Counts are different between websites

[superxdude]

I'm sure y'all know this but I just noticed it...according to http://wow.realmpop.com/us.html, realms are like 10M plus (I deleted some data from spreadsheet and am too lazy to re-copy and paste lol).

http://warcraftrealms.com/census.php shows 2.5M or so...

I reckon some toons we'll never ever see but until them just one census after another?

[bringoutyourdead]

realmpop has different counting methods.
It doesn't ever see characters that aren't in guilds or ever use AH to sell items.

I know that my main toon when it joined it's guild never did see close to 80% of all the supposed members of the guild. Yes they had been active at one time.. but that was back in Wow 1.0 and 1.2 days.

And oh by the way.. none of my nearly 50 characters on my main account are found in realmpop's numbers since my toons aren't covered by Blizzards webAPI calls... they haven't been played in a long time.

[superxdude]

i'm gonna stress test my system tonight with 10 wow windows....that might help close the gap lol.

MY main desktop died two weeks ago, had to cannibalize parts to make an older box work. It works but its got some issues....POS Dell .

I need a new one but need a job first.

[Padanfain]

realmpop Project Details
•What - We currently record character names, races, classes, genders, levels, and guild memberships for all characters on every realm in the US and EU regions.
•How - To get the list of characters for a realm, first we record all the characters who posted to the auction house. Then we fetch and record their guild rosters. This should cover the majority of characters on a realm. To avoid getting listed, a character must never post to the auction house, and never belong to a guild where a guild member posts to the auction house.
•Who - It's important to remember that we're simply counting the number of characters seen for each category. This does not mean the number of players, nor the number of actively played characters. We can't efficiently get activity data yet, so some characters may not have been played for a long time.
•When - We re-fetch guild rosters about once every 10-12 days, and then fetch characters we haven't seen after about 20 days. The goal is to find all characters, not necessarily to have up-to-date guild rosters. The reports that come from this data get updated about once a week.
•Where - We use the Battle.net API to get character and guild information. Every visitor to this site fetches some data that we need and sends it to our servers. In compliance with Blizzard's Third-Party API Usage Policy, you can view the code that accesses the API by loading this JavaScript file and running it through a beautifier.

So just for s#|+s and giggles....

Garona Realm

WCR Stats
Total Characters: 19,836
Total Alliance: 14,936 - 75%
Total Horde: 4,900 - 25%
Updates in the last 30 days: 240 : 138

realmpop Stats
85,343 Characters
60,825 Alliance
24,170 Horde
329 Unknown

realmpop does not list seen in last 30 days because:

The goal is to find all characters, not necessarily to have up-to-date guild rosters.

It's important to remember that we're simply counting the number of characters seen for each category. This does not mean the number of players, nor the number of actively played characters. We can't efficiently get activity data yet, so some characters may not have been played for a long time.

Scan AH and get names of toons that have posted auctions. Scan those toons for guildmates and list them. (Even if they have not been active for years.)

Go to http://wow.realmpop.com/us-garona.html and inspect the first 15 death knights in the default list. 33% are inactive by a half a year or more. When I look for player data I really don't care about last year or older unless I am looking for something very specific. WCR tells me who actually logged into a character in the last month. That is a ton closer to actual played toons.