OK.... here's my take... not that it means much .

1) MAG still has about 1500-2000 people on at any given time, and that's a 3+ year old game that's in dire need of fixing (and it's a "released" game), and it will never be fixed. in fact it's gotten worse and worse according to it's forums.

2) PC (and "domination" mode) will bring new people. it will also keep those who hit their caps playing because there is a reason to play. attacking and defending districts will be a 24/7/365 thing. there will be NO shortage of things to do. right now, once someone hits their cap, they quit because there's nothing more to do for the week.

3) there is a mentioned fix to matchmaking... here...

https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=786040#post786040

"Matchmaking GÇô we are working to put live an update to matchmaking on 5/14 that gets new players to play together, and keeps the vets and their proto gear away. For example: Entry to these battles will be limited by total warpoints earned per character and will prevent older players from joining. New players will not be presented with the existing instant battle queues however they can join a squad with veteran players and be pulled into other battles.
Expect this change to hit TQ by next week and for more details from CCP Nullarbor you can go here.

We thank you for all your feedback that has been provided to us up to this point in Uprising, and are looking forward to more feedback from you with the CPM in our continued development of DUST 514 GÇô now and into the future GÇô in close collaboration with you, the users. As we bring Beta to a close on 5/14, we have all hands on deck to keep pushing updates and responding to your feedback. We sincerely thank you very much!"

4) massive amounts of new content are planed for the future. MTACs, fighters, more dropsuits, etc... keeping the game fresh and interesting.

this game has tons of potential, and it isn't even released yet. there will be advertising, both on TV and over the PS network. i've personally never participated in a beta before, and i find it very interesting. it's kind of fun (all be it frustrating at times) to watch a game develop over time. June will mark 1 year for me, and i know there are people on here that have been here from the start. believe me, this game has grown in leaps and bounds from just the year i've been playing. i have faith in CCP. it's just that since they aren't as big as Valve or Bungie or EA, they can't do as much as fast. keep your heads up, powder dry, and lock and load. it's going to be a fun ride .

Look at eve online, it has 500,000 registered accounts and has less than 100,000 players each day but the game is still a success and still profitable for ccp.

The other night I saw about 35 K people playing ? The games largest player base isn't american.

CCP does not answer to a publisher. If they think this game will eventually be sound business they will keep working on it, just like they did with EVE.

And thing is, with the kind of games they make they will loose way more player who come by to test the game than they keep, but those they do keep tend to become fiercly loyal players. So the key for CCP is to get a steady stream of people to try the game. If they did a big bang launch, all they would do would be to kill the server and loose all the players.

My guess is that we will see a slow build of active player numbers like in eve, and CCP doing enough adverticing to keep a steady stream of new people trying the game. This slow build lets CCP tweak performance for larger and larger numbers, and helps building a more solid community by letting that grow organically over time. On a server with a steady flow of new players the server will have more vets than n00bs, which tends to help keep the mood more positive. Big bang launches tend to be killed by too many frustrated n00bs killing the mood.

I see nothing worrying here if you just understand how CCP rolls...

You really need to get the game brought up to high standards before you start advertising.

It's easy to attract new people, it's much harder to re-attract people who tried and were not satisfied.

Lol, probalbly broken. In my main account, everytime I log in it's about 3 to 5k but yesterday I played in my UK account and damn I flipped when I saw sumthing like 32k players. Broken or weird.

is the counter broken? or are we really down to bitter vets?


CoD world at war has more people playing it, and it's OLD

I'm going to tell you guys a little story about CCP:

I'm 35 years old now. When I was 25 I was much more into the video game scene than I am now. I used to buy all the magazines and sh!t, to keep up to date with whatever was the "next hot thing", and I've played just about every type of game you could imagine. But it always seemed that no matter what I played there was something missing. I knew what that thing was back in those days, but I didn't actually think that it was possible then, however, in reality, it turned out that I was wrong. In fact, back then, it was happening right under my nose, and even though I had the opportunity to embrace it I ended up discarding it instead.

