Server Populations - June 2014 Edition

June 2014 Charts >>> http://imgur.com/a/xT6yP

Hey Guys,

1. Intro // Monthly Notes

If you have any questions about anything you see here, feel free to ask in this thread. Also at the end of this post, I'll cover a few tidbits.

For June we continue to see the downward trend of population numbers. June is not that different from May. The averages are almost identical. The amount of times the servers hit "High" status though is quite different. May had two double experience weekends however and June had zero.

Looking forward, I think July will be about the same. I do not think it will decline more. I also think the July 4th double exerperience weekend will be incredibly busy. EQ, I've noticed, for some reason tends to be busiest the first and last weeks of the month, and slower in the middle. So that, coupled with the holiday and double experience, leads me to believe that Sunday July 6th will be extremely busy, and the busiest day of the month.

All times are Central Time Zone, the link to the data is here >> http://eqservers.imgur.com/

Eventually I hope to do year-to-year comparisons and not just monthly results. It will also be interesting to see population changes when servers are merged or added as well as the next expansion or when EQ Next is complete.

2. Rankings

I did something slightly different this month. With the decline, counting only "highs" is not as precise as I would like. This month I also counted the mediums. This helps to deviate between the servers that appear all the same due to never hitting High, etc.So the first number is the amount of hours that a server hit high, the second number is the medium hours. Lows not being counted.

Tier 1 - Cazic Thule (41, 513), Bristlebane (19, 488)

Tier 2 - Xegony (6, 449), Bertoxxulous (3, 538), Luclin (3, 463), Povar (2, 438)

Tier 3 - Firiona Vie (0, 552), Erollisi Marr (0, 527), The Rathe (0, 486), Tunare (0, 455)

Tier 4 - Drinal (0, 344)

Tier 5 - Antonius Bayle (0, 113), Vox (0, 106)

Tier 6 - Test, Fippy Darkpaw, Trakanon, Vulak'Aerr, Zek, Beta

3. Detailed Analysis & Server Specific Notes

Not much change. CT, BB, and Xeg continue their 1-2-3 pattern.

Bert, Luc, Pov, FV, EM, Rathe, and Tunare continue to be almost identical populations.Drinal is not far behind those, but it is definitely the slowest of the bunch.

I keep saying how AB and Vox are nearly identical. Well this month, counting the mediums, shows it more than ever. The last servers, as usual, never hit Medium status.

The busiest days are Saturday and Sunday. The busiest weekday is Monday. The slowest day is Thursday.

The busiest hour in Everquest is generally 8pm central, regardless of the day of the week. Therefore the busiest hour in Everquest every week/month is Sunday at 8pm central time zone.

Antonius Bayle, the Euro server, is busiest from 11am-4pm Central, like clockwork. I can always count on it being Medium status by Noon or 1pm, and being low status by 4 or 5pm.

4. Statements, Perceptions, and Frequently Asked Questions:

Why do you do this?

I enjoy charts, lists, numbers, excel, and Everquest 1.

What does the numbers mean? How are you charting the servers?

I track the population status that SOE gives us (High, Med, Low) once an hour into an excel sheet.

You realize those numbers are not accurate and they don't update for hours right?

Wrong. Well, I spend a lot of time looking at the refresh page, it is usually updated every 3-5 minutes. Rarely goes longer than 10-15 minutes. The status is shows with the patterns and what is happening (server down etc) appear to be spot on.

Just how busy is High/Med/Low status anyway?

No clue. I am 95% positive that Low status is 0-500 players, and at 500 or 501 it hits Medium. I have not had as much luck getting information that makes sense for Medium and High status.

So what good is all of this if we don't have real numbers?

Well it's better than nothing? It shows trends. It shows which servers are the busiest, which are busy at certain hours and play times, and with the tracking I am able to compare month to month, eventually year to year, and other significant happenings such as server merges or new expansions.

5. Links to Previous Months

Excel Spreadsheet Vault - http://eqservers.imgur.com/

May 2014 - https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/...lations-may-2014-edition.211164/#post-3093005

April 2014 - https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/server-populations-april-2014-edition.210336/

March 2014 Thread - https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/server-populations-march-edition.209642/

February 2014 Thread - https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/server-population.208763/

Thanks for posting this. Now that medium times are listed, it almost looks like some additional findings can be found for summer. For example, adding together medium + high you get a slightly different population break in the order:

Tier 1 - Cazic Thule (41, 513), Firiona Vie (0, 552), Bertoxxulous (3, 538)
Tier 2 - Erollisi Marr (0, 527), Bristlebane (19, 488)
Tier 3 - The Rathe (0, 485), Luclin (3, 463), Xegony (6, 449), Tunare (0, 455), Povar (2, 438)
Tier 4 - Drinal (0, 344)
Tier 5 - Antonius Bayle (0, 113), Vox (0, 106)
Tier 6 - Test, Fippy Darkpaw, Trakanon, Vulak'Aerr, Zek, Beta

Cazic still remains in first, but FV, Bertox and Erollisi Marr rise above the 2nd and 3rd place winners of the "high" listing. One could almost say that there are more players playing overall on these servers for a longer period of time than on Bristlebane or Xegony for example (these peak high but then drop off quickly).

