Saw 170 players on on Monday(why Monday!?) EST.
Other than that I can only repeat what I said before several times,its a mystery to me why SoD doesnt have
thousands of players,maybe the newer mmorpg player generation likes to buy their way up with rl money
instead of actually *playing* the game.
And why P99 has ~800 players in the average at peek times is an even bigger mystery for me,EQ
without AAs(tomes,and what not) is most boring.
But I am not worried,my (german) UO home free shard (Vetus Mundus)still has a very active staff despite
the population declined from 150 to now 30 in the average in the last 5 years.Again,this thing is better than
the original,all the OSI content + incredible tradeskill additions and *named* mobs everywhere,even the
economy isnt totally broken with so few players.
P99 is bigger for several reasons.
A larger playerbase already existing encourages people to start/continue playing. This means a bigger game will usually hold on to a decent population longer than a smaller game. Plus attrition of players, while bad for P99, is not as big a deal to them as it is to SoD due to the percentage of the population each player fills.
People that are looking for the Everquest experience and not similar-but-different will go to P99 more often than not.
Many players looking for a similar-but-different MMO will go to something newer with fancier shinies, and that appears more readily on google searches when looking for free mmo's. I'm not even sure how people find SoD without a current player telling them or seeing it casually mentioned on another EQEmu. Google searches for EQ servers show EQEmu and P99 but not SoD.
The population comparison affects new players: Look at SoD, look at P99, see populations and pick P99 because they want people to play with. Imagine wanting to log in to an MMO for the first time, hitting server select and seeing only 40 characters. If you're looking for a social choice you're adding SoD to the Con list instead of the Pro before you even make it to character select. Go log into P99 during peak hours and you'll see as many people in a popular newbie zone as SoD has in a city (our most populace zones).
SoD has a toxic problem with retired bots. It's become so pervasive I now run into people that feel they cannot progress unless they have access to high tier toons. Guess what happens to people that want to play but groups/raids fill up that role with retired ringers? Attrition. P99 has the population to enforce a No Boxes rule.
(Big one) P99 does not have a years of playing gap between new and old players. Character strength only goes so far because they've only released Kunark according to their webpage. The difference between an SoD new character and top character is staggering.
(
Biggest one) The new player experience. Log into SoD and try to find people to group with as you level. It's painful and lonely. The only plus is it doesn't take long IF you get the exp to start flowing. Now log into P99. Leveling takes longer to get to 60 but your leveling zones are populated; you can find groups quickly even without a global chat. You can level in groups from 1 to 60 rather than spend hours sitting lfg because you didn't make a box. And once you hit 60 there's not a mountain of exp to still get.
Oh yes, the boxes. In SoD you'll get told in /ooc -our double edged global chat- when you ask about grouping that you should have made a box. I made mine long ago because of the population problem. P99 has the population to say no boxing allowed; that rule and the population support people being willing to socially group instead of being antisocial. Being new in SoD brings the realization that you won't be great for a long time unless you get picked to fill a spot and jump tiers in a guild.
One silver lining of SoD's character strength disparity is tiers in the raid game. The multiple tiers delay congestion. P99 by design does not have a plethora of raiding content. They have 13 targets/zones if you're 60. The competition there is so toxic the GM's enforce a rotation on many targets. Imagine trying to raid in SoD if there were only 13 zones/targets in the whole game. Now picture it with P99's population size. However once P99 releases Velious a lot of that goes away as Velious will double their raid content.