Tracking realm population and how Blizzard does it
by Mike Schramm 
Oct 24th 2007 at 8:58PM
Once again, I would really love to see all the statistics Blizzard has as to when and where players play. When a player complains that his realm, Agamaggan, is too low population, Drysc replies that actually, Agamaggan isn't even in the bottom 25 realms. Agamaggan is seeing a 55% nightly population (which means 55% of the realm's normal population is logged on at night), and Drysc says Coilfang (which drops all the way down to a 30% nightly population) could use more help.He also says that about 200 out of the 225 realms aren't even "hitting capacity" (they've had no queues on them for a month or more), and that most of the realms fall into a "middle area" of population size, where there are enough players to keep up raiding and an economy, but not so many that it's overcrowded. It's also interesting that "overcrowded" isn't actually based on any feelings the players have (at least in this estimation-- who knows what other factors Blizzard examines to keep players happy). Instead, it's all based on the number of players each realm can hold, which was increased in the Burning Crusade. So realms that were "high pop" before BC are actually "middle pop" now-- even if you feel your realm is crowded, as long as they're no queues, Blizzard says things are fine.
And Drysc can even look up the Alliance to Horde ratio on Agamaggan-- it's currently about 1.1:1. Warcraft Realms has a pretty good guess-timation at where realms and numbers are at, but the numbers Blizzard is collecting are probably so accurate they'd make grown statisticians weep. We've gotten small peeks at what they're tracking, but like I said, I'd love to see everything they know about us and our behavior.
Filed under: Realm News, Analysis / Opinion, Ranking, Virtual selves, Blizzard, Economy
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Merus Oct 24th 2007 9:20PM
It's most likely that Blizzard tracks everything, probably except player movement. Frankly, that'd be a good thing to track because that way they can see where we get stuck.
Pinging Oct 24th 2007 9:45PM
omg i posted on that pinging - Agamaggan page 3
Flambeau Oct 24th 2007 9:29PM
you really think there's much to know?
wow players fall in to 2 categories:
unguilded and guilded.
the thing most people call low pop is the fact that they don't remember people. they lost thier old pals to quitting, splitting or transfers and they don't have the care to make new friends outside the guild. the unguilded see the world a s having no tanks, and that's a class shortage, and blizzard admitted it, the thing is what you fail to see is that they WERE high pop, and that blizzard increasd the MAX realm size with the new hardware that was designed to hold TBC's influx, and that's why high pop became medium pop. 5000 of 5000 is FULL, but 5000 on a 10000 slot server now makes it medium. so that can easily be disputed, as for the 30% at night, that's 30% of teh 5000 players and that's 1500 players at night, now how many want to pug, play, farm, or solo is the real issue when it comes to players. if there's only a few tanks, and they get all taken, then yes it's gonna seem like "low pop" when it's really a "low pop" that plays tanks. the thing with statistics is they are almost always used to hide real facts. easy example: Defias Pillagers" were the top 10 mosters that killed players, not because they were hard, but because so many players basically have to go through deadmines on alliance. now as to whether the true ally/horde ratio across all realms, that would be a nice statistic to know, but it's highly doubted that blizzard will release the real numbers.
hpavc Oct 24th 2007 9:32PM
The online size of a 'full' server with both factions combined seems quite small to me. WoW at times seems so small.
Dave Oct 24th 2007 10:21PM
WoW on the server end side is nothing more than a huge database (or sets of databases perhaps) and as such you can fairly easily make a query to return any set of data that you'd like to know. It's not really a matter of "how" they do it, since it's just a simple DB query, or an advanced DB query if they want to do something fancy.
If they wanted, they could tell us how many players on all realms right now are using a particular item (as seen on the armory more or less), how many people ganked someone in the last hour (and lets say ganking only occurs when you're at a 30+ level difference from your victim) and how many people are chatting in the Barrens on all servers around the world right now. It's pretty academic really, all you need to know is how to structure a good database query. (making it pretty with a good frontend and a nice website to go with it... hey that's what people get paid a good chunk of money for).
