MMO Activity trackers are unreliable to the max..

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Apart from the fact that I never read about a single api change on the raider.io blog where they are constantly talking about technical issues with the API it's completely irrelevant to my points:
For my first point it's irrelevant since a change in the measurement would obviously not be the same metric.
And for my second point it's irrelevant if the API is reliable or not as it still reliably tracks a minimum amount of people, unless you assume their api invents players out of thin air.

Don't know raider.io but here is the link to wowrank.io forum post about it which lead to them shutting down there site for a timeline (it was 2021 not 2022) and here's a link to blizzards API documents which list the change as is still a thing.

and ya a change would mean it's not the metric but for the most part people who compare API numbers like say Belluar don't even mention the change or that some of the sites even he used for numbers died due to it.

[Mad_Murdock]

In a game with millions of players and thousands of groups being formed at all times of day, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week... how does this number matter in any way to you? Here's a hint: It doesn't.

I'm not a person who obsesses over player population, but because I do all kinds of things, all kinds of hours, It is not hard to tell when the population shrinks considerably

At the start of the expansion, I could just show up to places at all hours of the day and night and do things and didn't even have to join a group. Now, I show up and even thought I'm listed as a high pop server group, Almost nothing is happening and I'm always having to look for groups and groups aren't always available 24/7/365. This morning at 7am ET, there were no groups available for the Primal event in Nohkud

Last night at 7PM, there was only 1 group available for Primal event in Brackenhide and that was off some server that gave me a 200 Ping

Can I normally get a group for most things? Sure most of the time. But the smaller the population gets, the fewer the options available and in probably 2 more months, it will be an even smaller population, so even fewer options

[VinceVega]

These numbers are a complete asspull nothing else.

MMOs don't report numbers anymore. Period. You get the MAUs in the quartly report overall that is it. But even this will not get broken done per game.

It is a loose loose situation for the developers. If there is even a small dip it could start a chain reaction off doom-seers and sayers. So why bother anyway?

Lets say wow gets suddenly an increase in 10 Million players. Any sane person would see, that this will not stay that way. Maybe 3 million of those would quit again and would make it look like the game is failing. Completly ignoring the millions of players still playing.

Hell Blizz still gets haunted by the numbers from WOTLK where wow basically was without ANY competition. Wanna play an MMO in that time? There is wow. That is it. Numbers no MMO will ever beat again. And people still use this as the basis for arguments on the internet that wow is dying... STILL!!!

TLDR: Reporting numbers only hurt the game no matter if they are high or low and any number you see online is a complete asspull congeled out of google searches and estimates on numbers from secondary websites like Raider.io etc.

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I'm not a person who obsesses over player population, but because I do all kinds of things, all kinds of hours, It is not hard to tell when the population shrinks considerably

At the start of the expansion, I could just show up to places at all hours of the day and night and do things and didn't even have to join a group. Now, I show up and even thought I'm listed as a high pop server group, Almost nothing is happening and I'm always having to look for groups and groups aren't always available 24/7/365. This morning at 7am ET, there were no groups available for the Primal event in Nohkud

Last night at 7PM, there was only 1 group available for Primal event in Brackenhide and that was off some server that gave me a 200 Ping

Can I normally get a group for most things? Sure most of the time. But the smaller the population gets, the fewer the options available and in probably 2 more months, it will be an even smaller population, so even fewer options

Completly ignoring, that the events are not really liked (or disliked, mostly ignored) by the players and the rewards are so bad you get better stuff faster by nearly every other content in the game. Primal events where... "fun" once or twice. But now i don't even do any of them on new characters.

I find more than enough groups at any time of day for any activity that is worth the time. Even if it is just for transmog or a toy. And i also did not really see a dip in groups for most other activities.

[Relapses]

I'm not a person who obsesses over player population, but because I do all kinds of things, all kinds of hours, It is not hard to tell when the population shrinks considerably

At the start of the expansion, I could just show up to places at all hours of the day and night and do things and didn't even have to join a group. Now, I show up and even thought I'm listed as a high pop server group, Almost nothing is happening and I'm always having to look for groups and groups aren't always available 24/7/365. This morning at 7am ET, there were no groups available for the Primal event in Nohkud

Last night at 7PM, there was only 1 group available for Primal event in Brackenhide and that was off some server that gave me a 200 Ping

Can I normally get a group for most things? Sure most of the time. But the smaller the population gets, the fewer the options available and in probably 2 more months, it will be an even smaller population, so even fewer options

All of these types of experiences will be totally anecdotal and completely meaningless. I can tell you the exact opposite version of that story and you would have absolutely no way to say I'm wrong. It's your experience vs. mine. IMO, the less time you spend worrying about player population the more time you can focus on playing the video game and having fun.

