Tracking Server Population - Thanksgiving 2013

[Langrisserx]

Thanksgiving Weekend - Tracking the Population
Hurb Snarebergowitz, PhD.

Abstract:
One day, I remembered I like to record numbers in excel. Someone else was tracking the population but I couldnt find the thread. I tracked the population over the US Thanksgiving day Weekend, starting when I realized I wanted to do that. Blue and red populations see similar fluctuations although with differently motivated groups of base players. Teams99 could have a large effect on either population, possibly to the point of detriment on teamless Red. Blue neckbeards may save the day, if they man the fuck up.

[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Figure 1: Chart of server population. What does this reveal, except that I sleep odd hours and should see someone?
Just kidding. I had one online course and it was boring, ive been jonesing for some busywork.

MATERIALS AND METHOD

The data was taken at random intervals when I remembered, as I stalked the homepage.

RESULTS

The two populations appear to follow similar up and down swings, seeing the least players around 3-5AM PST, even during the Holiday. There was a forum data migration that did not affect game server access. Population samples were taken from the login server screen during the website downtime.

DISCUSSION

The sharp spike at the end indicates that the holiday is over, and that a majority of the players indeed have lives to attend to. There appears to be a degree of homogeneity in the majority of the playerbase. This occurs because of what demographics specifically, I can only speculate... but I would include Age, Income, Race, Weight, Disability Status Physical/Mental (the outlying nature of certain traits reflected in the "overplayers") etc (Van Rooij, et al 2011).

Blue, while holding a hardcore population of neckbeards, is host to the casual player, ie less hours daily (higher turnaround and less stagnation).


CONCLUSION

The very small number of players left after adjusting for casuals, incidentals, true-bluebians, and healthy players who have 24/7 internet access and run in windowed mode, indicates a small portion of the community is possibly "overplaying" (Baguley, et al 2012) due to undisclosed reasons.

I encourage the otherwise mentally healthy Blue neckbeards, who roughly number approx 400 players (more than double the highest recorded Red peak), to try the teams server and realize their true potential. Don't let the retards stop you, you outnumber them. Perhaps you've made your choice wisely to wait.

Literature Cited

Baguley, Thom, et al. (2012). "Online gaming addiction: Classification, prediction and associated risk factors". Addiction Research & Theory 20:5, 359-371

Van Rooij, A. J., et al. (2011). "Online video game addiction: identification of addicted adolescent gamers". Addiction, 106:1, 205-212.




NOTE: "Nothing wrong with a graph with fluctuating scale along one axis. For the purposes of the data, the x-axis scale is not important." - smarter guy than u

[tristantio]

Can you normalize/average out the X axis? Some of the points look to be 1 minute apart, while others are almost a day apart.

Also, I would guess there are a lot of always on/idle accounts on the blue server vs red (for instance, if I'm not on a main, I always have an alt parked in east commons to log the /auction channel), while such a thing isn't really possible on red.

[Langrisserx]

Here, im sure you can copy/pasta or import

LocalTime Blue RED
11:00 647 103
16:00 447 105
0:03 547 108
16:00 918 131
17:00 983 147
17:34 992 152
17:46 996 154
17:58 1010 151
18:12 1007 151
18:15 1006 155
18:19 1007 154
18:21 1012 154
18:32 1023 155
18:59 1026 148
19:18 1013 150
19:59 985 156
20:11 979 155
20:18 980 155
20:46 965 157
21:11 933 148
21:47 889 149
23:20 702 113
23:49 638 111
0:45 552 91
1:22 495 79
1:57 458 62
3:20 414 53
12:51 999 134
15:06 996 138
16:31 958 134
17:03 982 140
18:24 1007 166
18:56 1019 170
21:44 1011 160
22:33 916 146
0:06 669 110
0:07 666 110
0:21 636 104
1:25 516 78
1:32 504 77
3:11 445 48
3:32 421 49
4:25 449 43
11:52 1006 139
13:50 1016 153
14:54 992 164
19:17 1037 165
20:38 966 151
22:57 693 96
23:40 572 85
0:20 141 21

[runlvlzero]

TBH tracking over the full uptime of the servers (logs could be grabbed from the website here maybe/google cache could be used to find the numbers... a daily graph for a the years blue has been up) would be interesting to see the seasonal changes.

[Langrisserx]

i bet the auction tracker guy can easily set something up to retrieve and display this data.... he seems good at that

mostly what you can tell from this is i have no life and sleep from like 2am to noon at least everyday

[Vicatin]

Cool stuff. I <3 graphs. Thank you for putting this together!

[Langrisserx]

for logging purposes, to circumvent pvp, Nihilum leaves level 1's logged at their GM's.

with global OOC on red being used for trading, an auction tracker would work possibly better... thoughts?

[Langrisserx]

or has this already been thought of and done

[thedonkdonk]

I've started doing this. Updates every 5 minutes.

https://lin01.ablackhat.net/cacti/graph_view.php

[Langrisserx]

have to login for that can anyone see? nice work though.

also, i think we'll see the post break dip has gone back up. people are hitting the real break til new years. get ready folks.