MyUO is monitored

[Serks]

Dont know if someone is into this stuff ...

There is a tool floating around which scans the crappy MyUO API. Maybe it will help one day to near down the estimates about the population.


Chars Count


Searches Count

It is still in the initial scanning phase and not all shards are fully scanned yet (~1 hour per shard). Additonally the API is crappy ...

In my Opinion, the devs should just release the numbers somehow on a regular basis. But I guess the API will just be disabled soon.

(Don't know the rules, therefore I did not post any further links)

 

[petemage]

Nice idea. Could you maybe post the numbers you got out there? Is that chars count only including players that have logged in recently?

 

[Petra Fyde]

How much would those numbers mean?
1. MyUO isn't currently updating
2. it only shows characters logged in during the past 30 days anyway
3. people could have anything between 1 and 7 characters on multiple shards, some of which are played regularly and others only occasionally.
as a guide for the number of active accounts it is, in my opinion, totally worthless

 

[Capt. Lucky]

No wonder MyUO is always broken lol Regardless if the info is nonsense or not it will be used to support any number on conspiracy theories. I like how Balhae is kicking Legends butt but if you spent 5 minutes walking around both shards you'd have a very different opinion. I mention it only because Balhae has been a topic the last few days.

 

[Serks]

As I said, MyUO is crappy and of course you can't get any results regarding active accounts. Thought this was clear ... ^^
But at least it will gather the amount of chars, whatever this means with regards to MyUO (Is it really updating and so on ?). It will at least help to near down the population (not active accounts or whatsoever).

Thats why I also said it would be great if the devs would share these numbers. I don't mind active accounts, we all know that they won't release these numbers. But they could at least provide the population per shard (Or put a better API in place ...).

petemage; will do. give it some more time.

Regarding 'recently logged in', this is what is beeing provided per char: https://api.uo.com/data/laston
{"0":"Recently","1":"Within 7 Days","2":"Within 30 Days","3":"Within 90 Days","4":"Inactive","5":"Unknown"}

 

[petemage]

Number of active chars in the last 30 days divided by 7 is an upper bound for actively used (i.e. played) accounts in the last 30 days. I would find that number highly interesting. The ratio of those numbers between the shards are also interesting to get a feeling how active an shard is (in contrast the plain feeling that a shard is "dead").

Of course, it needs to be read with a grain of salt, but that doesn't mean those numbers are useless..

 

[Capt. Lucky]

Number of active chars in the last 30 days divided by 7 is an upper bound for actively used (i.e. played) accounts in the last 30 days. I would find that number highly interesting. The ratio of those numbers between the shards are also interesting to get a feeling how active an shard is (in contrast the plain feeling that a shard is "dead").

Of course, it needs to be read with a grain of salt, but that doesn't mean those numbers are useless..

Only one of my 3 accounts has 7 characters slots

 

[Fridgster]

The seige numbers should be pretty accurate since your allowed only 1 character slot.

 

[grimiz]

Only one of my 3 accounts has 7 characters slots

That's why he said is was an upper bound...

At this point, any data is better than no data.

 

[Thrakkar]

Number of active chars in the last 30 days divided by 7 is an upper bound for actively used (i.e. played) accounts in the last 30 days.

No it's not. The average holiday item OCD lunatic will probably log in on every shard with every of his 7 toons. That is just one account. And not 28 (or how many shards we got).
People just playing any siege ruleset shard will only play with a single char.
So yes, that number is pretty much worthless...
Even if you would get the exact number of logged in accounts in the last 30 days, you cannot really get the active player base out of it, because multiple accs per players is not uncommon.

 

[MalagAste]

I still say the best way to get a closer to accurate count of how many people play is to get one of the scripting IDOCers to alter their script to count all the house signs they "check" and go with that number divide that by 3 or 4 to account for those of us with multiple accounts and those who have only one.... and that would give you a "rough" idea.

But first you'd have to convince a cheater to alter that code... and secondly you'd have to get them to give that number up... And then you have to wonder if they actually check EVERY location with housing... or do they just get the main area's...

 

[Khaelor]

But first you'd have to convince a cheater to alter that code... and secondly you'd have to get them to give that number up... And then you have to wonder if they actually check EVERY location with housing... or do they just get the main area's...

They are pretty good with covering pretty much everywhere. See them running by every couple of days in at out of the way homes.

 

[MalagAste]

They are pretty good with covering pretty much everywhere. See them running by every couple of days in at out of the way homes.

Yeah well I'm pretty sure they would have a fair estimate of how many houses there are out there...

 

[grimiz]

Yeah well I'm pretty sure they would have a fair estimate of how many houses there are out there...

Waiting for someone to argue that those numbers are also garbage because you know... not every account owns a house.

It's all a moot point, because they don't release active subscriber numbers. We all know the game is limping along - one poop-on-the-carpet away from being put down.

 

[elster]

Cool stuff. I did some similar analysis against the myuo. I actually dumped all myuo data into elasticsearch (brute force searched the API by searching for every possible 3 char prefix. dump script here myuo_analysis/myuo_dump.py at master · autorock/myuo_analysis · GitHub) for analysis to see what skills were most popular among PVPers. Once you get all data into a tool like elasticsearch, you can do some really cool things with it. myuo_analysis/analyze_data.py at master · autorock/myuo_analysis · GitHub

I created a web UI around it and everything too, but eventually just got bored with it.

