DeathofSelf, on 17 December 2012 - 11:17 AM, said:
Yes I want you to provide me with hard numbers showing the "small" player base. I don't think that is unreasonable. Having a hard time finding an 8 man team during off peak hours does not equal small player base.
I cannot give you the numbers, because PGI no longer shares that information with the players, and they have an interest in making the game seem well populated. What I did notice before the counter was removed, is that the peak numbers were steadily dropping during late closed beta before the counter was removed. There have been threads on new account creation on the forums by the person who tallied founders numbers. The rate of new account creation has been quite low during open beta. The horrid new user experience for non founders from late closed beta (after they stopped giving free testing MC to non founders) carried on into open beta, but that should improve on tuesday. Logically, new account creation has been low, and player retention doesn't appear to have been very good.
Finding an 8-man match is quite difficult outside of the few hours of peak time, presently.
So to finalize, no I can't give you those numbers, because PGI doesn't share them any more. However, that doesn't make me wrong.