Speculation: WoW Classic has more players than retail in the EU and the US

@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!

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Because its a new game, anything new will have a hype.

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Enjoy yourself mate, and perhaps when you have more data, drop by and share. :slight_smile:

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You do realise that to get MVP you have to #apply for the post …at blizzard .

They decide to give or not the position.
Thats working for them right there in my books .
Payment or not i dont care.

( also dont be trolls and divert the issue or the topic. )

Trelw I know its a longshot… but I’ve been trying for months now to get an account registered on WarcraftRealms. Tried different browsers, Email adresses… but I can’t get through.

Do you by any chance know another way I can contact them? I have been submitting data, that all works and for that I’m good but for some reason they just don’t let me register an account.

If you do and its not for the public eye, feel free to contact me in-game or so.

@Undeadguard:

You may wish to read that when you have time, especially the part on how one becomes green and why there are so few of us…

On the actual topic… No, greens do not have a “manual” for replies, we just strive harder than some to abide by the forum rules. In fact, since we are just regular players, we do not always agree even among ourselves. What I post is MY view on things.

5 million… Currently, sadly, unlikely. I probably should run my numbers again, but last time I did, the result was roughly along the following lines: US minimum a hair under 1 million, probable at 1,2+ million, EU minimum around 871 000, probable at close to 1,1 million, Russian region at around 52 000 to 77 000 (estimate), Korea and Taiwan maybe around 15 000 to 20 000 each and China very much unknown, estimates and guesses made by others range from as low as 50 000 to 2 million. I personally think current China probably falls in the 500 000 to 1 million range.

Those values for the BfA side. Since I have far less knowledge on Classic side the numbers on my earlier posts are more educated guesses than actual calculations. Both you and others are free to disagree with any of my figures anyway, I just try to offer what I can to the various conversations on the forum.

I will try to arrange time to run a new set of figures soon, so I can run better comparisons as far as US and EU data on WCR is concerned. It might provide some interesting insights into how the past few weeks have changed things…

@All: To everyone a nice Saturday morning, whether it be on BfA, Classic or reading the newspaper while enjoying a cup of hot coffee. :wink:

@Shopkeeper: Just saw your post before hitting “Reply”. Could you take a look here and see, if you can spot anything useful to your problem?

I also have to note that registering HAS been suffering from various problems, but some people have managed to get through despite the need for Bringoutyourdead’s manual approval. :confused: To be honest, as I am not part of the approval process (from WCR point of view, I am just one of the lead submission makers), I am not sure why your applications are failing. Sorry! :frowning: If absolutely all else fails, I can try to contact Bringoutyourdead and see, what he says. I am not putting his contact data in the open.

You could also post your BattleTag, so I can try to reach you for a more personal discussion as I currently do not have a suitable character available and my main account is full, so I can not create an extra one.

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Starts the thread with the word “Speculation”

Starts the post with the word “facts” in the first sentence.

Mhm hmm. Yet another crutch rubbing “yah classic is better than retail becuz reddit says so innit!! Retail iz ded!!!”"

Allow me to repost one of my immediate thoughts whenever the website reddit is even briefly alluded to.

“If you Read it on Reddit it’s likely bull*(&^”

You can quote me on that,

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No we know you don’t care because even when the facts are laid out you still choose to believe some claptrap conspiracy theory drivel (edited) you’ve read on the internet somewhere and decided it must be true.

Believe what you want. It’s your right. Just don’t get all upset and sit cross armed with a petted lip when it is pointed out to you that you are talking nonsense and here’s why.

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I havent been able to register either on the warcraftrealms site. Just… nothing happens when i try to :woman_shrugging:t3: Will continue to add my censuses still though :slight_smile:

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@Sinaaki: I am sorry to hear that. :frowning: As I told Shopkeeper, I am not part of the approval loop, so I do not know what is going wrong. Do you get any sort of error message or anything, at all?

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No, it just goes back to the register site if i remember correctly. Will give it a go again when i’m home from work, been a while since i last tried.

why is everyone saying that topics relating to classic are not in the right place here?

Classic is a topic for BfA players, because it has killed a lot of servers. Until or unless blizzard address the problem (by merging servers to start with)… this will continue.

what addon is this?

CensusPlus for retail,and for classic CensusPlusClassic.Also do not run bouth addons in the same clients,they cause conflicts.

thank you, Blurey

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Ignoring the confirmation bias you are using, classic is out in a downtime period of bfa so i wouldnt be surprised if classic currently has more people.

I personally got to 47 then lost interest and have returned to bfa.

we will see if classic has more than retail as time progresses.

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some people were just getting into raiding… how is it down time? 2 months before the end of a season maybe, but 2 months into the season?

It’s down time for the casuals of which raiding isn’t there Endgame . I literally log in and run old raids mount collecting since I got my flying I’ve not been to mechagon in weeks.
I believe a lot of people are similar so I pop in and out of classic and retail to break up a work shift.
I will never go full classic I’m just waiting for 8.2.5 and Blizzcon then I may vanish out for a few months.

oh this wowhead post probably sums up the closest to numbers just posted to the site

https : // classic .wowhead.com /news=295075/classic-wow-realm-population-report-data-aggregated-through-community.

this is only classics numbers.

But what is a casual by your deffenition?I have 2 friends one is playing the game every day 4h,collects mounts and does those nazj,mechagone achivments but never did anything rank 2v2,doesnt play anything past +5,and doesnt raid(mythic or heroic)…but then i have friend that only plays 2v2 is 2450 rank and 15+ but only play 6h a week.

So out of those two who is casual and who is hardcore?do you define it by what difficulty he plays in or by the time he invests in the game?

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