We are in the middle of a recession, kids. I did stray to WAR for the initial month, but took one look at their subscription plan and decided I might need to buy things for Christmas. And keep my car going. Oh, and eat, for that matter.
There HAS been more marketing activity last couple months - but one word to the nice marketing lady: you're advertising a comic-book game with a monthly sub. ABC1 nerds don't read the Sun that much. You want nerds with money, you want the Independent or the Metro (and they're always begging for compy prizes).
Is it time for the dance of joy yet?
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We are in the middle of a recession, kids.
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And yet...
so much for the recession...
Don't get into a flap. It's only my opinion and I'm thick
Arc 56763 Lord Anarchys heaven
2 mission arc. Bring friends cause Lord Anarchy means business...
GAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAA....
...please don't link to pictures of clowns, it scares me 
Is it time for the dance of joy yet?
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We are in the middle of a recession, kids.
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And yet...
so much for the recession...
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Yes but thats World of Warcraft a economic and marketing freek ocurance you'll be lucky to see any other game Match it in your life time.
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There were 124939 instances of unique accounts logged in during September now if we say that these are regular players (they are not but for this we will assume that these players log in every night). This shows that in September (30 days) the average number of players logged in at Server Peak Times to be 4165 (124939/30 Rounded up).
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I'm afraid I don't understand the logic behind your assumptions here. Surely, if you divide the total number of unique accounts which logged in during a month by the number of days in the month, what you're actually assuming is that each account logged in only *once* during the month?
If your assumption is that each unique account is a regular player who logs in every day during the month, then the number of unique accounts which log in on any one day would be 124939, right?
The first step for guesstimating average players on-line per server from these figures has to be knowing how many hours a month, on average, each unique account is logged in. If you don't have a reliable figure for that, then I don't see how you can make any meaningful estimates for server populations. To take a couple of random examples, switching from 'players log in on average for five hours a month' to 'players log in for five hours a day' gives you a potential 30-fold difference!
Arc#314490: Zombie Ninja Pirates!
Defiant @Grouchybeast
Death is part of my attack chain.
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The figure I used was the total count of unique accounts logged in over the course of the month. If you saw how I arrived at my average number of players logged in on a day I took the 124000 figure and divided that by the number of days in september to give an average number logged in, NOT the freak highest number that occcurs just
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Okay, I'm not a great one for numbers - I read your post a couple of times and it made my head spin - but if you divide the total unique users by the number of days in a month and number of servers, isn't that assuming each unique account only logged on once each month? 
/edit
Must type faster...
- what Grouchybeast said!
The two numbers we have, highest concurrent and monthly accesses, are only useful as upper bounds when talking about how well populated the servers are. We don't know the lower bounds.
All the highest concurrent number can tell us is that the busiest the servers ever was during September was 13,443 users. It might have been 13,443 users for the enture period or it might have been 13,443 for five seconds and less than 50 for the rest of the month. The number would be the same in either case.
The most the monthly accesses can tell us is that during September 124,939 different accounts logged in at least once. They might all have logged in for sixteen hours every day, or they might all have logged in one single time for five minutes. The number would be the same in either case.
So, the numbers alone tell us very little about how thriving the servers are. We can make some assumptions and postulate that the monthly access number might be a good indicator of server thrift, so we could say that "as the monthly accesses went down from June 2008 to September 2008, the server thrift probably did the same", but as we don't have a good model for how server thrift relates to monthly accesses and max concurrent users (it's certainly not going to be a linear relationship) we can't make any quantitative statements at all.
(Well, we know that the server thrift can't be 0, and we know that it can't be more than the limit given by the max concurrent users, but we can't say where it is lying between those two endpoints.)
So, in short (no, really!) these numbers do not show that the servers are empty and they do not show that the servers are not empty. There is limited[1] point in trying to analyze them further.
[1] x for lim x -> 0 point, or thereabouts.
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The two numbers we have, highest concurrent and monthly accesses, are only useful as upper bounds when talking about how well populated the servers are. We don't know the lower bounds.
All the highest concurrent number can tell us is that the busiest the servers ever was during September was 13,443 users. It might have been 13,443 users for the enture period or it might have been 13,443 for five seconds and less than 50 for the rest of the month. The number would be the same in either case.
The most the monthly accesses can tell us is that during September 124,939 different accounts logged in at least once. They might all have logged in for sixteen hours every day, or they might all have logged in one single time for five minutes. The number would be the same in either case.
