Mostly for my own curiosity, I've tracked the class populations for a few weeks now to see if it lined up with my guesses. This data is basic - just taken from /who all's of levels 51-60, once or twice a day, from midafternoon to midnight Eastern somewhat randomly. Note that it will not include anons. The table is just an average and the chart includes the ranges of values found during the times recorded. FYI: DRU 14.8% CLR 13.7% ENC 11.1% BRD 8.1% BST 6.1% WIZ 6.0% MAG 5.9% SHM 5.9% RNG 5.6% SK 4.7% WAR 4.4% PAL 4.1% NEC 4.0% MNK 3.3% ROG 2.3% I was somewhat surprised at the high Bard population and the low pure melee count, but that might just be my prejudices. I find it interesting how these numbers sway between no-boxing, 2-boxing, and unlimited boxing servers.
You have to remember also that likely almost everyone started here over the years with the typical trinity trio (melee, chanter, cleric/dru) has moved onto other alts. A lot of the Druids we see on our raids these days are from newer players since its a great first healer choice due to the classes other utility (ports, PL ability later on, etc). Beasts are also high with us for new players, they are a decent group tank.
Neat data Poor rogues. So good on raids, so... er, suboptimal... in trios. (Though I'd love to see a shman/rogue/rogue trio someday! Torpor tank on the shaman, autofollow the shaman on the rogues, position SHM - MOB - ROGs, flip to rogues and mash "5 backstabs" hotkey once a minute or so. Simple, low APM, and the rogues bring the only thing the shaman really lacks [DPS].)
I bet the reason those bard numbers are so high are the number of people looking to AFK their bard in someones group for the 4th toon bonus.
No surprise on the pure melees being at the bottom, but I thought the plate tank hybrids would be closer to the top.
Druid class delivers a ton of value considering how broad the portfolio is. I'm more surprised at the number of clerics logged in. Edit: all along the xp range I might add -- I think Druids have more good places to put AA than almost anyone
Is there a way you can base it off TAKP Magelo database? You could start by collecting data from all the guilds, then doing unguilded people by searching based on name or something like that, not sure best way to search unguilded people
Here's a list of all toons on TAKP, guilded or unguilded, sorted by level. The level 60 toons cover pages 1 to 45 of that list. There are about 2,000 level 60s. A lot of level 60s haven't played since Kunark or Velious, though. It'd be good to filter them out, e.g. with a "has at least one AA" requirement, but I don't think TAKP Magelo can do that atm.
I did a rough version of what Pithy suggested in excel and got this. I was aiming for the first 2250 characters in that list which is where it looked like the level 60s ended. I figure the idle players, and GM chars and whatnot are just noise and it's fairly close?
I think it's easier to see now.. somehow the 3 best 'mains' appear to have the lowest representation but if you add up the melees at the bottom of the list, it's about the same as the number of clerics/enchanters/druids since most of the melee players will have one or more of those for support regardless of which melee they are.
One bard per wizard, as it should be! Neat that BL is the most popular melee (unless you consider bards melees, lol). I suppose that makes sense, in that one thing that distinguishes TAKP from P99 is Luclin and BLs. Also it's pretty OP to have tank, slow, DPS and mana regen all in one class Kinda surprised how many level 60 necros there are. I feel like I never see necros around.
Necros are quite rare for nag in a raid environment. We usually have just 0-1 in any given raid. Definitely makes me feel like they are rare. Typically we have just 1-2 rogues and 1-2 pallies. I wonder which classes will gain in popularity come PoP!
I’m a little surprised to see this many shaman considering we never get more than 2-3 at a raid, and seemingly everyone I know has a Beastlord. Different guilds must have some clumps of classes I don’t see as many of.
I guess if solar filtered for deleted characters it would be a lot closer. Every so often I reminisce about poor Raev and I noticed his actual stats disappeared. If that is related, then judging from Spreckles and Drudgee's pages I guess monks have a substantial lead in the 'deleted characters with aten necks' category. Looks like Hagz still plays though and Rimidal is gearing up his monk! Interestingly, on Project 1999's wiki magelo the most popular class (Warrior) dominates the least popular (actually Magician, not Wizard as you might expect) by 3.4x. That's almost identical to the 3.7x difference here between Clerics and Paladins. I wonder whether that reflects the limit of Verant's ability to balance their classes or the idiosyncrasies of boxing.
There was an update to magelo and it now pulls data directly from the character instead of trying to compute it. Anyone who hasn't logged in since that update won't have their stats populated because there's no ingame data to use. So it has nothing to do with the IsDeleted = 1 flag next to your name in the database. It just shows that someone has been MIA.
Oh, I see. As a programmer I admire that kind of laziness, but I don't think I could sufficiently conquer my perfectionism to implement things that way. Anyway, I'm way past my personal frustration with Monks and am not here to ruin all your threads. Carry on!
Stats can always be interpreted and filtered to show whatever result people want. The original post here was based on recently active non-anon people, then the one I posted was just based on all level 60 chars that exist. Maybe a poll would be interesting - pick the 3 classes that make up your main/preferred trio.
I'd like to see the results filtered by only top /played character on account. Presumably that would for most people be their 'main' though a few alt clerics and enchanters might slip through.
Great thread, interesting to see the data, thanks for sharing it. haha you can never devour my soul! <3 Pally numbers have always been low, even from what I remember on live. Kunark and Velious was a rough time for them. AA's have helped. In PoP they will finally be great, can't wait. But yah, the class isn't flashy and can appear somewhat underpowered. I like the combination of cleric/healing and the tanking, it's just fun for me. Lots of mobs to lockdown and doing a group heal when needed feels awesome. Or the perfectly timed LoH. It's a fun group tank.
