To a point, but I think players came back to the game for the new mod, which also helps. Next listing is on 7/22 for me, so well see if it's taking 4 days more than my 7/18 listing, so July 1 or so.
Queue is down to 58.9M now and has been falling rapidly the last few days.
Do the big AD sinks in the Dragon hunts have an effect?
So far, we can't say, we are not deep enough in mod23 to really conclude anything on its effects on the Zax. We will have to wait at least end of july to really tell if mod23 AD sinks are efficient enough (and durable enough). But there are good signs ^^.
Backlog droped 2M AD in june with 1.5M being in the last 15days (so corresponding to mod23 release + jubilee), compared to the 0.8-1.2M/month droping rate since last december.
We are also finally past the direct influence of the "bonding stone exchange" : a complete cycle has been done since orders made 21st january 2021 (all delivered before 4th july 2021). Orders fulfilled today (and made in july 2021) were either independant to the bonding stone exchanges or refills from them that were already likely to be lesser in AD volume (be it because the player can't refill as much as it could right after the exchange, or because he simply doesn't play anymore and so does not put any new order). Orders made today are the beginning of the 3rd cycle, stockpiled AD from the bonding stones are largely exhausted (let alone some exceptions who were able to snatch over 60M AD with the exchange, and/or those able to perma roll 5x5k zen, but they don't really influence the wider trend and just set a "floor").
Queue is down to 58.9M now and has been falling rapidly the last few days.
Do the big AD sinks in the Dragon hunts have an effect?
So far, we can't say, we are not deep enough in mod23 to really conclude anything on its effects on the Zax. We will have to wait at least end of july to really tell if mod23 AD sinks are efficient enough (and durable enough). But there are good signs ^^.
Backlog droped 2M AD in june with 1.5M being in the last 15days (so corresponding to mod23 release + jubilee), compared to the 0.8-1.2M/month droping rate since last december.
We are also finally past the direct influence of the "bonding stone exchange" : a complete cycle has been done since orders made 21st january 2021 (all delivered before july 2021). Orders fulfilled today (and made in july 2021) are now either independant to the bonding stones or refills from the bonding stones that are likely to be lesser in AD volume (be it because the player can't refill as much as it could after bonding stones exchange, or because he simply doesn't play anymore and so does not put any new order).
Also game lost 50% of the players from last summer.
So if we translate that directly to ZAX, half of the posts that are filled will not be replaced because the player is not there any more.
That by itself should mean ZAX will be around 35M next summer. And that translates to a queue drop of 3M AD/month.
Also game lost 50% of the players from last summer.
So if we translate that directly to ZAX, half of the posts that are filled will not be replaced because the player is not there any more.
That by itself should mean ZAX will be around 35M next summer. And that translates to a queue drop of 3M AD/month.
How you find out that 50% playerbase have been lost? Based on what data, or it's just guessing?
Also whole ZAX issue can be easily explained. And it's far from 50% playerbase lost.
First of all the very basic how ZAX work.
It's system where players trade ZEN/AD between themself. In short for ZAX system to work, trades must be done on both sides. For player to convert AD to ZEN, first there must be player who want convert ZEN to AD.
Now, ask yourself would you convert your ZEN to AD? If you gain 100k AD daily anyways, also there are lot of items in AH which are relative cheap.
Other thing, for what most players spend ZEN? The answer VIP.
Cuz lets look to ZEN store, not much to buy there. Epic rank mounts? Companions? Some are great, but for most players they are not important in their game progress. And only those who goes after min/max would try buy them. But lets not forget there are plenty of same companions in AH.
Or like that certain companions apear only time to time, like Drizzt Do'Urden. So it's more reason to keep saving ZEN and not convert to AD.
So less ZEN get used in ZAX for convertion to AD, means less players conert their AD to ZEN.
So playerbase is not an issue here. Even if neverwinter would have lets say 300% or 500% playerbase increase, the issue would be same.
This ZAX system is not unique, have seen same and similar working system in other games.
======================================================================== “The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. Gustave Le Bon. ==================================================
Also game lost 50% of the players from last summer.
So if we translate that directly to ZAX, half of the posts that are filled will not be replaced because the player is not there any more.
That by itself should mean ZAX will be around 35M next summer. And that translates to a queue drop of 3M AD/month.
How you find out that 50% playerbase have been lost? Based on what data, or it's just guessing?
