Thread: MMOs and declining populations

In light of GW2 and ESO potentially drawing people away from LOTRO, how do MMOs deal with the decline? (I've only ever played this game so I have no frame of reference).

If the other two titles are a big hit, will Turbine consolidate servers in order to build the remaining community up with fewer but higher populated servers? Do kinships condense easily?

I have no interest in GW2 or ESO and I'm just worried about not having enough people to group up with or be in a kin with down the road.

I wouldn't worry much about it. Since LOTRO launched, there have been at least a dozen games arrive where people said it would be some big hit to LOTRO's population. Bzzzt. Sure, it might be a 5-10% hit for a short time, but half or more of those people will come back to the game they're more invested in. The new game often has problems that aren't apparent before it launches - or even in the first days and weeks. People get tired of the new game and bail.

It's rare that any new games takes more than 5% of other game's subscribers long-term. WoW did when it arrived in 2004, and TOR may have in some cases (although many people have already bailed on that game, for an assortment of reasons). Other than that... I can't think of any.

If/when LOTRO gets to the point where they do server merges, it'll be because the long, slow decline that virtually all MMOs suffer once they're past their prime has taken enough of a toll that they're starting to lose money with the current number of servers. They did server merges in AC2, and in DDO. They'll do it here if required too. I don't expect to see it for at least another couple of years though.

Khafar

In light of GW2 and ESO potentially drawing people away from LOTRO

I don't think they'll draw that many people away. Some people play this game because it's Lord of the Rings Online, and other MMO's will never compare to it in that way; they'll just compete with it on gameplay.

how do MMOs deal with the decline? (I've only ever played this game so I have no frame of reference).

Turbine just releases a new expansion around the time the other MMO's come out. Some people leave for the other MMO's, get bored and come back to LOTRO. They always seem to return... well, most of them.

If the other two titles are a big hit, will Turbine consolidate servers in order to build the remaining community up with fewer but higher populated servers? Do kinships condense easily?

If that ever happens (which isn't likely), they might combine servers. Players might quit dead kinships and join popular ones... so this is probably a yes as far as merges go. That's my assumption, anyway.

What's ESO? Never heard of the acronym before.

I think that the decline in numbers is not always quite what people perceive it to be.

Newly launched major titles will inevitably attract at least temporary interest from within our community. In some cases this may be a long-term switch.

It is my perception that it is the "hard-core" MMO enthusiasts who are most likely to leave for pastures new, at least for several months at a time. I also believe that these good folk are more likely to be devotees of the group play style, and thus their loss is felt keenly among others who group often. This leads to a somewhat inflated perception of the actual changes taking place.

Solo players tend to move through the game unnoticed by others, and thus their comings and going tend to be unremarked upon. I rarely group, and therefore I tend not to be aware of rises and falls in the numbers of those who do. I am equally unaware of changes in the numbers of other solo players.

As the demographic has changed, and the community has swung more towards the casual/solo end of the spectrum, it has become harder to judge the true state of the community, which I suspect is actually much heathier than is often suggested. A lot of the comments that we see regarding declining numbers are based upon the perception of kins and grouping opportunities declining. This is rather similar to the perception that "most people PvMP because all my friends PvMP". Very few of us actually get a true view of the state of the community across the full gamut of play-styles, so very few of us can actually comment on what may or may not be changing with any degree of certainty.

My personal percpetion is that I would very surprised to see any server merges in the short or medium term, by which I mean within the next 3-4 years.

You all have responded fairly positively, which was very refreshing to hear. I appreciate your input, and now I can have some idea what to expect. I'm definitely excited to see what the future of LOTRO has in store...

[ESO would be Elder Scrolls Online, the new mmorpg announced a few days ago if I'm not mistaken. Set in the 'sykrim' world.]

Originally Posted by 7h3C47

[ESO would be Elder Scrolls Online, the new mmorpg announced a few days ago if I'm not mistaken. Set in the 'sykrim' world.]

Oh, okay. I'm familiar with Skyrim, but I wasn't aware they had an MMORPG coming out. Thanks!

Personally, I don't think a new mmo coming out overall greatly effects other mmo's; personal finances do though.

