servers down .....again

[musketeer925]

Also, they do still make plenty of money off the game, and ESO in particular. There were 2030 ESO accounts created in the last week. (http://agecommunity.com/_server_status_/). This would imply that 2030 purchases of the game were made reasonably recently. AoE3 sells for $40 on Steam. Even if Steam was taking a 25% cut of of that (which I doubt), that's $60,900 in revenue in a single week.

You should take into account that many people buy the game out of steam. I know some stores that sell the game for like $5 all the time.

Okay, sure. The point is that they make way more than it costs them.

Let's say they on average make a mere 10% of the full game price per new account. At that, 2030 × 52 x $40 x 0.10 = $422000/annually. I am pretty sure 10% would be much lower than actual average revenue per copy sold, so there's plenty margin or error for unaccounted-for variables.

As far as costs go, we could estimate high. The thing might take 40 hrs maintenance per month worst case I'd guess. Even paying someone $100/hr for that work would come out at $48,000 annually. Someone mentioned electricity cost. Estimate maybe 2400 watts X 365 X 34 hrs comes out to be roughly 20,000 kWh. Electricity in Redmond costs $0.084/kWh (but I bet Microsoft gets a better deal than that), so the puts this cost at under $2k/annually.

So in total you're at $420k revenue (probably a low estimate) vs. $50k cost (probably a high estimate). Almost 1000% return on investment doesn't sound like a failing program I'd be trying to shut down.

[CelticCrusader]

All the doom and gloom as usual but ESO is back up already !

[EAGLEMUT]

@musketeer925 @_NiceKING_ Note that the number of ESO accounts created does not at all represent the total number of Steam purchases, while also not consisting solely of Steam purchases (though mostly does probably). Many people who buy the game on Steam don't use ESO at all - they play LAN/Skirmish/Campaign/Create scenarios or even use GR/voobly. The number of AoE3 users online on Steam is usually about twice (!) as high as ESO population during the same observed time. Judging by this data, the number of accounts bought in a certain time period is likely around twice as high as the number of new ESO accounts.

Another thing is that I feel like 40 hrs maintenance per month is a very, very high estimation. Consider that AoE3 has literally no dedicated staff members, which has been already confirmed by NiceKing's contacts. There is literally no one, they have no costumer support, no maintenance guy, just nobody. If the ESO service crashes or something, they just call up someone from AoE2 team to reset them or hotfix the issue (which mostly takes a couple minutes, as could be observed from how much time elapsed between the tweet and the fix). If someone tries to reach customer support on the official MS site, they will usually be directed to Ensemble Studios (yes, really) or Steam.

I'm sorry if I'm going to devalue some dev's hard work right now, but as it is, I would estimate the total dev/maintenance/support work done on AoE3 to be less than 40 hours total since the server upgrade last year. As far as I remember, the only two issues where Microsoft needed to intervene since that time was the server crash yesterday and the agecomm stats bug. Every time before that, the servers have been rebooting automatically on their own.

[milku3459]

2400 watts X 365 X 34 hrs comes out to be roughly 20,000 kWh.

u wish there were 34 hours in a day

[musketeer925]

Yeah eagle I completely agree. I was discounting the purchases that did not make ESO accounts, as single-player purchases would be unaffected by the shutdown of ESO.

Also totally agree about the work estimate. Just trying to estimate absolute worst case for them to show how impossible it would be for them to not make money off of ESO, even if they were trying.

@milku3459 I would love 34 hrs in a day yes

[AOEisLOVE_AOEisLIFE]

me and my mates cant connect to eso this morning wheres the server staus thingy gone on this website?

joe did you ask your dad ?
maby he knows more bout that

my dad says its that bloody trump he wont let us in...........

so he hold his promises and build a wall around ESO, letting only 100% real muricans and no immigrant scum(e.g. me) in?
am shocked, no wonder i cant connect for days..

seriously tho, this is far less bad than early 2016, the community can easily survive that and we will be all happy playing again.

[SymonSays]

It's comical the amount of guessing some of you try to pass off as "in-the-know". Stop pretending to know things you obviously don't. Voicing your opinions is fine, but make sure you present them as such. State your source or it's just opinion.

[_NiceKING_]

your post is just an opinion too

[EAGLEMUT]

It's comical the amount of guessing some of you try to pass off as "in-the-know". Stop pretending to know things you obviously don't. Voicing your opinions is fine, but make sure you present them as such. State your source or it's just opinion.

There is pretty much no guessing in the post that I've made at least. You do have a point that the sources were not listed so I'm going to list them right here:
ESO statistics (number of accounts being created, online population): http://agecommunity.com/_server_status_/
Steam AoE3 population data: http://steamcharts.com/app/105450
Users being directed to Ensemble Studios by Microsoft: https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe3/comments/ ... eing_away/
Don't have the source saying there are no employees working primarily on AoE3, but it's a pretty safe guess considering the total amount of stuff done by MS since server upgrade (almost a year) is one server hotfix and one case of restarting the server, presumably by flipping a switch "on".

[fightinfrenchman]

We're going to have to face the reality that these servers are not a priority for anyone at some point. I truly believe that the "new" servers were actually bought used and that is why they are so unreliable.