I can't believe it ! (number of Quake Live players)

[Spakk]

Following on from this post I tried checking the number of casual/regular players using this method:

(can only check for accounts, not individual players)

Carry out a player name tag search on a number of three-letter combinations chosen randomly (max result each time 99). Copy all the results together into a text file until a significant sample of 5000 accounts has been reached.
Then search for entries where "last played online" is in minutes, hours or days (therefore within last month).
Also get number of accounts online in last day (minutes or hours).
So get percent of players online within last month, and last day.
Multiply by total number of accounts (approx 1,300,000 obtained from awards data).

Result:
14.7 percent of accounts within last month = approx 190000 accounts (inflated by Xmas though)
3.1 percent within last day = approx 40000 accounts

This is much more than I would have thought, and means that Quake Live is a reasonable success.

I checked different samples other days with similar results.

Is there any error in this ?

[aaab]

This just makes me laugh at all the people posting that this game is dying, and how rubbish this game is.

[ybl]

so turned out to be a good decision, to shut down freezetag.

[*DevilsDream]

why is there only 12145 on leaderboards

[sponge]

Just a quick aside,

The Christmas award should be showing the amount of players who earned it. No conspiracies here, just a weird bug. I checked the database manually just now and found we had 57K people who played a match on either of the holiday maps. Over the holiday season, we had 78k players on the website.

[AXxXxO]

not bad....if ID is smarter and use opportunity to advertise quake live with razer...(razer did it on new product i think switchblade for free and ID should be smart to use that opportunity to advertise with razer and you will get players)
yeah dunno if anyone saw how ea do free commercial,no money for it but they got players in closed beta more then ql so it is weird that game has under 100k.....they use facebook and twitter
they use system if we reach 30k likes ea will send 100 keys or contest on some sites,everything to get them in game....
why not ql use something like that and get more players?

[sample2501]

inb4 sponge gets fired for giving out those top secret player numbers XD

but ~60k players sound better than i would have thought.
sponge, do u see an increase or decrease in player numbers since the going out of beta? this would be really nice to know.

cheers & oi

[motion_snk]

ql + steam = 499999999999999999999 more players

[Laval]

But sponge, it's the same award we could get last year. Doesn't it count ppl who played back then and didn't play this year?

The silent night award? there was a diffrent one last year. Its the halloween one youre thinking of. Last year it was a x-mas tree ornament and said 2009, this year is the gift that says 2010

[aaab]

ql + steam = 499999999999999999999 more players

ql + steam = steaming pile of crap. (no pun intended)

Thought I would add a little to this...
Steam = you go to your mates place.
Oh no you have to install steam.
It crashes
You remove steam
Reinstall
Download quake game
Steam crashes
Restart steam
Finish downloading quake
run quake
Quake crashes
Restart steam
Steam needs an update
update steam
Click play quake
It doesn't work
reinstall steam
start quake

You get to play 1 game of quake.
Your soon to be ex GF calls saying "I thought you were only going to have a couple of games then come home."
You reply "Have you done the washing yet? Can't you bring my dinner to my mates place?"
You are now in serious trouble and can't go home all because of steam.