EE PatronOct 2nd 2023, 2:09:23
Those are specifically alive countries at the end of the set. Dead ones aren't counted in the total.
Large scale wars almost always cause a major influx in membership due to warring tags recruiting old buddies back to the game, in addition to the current netting meta being very boring FFO only. I, for example, had not played EE ever after Earth 2025 folded in 2009, but I was a known warleader and LaF hater from the old days. I was recruited back by old friends who had supported me thru tough times that had remained RL friends of mine. Link bought me a sandwich when I was homeless and starving and I sorta owe all my current success business-wise to his support. So when he asked me to help him kill LaF in 2015, a clan that in the old days had cheated and botted to kill me 7 or 8 years previous, I had no choice but to support my friend. Ive been here on and off since then, and I don't think this sort of behavior is unusual for wardogs. I've helped people get everything from medical licenses to reinstated drivers licenses here because I pay forward the support the wardogs here have given me, and during this most recent campaign, I saw people in the warchats that I hadn't seen in anywhere from 5 to 20 years. Wardogs are lifelong RL friends generally with other wardogs from the hours and hours they spend together. When they get pissed and want to win, hundreds of old folks can turn up.
You can play solo and win the game netting, but wars require members, so there's more motivation to recruit, and those folks have closer knitted ties from people spending hours in warchats together as friends. The 10 largest membership sets of the last decade were all server wars or peak covid times in 2020, with those involving attacks on LaF generating the most, likely due to a rich history of pissing people in the community off and cheating in addition to a handful of old LaF kill team members who only ever play their war sets.
Peaceful sets and friendly war sets tend to steadily decline where server-wide grudge wars cause the only consistent membership increases the game has seen over the last several years.
As an example, LaF was 29 members pre-war, 32 members the set they beat the coalition (that's them recruiting a few wardogs back. In the 2nd set of the 3 war sets while they were saying people were quitting, they were actually growing in numbers). They are at 23 now which is a decrease from their war numbers for a net decrease of 6 people from their pre-war total. One could argue they'd decrease at roughly that rate normally, but that's conjecture and I'm making a purely statistics based post. However, considering their near 50 members in 2018, losing roughly 15% of their tag/year is statistically their normal decline rate. And that's been pretty consistently declining at that rate since they dropped under 200 members.
Pre-war SOL was 15 members, SoF was 7, mercs was 12, elders, thebomb and apoc hadn't come back and joined the war yet. The set they won, Elders/mercs was 22 members, SoF 10, SOL 17, apoc 6, cc 3, bomb 5 and 3 solos. Net increase of 22 members.
Just with people who were tagged, it's easy to see how war tends to increase membership, but counting people that either didn't tag their restarts after they died, or played solo, the total net gain at the peak of the war was north of 50, and it's only now fallen back to pre-war totals. Next set should be an all time low if you follow the trends.
The peak of the war had the highest amount of members playing 1a since the height of covid in mid-2020. The numbers 4 sets ago hit highs that weren't seen in years aside from the peak of the pandemic, which also had a pretty top shelf server war in addition to everyone being stuck in their houses with nothing better to do.
When you really dig in to user trends, the game clearly thrives as a war game compared to when it supports diehard netters. Kind of a bummer because I prefer the latter but the data doesn't support anything other than "total war" being the most likely driver of membership and "any netting" generally causing decreases.
Large scale wars almost always cause a major influx in membership due to warring tags recruiting old buddies back to the game, in addition to the current netting meta being very boring FFO only. I, for example, had not played EE ever after Earth 2025 folded in 2009, but I was a known warleader and LaF hater from the old days. I was recruited back by old friends who had supported me thru tough times that had remained RL friends of mine. Link bought me a sandwich when I was homeless and starving and I sorta owe all my current success business-wise to his support. So when he asked me to help him kill LaF in 2015, a clan that in the old days had cheated and botted to kill me 7 or 8 years previous, I had no choice but to support my friend. Ive been here on and off since then, and I don't think this sort of behavior is unusual for wardogs. I've helped people get everything from medical licenses to reinstated drivers licenses here because I pay forward the support the wardogs here have given me, and during this most recent campaign, I saw people in the warchats that I hadn't seen in anywhere from 5 to 20 years. Wardogs are lifelong RL friends generally with other wardogs from the hours and hours they spend together. When they get pissed and want to win, hundreds of old folks can turn up.
You can play solo and win the game netting, but wars require members, so there's more motivation to recruit, and those folks have closer knitted ties from people spending hours in warchats together as friends. The 10 largest membership sets of the last decade were all server wars or peak covid times in 2020, with those involving attacks on LaF generating the most, likely due to a rich history of pissing people in the community off and cheating in addition to a handful of old LaF kill team members who only ever play their war sets.
Peaceful sets and friendly war sets tend to steadily decline where server-wide grudge wars cause the only consistent membership increases the game has seen over the last several years.
As an example, LaF was 29 members pre-war, 32 members the set they beat the coalition (that's them recruiting a few wardogs back. In the 2nd set of the 3 war sets while they were saying people were quitting, they were actually growing in numbers). They are at 23 now which is a decrease from their war numbers for a net decrease of 6 people from their pre-war total. One could argue they'd decrease at roughly that rate normally, but that's conjecture and I'm making a purely statistics based post. However, considering their near 50 members in 2018, losing roughly 15% of their tag/year is statistically their normal decline rate. And that's been pretty consistently declining at that rate since they dropped under 200 members.
Pre-war SOL was 15 members, SoF was 7, mercs was 12, elders, thebomb and apoc hadn't come back and joined the war yet. The set they won, Elders/mercs was 22 members, SoF 10, SOL 17, apoc 6, cc 3, bomb 5 and 3 solos. Net increase of 22 members.
Just with people who were tagged, it's easy to see how war tends to increase membership, but counting people that either didn't tag their restarts after they died, or played solo, the total net gain at the peak of the war was north of 50, and it's only now fallen back to pre-war totals. Next set should be an all time low if you follow the trends.
The peak of the war had the highest amount of members playing 1a since the height of covid in mid-2020. The numbers 4 sets ago hit highs that weren't seen in years aside from the peak of the pandemic, which also had a pretty top shelf server war in addition to everyone being stuck in their houses with nothing better to do.
When you really dig in to user trends, the game clearly thrives as a war game compared to when it supports diehard netters. Kind of a bummer because I prefer the latter but the data doesn't support anything other than "total war" being the most likely driver of membership and "any netting" generally causing decreases.