Self-census on start of scan as well as end?

Balgair · Post by **Balgair** » Sat Dec 20, 2014 8:02 pm

I know all about the self-census on the end of a census run, it's great! However it's not that effective on giant realms: mine takes over 1.5 hours to run a full scan at peak hours since the population cap was raised, so actually reaching the end doesn't always happen with normal play.

I just noticed one of my alts which levelled to 93 at least a week ago is still showing as 92 - easy to see how that happened; I clearly logged off after levelling but before the census ended, so it didn't catch me. And it takes so very long to get through the 100s down to the low 90s that it's still not caught me, even though I've logged that character every day - garrison chores only take a few mins so I never stayed on long enough!

Obviously, now I've noticed that I'll use /census me next time I'm on that character, but having it automated at the start as well as the end of a census might be a nice bonus for us on large realms, would save having to remember to census myself manually

Edit: on a related note, I'm kinda concerned about coverage of <100 in general on higher pop servers, lvl 100s tend not to change much, but they take the vast majority of the time, while lower lvls who do change a lot are going to be missed by people who actively play there, but don't stick to the same character for 2 hours straight (or by visiting censusers who get AFK-dc'ed before reaching the end!).

I saw an older thread suggesting reverse censuses; I understand the reasons for rejecting that idea, but, on really large servers, I'd imagine picking the lowbie characters up at all, even if the census doesn't reach the end, is better than missing them entirely? Probably too complex, but I'd like to see some way that the addon can say "hey, this server is HUGE and the last 3-4 attempts to census it cut off before reaching the end; I'll flip round and do the lowbies first this time". Yeah, I'm sure it's not that simple to actually make it do that

Post by **bringoutyourdead** » Sat Dec 20, 2014 9:55 pm

I understand your frustration with the fact that Census takes a lot of time on the 6000+ active realms.
I spent 8 hours today just to do runs on 5+1/2 of the most neglected US region realms and yes I had to log out on the missing faction while it was still on the 100 level.

While it is possible to go hyper aggressive on the /who function, we would be the most hated addon on World of Warcraft as we saturated that feature.
We would probably gain the negative attention of Blizzard and they would probably just disable /who, as they have already done for levels 1-19.

As you have rediscovered /census me will take care of your current character.

Looking at EU-Draenor: My gosh.. what an unbalanced server.. 99% Horde!

Looking at the Realm Activity which only records on completed census runs.
We had 150 completed Horde Census runs during the last 30 days, most of those during the peak evening-AM hours.

The bottom line is that we will always have situations where we miss characters and level ups.
The only solution is to have more people running CensusPlus to insure enough overlap.
While this might trigger the server limiter on the /who function.. Blizzard would just see it as our standard usage from lots of players.

Balgair · Post by **Balgair** » Sun Dec 21, 2014 6:38 am

Fair point, I'll just try and remember to use /census me more then

And yeah, Draenor is crazy, it's not actually 99% Horde, as Alliance hasn't had many censuses lately (note to self: log on an Alliance alt later), but it is somewhere around 90-95% Horde... 7.7-7.9k online at peak hours, vs Alliance maxing out at about 600-650.

As for completed censues, 150 may sound good but to me it seems rather low, given both Fuxie and I play on Draenor, goes to show how much the higher pop is affecting it I think!

FuxieDK · Post by **FuxieDK** » Sun Dec 21, 2014 11:51 am

bringoutyourdead wrote:Looking at EU-Draenor: My gosh.. what an unbalanced server.. 99% Horde!

ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? Do you hostly want me to belive that Draenor have 1% Alliance???

I think I might have seen a total of 5 alliance players in the 1,5 I've been on that server..

Anyway, to get it back on track: How about (or atleast let it be an option to) reverse census order?
As mentioned, most changes happer sub 100, so it could speed up things..
Or an option to skip max-level scan?

Balgair wrote:I saw an older thread suggesting reverse censuses; I understand the reasons for rejecting that idea, but, on really large servers, I'd imagine picking the lowbie characters up at all, even if the census doesn't reach the end, is better than missing them entirely? Probably too complex, but I'd like to see some way that the addon can say "hey, this server is HUGE and the last 3-4 attempts to census it cut off before reaching the end; I'll flip round and do the lowbies first this time". Yeah, I'm sure it's not that simple to actually make it do that

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/forum/vie ... php?t=6032
I've preveous made a suggestion to have Census being able to work past toon-switch..

Balgair · Post by **Balgair** » Sun Dec 21, 2014 11:59 am

Haha

It's not quite that bad, just hopped on an alt, 281 online. Assuming there's about 7k on Horde at present (can't be bothered waiting an hour for census to run), that makes Alliance roughly 4% of the server

FuxieDK · Post by **FuxieDK** » Sun Dec 21, 2014 12:00 pm

Balgair wrote:Haha It's not quite that bad, just hopped on an alt, 281 online. Assuming there's about 7k on Horde at present (can't be bothered waiting an hour for census to run), that makes Alliance roughly 4% of the server

No no no no...

I will not have that many Alliance scum on my server....

CALL SOMEONE!!!