If your fun is somehow impacted by your inability to know these numbers that's no fault of the game.

[Nzx]

I'm not a person who obsesses over player population, but because I do all kinds of things, all kinds of hours, It is not hard to tell when the population shrinks considerably

At the start of the expansion, I could just show up to places at all hours of the day and night and do things and didn't even have to join a group. Now, I show up and even thought I'm listed as a high pop server group, Almost nothing is happening and I'm always having to look for groups and groups aren't always available 24/7/365. This morning at 7am ET, there were no groups available for the Primal event in Nohkud

Last night at 7PM, there was only 1 group available for Primal event in Brackenhide and that was off some server that gave me a 200 Ping

Can I normally get a group for most things? Sure most of the time. But the smaller the population gets, the fewer the options available and in probably 2 more months, it will be an even smaller population, so even fewer options

The most likely reason for this isn't because the game is 'less popular', it's because events like that are things a lot of people who play this game have absolutely no interest in. It's a bit like talking about how easy it was to get a group for the Whirlwind Axe quest on your warrior in the first two weeks of Classic release and now it's 'impossible' and therefore the game is dying. It's not, its just that 90% of the people who wanted to do that content have now done it and are now doing something that is still rewarding.

[Swnem]

Did you not read the ENTIRE PARAGRAPH where I state that these numbers DO NOT give any accurate picture about the actual population of the game? I literally said they have a validity problem in that they're not measuring what people say they're supposedly measuring. They're measuring certain activities that trigger certain things the API can detect.

Blizzard will never allow the kind of information to be accessed that way. In fact, as I pointed out in my post that you also seemed to have not read, we cannot even get those numbers anymore because, according to WoWRanks.io's site operator, it would take about a month to do a full refresh with the 10 API requests per second cap Blizzard enforces. If you go over that, you start getting HTTP 429 responses from the server.

Yet, you tried to make a case they are useless by saying they don't show what you want them to.
They are not. They give the representation of what we can see. They are still useful. They show us a slice.

I tire of these "didn't you read" posts when you fail to understand what you said and what i said.
Also, no i will not entertain the usual back and forth of insults and insinuations.
From the beginning i said and still say, the numbers are exactly what they say they are. People trying to extract from them the fact that they don't show the full population and should therefore be completely ignored are not correct either. They are representative of what they say they are.

[Relapses]

Yet, you tried to make a case they are useless by saying they don't show what you want them to.
They are not. They give the representation of what we can see. They are still useful. They show us a slice.

I tire of these "didn't you read" posts when you fail to understand what you said and what i said.
Also, no i will not entertain the usual back and forth of insults and insinuations.
From the beginning i said and still say, the numbers are exactly what they say they are. People trying to extract from them the fact that they don't show the full population and should therefore be completely ignored are not correct either. They are representative of what they say they are.

Brother, do you have a mental block to rational thinking? His point is that you're comparing stats from before Blizzard borked the APIs to stats after they borked the APIs. You're not even comparing apples to apples when trending so even that data is dramatically prone to error.

[Eosia]

I tire of these "didn't you read" posts

Then try actually reading then. I literally said these are not valid measures for population and said WHY, pointing out gaps in some of them like the raiding one because it a) only tracks guilds, and b) completely ignored LFR. Yet, you then replied to me saying I said something different.

People trying to extract from them the fact that they don't show the full population and should therefore be completely ignored are not correct either. They are representative of what they say they are.

