18.5% drop in players in only 8 weeks

[Rolder50]

Tbh Lucky Banchos methodology is flawed when it comes to trying to determine the types of things people are discussing in this thread. He looks at player activity over a span of multiple months, which sometimes varies in duration. This makes it difficult to gauge if those people are actually remaining subscribed, or simply logging in to do the patch content and then unsubbing.

It also is looking at active characters rather than accounts, and there has been an absolutely massive surge in the popularity of playing alts over the last two years that seriously cannot be overstated. There are tons of individuals that register anywhere from 2-7 times in that 'active characters' statistic.

It's reached a point where even Steamcharts probably provide a more solid overview of at least the broader trends. It would be interesting to see a comparison of the highs and lows of the last two expansions, proportionally.

I find it a little astonishing that people make alts in this game. There is very little practical reason to do so and they take a ton of work to get up to speed (unless you drop a lot of extra cash on them anyway)

[LittleImp]

I find it a little astonishing that people make alts in this game. There is very little practical reason to do so and they take a ton of work to get up to speed (unless you drop a lot of extra cash on them anyway)

People have their reasons. The RP/Clubbing/IMVU scene like to roll them to employ socially, and often end up boosting or maxing them out so that they can run content with them or obtain various items/glamours. Housing is another big reason iirc.

Among raiders, people use them for split raiding (allows groups to obtain gear more quickly), cross-region raiding, or to help other players outside their primary group without denying them loot. Split raiding groups can have 8 players with anywhere from 1-7 additional alts each!

I personally have 2-3 alts I use for marketboard stuff and very very occasional raid-helping. I barely actually use them, but would end up getting counted as 3 people in Lucky Bancho's stats. I can't imagine playing alts daily tho, it's not for me.

[Rolder50]

People have their reasons. The RP/Clubbing/IMVU scene like to roll them to employ socially, and often end up boosting or maxing them out so that they can run content with them or obtain various items/glamours. Housing is another big reason iirc.

Among raiders, people use them for split raiding (allows groups to obtain gear more quickly), cross-region raiding, or to help other players outside their primary group without denying them loot. Split raiding groups can have 8 players with anywhere from 1-7 additional alts each!

I personally have 2-3 alts I use for marketboard stuff and very very occasional raid-helping. I barely actually use them, but would end up getting counted as 3 people in Lucky Bancho's stats. I can't imagine playing alts daily tho, it's not for me.

For RP/Clubbing, there's also little practical reason, considering you can use mods to completely change your appearance, and the mods to sync the appearance to other people is rather widespread at this point.

[Stormpeaks]

For RP/Clubbing, there's also little practical reason, considering you can use mods to completely change your appearance, and the mods to sync the appearance to other people is rather widespread at this point.

A lot of people use alts to do ERP because they are "ashamed" to do it on their main, which I personally find ridiculous but it's their point of view I guess

[TheOperator3712]

I find it a little astonishing that people make alts in this game. There is very little practical reason to do so and they take a ton of work to get up to speed (unless you drop a lot of extra cash on them anyway)

There doesn't need to be a plethora of reasons to make an alt, just one or two very good reasons. The most compelling reason being savage lockouts. Having a ton of alts means that you can do splits with a static for faster overall gearing. Taking it to the extreme, you can funnel loot to everyone's main by having 7 alts each. Most statics stick to one alt though. Having alts also allows you to get geared up on more than one gear category, allowing you to hop into more PFs as ilvl reqs go up.

It's also not that hard to level alts if you're skipping cutscenes. 80-90% of the MSQ is cutscenes, so if you don't stop to unlock trials and raids along the way you can burn through the MSQ fairly quickly.