Increasing CensusPlus visibility in the player base.

Post by **bringoutyourdead** » Wed Aug 29, 2012 4:40 pm

I updated the CensusPlus addon pages at both
www.wowwiki.com and the newer fork from that of
www.wowpedia.org where all the major wowwiki editors moved for ongoing wow wikia activity.

As you are playing in game you might mention the addon to your guild mates who might have characters on other realms.

Just don't spam the chat channels to drum up more uploaders.

Curseforge (the addon editing site for Curse.com) keeps stats for downloads per version the most current shows more then 750 downloads as of some time this morning.. (no more then 14 hours after realms went live.)

1974ER · Post by **1974ER** » Thu Aug 30, 2012 5:00 am

I have been doing this for years. I know a few people have expressed interest and downloaded the addon, but many of them no longer play at all... :/

750 is an impressive figure for such a short time period. I hope it starts showing on the most wanted pages... as it is still less than one person per existing faction and we know full well that user spread is nowhere near even. :/

Post by **bringoutyourdead** » Thu Aug 30, 2012 10:32 am

Day two of 5.0.4 and latest version of CensusPlus is now over 2000 downloads.

One of the things I am thinking of suggesting to Rollie (and I expect he will jump on the idea) is to do some updating of the website.. one of the major complaints I have seen from people is "Ok.. I've done a census run.. now how it the H... do I get it uploaded to warcraftrealms.com!!!"

I think we need to make an update to the FAQ.. and to add it to the addon package. Too bad that Blizzard has to block out of game connections.. but that is far to open for abuse.

Balgair · Post by **Balgair** » Thu Aug 30, 2012 10:51 am

Wow, I didn't know we had that many users still active! Definitely worth updating the site a bit if possible then, if only to make it look more active and a little clearer for people as to how to upload (perhaps also Rollie recently fixing the ad-induced slowdowns may help there).

Something I've always wondered, is how much word of mouth there is among the non-English communities - most of us who post regularly here are on either US or EU English servers, and the French servers in particular seem to struggle bigtime for entires (the Spanish do as well but being fewer of them they're covered by some of us multi-server people, I think, certainly the vast majority of them have between 1 and 3 submissions...).

There seem to be more German servers covered well by actual players there, rather than just people who jump on to run 1-2 censuses, but they aren't as well covered as they could be. Unfortunately I don't speak any of those languages, nor do I have contacts on those servers, so can't really think of much to help there.

1974ER · Post by **1974ER** » Thu Aug 30, 2012 2:55 pm

I am not sure what's going on here... because in light of the database data page... My updates alone represent almost 10% of all characters that were SEEN in the past 7 days, Balgair and the 8 others on the top 10 cover another about 10%. Among characters created, the discrepancy is even greater... The monthly top 10 is responsible for over 33% of all new characters added.

Now... 1990+ people SHOULD be able to manage more than x 4 of the updating efforts of only 10 people. Beating me with 100 people would mean they would have to average of about 64 (yes, sixty-four) updates per day each. That's roughly 6 to 9 minutes of censusing on a medium realm per day. Sure, some users could average less than 45 minutes of active census time per week, but such cases should be rare. After that, an additional 100 people would beat the rest of the top 10. Add 200 more at same result level and we would be at x 4... with over 1500 people left over, producing a rough average of maybe 2-3 updates per WEEK.

Something strange is going on and / or I am really, really bad at mathematics... :/ Now, I may well be really bad at math... but if I am not, we have nowhere near 2000 active users. In fact, in light of my admittably rushed maths I would be surprised if the figure is above 200.

I am not sure if Rollie could pull out data about that easily, but it would be interesting to see that info. As for word of mouth... My skills in French and Spanish don't really allow me to advertise there. On German realms, I actually occasionally meet people to whom the site isn't entirely unknown, though many of them only read it occasionally, not submitting anything.

