Drysc(blue) Giving Warcraftrealms a Bad Name

oiseaux · Post by **oiseaux** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 2:50 pm

I was just checking through blue posts and found this thread.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... 113488&P=1

Here is Drysc's quote: "Outdoor PvP by its nature will be unfair in varying degrees, and thats really where a lot of the excitement can come from. Fighting in an area of unknown opposition, where additional forces can show up in a matter of seconds and turn the battle in their favor. There are controlled environments which provide a situation free from many of the variables found outside their walls, but that isnt what outdoor PvP is about.

Im not even going to touch on the extreme inaccuracies of those realm census figures."

I think it is unfair for Drysc to give a bad name for what Rollie has done here. The thread is 8 pages long and most of it is people suggesting that this site is worthless or not reliable and doesn't give accurate numbers. Some even suggest of putting Rollie "out of business" by having Blizzard release numbers. Rollie has dedicated a part of his life to help us and this is what Blizzard has to say? Really, that does not seem right at all in my eyes. Kind of a slap in the face, perhaps. I was going to post something but the post is about 4 days old and is probably on page 50 by now.

What do you guys think? How can we get those "most wanted" servers down to just yellows and not reds on both sides. I guess I am wondering what we can do to make this place more accurate so we see less of this:

There are too few Horde entries for this realm to give reliable results! Please help today by submitting data for this realm! Find out more about how to help here!

Maybe I am just crazy for wanting to help out.

Leonaitis · Post by **Leonaitis** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 5:15 pm

I have no idea what is wrong with that guy talking bad about this site. When we recently moved to a new server in order to be with coworkers we used WCR as our main source of data and info in order to narrow our search. Taking detailed readings of various servers showed the info on this page while not exact where very good in listing ratios and overall numbers. When I do census readings I try to grab a few of the most wanted and then just randomly sample others. If others are up for it, I will gladly join and work towards getting something set up where we could narrow down that field of most wanted servers.

Skyfire · Post by **Skyfire** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 5:31 pm

They -should- put Rollie out of business by posting their own numbers.

However, saying the statistics are inaccurate? That's BS.

I also know that there are more people then those in that thread, that have referenced this site.

oiseaux · Post by **oiseaux** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 5:48 pm

I am glad that you 2 felt the same way I did when I read that. Anytime I rolled a character I visited this site for information EVEN before I was submitting data. Rather out of character for a Blizzard representative in my opinion. It is one thing to say you do not like the website and mod, but it is another to claim it is full of errors or inaccuracies without evidence to support those claims.

Edit: If we could get those most wanted to at least Yellows it would help out. Maybe each week I or whoever could make a list of the realms in dire need of census data and make a post about which ones we need to pay most attention to. With almost 53k registered users on the forum, even if .5% try to help out that would be awesome.

My server is fine with the census, so I am willing to get those servers that are not so good. I have characters on Lightning's Blade and Frostwolf (alliance) so I could start taking census on those again. I was going to take a small break this month, but that post really made me angry haha.

Skyfire · Post by **Skyfire** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 6:29 pm

I've been workin on Alliance side Shadow Moon.

So don't worry bout them

Post by **Rollie** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 10:02 pm

Actually, he is right in every shape. What I'm most disappointed in is that it wasn't said until page 2 or 3 the important fact that submissions for that server are very low and the results cannot be considered accurate.

So with that, yes, in saying "Im not even going to touch on the extreme inaccuracies of those realm census figures." he is being very truthful. Those realm figures (for Garona) ARE inaccurate. I almost guarantee it. There aren't enough submissions for the Horde side for it to be accurate!

I was actually pleasantly surprised with the number of people who were supporting WR in general on that forum. Usually the number of Blizz fanbois that are willing to swallow whatever Blizz tosses them is a lot higher in those types of threads.

One good thing definately came out of that thread though. While reading, I got the idea to start tracking BG queues =)

So I'm going to try to add in BG queue time tracking to the stats. I think that would be very beneficial to have =)

Alanthus · Post by **Alanthus** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 11:15 pm

Blizzard has always had a company policy that relies heavily on secrecy, obfuscation and misdirection. Any statistics site for an MMO can always (even if the numbers are taken automatically right from the servers) be accused of being inaccurate, there is no escaping that. If you had data for every server for every hour you would still have bots, farmers, people logged on but not active, active people that never enter an instance, people not speaking your language etc. online that all warp the numbers from your perspective...

What you do is you try to get as much source data as possible and then you apply common sense and logic to that to try and turn this data into useful information. What you get is an educated guess, the more data you have and the better your analysis is the better the guess but it will never be entirely accurate, for servers with a decent amount of data it should be accurate enough for most practical purposes though.

