First of all, AV does not release any information about the population like:
- Logged in Users
- Active Subscriptions (incl. recurring)

BUT they release the figures about clan members, everyone with an active subscription may view them in the clan pages.
A certain webpage uses this information (which is also available in the external Game website journal) to display alliances, holdings etc.

http://darkfallinfo.com/pmap/index.php?mapserver=eu1&page=clans

So on this website you can see the total of players in clans per server, anyone may verify this information published by AV in game if there are doubts.
However, this page does also have an active player identification that takes the following into account:
- Changes of a Player Rank
- Changes of a Player Clan
- Changes of a Player Allignment (Note: on EU seems to be a bug, that shows you positive 10 Alignment when you are offline, althought you may have a negative Alignment online in Game, not sure if this is the same on US server)

I consider myself this information as quite vague, as it is not always correct, but interessting as estimation.

However back to the main thing, the number of players in clans (remember published by AV themselfes in game). If you have this figure, then you should also take into account the following:
- To have a total of all players you need to add the not clanned players, i assume most players are clanned from my own expierience and only a small percentage is unclanned but everyone may make his own considerations about this ammount and add a percentage of his own choice for it
- It is important to know that the number of players does not reflect the actual number of subs, as this may be lower due to the following facts
      # Cancelling sub has no affect to clan status
      # Runned out sub does not automatically remove you from clan, this happens after a certain amount of time (i'm not sure if it was 2 weeks ore more) except the clan kicks you before

With this knowledge you can get your very own picture of the Darkfall Server Population which is more or less accurate, depending on your consideration of the mentioned factors.

Some History figures (You may find more on the web or official forum)

http://www.darkfallonline.com/blog/darkfall-2-0-visual-test/#comment-4639

without further comment...

Since this game has been out for so long I think that it would need 20k+ subs or more in order for it to have at least a couple thousand players online at one time because most people cannot play video games all day every day. The real video game addicts that do come in to play usually will join from the launch for a few months and then get burned out and move onto another game. This is the main reason that EU launch seemed so populated compared to today. The people who subbed at the beginning also played a lot more often than they do now if they still play. Darkfall was only known by hardcore gamers when it was released for the most part. The problem is not the number of subs as much as the number of people who want to play it right now. Much of the population in the beginning had their character logged into the game at all times even when they were not playing so it used to seem a lot more crowded than it actually was . ... not to mention the fact that AFK macroing was allowed outside of NPC towns and there were a lot more problems with the game which favored the hardcore player over the casual player. Casual players were unbelievably behind in the beginning and are not nearly as much anymore so the number of subs would probably have to be at 40k+ for the servers to be full sometimes since most people have been playing the game more casually than they did at launch. Believe it or not, the heavy grind in the beginning and the fact that player-cities were not built yet made this game seem like it had many more subscriptions than it actually had.

I think the larger issue around darkfall population and health of the game is less about how many people are playing but more about when the payments come in nobody really is very sure what kind of currency to pay them in.

In other words I think the state of the greek economy itself might be playing a larger factor to the long term health of this game than AV. Programmers do not work for free

Originally posted by SEANMCAD

I think the larger issue around darkfall population and health of the game is less about how many people are playing but more about when the payments come in nobody really is very sure what kind of currency to pay them in.

 

In other words I think the state of the greek economy itself might be playing a larger factor to the long term health of this game than AV. Programmers do not work for free

nahh, dont blame it on the greek goverment... it's just AV who fucked up...

Originally posted by FullLootPvp

Originally posted by SEANMCAD

I think the larger issue around darkfall population and health of the game is less about how many people are playing but more about when the payments come in nobody really is very sure what kind of currency to pay them in.

 

In other words I think the state of the greek economy itself might be playing a larger factor to the long term health of this game than AV. Programmers do not work for free

nahh, dont blame it on the greek goverment... it's just AV who fucked up...

well in all fairness whatever conventional thought is on gaming websites its almost always wrong.

following conventional thought of forum posters Darkfall never came out, died within its first year, and was buried by how great mortal online was at launch. All predicted by forum posters, none of it came to pass.

So maybe...just maybe..