Server Populations - March Edition

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Chikkin, Mar 30, 2014.

  1. Chikkin Augur

    Hey Guys,

    1. Intro Ramble: My first thread last month was focused on Feb 10th - Feb 28th. Then one of my SSDs crashed, and it was the one that had all my excel files on it. Since there seem to be interest in the concept, when I got my new SSD in and installed, I began another batch of watching server populations. This batch is dated from March 6th to today, March 30th (as of 2pm Eastern Time). Although there is one more day of March, I have much more time to create this thread on a Sunday.


    2. The List: Glancing at the breakdown, as before I've created "tiers". It goes from left to right, as in Xegony is busier than Bert, which is busier than Luclin. It goes like this:

    1. Bristlebane (197) and Cazic Thule (184)
    2. Xegony (154), Bertoxxulous (153), Luclin (146), The Rathe (144), and Firiona Vie (138).
    3. Erollisi Marr (122), Tunare (110), Povar (103).
    4. Drinal (70)
    5. Antonius Bayle (8) and Vox (0, but Medium more often than AB)
    6. Test, Fippy, Trak, Vulak, Zek, and Beta. (0, Test went Med a couple times)


    3. Details/Clarification: Bristlebane and CT appear to be very close in population. Often times CT will hit "High" server load before Bristlebane, but Bristlebane often times will stay High an hour or two longer. Although BB is busier, it is not by much at all.

    Xegony is definitely busier than Firiona Vie, but similar to last month, those five servers are very very close in population. FV did not seem as busy this month. There was several hours where it was at Med while it's "brothers" were already high. Especially in the last week.

    Emarr, Tunare, and Povar are definitely a tier below. Emarr is a very unusual server. It has had some downtime problems, which always throws it off for a few hours. But in the last week it has really picked up. Makes me wonder if a bunch of guilds on that server are suddenly close to completing key events.

    Drinal is in a category all of its own. It may be the most "balanced" although to me, someone who likes a busy server, I would call it underpopulated. Drinal does go high, almost every night for about an hour or two. But it is the last of the servers to go high (of the servers that reach that status) and it is the first to go back to medium. It also does hit low status on occasion which most of the ones above it never do.

    Last month I said Vox was busier than Antonius Bayle, this month it has either changed, or I simply stand corrected. I based my assumption on the fact that AB goes Low during off-peak times, a lot. It appears more so that AB simply does not have as many baz-bots, or more likely, being mostly a specified time zone, the folks login during those times, then promptly get out instead of having people who play all time zones combined. My point is AB actually went high this month, something that did not happen in February, but yet AB goes low quite often too. This server is definitely well populated, but the people do not linger around.

    Vox is medium more often than AB and does not go low nearly as much, but I have never seen it reach high status in two months of tracking.

    For the last group, like last month, these are all the servers that never go medium, they are always low. Even at peak times. The one exception is that during the heroic character stuff, I did see Test hit Medium about 4-5 times (hours).


    4. Numbers or another way to look at it: For those who like to attach numbers to things.. I track the servers by the hour, when I'm awake. I log all of this in an excel sheet, which by this point is pretty easy to maintain. Although I wish we had "real numbers" as stated before, this is better than nothing.

    I only count "highs" although I do record all "lows" and "mediums" as well. So counting the amount of hours that a server had a "high" status for that hour is what the numbers up top mean.

    5. Future and Last tidbits: After tomorrow, I will start the April batch, reset the numbers and continue on. I then will see (to some degree) if the Heroic Character and Auto-Grant "rush" dies down.

    The only other note is that for anybody who didn't already know it, Sunday is by far the busiest day on EQ. Saturday Nights are a close second. But Sundays is when all the servers really stay maxed out for hours. It is also when I saw things such as Test server going Medium or AB going High for 4 hours straight. The double-exp Sunday was "omg busy" for EQ. I was hoping to see Vox go high, or one of the lower servers go Med.

    As always, any questions just message me on this forum, or reply in this thread.

    Thanks for reading.
    Elricvonclief, Tour and Iila like this.
  2. tarquinn21 Elder

    There are a lot of Korean players on E-marr, and a very populated/active guild for them, so E-marr actually stays pretty busy around the clock.
  3. Kelefane Augur

    Population wise, have you noticed if the overall numbers across the board are down from last month? It will be interesting to see when the overall population starts to spike downward as summer approaches. In my experience, attendance usually starts to slump around May.
  4. Iila Augur

    This is cool info, thanks for posting it.
  5. Chikkin Augur

    Mostly the same. Population is up if anything, mostly thanks to the heroic toons.

    AB is the busiest I have seen it for example.
  6. Crystilla Augur

    I can speak for EMarr in terms of your question (on whether guilds were close to completing key events). If you're talking raid events (where top servers, guilds only raid 1-2x a week now but might pick up and raid more if they're close to beating something)? If you mean that - the answer is no. Two guilds have beaten all the content with another three still working on various stages. But outside of maybe the top guild, the others don't change the # of days they raid each week.

    EMarr, as someone mentioned does have an Asian time zone guild + it has a pacific time zone guild. One of the other servers with that, so it may play into some of the things you see that you were calling weird.
  7. Chikkin Augur

    Thanks. It's stuff like this that is good knowledge for returners who may have different playtimes or timezones than what they had before.
  8. Qest T. Silverclaw Augur

    If you could post a chart so people could see what server is best for their particular play times, that'd be nice.
  9. Chikkin Augur

    Ok, I'm up early this morning, so I'm working on that as we speak. I don't have a way to share an excel file, but I can describe the trends/averages once the task is completed.
  10. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    Population always increases around the anniversary time.
  11. Chikkin Augur

    The most interesting data to me will be what I accumulate during new expansions or sever merges or a new server. I've always heard about the Summer slump over the years .. "kids out of school, nice outside" etc. But now I will see how the data supports that. Also just how much of a slump it is.
  12. Kreacher Augur

    Are you on CT server by chance?
  13. Chikkin Augur

    No. For years I was on Quellious, then brief stint at Emarr and now FV server since the free transfers...like 5 or so years back.

