Hello guys, how is the population in the game?
Wonder if anyone remembers my characters? Shadowsols, Chemikal, Aijijujitsu, some other twink toons I don’t remember the names of. Lemule chilling out in borealis wearing weird clothes all day long, lol.
Welcome back!
The pop ebbs & flows back depending on the time of year & events. During the summer It will feel like a ghost town.
The new “fresh start” server (“Rubika 2019” paid only) has further split the population. I wouldn’t be surprised to see FC just shut Rubika down altogether & using 2019 (with fixes in place) as the only server.
It is pretty dead. You either need to multibox to do content, pay someone else to do the content for you so you can buy nodrop loot or only play on weekends.
You cant reasonably play this game during the week unless you like to solo and do everything by yourself. I personally cant justify paying a subscription to a game I can only play on the weekend because of a lack of players.
I’m sorry friend, but the population (on the live server) is the lowest it has ever been.
I subbed for the first time in years a few weeks ago, and sadly, after a few hours, I already regretted my decision. The new server, although temporary (I think), divided an already small amount of players. Finding a team is a once-a-day occurrence – if you’re lucky. You’d find more people in Antarctica then you would in AO; and because of that sad truth, I think it’s time to grant froobs Shadowlands access, maybe one would find a team then… but I’d be beating a dead horse.
“We’ve heard your cries! We’ve heard your pleas!”
Weird to hear these answers. Last few tower wars and Tara raids its been 15-30 people per side so not sure what these people are saying. Every mmo has certain time zones that aren’t as populated but prime time for AO revolves more around EU times then NA. I from NA and if I want it to be active I have I play mid day and early afternoon. Friday’s and Saturday’s are pretty active regardless. Wow classic has caused a little dip but for planned mass PvP people always log for offense or defense usually.
I agree with you mate it started off amazing when i join join April 2019 i played but a vote came up for next expansion Shadow-lands won but the failed delay and bad support almost 2/3 left the game my whole Org left. then sl came out grid to 205 on whatever except mission was losing more ppl then 210 would repeat 205, best morph game i ever played but FC not being on top of there game killed it again sadly even AI coming in Oct will not save it well i know the few left will disagree i played since 2004 it needs another expansion another world to explore would bring ppl back but this game capped itself years ago on those ideas what a community we had early 2000 i miss it .
This game was launched in 2001, the audience of AO are in their 30s or older. Unless you have a job that lets you play in the day, you work nights or dont have a job then you wont be playing in the day time.
There is a low population no matter what time you play. Getting a team at any time is completely subjective and it goes back to what I said earlier, why pay to play a game when its only viable on the weekends.
AO has stagnated and has been that way since LoX. AO is still pay to play WITH a cash shop which is an insult to current customers and alienates those that would like to try AO. The population is low for a variety of reasons but those are two of the biggest.
Just resubbed. Logged on an alt and tried to find some heckler teams. Not a single person in the lfg for several hours. I logged off.
They do happen, but for some odd reason a lot of players don’t use LFT for teams… They use org chats or tradenet
The way things are done changed somewhat. Specifically, “hecklers teams” are way less popular than in the past. (Daily missions, Inferno missions teams,…). I remember pulling hecklers in East Adonis… nostalgia. Those teams still happen though.
As JackBauer pointed out just above, players tend to use other ways of teaming too, and it depends a lot on what org you are in, and what alliances this org has, or not.
For example, and just for example as there are other groups, Athen Paladins is in an Alliance with 21 other orgs (of very diverse sizes) and we raid every day. Teaming is not too hard either in the org or alliance.
Alliance Clan Francophone (“ACF”)
Athen Paladins / GoA (Guardians of Athen)
Atrox Caelestis / Deus Caelestis
BSTRDS
Code Dragon Noir / Code Enfants du Chaos
Coven of Hunters / Children of the hunt
Haven
ImPacT
Les Coyote Girls
Nordic Alliance
Phoenix Rising
Regulators
Silence of The Leets
Spectre / Spirit
The Asylum
The Glowing NightFlies
The Real Exodus
The Syndicate
Unlimited High Society
Unity of The Rose
Valheru Ascendants
Zweiundvierzig (“42”)
There are of course other groups of orgs and public raid bots. In such contexts, getting a team is not too hard.
The drawback is that this system tends to pull a bit people from regular LFT lists although, at least regarding us, we have extremely often people also LFT.
Chrisax
MP, in AO since 2001
President and founder of Athen Paladins
Rk5 should just be total ftp, rk19 is the main server now and is having updates. I really can’t see people going back to rk5 with the credit situation, it’s the main reason most came back and moved to rk19. Unless there was some major credit sink reason with a new update for rk5, that server is pretty dead.
