Server population is dropping...

[Clemsonalum]

What I love about this...

 

For the first 2 weeks all you could find on the forums were posts complaining about the overly long queue times.

 

The developers said over and over and over! "Over time, they will start to even out as players get back in to their routines and holidays end." That didn't stop a single person from posting nonstop complaints.

 

Now that they have cleared up, it couldn't possibly be that they were correct! No way! They must be wrong and the game is failing.

 

I cannot WAIT for the 20th. The people who WANT to be here will be, and those who do NOT want to be here will have to pay $15 to pollute the forums.

 

QFT.... Cant wait for the 20th and all of these mouth breathing morons will go back to WoW.

[Feariz]

It is true that "its beacuse of people go back to school and work", but this doesn't mean that nothing can be done to improve gaming experience.

 

I bought the game on holidays and started playing on an european server that was normal/heavy populated since i expected that a lot of people would have moved from those full servers with 20minutes queue time. What happened instead is that Bioware encreased population limit on full servers so that nobody moved FROM them but maybe others (from low-servers) moved TO them. In additions to this there's a lot of other things (quitters, workers, stundents...) that made high-populated servers keep their number of players, and the normal/heavy ones loose a lot.

The server where I play is now far from being heavy and I'm not so fool to think that more people will come in the next month. And as I can see a lot of other servers are in the same situation.

 

So there are a lot of servers so low-populated that the gaming-experience is redicolous and just a limited number where there's an high population.

I hope that Bioware will do something like merging servers or enabling server transfer, because I paid for this month of gameplay and I don't won't to waste another month to reroll a charachter on a decent server.

Edited January 17, 2012 by Feariz

[Andryah]

So there are a lot of servers so low-populated that the gaming-experience is redicolous and just a limited number where there's an high population.

.

 

Well, using my server as a reference point, it runs "Standard" during the day and ticks up to heavy most evenings, with the occasional very heavy on weekends. At the time my server is at "Standard" so is virtually every other server on the list (if not higher).

 

Anytime I scan a /who on a planet I see 50-75 people on within that local planet. Plenty of people interacting and forming groups through /general, etc. etc. Early morning local time for the sever, I still see about 30ish people in a local planet which is about right considering the time of day and that most people work a normal work day shift.

 

Looks all about normal to me. Nothing rediculous observed.

[Feariz]

Well, using my server as a reference point, it runs "Standard" during the day and ticks up to heavy most evenings, with the occasional very heavy on weekends. At the time my server is at "Standard" so is virtually every other server on the list (if not higher).

 

Anytime I scan a /who on a planet I see 50-75 people on within that local planet. Plenty of people interacting and forming groups through /general, etc. etc. Early morning local time for the sever, I still see about 30ish people in a local planet which is about right considering the time of day and that most people work a normal work day shift.

 

Looks all about normal to me. Nothing rediculous observed.

I wrote about Normal servers, not Normal that are often Heavy and sometimes Very Heavy. I started on a server that was something like yours, but now is always Normal. On planets I find 20 players (in the evening, which I think one of the most populated times) if I'm lucky and, for example, on ilum there were 5 players this evening... I don't think that my server is the only one in this situation since there are always other servers less populated than mine, so I was just asking what Bioware is going to do with this servers.

[Kirkkh]

Because a few weeks ago was Holidays, and now its work/school/college

 

I know i find myself with less time to play because I'm back in college. doesn't mean ive left or that im no longer gonna subscribe, it just means that you need to learn the peak times for your server.

 

Simples.

 

Your a college student with less time to play?

[vizionblind]

yep it seems to have dropped

[TheHeadCapper]

Your a college student with less time to play?

 

There are better things to do at that age than spend too much time playing video games....

[Kahldor]

QFT.... Cant wait for the 20th and all of these mouth breathing morons will go back to WoW.

 

Haven't played WoW since Day 1 of Cata. Will not be going back after the 20th.

 

The fanbois of this game are some of the worst I have ever seen. And I have been playing MMOs since UO's launch. Its these types of people, along with trolls, that help ruin the community.

 

BW keep listening to your fanbois, and this game will always be broke. Ignorance is bliss - so they say.

[discosoc]

Why does it matter how many people are playing?

 

You only do what everyone else does?

 

Flashpoints and HEROIC quests are kind of nice to do...

[TheHeadCapper]

yep it seems to have dropped

 

I wsa thinking t he same thing when i had queues on Fri Sat and Sunday. Oh wait, no i wasn't.

