More and more every day? What about those that will be dropping the game? Because I think this time around, it's going to be significant number doing just that. There are only a couple of days left until those that subbed from the start have to make a decision on whether to pay for a second time. I know plenty that have decided against it (myself included). In terms of Asia Pacific, I don't think it's going to be as big as you think. Most people from those regions that wanted to play, are already playing. In terms of the server labels, they cannot be trusted. It's common in MMOs for developers to adjust the labels so that a smaller number would trigger a larger label. This is done when population is falling and the devs want to disguise it from the people that are actually playing. I wouldn't base your whole argument on those server labels. I know for a fact that the server I play on (Frostclaw EU) is dwindling in numbers yet the label still shows as heavy.

Nice to see BioWare continuing to answer the easy questions whilst dodging the harder ones. I'm still awaiting an answer as to what they intend to do to improve maintenance times for EU customers. They promised us some info on this weeks ago, yet they are still silent. Sub gone in 2 more days...

Agree 100%.

I was in Game today and they are selling Collector's Editions for £89.99 instead of £129.99. So much for limited supply...

For some they are. There are tons of people that play MMOs for gear. Many might tell you they don't, but I would guess that most people raid for gear. Those that raid for the thrill and the fun and the challenge are few and far between. I remember seeing a poll on here months ago which actually supported my claim. The poll said something like "Why do you raid?" and around half of the respondents clicked the "For gear" option. For me personally, I don't care about raiding, what I care about is character advancement, and some of that advancement does include gear. I'm still waiting for an up to day MMO where you can progress your character fully without having to raid.

Your right, these things should not be ruining to one's gaming experience, but they should be adding to it. The thing that makes MMOs really great are all the little extra things. There are many video games released every single year, many of them are similar to other games, but the truly great games are not the ones that have the bare minimum, they are the ones that are packed with high quality features with high quality gameplay. The problem is here is that we have a MMO with many basic features, for the most part implemented in a very basic way.

4 then 1. 2 and 3 probably isn't going to happen. They are going to need to maximise the cash this game generates because I don't think it's going to have the longevity they were hoping.

Never pay up front for a MMO you haven't spent any time playing. You think you are saving money, but ultimately you are probably wasting it. I pay monthly only. This way if they piss me off, I can stop paying and if they don't do what they promise, I can stop paying, if the game is boring, I can stop paying. I wonder how many of those that paid 3 months/6 months are regretting it now. I played WoW for 6 years, I paid monthly for all that time, I never once entered into a longer subscription than that. Sure I could have saved myself some money, but ultimately, I prefer having the control and the knowledge that I can pull my subscription any time.

I bought the DDE, so I got the speeder cheaper than those that bought the CE. In my opinion it's the only decent digital item, and that's only because it's not a bad looking mount, and it saves a bit of cash. I would have preferred it if it scaled with your riding skill however, it kinda grates that it's only useful for such a short period of time. All the other digital items are pure junk. I wasted my money with the DDE to be honest, but hey, I guess you live and learn. I'll never buy another special edition game from EA or BioWare.

It's an okay game, that's all. In my opinion it's on a par with most of the other MMOs released in the last few years (AoC, LotRO, Rift, Aion) but no better. Best bits: It's Star Wars! The story aspect is superb. Worst bits: Maintenance times and it's SOOOO damn linear!

They've had enough time to fix my main gripe (maintenance times), they failed to even address so I'm out. It's a shame because I like the game, but not enough to accept being shafted on maintenance compared to the US. The length of time they should be given is going to vary according to whom you speak to. I think there were already some unforgivable omissions at launch which still haven't been fixed, combat log, low res textures, ability delay, to name but a few. If people have left due to any of those issues still not being fixed, I wouldn't blame them as these are all very basic things you expect in a game. This game was far from ready, and releasing it when they did could cost them in the long run, particularly with so many other (potentially) decent titles coming this year.

You might refuse to believe it, but a friend of mine is running it on his i3 machine with the onboard graphics (HD 2000). It runs, not amazingly well, but he is getting 30fps on average. It's only a temporary thing for him as he is waiting until the end of the month to buy a new GPU, but it's working out well enough.

I agree that those things are in the ToS and the EULA, but it still doesn't excuse the fact that they are shafting the EU player base whilst catering to the US player base. People aren't saying they shouldn't do maintenance, they are saying they should do it when the least amount of people are online. That means in the middle of the night, for each region. Not the middle of the night for US and to hell with everybody else. Wait until the Asia/Pacific servers go online. It has been stated that there will only be ONE maintenance time globally. This means that their maintenance times will be during peak hours. BioWare are really terrible at the MMO thing. I'm glad I'll be saving my money. If they learn how to do it properly, I might come back, but there again, with so much competition in the MMO space this year, it's likely I'll have better things to do.

Indeed. Stephen Reid promised some info, we've received none, not even a 'sorry folks but this is an issue taking longer to look at than we thought, update coming, just not soon'. I'm done here now. I have three days left on my sub and I will not be renewing until the EU maintenance times are adjusted. Fun game, but all the downtime is a joke, I'm not paying for downtime during the daytime and sometimes during peak hours whilst US players get theirs at night time. BioWare just refuse to engage with their EU customers and treat them equally to their US customers. Fine if they want to do that, but I will not be paying to be treated as second best.

Actually the game did fail on some level. Devs release a subscription based game as they believe that it has the ability to command a certain number of monthly subscriptions. When the game fails to live up to expectations and sub numbers are terribly low, they switch to the F2P model in order to try to plug the leaks as it were. If F2P MMOs were THAT profitable, nobody would bother with the P2P model at all. It is a fact that the P2P model is potentially the more profitable if the game is popular enough.

Nope, nobody has proved a thing. This thread is full of opinion presented as fact, and a LOT of speculation and conjecture. It's also full of a number of armchair developers who should probably be starting their own companies as they seem to know more about software development than EA and BioWare.

9/10 of a TINY playerbase. Read this, some real facts from a SWG developer on how popular the game REALLY was.

It did fail, and it failed harder post CU/NGE. Even one of their senior devs admits it. The SWG fanboys live in a world of SWG tinted spectacles however. That said, BioWare could have implemented more sandbox features.

Clueless BioWare. How can they justify taking the servers down during peak play times? It's things like this where they clearly show how amateurish they are at MMOs.

Beta started too late, wasn't big enough in terms of numbers, and with the people that were testing, many were just using their time to get to play the game for free rather than actually testing.

Most MMO developers do this after the free month, it's not just BioWare. It's done as you rightly say, to dupe people into believing that the populations are actually better than they really are. It's standard practice.

Those things are time sinks, they are a design choice by the developers. As much as I understand why we have such things in MMOs, I'm not thrilled with the way they have been implemented in this game.

I'm keeping my money until I see an improvement on EU maintenance. If they don't sort it, I'll be playing another game that isn't interrupted at ridiculous times.

DAoC in my opinion is STILL the best PvP game ever made. Mythic did a fine job on that one.

Watch the vid, there ARE numerical countdown indicators