Which US server usually has the highest population?

[Angadan]

Here's the population data. Meant to get another set of data at midnight server time, but I'm getting sleepy.

First the summary chart and graph: http://i1186.photobucket.com/albums/...1/PopGraph.gif

Then the more detailed data behind it: http://i1186.photobucket.com/albums/...21/PopData.gif

Sorry about having to provide link...I used to be able to copy photobucket images right into the forums, but can't any more for some reason.

Night!

[J_Howell]

Here's the population data. Meant to get another set of data at midnight server time, but I'm getting sleepy.

First the summary chart and graph: http://i1186.photobucket.com/albums/...1/PopGraph.gif

Then the more detailed data behind it: http://i1186.photobucket.com/albums/...21/PopData.gif

Sorry about having to provide link...I used to be able to copy photobucket images right into the forums, but can't any more for some reason.

Night!

For Vilya, were you using unite or glff for your "glff" stats in the second link? There is a glff on Vilya but it's basically an emergency backup unite, with unite being the primary server-wide channel equivalent to glff on the other US servers and globallff on the EU servers. Looking at the data, I'm guessing you did not know that, which explains Vilya's anomalously low population/glff ratio compared to the other servers. Interesting that we have so many more 95s than Crickhollow and Riddermark.

Your data have no overlap with any times I ever play LOTRO, but agree quite well with my own observations of Brandywine, Landroval, and Vilya in terms of relative size (I only ever looked at Crickhollow very briefly since it was obvious it was not competitive with Landroval or Brandywine in size).

When comparing US and EU servers, I'd suggest plotting against the dominant local time - UTC-5 for the US as you're already doing, UTC for the English EU servers, and UTC+1 for the French and German servers if you extend this study to include them. That would make the Gilrain peak line up properly with the US peaks. And I can assure you that the 10pm Eastern point is indeed the peak, at least at the time resolution you're using - I normally log in around 11pm Eastern and see numbers noticeably lower than what you've posted, with lots of people logging off in kin.

[Castorix]

Well I'm having a hard time believing Gilrain has a higher population then Vilya, Riddermark, Silverlode, Arkenstone, Crickhollow & those are just some of the servers who finished after Gilrain.

Yes, Gilrain is by far the least populated server.

From Turbine SOAP data at this time :

Crickhollow : 189 507
Arkenstone : 142 498
Silverlode : 134 213
Vilya : 119 669
Riddermark : 109 357
Gilrain : 67 751

[Lunasa]

Gilrain which I believe to be pretty much the lowest populated server finished 18th. So I would not say the bounder's event was a fair approximation for population.

One of the reasons for that is the increased rate of the bounder token drop on Gilrain and Firefoot servers.

One can see it even from the second graph in this topic: https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...onations-Graph. Both servers were behind until September 6. After that they had noticeably higher amount of tokens handed in per day as compared to the majority of other servers. Some people tried to compare the drop rates by making characters on these servers and on the others, and all of them reported a significantly higher drop rate for Gilrain and Firefoot.

[Angadan]

For Vilya, were you using unite or glff for your "glff" stats in the second link? There is a glff on Vilya but it's basically an emergency backup unite, with unite being the primary...

When comparing US and EU servers, I'd suggest plotting against the dominant local time..

Yes, I was counting GLFF in Vilya. I was told by Vilyans that it was indeed the main global user-created channel. Guess the ones who responded to me don't like Unite or something heh. But it's not nearly as anomalous as when I was counting the GLFF numbers for Gilrain. I was getting returns like: 4, 4, 8, 8, 2 before I decided something had to be off and kept asking 95s until one told me about globallff. (again there, the first person I asked assured me GLFF is the main channel...of course, he was one of the 4 people in GLFF, so he clearly didn't know either).

I actually didn't mean to include an EU server. This whole test was meant to help answer OP's question. And he asked about NA servers only. Only caught Gilrain up in it because of Rosey21's comment earlier in the thread. It wasn't until I saw the significant drop in Gilrain population in the middle of US prime playing time that I realized and checked. By the way, Crickhollow had a similar drop off a couple of hours later: Though I knew it was one of the four NA expansion servers, I figured at first that it had a lage EU population as well...but then I came up with a different theory: a lot of Crickhollow players may ALSO play on Landy, and were switching over for some Friday evening RP events at the point where their population took such a sudden dip (and Landy's made such a sudden climb).

Yes, Gilrain is by far the least populated server.

That's right, although from the viewpoint of one of the big servers, "by far" is an exaggeration. From the perspective of a Vanyarite or Brandywiner, the smallest half-dozen servers all look about the same.

At the same time, this is interesting: if you were a server-hopper, logged on only during US day time (8 am to 5 pm or so, server/US East coast time), you would find Gilrain almost indistinguishable in population from Riddermark (or Firefoot, based on some spot checks). After 5 pm, the drop off is severe as the EU crowd head to bed. But if your play times were during that window, you could move from Firefoot or Riddermark to Gilrain and never notice the population difference. And interestingly, Gilrain actually had MORE level 95s (people able to do end-game content) than Riddermark at most points through the day, until they went to sleep. Or so it appears based on a snapshot of one single day.

And that is important to keep in mind. This is a snapshot of a part of one 24-hour period in the life of these servers. There are things that make it potentially anomalous: it's a Friday, and Fridays (start of the weekend) can be 'different'. It also falls at the early part of the 'spring break' window, and may be affected by some schools letting out for the week-long holiday. And, as J_Howell noted, it only covers the time period when I was awake and checking (no, J_Howell, I'm not about to get up in the middle of the night, every 2 hours all night long, to check server counts, heh). So take the data with those limitations in mind.

[Angadan]

... & that means that every reply that another player gives you, about servers population, is pure speculations based on arbitrary opinions.

No, head counts and other objective measures are neither speculation nor arbitrary. They are simply incomplete. Headcounts, for instance, miss one element: anonymous characters. Trying to guess what % the anons would add to the population would be speculation. But simply looking at the non-anonymous populations and comparing evident server sizes that way isn't speculative at all.

[Castorix]

Quote Originally Posted by Angadan
... Turbine does not release population numbers ...

... & that means that every reply that another player gives you, about servers population, is pure speculations based on arbitrary opinions.

Turbine SOAP services give the number of connections per server in real time, which is usually accurate (except if a same player connects/disconnects 1000+ times per day on a server...)