Nice work
Curious. What tour did the mandatory LW arena cap take place and has there been a significant change of players since that time one way or the other?
Or has it been negligible?
The LW arena cap started right after the split, as the masses went back from the (then new) LW to EW. Either in the same tour or (at latest) in the next one (tours 80-81). As you can see in the big LW Activity chart, it doesn't seem that it had hurt the player base at all. But with so many factors guiding the popularity of an online game it's impossible for me to judge the exact impact.
And as one can see, the overall decline in player numbers we had since the peak around tour 98 also can't be blamed on any spectacular change or decision.
Oh, and as far as hours playing goes, I can't exactly tell (yet?). For tours before tour 120 I have only a few samples. It takes a lot of time to get the data for a single tour even... you gave to go through 4000-7000 score records per tour