I think the problem Blizzard has, is that they don't specify what timezone these realms are supposed to support, either officially or unofficially, and they probably don't want to since they'd rather have anemic spread out populations most of the time, rather than %90 of the people who have characters on the server being logged on at the same time. What people WANT is the peak population on at the same time they are, so they can find people to do things with for the most part. I'm on a "PST" server, but there are an awful lot of "EST" people who are on the server, mixed with a few large AUS and Japan guilds and you've got a high population server... but it's actually very very spread out and there's never really a good peak time.
Unfortunately, there's no real way to pick the server you'd like to play on based on the times you're going to play the game. If you're smart and can plan ahead before you start the game... or you don't mind rerolling or paying to transfer mabye you can figure out in advance where you need to play, but who really does that their first time in the game? Usually you play wherever your friends went, and if they picked a bad server for you, that's just how it goes.
I for one would love to see some realm mergers. They could balance some of the skewed horde/ally ratios by decomissioning a few servers here and there and offering free ally transfers to xx servers and free horde to xx servers where necessary and sorta "fix" a few of the things that are wrong with some of the non-high pop servers.
nobody likes a queue, but when it feels like there really isnt anyone around when you want to do things, it's not fair to have to pay an extra $25 to fix it.
RogueJedi86 Oct 24th 2007 10:49PM
I saw that blue posting in that thread, and at the end, Blue tries to discredit warcraftrealm's census again. And I have this to say:
In an information vaccuum, the slightly inaccurate unofficial source trumps the non-present official source that gives no information.
If they want us to believe them about warcraftrealm's inaccuracies, then they should give us actual numbers to show the drastic inaccuracies between the unofficial and the official.
And really, how inaccurate can it be, if it takes its information from the /who in-game every 15 minutes? That would cover every player on a faction, especially with players who are on for extended periods, or on at various times. If we're not to trust the in-game /who functionality, why do we have access to use such an inaccurate judge of players?
Tristan Oct 24th 2007 11:08PM
I live on Aggamaggan
I haven't played any other realm, I hit 70 a few weeks ago, started gathering my dungeon set... Going Days between finding a decent PUG and the realization that its just going to get harder the more i progress... I started thinking about moving... Then, hearing that many major guilds /gquit or transferred... I might not ever even see the inside of Kara if i stayed here
I've gone so far as to bust out the Excel Spreadsheet (office 2007 has some neato functions) and consider other servers, I've already interviewed the trade channel from 2 servers
LFG PVP-CST (EST or MST maybe): Good Beginner Raid Progression, Promising Future - I play Alli, but i'm a PVE oriented PVPer... ganking and shanking isn't my style
Krianna Oct 25th 2007 12:17AM
Rogue Jedi-- assumes that a lot of folks *use* the thing, and that they're all on, and several other things.
I know of several folks who went guild-hopping and are still listed as being in my guild, so Lightninghoof horde is known inaccurate.
slayerboy Oct 25th 2007 2:51AM
I started out alliance on stormreaver because of a friend. HUGE population server, lag in ever major city. I was used to the AH taking 15-20 mins to scan with Auctioneer. I was getting tired of the size, and was getting sick of alliance in general, and the guild was getting kinda irrelevant.
So I killed my toon on that server and rolled on Terokkar, because my friend's friend was going onto that server. I brought my hunter up to 59 on that server, found an ok guild, the guild imploded. I had started seeing the population of this server going down in the last month or so since I rolled in July. I could never sell anything on the AH, and the prices on the AH where stupidly high, but it took 5 mins to do an Auctioneer scan! LOL.
I finally decided to check out the warcraftrealm's census and rolled on many servers and checked many AH's and just chatted around, and finally settled on Area 52. The server does seem overcrowded, and lag has returned to the cities. I love how the census site was able to show what time zone the realms are in, since I live on the east coast, Area 52 kinda looked even better for me. I have yet to find a mature, fun, and casual good guild in a couple of weeks, but the AH is MUCH better.
I really think Blizz needs to look at merging realms like Terokkar with another low populated realm. The economy sucks on most low population realms, it's impossible to sell anything on the AH, not to mention PUGs are virtually non-existent to get (even though I have sworn-off PUGs forever now). I really think they have to face the fact that they population IS decreasing overall, and the sooner WotLK comes out, the better.