 

[Serks]

@MalagAste
This is by far a better way to determine the number of accounts. I bet the numbers are out there somewhere .... But all this is just about paying accounts. It is of course an interesting topic, but we will never know here as long as there is no input from official site. The best input we could get currently is that they will be shutting down ... or not ...

I really don't want to get the thread derailed here. My intension was not to discuss active/paying accounts, it was just about MyUO and how many chars exist (Or at least what does the MyUO API provide ...). At best push someone into the right direction @broadsword. But again, as you may already know, there won't be any feedback from them.

@everyone who is interested in what MyUO delivers currently:
ThatOneGuy (Who lives in 1998) runs the tool only from time to time, maybe 1 or 2 hours in the evening 2 or 3 days a week.
Start End Scan Of Shards

Code has been changed (all available on GitHub: GitHub - TooMuchLegacy/MyUOScanner: Yes we scan !! (First Public MyUO Scanner)) to scan shard by shard. Accurate numbers can only be delivered when the next full scan of each shard is finished or if someone picks up the code and can do better.
Here are the latest results (Please consider the way the MyUO API and this tool works):
This is how many request to MyUO of the initial run are pending:
Searches Done

This is how many chars have been found so far:
Chars Found Per Server

@elster
Maybe you have just won ? =D
Your input is very well welcomed.
Of course it is bruteforced, but the API only returns 150 results. Thats why you need more combinations than 3 chars from time to time and can not get exact numbers of chars like 'Avatar' on Atlantic (for example).
It seems that you also get blocked for some minutes if you sent too many request. Thats why the tool is slow, even with proxies. Anyway, thanks for you response. Nice to see someone who already digged into this topic. Any input is really appreciated.

 

[MalagAste]

I highly doubt counting the number of players logging in means squat... I mean if I just look at my accounts and how many I log in and when ..... we recently had a clicky.... so I can guarantee that everyone who does that sort of thing logged in every account they had with characters on Every shard and clicked the statue....

For me that's 14 accounts worth of characters logging on on every single shard... for the clicky.... But not all those accounts have a character on every shard... so if you are basing off numbers of players logging in that's not really giving you even a remote idea of how many people play...

On any given day I myself might log in 15 to 30 or more different characters.

In a months time I could have logged in potentially every character I have which would be 100's..... again.... not a good way to base player numbers.

I have friends with as many as a dozen accounts or some with 1 to 3 accounts.... they can log in any number of characters as well.... And what about players on Siege... they may only log in their one account or so 1 time... but they might have 5 to 7 accounts maybe and only log those 7 in in that month or they might just do some exploring on other shards and log in a few characters hear and there...

While housing is limited fairly well to 1 per account there are a few accounts out there still with multiple houses on them..... this would more than make up for those people who don't have a house..... which I'm just going to say have to be slim to none... There can't be that many accounts without a house.... I'm willing to bet the number of accounts with more than one to multiple houses on the account are FAR greater than the number of accounts with no house at all.....

Counting houses of course only means somewhat active accounts as well as there are houses out there which belong to DEVs and EMs and such which wouldn't really mean active accounts ...... as well there are houses out there doing the roulette risk on a month off for 3 ..... which I think is seriously risky and I would never do...

But counting houses and dividing by 5 I think would put you a whole lot closer to getting a fair estimate of how many players there are.

 

[Serks]

@MalagAste
Are you trolling?

 

[MalagAste]

I'm just saying that counting the number of characters and saying that has any relevance on how many active players is totally invalid. If that's trolling whatever... I don't say it to troll .... I'm telling you the logic is flawed.

 

[Serks]

Ok, I am with you and hope that now finally the last one understood that the thread was not about active players/accounts.
Thanks for mentioning it again and making it clear.

 

[elster]

@elster
Maybe you have just won ? =D
Your input is very well welcomed.
Of course it is bruteforced, but the API only returns 150 results. Thats why you need more combinations than 3 chars from time to time and can not get exact numbers of chars like 'Avatar' on Atlantic (for example).
It seems that you also get blocked for some minutes if you sent too many request. Thats why the tool is slow, even with proxies. Anyway, thanks for you response. Nice to see someone who already digged into this topic. Any input is really appreciated.

Maybe the API has changed, but when i wrote this you only needed every possible 3 character prefix. Searching for 'abc' would find all characters that start with 'abc'. You could use any 3 character prefix including spaces and special characters, and it would work all the same. I think my script considered paginated responses if more than 150 results had the prefix as well. It also didn't throttle requests then, but I've bought proxies and round-robin looped through them for similar scripts in the past. Good luck!

 

[Tyrath]

They are pretty good with covering pretty much everywhere. See them running by every couple of days in at out of the way homes.

Indeed they do, I see the same toons every 3-5 days recalling all over the world under house signs.

 

[Serks]

Maybe the API has changed, but when i wrote this you only needed every possible 3 character prefix. Searching for 'abc' would find all characters that start with 'abc'. You could use any 3 character prefix including spaces and special characters, and it would work all the same. I think my script considered paginated responses if more than 150 results had the prefix as well. It also didn't throttle requests then, but I've bought proxies and round-robin looped through them for similar scripts in the past. Good luck!

My problem is the limit of 150 results. I can't find any way to paginate: http://api.uo.com/character/search?name=avatar
Even the MyUO page does not offer any pagination: MyUO – Ultima Online
Maybe it has really changed since you worked on it?
The API does also return results for searches with less than 3 chars, but will then return exact results: http://api.uo.com/character/search?name=z

Due to the pagination limit I am down to query all shards seperately currently. It would really help to have a pagination.