sprite wrote:Hmm one thing that springs to mind about a possible innaccuracy in the count (not that it could be expected to be perfectly accurate anyway) is caused by spawning people not being counted (is this only people who are "mid-spawn" and thus nowhere, or does it include deads?).
Dead people show up, spawning people do not AFAIK (since they effectively vanish from the region and re-appear at the portal about 75% - 99% of the way thru loading from what I have seen)...
However most people "mid fight" tend to hang around a bit dead to see if they can get a res before spawning. (Watch your team window during a near wipe to see how this goes).
There is also the possibility that /who does not display _everyone_ all the time in a crowded region. I've seen weirdness when using /who where it says a buncha names, then "now displaying players in region xxxx" then finishes the list of names.
I think the list we have now is about as representative as we are gonna get short of a formal line-up and head count at the start/end of a battle, or some GM/Guide tool that shows statistics on these things (and the GMs/Guides have always been reluctant to release statistics on player numbers).
Overall what we saw was the Kami made a major effort and, with the help of some hired mercs/neutrals and a few Kara came _very_ close to matching what I would consider fairly "average" Kara numbers. The issues seem to be that that kind of commitment cannot be expected from one side only on every battle.
This attack on the Kami side was pre-planned and organised, most Kami guilds were contacted in advance (we were hired in advance too, though unrelated events affected our attendance and delayed it til about 30 minutes into the battle.)
As for Kara organisation, since I have no data I can only assume this is everyone they had been able to contact in the 24 hours or so warning they had that could make it, resulting in a mid-level turn out.
Therefore, unless this is the start in the reversal of attendance trends we can see that the Kara still retain a numbers advantage, though it's not as great in this case as it had been in the past due to an upsurge in Kami PvP enthusiasm.
In closing:
Personally I would love to see this kind of battle happening more often though with _slightly_ closer numbers (a full team of 9 people at last count is a fairly big diff when you have maybe 6-7 teams on a side), since with numbers that close a small team of mercenaries can more easily swing the balance... so we can charge more. Oh, and even battles = even numbers of OPs (so both sides can afford to pay more), and less trashtalking and more fun
