Anyone know why December 2009 seemed to have an abnormal increase in population?

 

 

holiday events probably and dont forget christmas break

Funnily enough, most of the "down-trends" start around December of '07. Hmm. Wonder why....

Some people left, yes, but many more gold farmers left.

 

Most bots nowadays are "players" trying to get high level stats/gp. Pre-2007, most bots were just gp-farmers who would sell the gp for cash.

That's what I meant. Loss of bots/goldfarmers caused a population drop.

Deosnt Alexa only count those who use their toolbar? These stats are meaningless

 

AFAIK All of those sites are pretty awful in terms of actual hits. There have been several cases where people run two separate trackers (such as Google Analytics) where there is actually javascript on your page and whenever that is loaded it counts as a hit and the differences can be quite astounding. Most of the time these sites under-report numbers, or have no real way of truly knowing.

 

That would explain a lot. Awareness of ad-blockers and non-Internet Explorer browsers, where an ad blocker is usually on the top of the list of extensions and add ons, is on the rise over the last few years. These blockers may interfere with hit detecting software.

It's probably free players quitting. I don't care about free to play. Jagex are still getting a lot of money from the members.

 

People discover runescape through F2P. The F2P player base declines (in the strictest sense) when one of two things happen - A F2Per quits, or becomes a member. If there are fewer and fewer F2Pers, there will be fewer and fewer new members. This is bad news for Runescape.

 

Another thing that might be happening is that Jagex is competing with itself for its own customer base. I haven't notice Jagex advertising for its games anywhere else on the internet. They only seem to advertise within their own websites.

I find it interesting that there are player spikes during Christmas time. Possibly for the Christmas event.

 

And people home on break from college and what not playing in free time.

its due to stupid jagex being morons and ruining the wilderness and the duel arena and botters

maybe the community of Runescape has somewhat matured over the years?

 

Wishful thinking :thumbsup:

 

It's probably free players quitting. I don't care about free to play. Jagex are still getting a lot of money from the members.

 

Yep, the runescape population has somewhat matured...

 

Online games slowly lose players.

 

In other news, the sky is blue.

 

Not necessarily, MMO's aren't really plagued as much by the "over time your game will die" thing that normal games are.

 

Normal games are just that, normal games, you finish the game, its over, and after that the graphics are old, the game is old, and thats that.

 

MMO's are constantly updated, especially ones with subscription fees like runescape because they need to keep subscribers.

 

Sure, a game will eventually diminish, but more players generally fill the gap. Its weather or not your game is good enough for new players to replace the old players that quit.

Graphs show exactly how I feel. The game is only getting worse. 2007 was a great year for it... Too bad I quit over a year ago, so my opinion isn't really valued!

school starting up >.> figure that in

Graphs show exactly how I feel. The game is only getting worse. 2007 was a great year for it... Too bad I quit over a year ago, so my opinion isn't really valued!

Players who quit a year ago have little understanding and experience of the game today, preventing them from having informed opinions for us to value.

and what, pray tell, is that giant gap after august of 09?

and what, pray tell, is that giant gap after august of 09?

 

My thoughts exactly...

 

Did everyone just decide to screw off for a couple of weeks?

That's interesting. Anyways, I'm quite happy with the current population. 120k+ people online at once is plenty. I don't see these drops affecting RuneScape any time soon.

Seeing as no one has answered my question, I will proceed with all speed to come up with a conspiracy theory.

Gap = no statistics, not no players

Ah so the graph does show a slightly declining player population. It's not bad at all for an old game like RS.

Alexa isn't the greatest predictor, but there probably is a downtrend in players. Jagex must have seen this, they're actually running paid ads for RuneScape now.

I think School plays somewhat of a factor in it.

 

Schools usually begin to start around this time of year.