Also whole ZAX issue can be easily explained. And it's far from 50% playerbase lost.
First of all the very basic how ZAX work.
It's system where players trade ZEN/AD between themself. In short for ZAX system to work, trades must be done on both sides. For player to convert AD to ZEN, first there must be player who want convert ZEN to AD.
Now, ask yourself would you convert your ZEN to AD? If you gain 100k AD daily anyways, also there are lot of items in AH which are relative cheap.
Other thing, for what most players spend ZEN? The answer VIP.
Cuz lets look to ZEN store, not much to buy there. Epic rank mounts? Companions? Some are great, but for most players they are not important in their game progress. And only those who goes after min/max would try buy them. But lets not forget there are plenty of same companions in AH.
Or like that certain companions apear only time to time, like Drizzt Do'Urden. So it's more reason to keep saving ZEN and not convert to AD.
So less ZEN get used in ZAX for convertion to AD, means less players conert their AD to ZEN.
So playerbase is not an issue here. Even if neverwinter would have lets say 300% or 500% playerbase increase, the issue would be same.
This ZAX system is not unique, have seen same and similar working system in other games.
While not 100% reliable as there are other factors too in play, Steamchart is a good indication of player number development: https://steamcharts.com/app/109600
Steamchart shows 50% player loss since summer 2021.
This also is supported by the in game-experience - it is obvious a lot of old players have disappeared. There is a lot of new and inexperienced players now compared to the few veterans left.
And I think most of those that have been following this thread for a long time likely have heard what you are trying to say multiple times as we have discussed the ZAX situation.
The reason why a drop in player volume will matter is that many/most of the participants in the ZAX queue keep their 5-slot 5000 Zen ZAX queue filled up. When a posting comes through it is just replaced, for net 0 change in queue.
If 50% of the people in the queue are gone, 50% of the queue will not be replaced when it comes through and queue will shrink. Imprecise science, but as long as we do not have access to the actual trade data from Cryptic, it is as good as any other model trying to explain the growing and shrinking of the ZAX queue.
Note that a reduction in queue length because of less players will not necessarily mean reduced wait time in queue. If 50% of the players are cone, so is 50% of the Zen that will go into the queue, so wait time remains constant.
However, as you indirectly point out, putting Zen into the ZAX queue is something new and inexperienced players do. Experienced players know there are better ways to convert Zen to AD. There still seems to be a good amount of new players rotating through NW, so maybe the rate of Zen into the ZAX queue is not that dependent of the total player numbers but on the influx of new players. That could see wait time go down too as queue length goes down.
For extrapolations or statistical purposes, we can consider steam players as a representative sample of total players.
Here are the same steam numbers mentionned above by @mentinmindmaker, but in bars, with modules and various NW infos pointed on the month they happened (yeah, i love graphs).
Steam might be an indicator of player base, but has also come to the point people log in another way. Once a player charges on steam(1st time) and gets the "probationary period" for I think 2 weeks, many get upset and find another way to launch the game. Steam also did an auto login on user name/password last summer, which again caused many players to find another launcher. I checked yesterday and it said 1100 were in game on steam around 4pm EST. Most I know in game(90% +) don't log through steam.
Steam might be an indicator of player base, but has also come to the point people log in another way. Once a player charges on steam(1st time) and gets the "probationary period" for I think 2 weeks, many get upset and find another way to launch the game. Steam also did an auto login on user name/password last summer, which again caused many players to find another launcher. I checked yesterday and it said 1100 were in game on steam around 4pm EST. Most I know in game(90% +) don't log through steam.
No one disputes that. What we claim is that the percentage of steam users is a rather conservative number. For example: Eve Online has at disposal both Steam Charts and official total number (=you can see how many players are logged in in any given time). The people on steam are a small fraction of the total (one digit difference), but the ratio is pretty constant through the time.
5000 zen from July 29 flipped July 3rd. 1300 on steam around 11:30 EST.
