freedom and end with the very first toon I made - Sapphire Jane, so all was not lost. It just wasn't on my terms. :(
I have mixed feelings about this. It was great to see people back on the server that I hadn't seen in quite a while, but at the same time those of us who never left got shut out of ending how we wanted.
Quote from: Surelle on December 01, 2012, 03:06:36 PM
Okay, some of the other servers weren't usually yellow. But I'm an 8 1/2 year vet of Virtue, and in fact Virtue was frequently red throughout its entire lifespan, even in the end days. So much so that whenever new issues would hit, it would often crash from the overload. I'm EST- maybe you're not, or maybe you just didn't create half as many toons as I did (I've had all 48 slots going on Virtue for as long as you could do that many) so maybe you weren't logging on nearly as much to see the continual server list or something.
Yes Surelle, I had said soemthing similar to Colbolt last night - how I remember that I was always excited, but dreading, the release of a new issue because I knew getting on Virtue may be a problem or it would crash.
Sapphire, I know it's cold comfort, but I'm well known as a native Virtuite, and had three server disconnects and spnet about half of last night in the login screens. Virtue was simply overwhelmed. Surelle is also correct, Virtue consistently bore the brunt. Its core population of RPers was small but fanatically dependable, and the population size managed to accrete others until it outstripped even mighty Freedom.
Even with that, all the servers (excepting exotics like the European or VIP servers) went yellow. Anyone smarter than me wanna estimate how many people were on last night?
A quick guess would be circa 100,000.
Everyone?
100,000 (+/- 50,000) is still a very large core group of players, prolly 85% of those players have been here for 5+ years
and thats with 0 marketing from ncsoft to attract more poeple
i was actually talking to someone i work with about coh and they were actually sad they couldnt play it because just the character creator was exactly what they were looking for, yet they had never actually heard about the game until i had told them about it today
Quote from: Victoria Victrix on December 02, 2012, 01:28:34 AM
A quick guess would be circa 100,000.
That's quite unlikely.
Solid yellow dots for everyone but Vigilance, Zukunft, and Defiant (Defiant blipped yellow during a couple of my multitudes of character swaps). Virtue went red first, Freedom later in the evening. When Virtue crashed, each time there was between 1000-1400 in the queue. Judging by that (1000-1500 = red dots ... color didn't PRECISELY translate into population but it was pretty close), I would guess there was around 5,000, maybe 7,500 ... maybe 10,000-15,000 all told over the course of the evening/night.
Don't take me wrong. That's still bleepin' ridiculously awesome turnout. But going by financials, City had (best guess) 20-40k subscribers by the end -- and 70,000 former subscribers *DID NOT* show up last night to round out your number. All the servers would have grayed out from being full.
Quote from: Aggelakis on December 02, 2012, 01:37:12 AM
That's quite unlikely.
Solid yellow dots for everyone but Vigilance, Zukunft, and Defiant (Defiant blipped yellow during a couple of my multitudes of character swaps). Virtue went red first, Freedom later in the evening. When Virtue crashed, each time there was between 1000-1400 in the queue. Judging by that (1000-1500 = red dots ... color didn't PRECISELY translate into population but it was pretty close), I would guess there was around 5,000, maybe 7,500 ... maybe 10,000-15,000 all told over the course of the evening/night.
Don't take me wrong. That's still bleepin' ridiculously awesome turnout. But going by financials, City had (best guess) 20-40k subscribers by the end -- and 70,000 former subscribers *DID NOT* show up last night to round out your number. All the servers would have grayed out from being full.
Number of subscribers pre-announcement 40k. Number of pure f2p, 40k. Number of freemium 20k.
(numbers verified)
Regardless, my statement stands. If 100,000 people had showed up, all of the servers would be grayed-out-full.
Quote from: Quinch on December 01, 2012, 05:21:18 AM
Virtue went splat.
It's the Unity Rally all over again!!
(https://dl.dropbox.com/u/33551029/Capture1.12.2012.-6.15.56.jpg)
This should be turned into a meme.
"Number of subscribers pre-announcement 40k. Number of pure f2p, 40k. Number of freemium 20k. (Numbers verified)."
Thank you, V.V. That's still a lot of people. In sum, CoH commands about 50,000 "whales." That's a sweet chunk of change there.
Quote from: Colette on December 02, 2012, 02:17:15 AM
"Number of subscribers pre-announcement 40k. Number of pure f2p, 40k. Number of freemium 20k. (Numbers verified)."