You're right. I thought about the Medium numbers a lot. I decided the biggest thing to consider was that using that method FV appears to be one of the most populated. Although FV will go High at times in previous months, showing that it is not dead by any means, the numbers on that server are skewed because it (by far when I actually login and compare servers personally) has the largest bazaar population.

When 500 people is all it takes to hit Medium status and FV has 200-300 in its bazaar quite often, it can be misleading.

Also, Povar is usually low more often than most of it's "brothers" excluding Drinal -- but yet Povar peaks and hits High more often than those same brothers. It leads me to believe it has a lower bazaar population. The only other theory would be that Povar players all login and play at the same time roughly instead of spread out among many time zones.

This post always cracks me up. SOE holds server population numbers very close to the vest and everything you're doing here is nothing but pure speculation.

You're absolutely 100% correct.

This is 100% for me. I was doing it anyway, and then decided someone else may find it interesting as well. Through the months, between views, likes, and comments, there seem to be a handful out there that are glad I am doing my "pure speculation".

It's still interesting.

For what it's worth...I look forward to and enjoy reading it

Same here. However, I don't actually pay attention at all to the # of players (since SoE protects that information, any guesses I ignore).

I find this very interesting... whether the actual population estimates are accurate or not, the trending is great.

Thanks to an extremely helpful user on this forum, I now will have a more complete chart.

I now will be able to have records of the results when I sleep or am busy with work/entertainment, but I also no longer will have to personally check it once an hour. The benefits of this will appear in next months results.

The higher mediums makes sense for Bertoxxulous considering we have relatively high European and Australian populations.

They really need to do server merges. There should be at least one "crowded" server for those of us who prefer our "Massively-Multiplayer" games to actually have massive numbers of players.

Well we know that Vulak and Fippy will get merged some day. No idea when since it seems that both servers do NOT want to be merged, and anybody on Vulak who wanted to merge should have just transferred to Fippy.

Trakanon, is it still that special lvl 50 server or whatever? Drinal and Vox merging would be good in the sense that it would help both servers "catch up" to the rest. I imagine AB, FV, and Zek will always be left alone, and FV is very healthy anyway.

To be honest, AB is pretty healthy. While I've never seen Vox go high, AB has quite a few times, especially on double xp weekends.

In my opinion, Xegony is the third busiest, but there is quite the case to be made for Emarr and Bert.

I think it would be nicer, if there were a variety of populations for different play styles. Some people really do want to solo/multi-box all by themselves with nobody to get in the way, so there should be a server(s) for them, and some do like to group, but don't like such a high population that they have difficulty getting popular camps, and there should be a server(s) for them too.

Stick me on the most crowded server.

Rather than bother with server transfers, just copy all characters to all servers. That way, people can try them all out and play where they prefer, and you don't have guilds breaking up due to people wanting different populations. Or better yet, if it's possible, divorce characters from servers and allow any character to log into any server so you can take your stuff with you from server to server.

I, for one, completely agree. When I came back to EQ after being gone for 10+ years last year, I decided to re-roll on Cazic simply because it appeared to be the busiest server. It would be nice if there was one server designed for a higher player load for those of us who want a more "classic" feel to the game, where there are 1000+ players active(not AFK in lobby or bazaar mules) at any given time. I'd be more than happy to deal with what is now considered overcrowding to have more opportunity for player interaction; though really, I can't see how you could call current content overcrowded given that a majority of players are in instances in the first place and the static zones get very little use.

I fall into the camp who hate the idea of instances. Perhaps an exception being LDoN type instances where you form a group and complete a mission, the total anti-camping way.

But I really enjoyed logging in years ago at the zone lines of the class, kunark, and velious zones typing "LVL 36 War, looking for a group" then like 5 other people say something similiar, then someone in OOC says "you all should form a group!" ... my point being it was THAT busy.

I usually let the thread die a few days after I start it so that I'm not spamming the board or bumping my own topic.

But since this is only a few days later and EQ is so busy, I figured I would post some positive results already.



Looking at it here (Saturday 8pm Central), I can already tell you that based on the "highs" alone this month is much busier than June. Tonight is pretty busy, as it stands now, the only servers left to go High (that I've ever seen go High) are Drinal, Emarr, Povar, and Tunare.

Basically the servers are packed right now, and tomorrow should be ever busier.

Cheers EQ and cheers double exp weekends.

I've reread this multiple times and still do not get the context. What is the point of these numbers?

Was nice when it showed the population at the server select for each server. Bring this back please

First number is how many hours that server was listed as having a high population over the course of the month. Second number is how many hours that server was listed as having a medium population. The server was listing a population of low for all the other hours of that month. The servers with no numbers were listed as low for every single hour of the month.

He used to just go by high hours, but it's dropped off in recent months. Listing both also gives a better indication of people actually playing on a server, rather than a server just having a ton of bazaar mules logged in 24/7.

At least, I think that's what he's saying (and what you're asking). I don't know. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Ok that helps. So as I understand it, low population is under 500, medium is 500 to X, and we have no definition of high, correct?