🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 12 Dec 2008 11:50:37 +0000, Flash <NOSPAM@digdilem.org> wrote:

>Folk wrote:
>
>> The question is.... why?  I doubt that the two-dozen people still
>> playing UT3 will really care.
>
>I found it quite interesting watching the player stats at Multiplay.
>
>Multiplay hosted the official Epic european servers as well as almost a 
>hundred UT3 servers when it was released. Through that time they've also 
>hosted just over 20 UT99 servers (which I run with my happy team - all 
>volunteers).
>
>I think at the height there were over 150 UT3 servers.
>
> From memory (icba digging it all out so this may not be accurate).
>
>In the month before UT3 was released, UT99 had a surge of interest with 
>about 50% more players.
>
>UT3 released, slight dip in ut99 and UT3 instantly overtook it.
>
>Within a month, UT3 numbers had dropped below UT99's which had recovered.
>
>In the following 3 or 4 months, UT99 climbed steadily while UT3 
>declined, with some spikes caused by the patch releases.
>
>We were having big problems with aimbotters on the UT99's and added UTDC 
>at that time, which lost us a lot of honest (and not so honest) players. 
>That version of anticheat blocked versions of ut < 432 and despite 
>advertising the upgrade patch, many never returned. Also some players 
>disliked intrusive anticheat and left on principle. That led to a sharp 
>downfall in ut99 players (initially about 40%) but slowly regained 
>leaving perhaps 15% lost.
>
>UT3 overtook us again then, but has since dropped even further so that 
>now it's pretty much just a handful of VCTF servers which are popular.
>
>Taking a look now (lunchtime), the multiplay servers have:
>
>Players/Slots
>
>UT99 - 30/442
>UT2k4 - 0/36
>UT3 - 12/1074
>UT3 Demo - 0/2
>
>So a nine year old game is now 250% more popular than one made last year.
>
>The player demographic is also significantly different, ut99 favouring 
>more mature players and occasional gamers - with a lot from eastern 
>european and soviet countries, and nowadays even regular players from 
>India, north and south americas and even Australia! (ping of ~200 btw - 
>roughly what I got with a 56k modem in the same country!)

Interesting stats.  If we had figures from a US based server pool, I'm
sure the numbers would be worse.  I recall at the time of UT3's
release that the enthusiasm level in Europe stayed at a higher level
for a longer period than here in the US.