Thank you, V.V. That's still a lot of people. In sum, CoH commands about 50,000 "whales." That's a sweet chunk of change there.
I might actually place it higher than that, F2Pers sometimes spend a lot more than VIP members all told. I pop in and out of the SWTOR boards and have been watching players buy multiple Cartel Coin packs... we're talking $40.00 a pop and sometimes as many as 5 at a time. I would be very curious to know what kind of funds the CoH store was raking in based on that.
Quote from: Digital Gypsy on December 02, 2012, 02:27:14 AM
I might actually place it higher than that, F2Pers sometimes spend a lot more than VIP members all told. I pop in and out of the SWTOR boards and have been watching players buy multiple Cartel Coin packs... we're talking $40.00 a pop and sometimes as many as 5 at a time. I would be very curious to know what kind of funds the CoH store was raking in based on that.
I was on a yearly subscription, so that was at a discount, but probably paid out that same amount over the course of a year on Paragon Points.
There were probably a few that spent even more than I did.
i know depending on the stuff released on the market that month, i spent between $0 and $100 on top of my 3 month sub plan
I know a couple people personally who spent about/over $40/mo on pp, on top of their subs. One of them had THREE subs (technically two and one for his son) and still spent that much - though that's less astounding because with three subs, he had to get things three times over if he really liked them.
Quote from: Aggelakis on December 02, 2012, 01:37:12 AM
Solid yellow dots for everyone but Vigilance, Zukunft, and Defiant (Defiant blipped yellow during a couple of my multitudes of character swaps). Virtue went red first, Freedom later in the evening. When Virtue crashed, each time there was between 1000-1400 in the queue. Judging by that (1000-1500 = red dots ... color didn't PRECISELY translate into population but it was pretty close), I would guess there was around 5,000, maybe 7,500 ... maybe 10,000-15,000 all told over the course of the evening/night.
I don't claim to know how these things work, but if there are 1400 queued on Virtue surely that implies a much bigger number than what you're suggesting? After the crash not everyone would have tried to get back into the server at the same time, I know a number who just moved to another server and imagine others might have waited a moment or left for the night. I'd suggest the highest number seen in a queue would be a minimum for the amount in the server at max, with probably quite a few more actually there.
Either way though, I was really impressed with how busy it seemed to be. Every server I visited had enough people that it seemed to be buzzing, whatever the actual number of people was.
Quote from: Aggelakis on December 02, 2012, 01:37:12 AM
That's quite unlikely.
Solid yellow dots for everyone but Vigilance, Zukunft, and Defiant (Defiant blipped yellow during a couple of my multitudes of character swaps). Virtue went red first, Freedom later in the evening. When Virtue crashed, each time there was between 1000-1400 in the queue. Judging by that (1000-1500 = red dots ... color didn't PRECISELY translate into population but it was pretty close), I would guess there was around 5,000, maybe 7,500 ... maybe 10,000-15,000 all told over the course of the evening/night.
Don't take me wrong. That's still bleepin' ridiculously awesome turnout. But going by financials, City had (best guess) 20-40k subscribers by the end -- and 70,000 former subscribers *DID NOT* show up last night to round out your number. All the servers would have grayed out from being full.
As others have pointed out, your numbers and assumptions are way off. As you can see below between 12,000 and 50,000 or more players were on at any one point in the final hours and it is quite possible that 150,000 or more players logged in on the final day.
According to NC Soft's own financial reports for June. 2004, CoH had "11 servers, highest concurrent users: 31,085, monthly access, 169,925" Even if we assume that every server in 2004 was at 100% capacity that means each server could hold almost 3,000 players at any one time. In reality the number is probably far more . A far cry from your "1000 to 1500 people" estimate. Since that time CoH has added 5 servers for players to use (4 European and a Beta server) and a few years back I recall that a Dev mentioned the servers had been upgraded. That means that 50,000 or more people could have been logged on concurrently without graying out the servers, possibly much more.
Even if you ignore NCSofts own financial reports you can verify the minimum server capacity is far in excess of your estimates by several methods.
A single instance of AP holds 70 to 100 people. But don't take my word for it, you can check that at least 3 different ways.
1) Goto the thread "Call to Action: Unity Rally" and look at post 135 by Paula and you will see pictures of some of the Atlas Parks on the unity rally day and in several you can easily count 60+ people in the picture, and that does not include others who were doing missions, marketing, dancing under Atlas or doing Kinky Catgirl RPing in the basement of City Hall.
