Ok, that’s broken for sure.
This gets into a methodology problem. All evidence points to the beta realms being worldwide in its population makeup. (This may also be causing some issues for Census+, I guess I’ll have to ask elsewhere)
This means “peak play time” is pretty evenly spread across the day.
Australians and people in China play different times than people in North America. People in Europe play in different times than people in NA and the western Pacific.
There frequently are hours long gaps in Census coverage, mostly during peak playing times for the Western Pacific. The guy who started the classic population project appears to be in Germany for example, so again, his own data gathering tended to focus around typical hours of play for the EU, not NA. So all kinds of chances for “holes” in the data to exist for people to slip through. (at least until others started to contribute data)
You’re also assuming that if 3,000 people are playing at 5PM, and check again at 7PM and see 3,000 playing at that time, that it is the people playing. That could be wildly wrong.
Almost within the range of going into a McDonalds and seeing 2 dozen customers scattered around the store. Returning 4 hours later, seeing 2 dozen customers present in the store and assuming they’re all the same people from 4 hours ago.
Timestamp 28:40
but the beta will delete all characters at it’s end, and it’s only a beta, it’s natural for them to not be as dedicated to the game
3 Likes
It’s too inconsistent of an experiment/data-gathering. For one, the beta has been artificially capped at 30, then 40. Classic would not be. This invariably leads to content droughts in beta that would not be seen in Classic.
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betas are over rated anyway, best not to worry about it
Layering could be messing with the addon too though…
Everyone figured the launch of 8.2 would be before classic, as to not take it’s thunder, and with beta being before that, it was used to drive up WoW hype generally.
Whether people think streamers are significant or not, their viewership promotes whatever game they are in, despite whatever rant a few have gone on recently.
The selection of participants was primarily old accounts, which have no relevance to a whole scope of possible accounts.
They don’t really need to have a set amount of layers. They can just have it make a new layer every 3k people. And close layers as the server pop lowers.
Only a tiny amount of people have been invited. Even if they are tourists, why would it be useful that 1% of the tourists don’t flood Classic launch?
I think beta was more about generating advertising and hype and while yes testing bugs is important, probably not the main purpose. No problem with that. Clever move. Especially prioritising streamers.
I think they will rotate bfa and classic patches. Again i think this is clever.
I think its good for the game and with luck will see more people playing
The Beta had two demonstrable purposes and no more.
- Test content to make sure it’s ready for release.
- Advertising via streamers to avoid paying for actual advertising.
Anything else is tinfoil hat conjecture unless actual evidence is presented.
Without having an idea of what % of players will leave, they will not know how many servers to have at launch to accommodate them all so that once flattened they will be as close to a full but not too full server as possible.
That said, there is no way to evenly distribute everyone between the servers on launch, so some may actually have so many that stay that they’ll be condemned to long login queues.
It’s a beta. There will be a wipe, soon. And level 40 isn’t exactly the most interesting part of the game. If this beta is like the ones I participated in, there is no bucket list of things that should be tested, so if you get bored or stressed, you just stop playing - until someone asks you to do something.
I really don’t think they’ll get a lot of reliable engagemant numbers (or however that is called) from that.
As for the subscription part, no idea. I always assumed that they expect players to burn out and this way they’ll make at least some money from it, even if they don’t return for the real thing. But I have a nice collection of tinfoil hats in my closet myself, so I’m probably wrong. ![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
Most of Classic players don’t have Subs now. There will be more Classic players than retail and first week 3 - 6 million players will come back that haven’t been subbed because we finally have a real WoW game to play.
The Beta is to test bugs nothing more nothing less.
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IF the level cap started out at 60 and the game was generally bug free then sure, this could be possible.
the same as the % of classic players who got a beta invite
For a lot of people the game doesn’t really start till 60.
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