Server population is dropping...

[Radiatonia]

That's not a very valid metric.

 

The last MMO I played was WAR. There was a knot of servers which maintained sizable populations until the very end. Most were ghost towns, but by your assessment because these last few were still reasonably well populated, there wasn't an issue.

 

At least, that's the impression I get.

 

There were one or two servers out of the bunch, yeah.

 

But it was painfully obvious that Warhammer Online was dying by degrees.

 

The PVP system didn't have anything to counter-balance population imbalances, like NPC aid, or anything like that. So you could literally see the underdog faction of any imbalanced server withering and dying over the course of a month whenever one side had an advantage for too long.

 

This was because WAR was almost entirely PVP centric in terms of its progression, meaning if one side had a significant advantage they could pretty much ruin the game for the other side with even half-way decent planning. This lead to un-subscriptions, and people rerolling to other servers.

 

Some servers managed to stave this off for longer thanks to good balance between skilled guilds, or roughly equal populations. But as more and more servers died, more and more people flocked to one side or the other, and started the process all over again.

 

There's nothing like that in TOR. The closest thing to that is Ilum. Which is not a major gameplay factor. Though I do wish Ilum would include some sort of NPC spawning and automated defense/capping mechanic for the underpopulated side, to compensate for when one side just zergs the zone.

 

And on the servers that weren't heavily populated, it was pretty obvious that the game wasn't doing well. TOR has no indications like that. Almost all of the servers are booming.

 

The problem is, in a highly populated game that's doing well, new players typically want to roll on the servers where they know they'll find new players, as opposed to the server that's going to be dead. Doubly so if that server is some sort of designated hub for a segment of the community. They really don't have any reason not too, unless the developers give them a reason too (Transfers, and such.).

 

WoW had a band-aid fix for this. Offer free transfers out. However, that particular fix also had the downside of pretty much obliterating a few existing servers communities.

Edited January 26, 2012 by Radiatonia

[Hordedog]

Yeah, for the moment, I'd blame it on the Holidays ending and folk's vacations are over. That includes college students who were on break from just before Xmas until this week.

[Alwaysrun]

I'm noticing a drastic drop myself in just the last week. It's like pulling teeth to get my guildies to log in

[Ansultares]

Some servers managed to stave this off for longer thanks to good balance between skilled guilds, or roughly equal populations.

That's about the only point I think you're accurate on.

 

Anyway, you completely ignored my point that there are 12 east coast PvE servers that have light populations during prime time.

 

They should be merged, no questions asked.

 

EDIT: One of those servers is a test realm, so make that 11 east coast PvE servers with light populations during prime time. And a refresh of the server status page now returns only 10 east coast PvE servers with light populations during primetime; it's worth noting that the test realm moved to standard.

 

10 east coast PvE servers with lower populations than the test realm....

 

How can you say they don't need to be merged?

Edited January 26, 2012 by Ansultares

[Wizzrobe]

Yeah. There are a few servers that didn't really get the lions share of the population at release. And that should most certainly be addressed, either by merges, or by funneling people to them via free transfers. But the current low servers are more the result of community planning in the case of the RP servers, or just bad luck. It has nothing to do with the population dropping by some insane amount.

 

A slight dip in the population immediately after the free month is normal. Some people are only in the game for the free ride, or to troll. And others forget to sub. Others still adopt a "play it for free for one month, come back in three to see how much has been done" method to gauge how good the developer team is. There's a myriad number of things effecting dips and increases in population.

 

Call me if we start seeing all the servers with 30-50 in one instance of the fleet station. Then i'll worry.

 

Hi. It is 8:17PM EST (primetime) on my eastern server (the Defenestrator) and there are currently 15 people total in the imperial fleet.

[Zhijn]

Definitely a drop in population.

 

My server (EU) Chuundar is a dull emptiness of nothing swinging between Standar and Light, and settles most of the time on light pop.

