How many people play dayZ?

[deadbolt (DayZ) 10]

is unique players an accurate way to measure this?

[waphlez 2]

Alive characters may be a good way to see how many people are currently playing. Not sure if people disconnecting after they die (at the "you are dead" screen) are created new characters in the database yet, or if they have to respawn to show up in the statistics. Maybe an average between alive and unique for a rough estimate.

[Officious (DayZ) 4]

+1 for the Alive Characters; additionally the number of active users on this forum is another good indicator. But I don't know if there's a reliable way to tell that number.

[SDE Bellisarius 1]

+1 for the Alive Characters; additionally the number of active users on this forum is another good indicator. But I don't know if there's a reliable way to tell that number.

im afraid this one is not very telling atall.

First off not everyone uses forums. secondly this is a mod for a game that is not very popular.

so you have to figure the ratio of game owners to forum users and then compensate that to game owners that dl and play ALPHA mods.

And then compensate for those that only use other forums to talk about DayZ, like steam forums BIS forums etc. etc.

the alive seems to be a closer bet. especially sionce i saw rocket mention 75k not too long ago.