Yesterday Zwift recorded a new personal best: 10,453 active Zwifters. The previous record was somewhere in the 8,500 range, so our community didn’t just beat our personal best: we smashed it!
Typically the weekly high traffic points are on Tuesdays around noon PST, but yesterday’s Tour de Zwift kickoff certainly upped the numbers, with some of the Stage 1 events hosting over 4,000 riders. Of course, this is also the busiest time of Zwift’s year, with much of the northern hemisphere dealing with cold temperatures, poor weather, and shortened daylight hours.
Care to Make a Bet?
Zwiftcast hosts Simon, Nathan, and Shane have been wagering on what the winter season’s high point will be, with guesses anywhere from 11,111 to 15,000. If traffic seasonality is similar to past years we’ll see that high point in the next week or two. What do you think? What will be this season’s “peak Zwift”?
I’m going to be even more optimistic than the Zwiftcasters and shoot for 15,500. I’m basing this on Zwift Insider traffic levels, which have more than doubled since last year. We’ll see how well that translates to actual Zwift traffic.
High Traffic: The Good and the Bad
High numbers of concurrent users should generally be considered a very good thing for the platform. Popularity leads to additional investment and eventual profitability, which both lead to a stronger platform as ongoing development is funded. But there are also hassles that come with high traffic–like crowded roads in Zwift’s current “one world calendar.” Luckily we didn’t have 10,453 riders doing an endless conga line through the one-way streets of Richmond!
What do you think? Is Zwift’s new PR a good thing? What needs to happen to take traffic levels even higher?
I’m pretty sure that it got over 10k concurrent users last Winter too?
How is Central Park supposed to function with that many riders for the TofZ, and regular Zwift activities for the weekend. It will be a continuous line of riders. Worse than the real thing on a busy weekend. I moved away from NYC years ago, hard to go back to laps around Central Park while on a trainer. Time for route extension to Piermont-Nyack-Bear Mountain.
Outside of events I don’t imagine it’ll ever be that crowded on the Alp duZwift and there’s no reason there couldn’t be a “backside” descent to another loop for people who really want to get away from it all.
First off, it’s great that so many people are pedalling away in Zwift. Especially considering the large number who otherwise wouldn’t do so at all. However, I think the crowds are reaching the silly level. From social to suffocating. Please open up simultaneous worlds, increase routes and give us some room to breathe.
I agree with Axel. I used to notice ridesr around me but anymore it’s such a mob scene I just ignore them. This significantly detracts from the “social” aspect of the platform. What’s the value of a “world” that you pay no attention to?
Also it would be great if an option to disable chat was available. With these giant crowds, it’s 24/7 chatter particularly on the weekend .. to the point where it’s dribble and annoying. Would be nice to have an option to turn it off.
It’s in Menu>Settings>Show Group-Chat.
You have a typo in the Zwiftcasters’ guesses. They guessed 11,111, not 1,111.
Whoops! Thanks. Fixed!
I agree – the social aspects disappear when the world is so crowded. I recently used the world hack to ride Alpe du Zwift on a non-Watopia day. We were 20-30 random strangers on the mountain – chatting, interacting and encouraging each other. I have never experienced that level of social engagement in the world-of-the-day and I believe that is because it is too crowded…
I hope Zwift HQ is reading comments like yours. I have had similar experiences riding events/races that take you away from the world of the day, then going off on my own to ride. I always find others on a climb when the roads are relatively empty. Generally, there is some type of interaction, and if riding abilities are matched, riding together occurs more frequently. New York, IMHO, should never be a weekend world for many reasons. Too crowded, not great roads for using precious weekend time to put in mikes going up a variety of climbs. I lived and rode in NYC for 12 years, and my form suffered. Central Park is just not a great loop for sustained watts. The elevated roller coaster Zwift has constructed is more of the same. Add that to 1000’s of Zwift riders, and it’s a no go world for me. Just annoying. With the endless possibilities that’s Zwift can provide for spectacular riding while on a trainer indoors, I do not understand how a design meeting thought that creating a 10k virtual loop around Central Park with no escape seemed like a good idea. I’ve been riding/racing since the 80’s, lived in Italy for 16 years, and have never heard a group saying, I would love to go to NYC and ride laps endlessly around Central Park. Again, if they give us an expansion up the HH river, over the GWB, to 9W, and Nyack- Bear Mountain. It would be a cool world. But when I see CP on the schedule, I look for alternative workouts.