Granted that when a new one comes out, people may leave for a while to focus solely on that particular game, but eventually some of them wander back, and new people are joining all the time.

I normally play this, WoW, RIFT, STO, and I'd like to play D3 when it comes out (the beta was awesome). At this current time, LoTRO if the only one I play actively (I was laid off last year and was unable to find a job until last week.). So, finances have affected my situation more than new games.

There will always be the comments of "such and such game is going to kill such and such game". Haven't seen it happen yet.

Originally Posted by Khafar

... Sure, it might be a 5-10% hit for a short time, but half or more of those people will come back to the game they're more invested in.
Khafar

I don't think this is accurate (and the % is just a guess by you right?). Lotro is in the constant turnover mode now. The idea that long term players stay around does not seem accurate to me with this new F2P, non-subscription model. Some people do stay around, but many, many long term lotro players have left - in part because they left for games they preferred.

When SWTOR came out - Turbine stepped up its advertising. Suddenly you see a lot of banner ads everywhere (Youtube, etc.). The new model is: keep pulling in new players to replace those who leave. That is why advertising and bringing in new players is more important than player satisfaction and long term retention.

For whatever reason, a lot of players have left, and new players come in drawn by the ads and F2P model. Notice with all this new advertising we do not see an increase in populations. Players are leaving. An increase seems to only happen with new content releases (and the start of F2P).

I would not be surprised to have lost 15% of players for SW and to lose 20% for GW2. Saying that Lotro only loses 1/2 of 5-10% seems obviously untrue - players never leave for new MMO games?

Of course, Lotro will be fine and have enough players. Turbine will desperately hide the server population figures. They can always step up the ads to pull in fresh blood.

Lotro is in a slow decline population wise, but it does not effect game play too much. Server populations are in decline from the levels at F2P start and RoI release, and will bump up with a new expansion, and then most likely keep declining. Unless they can do so well they can put even more money into ads to reverse this trend. Growth this way can't last forever though.

gw2 and eso?

um, Diablo3 is out in a week.

I don't think there's ever been an MMO that's just up and died quickly after a competitor has launched. That's generally not how it works.

As for as LOTRO specifically, I have no concerns. Our unique IP on its own is more than enough to sustain the game, as I would wager a good portion of the playerbase is here purely because it's Lord of The Rings, man.

And frankly I have yet to see any claims of LOTRO declining reported with any actual evidence. It's always just a 'gut feeling' or vague comments about their Kinnies not logging in as much. I'm just not buying it.

So Nyrion, would you say there are more or less players than at the release of F2P, and at the release of ROI?

Obviously there are less. Going from more people playing to less is a decline.

And what do you think the populations is doing? Going up? Staying exactly the same? Or you just have no idea? It has to be one of the 3 options.

Originally Posted by Khafar

I wouldn't worry much about it. Since LOTRO launched, there have been at least a dozen games arrive where people said it would be some big hit to LOTRO's population. Bzzzt. Sure, it might be a 5-10% hit for a short time, but half or more of those people will come back to the game they're more invested in. The new game often has problems that aren't apparent before it launches - or even in the first days and weeks. People get tired of the new game and bail.
Khafar

I totally disagree that 'half or more of those people come back'. To quote Sapience "thousands of new players join LOTRO every single day". I think it's fair to say that the population on almost all servers has fallen considerably since the first few months of F2P. So if all these people are joining every day, why isn't the population increasing by a huge amount, instead of falling? Because thousands of people are leaving every day and not coming back.

The only thing keeping Lotro's population from sinking like a stone - besides a relatively small core base of Tolkien fans, is the new blood replacing those that leave. If that supply gets cuts off, or cut back significantly, there will be a dramatic change in population, not the slow decline we see at the moment.

I'd bet quite a proportion of these new players joining every day are kids without access to credit cards, who are trying Lotro because they can play for free without needing a credit card. What's changing is that some high profile A list games are coming out that after an initial purchase, don't require a credit card ( This wasn't the case with SWToR and Rift ), hence parents could buy the game for their children, and not have to worry any further about cost. That could cut significantly into Lotro's new player figures, and if that happens, the knock on effect could be serious.