So, the numbers alone tell us very little about how thriving the servers are. We can make some assumptions and postulate that the monthly access number might be a good indicator of server thrift, so we could say that "as the monthly accesses went down from June 2008 to September 2008, the server thrift probably did the same", but as we don't have a good model for how server thrift relates to monthly accesses and max concurrent users (it's certainly not going to be a linear relationship) we can't make any quantitative statements at all.
(Well, we know that the server thrift can't be 0, and we know that it can't be more than the limit given by the max concurrent users, but we can't say where it is lying between those two endpoints.)
So, in short (no, really!) these numbers do not show that the servers are empty and they do not show that the servers are not empty. There is limited[1] point in trying to analyze them further.
[1] x for lim x -> 0 point, or thereabouts.
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Absolutely, i was just about to say that myself.....
Just wanted to ask, do the numbers take in to account, members with more than one account?
They have to be included since two accounts from same player are individual accounts to NCSoft and to the servers at all effects.
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They have to be included since two accounts from same player are individual accounts to NCSoft and to the servers at all effects.
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So the numbers don't really reflect the actually player numbers, but number of accounts? Is that correct?
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They have to be included since two accounts from same player are individual accounts to NCSoft and to the servers at all effects.
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So the numbers don't really reflect the actually player numbers, but number of accounts? Is that correct?
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Yes
So there could be fewer people actually playing the game than the numbers state, as those number reflect accounts not players. Ahhh crud thats not nice news!!
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It said the temp accounts are not included in these figures.
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I thought GR said they were, i could be wrong.
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For clarity:
Monthly Access refers to the number of unique accounts that logged in during a monthly period. It does not include subscribers who did not login during that month, and does include any trial accounts that logged in.
Concurrency refers to the number of unique accounts logged in simultaneously, at a global scale. Highest (or peak) concurrency is the maximum such figure achieved during a given period.
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Post by GR.
Which makes it worse in my opinion. Also the fact that those numbers dont include accounts that did'nt log in dont make them any better (apart from a money coming in point of view)when you are talking about low server populations.
It just means there are accounts still being paid for and not played.
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I'm pretty sure that's a typo and GR left out a "not" - or NCSoft changed what the numbers represent.
It was previously explained on the US boards, that trial accounts are not counted for monthly access numbers.
I'll try to find a quote.
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It said the temp accounts are not included in these figures.
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I thought GR said they were, i could be wrong.
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For clarity:
Monthly Access refers to the number of unique accounts that logged in during a monthly period. It does not include subscribers who did not login during that month, and does include any trial accounts that logged in.
Concurrency refers to the number of unique accounts logged in simultaneously, at a global scale. Highest (or peak) concurrency is the maximum such figure achieved during a given period.
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Post by GR.
Which makes it worse in my opinion. Also the fact that those numbers dont include accounts that did'nt log in dont make them any better (apart from a money coming in point of view)when you are talking about low server populations.
It just means there are accounts still being paid for and not played.
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I'm pretty sure that's a typo and GR left out a "not" - or NCSoft changed what the numbers represent.
It was previously explained on the US boards, that trial accounts are not counted for monthly access numbers.
I'll try to find a quote.
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I was just going on what GR said.
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So there could be fewer people actually playing the game than the numbers state, as those number reflect accounts not players. Ahhh crud thats not nice news!!
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We're doing ok - I13 will be good, as will I14 and especially I15 
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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We're doing ok - I13 will be good, as will I14 and especially I15
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But we could be doing great i13 sounds ok, looking forward to the badge QoL, but i14 sorry I am one of those thats not really in to the MA (but should be fun seeing what players come up with..) i15 ermm nothing been hinted at either way so not even thinking of it at moment.
So "doing ok is not great" 
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We're doing ok - I13 will be good, as will I14 and especially I15
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But we could be doing great i13 sounds ok, looking forward to the badge QoL, but i14 sorry I am one of those thats not really in to the MA (but should be fun seeing what players come up with..) i15 ermm nothing been hinted at either way so not even thinking of it at moment.
So "doing ok is not great"
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Yeah, I13 is a mixed bag for me, but I14 I will immerse myself in, I just love creating story arcs! 
When was the map sync bug at its worst? I know that certainly killed my will to log in.
Defiant 50�s: Generalissimo, Righteous Bob, Splortch, Brutus Cayuga
Union 50's: Chimera Obscura, Diet Anthracite, Grim Proctologist, Puny Little Minion, Raging Bitumen
In Soviet Russia, mission farm you!
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When was the map sync bug at its worst? I know that certainly killed my will to log in.
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Just after the realase of I12.
I15 is supposed to be the next big chunk of plot is it not
As do most of your comments and replies!