ThIs gAmE iS DeAd!?

Quite early on a Friday afternoon, in late August, over 700 people in just the hub, not including those in bases, in instances, out in the open world...yep. So low population, much wow.

In the sunday before F2P launched, I was in the watchtower. There wasn't a single other toon in the whole thing.

Two days after. People are curious, they aren't committed. Recheck in two weeks, and then two months, bud

Obligatory: "Can I have your stuff?"

I think it's definitely bringing people in/on. Retaining them is what is going to matter tho. So hopefully it stays like this numbers wise. But do me a favor and travel to FP and do this same thing. I did this morning on USPS/PC and there were 5 phases, 2 had more than 15 and the others less than 5. I'd like to think if we still got source for it that it would at least have one full phase considering it's still pretty much the newest content.

Hmmm, I was impressed with the phases in the Hall last night too. But it's not indicative of any position at all.

The game is now totally free and there's bound to be people coming in to check out the changes and look around the new hub and the buzz (both positive and negative). That doesn't mean they're staying (or leaving).

They dropped the YouTube trailer for the update too. I suspect it will generate a lot of traffic--but I also suspect a lot of people will leave angry and mislead from it.

We really won't know how popular or unpopular the current build of the game is for at least a few weeks still.

Its the first Friday after a major patch release. Also, 700 is still very low for a MMO with 40 episodes of content to spread out through. We would need to look at Daily active users to actually decide if a game is dead or not.

I don't think the game is dead, but I do think that it's on its last few legs, but that's expected with a 10 year old game. DCUO isn't a hugely popular game and never will be.

Do you think dcuo did better in its first few years?

With the craze of comic book movies and video games, we'd think DCUO would've had a significant increase in players by now. I think the issue is that DCUO suffers from its old engine. Obviously this is only from my personal experience but most people I've tried getting into DCUO were put off by the graphics.

It's good to see the population at an "healthier" level but it's definitely not indicative of the average player count. I'm curious to know what the average player count is on DCUO right now...

Red Dead Online averages around 2,000-4,000 roughly a month and that game is considered "Dead" and "forgotten", they do however barely get content or updates but still. When you look at WoW who has taken a severe hit in the last few years, they still average over half a million players a day. DCUO has been around for more than a decade and we barely had an average of 600 players in January of 2021.

Hopefully this new model brings in more players but I'm not going to be too optimistic.

If we are talking population, yes. The only time I would expect the player base surpassed that would have been when it went free to play. Otherwise it's as big as it will ever get. Not that it's a bad thing. I'm in an active enough league to get stuff done.

We are talking about an extremely hard feat. How many MMO's have made it to year 10 while increasing their stock profit, or profit in general? I would say VERY few.

That's not counting EU and Hollow Earth

I think it will bring in a lot of new players, but after they hit 330 ish, they will die off. As long as they spend money on the game, then it's a success for the game.

Is Hollow Earth "Switch Players"?

I believe the Switch is referred to as the "Wastelands".

No! its a hidden world beneath us.

So you say that once they hit endgame they start leaving the game? I agree,I personally see alottt of endgame players leave aswell.

And would you say that dcuo endgame content specificly the Elite raids or the newest content in general doesnt have enough difficulty / replaybility / longevity maybe even a wrong gear and progression system at endgame to keep players engaged for a long time?

I personally really dislike how we are able to complete the supposedly most difficult content that just released (elite raids) in day one with previous episode stats and almost all elite raids being done in like 15 ish minutes waiting for a episode 4 months just to being able to speedrun through it in 15 minutes or so really bothers me and many others this one reason alone makes many people quit from my experience.

Most MMO I play or have played seem to lose player retention in endgame. It's almost as if the "Grind" is slowly becoming more unbearable for gamers, I'm not saying it's an entirely bad design but when you prioritize grinding with padded content over creative content, you're definitely hurting your play base in the long run.

You can have mine!!!

I'll say this again, whether you can prove or disprove if the game is dead or not, it is still a subjective statement/feeling/observation.