How does the roster work?

[Bosch232]

I find that there are less players online than what the opening server screen says.

For example, just now it was saying the Late War Blue was 198/200.
But when I logged in and checked the roster from the clip board, players listed were 13 Bishops, 11 Knights, and 13 Rooks.
Which, of course, doesn't equal 198 players.

It's always this way so I'm apparently not "getting" something.
What am I misinterpreting?

[Lusche]

You see that few player on roster if you just logged on. It just takes some time to download all that information. If you would hit "refresh" repeatedly you would see the numbers growing.

[fuzeman]

Patience, patience. The arena doesnt automatically give you all player information at once. it can take a few seconds for server to give you complete information. Look at the center of the map, arouond 10,10 on large ones. When you first login you will see friendly and enemy dar bar going up and down in that sector. This is due to game loading more and more people to your front end. They're info comes in here and then moves to where they actually are. Depending on speed of connection that center section will settle down some as all players info is given to your front end. YOu can alternately hit 'refresh' on roster and see the numbers change as player info is received by your FE. Again, sooner or later this will not change as much as player info is received by your FE.

Lusche beat me with the Readers Digest version