I don't see the benefit of removing it. But there you go, just my opinion.

I use it to see when NOT to log on. When certain players are around, I can expect 100 to be an infantile swearing club and that is not how I need to pass my limited free time.

Inc, it is not only pirates that wants it removed, but mostly so...

But when you do decide to haul something in grey, you will be more likely to do so during a time when a pirate you are not, at the time, aware of is online.

Edit: Hortan, stop posting while I'm posting! lol

Yes Sir:)

I see that your post is actually the only bonus I could think of!

The IRC bot can serve Whytee's purpose even better; you can *see* if 100 is an infantile swearing club regardless of who actually has a client logged in.

A per-guild count would be more useful than a per-nation count.

Making all of these things a bit hard to find for the newbie might be a Good Thing as long as active player counts remain low.

A per-guild count would ruin everything.

Maybe the guild pages could show members active in last 24 hours or something. Not the names, just a count of how many members of the guild have been online in the past 24 hours. Nah, that idea blows too, forget guilds, nation count, and/or total would be fine.

a private past 24 hours would be a cool feature though ;)

No information on who or how many players are online should be provided with the exception of seeing your own guild members and buddies.

When do you expect to have the active players page fully unavailable? Until then removing the menu option was really just a vain gesture.

Well, we could pull it next week, easily. I'm just a little busy right now.

This had as little to do with our "vanity" as it did "hiding shrinking activity blah blah". I promised this for ages, I was removing other stuff from the sidebar javascript, I figured I would do this at the same time.

I also figured I would try to get a "user count" graph online, and perhaps a Buddies Online thing, before we yanked the old feature entirely. I'm all for making transitions, but if there's some stuff we need to implement (like Buddies Online) then we should probably get that done. At the very least, my removing it from the menu has inspired some discussion on the subject.

Everyone on this thread is full of shit. Inc took one step in the right direction while it was convenient, and will take the next (completely removing the list from the website) relatively soon.

Note that there is no hidden agenda or vanity or any other bullshit involved. Now quit whining and go shoot stuff.

Gee, two more pages of shite. "Gleaned" much yet, Inc?

If I wasn't so fucking sore from the trees and moguls, I'd log in and see who there is to shoot. But I am, so it's time for pint therapy, Guinness style.

I see why you want to do this, but I foresee less logging on without it. Many of the people I want to be ingame with, both adversary and ally, are not on my buddy list(s) nor in my guild(s).

The only way to be equitable about it is to remove irc as well, or at least the irc active command, and any other way for people in or out of the game to record log-ins and outs of anyone not on their buddy list or guild.

thats a good thought, and i havent seen it on here, but in IRC you can see who logs on and off, is that still going to be available?

My opinion: im torn 50/50. i definitely understand why you want to remove it. and it will definitely hide the low Player Count here lately, but, i havent subbed in about 6 months waiting to see if VO would grow into a larger community, but without being able to check, i'm not sure if i will ever sub again. however, i guess i could always log in to IRC and see whats happening on 100.

i guess what i am trying to say is you pulled it too early, you need more subbers guys =(

IRC gets its information from the website, I believe. Removing the Active Players page removes its ability to track logging.

Number of active Serco/Itani/UIT/Unaligned is all that should be available for general viewing; as I avoid all buddy list bullshit, y'all can do whatever you want with that nebulous concept. A public display of guild counts must not be implemented - that's nobody's business but the guild's members.

VO should not be a fish tank that every miserable wanker gets to look over and see what's what before they dive in.

A suggested solution to the issue of locating friendly guilds without a active player tracker can be found here.

Actually anything other than a total player count makes no sense to me.

I log in, I am in a station. I can see where my friends and guildmates are. The rest I guess at "by habit and repute". A few surprises add spice to space.

There is the argument that you can see who is ingame by watching 100, I argue that I really don't care, I will deal with them if I meet them. I want to see hundreds or even thousands in game, and by see them I mean see their ships not watch adolescent whining on 100.

Inc, I for one am looking forward to the complete removal if its going to happen. Lets see what happens for good or ill. We might all be pleasantly surprised by the results. I'll admit I was rather disappointed when three messages in it was pointed out that the page was still active.

I think that "/msg irc active players" should return a list of all players who are online and have spoken on 100.

The active players link on the website could also return this list.

There will always be a way for a bot to make this possible. So, obviously, after the APL is gone, the next step is to ban the bots.