Intro:For most of us long-time users from 2012/2013, we generally feel like Feral Heart is on some sort of downhill spiral and that there's a lot less activity than when we started out. As
LordSuragaha pointed out, this isn't really the case. Sure, it feels like FH is dying, what with old MODS/Admins retiring and altogether a lot less rambunctious in-game behavior,
but at least in terms of numbers, FH isn't losing activity. The number of people online in the busiest times of the day has roughly stayed the same.
Initially, however, I did think FH was dying and I wanted to see if the increase(s) in the popularity of mass markings made younger/newer users feel out of loop and less involved with other players. Thus, making a huge proportion of users less likely to keep playing and making the # of downloads rely heavily on old/current users re-downloading rather than surges of new ones downloading the game for the first time. However, I immediately ran into a couple of problems when I tried looking into this: 1) I don't know how to (or if I even can) get access to the number of downloads Feral Heart has gotten as well as the age ranges of those downloads 2)even if I somehow got that data I wouldn't know if it can be applied to a timeline 3) it's incredibly messy trying to track the popularity of mass markings since there are multiple versions and its been around quite a while.
So, instead I just went digging into FeralHeart's online activity since there are a lot of sites that will do this for you by just typing in the domain you wish to look into. When I searched up FeralHeart, sure enough, I found that we aren't in some sort of depression and that FH is, in fact, doing just fine.
Besides that though I did notice that there were a lot of spikes/drops in online activity and I thought it'd be interesting to try and see if I could find the possible contributions to those rises and falls. I quickly realized that I'm missing a lot of background information and that it'd be best if the community could help and fill in the possible missing pieces. So, I'm firstly posting what I was able to composite on my own and as more information is given I'll update it accordingly. Maybe instead of letting a negative outlook manifest without data to support our sense of despair, we can find a positive attitude in all of this by contributing, as a community, to a timeline that we helped shape in the first place.
*Disclaimer:* Obviously, it's very hard to say that any one thing might've contributed since this is an overall accounting of the online activity not the number of downloads, and even then it's hard to say. The data for this also doesn't show the distinction of people going online just for the download or people going online to check out the forums. Also the forums, in a lot of ways, are a different entity than the game itself (case in point: I've been playing FH since 2012-ish but only just started to use the forums..at least properly anyways).
ABOUT:I will be showing pictures of data with certain pinpointed dates to help create the sense of a timeline. Underneath each picture, I will be putting the dates of events that might've contributed to the rises/falls of activities shown within that portion of the timeline.
*Please ignore the bottom red line in the pictures as this has to do with paid data/advertisements and doesn't apply to FH*The flag(s)
shown in the picture(s) refers to any relative high-point(s) of activity.
To reveal the picture(s) click the "Show" button underneath the golden pawprint(s)
T h e F i r s t Y e a r : January 2011 - August 2011 
We see an initial rise in activity after the servers are open from 1 in Jan to 81 in Feb
Events/Possible Contributions:•Jan 2011: Feral Heart comes out
•Feb 2011: Servers launch
•June 2011: KovuLKD joins Facebook/1st post on June 21
September 2011 - December 2011 In the latter part of 2011, we see a rise in activity from 603 in Sept to 2,288 in Oct
Events/Possible Contributions:•Apr 3:
Feral-Heart-Art is created on DeviantArt
T h e R e s t o f t h e Y e a r s :January 2012 - June 2014 Here there is little to none noticeable rises or falls for almost three years. However, it does start off with a rise at 4,777 on Apr 2012.
I think this period of constant high activity is what most would consider the "golden years."
Events/Possible Contributions: •June 2012: KovuLKD leaves
•Oct 2012: Feral Heart's
officical tumblr is created
•Jan 6:
Floofy-Corner on DeviantArt is created
July 2014 - April 2015
In the first picture, there is a significant spike from 4,109 in Jul 2014 to 14,159 in Aug 2014
The second picture shows another spike from 10,770 in Oct 2014 to 19,583 in Nov 2014
Events/Possible Contributions: ? ? ? ?
May 2015 - Dec 2015 The first picture shows a rise from 10,244 in May to 16,765 in Jun
While the second picture shows an initial drop in Sept at 10,424 to another rise to 18,541 in Dec
Events/Possible Contributions:? ? ? ?
Jan 2016 - Aug 2017 The first picture shows arise at 22,773 and another rise in Apr
The second picture goes from 22,823 in Jun to a fall at 22,637 in Jul
The last picture shows a rise at 22,637 in Aug, which is the last date I'm taking into consideration in this post.
Events/Possible Contributions:•June 2016: 1.15 Patch/Update
The whole point of this is to contribute as an online community and fill in the pieces to a timeline. So, feel free to either leave a comment about a significant event that might've effected FH's activity or comment a date of something that took place. Here are a few examples of things you can help fill in:
•Dates when the server was shut down
•When account registration started randomizing
•When General chat was removed
•Dates of updates (i.e. the addition of wings update)