2) Check out this statement on the making of a youtube video about the protest "This is a crowd of 3700 heroes that gathered on various servers in protest of the closure of City of Heroes. This is a composite shot: we flew through over 50 instances of Atlas Park on various servers recording the heroes..." That works out to around 70 or so heroes on each instance of AP who were at the protest and once again does not count those elsewher in the zone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRsj2DtLCQs
3) Check posts made prior too September 1st for the number of people a single instance can hold and the estimates you will most commonly hear are 70-100 people. I can confirm this and have used the /search feature to find the number of people in a zone and my personal experience is a new zone spawns at around 80-85 people. Keep in mind that my method will fail to include anyone who is hidden, so the number is probably larger.
Step 2
Now we know that Virtue spawned 33 full instances of AP so a bit of quick math reveals that on that September day the Atlas Parks in AP had between 33x70 = 2310 players and 33x 100 =3300 players. Considering there are several dozen zones besides AP most of which had people playing on that day as well as any people inside instanced missions and it is quite reasonable to suspect that several hundred maybe even a thousand or more people were on Virtue that day when it locked people out. As an example on a Saturday afternoon 700 player could easily be spread across the remainder of virtue with and average of 15 players per zone besides AP, 2 Itrials, a half dozen regular trials and 100 players doing solo misions or 13 teams of 8 doing missions or any combo between. Perfectly normal fair for a Saturday on Virtue.
Given this information we can see that the low end number is 2310 players and only if we assume that EVERY player on Virtue was at the rally. and in reality the number was probably closer to 4000 or more players at the time it crashed.
Given those numbers we can quickly see that there were at least 15,000 and 45,000 people on concurrently on near the end of the final night.
Bare in mind that on the East Coast it was 3AM and players had gone to bed hours earlier. Others had logged off due to work, social engagements, family obligations, mom sending them to bed, there computer no longer able to handle the load, or as I saw in several cases the fact that players found it too emotionally difficult to stay on to the end.
I don't think a 3 to 1 turnover rate throughout the day is unreasonable leading to a total last day attendance of 50,000 to 150,000 players.
I know Guardian was jammed! People were complaining they couldn't get into AP. Was there for 10hrs, spent 2hrs, early afternoon, on Virtue. Taking screenshots! Have a shot taken seconds before "connection to mapserver lost", on Guardian. Still sorting 12hrs of screenshots.
Was good to see a lot of players i hadn't seen in a while. Several popped on just to say "Goodbye". They said it had been too depressing for them to try to play the last months, knowing it was going dark. Btw, thanks Hitstreak for the kracken(sp?) Great team play!
What is probably the saddest thing, is the amount of people I've talked to who had never heard about the game and would love to play it! No statistics on this to show Disney, unfortunately.(I'm having these people write letters, also.) I want our game back!
/em holdtorch
Keep in mind...
The number of people in the queue is the number of people trying to log in[/], it is not the number of people on a server.
Quote from: cmgangrel on December 02, 2012, 03:39:17 PM
Oh indeed, but when a server suddenly dumps the vast majority of people who were logged in...
They only dump a few related zones at a time. Lag in AP wouldn't DC people in Steel, for example.
Quote from: Victoria Victrix on December 02, 2012, 01:48:40 AM
Number of subscribers pre-announcement 40k. Number of pure f2p, 40k. Number of freemium 20k.
(numbers verified)
And this was at a particularly low point, I had 5 friends who were unsubbed and not playing, but were about to resub for I24 and had told me so before the announcement and I'm sure this is not unusual.
Quote from: Rienuaa on December 02, 2012, 04:25:43 PM
They only dump a few related zones at a time. Lag in AP wouldn't DC people in Steel, for example.
The Atlas Parks of Virtue crapped themselves once (I wasn't in AP at the time and didn't get kicked). The entirety of Virtue crapped itself twice. It never went 100% down [[EDIT: Until a couple minutes before the end]], so maybe a few people were able to stay on, but there weren't enough APs for 1500 people in the queue to be only in AP every time.
It is basically guaranteed that there was not
100,000 people there. It's very unlikely that 50,000 people were there. It's possible 25,000+ people were there. It is very likely that 15,000+ people were there. It's basically guaranteed that 10,000+ people were there.
Quote from: Tommy2Toes on December 01, 2012, 02:44:16 PM
Honestly.....don't you think the only reason the servers were this busy was due to game closure. I can't remember the last time we had that many yellow dots, let alone a red one.
Too bad the only time the community rallied was to attend a funeral.