So we may never see a full year of "patience" to get Zen via the Zax ^^. The waiting time, after peaking at 349 days on june 26th, is suddenly bending down to 339 (consistently with the last 5 consecutive entries I gathered from here and my guild/ally). It follows (with some 2-3 weeks of inertia) the backlog's big drop we experienced from mid june to mid-august 2021
AD sinks of mod23 are also likely to be at play : last week-end I met and invited in my guild 3 relatively new players [playing since 2-4weeks] who used €€ to get Zen => Zax => AD to buy dragon hunt equipements/modifiers. It has been a very long time since last time I met someone who did that (maybe 2 years or so). Needless to say I told them there were better ways to use their Zen to get AD, and they won't reproduce that mistake again :P xD
The discussion here is always made with interesting points of view, but one is missing - the players who beat the game. These are players who are no longer interested, but who still update their characters and then go dormant in another game. They don't need to buy more Zen because they already have a lot and they don't even use VIP anymore. I did a test, I put a note on each player that logged in at least 1x a month, and I saw that 90% logged in, but the players I mentioned, they practically didn't play constantly. It was like, I'm going to log in here and make a Zariel to kill the longing for the guild people or friends in the game and disappear for 1, 2 or 3 weeks.
Another factor they are forgetting is that there is indeed an intervention in the gaming market. Necklace and belt from the artifact sets is already at the maximum, this made the price of the stones fall, this made the most famous farm in the game become uninteresting. I myself did PF about 40 times on my GWF alone, but the last time I only did 10 and never came back. It's been 3 double stone events since the last one. The PW's that, in a funny way, didn't drop that much, maybe because they can still be used to level up enchants, but at least they're cheaper, around 1M.
I didn't want to wait to get what I wanted and wanted it then and there so I relented and bought 20k zen. I checked both options on that day, both using a direct exchange using the ZAX, or buy 2 coal wards and put them on the AH. The AH won because even after the AH cut I still came out ahead over a hundred grand https://www.smartwheel.ca/inokim-oxo-1560wh-electric-foldable-scooter/
Mmmh. Unsure I do understand where you want us to go with that in relation to the topic (or the off-track topic about the amount of players) ^^. But let's try :P
These are players who are no longer interested, but who still update their characters and then go dormant in another game. They don't need to buy more Zen because they already have a lot and they don't even use VIP anymore. I did a test, I put a note on each player that logged in at least 1x a month, and I saw that 90% logged in, but the players I mentioned, they practically didn't play constantly. It was like, I'm going to log in here and make a Zariel to kill the longing for the guild people or friends in the game and disappear for 1, 2 or 3 weeks.
So, for the Zax, these type of players would unlikely have an effect according to your description. To be honest, I think they do have a tiny one, but as a "floor".
For exemple, when i went dormant during half-mod16 and all mod17, then again during all mod22, I was still logging in once in a while to check and if needed to resplenish my orders in the Zax (still have quite a lot of AD in reserve today, only 1 month after returning from my break, enough for at least 3 full cycles of 5x5k Zen + confortable left over), and usually played a little bit ('cauz someone noticed my presence, thought I was back and whisped me to invite me do X or Y with him or was trying to convince me to truly come back). It is or was also the case of few "dormant" others I know and talk with outside of Neverwinter. My IRL brother was dormant during more than a year through mod16-17-18-19, until he ran out of AD to pour in the Zax : it was is ticking clock to let the game a chance to hook him again, it didn't happen, and he definitely abandonned Neverwinter (after emptying something like 80k Zen to distribute gifts to players he had fun with, myself included :P).
Hence the "floor". Ghosts who have a long-term ability to feed AD in the Zax even if logging in once a month, thanks to the length of the backlog.
For the playerbase. The way the average amount of players is calculated, from the only data we have through steamcharts, implies, numerically, for a given month, that 1 player connected 4h per day is worth roughly the same as 30 players connected 4 hours per month (28, 29, 31 depending of the month ^^).
On average, last June , 871.5 steamplayers were connected at the same time in the game. If a steamplayer is connected on average 2h/day (that's an hypothesis), then maybe we can say as a rough estimate that 871.5x24h/2h = each day in june 10458 different steamplayers were on Neverwinter. I can't tell or deduce how many different players were there during a whole month though.
There are 4 means to connect to the game : Arc, .exe, steam and epic. As another hypothesis, let's say steam represents 20%, and assuming each mean of connexion features the same player's behavior (2h/day), that would make the whole playerbase = 52290 daily different players last june (twice that if steam is only 10%, we don't really know ^^).
Another factor they are forgetting is that there is indeed an intervention in the gaming market. Necklace and belt from the artifact sets is already at the maximum, this made the price of the stones fall, this made the most famous farm in the game become uninteresting. I myself did PF about 40 times on my GWF alone, but the last time I only did 10 and never came back. It's been 3 double stone events since the last one. The PW's that, in a funny way, didn't drop that much, maybe because they can still be used to level up enchants, but at least they're cheaper, around 1M.
