How big is this community?

[JohnMcBadger]

How many active players are there in total on Battlemaster? (by active I mean who play about every full turn) I read some sources online, and it said that it's been over 2500 in the past, but that it was down to a 1000 around 2014. Did it keep going down or is it going back up? Since I started playing so recently, I can't really tell, but it would seem to me as though there aren't quite that many now, especially considering how most online posts about the game date back to 2012-2013...

Also, how many active players are there in Dwilight in particular, if there's any way to even get that info?

[Zakky]

You can get a rough idea through the player statistics.

According to it, about 130 players log in every day while 260 players log in at least once a week.

[Abstract]

I replied to this partially on discord but kept forgetting to reply fully to this question here.

How to find player statistics and what is available:

As Zakky said, you can find the player statistics in game. Just go to the information menu, after logging into one of your characters, then in the second column titled "World Information" is a link to "Statistics". The very top link is "player statistics" which, as the title suggests, gives you stats on the player count. The three stats available are registered accounts, weekly activity, and daily activity. Registered accounts are any accounts that are registered even inactive ones. However, the only way an account is not deleted when it goes inactive is if it is at least three months old. Weekly activity is measured by the accounts that have logged into either the game or a character in the past week and daily is the same but for that day.

Active players on specific islands are a different subject. While the admins, and maybe the developers, could have easy access to that type of statistic, it isn't something that most people will be able to tell you. If I had to guess about how many are active daily on Dwilight, I would say about half the active nobles (~200) are active daily.


Current status of the player count:

I have been tracking the player statistics in my own spreadsheet since October 11, 2018. I will just give you a couple numbers pulled from this time frame and let you make your own judgement on what they mean.

(Note: June 23rd is the last day that is recorded. December holidays played a role and January saw the opening of the war island that played a role.)

Average Daily Activity in the Month:

October - 129
November - 130
December - 138
January - 143
February - 135
March - 125
April - 131
May - 135
June - 131

Overall Average - 133
Highest Daily Active - 157 (December)
Lowest Daily Active - 110 (March)

Average Weekly Activity in the Month:

October - 253
November - 258
December - 269
January - 274
February - 270
March - 260
April - 262
May - 260
June - 270

Overall Average - 164
Highest Weekly Active - 285
Lowest Weekly Active -  245


Message Statistics:

Recently added was a stat on message statistics for each realm. This shows the number of messages sent to the realm and the total number of messages sent for each realm over a three day period. If you are looking for an active realm then these stats can help in the decision making process. What this doesn't show though is the type of messages. If you are looking for role-playing for instance then the message stats don't really help that much. A realm may talk a good amount in letters but not do any RPs while another may not talk much in letters but do an above average amount of RPing.

Conclusion:

The game isn't what it once was but this could probably be said for just about every single browser game out there. The numbers suggest the player count is pretty steady with maybe a slight increase.

In the end, the game is still completely playable with the player base despite the islands being a bit too big and there being, generally speaking, too many realms. The main thing is finding the right realm for you.