 

Its incredible boring not to mention a pain the arse trying to get a HC4 quest going or que up for pvp. Iv gone through 49 levels and i only ever met a enm rep player(s) like 5-6 times during thouse open world areas (pvp server). Then again, there isnt really any rep players on Chuundar so thats probably why, and its another problem. =/

 

Im hoping BW will soon allow character transfers because this is just way to boring. And while i could just start a new toon on a new server, the thought of crafting to 400 again and RS'ing all over again to get blues ect, not to mention lose a good chunk of my cash will give me grey hair. =(

[Cycrow]

my wow server died off alot recently

 

you can all ignore it....

 

but they are all playing swtor now and It makes all the fleets too crowded on my server.

[Ansultares]

Iv gone through 49 levels and i only ever met a enm rep player(s) like 5-6 times during thouse open world areas (pvp server).

I could see that happening even on a well populated server, between the faction imbalance and BW's choice to heavily segregate leveling content.

 

As for those heroic quests, I found a planet needs at least 60-75 people for me to readily find a group to do them. You have to figure, so many people aren't yet able to access that quest, so many people have already done that quest today, so many people are on the bonus content for that planet and aren't interested in doing that quest, so many people don't have the time to run that quest or are interested in running heroic quests at the moment, etc.etc.etc.

Edited January 26, 2012 by Ansultares

[Wizzrobe]

my wow server died off alot recently

 

you can all ignore it....

 

but they are all playing swtor now and It makes all the fleets too crowded on my server.

 

I think that's great.

 

But on MY server it is primetime and there are now 12 people in the fleet. The game has effectively become a single player experience.

[unclekaula]

I think that's great.

 

But on MY server it is primetime and there are now 12 people in the fleet. The game has effectively become a single player experience.

 

Go to a different server.

[Wizzrobe]

Go to a different server.

 

Ok, and how will that help my server?

[MdrnStm]

-- Ignore this message --- Edited January 26, 2012 by MdrnStm

[Klarick]

The server Im on is booming. Sorry to hear yours isn't. You could reroll on another server.

[Jett-Rinn]

Looking at the severs right now most are heavy to standard in population only four are light....so false information is false.

 

[Wizzrobe]

The server Im on is booming. Sorry to hear yours isn't. You could reroll on another server.

 

People keep saying this. If I reroll, the server is STILL there and STILL a ghost town.

 

And yes, I and my RL friends are likely going to reroll (most of us anyway, one may unsub unless he can transfer his character), but that still doesn't mean that Bioware shouldn't fix the problem!

[Wizzrobe]

Looking at the severs right now most are heavy to standard in population only four are light....so false information is false.

 

 

Log onto my server and prove it to yourself if you want to. Go ahead. Fleet just hit an all night high of 22 people so maybe you'll be able to get something done.

 

I don't care if EVERY server is heavy but one is light, that doesn't mean that the people on the light server don't deserve to have the same playing experience as everyone else.

[lawsonn]

Please merge the empty servers on my realm its the same 5 players in battlegrounds all day and ive never done a flashpoint... the srrver is basicly empty.

[Jswizzle]

Giys its a little too early for merges. Give it more time. Average level is only like 30. More new players are joining every day

[lawsonn]

ive taken the decision to abandon my level 33 and the eu servers to play on a heavy pop us server. This game just isint working out for me so if this doesnt work ill most likely quit the game as im tired of not being able to do stuff like flashpoints... Edited January 26, 2012 by lawsonn

[andrelle]

Please merge the empty servers on my realm its the same 5 players in battlegrounds all day and ive never done a flashpoint... the srrver is basicly empty.

 

Whether they merge them or not, it doesn't matter. The zones are empty because of the sharding. Not once has this been addressed by Zoeller or any other developer, in the Dev Tracker, or anywhere else. What you see now is what you will see going forward.

[Wizzrobe]

Whether they merge them or not, it doesn't matter. The zones are empty because of the sharding. Not once has this been addressed by Zoeller or any other developer, in the Dev Tracker, or anywhere else. What you see now is what you will see going forward.