    Nobody would know me in game unless they played Quell from 99-2001.
  14. tofu stir fry Augur

    More than likely test only hit medium during peak hours the days before testing heroic toons? Is there a timeline for those days? I'm curious as test is usually and should be at the bottom almost all the time, never mind midway :)
  15. Cerris Augur

    I'm not sure about that these days. I've only been on test for about six months and I've noticed a lot of new names in chat recently. Free gold + free expansions + the ability to buy a raid copy from Firiona Vie for a krono are pretty powerful lures.
  16. Chikkin Augur


    Absolutely this is my belief. It didn't go medium status at all during February.

    Here is the times/dates.

    Sunday, March 9th - 3pm (Daylight Savings time day also)
    Sunday, March 16th - 5pm, 6pm, and 7pm - This was double exp weekend.
  17. Chikkin Augur

    Those times were central by the way, sorry. I was in a hurry when I responded last.
  18. Chikkin Augur


    Done with this data.

    I now have a March average status for each day of the week. Since I don't have a place to put the charts, I will attempt to put the data here. The charts are much more precise and detailed of course.

    (All Times are Central Time)

    AB:

    Monday - Friday:
    7am-7pm: Med
    8pm-6am: Low

    Sat/Sun:
    4am-8pm: Med
    9pm-3am: Low

    Sunday from 2pm-4pm was the busiest time.
    Thursday was the slowest day.

    Bert:

    Monday-Friday:
    12am-4pm: Med
    5pm-11pm: High

    Sat/Sun:
    2am-9am: Med
    10am-1am: High

    Thursday was the slowest day.
    Sat/Sun appeared equally busy.


    Bris:

    Monday-Friday:
    12am-2pm: Med
    3pm-11pm: High

    Sat/Sun:
    2am-8am: Med
    9am-1am: High

    Thursday was the slowest day.
    Sat/Sun appeared equally busy.


    CT:

    Monday-Friday:
    12am-2pm: Med
    3pm-11pm: High

    Sat/Sun:
    2am-8am: Med
    9am-1am: High

    Thursday was the slowest day.
    Sat/Sun appeared equally busy.

    Drin:

    Monday-Friday:
    11pm-6pm: Med
    7pm-10pm: High

    Sat/Sun:
    11pm-12pm: Med
    1pm-10pm: High

    Friday was the slowest day.
    Sun was slightly more busy than Saturday. Especially Noon-9pm Sunday.

    Emarr:

    Monday-Friday:
    11pm-5pm: Med
    6pm-10pm: High

    Sat/Sun:
    2am-9am: Med
    10am-1am: High

    Thursday was the slowest day.
    Sun was slightly more busy than Saturday. Especially Noon-9pm Sunday.

    FV:

    Monday-Friday:
    11pm-5pm: Med
    6pm-10pm: High

    Sat/Sun:
    12am-10am: Med
    11am-11pm: High

    Thursday was the slowest day.
    Sat and Sun appeared equally busy.

    Luc:

    Monday-Friday:
    11pm-5pm: Med
    6pm-10pm: High

    Sat/Sun:
    12am-9am: Med
    11am-11pm: High

    Thursday was the slowest day.
    Sun appeared slightly busier than Saturday.

    Pov:

    Monday-Friday:
    11pm-6pm: Med
    7pm-10pm: High

    Sat/Sun:
    11pm-11am: Med
    12pm-10pm: High

    Thursday was the slowest day.
    Sun appeared slightly busier than Saturday.


    Rathe:

    Monday-Friday:
    11pm-5pm: Med
    6pm-10pm: High

    Sat/Sun:
    12am-9am: Med
    10am-11pm: High

    Tues/Wed/Thurs appeared tied for slowest day.
    Sat/Sun appeared equally busiest.


    Tun:

    Monday-Friday:
    11pm-5pm: Med
    6pm-10pm: High

    Sat/Sun:
    12am-10am: Med
    11am-11pm: High

    Thursday is the slowest day.
    Sat/Sun appeared equally busiest.


    Vox:

    Monday-Friday:
    1am-11am: Low
    12pm-12am: Med

    Sat/Sun:
    4am-9am: Low
    10am-3am: Med

    Thursday is the slowest day. (Low status the longest)
    Sat/Sun appeared slightly busier than the rest of the week.

    Xeg:

    Monday-Friday:
    12am-5pm: Med
    6pm-11pm: High

    Sat/Sun:
    1am-9am: Med
    10am-12am: High

    Tuesday is the slowest day.
    Sat/Sun appeared equally busy.




    This is really rough, but any questions just ask. This is just looking at my excel charts and trying to keep it very simple here.

    The "low six" servers were not even included here. They average Low at all times.
  19. Tadenea Augur

    I find it funny listing Rathe slow days being tues,wed,thurs those are 3 of our 4 raid days
    but of course we have 6 raid guilds in current content, 3 beating and farming it
    (they may all raid on the other days)
  20. Chikkin Augur


    Well slow just means "slowest". Both Mon and Friday the servers were high earlier and stayed high longer. Sat and Sun of course is a whole nother level of busy.