“…never heard a group saying, I would love to go to NYC and ride laps endlessly around Central Park”
Excellent summary. The ZwiftHQ approach that whatever routes are open in winter, will have to be small enough to be busy enough during low-use summer is flawed. Find a different solution, because this clearly isn’t it.
I know some people who have thousands of friends on Facebook posting pictures of the latest meal or selfie. Eventually they have stopped using it or culled their list of (friends) I have around 35 all of whom I have met. I enjoyed seeing what my friends are doing. Zwift is no different. Far to many people on it mean that somebody new does not get what I had in the early days, I got to see the same group of people and got to know them . If I was using Zwift for the first time this year I would feel very lonely. I would compare it to moving into a big city. When I joined it was like moving to a village.
Totally agree. New York always feels crowded, even claustrophobic. Really don’t understand the delay in giving a choice of at least two worlds. Seems zwift is designing a front end whereby you arrive at Watopia and choose to go by plane to another world. Seems an unnecessary gimmick to me. I’d be quite happy to open up zwift, be given a choice of two worlds (perhaps Watopia and another) and pick one. simple! So why delay?
It is good that Zwift is picking up new users, but I’m not thrilled with riding in a pack and fighting just to get a glimpse of my avatar among the struggle and bumping. I’d rather use Zwift Preferences and ride another route that is not on today’s calendar for use.
I rode today 1/5 around 10AM EST. There was a Tour de Zwift occurring on the NYC route. At first it was pretty cool that so many people were riding but about 30-40 minutes into my workout, my computer (which is already slow) slowed to a crawl. My frame rate was about .2 frames per second and eventually I had to quit the program which didn’t even register my progress up to that point. I’m sure others experienced the same problem and Zwift will be bumping up their server performance soon. Or allowing additional worlds simultaneously.
Lots of strange goings-on though and myriad complaints about drop-out etc. when there are that many riders on concurrently. Many riders went off-course on NY today. Lots are getting ride-stopping dropouts (including me) when I have never had a problem in Zwift at any time up until now. Both stages of the TdZ I have entered resulted in my Bluetooth connection dropping despite warming up on the course beforehand with absolutely no problem until I entered the event.
Zwift are becoming victims of their own success and need to divert some of the cash they are obviously raking in for more processing power. I won’t be entering a Zwift tour again. Racing or workouts are much more fun and productive than just riding round with 2000 other riders in one endless stream.
I work in a bike shop, we sell wahoo trainers. Most customers are excited to use Zwift when they see it in the store. Today I had a couple of customers tell me they got kicked off mid ride. I agree that running two worlds during peak times would help. It’s great there are a lot of users, but these people were pretty frustrated. They pay money to use Zwift.
Well I guess I never thought of it as I just joined Zwift 3 weeks ago. As a new rider I’m really not concerned about the amount of traffic. Actually am very motivated by the number of other riders and I’m sure Zwift is aware of and will make improvements as it evolves.
Welcome to Zwift! 🙂 There’s a lot of moaning about Zwift as it grows VERY rapidly as a platform, sure it’s not perfect but it sure beats staring at a wall on a “dumb” trainer like we used to do! Like most longer term users I don’t understand why some form of official world choice still isn’t a thing. Hope you enjoy your virtual miles and it leads to mega fitness gains! #RideOn
Simple solution already exists….just use the Zwift World hack….and ride any Zwift World any time you wish to leave the crowds behind
Is the world hack available for iOS?
For £13 a month I should not be hacking code, if it’s that easy then it should be part of the zwift login screen NOW
Agree with the general feeling, there are usually so many riders that I just ignore them. When I used a Mac or PC I always used the hack to go to a quieter world, but now I’m iOS only (12.9” iPad is great for Zwift) I can’t use it – so I just move back to Tacx or Rouvy or BKool for a month when I get so fed up with the rider density on Zwift (like this month!), cancelling one subscription and activating another if necessary. I’d rather stay with a Zwift where I could select a world – given it can already be done by a hack, it is a trivial bit of coding and the only thing stopping it is Zwift admin, mainly because they say they need to keep the current world well populated. But for those wanting maximum users online when they ride all they would have to do is choose the most popular world – Zwift could even show how many riders were on each world to give us choice of rider density). In my case at least, they are losing customers by ignoring this issue, and opening all the worlds for us would likely increase their subscriber rate even further – surprised they can’t see that.
Tuesday January 8, 2019, at 10:58 PST 12,949