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Etherdrifter

Population Data So Far

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6 hours ago, Stinboi said:

This discussion has came up so many times the last few years proves that the current playerbase isnt happy.

 

Uh, does it? I'm happy. As far as I know the numerous players I know are all happy too. I don't think I know an "unhappy" player. Sure, we could use a few tweaks here and there, but this talk of server resets/merges is way too drastic, and is actually rather risky. And for what? Some hypothetical gain?

 

At some point we just gotta stop whinging and play the game :P

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41 minutes ago, Mowglia said:

 

Uh, does it? I'm happy. As far as I know the numerous players I know are all happy too. I don't think I know an "unhappy" player. Sure, we could use a few tweaks here and there, but this talk of server resets/merges is way too drastic, and is actually rather risky. And for what? Some hypothetical gain?

well considering how many that quit after the steam release, so yeah i think it does :P

Server merge/resett will never happen, but they shouldnt open more servers in the first place and split up the small community Wurm has, 

 

47 minutes ago, Mowglia said:

At some point we just gotta stop whinging and play the game :P

 

Or like me and 90% of the players do, stop playing :)

 

But in the end Wurm is what it is, and everyone decide for them self if they want to play or not.

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In fact, many of the about 28k playing in the first weeks after steam release quit, yet 4500-5500 stayed, so rather 81-84% of those quit. Compare it to e.g. New World where 19k out of 800+k stayed, that is indeed around 97.5% churn rate.

 

That said, I find the Wurm churn rate too high, be it usual or not. But 90% is drama, leave that on Cadence 😎.  But I agree that more servers would not be a good move.

 

Edited by Ekcin
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The data I gathered, and indeed the data wurm "provides", hides from us two factors that inflate player count.  These are impossible to account for with the paucity of data available at the current time, so their impact might be quite small, or it may be extremely large. 

 

1.  Number of alts per player on the same cluster.  My rather imperfect poll seems to suggest that the average factor here is 2 on the old cluster.  I cannot offer any conclusion as to this on the new cluster, though I suspect it would be smaller since there are enough people around to support dedicated priests.

2.  Number of alts per player on a different cluster (this I suspect is a smaller multiplier, that (1).  If I were to guess (and this would be a pure guess based on conversations ingame, so take it with a grain of salt), it would be around 1.2--1.5

 

In terms of exploring wurm's health, factor (1) could theoretically be discounted, if we had evidence to suggest the number of alts used on average has remained constant over the years (which I suspect is somewhat unlikely).  Factor (2) was newly induced by the steam update, and nailing its impact down would give a much more concrete picture of what the real state of the game is.

 

The development team likely have access to data that would give them a better estimate; however it is unlikely to ever be made public.

 

1 hour ago, Mowglia said:

At some point we just gotta stop whinging and play the game :P

Some of us go for option (b) - let out premium drop and enjoy our homes :P

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16 hours ago, Etherdrifter said:

Some of us go for option (b) - let out premium drop and enjoy our homes :P

 

So you are unwilling to support the game with a monthly premium, even though it would cost you about a cup of coffee every month.  Good to know.

 

Your posts clearly come across that you are a bitter vet, hate the steam release and the NFI cluster.  You disguise this as "data gathering", which you then spin the numbers to fit your narrative which is almost always negative.  The steam release was 2 years ago, move on.  NFI is going no where and a cluster merge has been ruled out of the question for now.  Wurm's population is stable during the summer months when most gaming populations dip because of summer vacations and overall nice weather.  That is a good thing.

 

You clearly have a following on this forum as this is one of the longest forum posts I have seen.  I think you could do much better for Wurm and it's players if your posts were more positive, concentrating less on the past and more on what Wurm has to offer now.  This is a very good game that allows you to do almost anything you want in a wide open world.  There are a lot of players that are happy with the game as it is now.  The dev team has been making some great strides forward with many QoL changes and most recently the treasure hunting update.  I have never played a game before where the dev team actually listened and communicated with the community like the Wurm dev team does.  It really adds to the overall gaming experience when devs care as much as players.  I am sure the dev team is working hard to create many more great updates for the future, and I for one can't wait to see what comes next!           

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1 hour ago, Tukodama said:

Your posts clearly come across that you are a bitter vet, hate the steam release and the NFI cluster.     

You come across as someone who hasn't read the thread, has an obvious bias, or is someone who discounts the years of playtime prior to Steam. That said, there is nothing stopping you from making your own curated thread to spin the numbers how you would like them spun.

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2 hours ago, Tukodama said:

Your posts clearly come across that you are a bitter vet, hate the steam release and the NFI cluster.  You disguise this as "data gathering", which you then spin the numbers to fit your narrative which is almost always negative.  The steam release was 2 years ago, move on.           

I'll address the personal comments first - you're welcome to your opinion and your own narrative spin, which you are disguising in the somewhat disingenuous format of "be better"; it is not persuasive to me.  I don't have a following so much as sparring partners who disagree with me (welcome to the club; contact Ekcin about membership rates and the activities list etc!), which is welcome since I'm always open to the idea that I am wrong.  I'm not going to spew positivity unless the data leads me there; there are plenty around to do that for me.

 

2 hours ago, Tukodama said:

Wurm's population is stable during the summer months when most gaming populations dip because of summer vacations and overall nice weather.  That is a good thing.

