Vintagelove wrote:Not sure why you put stock in the census mod, especially when the servers populations are manipulated and inflated by the admins themselves. You can /who a zone with zero people in it and the search will still return "27 people found" or another fabricated number.
I understand they did it to retain players but a true assessment of the playerbase is kind of hard considering the youtube footage of GM island being home to tens of lvl 1s to boost population. In short, shady methods were and are still used to inflate populations. Is it a stretch to think they might use the same tactics to portray balance? For balance is another reason a server can die.
The strange part is that I'm partly inclined to agree with you. I did a /who in Mulgore a few days ago and it showed a whole bunch of people, yet with Mulgore being so small compared to the other zones, I didn't see nearly as many people as the /who showed. There were a few sitting afk in random spots near the starting area, which I found rather strange, as I recall seeing them several times in the same spot as I was leveling up my hunter, like they were some hardcore AFKers, if that makes any sense.
I'm not saying that's definitely the case, but I've always been the type to take such things with a grain of salt.