The REAL Beta Numbers Thread
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As everyone knows, there is a lot of confusion and misinformation getting thrown around about the numbers of accounts and beta members. In this post, I'm going to list facts about the invite system and its history. My next post will have estimated amounts based off the dates and timer intervals, to the best of my knowledge.
Each date is a link to the appropriate announcement thread. Any missing information from timelines is appreciated, but please have a link for reference. At the time of this post: 133,99x accounts Unknown number of accounts with beta access 10,798 Default League characters 2,696 Hardcore League characters 17 October 2011 Edit: 146,97x accounts (~618 accounts created per day since above numbers) 14,552 Default League characters 3,227 Hardcore League characters It appears they have fixed the search issue with accounts, so we can now see an accurate number instead of rounding. 7 November 2011 Edit: 152,502 accounts (~260 accounts created per day since last edit) 16,689 Default League characters 3,465 Hardcore League characters 17 November 2011 Edit: 154,596 accounts (~209 accounts created per day since last edit) 4,323 Default League characters 830 Hardcore League characters As the new patch is only 3 days old, characters per league is not yet up to numbers that are representative of the beta tester pool. 1 December 2011 Edit: 162,192 accounts (~543 accounts created per day since last update) 14,497 Default League characters 2,499 Hardcore League characters 15 December 2011 Edit: 168,497 accounts (~450 accounts created per day since last update) 23,278 Default League characters 3,609 Hardcore League characters 15 January 2012 Edit: 179,217 accounts (~346 accounts created per day since last update) 13,798 Default League characters 23,914 Legacy League characters 2,455 Hardcore League characters 3,109 Hardcore Legacy League characters 1 February 2012 Edit: 188,026 accounts (~518 accounts created per day since last update) 22,203 Default League characters 3,617 Hardcore League characters 14 February 2012 Edit: 197,124 accounts (~700 accounts created per day since last update) 30,700 Default League characters 4,707 Hardcore League characters 2 March 2012 Edit: 207,970 accounts (~638 accounts created per day since last update) 41,617 Default League characters 6,021 Hardcore League characters 24 March 2012 Edit: 221,000 accounts (~592 accounts created per day since last update) 52,835 Default League characters 7,663 Hardcore League characters 1 April 2012 Edit: 254,588 accounts (~4,199 accounts created per day since last update) The public stress test created thousands of new characters that are not indicative of beta accounts. Until a Legacy migration occurs, characters per league will no longer be tracked. 11 April 2012 Edit: 281,270 accounts (~2,668 accounts created per day since last update) 88,029 Default League characters 8,790 Hardcore League characters 25 April 2012 Edit: 301,912 accounts (~1,474 accounts created per day since last update) 106,370 Default League characters 11,489 Hardcore League characters 29 May 2012 Edit: 370,620 accounts (~2,021 accounts created per day since last update) 95,675 Default League characters 7,082 Hardcore League characters 14 June 2012 Edit: 382,739 accounts (~758 accounts created per day since last update) 106,546 Default League characters 7,894 Hardcore League characters 10 July 2012 Edit: 412,142 accounts (~1,131 accounts created per day since last update) 133,955 Default League characters 9,719 Hardcore League characters 25 July 2012 Edit: 433,433 accounts (~1,419 accounts created per day since last update) 151,660 Default League characters 10,658 Hardcore League characters 31 July 2012 Edit: 471,636 accounts (~6,367 accounts created per day since last update) 221,335 Default League characters 12,885 Hardcore League characters Many new characters are due to the public stress test and are therefore not indicative of the true number of beta accounts. 27 October 2012 Edit: 564,780 accounts (~1,047 accounts created per day since last update) 18,797 Default League characters 3,711 Hardcore League characters Invite Timer Timeline:
*Sometime after Sep 8, the timer was increased to 35min, then down to 25min.* Known Keys Distributed:
*Numerous keys have been given out via Twitter, Facebook, and random forum posts. Keys have also been given to streamers and gaming sites. These promotional keys number in the thousands, but exact data is unknown.* Non-invite Announcements:
Closed Beta/Alpha Tester back after a 10-year hiatus. Kiwi pets and Spark spam FTW. Last edited by WhiteBoy on Oct 27, 2012, 5:43:07 PM
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The Numbers
I've take each segment of the timeline and broken them down to get a rough calculation on the number of timer invites and friend invites that have been distributed. For short periods of time (less than 2 days), I've calculated to the hour, rounded. For longer periods, I've calculated to the day. Take these with a grain of salt; they are most likely far less than the actual values due to rounding and many unknown variables. Invites Over Time:
Total of estimated timer invites: more than 107,096 Friend Invite Keys:
Total of estimated Friend Invite keys: more than 19,212 (As of Nov 29, 2011) Total of all estimated invites/keys plus known distributed keys: more than 176,308 possible beta accounts (approx. 31% of all accounts) *Since "thousands" of promotional keys, non-tracked friend invites, and pre-purchase keys have been given out, the number of possible beta accounts is actually much higher than the total estimate shown above. I would personally estimate these to number in the tens of thousands.* How the timer (likely) selects accounts:
Spoiler
Skip to bottom spoiler for the simplest, no-math explanation.