Blizzard has a very obvious agenda, they want to be able to spin or hide population information as much as possible because MMO's have a history of turning lowering populations into a stampede of players leaving. I don't think they will be successful in this, the very design of the game relies so heavily on instancing that a rather small decline in population will leave realms feeling virtually deserted. The funny thing is that so far the numbers on this site with the exception of population balance have been very favorable to Blizzard, "empty" or low population servers have actually had quite a few players, rumors that players are leaving in droves have largely been proven wrong by the data collected here (at least as many new players start playing as the ones who stop) etc.

Blizzard will never release useful numbers to the public but if they did there are all sorts of interesting statistical analysis that this web site could provide so I very much doubt the site would have a problem. DAOC has always had population data available and for a time there were at least three different sites providing analysis of the numbers Mythic made available

About the numbers for Garona, I hate it when people use the total alliance/horde ratios, those numbers are statistically unsound since they are based on characters and not players, the activity ratio suggested at 2:1 sounds about right though based on the server having over 2000 players on alliance at prime time and rarely being queued (leaving only 1500 max for horde but most of the time the total is less and some people being at the character selection screen etc. for both sides the few times it is queued). If Drysc would state that the activity ratio is extremely inaccurate it would be interesting... not to mention a rather blatant lie...

oiseaux · Post by **oiseaux** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 11:48 pm

Rollie I understand what you mean. I was actually trying to make a horde character on Garona to get the census information corrected, but I cannot. It seems that Blizzard has disabled character creation on that realm. Go figure! Maybe I will try again tomorrow.

I don't like the attitude that Drysc had in that thread. He didn't even want to "touch" how inaccurate it was. He sounded rather elitist or something to me. "I have inside information and you don't..hahah" Something like that.

Another thing I think this thread has helped me to see is that no one truly understands the data this mod collects. It seems like they just look at the amount of alliance and horde on a server without checking to see how much data is being collected on that server. Maybe I am a little more bright than the average person, but it seems that people do not understand the difference between activity ratios and the character population ratios(ie 80% alliance and 20% horde, but an activity ratio of 1.1:1).

I just got upset I guess. haha I wanted to stick up for Rollie and this website!

Oh and the idea of tracking BG queues would be amazing. That will all changed drastically though in 1.12 with cross-server BGs.

And to Alanthus. I think Blizzard is way to secretive as well. What is there to hide? Oh yeah that is right, population imbalances.

Post by **Rollie** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 8:54 am

Yeah, I think I need to find a way to push the activity ratios a bit more. People focus in too much on the total characters when the activity ratios really give a better indicator of 'life on the farm'.

Leonaitis · Post by **Leonaitis** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 1:27 pm

The data on this site is based on snapshots by the people doing the census readings, so while not extremely accurate they do help make sense of the overall population. I checked the data for the server I transfered to and went in and took a few readings myself and most of the data was 95%+ accurate. So having Blizz talk about how bad our data is does not make me cheerful at all. Is the data 100% correct? Of course not, since the only way for that to happen would be for someone doing a census continously on each server in order to get every single character that logs on. That will never happen.

However, I think we can do alot better than what we are doing now. I have been submitting data to this site for over a year now and didn't even bother to create an account until last year. Even when I submit, I never bothered to log in using my info since update total either. I recently formatted my pc and by default added my login info for this site, so when I submit now it adds to my totals. I made over 68k updates this month and it took me about 7 days. I have two computers and use an alternate account to log in and just run down the list of most wanted while I play on my regular account. If I am able to get this far in such a short time I do think if we get a dedicated goup of people willing to help out that we can vastly improve the data we collect. I personally do not mind checking servers every nite while I play on my second computer. The only problem with that would be that I could never scan enough in an hour so we would need multiple people set to specific servers going at it throughout the day. I can see that this would greatly improve accuracy if we tried this.

For the record, I just did a scan of Aerie Peak while I typed this. The activity graph said we should have 2200ish at this time of the day. My census reading brought back 2268. That is not what I call 'extremely innacurrate'. Yes, there are some servers worse than others but I feel that is because when we scan the most wanted and get a few readings it drops from the list. We need to scan aggressively for a few days to make sure to get more data.

oiseaux · Post by **oiseaux** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 2:41 pm

Well I made a character on Garona(horde) and Azshara(alliance). I also have alliance characters on Frostwolf and Lightning's Blade. However, Frostwolf and Lightning's blade horde side really needs some data. I have a couple mid level characters on Frostwolf alliance and do not want to delete them. So someone is going to need to get some data on horde side if possible.

@Leonaitis
Honestly, if I do census for 4 hours a day I could be at the top of the contributor list fairly easy. However, my husband thinks I am crazy as it is and I have been trying to cut back computer time and WoW time. So I will see how much I can do without getting husband aggro lol. Then again with the new addition of /census timer, I just set it to run every minute(on realms I am not actually playing on) and just tab out!

If anyone else is willing to help out with data on Anetheron(horde) that would be great. Only 3 submissions in 30 days there.

