What do those numbers MEAN!?

by Honorguard

This is a somewhat rare question, but when it is asked it is frequently given an incorrect answer.  Think you know?  Well, lets compare notes....


This appears in the upper right corner of the play now page (as of the date of this article's writing)

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First, the colors...


Green - Players on the "green servers".  Namely, the Beginning Server.
Orange - Players on the "Orange" servers.  Namely, Open server.
Red - Should be obvious now: Players with access to the Regular Server.


Now, about the numbers...

Each number listing represents the "active players" on the three different levels (depending on possible future changes, there could be several more).  To be more specific, it represents the number of accounts that have logged into the GAME within the past week or two.  The week or two is an estimate based on past statements by Slurpy himself... the post that Slurpy had announced this change in was over a year old and there are few posts so old that have not been removed.

You will notice the numbers will frequently fluctuate from day to day, as various accounts stop being logged in to and new accouts are created/logged in to after a long time.

A Myth about the numbers!

"The numbers represent TOTAL accouts on the player database, and the reason the numbers fluctuate is because accouts get deleted."

Reasons this is a falsehood...

  1. Slurpy made the numbers reflect "active" accounts because the numbers had become very inflated and misleading early on.
  2. There is no algorithm at the time of this article that scans the database routinely and deletes old accounts (any moderator can attest to this from first-hand observations).  Note: There is a single exception this right now:  People who register an account but never actually log in to a game server.  After a week of the website account not being associated with an in-game account, the account is deleted.
  3. An old account will get erased/changed occasionally if an old player returns to the game to find his account is being used.  This is never the case if said name is actively being used.
  4. The "Regular Server" number was once around 1,100 or more, and is now around 500.  If the numbers did in fact show every account ever made, and we know there is no automatic deletion of accounts, then MODs have deleted over 500 "red" accounts.  Over the course of my entire Moderator career I deleted only 5 or 6 accounts of the Regular server level.



 All of this is, of course, subject to change at any time and without any notice.  For now, however, this article is 100% true.  Why did I feel it was important to type this all out?  Just because it's a very simple and minor bit of info that is commonly not understood by people and big important players everyone turns to for knowledge frequently tell the "myth" rather than the facts.  These things annoy me to no end!  Just like "landing makes you completely untargetable".





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