[Andryah]

Its these types of people, along with trolls, that help ruin the community.

 

Irony in action.

[cuzcozed]

Server merges/transfers please

[DwokImmortal]

Most of the appearance toward the servers seeming empty is probably because of how small they made each server's population. Those coming from WoW may be used to thousands of people on one shard, where in swtor you get queues before you even break the 1k barrier. Add in people going back to school and work and it can feel pretty empty for an MMO.

 

Jung Wa which spent the first three weeks with horrid queues now barely scrapes together ~600 people at prime time (judging by planet hopping and playing on both sides).

[Punizher]

i wonder how many of you complaining that the servers are dead were the 1st ones to ask to open a new servers cos of the queue times.

 

for me they should have done 1 server 1 faction, less hoping.

[spiritpriest]

I would love to see merges I was playing with 1 person on a planet yesterday, granted it was early 8:00 till 10:00 am but still 1 person how am I meant to do anything with that, Server Senator Contispex. Edited January 21, 2012 by spiritpriest

[Chaffery]

As I'm still on grace period I will leave here my last message for thinking.

 

Seen threads like trolls killed game and peoples hired buy Blizz killed game. Ridiculous.

 

But you don't realize that actually you, fan boys and girls got this game in to current state.

Buy accepting this thing what EA+Bioware did throw in to our faces.

I was working for 20 years as a IT tech support/admin, hardest job I have done was look after 250 workstations/laptops and 6 servers. And I had really good reputation because everything was working flawlessly. Of course I had some problems some times with new hardware or software.

But bosses listened me, if I spotted just slight problem, maker vent automatically in to blacklist and no one ever dealt with blacklisted again.

 

Can't call game other way than digital garbage, I wish to Bioware good luck because not so many peoples willing accept this horrible thing. Honestly, never seen anything worse in my life than this game, still in shock. Peoples don't remember good things for long but bad things they will remember for very long time, if not forever.

 

So fan base, enjoy your ghost town servers but you know, it is not the end yet. Avalanche haven't stopped yet. Sales say 1.9 million copies overall, from Swtor Arena I see last worldwide peak 450-460K. So where are rest 1.5 millions?

It is good that game has fan base but if some fans start loosing fate, that's no good at all.

And you will see less and less happy posts here, trust me, it's coming, pretty soon, perhaps sooner than you expect.

[MetalHurlant]

just clicked on my "cancel subscription" button, I gotta agree with you, the servers are ghost towns....

 

goodbye!

Edited January 21, 2012 by MetalHurlant

[WilV]

I'm curious as to how many of the people concerned about low server pops are new to an MMO's first month. I've played 3 of these games from beta now and ALL of them drop population significantly towards the end of the first month. WHY? Because most of the people leaving were the ones enjoying the free month ride and had no intention of subscribing.

 

The low population becomes even more apparent in a game that has multiple servers. WHY? Because the population that's left after the mass exodus is spread out thin over many servers.

 

One mistake EA made, which seems to be common for multi server MMOs, is that they opened up a load of servers from the start to alleviate q times and lag. Unfortunately they didn't consider that once people leave after the free period is over that leaves servers virtually empty. It's one mistake that DCUO made and it left the game vitually unplayable for many. By the time they corrected the issue it was too late because many people had left due to the lack of players in their servers.

 

In about 6 months the game will probably start it's gimmicks to bring players back. Things like, free weekends or introducing new species, maybe in game character recustomization or dual spec, in hopes to draw back some of the players that left.

Edited January 21, 2012 by WilV

[PjPablo]

I think that due to the casual appeal of the game you have casual players playing casual hours. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that the average TOR player isn't playing the average MMO player's hours of 21 per week.

[MaGariShun]

I'm curious as to how many of the people concerned about low server pops are new to an MMO's first month. I've played 3 of these games from beta now and ALL of them drop population significantly towards the end of the first month. WHY? Because most of the people leaving were the ones enjoying the free month ride and had no intention of subscribing.

 

The low population becomes even more apparent in a game that has multiple servers. WHY? Because the population that's left after the mass exodus is spread out thin over many servers.

 

One mistake EA made, which seems to be common for multi server MMOs, is that they opened up a load of servers from the start to alleviate q times and lag. Unfortunately they didn't consider that once people leave after the free period is over that leaves servers virtually empty. It's one mistake that DCUO made and it left the game vitually unplayable for many. By the time they corrected the issue it was too late because many people had left due to the lack of players in their servers.

