We had a conversation in Global Chat about whether this game had already peaked:


...so I decided to take a peek (manually).

For account creation, I looked at 15 accounts' creation dates to approximate playerbase growth (in accounts/day)- these scatter points indicate the average accounts created per day between those two accounts (based on player ID, which increments):


It seems from this that, in account creation terms, Warzone peaked in 2016 and- other than a COVID spike in 2020- has been slowly declining in terms of new accounts created.

We were also curious about Idle's share of this, so I randomly sampled (manually - no automation was involved) 50 accounts created between mid-July and late September of this year. I looked for evidence on their profiles of playing Idle, Single-Player, and Multi-Player, and classified them as Idle/SP/MP-only if I only had evidence of them playing one game mode, Idle/SP/MP-primary if the evidence on their profile pointed to it being their main game mode, and No Activity if I saw no evidence of SP/MP/Idle on their profile. Sampling 50 accounts of a population of 10,000 means a 12% margin of error (at 95% confidence):


(the title is a typo - it's 1410000 - 1420000)

I repeated the sample with another 50 accounts to see if they'd be similar:


and here's the two samples combined together:


The error bars are kind of ugly because they don't play well with a stacked column chart. But just add +/- 8% of the values in the final graph in your head. Keep in mind that it's hard to tell from someone's profile if they've played Idle - especially if they quit before finishing Ursa:Luna - so Idlers might be showing up in other categories (like No activity or SP/MP-only if they only lost Arenas or if they played SP/MP while waiting on Idle).

Anyhow, this is hastily/lazily-sampled data but seems to tell a few stories. What's your takeaway?

Mine is that Idlers are destined to become the majority of the player base because they seem to make up a majority of accounts that stick around. Even if we count all "No activity" players as Idlers- perhaps reasonable, since my criteria for whether someone's an Idler is going to miss most everyone who tries out Idle and quits early- Idlers have so much more retention than Classic players that, though they make up a minority of new accounts, most accounts that stick around are Idlers. Perhaps the causation is reversed and players who stick around tend to gravitate toward Idle- I think this makes the most sense since otherwise the retention rates for Classic players must've dipped drastically- 100-day retention was about 80% in 2019 and 2020.

Edited 11/28/2021 05:16:44

zombie website, zombie web, zombie world

why is this in off topic

why is this in off topic

Well, it's not just about Warzone Classic, and it's not just about Warzone Idle.

Did a slightly more thorough investigation of account creation and game activity.

interactive chart: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRptEZPOJmpkBhq2hrMZ0jlHz2_c-4JXiG-7gTpMau60AdxWKfDTAb24wFVCiGLc9jS8KYjmz_12uJq/pubchart?oid=261918680&format=interactive

the day the game name changed from warlight to the current name things turned for the worse

bring back warlight

if you want my opinion, i think this game started getting all over the place in 2015

these games really rely on community to grow, 2014 community was strongest for sure

then it started spreading out into many other game types and communities, diplo games, coin games, lottery games, rt ladder, local deploy, then all sorts of qm and idle and what not, feels a bit overwhelming

not saying these new formats are bad, but i'd take a game with one strong united community any day over many small tiny communities

nothing wrong with original risk inspired warlight, with 1v1,2v2,3v3 and seasonal ladder, now its all over the place

just my 2 cents

the day the game name changed from warlight to the current name things turned for the worse

Warzone was launched on 2017/11/13. There's no decline in game or account creation activity around that time, at least not in the data above.

i think this game started getting all over the place in 2015

That seems to also have been the year of rapid account growth, unmatched until the COVID wave of 2020.

not saying these new formats are bad, but i'd take a game with one strong united community any day over many small tiny communities

QM is kind of the backbone of the game right now, at least in terms of game volume. I think it also explains the uptick in games per day starting late 2017. There's not really as much fragmentation- QM has helped kill off diplo (at least RT diplo), supplanted the RT ladder, etc.

Plus, all in all, Warzone/Warlight is doing far better than its peers. Here's the comparison of games/day, based on recent game IDs:

- Risk: Global Domination: unknown, probably significantly above Warzone
- AtWar: unknown, probably between CC and Risk:GD
- Warzone: ~10,000 games/day
- Conquer Club: ~2,700 games/day
- Dominating12: ~400 games/day
- Major Command: unknown, probably between WarGear and Dominating12
- WarGear: ~150 games/day
- LandGrab: ~50 games/day
- Victors United: unknown, probably between Warfish and LandGrab
- Warfish: ~2 games/day

I couldn't get game IDs and/or creation dates for some of them- those are the "unknown"s, with their rank in the ballpark of where I think they'd land.

For AtWar, I was able to check account creation rates and that's ~340 accounts/day between November 2020 and September 2021. For comparison, Warzone had slightly slower account creation during a similar timeframe- ~310/day. I think AtWar is imploding, though (https://atwar-game.com/forum/topic.php?topic_id=48262 https://atwar-game.com/forum/topic.php?topic_id=48258) so we might've caught them at a low point. I remember them being a fair bit larger than Warzone last time I checked- in late 2018-late 2019, they were adding ~500 accounts/day while Warzone averaged ~270/day over that time period.

For Risk: Global Domination, one of their staff mentioned that they had 2 million monthly active users "at a low point over the Summer" of 2021. So they seem to be >25x as large as Warzone.

But ignoring Risk:GD and AtWar- which isn't really Risk-like at all- there's not much better results out there in the indie Risk-like non-Hasbro-licensed turn-based-strategy game genre. Maybe Warzone is just limited by the popularity of its genre.

Edited 11/29/2021 09:33:42

well ok, but you're talking about warlight slowing down, so why are you comparing daily no. of games with other sites, not really a relevant statistic

have to insist we change game name back to warlight

why are you comparing daily no. of games with other sites, not really a relevant statistic

Because the slowdown (inasmuch as one is happening) might not be specific to Warzone but just the genre as a whole declining. Maybe this is just the twilight of online Risk. Plus the current slowdown in account creation is nothing crazy- we're coming off the COVID high and reverting to where things were in late 2019, it seems. Maybe it'll climb again in the near future.

have to insist we change game name back to warlight

Well right now is certainly a bad time to do that. It probably won't happen until after the Activision lawsuit ends/settles.

Edited 11/29/2021 05:45:12

i loved playing classic last year but so many people stopped playing after idle came out. it also cut the time people spent playing classic - qm, diplos or other things. and the draconian moderation policies.

(at 95% confidence):

WE DEMAND 100% CONFIDENCE

we need more trolls like justinian, neverdeverd, platinum, etc...

i agree. more trolls, less dorks