 

No, some of the servers are empty because there are hardly any people left on them. I realize that this happens on populated servers, but there are still more people on chat channels, using the market, and grouping up for flashpoints.

[XLauncher]

Go to a different server.

 

This is not a reasonable long term solution. Me, I have absurd amounts of patience and resilience, so yeah, I rerolled to Lord Adraas this past weekend and I'm in my early thirties. But how many people, who took Bioware's advice and rolled on a lighter server, are going to just decide it's not worth it to do it all over again and quit altogether?

 

That, and as Wizzrobe is saying, even if people do reroll, the server still exists. So, no matter what, it's unsustainable. They'll either slag it or merge it, if they're even a tiny bit responisble about it. Merging is obviously better.

[Wizzrobe]

Giys its a little too early for merges. Give it more time. Average level is only like 30. More new players are joining every day

 

My server has dropped drastically in the past 2 weeks and is currently a ghost town. Do you honestly think it is going to improve? If anything, new players will continue to join the already heavily populated servers.

[SithZigg]

People who keep crying that the population is drying up seem to willingly choose to ignore two things, server caps and real life.

 

Server caps have gone up; this was done to reduce, if not outright remove ques so that more people can play at the same time. At launch, BW had the caps set pretty low, to make sure the servers were stable. But now, that caps have been raised; so now what was once a "full" or "heavy" populated server is now "normal" or "light" simply due to the fact that the server can now take in a larger number of people. Think of it this way, at launch, the server cap was, say, 600 people; with 700 people wanting in on that server, it got full really fast; now the server cap has been raised to, say, 1400, and now those 700 people can get in very easily. The population now looks small, only due to the relative size of the cap.

 

And also a vast portion of the population are of either college age or older. When TOR was released, it coincided with the time those people had off; so those people had plenty of free time to do whatever they wanted. But now vacation time is over, and those people have since returned to school/work. Where once they had the entire day to play TOR, now they only have a few hours here and there during the week because of classes/job/both. Again, this make the population smaller than what it might actually be.

 

I am not saying that nobody has legitimately left the game, that would be naive on my part; but to not take into account the two things I have mentioned, and immediately jump to the worse case scenario, is both rash and short sighted, and just as naive for its own reasons.

[Wizzrobe]

People who keep crying that the population is drying up seem to willingly choose to ignore two things, server caps and real life.

 

Server caps have gone up; this was done to reduce, if not outright remove ques so that more people can play at the same time. At launch, BW had the caps set pretty low, to make sure the servers were stable. But now, that caps have been raised; so now what was once a "full" or "heavy" populated server is now "normal" or "light" simply due to the fact that the server can now take in a larger number of people. Think of it this way, at launch, the server cap was, say, 600 people; with 700 people wanting in on that server, it got full really fast; now the server cap has been raised to, say, 1400, and now those 700 people can get in very easily. The population now looks small, only due to the relative size of the cap.

 

And also a vast portion of the population are of either college age or older. When TOR was released, it coincided with the time those people had off; so those people had plenty of free time to do whatever they wanted. But now vacation time is over, and those people have since returned to school/work. Where once they had the entire day to play TOR, now they only have a few hours here and there during the week because of classes/job/both. Again, this make the population smaller than what it might actually be.

 

I am not saying that nobody has legitimately left the game, that would be naive on my part; but to not take into account the two things I have mentioned, and immediately jump to the worse case scenario, is both rash and short sighted, and just as naive for its own reasons.

 

I think there are two different issues here.

 

Some people believe the whole game is losing players, and some are being defensive of that.

 

Others (like me) have been unfortunate enough to end up on a very low population server, and are asking servers to be merged to make the game playable for us.

 

I love the game and I am not part of the 'doom and gloom' crowd, BUT, I cannot ignore the fact that there is hardly anybody playing on my server. Having 15-20 people in your fleet during primetime is just not the way the game was meant to be played.