When I was 24, I remember reading in all the video game magazines about this amazing new game concept called EVE Online. It sounded so amazing. Persistent world, everyone interacting with each other in a single sand box. I was so exited. This was the thing that had been missing! over the course of my many years as a gamer, I had grow so tired of games that had endings and then having to move on to the next big thing. But I wasn't done with that game yet! I wanted a game that would never end. And that was what EVE was supposed to be.

I was 25 when EVE came out, and I was so exited about it. As soon as it hit the shelf, I bought a copy and sped home in my car, eager to upload it and get down to business. When I finally got the game uploaded, and running, and after only 20 minutes of playing it (or at least attempting to) my hart utterly sank into disappointment. The game was terrible! The grafics were complete sh!t. There was no tutorial, and I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to be doing. The last thing I remember at that time was flying tward some random planet in my ship until I rammed into it, like it was some kind of giant marble, and then nosing around it with my ship like I was some kind of insect and it was a giant light bulb. 20 minutes was all it took and I had had enough. So I shut to game off, deleted it from my system, put it back in the box and stuck it on a shelf, where it sat for years. Eventually, I got back around to addressing what to do with that game, several years later, while doing some spring cleaning one day. I took one look at the box, recalling the memories of my experiences, then proceeded to stuff it in a garbage bag along with the rest of the trash I had collected while cleaning that afternoon.

Several more years went by after that, and one day I was messing around on Myspace when I happened to notice an advertisement for a game called EVE online. Now, so much time had passed since my original romance with this game, that the name EVE Online didn't even ring a bell. But it was a sci-fi game and that kinda sh!t floats my boat, so I followed the advert link and was subsequently taken to the following trailer titled the "the butter fly effect":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq2oxt7Nrxo&feature=youtube_gdata_player

I was blown away, and all of a sudden the memories started to flood in. I rushed to download this game off the internets (took a grueling six hours). I was so impatient. Had EVE Online become what they had touted it as being those many years ago?

The game finally finished downloading and I finally got logged in, and it was true. The game had become something amazing! Oh how I kicked myself for not giving it a chance those many years ago!

I played EVE online for about three months, and very much enjoyed myself. But, unfortunately, some real life circumstances cropped up and I could no longer play, and by the time I was ready to return to the game, unfortunately, I had lost access to a computer, and was then unable to do so. And, equally unfortunate, I still don't have a computer to this day (I am writing this no my iPhone). But what I do have, and what I have always had, is a gaming console, such as the PS3.

Before I left EVE Online, I had heard rumors that CCP was making another video game that would be connected to EVE Online. Rumor was, that this new game was supposed to be a first person shooter, about land battles on the surfaces of the planets in EVE. Well several more years went by and guess what? Low and behold, one day, in September 2012, I was messing around in playstation network, when I see "EVE online: Dust" attached to an icon and... well, I'll leave the rest up to your imagination.

Anyway, what I am trying to get at here is that, regardless of whatever you're opinion of the state of Dust is right now, I'll be damned if CCP isn't the little engine that could. I wish that I could have stayed around in EVE Online to witness the development of the game. And I still kick my self to this day wondering about how long it took them to get the game from what I played in 2003 to the drastic change of what I played in 2009.

My point is that regardless of what you think the state of this game is now, I am highly confident that CCP will continue to develop this game just as they did with EVE. And this time I do not intend to miss out.

Bump, because I spent a lot of time writing that post.

it's just hard to talk any one into it, the whole "well its free" is kinda redundant since most ppl who can afford a PS3 and internet connection can afford to buy games.. and how do you explain the hard cap on range to someone, i know they said they will one day remove it but that does not go well with ppl. "but we have vehicles" with frame rate issues, another point hard to sell to someone.

yes, it is hard to talk people into it. That's why I haven't uploaded another montage yet. I want my next montage to look a certain way...and it highlights don't come so easy in Dust.

I've been trying to get a lot of my guys in it......I figure that if I can commit them to play for a while after just understanding the skill tree and the game, then I can hook them. Because a lot of people play because we are all still leveling up and it's a grind. But Dust is not an easy sell..gameplay wise. And with the sluggish movement, controls, and aiming issues.....I really don't want to tell anyone that this game is "launching" Tuesday.

Amazing post and I can imagine how long took it on an iPhone. +1
Btw im writing from iPhone as well :)