AH is a mechanism. It is AD travelling from a pocket to another pocket with a 10% sink, which means 90% of the existing AD are kept in the playerbase hands. It has an effect on the Zax in the sense that usually the AD goes from newer/poorer players (need lot of stuff) to older/more wealthy players (doesn't need much stuff), preventing (or slowing down) the first ones to be able to really start Zaxing, and cimenting the second ones in their ability to Zax more and more until reaching the rotation of 5x5k Zen perma orders (once there, no more effect). Obviously, i'm here extremely schematic and generalizing ^^.
AH reacts to the changes in game, especially the brutal ones.
I use here the split between mod22 and mod23 as an exemple (because i won't be as efficient at analyzing the change on enchants between mod21 and 22 as I got too dormant ^^)
If we except the exchanges at the antiquary (currencies from ex campaign of Tyrany, which had a mostly negligeable impact on AD), there was a finite maximum amount of AD that the playerbase could create in june. With the 52290 daily different players from hypothesis above, that would make 5.229.000.000 AD at max created every day.
These AD were either : put in the Zax, kept in bank, sunk by various sinkers, exchanged from one hand to another (the 90% left after a taxed trade on the AH). A share between 4 things, and this share was roughly stabilized 1st june as mod22 release was reasonnably long enough ago. What happened mid-june is the sudden apparition of 2 big new (in my opinion very ephemeral) sinkers (dragon hunt modificators and dragon hunt equipments) with basically no new tradable equipement + a severe increase of sublimation points from the dungeons endchests.
Mechanically, as the new stuff + modifcators were highly desirable, the share of AD shifted heavily toward the sinkers, other "placements" crashed down (and it was clearly the intention, personnally I see that as a delayed counter balance to the bonding stones exchange). On the Zax, it meant a sudden fall in the backlog. On the AH, it meant less AD spent to trade while the sellers remained roughly as numerous as before (at least for a while), a clear "more offers than demands" situation developped on a lot of markets, with the consequence of prices quickly falling because of harder battle with the concurrence. Can't be sure about banking ^^, but if there was not a big hit, it probably stoped/slowed the hoarding.
About AH, it was even more drastic on the sublimation gems because of the addition in the dungeons endchests (legendary diamonds, etc). For exemple the black opal +1 I'm used to produce routinely on 30+ workshops since mod15. A pack of 99 black opals+1 was around 30-32k AD right before jubilee, not very much sensible to x2 sublimation, and pretty stable (on a slight fall down since years, after mod16 madness when I could sell my produced stacks for almost 100k AD each and the adjustment caused by the acceleration of x2 sublimation during and after mod19). In a matter of 2 weeks after mod23 release, the black opals+1 lost 1/3 of their value and are still in a slight fall currently.
A similar situation probably happened to the purple enchantment stones from PF/celestial chests in mod22 (difference is they were suddenly in less use in the upgrading process as not needed anymore for the enchants)
To the contrary, at mod23 release, some consummables should have sharply risen in prices, especially scrolls of life and health stones, even with a lesser AD share for trading, as it is almost always the case when a new mod is released and players throw themselves in content they do not know by heart yet, but it was smartly (or by fortunate coincidence, can't be sure) mitigated by a simultaneous reduction on the tamarlune shop.
If we want to go into predictions, the dragon hunts AD sinkers won't last in my opinion, and around september will probably mostly not affect how the "share of AD" is distributed between Zax, AH, Bank and sinks as much, sort of a normalization may happen returning closer to the pre-mod23 state, with some old markets on AH broken by mod23 changes and probably not a lot of new markets on the rise. Until mod24 :P
I didn't want to wait to get what I wanted and wanted it then and there so I relented and bought 20k zen. I checked both options on that day, both using a direct exchange using the ZAX, or buy 2 coal wards and put them on the AH. The AH won because even after the AH cut I still came out ahead over a hundred grand https://www.smartwheel.ca/inokim-oxo-1560wh-electric-foldable-scooter/
Indeed, and this is well known to everyone with a little experience.
Those putting Zen into the ZAX is mostly the inexperienced newcomers. Don't tell them though, or we will never get our Zen!
