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pleuraXeraphim

Age :49

Group: News Writer

Location: Ireland

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pleuraXeraphim

Misc / 1 Sep 2010, 18:08

Quakeworld in Decline - Visual

It's not dead yet but is it getting there....?

Having recently read through the latest Quakeworld revival thread, out of interest I went and performed some queries on the Quakeworld Statistics database to get an idea of activity, since the site went active in February last year.

I queried the total weekly matches played in 1on1, 2on2 and 4on4. I then compared these weekly figures from 2009 against 2010 in 3 separate charts as below.
You can see the various peaks and troughs in activity during the summer and winter periods as expected. However the main thing that is very obvious is that on a weekly basis across 1on1, 2on2 and 4on4, the numbers are definitely down and significantly so from last year. Yeah I know it might be obvious but now we know for sure.

It should be noted that before the site went active there had been stats for 2008 and I think 2007 and one thing that had been evident at the time was a surge in activity when there was a team building initiative and rookie tourneys.

This sounds like a bloody thesis or something. Tis just been another very boring day at work as you can clearly see :-)
So anyway numbers are down. It�s confirmed, but will there be a task force put together to reverse this trend before its too late. :-)

Note:
X- Vertical Axis (Number of Matches Played)
Y- Horizontal Axis (Week Number in the year)

Further Charts:
I also drew up the following 3 charts using the same data showing weekly activity for 1on1, 2on2, 4on4 from February last year through to September 2010. This was just to give a general trend over the full period since the site went active.

FFA Diagram:
The figures are well down for FFA as well. Interestingly there is less peaks and troughs with FFA, with no real summer break however there has been a noticeable decline in numbers since 2009.

It should be noted that while there are bugs in the way the info is sometimes displayed on the actual stats site, the query results shown here themselves were performed on the match data directly and should be fairly accurate.
Also the detailed figures are available if anyone is interested. :-)

Comments

2010-09-01, 18:37

Hagge

A nice read! I'm not worried, seems like activity has gone up a lot now in the last two weeks or so. As long as there is ppl to play with I will keep on playing

2010-09-01, 19:33

Stev

Interesting reading. 4on4 seems to have taken the smallest hit, probably due to all the drama surrounding it

, but the significant drop in all other game modes is not a good portent.

2010-09-02, 01:11

time!

This is all because antilag is on :X

2010-09-02, 07:47

Hagge

you don't like antilag time? thought you would love it

2010-09-02, 12:43

JohnNy_cz

Heh, few minutes ago I also posted some qw graphs on the forum, without knowing there's a blog post from you with graphs too.. nice coincidence

2010-09-02, 13:12

pleuraXeraphim

Great minds think alike

2010-09-02, 13:58

time!

Hagge: If doesn't matter if i like it or not. I just like activitity. My comment was a semi-joke, but maybe is antilag along with other things what makes people quit. I barely play now, but because i'm busy with real life stuff.

2010-09-02, 14:21

Rikoll

I doubt antilag has much to do with it, it is more that the player base average age are rising. Tbh, I think antilag have the potential of being some of the best that have happened to the scene in a while. We'll see.. But of course, anything that doesn't get "new recruits" will die eventually.

2010-09-02, 18:09

bps

I feel younger and younger every day

2010-09-02, 19:11

#10

HangTime

Good job.

One thing about the FFA stats though, what criteria are you measuring on, number of matches? It might also be interesting to see total player minutes as for example a decline in games played could simply be as a result of a greater concentration of players on a smaller number of servers (e.g. Russian ffa server goes down, so russians join the action on xs4all). You can't really make the same comparisons as you did for 1v1/2v2/4v4 because FFA does not have a static number of players and has no restrictions on joining in progress matches.

Example:
MrQuake wants to play a 1on1 game. The only way he can do this is to start a new match.
MrsQuake wants to play a ffa game. By far the easiest way she can do this is to join a game already in progress, it is much less likely that she will join an empty server to start a new game.

2010-09-02, 19:34

#11

pleuraXeraphim

Good point HangTime. I was thinking about that as well this evening. One of the main servers scanned was nobodysalternative and that has been shut down recently so you could be right. Will check the stats on xs4All as that is the main server really across Europe and might be a better indicator.

2010-09-02, 19:51

#12

HangTime

Even if you just look at a single server that isn't really ideal as a measure of activity because there is no distinction between a game with 2 players and a game with 16 players. Generally speaking during peak hours you would expect xs4all to be in almost constant use.

Then you have to remember that there is the next_map command in FOD FFA mod which presumably triggers a 'new match' if enough players vote it. So 16 players playing for 12 minutes (196 player minutes) would count as 1 match, whereas 2 players playing for 15s then next_mapping, playing for 15s and dropping (1 player minute) would count as 2 matches. Does that really represent twice as much activity?

2010-09-02, 20:03

#13

pleuraXeraphim

True but over a 2 year period this would average out anyway over the two years. The graph wont give a full indication of the length of matches, number of players but it does indeed show a reduction this year based on the same criteria. If that makes any sense

Twould take a bit of effort to extract that sort of info. Some servers would not play the 12 minutes either. Might have a look and see what I can pull out. But in any case it might be more important to focus now now on reversing the downturn and see if numbers can be increased again.

Edited by pleuraXeraphim on 02 Sep 10 @ 22:00CET

2010-09-03, 11:37

#14

Andeh

there are new recruits to QW as well! just look at me!

2010-09-03, 12:31

#15

Hooraytio

Bring your friends!

2010-09-06, 14:25

#16

miku83

Time, what are you talking about? Antilag and new kenya maps in EQL will bring new players into the scene.

Rikoll, you like it cos ur bolt is not lagging that much as mine(52 ms or more

) Maybe antilag is not that bad under 30 ms, but i really dont like with my 52 ms

. I played 1 4on4 since i realised it is on, all strategical server has it

. And they still havent fixed that bug or something, what Bigfoot posted on qw.nu in a demo. Its ok, i accepted it will be on, just ignore my bullshit here, (as they ignored to watch Bigfoots demo) but that would be great to leave 1 server antilagfree from every server family(wg3 from wg servers for example, my english might failed me again

) If something is usefull for the community, that is the new QHLAN(much respect to the organizers)!!too bad i cannot go there, i would really like to.

2010-09-07, 22:16

#17

Rikoll

I'd like to see the same graphs thats up now, but 1 month ahead. Think it would look very different tbh.

2010-09-08, 16:03

#18

pleuraXeraphim

I'll run tham again in a month or at any stage if people are interested. Tis easy enough to run off the reports.

2010-09-13, 16:55

#19