If 80% of the accounts were effectively used, and the 50% of the remaining not alt accounts, why do you think these numbers would be reliable? The history of the Company called id, maybe?
I see the same 50-100 regular peeps across the united states.. numbers like these make me laugh.
i rarely even see 2009 accounts. this is a community of people who like to alias....make dozens upon dozens of accounts they only use for a short time before discarding.
it undermiens the skill match system...and a main reason this game is dead and not respected. with no league scenes...and no legit ranked pub matches.
most normal competitive people into e-sports.... will not stick around.
If you want to see how dead QL is, you can follow my patented process:
1) pay money into it for the ability to host servers
2) host PQL duel
3) wait 30-45 minutes for the first person to join
4) 99% chance this person doesn't like PQL, doesn't know what it is, thinks you're hacking etc
5) if you even get to start a game, 99% chance they ragequit before 2 minutes are up
6) if you finish a full game, chances are you got destroyed by someone from CPMA who is bored to tears with this game
Or you can just look at the server browser and count the numbers. It's very easy.
QL is 'making ends meet'. This and pretty much only this statement from John Carmack is the only reliable way to gauge if QL is 'dead' or not. it also depends on what you deem to be 'dead'
exactly. so, from a financial standpoint, QL isn't really a success but it's not exactly a failure either. QL's biggest purpose isn't anything monetary, it's about keeping people playing Quake and looking forward to more ID games.