To say that "ghosts" who log in, post on ZAX, and logout, is a small part of the problem is being naive. I know for a fact several players on "break". Also know they have multi accounts, so when they fill ZAX, it isnt 25k, it's 100k to 125k for just 2 people. If there are 100 such players, that's 10 mil of the line. If there were 575 players, with 4 accounts and 5 listings, thats the entire line. Probably somewhere in between, 25-30 mil of line is people actively playing, 25-30 mil of line people just logging and reposting zen when it flips.
If 50% of the people in the queue are gone, 50% of the queue will not be replaced when it comes through and queue will shrink. Imprecise science, but as long as we do not have access to the actual trade data from Cryptic, it is as good as any other model trying to explain the growing and shrinking of the ZAX queue
i went dormant during half-mod16 and all mod17, then again during all mod22, I was still logging in once in a while to check and if needed to resplenish my orders in the Zax (still have quite a lot of AD in reserve today, only 1 month after returning from my break, enough for at least 3 full cycles of 5x5k Zen + confortable left over), and usually played a little bit ('cauz someone noticed my presence, thought I was back and whisped me to invite me do X or Y with him or was trying to convince me to truly come back). It is or was also the case of few "dormant" others I know and talk with outside of Neverwinter. My IRL brother was dormant during more than a year through mod16-17-18-19, until he ran out of AD to pour in the Zax : it was is ticking clock to let the game a chance to hook him again, it didn't happen, and he definitely abandonned Neverwinter (after emptying something like 80k Zen to distribute gifts to players he had fun with, myself included :
How you manage to maintain compile and test pipelines at 0 cost? I just spent few days at work updating those build pipelines due to legacy dependencies so I would love to know how to avoid this in the future while maintaining infinite backwards compatibility and using new features.
Comments
Posted 07/12/2021
Filled 06/28/2022
Do the big AD sinks in the Dragon hunts have an effect?
But there are good signs ^^.
Backlog droped 2M AD in june with 1.5M being in the last 15days (so corresponding to mod23 release + jubilee), compared to the 0.8-1.2M/month droping rate since last december.
We are also finally past the direct influence of the "bonding stone exchange" : a complete cycle has been done since orders made 21st january 2021 (all delivered before 4th july 2021).
Orders fulfilled today (and made in july 2021) were either independant to the bonding stone exchanges or refills from them that were already likely to be lesser in AD volume (be it because the player can't refill as much as it could right after the exchange, or because he simply doesn't play anymore and so does not put any new order).
Orders made today are the beginning of the 3rd cycle, stockpiled AD from the bonding stones are largely exhausted (let alone some exceptions who were able to snatch over 60M AD with the exchange, and/or those able to perma roll 5x5k zen, but they don't really influence the wider trend and just set a "floor").
So if we translate that directly to ZAX, half of the posts that are filled will not be replaced because the player is not there any more.
That by itself should mean ZAX will be around 35M next summer. And that translates to a queue drop of 3M AD/month.
Also whole ZAX issue can be easily explained. And it's far from 50% playerbase lost.
First of all the very basic how ZAX work.
It's system where players trade ZEN/AD between themself. In short for ZAX system to work, trades must be done on both sides. For player to convert AD to ZEN, first there must be player who want convert ZEN to AD.
Now, ask yourself would you convert your ZEN to AD? If you gain 100k AD daily anyways, also there are lot of items in AH which are relative cheap.
Other thing, for what most players spend ZEN? The answer VIP.
Cuz lets look to ZEN store, not much to buy there. Epic rank mounts? Companions? Some are great, but for most players they are not important in their game progress. And only those who goes after min/max would try buy them. But lets not forget there are plenty of same companions in AH.
Also lets not forget that there are special deals for VIP's.
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/11519473
Or like that certain companions apear only time to time, like Drizzt Do'Urden.
So it's more reason to keep saving ZEN and not convert to AD.
So less ZEN get used in ZAX for convertion to AD, means less players conert their AD to ZEN.
So playerbase is not an issue here. Even if neverwinter would have lets say 300% or 500% playerbase increase, the issue would be same.
This ZAX system is not unique, have seen same and similar working system in other games.
“The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
Gustave Le Bon.
==================================================
https://steamcharts.com/app/109600
Steamchart shows 50% player loss since summer 2021.
This also is supported by the in game-experience - it is obvious a lot of old players have disappeared. There is a lot of new and inexperienced players now compared to the few veterans left.
