First of all I do acknowledge that in the past week or so, there have been slightly more RB games being played than normal (normal being the past months). I think this has to do with the forums/RB community being a tad more active during this period. I think it was the forum activity that triggered some of the old players to start playing again, which in turn, causes new players to join those games. I say this as the most active member on IA/IA forums (that's a statistical fact atm). Being this active I can observe more efficiently and accurately than most people - to an extent. This takes ownership of a part of the slight increase in player base in the past weeks. However, there is more. 

Right now there are 6 players playing 6 games. There has been little improvement in player base since the player base was zapped. That little improvement is expected when you have more people joining IA everyday:

P = OP + T(x)

P being player base, OP meaning original players that stuck around, T representing teapots that are trying out the game, and (x) representing the rate in which IA is growing.

As you can tell, as long as IA grows there will always be a slight increase in T which in turn increases P. The problem is that the community is not strong enough to keep those new players hooked in, most of the T's don't play RB consistently and or never play RB again. New players are passing RB right up without a second thought, this is why I get so emotional because it should not be this way at all. The new players that have stuck around I can probably count them on one hand and are not notably important. Without new players getting involved with the RB community, the  RB community cannot grow on a substantial level.

Of course there are other variables that come into factor, but those have a very small effect on the whole.

On the bright side, once we get new players to start sticking around RB and RB's community, RB's player base should sky rocket. Since IA is growing at a decent rate and will continue to grow at a even more decent rate for a long period of time (depending on business decisions and choices), RB could one day have a player base of thousands of people - the sky is the limit.

I am expecting a huge release to come up soon though. I think RB's core content is getting wrapped up, JustinD - one of the main devs for RB, just went over to legions. I hope we are blown away with the update (any hints on a time frame for the release would be lovely).

(that equation was for you ben, I know how much you like math  )

omg!?!?! yeah you were inspired... anyway yeah i agree with most of what you said, the rest is things i didnt even understand XD anyway yeah but now i see IA ads everywhere! this is crazy

> (that equation was for you ben, I know how much you like math


Congratulations for coming up with a somewhat coherent formula that explains something everyone already knows and has never been in question...

If your whole point for the last six months is the explanation of that math then every single person working for IA is 100% in agreement with you.

At the very least it was an entertaining read

I am very glad I could at least entertain you.

Yeah lets be real, how many good RB players do we see that aren't us vets? People join RB when they see a game going, most games are started by vets, and I think we have seen a slight return in vet population. I still wouldn't attribute any noticeable increases in RB population to IA.