Then again, if I ever get a Wii, I'm done with WoW lol!
Tornik Oct 25th 2007 6:32AM
Getting access to Blizzard's hard data would be very interesting indeed. Unfortunately, the way most players' minds think, you would see massive server desertions as players flocked to either a high-pop server or low-pop server, depending on what they were looking for.
I think you'd end up with server populations weighted one of two ways - either very high population or very low population, with nothing really in between.
It's probably best that Blizzard keeps this info under wraps, because let's face it - your average player is pretty stupid.
Vestras Oct 25th 2007 7:58AM
I don't think records of % of players online reflects which faction is online. It could be that 49% of the 55% total are alliance, leaving a mere 6% Horde.
A stat I would be more intreseted in seeing is Blizz establishing how many of the total server population are meer alts to a main account. I personally have 4 alts on my server, so does that mean I count as 5 "players" or 1 when they do their counts?
Scott Oct 25th 2007 10:20AM
My dad is a Disney fanatic, and he took the "backstage" tour at Disney World a few years ago. The stories he tells of the things that they track at that park are amazing.
For example, the hours the Disney parks are open are based on how many people they predict will visit the park on a given day. In the summer (when more people are there), the parks are open later. In the winter, the hours are shorter. The times are based on a magic number: 13. The parks are open long enough for people to ride/see 13 rides/shows.
Disney keeps track of everything, but they also survey like mad. They survey you in the park. They survey you in the hotels. They email surveys to you at various times after you leave.
Because it's completely online, I'm sure that Blizzard similarly has tons of hard numbers, and I bet that their number-crunchers are on par with the best. But I've been playing for over 2 years, and I've never been surveyed. If the only human feedback that Blizzard gets is when someone contacts them, then I think they may have a skewed view of how players feel and perceive.
theremover Oct 25th 2007 10:04AM
When I first started playing, I went on a Medium server called "Azshara". Well, long and short, it's now the lowest population server around (or bouncing for the spot at least). The horde out number the alliance in large numbers (unconfirmed rumor that part) and it's painfully hard to accomplish many things.
There are some neat dynamics to being on a low population server. But honestly, id like to trade them in for more people on our server. It shouldn't take multiple hours to find a group for a well-known group quest or an instance.
Having a fun guild full of friends helps with that some, but still.
Smurk Oct 25th 2007 11:25AM
I just noticed that Maelstrom was showing as as low pop. server the other day, so I suppose this explains that.
The warcraftrealms site shows that while the population ratio of Alliance to Horde on my server is 1.5:1, the activity ratio is actually slightly in favor of the Horde. I wonder if this is typical?
rgoff31 Oct 25th 2007 11:19AM
Sounds like loud QQ'ers @ Aggamaggan to me. The should suck it up and transfer or Blizzard should start merging.
I am a big fan of Wowrealms it's not like blizzard is sharing any of that kind of info.
Aggamaggan has a higher pop than my Norgannon Server.
Aggamaggan 18,700 - http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php?serverid=82
With 2300 Alliance / 900 Peak Horde players at night
Norgannon 13,197 - http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php?serverid=667
With 1500 Alliance / 800 Peak Horde players at night
rgoff31 Oct 25th 2007 11:31AM
@12 Azshara - 750/500 Peak
http://www.warcraftrealms.com/activity.php?serverid=578
Ouch.
scoobydoobydoo Oct 25th 2007 3:04PM
Pfft, quit your complaining.
This server feels fairly alive to me, and look at the numbers.
http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php?serverid=704&factionid=-1&minlevel=10&maxlevel=70&servertypeid=2
yeggg Oct 25th 2007 12:43PM
@14 I think you looked one line too low, and looked at Aggramar, which has 18,708 characters. In contrast, Agamaggan has 5,813 players. I'm still disappointed that warcraftrealms.com continues to actively support gold seller sites though.But I've discontinued use of their addon. Maybe someday. :)
Elaus Oct 25th 2007 2:18PM
L2Spell AGAMAGGAN pls! You too Mr. Mike Schramm!
Mike Schramm Oct 25th 2007 2:51PM
Yowza, you caught me. Fixed, sorry about that, Agamaggan.