And I think most of those that have been following this thread for a long time likely have heard what you are trying to say multiple times as we have discussed the ZAX situation.
The reason why a drop in player volume will matter is that many/most of the participants in the ZAX queue keep their 5-slot 5000 Zen ZAX queue filled up. When a posting comes through it is just replaced, for net 0 change in queue.
If 50% of the people in the queue are gone, 50% of the queue will not be replaced when it comes through and queue will shrink. Imprecise science, but as long as we do not have access to the actual trade data from Cryptic, it is as good as any other model trying to explain the growing and shrinking of the ZAX queue.
Note that a reduction in queue length because of less players will not necessarily mean reduced wait time in queue. If 50% of the players are cone, so is 50% of the Zen that will go into the queue, so wait time remains constant.
However, as you indirectly point out, putting Zen into the ZAX queue is something new and inexperienced players do. Experienced players know there are better ways to convert Zen to AD. There still seems to be a good amount of new players rotating through NW, so maybe the rate of Zen into the ZAX queue is not that dependent of the total player numbers but on the influx of new players. That could see wait time go down too as queue length goes down.
Here are the same steam numbers mentionned above by @mentinmindmaker, but in bars, with modules and various NW infos pointed on the month they happened (yeah, i love graphs).
The waiting time, after peaking at 349 days on june 26th, is suddenly bending down to 339 (consistently with the last 5 consecutive entries I gathered from here and my guild/ally).
It follows (with some 2-3 weeks of inertia) the backlog's big drop we experienced from mid june to mid-august 2021
AD sinks of mod23 are also likely to be at play : last week-end I met and invited in my guild 3 relatively new players [playing since 2-4weeks] who used €€ to get Zen => Zax => AD to buy dragon hunt equipements/modifiers. It has been a very long time since last time I met someone who did that (maybe 2 years or so). Needless to say I told them there were better ways to use their Zen to get AD, and they won't reproduce that mistake again :P xD
Received zen 7.7.2022
341 days
Another factor they are forgetting is that there is indeed an intervention in the gaming market. Necklace and belt from the artifact sets is already at the maximum, this made the price of the stones fall, this made the most famous farm in the game become uninteresting. I myself did PF about 40 times on my GWF alone, but the last time I only did 10 and never came back. It's been 3 double stone events since the last one. The PW's that, in a funny way, didn't drop that much, maybe because they can still be used to level up enchants, but at least they're cheaper, around 1M.
So, for the Zax, these type of players would unlikely have an effect according to your description.
To be honest, I think they do have a tiny one, but as a "floor".
For exemple, when i went dormant during half-mod16 and all mod17, then again during all mod22, I was still logging in once in a while to check and if needed to resplenish my orders in the Zax (still have quite a lot of AD in reserve today, only 1 month after returning from my break, enough for at least 3 full cycles of 5x5k Zen + confortable left over), and usually played a little bit ('cauz someone noticed my presence, thought I was back and whisped me to invite me do X or Y with him or was trying to convince me to truly come back).
It is or was also the case of few "dormant" others I know and talk with outside of Neverwinter. My IRL brother was dormant during more than a year through mod16-17-18-19, until he ran out of AD to pour in the Zax : it was is ticking clock to let the game a chance to hook him again, it didn't happen, and he definitely abandonned Neverwinter (after emptying something like 80k Zen to distribute gifts to players he had fun with, myself included :P).
Hence the "floor". Ghosts who have a long-term ability to feed AD in the Zax even if logging in once a month, thanks to the length of the backlog.
For the playerbase.
The way the average amount of players is calculated, from the only data we have through steamcharts, implies, numerically, for a given month, that 1 player connected 4h per day is worth roughly the same as 30 players connected 4 hours per month (28, 29, 31 depending of the month ^^).
On average, last June , 871.5 steamplayers were connected at the same time in the game.
If a steamplayer is connected on average 2h/day (that's an hypothesis), then maybe we can say as a rough estimate that 871.5x24h/2h = each day in june 10458 different steamplayers were on Neverwinter. I can't tell or deduce how many different players were there during a whole month though.
There are 4 means to connect to the game : Arc, .exe, steam and epic.
