Reliable population stats?

[Emperor Newt]

I was interested to see what OMFG did for the overall population on my server (Miller). So far I know two websites providing population data:

http://sirisian.com/planetside2/popu...=10&timezone=0

and

http://www.therebelscum.net/world-po...&totalpop=true

Problem being: if I look at the peak times the total pop differs by over 500 players at times. So any ideas why that is and suggestions which data to trust? Are there other sources to use?

*edit*
Doh! Stupid me. At Sirisian it states:

The data represents the number of users that were logged in during a specific hour. This number is slightly larger than if you took the exact number of users currently logged in at a given hour since users could log in and play for a small amount of time. Take this into consideration since you can't use this data to say that at a certain time an exact number of people were playing.

So if I get this right the Sirisian data "overestimates" the amount of people as some of them could only be logging in for their daily certs etc but are not actually be playing. So the numbers grow although those players have never "participated" and should not be considered "active"?
So if I want to have a more exact feeling on how the active population developed the "RebelScum" data should be better?

[AThreatToYou]

My data says: Did nothing.

[MerlO]

Originally Posted by Emperor Newt

So if I want to have a more exact feeling on how the active population developed the "RebelScum" data should be better?

Rebelscum is capturing every 10minutes based from the comment below the graph.

[bites]

Originally Posted by AThreatToYou

My data says: Did nothing.

I'm glad to inform you that this is not the same for everyone else.

Its a great time to planetside :>

[Emperor Newt]

Dear lord those Connery stats, you lucky bastards! Thats about 500 players more on average (even more at times) then on Miller or any EU server for that matter...
But Connery had a merge a few months ago if I remember correctly?

There is even a noticeable increase in players when OMFG was released on Connery which is either completely absent on the EU servers or vanished after about two weeks.

[Calista]

Originally Posted by Emperor Newt

Dear lord those Connery stats, you lucky bastards! Thats about 500 players more on average (even more at times) then on Miller or any EU server for that matter...
But Connery had a merge a few months ago if I remember correctly?

There is even a noticeable increase in players when OMFG was released on Connery which is either completely absent on the EU servers or vanished after about two weeks.

Yeah the entire Western US is on that one server. Mattherson and Waterson looking to need a merge.

[HelpLuperza]

Reliablility to me is a slightly subjective thing, I think.

http://borderlinetactical.net/rsnc/

Pros

• Underestimates instead of overestimates the data
• Has Percentages

Cons

• Has the data since Aug 10, 2013 (just barely less than half the data Sirisian has)
• Data is not as easily accessible to public (I cannot pull data to do DFTs)

http://sirisian.com/planetside2/

Pros

• Has been around longer and has 2x as much data as others. Sirisian at one point even had data from when the PS2 launched, but he took it down because trolls were abusing it.
• Data is easily accessible to the public (I can actually pull the data myself)

Cons

• Includes the API crashes that occured during the spring and summer of 2013
• Typically overestimates the data because it measures every 1/2 hour - hour.

Now both show population figures of the different servers and factions. However, both still suffer from problems with API is down or crashes. To explain what I mean, look at this picture here of RSNC:

There is a big hole around September. If I look at the data, I pulled from Sirisian:

There is the exact same big hole around the 4500th hr of the game or 9/3/2013.
In fact, RSNC if it started a month or two earlier would have run into the same bizzare API error population spikes that we can see on Sirisian. Sirisian actually mentions these lightly in this statement:

Hover over the line segment for values. Some data may be missing due to the API being down. This is represented by straight lines.

I hope this gives you a better perspective on the two population graphs. Also, do you know how to contact the person who does RSNC? I would need access to his data in some kind of table or html form if he would like me to analyze it like I did Sirsians:

Fast Fourier Transform plot of the population's frequency spectrum

Then, again I am not sure if knowing the frequency of players logging in/out of the game is useful to people XD. I just did it to practice some of the stuff I learned in college. -_-;

[Timealude]

Originally Posted by Calista

Yeah the entire Western US is on that one server. Mattherson and Waterson looking to need a merge.

I think they were saying that the population of both the servers are currently too high to merge with each other.