 

In terms of the data, I don't have any reliable data for the summer period this year as I stopped my own data collection a while back - my last reading was taken on April 17th 2022 at 11am.  This is why all my comments have been somewhat tacit and generally exploring the reliability of what is said.  I would very much like to see where you got "wurm's population is stable during the summer months" from, indeed if there is another independent data source out there with player numbers I'd absolutely love to see it and compare it with my own to see if the readings match.  Did the stability I saw then stick around, did it start a rise after the treasure map update, or did it slip into decay again?  If you feel able, please do add your own analysis and observation to this thread (the data is there for you to use as you like, and I look forward to seeing your post on it).

 

2 hours ago, Tukodama said:

 I think you could do much better for Wurm and it's players if your posts were more positive, concentrating less on the past and more on what Wurm has to offer now.

You know, I disagree.  As I mentioned before, others are happy to post the positivity, but I think a realist's negative view also offers something to both engage with, and generate discussion with.  If everyone just posted how wonderful everything is, would we really be seeing so much change today?  Would tomorrow actually be better?  Is today better than yesterday, and if not what changed to make it so?

 

No, I would argue I am doing my best for wurm in my own way (even though I suspect the dev team thinks of the "nuke deed" button every time they read one of my critiques)- and even though we have opposing views I hope you will too!

Edited by Etherdrifter
Typo!
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Hypothetically me too would wear the pink glasses if i had a friends devs or staff  or GM's that always "help" me with just a message sent, or if i ever wanted to one day become a staff or something. Like some people in here likes to virtue signaling about. Idk how would that be benefical on a long run for this game population tho.

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Strange, first Tukodama hauling dirt on Etherdrifter, now you on whomever. Shouldn't we better discuss population data?

 

Edit: That said, I am somewhat disappointed about Etherdrifters throwing mud onto me. I never attacked him personally, just criticized his doomsaying.

 

Edited by Ekcin

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Just now, Ekcin said:

Strange, first Tukodama hauling dirt on Etherdrifter, now you on whomever. Shouldn't we better discuss population data?

 

Pretty much what i am saying

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I've read this thread for a few months and not really commented, but... does anyone else who has been here for ages not entirely get what the fuss is about? I had a look at some of my old event logs from back in 2011-2012, and typical player counts seemed to peak at around 1000 accounts online. Currently, Wurm peaks at around 600-700 - eleven years later. Very, very few games stick around for so long.

 

I definitely think that Wurm's new player experience needs a ton of work, and it is a shame that so few newbies stick around long-term. It's a real shame that the Steam release didn't capture more, which I think is something Ether has been really getting at (which is very fair). But I don't think it's the next Wurmageddon, particularly as the playercount seems stable for now. As long as the developers keep working on things and don't take it for granted that Wurm has survived for so long, then I think Wurm can and will stick around for a very long time to come. There are difficult times ahead with the decision around merging clusters, but if the past has taught us anything, Wurm can keep on surviving.

 

It's difficult to know how much of the player counts we see are alts, particularly when comparing to very old data - but I do at least know that back in 2012 I used to play on more alts than I do now, and I knew many people back then who ran lots of alts (in the same way that many people do now.) Also, even for people with a priest of every god, I think it's pretty rare to have them all online at once - once they're skilled up you only really log them in to do casts, so I don't buy that the playercount now is necessarily so full of alts as has been suggested, or that it's really especially different to ten years ago. (But we also don't know conclusively, and I'll gladly eat my hat if I'm wrong.) One serious factor at play in making it difficult to know is that regular forum users of Wurm are definitely not representative of the overall playerbase - I'd wager that people who browse the forums regularly are more hardcore about Wurm, have probably been around for longer, and are probably more likely to have more accounts than the typical player.

 

I for one would love it if @Chakroncould release a data dump of all the player counts from Niarja over the years, it would be really interesting to have it as a point of comparison with the great work Etherdrifter has done (particularly since it goes back a lot further.)

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3 hours ago, Ekcin said:

Strange, first Tukodama hauling dirt on Etherdrifter, now you on whomever. Shouldn't we better discuss population data?

 

Edit: That said, I am somewhat disappointed about Etherdrifters throwing mud onto me. I never attacked him personally, just criticized his doomsaying.

 

Oh, I didn't mean it as an attack - rather I meant we rarely, if ever, agree!

 

Indeed, you're the most frequent critic of my point of view, which is great since echo chambers rarely generate good ideas

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On 8/29/2022 at 10:57 AM, Ekcin said:

I am somewhat disappointed about Etherdrifters throwing mud onto me. I never attacked him personally, just criticized his doomsaying.

 

 

You can't criticize the doom-saying. Wurm is doomed. This has been established beyond refute for several years now.

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On 8/25/2022 at 9:45 PM, Sindusk said:

Just take 4 of the 2k servers on freedom, combine them into a single 4k server. Now you have 3 less servers and nobody loses anything. Easy.

CEtqzB9.png

Not sure if anyone brought it up, but would really suck for anyone who lives on any of the coasts that would end up being inner ones, or even worse the inner central corners. 
Maybe people chose to live on a corner island because they wanted to be close to both borders, and they end up being in center of a big server, would be pretty bad imho.

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34 minutes ago, Davih said:

Not sure if anyone brought it up, but would really suck for anyone who lives on any of the coasts that would end up being inner ones, or even worse the inner central corners. 
Maybe people chose to live on a corner island because they wanted to be close to both borders, and they end up being in center of a big server, would be pretty bad imho.

Pretty sure sindusk was being facetious here. 

 

Lets not fall for it and start complaining about something that's never going to happen because someone made a joke 

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1 hour ago, Sheffie said:

 

 

You can't criticize the doom-saying. Wurm is doomed. This has been established beyond refute for several years now.

I think I found a thread from 2008 saying it 

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On 8/29/2022 at 1:37 PM, Tukodama said:

it would cost you about a cup of coffee every month.

not for everyone ;)

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