To quote Sapience from January this year - "In addition to new development, one of the benefits of our recent success with LOTRO is an increased investment in marketing and advertising."
In effect, they have had to increase the marketing and advertising budget just to try and remain competitive. They can't go on forever increasing this budget just to try and keep a stable population...

Some of the servers are already as good as empty except at peak times, Gilrains population is tiny, and I recently logged into my toon on Gladden and was amazed just how quiet that had become since I last logged in also. They should be looking at mergers now, not waiting until there are 20 people left on a server. Almost all other MMOs would have merged servers long before now with these low pops.

Originally Posted by Cindir

So Nyrion, would you say there are more or less players than at the release of F2P, and at the release of ROI?

Obviously there are less. Going from more people playing to less is a decline.

And what do you think the populations is doing? Going up? Staying exactly the same? Or you just have no idea? It has to be one of the 3 options.

I (oops, not Nyrion sorry) would of course say there are less than at release, this is only natural as folks come back for a look then drift away again - as you no doubt well knew when you asked the question.

When Rohan is released, if it is anywhere near decent, I expect we will see a big increase in numbers for some months, which will then tail off again.

I don't agree that there are not many long-term players here. I have been here since beta and a lot of our kin from that time are still around. Others drift in and out as they try other games - I generally take around 3 months out of the game in any year to try other MMOs (I am a real MMO junkie) - personally always come back here for the great community, mature game systems, story etc.

Plus, lots of people play multiple games. I am also an Elder Scrolls fan so will give that one a go when it releases, but will still be playing here.

On our server, numbers still appear very good in most areas - I even created a new character to check out the starter areas and they seemed fine for an older game. My perception is that we have about the same numbers as we had around 6 months after launch - so I don't think the LOTRO panic button needs to be pressed just yet.

[edited for typos]

Originally Posted by Cindir

So Nyrion, would you say there are more or less players than at the release of F2P, and at the release of ROI?

Obviously there are less. Going from more people playing to less is a decline.

And what do you think the populations is doing? Going up? Staying exactly the same? Or you just have no idea? It has to be one of the 3 options.

Well 'obviously' I don't know for certain, and neither do you.

That said, I haven't noticed any significant change in population since I joined, at least on my home server of Landroval, but there probably are less now than at F2P launch. However I think that's simply an ongoing cycle, like you'll find in pretty much any MMO, and therefore not a problem. I expect that when Riders of Rohan releases, the numbers will pick back up to at least what they were at F2P, maybe even more considering where we're going.

Originally Posted by Cindir

I don't think this is accurate (and the % is just a guess by you right?). Lotro is in the constant turnover mode now. The idea that long term players stay around does not seem accurate to me with this new F2P, non-subscription model.

The percent number actually came from Raph Koster, who said that it's almost unheard of for a new game to take more than 5-10% of any other current game... WoW did so, but it's in a league of its own in terms of 'success'.

I believe he was (and is) correct based on just watching these cycles long-term, and he's obviously in a position to know more of the business side of things than any of us do.

That's not to say that long-time people don't leave. They obviously do, and it doesn't all revolve around other games. I'm not really playing LOTRO myself at the moment, having left for TOR back in December. But like lots of others, I'll be back. 5 years in, it's the only "home" I have among online games.

Nick Yee did some studies where he looked at retention for online games, and found that far and away the largest predictor of someone still playing a game a year down the road was simply the length of time they'd already played. New players are much more likely to leave, often in just a month or two. In a F2P game, that n00b churn has to be far higher still. I don't have tons of personal experience with F2P games, but my daughter does... she and her friends hop from one free game to the next on what seems like a weekly basis. Certainly a monthly basis.

Khafar

The population has declined. Will it keep getting worse, I dunno. I do think Turbine needs to start listening to its player base allot more before things get even worse.

Originally Posted by Eartholloth

The population has declined. Will it keep getting worse, I dunno. I do think Turbine needs to start listening to its player base allot more before things get even worse.

Declined from what point? It goes up and down all the time, so we could both reasonably say it has increased AND declined.

Listening to the player base has been a disaster in many MMOs - the designers have a vision and folks will either like it or not - they get paid to do this and I would hate to see a game designed by us, the mob.

Originally Posted by 7h3C47

You all have responded fairly positively, which was very refreshing to hear. I appreciate your input, and now I can have some idea what to expect. I'm definitely excited to see what the future of LOTRO has in store...