Post by **bringoutyourdead** » Thu Aug 30, 2012 5:54 pm

While there may have been over 2000 downloads of the addon, a good question that can't be answered is how many of those downloads were for people playing the game, and how many were Bots sweeping the web for new pages and files.. for other websites for example. Curse doesn't provide that info back to the addon authors.

I agree.. I haven't seen any sign of increased uploading of census runs (yet).

One of the advantages of Rollie hosting his own downloads.. is that he can check the weblogs for some tracking info.. most reasonable Bots have ID info when they connect and it is also somewhat possible to track the connecting IP to the correct regions of the world.. (Assuming you keep the IP tables up to date....something that isn't the case here

)

FuxieDK · Post by **FuxieDK** » Thu Aug 30, 2012 9:36 pm

Some people might not know, that you have to manually upload the data..

Yes, it says so, but you can miss it, or simply don't care....

1974ER · Post by **1974ER** » Sun Sep 02, 2012 11:18 pm

Well, looking at the DB data page indicates there has been a bit of increase. The number of characters seen in past 7 days has gone from about 633k to about 761k in couple of days and number of realms updated is now about 200 for both sides, also up from about 170 each. Balgair has been powering up again, so some of that is certainly her work, but propably not all.

Let's hope the upward trend stays strong and continues as we head towards MoP launch date. On that note... does anyone have info on whether Rollie intends to support data for neutral Pandaren? And if yes, will the addon as is be able to supply it?

FuxieDK · Post by **FuxieDK** » Mon Sep 03, 2012 12:16 am

1974ER wrote: does anyone have info on whether Rollie intends to support data for neutral Pandaren? And if yes, will the addon as is be able to supply it?

I see that as irrellevant..
1: Pandas are neutral up to level 12, and CP only supports 10+ = total 3 levels
2: Faction change have always caused problems. If neutral pandas are supported, then they will, from CPs view, perform a faction change at level 12, only resulting in even more inconsistancy.

Right now, when you run CP on a neutral panda, it says "Neutral faction isn't suported", and I think that should continue.

Balgair · Post by **Balgair** » Mon Sep 03, 2012 5:54 am

The French realms (plus one of the new Italian ones, other one's got a slightly bugged DB entry atm, waiting for Rollie to come back and fix it) were me, rest isn't

Sounds from those numbers like a few others are submitting too then, noticed a few names in the monthly top 10 which aren't familiar to me so good to see!

As for neutral Pandaren, agree with Fuxie, there's no need IMO. Pandaren will join Alliance or Horde somewhere between levels 11-13, depending on levelling speed, and so missing a couple of levels in the DB won't hurt that much. They can only be seen on /who by other neutral Pandaren, so to census them would involve creating a 3rd faction character on every server, when we already struggle to get two factions kept up to date. It just doesn't seem worth it for the sake of 2-3 levels in the database!

1974ER · Post by **1974ER** » Mon Sep 03, 2012 7:32 am

Actually, intended or not, CP (re)supports levels below 10... since around December 2010, at least...

Here is a link to one of my censusalts:

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/charsheet/131850381

I also agree that the levels aren't critical. I'll just keep manual records for my own Pandaren and leave their starting area uncensused.

I was just curious, because the topic was mentioned briefly in other threads. On additional related noted... Though I don't think many people will even want to, any idea whether it will be possible to race change TO Pandaren between levels 2 and about 13? In other words, can we expect to see rare Alliance / Horde Pandaren of very low levels?

FuxieDK · Post by **FuxieDK** » Mon Sep 03, 2012 8:20 am

From level 1 to (somewhere during) 12, you are neither Horde nor Alliance. You are neutral.There are 3 RaceIDs for Pandas: 24 (neutral), 25 (Alliance) & 26 (Horde).
For all intent and purpose, they are different races, only they share name..

Currently, heirloom-bonus (+55% without pirate ring) apply, and in time RaF will also be possibe, making in possile for players to be maybe level 20 before you choose faction (there is bound to be atleast one person, who will stay on the turtle, until all mobs turn grey).
Also, we don't really know how much quest-skipping is possible, but I guess that you might skip a few, and maybe choose faction as early as late 10...

