Server population is dropping...

[Miffy]

Any one else noticed that the servers were all full during peak times the other week and now all the full ones are now only heavy or very heavy. Lots are just standard now and you log on to them to see what the populations are like and you'll get like 20 people in a zone compared to around 80 in the very heavy ones.

 

Bioware needs to start merging servers before they make the mistake every other developer has done with mmorpgs ever since WoW. If you're part of an unpopulated server you're more likely to quit because you cannot find the people to play with.

 

It's not a doomsday thread but Bioware need to get on top of the population decline before the servers get too underpopulated and people quit.

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[newwb]

it all started with shoes.

 

swtor had always been a nice place, except that there were a few too many shoe vendors in the major cities. the more shoe vendors there were, the more shoes were produced. the more shoes were produced, the lower the quality of the shoes. the lower the quality of the shoes, the more often people had to buy new shoes. the more often people had to buy new shoes, the more shoe vendors there were. eventually, swtor passed what economists call the 'shoe event horizon' when it was no longer feasible to produce anything other than shoes. needless to say, disaster ensued. those few players with the correct genetic makeup mutated into hobbits. the rest died off.

 

its a common economic phenomenon, but tragic to see in operation.

[Thradar]

IMO BW and the playerbase over reacted during launch.

 

BW freaked out and opened more servers than the needed.

The players freaked out because they have not patience to wait for launch to settle out.

 

This is the end result.

 

Our guild started on a high pop server. Many members asked about moving when new servers opened up. I said "No, things will settle out and the queues will vanish." and they did.

[Sabster]

BW freaked out and opened more servers than the needed.

I disagree - the servers were all showing heavy with queue times.

 

Having said that, I'm glad what they did - it's just i fully expect server mergers soon. I doubt there's well over a million accounts playing now (past the 30 days). But I'm curious how many there really are.

[wrmrstacrdwower]

I disagree - the servers were all showing heavy with queue times.

 

Having said that, I'm glad what they did - it's just i fully expect server mergers soon. I doubt there's well over a million accounts playing now (past the 30 days). But I'm curious how many there really are.

 

I agree, for the first three weeks there was a lot of QQ about que times and server waiting.

 

And now the pops have all died down because SWTOR fails.

 

Everyone wins. EA recouped it's money and we saw the potential of a decent MMO.

 

Now all EA and Bioware have to do is pull SWTOR rerelease it and use an actual game engine and hire some real devs.

Edited January 29, 2012 by wrmrstacrdwower

[Wolfeisberg]

I disagree - the servers were all showing heavy with queue times.

 

Having said that, I'm glad what they did - it's just i fully expect server mergers soon. I doubt there's well over a million accounts playing now (past the 30 days). But I'm curious how many there really are.

 

 

yeah, at the time they had a good amount of servers. The biggest reason why we have way to many servers now is because they released the game during a major holiday where there was no school and people taking vacation from work. If they released the game this month instead, I doubt they would have needed to create as many servers, since School is back in session and people would have been back to work.

[Jett-Rinn]

Ebon Hawk is popping even had to wait in a queue tonight.

[wrmrstacrdwower]

Ebon Hawk is popping even had to wait in a queue tonight.

 

There are like 4 servers that have a decent population. The rest are dead.

[GongStar]

My server is full and healthy.

Probably differs between servers.

[Kourage]

It's 6:21pm EST Saturday.

 

My server is Krayiss Obelisk, East PvE

It's marked as "Standard" pop

 

 

There's 2 Imps on Ilum, including myself. I've been here a couple of hours now and there's not been more than 3, including myself. You can't tell me it's a weekday, everybody is working or any other excuse.

 

This is ridiculous....

 

 

 

 

 

I'm going to have to reroll on Shadow Hand I guess. That's what other people are doing which only makes our server worse off.

 

 

It's now 9:26pm EST Saturday Night and only 3 Imperials on Ilum.

Server Status says "Standard".

God help the "Light" servers.

Edited January 29, 2012 by Kourage

[Tanjamus]

Have the same problem on my server, batteling the dessition to Reroll along with the guild on a better server or just cancle ... i only PvP i dont find Raids and FPs fun so when i have to wait for 1 houres to get a BG to opo something has to change, at first i though well they will merge servers allow char xfers, and i m sure they will but my server will be long dead by then, there are just way 2 many other things that need fixing atm for them to spend ressources on merges and xfers.

[Vlacke]

My server is full and healthy.

Probably differs between servers.

 

This.

I see plenty of at least very high populated server in both US and EU at prime times.

Mine is also very high/full often so i don't have any problems at all.

 

Some servers are underpopulated though, but that is because Bioware opened more additional servers then they should have, when people complained about queues

Edited January 29, 2012 by Vlacke

[Augerman]

This.

I see plenty of at least very high populated server in both US and EU at prime times.

Mine is also very high/full often so i don't have any problems at all.

 

Some servers are underpopulated though, but that is because Bioware opened more additional servers then they should have, when people complained about queues

 

This ^^^

 

People whined that they never had enough servers and they opened more. Now comes the whines about under populated servers. I posted about this in December when people were whining about the queues.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=334939#post334939

 

 

 

Exactly. Everyone just needs to be patient and wait and eventually everyone will start playing a few hours a day instead of 24/7 and the queues will be gone. We really don't want a bunch of dead servers with hardly anyone on them.

[jarjarloves]

 

 

It's now 9:26pm EST Saturday Night and only 3 Imperials on Ilum.

Server Status says "Standard".

God help the "Light" servers.

 

server status isn't there to tell you how populated Ilum is. It's purpose is to tell you how full the server is.

 

A light server could have more then 3 people on Ilum.

