My thoughts on MMO-population.com

Off-Topic Games, Gaming and Hardware
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I’ve always thought that using third party sites like mmo-population.com was not a reliable or accurate way to know the population of the people playing there, simply due to the fact it’s questionable source gathering on how it arrived to it’s conclusion. Well that, and Superdata.

Personally, unless it comes directly from the company who made the MMO, since they have access to all the data at their fingertips, it’s all just speculation to me. This isn’t without understanding why the websites are being used the way they are being used, because the companies behind the MMO’s know that the numbers can hit rock bottom at anytime for any reason and it would look bad for them. Not just to the MMO playerbase, but to investors and shareholders as well. “Below expectations” as they put it.

That would be fine enough if it doen’t get used in these silly popularity contests of “my MMO is bigger then yours” war sort of thing i seen in the MMO space, but mostly from the WoW community here. I personally do not care about the numbers or at least not going to let it affect my decisions (To an extent, playing on an MMO with 0 players wouldn’t have much of a good experience) on whether or not i like the MMO.

Popularity doesn’t determine quality. But i digress. :raised_hand:

We all know that MMOpopulation still has Wildstar, Star Wars Galaxies, and City of Heroes, and other MMO’s that are dead listed there, as well MMO’s that aren’t even released yet like Ashes of Creation and New World reporting their numbers. Wildstar and the other closed MMO’s in particular, led me to think that the numbers are being recorded from private servers (because where else can they get it from? the actual server is closed). This would be fine if the website clearly distinguish right away… “by the way, these numbers are being pulled from unofficial servers of that game”, but right now, it doesn’t. Meaning if you go and look at the numbers WoW has, you might think it comes from the actual server, but it could be possibly taking into account from both private servers and the actual servers, and just totaling it up from here.

It would be like if i have a data collecting website that records how many players are playing these PS1 games at a given time and then you see Thrill Kill on there. You might have a couple of questions about how i’m going about my data gathering here since that game wasn’t even released.

What cemented that opinion i had for MMOpop for me is this game they have listed on their site here. :point_down:

In case if you don’t know what EverQuest Online Adventures is, it’s an Everquest Spinoff exclusively released for the PS2 and it was shut down in 2012.

It prompt me to find out how exactly they were even getting their numbers off a game for a platform that isn’t even being made anymore, and i’ve found out that there is a private server for this game via by emulation. Project Return Home. With a few hacks and a bit of knowhow and possibly tracking down a physical game yourself for a cheap price, you will be playing the game like it’s 2003 again.

By the way, this isn’t the first MMORPG on consoles. Phantasy Star Online (2000) is. Just a little fun fact. :slight_smile:

Those are my thoughts on whenever somebody brings up MMO population website, and why i think that. If you disagree, then that is honestly fine by me. Figured i would give my two cents on something like that in my own thread to be further elaborated on, essentially saying should be taken with a grain of salt. :pinching_hand: :kissing:

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I agree with this entirely. One of the things we learn in school when it comes to researching when we’re doing reports is that not only do we have to cross-check the information we find, but also check the credibility of the sources and author(s) themselves. Websites could either be faked with fabricated information or exhibit some sort of bias in favor of the author.

In regards to MMO population specifically, some players are so quick to pull random numbers from random websites or come up with these magical population percentages from midair in their arguments without doing the above - IF they can even do so. Even if they are able to do so, they don’t think about the possibility these numbers are actually inflated by players having alternate accounts and botting accounts. How many of these accounts are played by an actual person and owned by different people?

This here is a plausible theory since I have no hard evidence otherwise, but I think that cross-realm zoning is a result of an overall population decrease. Merging and closing servers would scare players and shareholders alike, so instead you come up with new technology to allow players to phase into each other’s world and have the servers double for load-balancing. You would then hide the negative with something that sounds more positive by telling the community you’re trying to make the game world feel full by allowing players to phase into each others’ worlds.

I agree with this one too. I remember seeing a thread in GD some time ago that someone had said that “WoW is like the McDonald’s of MMOs” - a popular restaurant with millions of people served, but what’s the quality of the food?

This is why I steer away from the popularity chatter where people just throw unconfirmed numbers into the mix and instead talk about the actual experiences I have in the MMOs I play.

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Yeah. It’s really just a shame that it’s taken for granted these days. :neutral_face:

I also remember seeing a thread where they were celebrating for WoW’s numbers being 5 to 4 million or something… but they don’t link the numbers… they said MMOpop, but when i go over to look myself… well… that was the time when i discovered the Everquest PS2 game.

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Wasn’t that the site that gauges a game based on subreddit activity?

Like, I’m pretty sure if you check the site it says Wildstar has 13000 players.

Y’know, that game that died a few years back.

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Huh, really? :thinking:

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Was gonna post the link, but forum won’t let me. But yeah, still says it actually.

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Like this one? :point_down:

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This is how mmo-populations gathers its information based on what they showed years ago:

So, we do it based on reddit subscriber information. We track the current subscribers, active users and history of both. This helps you to choose an MMO that has the required “activity” you’d like to see, or perhaps you are just interested.

Total players = (Subscribers*54.0614)

Activity rating = (Active users/Subscribers)*50000

Daily players = (Total players*0.095(Activity rating/10)

It literally uses reddit as its only source to tell how popular an MMO-RPG is which is why dead MMOs are still showing. If you do the math it matches up.

WoW Total Players = 2.2 million on reddit (this is rounded up) * 54.0614 = 118 million. MMO populations shows 116 million so it’s pulling the true number from reddits API.

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You mean to tell me that i can go to any of the MMO reddits, join up there and it will count on MMO pop despite not even owning the game?.. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Well, this system isn’t ripe for abuse and misrepresentation of the data. :crazy_face: /s

Thank you for telling me this, because now it makes it even worse. :dizzy_face:

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I just found this out myself today so it’s terribly misleading to everyone.

If you compare FF14 to WoW reddit there’s twice as many FF14 users logged on at any given time so based on its formula it makes FF14 look like it has more players than WoW.

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