I think there are some points most don't consider, so I just want to add them. These statistic pages count "active" as: "Has gained at least 1 point since last file dump." This in theory is ok, but there are many points left out, under which the vast majority of player fall under. These are for example:
- Players, that don't play daily: If 10 000 players play on day 1 and 10 000 different players at day 2, only 10 000 players are considered as active, even though all 20 000 players are active, just not every day.
- Players, that did not gain ranking points on one day: As already written before, if you don't gain any ranking points, these sites don't count you as active.
- Players with less than X ranking points.
Most players fall into one or a combination of some, especially if they don't gain points daily.
Other factors to determine activity is of course the PvP Arena, but let's be real: If you would only play once a day or even less frequent, would you care about the PvP Arena? I think not. So most don't even touch it.
I was also surprised to see how many players just play the game without any ambitions, just for fun. They build their little city, go slowly through the ages, are sometimes not even aware, that there is an arc and don't like it, when their productions are plundered, because they just want to build up their city and don't engage much with other players.
From all people I met, where I did not know they played Forge, almost all played in this style.
The problem is you don't really see them. They don't engage much, play in their own guilds or guilds, that are full of these players without really strong ambitions and don't communicate. We are all mostly in our bubbles of active guilds, very active players, players that gain ranking points very fast.
In conclusion, there is a very high amount of players in the shadows (We have a very good word for that in German: The Dunkelziffer ^^). This does of course not mean, that your feedback is less valuable, it is great in fact and helped a lot, especially in event balancing. This is just to show you where the other sources come from.