dwyur wrote: ↑Sun Jan 09, 2022 3:40 am
Alfa1986 wrote: ↑Sat Jan 08, 2022 10:43 pm
Well, firstly, because of the blocking of NB, it took not a few percent, but almost half of the server. in different time zones, the effect was of course different, but it took about 30 (EU) -50 (NA)% of the population.
This keeps being repeated by the people upset over NBs removal, and it is not remotely true. The server population has only grown in the last 2 months both primetime and dead NA night time, due to people coming back from MMO releases like New World/ Land of the Dead testing / natural cycle of getting bored with RoR and returning.
50% of the NA population did not leave due to NBs removal; when I stopped playing a year ago NA was even more dead than it is now.
A lot of stuff happened last year. Lots of games came out over the summer too. Back in March weekly peak concurrent numbers were hitting well over 1600 players, and we had a couple weeks at 1700+. The week before NB ban came down we were at ~1560 weekly peak players. The week after it dropped to 1340, the week after that it dropped to 1260. The weeks leading up to the city release we were around 1000 players, bumped up to 1450 for the release, and the weeks after we dipped into the low 900s. We've just recently started hitting over 1000 again, so it seems like we've hit bottom and are recovering as new players join the game. We have the numbers, it's not like there's some secret about how many people play here. We keep current player counts right on the homepage that anyone is free to scrape and make data out of.
So maybe this pronounced drop in population was a whole bunch of other reasons than NB getting banned, or maybe all those other reasons compounded the issue and we just chose the worst timing possible to do the most damage to the playerbase population. Pop bounced back a couple times since the initial ban as people found workarounds, but eventually the code was tightened, and NB was locked down completely. We haven't seen any credible evidence of working versions despite rumors. Sequencer was buggy at first, PlanB was broken, other addons seeming unrelated to NB broke as well. Players stuck around for weeks hoping this was some temporary insanity that we would pull back on, but we didn't despite the warning signs. It wasn't just NB getting banned that caused people to leave, but it did cause a critical collapse for a lot of established guilds. When enough people leave over the loss of a feature that made the game
playable for them, the people around them also end up leaving even if they didn't need or cared about losing NB. We saw large portions of guilds and alliances decide to take a break, play other games for a while, and see if things get better. Well, they have to get better before they consider coming back and it's unlikely that will happen.
So this is the new normal as far as NB goes. Pretty close to half of our active population decided
something over the summer would make them leave and not come back. NB was by far the most discussed topic smack dab in the middle of that time period. We will recover from it, the game is still great, we're still actively developing, and there's still content to come in the future. New players always find the game, and they're playing in an era where NB never existed for them. I haven't seen any movement internally that would remotely lead me to believe there's a sliver of consideration for removing the NB blocks, it's probably well past time to just move on and let this conversation die.