True concerns about the future

You are confusing concurrent numbers with total players. 603 is the top concurrent player number, not all players play at the same time all the time. Only a fraction of total players are playing at the same time any given time.

edit:

Current total players on steam according to steamdb 38000, players in last 2 weeks 6400:

 

Honestly, the game should be free-to-play. Free-to-play attracts a TON of new players. Being involved with kids of all ages at church - Fortnite is talked about a ton from kids 6 years old to 16 years old. Why? Because its free and they all can try it without spending any money .. and pretty easy to jump into. SOTA is not really.

I don't see this game attracting young players -- heck -- the "dated"-ness of it (graphics and gameplay) -- I would struggle to recommend this game to friends my age (who all played all the old MMOs a ton (including old MUDs). The first impression would probably not draw them in.

Games need the young to be healthy and popular. A traditional MMO like this is for people who have a ton of time on their hands. As much as I would love to dive into this game like I did with WoW, I just don't have that time anymore -- I'm married, have two kids and a job with more responsibility (where I can't stay up late every night immersing myself into a online world). I haven't even found the time to revisit the game (after giving up 2 years ago) after release. I know I don't have the time to give it justice really.

This game was targeting the "nostalgic old farts" that remember Ultima and UO fondly, but was designed to have a time investment that only the young (or retired) have. A ton of us nostalgic old farts were hoping for more of a single player RPG (that we could play at our own time/pace with a fun and interesting story) .... they did not design that game, so it has even alienated a ton of people who originally kickstarted it.

 

FYI: This is great data, keep up the good work.

 

You are very patient and far more charitable than I would be, addressing a lack of understanding what the term 'Concurrent' means by someone who claims to want to talk numbers and how numbers carry meaning.

 

Have you forgotten that there is a full offline game in this? And there is a free-to-play mode, with just a few limitations. Only one main quest line, no economic interaction with full accounts, skill level 50 (?) cap. If you just want to hang out, it doesn't cost anything.

 

Yes, i think the Forum with all the toxic "i dont know what you mean, everything is fine, please dont talk about it again, everything you say is wrong" mentality looks like a waste of time. Also we never get any answers from devs about such stuff.
You are right, best advice is to not spend any money until i know if the game has still a future. New players should stay on free trial as long as they can and wait some month until they know more about the game.
They do not need the money, they can survive because everything works fine.

 

This thread has been filled with people either willfully or just showing a complete lack of understanding of what the word "Concurrent" means. They claim that "concurrent" players being "so low" means that the game is never going to last. The game has nearly 45,000 players, just not much more than 600 are in the game at any given time.

Which makes sense, if you think about it...

This game hearkens back to older school mechanics, older school interactions. Stuff that draws an older crowd a bit more than the younger crowd. We, older types, tend to have homes, families and full time jobs and cannot devote every day to playing the game, even though we absolutely buy up a ton of things during the Telethons... (We blew past $80k just a few weeks ago... you don't really NEED that many people to blow past that number, as it's only around $150 each, but damn... I'm not spending that much in a month on this game!)

Portalarium has been operating using this model since 2013. If they were going to fail... it would have already happened. However, none of that is going to convince someone who is so convinced that failure is right around the corner.

Spend your money or don't. There are plenty of the rest of us who will continue to spend our money and... three years from now, you can still sit back and pretend that the game is JUST ABOUT to be shutdown. Personally, I only see that happening if we are looking at a global war, massive economic depression... but hey... you do you.

 

Can you "source" your quote?

 

im possetive i think they ithere have the players they need already or close just see how many new players are enterning game evry day is real nice

 

Really? As far as I know e.g. ESO had 7 years of development until launch. Sound to me like the development of SotA with such a small team and budget was quite fast.

 

I'm pretty sure... that there was a another massively high profile developer that launched a kickstarter right around the time that Portalarium did and... they still aren't even talking about moving out of ALPHA for maybe another year or two. (Cloud Imperium Games/Roberts Space Industries, I'm looking at you!)

Which seems to be an even sloooooower development process than SOTA has been through.

 

15 years ago i started to play eve-online, they were open & transparent with user-numbers from day 1 and so we could see that we shared our nights with like 2.5 - 3.5 k concurrent players at peak time in the first months.

judged by their forum - "eve is dying" since that time

judged by our forum here, sota is dying since it started development - meanwhile i happily bought 2 pledges, invested some into portalarium and see things getting larger & better constantly (monthly releases anyone ??)
these doomsday-threads are a nice personal entertainment for me, but I fear younger faces, newcomers and those not used to the dark side of online game forums might come to wrong conclusions wading through them ...

I´m looking forward to reading these stuff for the next 8 years (or 4 episodes)

*popcorn*

 

Dont think there is a lack of understanding, everyone talked about peak players and avarage login at the same time. People know there are more, but still not enough when Starr said they need 50k to be profitable.

 

Hey everyone, thanks for the concerns! We appreciate the dedication in the community here on the future of the game.

There isn't much point though in arguing and beating yourselves up about numbers and statistics that are not complete. You are correct on some of the numbers, but it's only the start of what the overall results show.

Please keep in mind that we are still ramping up the marketing and promotions, which are just beginning! This takes time to 'get going'.

For now, just have fun, play the game, enjoy the community, and let us worry about numbers . And let's keep the community forums focused on the game. We'll update you each step of the way as progress, and any setbacks, may come about.

Thanks,
Berek