@Säruman: Elaynne is not being delusional. Things right now are significantly better than they were in November 2018.
This is a very limited sample (my own stats only), WCR activity updates by month. As I watch and play on a very specific set of servers across three support languages, the recent results are comparable.
November 124 915
December 146 000
January 135 493
February 130 320
March 137 111
April 140 360
May, so far and projected: 65 680 (in 11 days, I have been absent at times) and 156 622
8.1.5 helped and the figures have held above November ever since… and as you can see from the current projection, the servers I play on as a whole, will probably do better than they did in December, even with no patch this month.
Naturally, looking at my stats only is too limited a sample, but other CensusPlus users are showing similar patterns. Many of the top actives are showing better numbers (both historical and actual projections) than in November.
While it is theoretically possible for activity updates to go up while player counts drop, such a scenario is NOT sustainable over a pediod exceeding five months by now.