Logging into Aradune, Vaniki, Mischief and Yeli and it seems like even during prime time the numbers are waayyy down. It's not summer is it?
Vaniki and Aradune have been low pop like 2/3+ of the time (not unusual) Mischief is still be pretty high and probably what caused Yelinak to not stay as high as usual for a brand new TLP, but should still be decently towards high
It's not 'summer slow time' it's 'Beta slow time'. Cool kids are on Beta server, devs are busy trying to finish the expac they already paid for.
The ugly little secret that a large part of TLP population is bored raiders from the live servers all slumming and farming Krono to support their real characters
I don't know about the statement above. But I main on Aradune's, and play daily. The population seems very good and stable to me, on Primetime we at least have 1 full General Chat(400), with the 2nd General Chat significantly populated as well (200+). And that doesn't even count the players that don't autojoin chat channels. There are also at least seven high end guilds clearing Solteris as of this week, with around two more to come in the next week or so. Granted this is a limit 2 per person truebox server it is still has a very healthy population. To my understanding and based on stats researched for TLP's from highest to lowest populations below. 1/2) Mischief/Thornblade - All items tradeable (FV Clone) + Randomized loot with bonuses, quickened expansion launches, at least on the earlier expansions compared to the previous years. 3) Rizlona - (Aradune clone except with any type of true-box limitation, with a possible unconfirmed greenlight on certain 3rd party programs to my understanding. 4) Aradune - Mangler clone on expansion releases, except with the limit on two toon limit(To play simultaneously (Truebox only). 5) Vaniki - Special ruleset server that unlocks by level rather than by expansions (First expansion of this type done), with higher end content released much earlier for extra challenge some of which have rewards that are spectacular upon completion of these very tough fights. A few of which still have yet to be competed (IE CBQ - Which grants crazy good rewards for the whole raid upon completion. One of the newest servers alone with Yelinak. 6) Yelinak - Normal ruleset true-box server, no limit on amount of toons. (1 of the 2 newest servers along with Vaniki). 7) Mangler (One of the older servers now, true-box with no box limit). However, still has a very good population and a few guilds still clearing end-game content quickly upon expansion launches. This is just to my knowledge so some information may not be 100% correct. Feel free to correct anything I may have gotten wrong or where I can improve!
7 guilds cleared VoA in era and it's one of the harder expansions, I suspect we'll see 8-9 clear RoF.
Let me be the first to congratulate you on the thorough job you did researching and collecting all this population data. Bravo!
Yelinak has lost what I feel is a very large portion of what was already a dwindling population. Most of the server seems to be in raid log mode. The chat channels are quiet other than the 200 aoe exp sellers and the tunnel, other than primetime, is very quiet and you really dont see a variety of loot that a healthy server produces.