As another hypothesis, let's say steam represents 20%, and assuming each mean of connexion features the same player's behavior (2h/day), that would make the whole playerbase = 52290 daily different players last june (twice that if steam is only 10%, we don't really know ^^). AH is a mechanism. It is AD travelling from a pocket to another pocket with a 10% sink, which means 90% of the existing AD are kept in the playerbase hands.
It has an effect on the Zax in the sense that usually the AD goes from newer/poorer players (need lot of stuff) to older/more wealthy players (doesn't need much stuff), preventing (or slowing down) the first ones to be able to really start Zaxing, and cimenting the second ones in their ability to Zax more and more until reaching the rotation of 5x5k Zen perma orders (once there, no more effect). Obviously, i'm here extremely schematic and generalizing ^^.
AH reacts to the changes in game, especially the brutal ones.
I use here the split between mod22 and mod23 as an exemple (because i won't be as efficient at analyzing the change on enchants between mod21 and 22 as I got too dormant ^^)
If we except the exchanges at the antiquary (currencies from ex campaign of Tyrany, which had a mostly negligeable impact on AD), there was a finite maximum amount of AD that the playerbase could create in june.
With the 52290 daily different players from hypothesis above, that would make 5.229.000.000 AD at max created every day.
These AD were either : put in the Zax, kept in bank, sunk by various sinkers, exchanged from one hand to another (the 90% left after a taxed trade on the AH).
A share between 4 things, and this share was roughly stabilized 1st june as mod22 release was reasonnably long enough ago.
What happened mid-june is the sudden apparition of 2 big new (in my opinion very ephemeral) sinkers (dragon hunt modificators and dragon hunt equipments) with basically no new tradable equipement + a severe increase of sublimation points from the dungeons endchests.
Mechanically, as the new stuff + modifcators were highly desirable, the share of AD shifted heavily toward the sinkers, other "placements" crashed down (and it was clearly the intention, personnally I see that as a delayed counter balance to the bonding stones exchange).
On the Zax, it meant a sudden fall in the backlog.
On the AH, it meant less AD spent to trade while the sellers remained roughly as numerous as before (at least for a while), a clear "more offers than demands" situation developped on a lot of markets, with the consequence of prices quickly falling because of harder battle with the concurrence.
Can't be sure about banking ^^, but if there was not a big hit, it probably stoped/slowed the hoarding.
About AH, it was even more drastic on the sublimation gems because of the addition in the dungeons endchests (legendary diamonds, etc).
For exemple the black opal +1 I'm used to produce routinely on 30+ workshops since mod15.
A pack of 99 black opals+1 was around 30-32k AD right before jubilee, not very much sensible to x2 sublimation, and pretty stable (on a slight fall down since years, after mod16 madness when I could sell my produced stacks for almost 100k AD each and the adjustment caused by the acceleration of x2 sublimation during and after mod19).
In a matter of 2 weeks after mod23 release, the black opals+1 lost 1/3 of their value and are still in a slight fall currently.
A similar situation probably happened to the purple enchantment stones from PF/celestial chests in mod22 (difference is they were suddenly in less use in the upgrading process as not needed anymore for the enchants)
To the contrary, at mod23 release, some consummables should have sharply risen in prices, especially scrolls of life and health stones, even with a lesser AD share for trading, as it is almost always the case when a new mod is released and players throw themselves in content they do not know by heart yet, but it was smartly (or by fortunate coincidence, can't be sure) mitigated by a simultaneous reduction on the tamarlune shop.
If we want to go into predictions, the dragon hunts AD sinkers won't last in my opinion, and around september will probably mostly not affect how the "share of AD" is distributed between Zax, AH, Bank and sinks as much, sort of a normalization may happen returning closer to the pre-mod23 state, with some old markets on AH broken by mod23 changes and probably not a lot of new markets on the rise. Until mod24 :P
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(edit : damn, i was upside down, I was mixing up roof and floor xD. Corrected ^^)
Those putting Zen into the ZAX is mostly the inexperienced newcomers. Don't tell them though, or we will never get our Zen!
My comment related to ZAX, I have no interest in the playerbase subject.
It is or was also the case of few "dormant" others I know and talk with outside of Neverwinter. My IRL brother was dormant during more than a year through mod16-17-18-19, until he ran out of AD to pour in the Zax : it was is ticking clock to let the game a chance to hook him again, it didn't happen, and he definitely abandonned Neverwinter (after emptying something like 80k Zen to distribute gifts to players he had fun with, myself included :