Active in that sense is just logging in once every 30 days or so though.

That will also count all of a person's alts, so doesn't give an estimate of # of players behind the alts.

The number of forum accounts might be as good an estimate you are going to get without counting the number of IG accounts.

I don't see how -- some people have multiple forum accounts and quite a lot of players aren't on the forum.

A very lot of them aren't.

So they kind of balance out, maybe

As an aside you can get a general idea of the active number of players online using Little's Law.

From Wikipedia: The long-term average number of customers in a stable system L is equal to the long-term average arrival rate, λ, multiplied by the long-term average time a customer spends in the system.

It's handy for guessing how long you have to wait in a queue at the bar/grocery store and all kinds of other random situations. If you calculate L over the course of two weeks you could probably extrapolate for a year (or five) and have a reasonable estimate that will at least be in the proper order of magnitude. (which you get just as easily by looking at forum accounts) Of course this isn't exactly what you're looking for but if you know someone who knows a lot about queuing theory you could probably create some birth/death rate model/simulation, do some math magic and get a good idea of what's going on.

Yes, and there are surely players who signed up for the forum six years ago who are no longer with us.

It's really, really hard to pin down the size of any online game's active player base, in my experience. The admins could probably get a roughly accurate estimate by counting all of the unique IP address visits that occur at least ten times during a period of 30 days. That rules out alts and inactive (or very nearly inactive) characters and somewhat adjusts for dynamic/changing IP addresses.

I tend to think that, at any given moment during peak times, approximately 1 in 4 of all active Lusternia players are online (this figure is usually 120-130 people). It could be as high as 1 in 3 active players online during peak, or as low as 1 in 5. 1 in 2 and 1 in 6 both seem fairly unlikely.

So basically, when you multiply the number of players online at peak by the estimate of what proportion of the playerbase is currently playing, you get a range of 400-600 active players. I think 500, give or take 50, is probably fairly close to reality.

It'd be even easier for admins, since we supply an email-adress when registering (and everyone uses the same email-adress for all their alts, right? RIGHT?), which would just make it a question of checking which registrations have been active within the last few days.

Good point. You're not forced to register right away (if ever), but I am sure everyone who plays for any length of time registers.

How long does it take to learn one group of lessons?

You are forced to register, actually. Your character won't survive the daily purges without it.


I find even one in five extremely unlikely, unless you're using "active" to mean "active enough to hold an elected office with ease and has little to no real life." That's putting the median online time at almost 34 hours a week.

Yes they will. I have had characters go for months without registering, you just have to make sure you play them.

As the ratio becomes more pronounced, median online time per player actually decreases, so I'm not sure why you'd find 1:5 unlikely as opposed to, say, 1:3. 1:1 would indicate that every player is online at peak time, which would translate to a huge number of hours spent per player per week. As you move past 1:1 to 1:2, 1:3, 1:4 and 1:5, the number of hours spent per player decreases.

EDIT: Actually, ratios don't really work for this. Fractions are what works, but the principle of hours spent is basically the same.

You bring up a good point, though: Comparing a given population estimate to MUDstats.com's average connected players figure (which, for Lusternia, is 78, measured hourly over the course of an entire month) should tell you roughly how realistic that estimate is.

Using MUDStats' figure, if Lusternia has a total active population of 500, that would mean a median online time of 20-25 hours per week, which actually seems a bit high.

For 15 lessons in Shadowbeat, it's about 32 seconds. I use an alias to learn multiple batches, and if I set the #WAIT time any lower than 32 seconds, it wouldn't work properly.

Is there a defense that lets you see when cloaked people walk out of the room?

Not that I know of. Faeriefire on them will mostly cancel shroud, though.

Faeriefire, that lowers their armor right? But I'm not a faerie dragon.

Wrong game. And faerie dragons don't even cast faeriefire!

There's also that Harmony Mantra that tells you who but not where they exited/entered.

Instead of waiting, trigger on "bows to you - the lesson in Blah is over" and you don't have to get the timing right. You will learn your lessons as fast as is possible.

Harmony Ooshmun will tell you what direction 'someone' went, but doesn't tell you who that someone was. It halfway counteracts shroud.