Need your help!!

[Rollie]

I started looking around at the number of updates we're getting per realm/faction and I see that we are fairly lacking on many many realms. We need more submissions from factions and realms that are not well covered. US realms are particularly bad off. I have added in additional areas where people will notice that the submissions are low, namely on the main Census page to hopefully encourage more people who use the site to submit data.

I could expand my coverage to characters seen in the last 45 or 60 days, but I think it really does work best with 30 days. We just need better coverage across all faction/server combos. Talk it up on your server boards, encourage members of the opposing faction to help submit data. I realize that most of you who are here reading this already help out, but a very tiny percentage of players are actually submitting data and we need more!

Let me know if you can think of things I can do to make it easier/quicker for people to submit data so that others may find it easy to get data to us!

Only with help across all servers will the data be truely accurate and reflective of player populations across the servers.

[Alanthus]

Well, as time passes we'll get less updates due to people tiring, cancelling and other issues. I will keep posting updates for my BH/Alliance and I will also now and then get some data from Sargeras/Horde which is my second server (for some reason that server no longer had anyone contributing on horde side, a cpl of months ago there was plenty).

Showing 45 or 60 day data is just a stop gap measure really and will just show less relevant data overall.

Getting some kind of overview up that shows history and/or concurrent user data would maybe be something that would sparc more interest as any discussion of population statistics now ends with ytring to explain that the site does not just display character (alt) data but there is also hard numbers for concurrent user when digging deeper. A lot of people are looking for a new server as their low population server is getting more and more deserted and short of levelling a char to 40 or so to find out this is the site with the most relevant data for them to try and find a server with a decent population.

[WallyR]

I think one of the main reasons to the lacking updates is the TOS and the currently unknown status of Census+ in relation to this (http://www.warcraftrealms.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=451
).

People that are still active playing are not willing to put their account at risk due to some "unimportant" data gathering.
Get a clear response from Blizzard, maybe by posting the question on their forums.
If its a positive response, then you should see a big increase.
If its a negative response, then you would probably see a drop.

[Rollie]

I have both posted in their forums and emailed them and have had no response to either. If this (and other mods like this) fell under the TOS section mentioned, then we'd know about it by now ad there would be postings about it in the UI forum. I am still awaiting a response though.

[Synapse Void]

In an effort to help out the 'red' areas I've been making characters named 'Censuscheck' on the various servers that are in dire need of data gathering and collecting data. I collect info during peak times and low population times and send it in at least once a day. There are about 10 servers that have no one...or almost no one gathering data....I'm trying to rectify this.

Just a thought...If WoW can be run from the command line with realm & character selection via command line parameters maybe a simple batch program could be used, or maybe VB app, to automatically do a census check & send you the .lua file.

[Rollie]

I would be willing to bet such a system would definately fall under the 'bot' category =)