I know we all talk about the declining numbers. Its sad cuz I've been playing this game for a long time and it pains me to see it deteriorate like this. I took the liberty of pasting the rounds and amount of players per round from last year to present for your reading pleasures. Between the 26th and 27th round we lost over 200 players. (maybe bots maybe not) but non the less targets. I hope we can someday get these numbers back up.


Nineteenth round: Dec 05, 2012 - Feb 03, 2013: There were 894 countries in the Alliance server.

Twentieth round: Feb 04, 2013 - Apr 06, 2013: There were 870 countries in the Alliance server.

Twenty-first round: Apr 06, 2013 - Jun 05, 2013: There were 769 countries in the Alliance server.

Twenty-second round: Jun 06, 2013 - Aug 05, 2013: There were 805 countries in the Alliance server

Twenty-third round: Aug 06, 2013 - Oct 05, 2013: There were 749 countries in the Alliance server.

Twenty-fourth round: Oct 06, 2013 - Dec 05, 2013: There were 676 countries in the Alliance server.

Twenty-fifth round: Dec 06, 2013 - Feb 04, 2014: There were 717 countries in the Alliance server.

Twenty-sixth round: Feb 05, 2014 - Apr 06, 2014: There were 723 countries in the Alliance server.

Twenty-seventh round: Apr 07, 2014 - Jun 07, 2014: There were 589 countries in the Alliance server.

Twenty-eighth round: Jun 07, 2014 - Aug 07, 2014: There were 569 countries in the Alliance server.

Twenty-ninth round: Aug 07, 2014 - Oct 06, 2014: There were 553 countries in the Alliance server.

Thirtieth round: Oct 07, 2014 - Dec 06, 2014: There were 473 countries in the Alliance server.

Thirty-first round: Dec 07, 2014 - Feb 06, 2015: There were 453 countries in the Alliance server.

Current round: Feb 06, 2015 - N/A: There are currently 365 countries in the Alliance server.

blame it on laf and sof

clearly the decline started after obama took office the 2nd time around

thanks obama

Well everyone blames LaF and SoF but both tags have toned it down and the numbers are still declining. Hoping that old players will come back in a few resets.

I posted a nice little graph in another thread a few days ago if you want a visual.

about jelly beans

Yes my jelly bean stockpile, in direct corrleation with EE players.

http://i.imgur.com/HEwNdjC.jpg?1

Plummeting

http://youtu.be/rVkSi4WUMI4

Clearly we need a way to get more players into the game.

It needs to be a true App for Droid an Apple.

Time to recruit COC players:P

*runs*

only nerds play CoC

HA! Good way to scare them off.

You need to math harder if Feb 2013 is last year.

There you go Mr. Anal. I fixed it.

FACT:

TAN's nickname IRL is infact, Mr. Anal.

and ~6 years ago alliance had 978 countries (~200 of those still in protection). year later 741 countries.

what's your point?

I blame people farming untaggeds...i quit for a while because of it. That, and stupid retal policies.

LOL Trife!!

What is your point Marshal?

Yeah, I attempted to play a few years ago, untagged. I got farmed within a couple days and quit playing. While I understand that this is the alliance server, I still feel people should not farm untags.

Maybe we should do something like CoC where you are put into protection after being landgrabbed. Not just DRs, but actual protection. Each LG could give 12 hours of Protection.

Declaring war on the protected country would negate this protection (allowing actual war), also, if the protected country makes an attack, it leaves protection.

Lol at expecting marshal to have a point.

my point is that amount of countries has varied between years. sure it is declining but it has been declining since early of this century.

The event it coincided with most strongly in my mind is the introduction of captcha's; but we'll see, between bots and making captchas a little easier, maybe we can reverse the trend ;)

i haven't seen ee-captcha since .........

I agree with this... I played lots years ago and since there was so many players back then it wasn't a big deal... but any "new" player that tries to learn this game gets quickly sick of it and quits before they can get addicted with the uncontrolled farming...

y'all won't get new players to stick if you keep farming untagged ones so bad.... ya, I know you need land, so not sure how many people would look at the longterm value of this, but it's a valid point...

How about you RECRUIT untagged ones to your tag and train them instead of FARMING them? I played approx 3 weeks of last reset untagged and then in a bogus tag and actually ended up with a respectable rank and didn't get ONE SINGLE recruitment message....

i have gotten 2 recr msgs so far, tags recruit mostly during 1st week.

not allowing untags on alliance server might be the only way to solve this.

funnel and limit all new players to express and primary only, and they would need to be recruited to an alliance first before joining the Alliance server, and FFA server.

just food for thought

So when did RD get deleted and when did Sof go bottoms up?

Just a question: why would you play on a server designed to play on a team (alliance) as a solo player? Primary is much better for that kind of game play. Sure you could have gotten some recruitment messages, how about you go seek out an alliance and inquire as to how to join it? You obviously know you are playing on a team based server.

The point is in the trend over a long period of time. In case you haven't noticed the trend from 2010 to 2014 is downward.

I should add tho the downward trend didn't start until ~10/2013. Hopefully some of the things Qz is doing will help bring more interest into the game.

The good news is there is ~750 people who have played in the recent past and something new or cool being added to the game could bring some of them back.

wow

I do know - but NEW players wouldn't have a clue how to search out an alliance... and I started really late and was just curious how it was working....

We are referring to getting NEW players to want to stay around and like the game and join alliances aren't we? So why would you funnel them to other servers? that doesn't make any sense to me... and I know plenty well the advantage of non tags for the land we need to netgain in Alliance, so I know this is a complicated observation I made...

People are getting older... the average gamer is in his/her early thirties. Meaning more responsibilities, birth of their children etc., etc., etc. In the end, less time to play.

Dreckon, don't get too friendly with Jayr, he will request dirty pictures of you!

/me runs

That too. Crazy. =/

.

Give us 10k players

Give us 10k players

earth had 10k countries (rd etc bots included) last time ~13 years ago.

I am hating Alliance because of "planned wars". If you want to plan a war, keep it quiet among the leaders and let the members think they are warring because, well, to me it is a war game. As for untags, they are a great recruiting tool until you try to recruit a bot.... bot = landfarm :P

~Suicidal's BONUS~

No cant do that, it makes much more sense to be selfish and play however you want for your own amusement. Most do not really care about survival of this game over their own enjoyment of it.

That is partly why I decided against doing a negative post about Bots. Bots will not encourage new players, if anything it will detract them. Bots may however prolong and keep the current players plus maybe couple prior players to remain. Any such argument against bots would just most likely fall on deaf ears.

tbh I'm surprised this game is still online

most are too stubborn to quit.

Lol way too stubborn...or too lazy to find and learn another time killer

SoF's membership peaked June-August 2013. We lost a lot of members for the following set because we could not find a war. We finished this set with 91 members but peaked at 94 members. We dropped to 74 members by the next set and then SoF's began to decline around this time with the rise of SOL/MD.

RD was deleted from the game in the October-December 2013 set.

The arguments that SoF/LAF drove people from the game are really not supported by the numbers. In fact it could be argued that during SoF/LAF's time the game was on the rise.

I attribute much of the decline of the game to decisions made by the admins. Much of my own loss of interest in the game is due to the admins.

+1

I blame poor/nonexistent wi-fi connections at most of the nursing homes where most old earthers are currently residing. Bring back dial-up!