[ESO would be Elder Scrolls Online, the new mmorpg announced a few days ago if I'm not mistaken. Set in the 'sykrim' world.]

Ah, that makes more sense. Googling "ESO MMO" sent me to Ether Saga Odyssey - Free to Play Anime MMORPG. I couldn't see exactly why that could be considered a LotRO killer.

Originally Posted by Khafar

she and her friends hop from one free game to the next on what seems like a weekly basis. Certainly a monthly basis.

Khafar

Indeed, as my nephews and their friends do. But what do they actually contribute to the game? Probably nothing financially. If Turbines new player turnover is comprised mainly of non payers such as these, then the game is doomed in the longer term. It's no good having thousands of people on if they don't stump up any money. What I think needs to be differentiated is the paying population, and the non paying population. A ton of my buddies still log in from time to time, just to chat with old friends. Do they contribute any money? No, not anymore. They use Lotro as a bi-monthly 3D chat room, and nothing else. The game needs to retain those that are paying, and as things are, I don't see that happening.

Originally Posted by trcanberra

I would hate to see a game designed by us, the mob.

No kidding. "Design By Committee" is about the worst possible way to wind up with anything that's functional, elegant, and efficient (which is of course why it's so popular in government bureaucracies ). Game companies do of course have to pay attention to what's making players unhappy, but they should solve those issues in the ways that make the most sense within their system -- and stay true to their vision for the game (at least if the game has any success at all). Their vision is what brought them success, and altering it substantially it is very risky indeed.

Khafar

Originally Posted by trcanberra

Declined from what point? It goes up and down all the time, so we could both reasonably say it has increased AND declined.

Listening to the player base has been a disaster in many MMOs - the designers have a vision and folks will either like it or not - they get paid to do this and I would hate to see a game designed by us, the mob.

Well there vision on housing in this game stinks & thats just one of the things people have been asking for improvements for years & it falls on deaf ears.

Originally Posted by Khafar

Game companies do of course have to pay attention to what's making players unhappy,

According to many that is not happening a whole lot in regards to this game.

Anyway the point I made was taken wrong.

Originally Posted by 7h3C47

You all have responded fairly positively, which was very refreshing to hear. I appreciate your input, and now I can have some idea what to expect. I'm definitely excited to see what the future of LOTRO has in store...

[ESO would be Elder Scrolls Online, the new mmorpg announced a few days ago if I'm not mistaken. Set in the 'sykrim' world.]

Dammit, what was wrong with a fallout mmo? As much as I like not being able to adventure anymore cos of an arrow to my knee, future mmos were aiming more for modern, SiFi settings because the mmo scene is already swollen with fantasy settings.
May still be good but fallout would have been better and hoped for since bethesda did go to all the trouble of taking interplay to court.

Originally Posted by Eartholloth

The population has declined. Will it keep getting worse, I dunno. I do think Turbine needs to start listening to its player base allot more before things get even worse.

They /do/ listen. Their (visible) response (or lack thereof) isn't to your taste, but I promise you they listen.

They /don't/ obey.

This is a subtle but important difference.

Originally Posted by SunrunnersFire

They /do/ listen. Their (visible) response (or lack thereof) isn't to your taste, but I promise you they listen.

They /don't/ obey.

This is a subtle but important difference.

There is no big "they". Obviously some people at Turbine read the forums. But to use "they" to mean Turbine:

They /do/ have a goal of making money.

They /don't/ need to have player satisfaction or making the best gameplay experience as high priority goals.

They need the game to be good enough so that players will join and try it, and spend money, and some will stay and spend money. Turbine just doesn't have the resources to make a polished, ever-improving game. Or rather they will improve things and sell them in the store (like the extra bag coming), but they wont/can't put enough resources to fix bug and improve basic systems like housing or kinship interface. Their priority at this point is making money. See all the new shiny mounts in the store, and notice how the store systems are bug free.

Maybe at some point they will invest in fixing bugs and improving game systems, but in in the last few years this has yet to happen. Neglect of this is a force that makes players leave and population decline.

