@Redoctober: While I am addressing you, this post is more widely targeted, because I do not have the time address over 30 different posts directly right now.
I wish to make the following notes to correct some general confusion.
One) CensusPlus and CensusPlusClassic (mod by Christopherus) are two separate projects. The latter is a less official modification of the CensusPlus addon and I have been told (I have not tried it myself) it tends to have some problems, one of which is that it sometimes (almost always?) fails to end properly at level 1, due to a certain Blizzard API feature involving 49 vs 50 returned entries. On an additional note, Bringoutyourdead, who takes care of the CensusPlus addon nowadays (Rollie “retired” many years ago), is working on his own version for Classic. Whether he and Metalbeast, the current actual owner of Warcraftrealms, are able to offer us a functional CP for Classic (and the ability to both upload AND examine data) in the near future, remains to be seen. It is my understanding that a very limited number of people are currently testing the CPC for WCR.
Two) Both BfA and Classic servers have comparative size classifications, but how they interact exactly has become extremely difficult to find out as Blizzard has not and apparently does not intend to publish data on numbers of layers, their actual maximum sizes, Classic side server CCU caps (my current assumptions (which I can NOT confirm) are 4, 3 000 each and 12 000 cap). Blizzard has also announced they made changes to how the Classic realm sizes are determined. But the details of the changes were also not made public.
Three) RealmPop tracks TOTAL population and to my knowledge does so with very high accuracy. However, due to that RealmPop figures are almost useless in terms of looking into how active certain realms are. WoWrealmpopulation and Warcraftrealms (the home of CensusPlus) are more interested in active populations. The former works by armory crawling, while the latter relies on user submissions by CP users such as myself and Padanfain, who is both the leading US submission maker and has also passed me a long time ago as the world leader (I hold the number two spots of both added entries and updates since the release of CP (long before I even started playing (or censusing)).
Four) As it would actually be both a ToS, EULA and in some countries even law violation, both WRP and WCR track characters, not players. As some of the people present know, I have at times ran calculations on total minimum active players based on WCR data for US and EU and made guesses on Russian numbers (WCR and CP do not support Cyrillic).
Five) Both BfA and Classic realm size systems have at least some combined components, which explains why places like Argent Dawn, Silvermoon and Draenor never show very low sizes, even if they currently have very few people actually onlin. Contrary to what some posters suggested the values are NOT static and that goes for both BfA AND Classic realms (in fact, early this morning almost all Classic realms were showing as “low”).
Six) Current activity varies massively on some realms. Using Silvermoon alliance as an example… Early Monday morning, maybe around 400 (WCR stats suggest around 391 as an average of 11 scans around 06:00 and 06:59) people online during the lowest point, Wednesday evening prime time peak… Current data on WCR says… 5 207 average out of 4 scans… and when BfA launched, I believe I got a scan result in the 15 000+ range (naturally not concurrent as the BfA realms have a CCU cap of 6 000 or extremely close to that (I am not privy to all details, again an Blizzard internal piece of data)).
Seven) The last time I ran my calculations (which was some time before Classic precreation began) I ended up with an estimate of something like 871 000+ (I do not have my exact figure at hand right now) minimum possible for BfA (EDIT: For clarity: EU). Because I have too little actual information on Classic, I am going to note that my guess is that Classic right now has roughly 335 to 350 000 EU players and less than 40 000 Russian region ones. I need to stress those values are my best guesses, not facts.
Eight) Due to what I noted in my sixth note, it is entirely possible certain Classic realms have activity levels that far surpass BfA ones during some parts of the day. However, Silvermoon and Draenor still boast very high numbers of total active players, by my estimates around 17 000 (down from earlier estimate of about 20 000) for Silvermoon, somewhere around 19 500 (down from earlier estimate of about 22 000) for Draenor. For both, roughly one third to one fourth are active at prime time peaks so they do not currently suffer from lockdowns.
Nine) As far as I am able to tell, BfA and Classic have very small overlap in terms of players. Without making additional calculations I am going to say around 10%, but I may have to revise that once I have both enough time and energy.
Ten) I am tired, so I am going to join my girlfriend, who already fell asleep in my bed. Good night to all!