 

In about 6 months the game will probably start it's gimmicks to bring players back. Things like, free weekends or introducing new species, maybe in game character recustomization or dual spec, in hopes to draw back some of the players that left.

Of course they knew that this would be a problem, they are not stupid. But what would you do? Leaving your angry customers with full servers, lags and endless queues?

 

They just have to merge servers / allow free transfers, blizz did that all the time. What I would be more worried about, are the faction imbalances - WoW kinda solved them through giving the underpopulated faction the "cooler" races in the expansions, although iirc the imbalance was never as big as in swtor.

Swtor, being the story-driven MMO it is, would give up it's integrity by allowing faction change, as you would skip the whole class and normal quests they put so much (read: almost all) time and money in. If however the imbalance goes on like this, they have to at some point or another, cause the few reps that are left will start rerolling imp cause they can't find groups / are being pwned in world PvP

[Volas]

Also cancelled.. Im tired of seeing NOBODY on a "Standard" server. Ghost towns, almost no chat, no way to even get a flashpoint group without hours of sitting around doing nothing.

 

Trade Network is like wiping your **** with a rusty cheese grater, Ive seen ONE guild on my server, and they said they have like 15 members. Nobody wants a guild, because nobody NEEDS a guild. You never SEE anyone else. I've re-rolled on 3 different servers, all Standard to Heavy. Nobody..

 

Bugs are completely game breaking, PVP rewards are stupidly easy to get, and are 100x better then anything PvE related.

 

yet the most annoying for me has to be this.. I play on a "standard" pvp server. Lots of PVP action right? WRONG. I have yet to be attacked, ganked, NOTHING. I havent even SEEN an empire player.. (yeah, Im REPUBLIC.. and cant even find Empire to fight.) Why? Because this game does everything possible to seperate you from everyone else. Level 40.. not ONE Empire player? Seriously???

 

 

*edit* - Dont feed me that ******** about "1st month mmo" garbage either. WoW EXPLODED first month. PVP was rampant, everyone was fighting everyone else, I could see players EVERYWHERE from both factions. It was great. Crossroads was constantly being raided, ALWAYS had people to talk with, play with. NEVER had a problem getting a dungeon group etc etc. Take off your rose-colored glasses and LOOK at what your playing instead of going "oh yeah its the first month" blah blah blah. Its garbage, and you KNOW its garbage.

Edited January 21, 2012 by Volas

[Superawesomerman]

*edit* - Dont feed me that ******** about "1st month mmo" garbage either. WoW EXPLODED first month. PVP was rampant, everyone was fighting everyone else, I could see players EVERYWHERE from both factions. It was great. Crossroads was constantly being raided, ALWAYS had people to talk with, play with. NEVER had a problem getting a dungeon group etc etc. Take off your rose-colored glasses and LOOK at what your playing instead of going "oh yeah its the first month" blah blah blah.

 

sadly, this. god forbid i actually miss barrens chat, but...

 

who am i kidding, i loved barrens chat.

[PjPablo]

*edit* - Dont feed me that ******** about "1st month mmo" garbage either. WoW EXPLODED first month. PVP was rampant, everyone was fighting everyone else, I could see players EVERYWHERE from both factions. It was great. Crossroads was constantly being raided, ALWAYS had people to talk with, play with. NEVER had a problem getting a dungeon group etc etc. Take off your rose-colored glasses and LOOK at what your playing instead of going "oh yeah its the first month" blah blah blah. Its garbage, and you KNOW its garbage.

 

True ^

 

Wow's sub base went up SEVENFOLD in the first 90 days.

[Superawesomerman]

True ^

 

Wow's sub base went up SEVENFOLD in the first 90 days.

 

word of mouth made wow.

 

i get the feeling even most diehard bioware fans are telling their friends "yeah, this is gonna be the most awesome game in a few patches!"

 

and their friends are going "slick dude, imma be playin skyrim till then bro"

[Tenndou]

 

So fan base, enjoy your ghost town servers but you know, it is not the end yet. Avalanche haven't stopped yet. Sales say 1.9 million copies overall, from Swtor Arena I see last worldwide peak 450-460K. So where are rest 1.5 millions?

It is good that game has fan base but if some fans start loosing fate, that's no good at all.

And you will see less and less happy posts here, trust me, it's coming, pretty soon, perhaps sooner than you expect.

 

if u quote statistics atleast understand what they mean and how they work first