Quote Originally Posted by Jojoya View Post
And still excludes the growths and declines the market has experienced since. It also doesn't mention factors that influenced the sharper value changes.

In reality, it's all a guessing game. We cannot know which direction things are going. We can only view things clearly in hindsight. High populations now may be low in 6 months then higher in 12 months or vice versa. It depends on player engagement and other game releases.

People need to stop worrying about how many other players are active. The important question is "Are you having a good time?" If you are, great. If you aren't, why are you paying money to have a bad time?
Shhh, don't say that too loudly or people will realize that you can't accurately model the future.

Quote Originally Posted by Striker44 View Post
Actually, right, right, right. Sadly, what you're describing is exactly the utterly flawed approach used by the negative echo chamber around here, where they cherry pick completely arbitrary data points, ignore the context, and then try to act as if it means something. "Hey! There were more people playing this game at Point A (when ShB first launched) than at Point B (a random spot in a late-patch lull for EW). The game is dying!" It's worthless.

Meanwhile, the person you were responding to (Ren) provided a thorough, valid, thought-out analysis using precisely the methodology you claim to want. He looked for trends in entire data sets and consistently compared similar points in time across multiple expansion (i.e. looking at the population precisely after Patch X.2 launched, or right before X.4 launched, etc.), and the data over and over shows steady growth from expansion to expansion, with EW being the most populated one yet at every comparable point along the way.

So, your commentary in general makes a great point, but I'm utterly confused why you're directing it at the person who is actually doing the valid comparison you apparently want, while ignoring that the doomsayers are exactly the people using the invalid approach you show is flawed.
After reading your post multiple times, I have come to the conclusion that you are illiterate and did not understand what I said or the context in which I said it. Good day and may you fix your illiteracy problem soon.