Sohu – TL – Myths that TL is not popular

This is the 2nd part of 4 part series. The 1st part is here:
http://chinese-net-gaming-stock.blogspot.com/2007/05/sohu-tl-is-its-server-counts-for-real.html

Before I went further, I just want to say that I created this article on 5/25/2007. Therefore, all the data supplied are up to the date of 5/25/2007. As of today, TL has 159 servers.

Myth 1 – Why does the Sogou Game ranking ranks TL so low?

Well, they rank them so low that you can’t even find it on Sogou’s top50 game search ranking:
Actually, the answer to this is very simple.

If you go to the Sogou top50 book ranking:

There is it, number 3 right behind “adult novel” and “Love novel”. There is no way TL the book is so popular. TL is popular not because of the book, but the game.

The lesson from this is not TL is not popular, but Sogou is still immature in classifying phrases. Another lesson is Sohu’s various divisions are very independent. Most times, I got the impression that there are very few coordination between the divisions.

One thing is for sure; there are is no vast Sohu conspiracy to lie about TL’s popularity since both Sogou and TL are Sohu’s property.

Myth 2 – Why does 17173.com rank TL so low?

Again, another Sohu’s property seemingly dissing TL! From the following 17173 game download ranking:

TL is down all the way to number 211!

I will give a possible reason.

If you go to TL’s download site:

You can see the latest version is dated 5/10/2007 and the file has 471MB of data. But if you go to 17173’s download site for TL:

You see the version is dated 4/28/2007 and the file is 456.15MB. 17173’s file is a couple of versions back.

Actually, it doesn’t matter whether you start out with 5/10 or the 4/28 version, during the installation process, it will auto-patch to the latest version anyway. But new players don’t know that. Given the choice, they download the latest one. They either got it from Xunlei or from the official site, or other places that has the latest, rather than from 17173.

The answer is really simple. 17173’s game ranking ranks by the number of downloads. TL has low ranking because gamers don’t download TL from 17173. They don’t download from 17173 not because TL is not popular but because 17173 doesn’t have the latest file for TL.

Again, no vast Sohu conspiracy to lie about TL’s popularity since 17173, Sogou and TL are all Sohu’s property.

Tomorrow, I will provide 5 reasons why I think TL is extremely popular.