Quarterly Report: How's That Noah's Heart Game Doing, Anyway?

Last week, Eliot Lefebvre of MassivelyOP posted a short piece on Noah's Heart, supposedly updating the readers on how the game had been doing, following its global rollout back in July. I'm not going to link to it for fear of encouraging him or comment on it for fear of saying something litigious, but I will  say I do wish there was a comparable news site that operated on the principle that if you can't say something nice, you shouldn't say anything at all. I'd subscribe to something like that.

About the one thing in the MOP piece I would agree with is that the official website hasn't seen an update in a while - but then that's true of so many of them. I'm not really sure what the point of "official websites" is any more. They seem to play a role in the lead-up to launch but after that they're frequently out of date and often misleading. I tend to avoid them.

As for the rest of the post, reading it made me quite cross. The contention, as I understood it, seemed to be that not many people play the game any more and the developers aren't updating it very actively. I don't believe either of these things is true. 

As we all know, it's extremely hard to get meaningful data on player numbers for almost any mmorpg these days unless, like New World, it's accessed almost exclusively through Steam, whose charts provide a real-time picture of the current situation. Anything else is pretty much guesswork.

I have absolutely no idea how many people play Noah's Heart, although it's true the developers did make some hefty claims back at launch, such as having "over 6.4 million pre-registered players" including "one million in Japan alone"in addition to the reported "10 million in China". Those are huge numbers but what they meant even back in the Spring, when the game was in its promotional pre-launch phase, is impossible to define. 

My title from the second PvP season.

Another problem with knowing how many people might be playing is that Noah's Heart is primarily a mobile game. It's available for Android, iOS and PC but the UI and control system certainly suggests handheld screens were the developers' primary target. 

Mobile mmorpgs get precious little coverage in the specialist mmo press and surrounding blogosphere, except and unless they also offer a PC version or they spin off from one that already exists. It's increasingly common to see cross-platform releases, PC and Console, PC and mobile or all three, but there seems to be a well-established heirarchy of respect that considers success on PC to be the benchmark, followed somewhat grudgingly by success on console, with success on any other platform acknowledged, if at all, only as an (often sarcastic) afterthought.

I don't currently own a mobile device that's fit to play modern mobile mmorpgs, which tend to be punishingly graphically demanding. My aging Kindle Fire won't run most of them at all, even though I sideloaded Google Play the day I took it out of the box. Even if it did, I probably wouldn't choose to play a game on mobile if I could play it on desktop instead. I'm just happier with keyboard and mouse.

Plenty of people do play mmorpgs on mobile, though. Google Play lists Noah's Heart as having had 500k+ downloads. The problem with that number is it doesn't appear to have been updated since I quoted it in a post back at the start of August. I think it's reasonable to assume the game has been downloaded a few more times since then. Maybe it needs to hit 1m before the dial shifts.

Since there seems to be no easily-accessible and objective means of quantifying the game's population, I'll just have to resort to good old subjectivity and the always-reliable anecdotal evidence. I've logged into Noah's Heart every single day since launch, usually around the same time of day, so I have a pretty good feel for how busy or otherwise it feels - and it does feel busy.

The Halloween questgiver draws a crowd.

There are always plenty of people in the larger towns - Fairy Spring Town or Gulf Stream City, say - but there's someone in just about every location I've ever visited. It's very rare that I find myself alone anywhere other than travelling cross-country. There's always (Literally always in my experience.) someone at the craft stations in the cities and during the recent Halloween event there was a permanent crowd around the questgiver.

When I began playing, I had to switch general chat off because I found the endless scrolling distracting. The game has a mechanic (Which I don't claim to understand, not having used it.) where you have to pay some in-game currency to talk in global channels but it doesn't seem to stop people chattering.

Even without the background hum of global, my game is far from silent. I'm in a very active guild, where people frequently say "Hi" and have conversations about the game but the bulk of the traffic comes from an endless series of automated announcements generated by things my guildies have done. 

Every time someone gets an achievement or a good drop it's broadcast to the guild. Sometimes it happens a few times a minute. There's also a steady stream of LFG messages and requests for "Help", another game feature. I don't need to be in direct communication with other players to know, for certain, they're out there playing the game just like I am.

There has been one round of server merges since launch, so it's evident population numbers overall have fallen, but that's absolutely par for the course with any new mmorpg. When was the last one that grew month on month after launch? Server merges these days don't necessarily indicate anything more sinister than the expected contraction allowed for in the planning stage.

So much for population. It feels healthy to me, especially compared to other mmorpgs I've played, but I'm aware that's nothing but an impression.

Typical crafting station crowd.

I'm on much more solid ground when I say that the game categorically has not suffered from any lack of attention from the developers so far. There is absolutely no hint of any kind of content drought. On the contrary, as a regular player, I can confirm that new content has been added at such a rate I haven't been able to keep up with it.

There's an update every week or so. Some are small but most have been significant. There doesn't appear to be an easily-accessible repository of patch notes so I'll have to work from memory but offhand I can think of the following things that have been added to the game since launch:

• Four PvE "Seasons", each with its own lengthy storyline.
• Two (Or is it three now?) PvP Seasons.
  
• A holiday event (Halloween)
• Sailing ships.
• Two new regions, each with its own storyline.
• Fishing and shipping missions and competitions.
• A new PvP competition.

These are just the parts of the game I've engaged with personally. I'm aware there have been a number of additions to other activities I don't pursue. There's a lot to do in Noah's Heart but what you choose from the buffet is entirely up to you. I only pay attention to the things that interest me.

Oh, the places I've seen. Not that many, actually...

In terms of overall content, after three months of daily play I'm still a few levels short of the server cap, which currently stands at 89. I have yet to fully explore even a fifth of any of the dozen or so continents and oceans shown on the map. Lack of content is the very last of my problems with the game.

I haven't even found time yet set to sail in search of the chain of islands that was added in the patch before last. It can only be found by ship and I don't know where to start from or which direction to go. Noah's Heart is an explorer's paradise but it also caters extensively to achievers and I'm afraid so far my inner box-ticker has been calling the shots.

To sum up, while I'm happy to accept the game hasn't established the kind of presence in the market those outrageously large pre-launch numbers would suggest it should have, I'm confident that to call it a fading, let alone failing game is premature. It may not be the next Genshin Impact but it's a solid, well-made, entertaining mmorpg that appears to be holding an audience and catering to it.

It's about as much as anyone could reasonably expect. But then, not everyone's reasonable, are they?