It's not that they don't listen; it's that what they want (money) and what players want (better game) are not the same thing. They are not working on the business model of making the best game possible in order to make the most money - that system was gone with F2P and players no longer subbing. Now it is all about numbers of new players joining, and numbers using the store.

It's free. If it was subscription only, I'd worry. But free means people can keep playing at no cost and have money to play GW2 for instance. Which is what I'm going to do. I always play 2 to 3 games at once (sometimes literally).

People make a big deal out of population declines but really who freaking cares. Population comes and goes in phases. When Rohan is released, I could come on here and tell you with certainty that population is up. Is that real?

I could tell you it's down from the release of f2p. OF COURSE it is. It's down from launch too! Oooo! It's no shock that populations decline while waiting for new content. The fearmongers would have you believe it's a sign of the END. No. Numbers will jump back up after Rohan. Just like they did after ROI.

Lastly, new games pull players from all over. TOT and STO sure did. LOTRO took a hit. WoW took a hit. It happens. Then, those games loose players and they return to WoW or LOTRO and wait for their next dream game... cycle of life blah de blah Simba becomes Mufassa, butterlies an caterpillars stuff.

I just log on and play. I leave all the financial and population data to other folks.

Hex, excellent points.

We all wish that LOTRO will rise to a higher level of greatness. That it will become less buggy, have better housing and other systems, and have a truly incredible expansion. I hope that Turbine is slowly investing more of the money its making in development staff - or that it will do this at some point.

Sadly we just have no evidence of this happening. No evidence that they will fix bugs and create a more polished game. No evidence that any expansion will be on the Moria level. Games have a life cycle. Which is why Moria was the last full expansion (amazing design, new classes, etc.). And why SOA content is the best, and bugs do not get fixed now. And new hobbies don't get added. And housing and PVP never get improved. It's not just about populations, but what the company is putting into the game. In many cases (like polishing and removing bugs, like PVP) it seems to be they are doing the minimum.

In some cases, new PVP map and features, housing, they are basically doing nothing. You do see a steady improvement of the game experience over years (like shared storage). Just wish this could happen more, and we could get a more polished, bug free game - the way WoW is more polished and bug free. Seems they don't have the resources for this though. Populations and turnover will reflect the state of the game.

Let's hope some new greatness comes into the game. The story and works of Tolkien deserve better. I don't think the drive for profits, and the lack of resources, and making this Middle Earth all that it could be.

I wouldn't worry too much. Even if lotro lost a significant percentage of players permanently there will always be enough left to run several servers. Warner Brothers wont shut it down while it turns a profit. I doubt Turbine will consolidate servers at any stage though when its far more profitable to have players pay to move their toons. Those of us on the more populated servers have already seen mass migrations in the last few months.

I think some will return from GW2, particularly the crowd that needs to have better 'shinies' than other players at endgame.

Despite GW2 having the whole game be endgame, there will be a whole host of PvE oriented people who race to cap and then complain about lack of content without the whole raiding and gear treadmill being there. They may level an alt or two. They will run the instances in story and exploration mode a few times and then they will return to where they came from while they wait for expansion packs.

PvE Players who take their time and treat the whole game as endgame, engage with all the content, find all the hidden places (like the charr jumping puzzle) all while paying no monthly subscription will take longer to return. It's hard to be sentimental about paying a subscription to be stuck in place on a swift horse for 10 minutes when you're knee deep in npc's and allies during an awesome dynamic pve event. But eventually they too may return due to the gear/raid/grind treadmill not being there at cap.

Although the lore is extremely rich in GW2 and often more subtle and nuanced, its easier for people to engage with the lore here as they are more familiar with it. This might bring some of the 'lore' fans back here.

From my small sample group of 6 players that were on the w'end beta, 4 were determined to keep playing this game as well as GW2 prior to the beta. They had lots of characters and time invested here (one with over 40 toons across servers) and they were huge fans of Tolkien lore. At the end of the beta weekend not one of them planned to keep playing lotro. A couple of the pve only players were converted to loving pvp as well within 20 minutes of playing WvW (it's that fun).