People throw around the term "RNG" (Random Number Generation) quite a bit. I thought it might be useful to explain how the random selection probably works. To read up on RNG, check here. The theory is simple: the computer pseudo-randomly picks a number based off an input number (seed) run through an algorithm. Computers are logical, so true randomization is impossible to achieve. The seed is necessary to give the computer something to calculate, and it can be derived from many things. To begin, we're going to give all accounts a numerical designation. To keep it simple, we can just sort them in the order they were created, starting with 0 as the first (nearly everything in computer mathematics uses 0 as the first digit). This order has nothing to do with the selection, since the RNG could pick any number equally. 0 Bob 1 Joe 2 Billy 3 George 4 John 5 Michael 6 Steve 7 David 8 Tom 9 Ed Now, we take this list and throw it into our code, which tells the computer to run the algorithm to select a number from 0-9, giving the corresponding account beta access. For each selection, the timer code has to filter out all beta member accounts and assign new numbers to each remaining account. If no new accounts are created, everyone's chances improve with each selection. That is the very basic example. To weight accounts as more likely to be picked, they are simply added to the list more than once. From the list above, if we wanted Bob to have twice the chance everyone else has, we would simply list him twice before assigning numbers: 0 Bob 1 Bob 2 Joe 3 Billy 4 George 5 John 6 Michael 7 Steve 8 David 9 Tom 10 Ed Bob's chance goes from 1/10 to 2/11, or .1 to .181818. His chances are now twice that of each other person. They each went from 1/10 to 1/11, or .1 to .090909. Keep in mind that we're not attempting to double Bob's chance, only to give him twice the chance as each other person. What if we have more than one person getting the same weight? Let's put Joe in the same 2x chance category as Bob. 0 Bob 1 Bob 2 Joe 3 Joe 4 Billy 5 George 6 John 7 Michael 8 Steve 9 David 10 Tom 11 Ed Bob's chances are now 2/12, or .166667, along with Joe's. Each other person's chances went from 1/11 to 1/12, or .083333. As you can see, Bob and Joe still have twice the chance as everyone else, but Bob's overall chances have been lowered due to Joe being weighted in the same category.
Spoiler
The simplest explanation of the name-selection process, without lists and math:
I used a longer description above to mathematically show that the 10x weighted chance doesn't actually give you a +10% chance (as many people are saying), nor does it give you ten times your base chance before posting on the forum. If we knew the number of active accounts and the number of beta accounts, we could apply this method to calculate the actual chances of active accounts versus inactive accounts. Unfortunately, this is unknown. Calculating from assumptions won't do us any good, either. Closed Beta/Alpha Tester back after a 10-year hiatus. Kiwi pets and Spark spam FTW. Last edited by WhiteBoy on Oct 27, 2012, 5:48:39 PM
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Hmmm good job
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I FLIP WITH THE BIG BOYS | |
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odds are looking rather good, I'll keep waiting.
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Forgot to add that the invite timer will be getting a shorter interval in the near future, when they push out the 0.9.3 patch. That's good news for everyone still waiting!
Closed Beta/Alpha Tester back after a 10-year hiatus.
Kiwi pets and Spark spam FTW. | |
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Awesome thread whiteboy, thanks a bunch for these numbers. So everyone can see things aren't so grim.
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These odds are NOT encouraging honestly.
Barely over 10,000 characters for definitely over 7k keys? That means that people really aren't using their invites as we thought. | |
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It doesn't take into account any deleted characters, or the fact that many testers may have stuck with or quit after playing one character. It also doesn't consider that of those 7,400+ possible accounts, many of the friend invites and PAX keys may not have been activated yet.
I would estimate the publicity keys (ones that went to gaming sites and streamers) to total in the hundreds, so the possible accounts might be 8,000+. If we consider that as a safe estimate, then 8,000/134,000=~6% of all accounts could be beta members. That's not really all that bad, since this is being run as a true beta test and not a demo or stress test. GGG says most of the invited accounts are being used, and we have no evidence that suggests otherwise. Like I said above, there are many unknown variables involved that could swing these numbers in any direction. Closed Beta/Alpha Tester back after a 10-year hiatus. Kiwi pets and Spark spam FTW. Last edited by WhiteBoy on Sep 26, 2011, 3:18:25 AM
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Still a fair few amount of players. Still dont think all the keys sent out via the timer would be used.
Cant believe Ebay took the auction down. I could understand if it was a normal person trying to sell beta keys and the company asked ebay to take them down. But to be taken down when its the actual company selling them and for a charity as well, seems rather stupid if you asked me. |
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Well you must take in common that half of those who received key dont even play. They either dont have time or totaly forgot about the game.
Keysus- His power is infinite! Last edited by Snagod on Sep 26, 2011, 3:55:28 AM
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