Again, this is you showing you failed to read or understand what was written. I literally told you those numbers ARE UNOBTAINABLE NOW BECAUSE BLIZZARD PUT A CAP ON THE API THAT RESTRICTS EACH KEY TO ONLY 36,000 REQUESTS PER HOUR. I also paraphrased the Site operator for WoWRanks.io, the site Bellular cited for his data for his Patch 9.1 video about the health/population of WoW. The guy shut the site down because of that 36,000 per hour request cap on the API. In his post on the official forums, he said that the cap took what could be done basically overnight for a single update and would now make it take A MONTH because of the sheer amount of requests it took. Blizzard never responded to his request for special treatment in regards to said cap so he shut the site down. But you didn't read that, or just simply ignored it.

So no, it's not "insults and insinuations", it's calling a duck a duck.

[Kokolums]

Unfortunately, only Blizzard's numbers matter, and they're not sharing. No one else is able to get anything fully accurate. Even people like Bellular have admitted they can only track things like guilds taking down raid bosses, and that is in no way representative of the entire WoW playerbase. Tons of people play this game and never raid.

To be honest, tracking raid kills is probably the only thing that matters. If raids die, the game dies.

[Gaidax]

Can you people like... stop sweating and just play/not play the damned game?

[Biomega]

Can you people like... stop sweating and just play/not play the damned game?

But but but you don't understand, if I don't get validation for my own likes and dislikes by having the internet agree with every opinion I hold, what is going to happen to my self-worth after I've so carelessly attached it to my product consumption behavior?!?!

THIS IS SERIOUS, MAN!

[loras]

These websites will always be unreliable because Blizzard's APIs are not designed to tell us how many people are playing WoW.

The number of people playing WoW is completely meaningless to players anyway. The only reason anybody ever wants to know this information is so they can "win" an internet argument by showing how player activity has increased or decreased because whatever activity they like or dislike is successful or the worst thing Blizzard has ever done to the game.

This.
/10chars

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But but but you don't understand, if I don't get validation for my own likes and dislikes by having the internet agree with every opinion I hold, what is going to happen to my self-worth after I've so carelessly attached it to my product consumption behavior?!?!

THIS IS SERIOUS, MAN!

Also this.
Made me chuckle.

[Kilpi]

I don't understand why we care what stupid people think. That would make me stupid as well.

I also don't understand why player population is so important. It's like it has an actual direct relation to dev budget (until it gets low enough).

[ArenaDk]

reading all your threads id think that DF was some wotlk/legion expansion on steroids, and we all know that's not the case. you love this expansion and that's great but toning it down would be a really good idea considering you sound like a diehard fan that plays anything blizzard gives you or a bloody shill. this game is bleeding players, deal with it or stay stuck in wonderland.

Always using buzz words huh ?

bleeding
dying
on life support

meanwhile : blizzard talks about higher retention rates.

But hey gotta get your daylie hour of hate

[Lolites]

this game is bleeding players

by the time of pandaria 100m people tried wow, but it hav never more than 12.5m (or so) active players - btw this is all from BLIZZARD revealed data, not from some randomly half assed numbers - so in its "golden" era retention was about 10-15%, so yeah, WoW was bleeding players since vanila, its just influx of new player was big back then, but that ofc had to end, new players are not infinite resource...

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I'm not a person who obsesses over player population, but because I do all kinds of things, all kinds of hours, It is not hard to tell when the population shrinks considerably

lol, how? you might meed like 1% of wow players over a decade of playing, how can you tell if it shrinks "considerably"?
hell, the population as a whole might increase and it might seem smaller to you, bcs in your "circle" (region, realm group, shard, whatever) it got smaller...
or might not even got smaller just people are not looking for the same things you do...

Last night at 7PM, there was only 1 group available for Primal event in Brackenhide and that was off some server that gave me a 200 Ping

less player doing certain activity =/= less people playing...
i havent done any primal event for few weeks now, yet i play pretty much daily... just i already have the set for transmog, and i dont feel like farming for mount, so theres no reward for me...

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I also don't understand why player population is so important. It's like it has an actual direct relation to dev budget (until it gets low enough).

its not, people only want the numbers bcs they think it will validate their opinion...
thing with the budget is sub count falling under certain level might actualy lead to INCREASE in budget in attempt to make it higher again... we dont know what decision the managers at actibliz will make, so knowing sub count truly have zero informational value to us...