Endgame for GW2 is pretty much pvp oriented. I think the moors will be hit hard, especially on creepside where you have many more pvp focused players. I do not however to expect this to happen in a day but rather over months or maybe even a year. I know many creeps bitten by other games who are holding off to see how the land lies after launch before deciding whether or not to join us early adopters. Normally new creeps have risen up to fill the holes left by people leaving, but with the commendations block to levelling a new creep Turbine themselves could be guilty of adding to the overall collateral damage in the moors.

I saw no complaint from anyone in GW2 WvW saying they felt underpowered compared to other classes either ingame or on the forums afterwards. Nor were there cries of such and such class needs a nerf/is OP. Great open realm pvp has sheer numbers and good strategy/skill determine the outcomes of battles. Because Anet plan to run sPvP as an E-sport they have to maintain good pvp balance between the classes. PvP and PvE are kept seperate so a change to PvP wont affect PvE gameplay and visa versa. The map for WvW is about the size of the SoA map altogether and creeps/freeps who have been begging for a bigger zone to fight in might be attracted to the sheer size of the WvW mists.

GW2 wasn't optimised for graphics cards on the beta and was only using one cpu core (single threaded) and it ran perfectly on my machine. Lotro, running on my system with geForce 680, 12 cores brand new sandybridge xeons, 12gig ram and fast SSD runs like a snail that has asthma carrying heavy armloads of shopping (to paraphrase black adder). It's not my cable connection, its not my brand new powerful computer and if Anet can run their product perfectly (highest graphics settings) without using the graphics card and on a single core then Turbine quite frankly need to pull their socks up.

I'm not going to even address issues like pvp balance, a store with its hand constantly out to people already paying subscription fees and a host of other things wrong with this game. There are plenty of threads on these types of subjects and those are battles best left to others who have no plans to leave this game.

For players like myself who hate grind and love exciting pve and epic pvp with no subscription fees it will be goodbye.

Here's what I think. Someone may have already said this, but I havn't read all the posts.

GW2, ESO or any other MMO won't destroy LOTRO's population. I hope they do, but they won't. Some people like the PvE in this game, and there's nothing wrong with it. That being said, the PvP population will decrease a lot. Creeps (and some freeps) are tired of the ignorance of Turbine and the lack of attention they are giving PvP. They are going to Arenanet because they have made a better game and they listen to their customers. I've seen more posts by the Arenanet devs on the official forums in 2 days than I have ever seen in LOTRO.

TOR took made a mark in the population. There have been lots of transfers to BrandyWine lately. They say that TOR basically killed the lower populated servers. People on BW have gone to TOR, they come back to this game and go "Oh god" and go back. I hear SW:TOR isn't great either, but I havn't seen for myself.

When GW2 releases, I see there only being a few servers for decent PvP. However, I know loads of people on BW that are going to GW2 - we know for sure, we've played the game for ourselves and the beta stage is better than LOTRO in the stage than it is now. I'll still hang around the LOTRO forums, because even though this game is complete #### for some reason I like it.

Games like GW2 are the type that draw the PvPers aways. SWTOR made a noticable impact on the server I play on. Anyways..

I'm not sure of any MMO that has had client hitching/stuttering issues like lotro and these issues still happens often. Client/server lag is a major turn off. Also, since rise of isengard the frequency that players experience client crashes have also increased, or at least what i've been witnessing. Out of the 50+ times entering ToO, there has been less than a handful times where we all entered without at least 1 person crashin. Of course there is crashing in other locations, but ToO is the most noticable. Server lag + client crashes are not a good sign for an MMO, especially when it relies on new blood.

Originally Posted by Shedera

Lotro, using the full power of my geForce 680 and all 12 cores of my brand new sandybridge xeons, 12gig ram and fast SSD runs like a snail that has asthma carrying heavy armloads of shopping (to paraphrase black adder). I.

I have a totally Off Topic question for you. I plan on getting a new rig soon and was just wondering is 12 gigs of ram is over kill for MMOs and Skyrim.

Originally Posted by Nymphonic

I have a totally Off Topic question for you. I plan on getting a new rig soon and was just wondering is 12 gigs of ram is over kill for MMOs and Skyrim.

Yep, total overkill IMO. I have 4gig of ram and run GW2, Skyrim, Lotro, Rift, Mass Effect 3 with the graphics maxed out. The only game I can't run at max is Witcher 2, but that's down to GPU, not ram. Spend the extra money on your GPU, not ram. Unless of course you intend to leave Photoshop running in the background with a shed load of images open

Thanks for the fast response, I appreciate it!

