This is not a rag post - just one based in honesty. I keep seeing all these posts about player counts and recently and so few speak towards the true feeling of a player or real numbers. A player doesn’t ‘feel’ what steamcharts.com shows or what New World Status shows. (although New World Status is closer)
I’ve had NW since launch day, and I’m still playing. This isn’t my “I quit” post. Those kinds of posts are for attention wh0res. But 30 days ago, the global steam-tracked player base peaked at 315K concurrent players. Today it peaked at 136K concurrent players, with a total player base of 102K at the time of this writing. (According to SteamCharts. New World Status shows 90k)
That still doesn’t sound bad - 102,000 people playing the same game, at the same time, is quite frankly, a lot of people and for most games, a really vibrant player base! However - that is where regional fragmentation breaks down and few really talk about with detail.
For instance, I’m a North American, West player. I’m on the west-coast (Oregon) which means, if I play on NA-W servers, my player base is actually 14K players. That 14K is spread across (8) world sets, the highest (Westernesse Zeta) having 2.5K players (world set, not server…) and the lowest (Westernesse Tau) having 991 players.
That North American base of 14K players right now is spread across (8) world sets, and that NA West World Set has 49 servers. 49 Servers…
As a NA - West player I have the choice of playing on (3) servers that have more than 1,000 players. [Camelot, El Dorado* and Yggdrasil] After that you have three more servers over 500 players but lower than 1,000. The rest of the 43 remaining servers have 300-120 players each, with the lowest poor server, Ashok Vatika pulling in a total 97 players. That’s…two companies?
*My 60 toon is on El Dorado, used me free transfer token from Ophir that has 271 players right at the time of this writing.
Let’s be real about the numbers people. When we say, “The game isn’t dead, there are 136K playing at peak times!” we are making up lies to make us feel good. The truth is, the East Cost holds 49% of the games population, while the West Coast holds 16% of the games population, and the remaining 35% is spread between SA East, AP SE and EU.
And don’t think that the East Coast has it any better - their lowest population server right now sits at 67 players, with 14 servers holding 100 players, and only 8 of the 155 servers have more than 1,000 players. They do however, have a higher ratio average. If the NA-East servers merge to a standard population of 1500, they could do that with 30 servers, while NA-West would only need 10 servers.
I can say this is probably why ESO still feels more vibrant and living. Their mega servers allows all of these players to ‘cross’ the boundaries and play together. Why couldn’t AGS just bring us together in a more cohesive fashion? Why has sever merge taken so long?
Hopefully AGS has people who can do that basic math, stand back and look at it from the perspective of a regional player, not a global base, and work towards that feeling. Howe about SA East that has a player base right now of 9700 with their lowest population server having 57 players right now? That’s literally a single player game for an MMO world.
Help us AGS - we literally WANT to love this game.