You may not have been around long enough to know this Tommy, and I don't if you had or not, but at one point the servers were always yellow and red. All of them. It caused a massive lag fest for a long time. Then, the devs implemented a load balancing technique, I forget exactly when but it may be on the wiki or maybe even someone here remembers it happening (I remember because I'm a networking guy and found it interesting but I'm awful with dates) and after that was implemented, the servers almost never got to red dots ever. So the point is, that just because they changed something and it took more people to get to yellow or red, it doesn't mean less people were playing the game or even that very many actually showed to, in your words, attend a funeral.
Quote from: Tommy2Toes on December 01, 2012, 02:44:16 PM
Honestly.....don't you think the only reason the servers were this busy was due to game closure. I can't remember the last time we had that many yellow dots, let alone a red one.
Too bad the only time the community rallied was to attend a funeral.
Additional to what profit said, server capacity was IIRC upped just before freedom, so it was less likely servers would go red since then.
Also the 100K figure might be accurate for the night, just not at the end. Evidence from stuff I saw in chat channels would suggest that at least as many people logged on during the final few hours, but had logged before the end, as stayed for the switch off. Several people on GMT or GMT+1 in my SG were on in the Euro evening, but didn't unlike me either play all night or get up early on a Saturday morning.
Quote from: Profit on December 02, 2012, 07:24:14 PM
the devs implemented a load balancing technique, I forget exactly when
I believe that was a few months before Freedom went live. They ran a bunch of stress test events to help gather feedback to make those changes. There was even a badge for attending one of those events, "Defender of Primal Earth" iirc.
Edit: A quick teleport to the wiki tells me that, no, Defender of Primal Earth was not the badge associated with this. If there even was one, now I'm not sure.
the DOPE (defender of primal earth) badge was indeed given for their load balancing test
the initial badge was only given out on freedom for a period of like 4 hours, the badge itself i believe did return in the form of various events across all of the servers
Quote from: cmgangrel on December 02, 2012, 07:50:42 PM
I wouldn't put it past people to quickly log in and say their goodbyes, and then log off silently into the night during the last 24 hours of the games life. I honestly wouldn't. And that fact that former subscribers could log in at *any* point makes that even more likely to happen.
The only thing I would dispute is that 100,000 were there at *any one singular* point in time. I find it more likely to be as previous posters have said, of around the 15-25K at the *very* end (well last couple of hours), with the vast majority having said their good byes at some point in the preceeding weeks.
I didn't mean that, basically people teamed all evening GMT then went to bed at say 1am and weren't on at the 8am end. Also a number of americans seemed to either go out for the evening and not return or flake out before the 3am eastern time close.
I agree that 100K at one time is very unlikely. Also many of the subscribers will be people with multiple accounts, I know I didn't have my second account logged in at the end, don't know what other people with multiple accounts did, but the people behind those accounts were online.
I know I account for two of those "pure" f2p accounts on top of my "real" account. I made the first f2p account to see what that side was like (as I was doing with all the then-available f2p games; there was a quick succession of f2p games that years, as you'll recall), and the second was the one I made for my son at the beginning of the summer.
Quote from: Aggelakis on December 02, 2012, 07:21:56 PM
The Atlas Parks of Virtue crapped themselves once (I wasn't in AP at the time and didn't get kicked). The entirety of Virtue crapped itself twice. It never went 100% down [[EDIT: Until a couple minutes before the end]], so maybe a few people were able to stay on, but there weren't enough APs for 1500 people in the queue to be only in AP every time.
It is basically guaranteed that there was not 100,000 people there. It's very unlikely that 50,000 people were there. It's possible 25,000+ people were there. It is very likely that 15,000+ people were there. It's basically guaranteed that 10,000+ people were there.
Rikti War Zone went down 3 times between midnight and 2am EST -- a tad brutal as I was running SSA1.7 which
takes took place there.
Quote from: NecrotechMaster on December 02, 2012, 08:14:26 PM
the DOPE (defender of primal earth) badge was indeed given for their load balancing test
Thinking is hard on the weekend :o
*crawls back into bed*
Quote from: Minotaur on December 02, 2012, 07:45:17 PM
server capacity was IIRC upped just before freedom
Actually, I didn't know about the one before Freedom. The one I'm thinking of was a long long long time ago (while I was working in a call center, which is going on 5 years ago now) so I think that puts it around the time of Going Rogue.
Was it really only 2 years ago??? Wow seems so much longer.
Ok, so the only thing I'm sure of is that I was still at the call center when this happened.