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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsSearching for the most popular server
by Mike Schramm 
Oct 3rd 2009 at 8:00PM
Of course, even that can't be trusted -- those numbers are picked up from the site's addon, all within the last 30 days, and it could just be that WR has more info about more people on that server. But at the same time, I'd guess that Warcraft Realms' numbers are in the ballpark, as long as you're talking about Yankee Stadium. Whisperwind, Cenarion Circle, Stormrage, Moon Guard, and Proudmoore are all big servers, I can promise you anecdotally, while Laughing Skull, Blood Furnace, and Malorne are definitely at the other end of the spectrum. As for a most popular realm, there probably isn't one specifically (it changes periodically, if not even at different times of the day). But if your realm is near the top of Warcraft Realms' list, it's probably busier than the others.
Filed under: Realm News, Realm Status, Virtual selves, Blizzard, Instances
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 4)
zaababy Oct 4th 2009 4:26PM
Whisperwind is my server!
/cheer
Joyous_Oblivion Oct 5th 2009 12:30AM
Sad day for Laughing Skull, my home for the past 4+ years. I know when server transfers opened we lost a few huge guilds to new realms (namely the Banana boyz) and after people got bored with Leeroy (from our Pals for Life) I guess they all left.
I guess we still have Deus Vox who are aleading North American PVE guild.
Our realm isn't that bad, you should come check it out, we have cookies :)
csarcops Oct 5th 2009 8:47AM
Call me old-school, but I do love my server home of Terenas-US. Medium pop all the time, seems to be pretty balanced as far as Alliance/Horde, great guilds for all playstyles.
abennett Oct 5th 2009 12:00PM
Interesting. I've had Alliance characters on Whisperwind since the game went Retail, and Horde characters on Laughing Skull for the last 3 years. Both servers "feel" about equally busy at any given time. The only significant differences I have seen are:
1. the higher prices across the board on Whisperwind's AH
2. the higher levels of spamming and nasty comments on the Trade channel in Laughing Skull
3. there are more pugs forming at any given moment on Laughing Skull than on Whisperwind
4. both servers have a good amount of guilds working end-game content
Just a subjective impression, though.
DavidC Oct 5th 2009 2:03PM
Largest Population vs Most Populare are not necessarily the same. If you have a server 30,000 characters that only play 1 hour per week, vs 10,000 characters that are played 4 hours per week, the later server is going to *feel* more popular / active. (30,000 char hours vs 40,000 char hours).
Furthermore, how many of those 30,000 or 10,000 chars are alts? On the server with 30,000 chars, if each *account* has 10 alts, that would be only 3,000 players, where as on the server with 10,000 chars if each account only had 2 alts, that would be 5,000 players.
In the end, I don't think counting *characters* is the way to determine which server is "most popular". The real measure would be a formula somewhat like: Unique Account Hours.
Something we don't have nor, will ever have. The next best thing? Character Hours. The *most* popular servers will have the most *character* hours logged on the server ... so 10 chars playing 1 hour = 1 char playing 10 hours. Each of those will *feel* the same.
Wynta Oct 19th 2009 1:34PM
DavidC :)
Sorry for ressing this topic :) I'm looking at transferring away from Moonglade-EU (why, oh why did I move there *cry*), so I've been looking at warcraftrealms and it *does* have something a bit more useful than number of characters - it's just a bit harder to find & compare.
If you go to each realm's own page, then click on the 'activity ratio' link on the right, you get to see charts with the average number of active players by hour and day.
For example,
Moonglade-EU has 9,270 ally population, but the average online at 20:00pm is 1,342.
Ulduar-EU has 9,290 ally population, but the average online at 20:00pm is 1,827.
..which sort of confirms my gut instinct, that Moonglade is full of alts ;)
Obviously, the data's even more dependent on folks using the addon, so on some servers the information simply isn't there... but it could be ;)