Post by **bringoutyourdead** » Tue Sep 04, 2012 11:31 am

As of this morning upload count has exceeded 3000.
I need to look at the code and may have to do a patch.
It was discovered yesterday that Blizzard goofed in the GlyphUI module and marked the Lua language standard ignore me variable ' _ ' as a global variable.

The '_' variable is used when unwanted data is returned from function calls. And since it is by definition to be ignored it shouldn't be an issue if someone makes a mistake, but Blizzard did a real good job. What happens is that now that it is in the global table, if an addon happens to use that variable (as a placeholder to be ignored) the GlyphUI gets tainted and stops working.

RE: Neutral census
I don't believe at this time Neutral census will ever be allowed or active. One of my nightmare scenarios is for Blizzard allowing members of factions to declare themselves Traitors (aka switch faction but not switch race) [This would of course be a PAID character change]

Query: Does anyone know for sure? I believe when a faction change or race change happens warcraftrealms.com treats it as a new character.

Balgair · Post by **Balgair** » Tue Sep 04, 2012 12:29 pm

So far as I'm aware it is indeed treated as a new character - my other half has racechanged some of his characters and they appear in my guild on WCR in both versions of the character.

That GlyphUI thing is a menace, SOMETHING is causing it to give me between 40 and 100 lua errors about trying to access the talent frame most times I zone, but given all I've heard, it probably isn't one addon involved, but several! I gave up trying to identify it lol, and just put up with it... would be nice to be able to change my glyphs without disabling all addons though

FuxieDK · Post by **FuxieDK** » Tue Sep 04, 2012 1:21 pm

Race/faction change is regarded as a new toon..

However, if you change back to original race, you resume where you left offbefore changing.. Assuming you didn't change name ofc..

An example is, Dottz from my old guild, went human for a year or so, during WotLK, and t hen came back to the good side.
Horde: http://www.warcraftrealms.com/charsheet/65109619
Alliance: http://www.warcraftrealms.com/charsheet/109900171

FuxieDK · Post by **FuxieDK** » Tue Sep 04, 2012 1:23 pm

There are quite a few addons that have solved the Glyph-taint.. DBM and DataStore (part of Altoholic) are the first 2 that springs to mind..

Post by **bringoutyourdead** » Tue Sep 04, 2012 2:40 pm

Initial testing running only CensusPlus addon seem to indicate that we don't trigger taint.

But if you want to help test... I would be happier knowing multiple people are finding CensusPlus clean of this problem.

The only area where this might pop up is by doing the /census slash commands.

I have a fix ... but if the current release isn't causing problems I just as soon not push another fix patch out considering that 5.0.5 is one or two weeks away, and Blizzards mistake goes away anyway.

Pennet · Post by **Pennet** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 1:58 pm

I have seen glyph taint from easily 8-10 different addons, but CP has not been one of them. Most of those other addons have updated a few times in the last week, and I haven't seen a glyph taint error in a couple days.

Balgair · Post by **Balgair** » Fri Sep 21, 2012 3:56 pm

I've just noticed a certain Epic Censi appears to have green text on the offical forums at present, obviously spamming wouldn't be advisable, but maybe jumping into the odd low pop server whinge thread and telling people how they can get more accurate data on just how low pop their server is could get a few new folk around

(If you've already done that, then great! I'm too lazy to trawl through that forum, the amount of negativity is mindnumbing lol, was pure chance I spotted one post which gave me this hint lol

)

1974ER · Post by **1974ER** » Sat Sep 22, 2012 5:35 am

Yes, I have a "green infection" for the duration of the Blizzard Mentoring program... or until I get permabanned (which ever may come first). *sighs and worries* I fear I have irritated a few people and may have been overtly "fingerhappy" on my replies...

No, I am not talking about middle finger ASCIIs, just that I typed a lot... of stuff.

Thank you for the support in there, Balgair. The official forums are areas where few Trelw dare to tread.