DM. · Post by **DM.** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 4:38 pm

While inacurate some servers are, the data on WCR does rely on submissions by the players themselves on a daily basis to get the best snapshot of how that server really is.

I can say on Silvermoon, the data I have on my list is very close to what is showing up on WCR.

IMO I think Drysc is refering to all realms, and not that particular realm, since he used the word 'those' as opposed to 'that' which, imo would be refering to more than one realm.

And I totally agree with Alanthus on what Blizzard is doing.

I say keep it as it is, but if a server needs to be updated we can either post a friendly notice on that server's realm forums or just sit tight and wait for someone to read the red message... I posted a notice on the Silvermoon forums for the Alliance side to get their numbers up a couple of months ago when I noticed it was down. And since I play on that realm I am known by many on both sides, so it didn't come across as an advertisement at all, just a friendly notice. And I did noticed the numbers did improve a bit the next month for the Alliance side.

Rollie is doing an amazing job here, he's worked hard on this, and with the newly released realm transfers, Warcraft Realms is becoming even more resourceful for those seeking to transfer to another realm.
People are also using WCR to compare with the other realms in their Battlegroup come 1.12 with the Cross-Realm Battlegrounds.

Good job Rollie!

oiseaux · Post by **oiseaux** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 6:07 pm

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to 'change' anything in a bad way. I just think we need to be more aware of which realms need our attention. I use my husband (Ihope he doesn't read this) as an example of the majority of WoW players. He thinks the census is boring and a hassle to worry about uploading and downloading files. BUT he uses this site all the time when choosing a new realm. Yes makes absolutely no sense at all. Those of us who actually find this work interesting need to step up and help those realms. All of those Most wanted realms should at least be yellows. Some realms have only 3 submissions in a 30 day time period which can easily be done in 20 minutes depending upon the population size.

Of course it is best if people who are actually playing on that realm do the census, but that is just not possible on every realm. We need to fill the gaps. Personally I think there should be a census built into the default UI, but I would miss this site and community greatly.

madslane · Post by **madslane** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 6:41 pm

I hate reading alot so maybe this point has been said.

Only Blizzard can tell us how accurate these numbers are. At best I use the numbers found at WR as speculation or an estimate. There can be all kind of problems that would make WR inaccurate.

One example, and Rollie if you find a way to solve this let me know, would be that characters are delted. Let's say you do a Census and find 100 characters all begining in hogger???. Like a guild all started toons to kill hogger at a low level. Then all them are deleted. But you saw them during your Census. And two days later after they are deleted you run your Cenus again, and then upload it. All those characters that existed during one Cenus but have since been deleted still count towards the number. Would I be correct as saying this could be the biggest flaw? (I will literally shit my pants if you found a way around this since I can't think of a way, but then I'm still new to WoW)

There's several reasons as to make WR realms inaccurate, that's why I take everything I see with a grain of salt. Some servers can be pretty close and others can be nowwhere near close. All depends.

Skyfire · Post by **Skyfire** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 8:11 pm

Mad:

Any characters not seen in the past 30 days are -not- counted in the statistics.

So yeah. Rollie's already dealt with that.

Leonaitis · Post by **Leonaitis** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 8:56 am

I have maxed out all my wow toons on one account. I just play on one, and use 6 others on an old server before I transfered. So most are sitting on servers that need updates all the time and used just for this site. I had to loan my extra pc to a friend who had his die but in a few days when I get it back I will start getting to work in a small group of servers and just update those every hour for a couple of hours a day several days a week. I am goin to stop tryin to get max submissions and try to go for better readings of several servers. Any ideas which ones we should do first?

Post by **Rollie** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 1:44 pm

Just hitting the most wanted would be the most help =)

oiseaux · Post by **oiseaux** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 3:44 pm

What Rollie said. And you can just go to the US server stats and any server with a red in the activity ratio is a good choice. A few servers have red on both sides, so I know those servers numbers are way off for sure.

If you have a horde on a pvp server and need someone to make an alliance on that server just let me know. You can PM if you like because I check my real email more often than this site(I get a notification).

Leonaitis · Post by **Leonaitis** » Wed Jul 26, 2006 8:31 am

I know about that, that is what I have been doing. My point is that we need to do more than just drop it off the list for a few days. For example, if a server shows on the list and we all hit it for a few days, it drops from the list. A few days later, when the averages balance out on the readings the same server shows up again. We really need to slam those servers for a few days after they drop from list to make sure they stop showing up. Have you noticed sometimes from out of the blue a server that was not even on the list suddenly shows up at the top? I was trying to figure out a way to keep than from happening.

NiennaMiriel · Post by **NiennaMiriel** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 7:06 am

I usually create a census toon on Most Wanted realms, and then even if it drops off, whenever I have time to do full censuses (which isn't as often as I like any more), I still do those servers, and add in more Most Wanted. I think I'm gonna be maxed out soon. =/