Ha well just trying to find a reasonable solution because no god damn way 3000 players are on at 1 am pacific time..

Then simply put there is something wrong with the stats.  You either don't log off people as you should or something else.  There is no way that 85% of the people have Demigod running and logged on to server, but still not joining or playing games.  I mean, it's not like they can chat ingame... So how about for once paying attention to what people are obviously showing with facts.  There is no way that the opengames.asp pages is showing correct numbers!  Either it doesn't show all games or it shows more people online than there really are... simple as that.

I know about the impulse overlay... but it hasn't been working for me forever...  EXCESS FLOOD error.

Besides, if people were in the chat, they'd show in the irc channel too.  Or maybe there is a secret society of 2500+ people that use stardocks irc server via impulse overlay inside Demigod and chat in their own channel... yeah, that's it.

[quote who="NoW^StiL ReY" reply="1" id="2281011"]Ha well just trying to find a reasonable solution because no god damn way 3000 players are on at 1 am pacific time..
[/quote]

1am pacific time is not 1am around the world.

Why people find this so hard to believe is beyond me.  With all of the complaints about people that go afk DURING a game, and you can't believe that a lot more people actually do go afk before trying to get in a game...

these numbers seem completely reasonable to me. There are quite a few time zones and quite a few people throughout the world. Not to mention, yes there are a huge number of poeple that unfortunately will only play single player because they are too scared or unable to play online.

For some reason I notice more games hosted on Impulse compared to when I'm logged into Demigod and viewing the games through Demigod. Does Demigod filter far off games or games with different languages?

Istari, I for am not saying I don't beleive the data. I'm just asking for explanation about the discrepancy of players in game and players online.  The stats regularly show 85% of the people online not playing.  You have to admit it's a bit weird, so maybe worth looking into.

This only 1 of 8 servers was only for the total players online though I think. Because you have always seen all open games in the list, and the amount of games open/ in progress hasn't changed much since the revamp of the opengames page.

More interesting than the total amount of players online is the number of players currently in matches (or in pre-match lobby or in waiting list for automatch) - Would be nice to have a sum of that numbers instead of having to manually add them up

I totally agree.  If SD says the data is accurate then ok.  But please don't take offense if we ask for some clarification. 

Thanks, Istari.  I was hoping you'd make a followup post.  I'd like seeing that # of people actually in games stat if its not that big a change on your side.  That's for the historical reference as well regarding the stats. 

These stats are weird. Demigod is a very low population game. I have no idea how they sold so much and yet so little people are online as it is (in essence) a multiplayer centric game.

At the moment of writing this post... so called "2106 players" are online but only 157 are actually inside games, playing. This is baloney. Less than 10% in game while 90% are lurking? Is Demigod the new screen saver? Come on. Something is wrong here.

Thanks for the information Istari -  the thing I was most interested is that you only count people logged in to the server via Demigod and have a 30s heartbeat.  It's a bit weird that people on average spend 3+ hours lurking for every game played (30 minutes), but I guess we cant discuss people's habits...

EDIT: Hmm, just checked steam stats...

It's all a conspiracy.  You guys, who are clearly staticians, mathematicians, software engineers, computer scientists, and all manner of other relevant occupations, clearly have the experience to say the numbers are fudged or even "off a bit."  It is clear that your superior reasoning and logic chain, which is so elaborate that you cannot even put it down on paper for us to analyze, is much more reasonable than simple programatic functionality to track these things.

No, indeed, you are right.  It is a conspiracy contrived by Stardock and GPG to make their game seem like it has only a modestly small population instead of a smallish population.

Please also tell me about how 9/11 was done by the lizardmen of the US government and how THAT VAN is ALWAYS falling you and you JUST KNOW they are watching you.

In other words: back up your arguments with reasonable logic.  There is absolutely no reason to think they would be fudging numbers, let alone fudging numbers in such a way that doesn't even make them look good.  Let's not forget that if they wanted to fudge numbers, they could EASILY add games to the game list to actually make them look far more active.  But no no, you guys are right...it is definitely a conspiracy.

Edit: And yes, GPG, please put in a "Players in game" stat anyway.