I have no first-hand information but I assume they have a character logged to each server and some way of processing LFM and WHO data.

The API died a long time ago.

Well, automating something you did manually is one of the purposes of programming, is it not?

If they scan the who list, they miss all the people that are logged anonymously.
The API ( long dead now ) didn't miss them though.

so in the end there's at least 20% more people than what they report, since the Anonymous won't show up.

Snu Snu wrote on Nov 22^nd, 2020 at 4:45am:

Shunned wrote on Nov 22^nd, 2020 at 10:04am:


Another theory is the API no longer recieves updates or ongoing development, is broken for 90% of tasks, but still functions juuuuuuuussssssstttt well enough to pull server population data. The LFMs are clearly a screen grab but it would not be difficult to automate that process(note: 'Automating' comes from the roots 'auto-' meaning 'self-', and 'mating', meaning 'screwing'.)

Notanarc wrote on Nov 22^nd, 2020 at 2:27pm:


You don't log in. In text chat "/anonymous on" sets you to anonymous. Source:

https://ddowiki.com/page/Chat

Shunned wrote on Nov 22^nd, 2020 at 10:04am:


it's wild assed to think that.

noamineo wrote on Nov 22^nd, 2020 at 2:25pm:


I agree, actually if it's as high as 20% being that much lower is a good thing... it means that the game population is higher than many think.


noamineo wrote on Nov 22^nd, 2020 at 2:27pm:


As far as I know the API server ( that was left rotting in a corner after they killed MyDDO ) died during a power outage long before they moved to the Current Virtualized Datacenter environment. Since at that time it was not possible to have a coder token anymore only those that used the API before they killed MyDDO were still able to use the API server before it's death.

I don't think they revived it when they went virtual. ( they would have made some noise about it, like when they gave us back the art assets so that we could reskin the game )

Now, and it's going to devolve rapidly back into geek stuff between noamineo and me, they might have found a way to tickle the login server to provide informations. ( and in that case they might be able to track the anonymous, since they appears as login, but not in the who list )

Flav wrote on Nov 22^nd, 2020 at 4:22pm:


It was inevitable, really.

So "API" is one of those tech buzz-words that can mean all kinds of different things depending on who's making it. The game's intentional public API that you speak of is probably very long dead, but we shouldn't omit the notion that the login server or game servers themselves had independent APIs  someone might have tripped into accessing.

Another notion to consider - there may be some not terribly difficult way to pull this information out of the client. We already know its possible to manually trigger a request(open the social panel and go to the "who" page) - its possible this process presents some kind of request to the server. Something like:

Client "How many people are online?"
Server "528 people with 147 anonymous"
Client: "Display non-anonymous players" (client busily makes a table with 381 rows to hold the data)

It wouldn't take much to figure out where this information is being returned and pull it out of there. At the very least a packet trace could do it the same way they reverse-engineer MMO servers.

Knowing how incredibly hostile the SSG devs are towards any players who do anything remotely like that, its fairly easy to see why the guy doing it might say "Oh I just have a bunch of friends manually counting for me!" while quietly weeping to himself about how no one will ever know his true cleverness.

Jerky wrote on Nov 22^nd, 2020 at 4:39pm:



DDOracle doesn't react to any questions whatsoever. It doesn't really look like there is much maintenance going on either.

Does the data match?

5 Foot Step wrote on Nov 21^st, 2020 at 12:40pm:



Remember when you could look up other players gear/stats on YourDDO? Logging with shit gear to troll other players.

Rose-tinted Goggles wrote on Nov 22^nd, 2020 at 8:26pm:


Lots of people was doing that... which lead to the "Link your DR Breaker" tells when trying to join a PUG.