Well i came back to the game last month and subbed for a year. The free server is at least reasonable populated. However, i went on the new rk19 server this week just to find it both almost completely deserted (even ICC had less than 10 ppl standing AFK) and also that dispite the low population it has terrible latency issues. Changing maps can take forever and often give an error, and sometines the game just stops mid-fight for 5-10 seconds before continuing. Startingzone also bugged (guide keeps giving same quest over and over again instead of moving on to next one)
Personally i regret subbing for a year.
Just to clear things up - unless you’re really after the progression experience on the rk19, you can still enjoy the full-paid experience on the regular server (rk5), which you confusingly call ‘the free server’. You probably know that, but I’m just making sure you won’t waste your hard-earned money.
Population is okay - players got some reason and they moved from dead orgs to those populated, and orgs are making content on their own. It used to be 20 orgs with 20 players total, and all those lone players were in /lft - now its different. And better! 
There is a serious lack of open community. If you aren’t in a big org (which doesn’t exist because now its just a bunch of alliance orgs) or part of an alliance of orgs then scraping up a bunch of randoms is highly unlikely. Everything is dictated by several things:
Your org (and by contrast alliance) does things at a specific time or day.
People multi log and do content and sell loot rights thus negating an open community/game/teaming
The same is applied in PvP
Paying to play this game only on weekends due to population is not worth the money
The population is poor/extremely low which is why the above reasons exist. If people say “population is great/ok/fair/good on weekends” etc then they are fabricating the true state of this game. You cant reasonably play this game during the week. There is a window on the weekend to play this game.
AO was not meant to be a solo game. AO was created when MMOs were new and they took MM to heart. A lot of the content is built around team content in order to make a meaningful/fast progression. There is solo content and I am not saying you cant “play” the game at all because you cant team with others but you will find yourself doing a lot of stuff solo to make some progression and thus feel lonely and have no real drive or place in the world.
The game has been in decline for several years, the game has also stagnated in content with nothing new planned indefinitely.
Play the game if you intend to deal with playing solo. Play the game if you dont mind playing on the weekend in raid type situations or meaningful progression. Play the game if you can justify the cost in logging on/playing 8 days a month (every weekend for a month and thus wasting potentially 22 days of play time). Play the game if you want to just visit a while. But to say that AO is alive and well is far from the truth, it is a dusty book in an abandoned house that will never be occupied.
THIS! Is is one of the problem, please peoples if youre free to team up just throw youre self on LFT . IF you feel like helping out newbs put youre self up there.
I came back, like did many others.
Luckily as a grown up man i find 15€ is meaningless pocket change what i throw in if i want t cup of coffee and a sandwich lol…
Even if i would only play 1 time in a month for 1 hour i would get more enjoyment(time) of my investment to AO than in my normal everyday investemnt for a afternoon coffee, wich lasts for 20mins.
One more thing id like to add is, that i have joined one of these big ORGs, and they are welcoming and the gaming experience is much better. If you cant beat them, join them!
The endgame activities are something that are fit for ORG’s the ORG’s are the mmorpg population in this game.
IF one chooses to go solo and lone wolf there are challenges with it (i respect this i played solo for a yearback in the day)…and of course rewards too! There is nothing wrong in solo, i have few secret toons that are un ORG:ed so i can play with all.
But yeah, my personal experience was good with joining a bigger org.
MMO-Populations has up to date info. They don’t paint such a bleak picture.
Anarchy Online is ranked #85 out of 138 tracked MMOs in terms of aggregate server and player population. TOTAL PLAYERS 182.78K Anarchy Online is estimated to have 182,781 total players or subscribers. DAILY PLAYERS 5,209 Anarchy Online is estimated to have 5,209 players per day this month.
Of course, that’s not near what it used to be, but it’s still viable. I’m still enjoying AO. Where’s the kickstarter for AO2? I’ll donate from my retirement fund. If that’s not enough I’ll start giving plasma.
Thanks for these numbers. I was positively supriced myself about the population.
Sometimes i even think there is too many (when they steal my camp GRRRRRR 
!
I was really really close on starting kickstarter campaign , not for AO2 (i would support this too), but just to get 2 more positions filled on game staff. 1) Fulltime customer service person 1) Content developer/designer or programmer, to tweak small things in game, balancing maybe new items etc.(these are just stupid suggestions, but the idea is to hire few critical staff memebrs to team, im not sure whats most critical.)
I would settle of of these goals and would pay for either.