We’ve had official dev responses that it is indeed the number of players active. Multiple responses, I think.
You don’t see lots of people right near you because:
1) Most people are in LA
2) Also, dungeons, or crafting, etc
3) Some zones are populated, some aren’t. So how many players you see depends on what zone you’re in
4) Players are in the zone, they just aren’t near you. Zones are large. I’ve seen this plenty on Henge, where someone will complain in map chat about no one else being there, and players will pipe up, even in the middle of the day.
5) Some players aren’t chatty. I’ve done events with other players, none of us spoke, we all wandered off afterward. To someone who wasn’t there, map chat would be empty and the zone would seem like a ghost town, but that doesn’t mean it is.
I’m on Henge too, and I never feel like there’s no one around. Some zones are noticeably emptier than others, and some times are going to be empty, but people are there.
I do think we should have some kind of option to show players on the minimap, but people are playing the game even if they aren’t near you.
Can you cite a source for this? I’ve searched around and haven’t found any dev posts or interviews specifically covering this subject.
I’m aware of factors such as what zone I’m in and the size of zones. I was specifically roaming about looking for other players, and failing to find them. Yes, obviously there were people in Lion’s Arch. During peak hours, one encounters noticeably more players wandering throughout the world than one does during non-peak hours.
Without a /who command it’s very hard to verify, and I’m aware that at the moment a sizable chunk of the population is likely to be tucked away in FotM instances, but I simply cannot believe that the servers’ active, online populations are classifiable as “High” at all times.
As I indicated in the OP, my guild has been checking the server transfer menu around the clock, and we never see any significant deviation. This does not sync up with observations done in-game – peak hours are noticeably more active.
It’s worth noting here that the transfer menu uses a different system from the login menu – a server listed as “Full,” for example, does not necessarily have a queue to enter.
If, however, server populations (for the specific purpose of the transfer menu) are determined by the number of online players, then ANet seriously needs to consider hardware upgrades. Players are being barred from joining a significant chunk of the server list around the clock.
I’ve never known a single MMO to list actual concurrent users online. It’s always some arbitrary scale they devise that I’m sure is locked away in a safe somewhere.
I’m not asking for precise details here, just the broad strokes – for example, is it determined by currently online users or based on total accounts with allegiance to the server, as proposed here. The latter seems unlikely, but the former doesn’t add up with observations.