[sam86]

The number of people playing WoW is completely meaningless to players anyway. The only reason anybody ever wants to know this information is so they can "win" an internet argument by showing how player activity has increased or decreased because whatever activity they like or dislike is successful or the worst thing Blizzard has ever done to the game.

did u try pugging pre-cata and post-cata? heck even in MoP pugging was way easier (for raids) than since the introduction of token wow in WoD
no idea it is due to WoD quality or tokens or whatever, but post MoP I can't pug as easy at all as before, and also from that time wow playerbase became a joke in compare to its older far more popular days
so yeah not everyone have 1502 rl friend to play with (ironic i literally had 9 rl friends we had our own 10men raid in wrath time), so we have to pug, and pugging for a raid from 100 is way harder than from 1million

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I also don't understand why player population is so important. It's like it has an actual direct relation to dev budget (until it gets low enough).

it is of course
when a gaming company see that a gambling lottery like Genshin Impact made far more money than a hardcore shooter like Doom, which game genre u think they will keep pushing next?
and unless microsoft buys activision-blizzard, i don't see a good future for blizzard part in that company at all, just check most resent rant from ex-developer that was this year (i think 1 month or less ago) on this website front page detailing how the overlord of actiblizz treat their employees like they are in running man dystopia

[Kilpi]

it is of course
when a gaming company see that a gambling lottery like Genshin Impact made far more money than a hardcore shooter like Doom, which game genre u think they will keep pushing next?
and unless microsoft buys activision-blizzard, i don't see a good future for blizzard part in that company at all, just check most resent rant from ex-developer that was this year (i think 1 month or less ago) on this website front page detailing how the overlord of actiblizz treat their employees like they are in running man dystopia

Yes, so they can then try and see what it is in the gambling lottery games, that actually brings in the money (tits), so they can minimize the budget of the game to make as bad as possible, but with enough hook that it will keep generating money, with as little as possible expenses. It would be an awesome situation in game industry (and tbh in any industry), if product profits would actually lead to increased resources in development. What actually is more likely to happen is development resources gets cut as long as those profits still stay high with as little development or innovation as possible. Because, Activision Blizzard and Bobby Kotick only cares about money. If WoW can keep strong enough and even increase their player population, why increase the budget when clearly they can increase income with a smaller team?

[epigramx]

easily the most reliable meter of popularity is the google trends algorithm. there's been a sudden collapse after the peak of WotLK that appears to have sort-of stabilized around 2018 and now it's constantly at <= 20% of its peak with some seasonal changes but those are statistically mostly noise.

in my opinion the game's best bet is to get rid of the expansions as a concept because it scares away new players (even if it's easy to install: they don't know that) and just re-release it as 'warcraft' alone.

[Soon-TM]

blizzard talks about higher retention rates.

Without more numbers to give a bit more of context, the statement is ultimately just hot air. Just for the sake of argumentation, here's a brief example:

If SL had 6M players at launch, but lost 4M after two months -> 33.33% retention rate.

If DF had 2M players at launch, and lost 1M after two months -> 50% retention rate, much better than 33.33% if you ask me. And yet...

Of course these are made up numbers, but they do illustrate (I hope) that Blizzard's statement, without any sort of additional info, doesn't mean a lot.

[Gimlix]

By your own logic, these numbers are also bullcrap unreliable to the max, aren't they?

I'm pulling the numbers the tracker is giving me lol. In my eyes WoW is bussier then has been last 2-3 expansions. EU Still has nearly 40 full realms after 3 months of release. While SL lost most players after 1 month already.

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easily the most reliable meter of popularity is the google trends algorithm. there's been a sudden collapse after the peak of WotLK that appears to have sort-of stabilized around 2018 and now it's constantly at <= 20% of its peak with some seasonal changes but those are statistically mostly noise.

in my opinion the game's best bet is to get rid of the expansions as a concept because it scares away new players (even if it's easy to install: they don't know that) and just re-release it as 'warcraft' alone.

Google trends, who still googles WoW related stuff though? I haven't done that for solid 5-10 years while i still play daily

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I also don't understand why player population is so important. It's like it has an actual direct relation to dev budget (until it gets low enough).

Because you like to see the game you play doing well, it's a MMOPRG afterall and i am happy to see if its going well and knowing the future ahead is bright. If a game is dying quickly then i feel like not investing in it, what is the point in a game that is on the brink of auto pilot or closure? I rather just focus my attention on the next new trend then.