I was looking over some of the old census numbers (Elanthipedia has them all in one place! http://www.elanthipedia.com/wiki/Census) and I thought it was interesting that the relative popularity of the races has been pretty steady over the two years or so of the census numbers.

I found an old post I had saved from February of 2004 that shows very similar numbers:

721 Adventurers

Humans 177 (24%)

Elves 175 (24%)

Elotheans 70 (9%)

Prydaen 60 (8%)

S'kra Mur 55 (7%)

Gor'Togs 49 (6%)

Dwarves 38 (5%)

Rakash 35 (4%)

Kaldar 27 (3%)

Halflings 22 (3%)

Gnome 12 (1%)

Unknown 1 (0%)

From 2004, Humans and Elves are down a little bit in the snapshot of the players, but they've been the two largest races of PCs for almost six years running. Almost half of the players in any given census are Humans or Elves.

I was wondering why. Are most people picking them for RP reasons, like they actively want to play the race, or is the high number of Humans a sign of a lot of people not wanting to deal with being bad in some attributes but good in others. I'm guessing that for Humans it's because a lot of people go for the neutral approach to attributes and for Elves it's the RP appeal. I guess somehow Elves are just more popular than other races? I don't get why the current attribute strengths/weaknesses for Elves would be more popular than others.

Elotheans have been a steady number three over the years, usually just over 10%. I think I can understand that. In addition to their lore in game which I think is pretty cool, they are the only race to get a bonus to both Wisdom and Intelligence and they might seem more appealing overall than Gnomes, with just the Wisdom bonus? I've often favored Elotheans when I'm playing one of the magic or lore guilds. And the census posts, when they show the race and guild of each PC in the snapshot, tends to show this with a lot more Trader, Moon Mage, Empath, Warrior Mage and Cleric Elotheans compared to the other guilds. But oddly not Bards. Go figure.

The old 2004 census is a little different than the recent numbers from 2008 through 2010, but the trend recently is for the other 8 races to all hang out close to 5% of players, but with the Prydaen just a little bit higher on average and the Rakash just a little bit lower in average. I guess outside of Humans, Elves, and Elotheans the other races have a lot of balance, some people like one, others like another, and nothing really stands out. Which makes sense, I don't think any of these races has a real monopoly on being appealing in a certain area.

Just some random thoughts I wanted to share.

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Lupdels

and the fact that I have about ten characters all of whom are togs.

>I would bet togs are on the rise a bit with the learning changes in recent years.

I didn't know there had been a learning change. I'd be interested in 2011 numbers too both to see how the races have changed but also the guilds. I'm curious if Necromancers have stayed where they were or if there was a decline as people tried the guild but moved on.


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Lupdels

>I didn't know there had been a learning change. I'd be interested in 2011 numbers too both to see how the races have changed but also the guilds. I'm curious if Necromancers have stayed where they were or if there was a decline as people tried the guild but moved on.

Rebalance tog stats to be +/- 0 instead of the +2 they had, change encumbrance, and probably the log-in XP and the everyone-learns-primary-till-100 thing.

>but it's pretty clear that a lot of humans are running around and the other races

Humans lack the odd biology or lore of other races, and have balanced stats. They're probably used a lot as the default 'I don't have a pressing urge to bother with other races' choice.

>I don't entirely get why Elves...are so much more popular.

I don't get it either, but Elves are like roaches. You can't shake a fantasy tree without knocking out a dozen varieties. Everyone loves them for some reason, not just DR.

I detest them. I am sick of them. I want to perform genocide. Even JRPGs have infestations now.

>When you're looking at the guilds these days and trying to line up stat breaks, none of the races makes any sense whatsoever except humans, since the changes now mean basically every stat is important. So humans will remain and potentially grow as the most favored race, likely.

I'm not sure I follow. All races have a zero sum stat distribution, which means...it costs the same for the tog, the human, and the gnome to raise every stat to 20. So, if anything, it should make stats irrelevant, and open the races more.

There are still reasons to favor certain stats, and reasons to basically drop some after some point.

Even after the magic/abilities rewrite certain stats will be weighted in certain contests; Save vs. Will, etc.

I played an Elf because Elves are (traditionally) graceful, elegant and aesthetically pleasing.

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~Leilond
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