It has somehow been eight months since I started War Era Stats.

The last time I really talked about the project itself was around six months ago. Three months ago I posted about the War Era Stats Gateway, mainly aimed at developers, but I haven't properly talked about the user-facing statistics website in quite a while.

Meanwhile, people just... kept using it.

At this point, more than 10% of War Era players seem to use War Era Stats, which is something I'm incredible proud of.

So, I think it's time for a proper update on where everything stands today: the Gateway, the current Stats website, and the new version I've been quietly working on.

The War Era Stats Gateway: 4 months later

First, the developer side of the project.

The War Era Stats Gateway has now been running for around four months.

For anyone who joined recently or hasn't heard of it before, the Gateway is an open source project that sits between applications and the War Era API.

You can find the source code here: https://github.com/Hattorius/War-Era-Gateway

Instead of every application constantly sending requests directly to War Era, the Gateway adds a layer of caching, local storage and batching.

And it is getting used. A lot.

In the past 24 hours alone, the Gateway received around 2.6 million requests.

Of those 2.6 million requests, only around 500,000 actually had to be sent to War Era.

The other 2+ million requests were handled directly by the Gateway using its cached or locally stored data.

I knew the Gateway could reduce the load created by tools using the API, but seeing numbers like that is pretty cool.

One thing the Gateway deliberately doesn't do is track who is using it.

From a curiosity perspective... I would absolutely love to know what people have built with it.

One project I do know uses it is the War Era News Desk by https://app.warera.io/user/69bd432766cd740733175da7 : https://app.warera.io/article/6a7f1224f19996f8b4535757

And I'm sure there are other projects out there that I simply don't know about.

If you're using the Gateway for something, feel free to tell me. I'm genuingely interested in seeing what people have created with it.

The Gateway could use some help

There is one problem though.

The endpoints currently supported by the Gateway are starting to become a little outdated compared with what is now available through the War Era API.

So this is also a small call for help to the developers in the community.

The Gateway is completely open source, and I'd love for people to take a look at the current available War Era API endpoints, compare them with what the Gateway supports, and help bring it up to date.

If you've wanted to contribute to the War Era development community, this would be a very useful place to start.

And then there's War Era Stats itself...

War Era Stats has now existing for roughly eight months.

I really did not expect it to still be used this much when I originally started building it.

The current website is still available at: http://warerastats.io

It contains the market statistics people are probably already familiar with: items, equipment, wages and various tools built around that data.

It also has some... performance issues.

If you open the homepage, there's a pretty good chance you'll discover one of War Era Stats' most advanced features:

timing out.

So, for now, you're usually better off opening one of the pages directly, such as: https://warerastats.io/items

Despite those problems, people are still using the site. A lot.

And that's part of the reason I've been working on something new.

War Era Stats Alpha

There is now a completely new version of War Era Stats being developed: https://alpha.warerastats.io

And before anyone gets too excited, it's very much an alpha version.

The design isn't where I want it to be yet. Things will change. Things may break. There is a lot still missing.

But the underlying direction of the project is much closer to what I think War Era Stats should actually become.

100% open source

The plan is for the new War Era Stats to be completely open source.

I mean essentially everything becoming open source:

• scraping

• data collection

• processing

• APIs

• backend systems

• frontend

The goal is to make the entire process behind War Era Stats visible.

If War Era Stats has data, I want other developers to be able to understand where it came from, how it was processed and eventually, use that data themselves.

That leads into probably the biggest change in philosophy for the project.

Statistics first. Tools second.

The current War Era Stats slowly became a mixture of two things:

statistics and tools built using those statistics.

For the new version, I want to separate those ideas.

I don't think War Era Stats itself needs to become the place containing every calculator, optimizer or tool someone could possibly build.

Instead, I want it to focus on what its name actually says:

War Era statistics.

Collect the data.

Process the data.

Make it understandable.

And then make that data available to everyone else.

My hope is that this eventually includes a War Era Stats API, giving tool developers access to the same datasets War Era Stats itself uses.

Instead of every developer needing to independently build months of historical data collection before they can make something interesting, they could simply build on top of an existing dataset.

If somebody has an idea for a better tool than I could make myself?

Good.

That's exactly what I want.

A lot more than market statistics

The current War Era Stats has mostly focused on the economy. Items, equipment, wages, market activity.

The new version is going much further.

The goal is to collect statistics about War Era itself, not just its markets.

That means data for:

• Countries

• Military Units

• Political parties

• Players

• Markets

• Items

• Equipment

• Battles

• And more over time

For example, individual battles van have their own statistics.

Not just how much damage each side dealt, but estimates of what equipment was used, what resources may have been consumed, and approximately how much money each side spent fighting the battle.

That's the sort of information I've wanted War Era Stats to eventually provide.

And yes.

After all this time...

Paper and Wood are actually on the items page now.

We truly live in the future.

About the not-so-secret Alpha...

Originally, I hadn't really announced the Alpha.

I shared it with a few people because I wanted to show what I had been working on.

Apparently, those people shared it with other people.

And those people presumably shared it with more people.

A few weeks ago, https://app.warera.io/user/6980baba164c1577a1bc18a1 shared his screen with me.

And there it was.

War Era Stats Alpga was open in his browser.

I don't remember ever giving him the link.

That was when I started getting suspicious.

So I checked the traffic.

At the time, the Alpga site was already receiving around 3% of all visitors to the War Era Stats domain, excluding Gateway traffic.

In other words, roughly 3% of War ERa Stats users had somehow discovered a website I hadn't actually announced.

The geographic distribution made it even more obvious that the link had been travelling through particular groups.

The Alpha audience appeared to consist of a small number of Dutch users, a surprisingly large German group, and some users from France, the UK, Finland and the United States.

The normal War Era Stats website has traffic spread much more broadly across the countries.

So apparently we've had a small international group gatekeeping the Alpha site.

At this point, trying to pretend the Alpha is secret seems a little pointless.

So: it's public now.

Why I'm sharing it before it's finished

Normally, I would have waited.

I would have finished more pages, improved the design (by a lot), fixed more bugs and made everything look presentable before properly announcing it.

But there's another reason I want to share it now.

I want people to have equal access to the data War Era Stats collects.

I don't particularly like the idea of a handful of people knowing about the Alpha, using its new data and statistics, while the rest of the community doesn't even know those things exist.

Especially if the long-term goal is to make the project open source anyway.

So even though the Alpha isn't finished, I'd rather open the doors now.

So go ahead, explore it, use the statistics, find problems, tell me what looks terrible, tell me what data you want to see.

And if you're a developer, take a look at graph.warerastats.io (be careful, there's a very very very tight rate limit on this thing).

Eight months later

When I started War Era Stats eight months ago, it was mostly a statistics project around the War Era economy.

Now the existing site is still being used by a surprisingly large part of the community.

The gateway is handling millions of API requests every day. Developers are building applications on top of it.

And the next version of War Era Stats is slowly becoming something much larger than the original market statistics website.

There is still a lot to do.

The Alpha is unfinished.

The Gateway needs its endpoints updated.

The current Stats site occasionally decides that loading pages is optional.

But seeing ~1.4k players apparently using War Era Stats makes all of that worth it.

So, thank you to everyone who uses it.

And especially to the people who apparently found the Alpha before I even announced it.

You ruined the surprise.

❤️

War Era Stats: https://warerastats.io
War Era Stats Alpha: https://alpha.warerastats.io
War Era Stats Gateway: https://gateway.warerastats.io
Gateway source code: https://github.com/Hattorius/War-Era-Gateway