[TitanJJ]

I just wanted to say:

 

 

Just because a server doesn't say 'full', doesn't mean there aren't tons of people playing on it.

 

I know, as americans, we tend to get obsessed with big, BIGGER, BIGGEST, but I assure you, a 'standard' population is perfectly fine.

 

The server I play on, used to have queues. it is now 'standard'. Yet, there's still tons of people on all planets. What many of you can't seem to comprehend is, Bioware is able to change the server caps.

 

I will explain this to the less fortunate people with small heads.

 

say you have 2800 people on a server and the cap is 2800. this server would show as 'full'.

 

now take that SAME server and raise the cap to 4000. now you have a server that is 'only' 2/3 full, which would probably show as 'heavy' or 'standard'.

 

do you get it now?

 

also, don't forget to report this post for all the poor unfortunate people i offended.

[RobHouse]

There are like 4 servers that have a decent population. The rest are dead.

 

 

GO ONLINE.

 

check the server populations, they are all standard, i was on tonight at like 11, there were ZERO lights, zero! where are you all playing that u see ghost towns?!

[Jswizzle]

They aren't seeing ghost towns. They log on, look at one or two planets and say ghost town. Same thing they have been saying since launch.

 

Complete exaggeration. My standard server has tons of people

[vandolay]

I play on Zez-Kai Ell server and there have been numerous times when I have been the only player on an entire planet. A couple of times I have been the only player on the Imperial Fleet. I would say that fits the deffinition of a dead server:(

[Wolfeisberg]

GO ONLINE.

 

check the server populations, they are all standard, i was on tonight at like 11, there were ZERO lights, zero! where are you all playing that u see ghost towns?!

 

unfortunately "Standard" doesn't really mean anything, cause it seems to have a huge gap between the min for standard and the max for standard. In an other thread someone posted some screenshots of the /who for different planets while he was on Fleet, on a saturday night at 9pm on a standard server. He was in fleet with less then 20 people on it, and the other planets had less then 30 people on them, and he was playing imperial side.

 

So yes, being on a standard server can still be a ghost town because the min for standard is set way to low apparently.

[Mannic]

This.

I see plenty of at least very high populated server in both US and EU at prime times.

Mine is also very high/full often so i don't have any problems at all.

 

Some servers are underpopulated though, but that is because Bioware opened more additional servers then they should have, when people complained about queues

 

You're not looking then becuase it didn't get above 25 heavy servers tonight in prime time in NA. On a Saturday.

 

That's less than 25% of servers getting to heavy or higher. And there were over a dozen that never got above light--again--in Prime time on a weekend.

 

Time for server merges. Do it Bioware.

Edited January 29, 2012 by Mannic

[ruminate]

I'd like to point out that server population in the server select screen is a farce.

 

As of 10:15 PM PST, "Perlemian Trade Route" and "Master Gnost-Durol" shows heavy population.

If you go in game and do a /who "Juggernaut", "Sniper", "Mercenary", etc. you'll notice that there are less than 80 people online per classes, including the more popular ones like Sorcerer. Some of the less popular ones, like Powertech, have less than 30.

 

As of 10:15 PM PST, "Mask of Nihilus" and "Master Zhar Lestin" shows standard population. If you go in game and do a /who "Juggernaut", "Sniper", "Mercenary", etc. you'll notice that there are over 100 people each playing the popular classes, and the less popular ones, like Powertech, have close to or over 100.

 

What does this mean? It means BioWare is playing around with the "server status" to prevent the average person from realizing that the majority of servers are a ghost town during primetime.

 

No, this is not a conspiracy. You can check it out yourself by doing a search for each class on a server. Unlike WoW, TOR doesn't have an /anon, so the search function provides accurate results.

[TheHeadCapper]

Not on the Harbringer, there was 190 on the fleet republic, i was seeing 180+ on each planet in the noob zones, 120 on Voss. This is republic........ Edited January 29, 2012 by TheHeadCapper

[Leggomy]

I'd like to point out that server population in the server select screen is a farce.

 

As of 10:15 PM PST, "Perlemian Trade Route" and "Master Gnost-Durol" shows heavy population.

If you go in game and do a /who "Juggernaut", "Sniper", "Mercenary", etc. you'll notice that there are less than 80 people online per classes, including the more popular ones like Sorcerer. Some of the less popular ones, like Powertech, have less than 30.

 

As of 10:15 PM PST, "Mask of Nihilus" and "Master Zhar Lestin" shows standard population. If you go in game and do a /who "Juggernaut", "Sniper", "Mercenary", etc. you'll notice that there are over 100 people each playing the popular classes, and the less popular ones, like Powertech, have close to or over 100.

 

What does this mean? It means BioWare is playing around with the "server status" to prevent the average person from realizing that the majority of servers are a ghost town during primetime.

 

No, this is not a conspiracy. You can check it out yourself by doing a search for each class on a server. Unlike WoW, TOR doesn't have an /anon, so the search function provides accurate results.

 

I dont believe this at all. Makes no sense why would they do it? Also if it says I am 400th in line to get in does that mean they faked at least 380 of those people and make me wait for no reason?

[ruminate]

I dont believe this at all. Makes no sense why would they do it? Also if it says I am 400th in line to get in does that mean they faked at least 380 of those people and make me wait for no reason?

 

I already told you how you can check it yourself.

 

I also already explained why they did it.

 

If you want to know HOW it happened, take a look at the following list:

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=254

 

Every single server that was opened after early access ended requires less people online for the server status to hit "standard", "heavy", etc. The two heavy servers I listed were released after early access. The two standard servers I listed(which has a higher population than the heavy, keep that in mind) were released during the start of early access.