Three‑day rebound continues; growth concentrated in a few servers

Pick the most unusual deviations by how atypical they are for the server, not just by size. Last Story is the clearest outlier: it averaged 222 players yesterday (was 5), a jump of +217 and an own‑7‑day average of 2 — Last Story has been climbing for nine days, far out of its own norm. That kind of sustained, multi‑day ascent from a near‑zero baseline is the sort of signal that merits watching for persistence rather than treating as a one‑off. In Thailand, SAKURA TOWN CLASSIC doubled again and is up four days straight — it rose from 317 to 699 average players and sits well above its 7‑day norm of 93. MAHANAKORN DIWA continued its run too: having already been flagged earlier in the week, it moved from an average of 4 to 312 yesterday and is up three days straight; its jump remains extreme relative to its own 7‑day baseline. On the negative side BEAR TOWN stands out for the opposite reason: down to an average of 33 (was 159) and down eight days straight, it has moved drastically below its own 7‑day norm and looks like a sustained bleed rather than a brief trough. These moves — a handful of rapid rises and a few prolonged collapses — explain most of yesterday’s net change because the overall server count barely moved.

Script adoption showed small, broad upticks that are typical of weekend churn rather than clear, sustained migration. Core resources gained modestly yesterday (bob74_ipl +162, ox_target +144, oxmysql +143, ox_lib +134, pma-voice +132) but their seven‑day nets remain negative or near zero — for example bob74_ipl’s 7‑day net is -305 and oxmysql’s is -347 — which means these are short swings on top of a recent downtrend. ox_inventory is one of the few items with a short consecutive run (up three days straight) and a 7‑day average essentially flat (+0.1% vs its own 7‑day mean), so keep an eye on it; otherwise the pattern is weekend installs and teardowns, not sustained adoption of a new dependency. ESX modules (esx_status, es_extended, esx_basicneeds, esx_context, esx_datastore, esx_menu_list) all added roughly a hundred servers each yesterday but their 7‑day nets are small negatives, reinforcing the reading that this was a temporary bounce rather than a fresh migration to those frameworks.

The regional composition continues to tilt away from a single dominant market. Compared with a week ago, Brazil (pt-BR) is larger (19.6% vs 16.3%), Thailand (th-TH) is larger (14.2% vs 10.7%), and en-US has also expanded its share (16.2% vs 12.6%). root-AQ, fr-FR and several other non‑Western locales show noticeable week‑over‑week gains too. There were a handful of first‑time servers yesterday (Dead Zone City, Today Roleplay, several small regional openings), but none of those debuts moved the global numbers materially — this remains a redistribution within the existing footprint rather than growth driven by new server supply.

Put the day in the run: Saturday’s uptick is the third straight daily rise after a multi‑day slide earlier in the week. That makes yesterday an incremental recovery, not a regime change. The distinguishing feature is concentration — a small group of servers (Last Story, SAKURA TOWN CLASSIC, MAHANAKORN DIWA and a few others) are carrying the lift while most servers stay lightly populated. For server owners that means the weekend crowd is still brittle: a well‑timed event or stream can produce a dramatic, transient jump, but the platform statistics show these swings often evaporate within days. For script developers the take is different: core modules show only brief weekend upticks and 7‑day nets remain negative, so if you’re expecting to judge adoption from a single‑day snapshot you will be misled. What to watch next: persistence in the Thai cluster (SAKURA and MAHANAKORN) over the next 48–72 hours would convert a short run into a meaningful shift; Last Story sustaining or growing beyond its current stride would be the clearest sign of a new, durable audience; conversely continued declines like BEAR TOWN’s eight‑day slide would indicate local retention problems rather than platform noise. Finally, low average slot fills (17.1%) mean there’s still plenty of headroom for servers that can convert weekend curiosity into repeat visits — that’s where retention and onboarding matter most.