Although subscriptions alone arent the full picture anymore, its interesting to see the data from this site. It looks like lotro is back to about 250K subscriptions. Again it doesnt address profitability from the store and micro purchases, but it is a data point to consider.

http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png

@ Buttercakes
My system is a powerhouse simply because I work in design in both a 2D and 3D environment and for the work I do I need a lot of power. I actually plan to increase my ram to 24gig in the next few months.

So for the normal gamer it may well be overkill, though I would always recommend that you look at any particular games hardware recommendations and lean toward the maximum requirements if you want to experience the game without having to lower graphics options etc in order to get it to run smoothly.

Originally Posted by monteeburns

Yep, total overkill IMO. I have 4gig of ram and run GW2, Skyrim, Lotro, Rift, Mass Effect 3 with the graphics maxed out. The only game I can't run at max is Witcher 2, but that's down to GPU, not ram. Spend the extra money on your GPU, not ram. Unless of course you intend to leave Photoshop running in the background with a shed load of images open

Originally Posted by Shedera

@ Buttercakes
My system is a powerhouse simply because I work in design in both a 2D and 3D environment and for the work I do I need a lot of power. I actually plan to increase my ram to 24gig in the next few months.

So for the normal gamer it may well be overkill, though I would always recommend that you look at any particular games hardware recommendations and lean toward the maximum requirements if you want to experience the game without having to lower graphics options etc in order to get it to run smoothly.

Thanks to both of you!

Originally Posted by Nymphonic

I have a totally Off Topic question for you. I plan on getting a new rig soon and was just wondering is 12 gigs of ram is over kill for MMOs and Skyrim.

If you are running a 32bit version of Windows, a 32bit application can only use 2gb of ram. (3gb of RAM if the Large Address Aware flag is set on the executable.) If you are running a 64bit version of Windows, a 32bit application can only use 2gb of ram. (4gb of ram if the Large Address Aware flag is set on the executable.)

You want roughly 1gb ram for Windows*. If you're using 32bit windows and 32bit applications, having more than 4gb ram available has no effect on the individual application's performance. If you're using 64bit windows and 32bit applications, having more than 5gb ram available also has no effect on the individual application's performance. More ram merely lets you run more applications without having to worry about them potentially running out of ram and having to use the pagefile.

The LOTRO client is a 32bit application. It isn't flagged as large address aware*. So it will never use more than 2gb ram* per client. Skyrim is also a 32bit application. It also isn't flagged as large address aware*. It will never use more than 2gb ram* either.

useful information source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...#memory_limits





* - by default anywise ...

Originally Posted by SunrunnersFire

More ram merely lets you run more applications without having to worry about them potentially running out of ram and having to use the pagefile.

Yup. And using the pagefile on an HD is a massive performance hit which will turn a smooth-running game into a stuttering nightmare. Being able to hold as much as possible in RAM is a good thing. Most people have a lot of other programs running when they're gaming these days, so lots of free RAM is good.

General rule of thumb - DIMMs (RAM) are cheap as dirt. Load it up. More RAM (up to the board's limit) will never negatively impact the performance of a system.
Another rule of thumb - just because LOTRO and other games are all 32-bit applications right now doesn't mean they always will be. If you want your system to still be useful in a couple of years, I wouldn't assume all games are going to be 32-bit forever.

8GB is pretty standard these days. 12GB is going to be pretty standard on mainstream systems by the end of the year. Having 12GB on a Win64 system means you can run other programs (like Ventrilo or a video capture program or your music player or browser or whatever) without having to worry about running out of RAM and being forced to cache memory on the dreaded lurgy hard drive.

Further tip: Get an SSD drive as a boot drive, and run MMOs/Skyrim from it. That way, even if you use up pagefile, your access times are way low.

Having said all of that, bear in mind that LOTRO is a bug-ridden piece of crud that will probably never perform to spec on any system. Much of the problem with LOTRO is client-server lag, which means no matter how awesome your system is, you can still expect stuttering. Buying a new rig may not "fix LOTRO" for you. Skyrim doesn't have this problem, however.