Downloaded the mod and set to getting data for my realm. I set it to "auto-census". I noticed the population numbers climbed higher and higher thorough the evening as I switched between characters.
Tired to look up if I should be limiting it to only one character - as I suspect that it's adding each consecutive character's data to the list - but I can't find a thread saying to do that. I'm going to purge and limit data collection to manual. Would love to know why it's giving me interesting numbers.
It would utterly invalidate any data I'd upload if I was setting up the mod incorrectly and I'd like to avoid that.
Might be a bug ... Might be me doing something stupid
Hello!
Actually, the data collection is incremental intentionally. When you successfully log out a character, data gets saved. The .lua file can (and for many of us big uploaders does) contain data from multiple census runs, even from several different servers. The main limitation is that manual uploads are limited to about 8 MB maximum. (It's supposed to be 10 MB, but at least I can't currently get files in excess of 8 MB to manually upload correctly.)
I am about 99% sure you are doing nothing wrong. If you find some numbers confusing, please make a further post and I (or someone else) can take a look at them.
Have a nice day!
Actually, the data collection is incremental intentionally. When you successfully log out a character, data gets saved. The .lua file can (and for many of us big uploaders does) contain data from multiple census runs, even from several different servers. The main limitation is that manual uploads are limited to about 8 MB maximum. (It's supposed to be 10 MB, but at least I can't currently get files in excess of 8 MB to manually upload correctly.)
I am about 99% sure you are doing nothing wrong. If you find some numbers confusing, please make a further post and I (or someone else) can take a look at them.
Have a nice day!Forgive me for poking again... Just want to make sure I'm being clear and we're talking about the same thing. For instance when it chimes as complete for Character A it reads a total of 350. And then when I log into Character B (same server and faction) and it chimes as complete the total number is approximately double the original figure.
If I'm understanding you - that is to be expected - correct?
If the data collection in incremental why does it chime complete and how long would I have to be online (and how many characters cycled through on that same server) to have an accurate sampling?
Perhaps part of my confusion would be whether we're looking at unique accounts or characters (of which an account might have many)?
If I'm understanding you - that is to be expected - correct?
If the data collection in incremental why does it chime complete and how long would I have to be online (and how many characters cycled through on that same server) to have an accurate sampling?
Perhaps part of my confusion would be whether we're looking at unique accounts or characters (of which an account might have many)?
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bringoutyourdead
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Each time you do a /census take, you are taking a snapshot of what characters are online during the time it takes to go from max level to level 1. The completion of the snapshot is what the chime signals.
You have to remember that people (accounts) are logging in and out all the time.
Blizzard does not provide the ability to know at any instant of time how many are online.
The best we can do is use the tools Blizzard allows which is much slower, therefore we are more likely to miss people who hadn't logged in yet before you counted their level... or who logged out before you got to their level.
This is why we like one or better yet more people to doing snapshots of realm/factions multiple times per day (and uploading to this site.) As soon as the WarcraftRealms.com website owner and his staff fix the problems caused by the changes Blizzard introduced with patch 5.4, I intend to start asking people to work towards getting a snapshot on an hourly basis for every realm/faction. This I know is an impossible (or at least improbably) goal, but it will make our data much closer to what Blizzard has in their databases.
In the situation you are seeing...
Yes as you first start keeping records on a realm/faction each time you do a /census take you will see a large increment of new to you characters.
But as your history of the realm/faction gets larger the number of new to you characters will drop down to a relatively small fraction of the total number of characters.
These will be the natural addition (creation or realm transfers) of new names.
What we have no way to know is the names of characters that have gone silent, either from players no longer playing them or the player transferring them to another realm/faction.
You have to remember that people (accounts) are logging in and out all the time.
Blizzard does not provide the ability to know at any instant of time how many are online.
The best we can do is use the tools Blizzard allows which is much slower, therefore we are more likely to miss people who hadn't logged in yet before you counted their level... or who logged out before you got to their level.
This is why we like one or better yet more people to doing snapshots of realm/factions multiple times per day (and uploading to this site.) As soon as the WarcraftRealms.com website owner and his staff fix the problems caused by the changes Blizzard introduced with patch 5.4, I intend to start asking people to work towards getting a snapshot on an hourly basis for every realm/faction. This I know is an impossible (or at least improbably) goal, but it will make our data much closer to what Blizzard has in their databases.
In the situation you are seeing...
Yes as you first start keeping records on a realm/faction each time you do a /census take you will see a large increment of new to you characters.
But as your history of the realm/faction gets larger the number of new to you characters will drop down to a relatively small fraction of the total number of characters.
These will be the natural addition (creation or realm transfers) of new names.
What we have no way to know is the names of characters that have gone silent, either from players no longer playing them or the player transferring them to another realm/faction.
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bringoutyourdead
- Forums Admin & general flunky
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The real question is what is accurate?Cienwen wrote:... and how long would I have to be online (and how many characters cycled through on that same server) to have an accurate sampling?
A single computer, running two instances of the WoW client... one for Alliance the other for Horde.
This computer would need to be running the game 24 hours a day/ 365 days a year. Using the smallest delay I allow of 5 minutes between end of one snapshot and the start of the next. You would end up with a very good sampling of numbers of characters on each faction for that realm.. through out the day/week/month/ and year.
However the larger the realm/faction population the longer a snapshot takes, therefore the greater the likely hood that you will miss people logging in or out. So those realm/factions probably need multiple WoW clients running out of step from each other so that the overlap will catch the missing.
Other people use different methods to estimate how many characters are in each realm/faction. But the methods they use count characters that are in Blizzards database, but aren't actually seen in game anymore.
For example some sites will see a character in a guild and use the tools Blizzard provides to find all the guild members, then they count those guild members as playing even it they haven't been online in more then a year.