Server population is dropping...

[Daltin]

I can see you're upset, and I'm not trying to yank your chain, but I'd like to know what you mean by thriving. Is it just the lack of pvp that's problematic? In my opinion, most low-pop issues can be resolved by joining a good guild, except that it won't make your warzone queues pop any faster. I believe I'm on the lowest pop server of them all (Fort Garnik) and the lack of crowds doesn't bother me, but then again I don't do warzones much.

 

Thriving to me is more than 15 people on fleet during peak hours. That's 14 other people, not counting myself, that are potentially looking for a group to complete some operations, PVP, or whatever the case may be.

 

Some servers have hundreds of people on the fleet.

 

The heavy population servers stay heavy, and the lower pop get lower, because eventually something snaps, and they give up. They re-roll on the high pop server. I won't be a statistic, however. This is my personal choice, and am prepared to live with the consequences. However, my consequences are finding a different game, but to bioware, it's -15 dollars. But! If they allowed server transfers, not only would they get to keep my 15/mo sub, but they'd also get my 20 dollar transfer fee. Winner=Bioware.

 

210 is actually very good.

 

If 210 was for one side, I'd agree that would be a healthy population. But 210 combined is extremely poor. I left out the amount of 50s from that post. There were 13 Republic 50s, to 4 Empire 50s.

[Jxspyder]

/who 1-25 Republic: 64

/who 26-50 Republic: 59

/who 1-25 Empire: 43

/who 26-50 Empire: 44

 

5PM EST Total Server population of 'Crevasse City': 210

 

 

Yeah, lol. We're ok as a server. What's the excuse now? "It's only 5PM" ? Ok.

 

I want everyone to work on facts and opinions. Venn Diagrams may be useful, use at your own discretion.

 

Opinions: Some servers are good

Opinions: Some servers are bad

 

Facts: Some servers have very high populations and are thriving.

Facts: Some servers have very low populations and are not thriving.

 

Fact: Bioware said in the end of December "Realms were reaching their ABSOLUTE cap"

Fact: Bioware then raises population caps a week later.

Fact: Bioware never stated "we will be raising server populations for realms that reach absolute cap"

Fact: Bioware said "Avoid Absolute cap realms, make one on a low population."

 

Opinion: This game is dying

Opinion: This game has good PVP

Opinion: This game has bad PVP.

 

Fact, by definition, "something that actually exists; reality; truth: Your fears have no basis in fact. "

 

Opinion, by definition, "a belief or judgment that rests on grounds insufficient to produce complete certainty. "

 

Some people think low pop server-rollers are at fault for making the realm selection they did. This is opinion.

Some people realize Bioware told the low-pop server-rollers to make characters there. This is fact.

 

I'm glad we cleared this up.

 

About your facts.....http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=60893 Posted 12/20 (launch day) at 3:20.

 

Couple of excerts I wanted to pull from that for you to clarify.

 

About absolute cap, and what it means:

These servers are closing in on their absolute population cap (the maximum amount of players who can be on the server at any given time) and will likely have a queue to enter even at off-peak play times.

 

About raising said caps:

We're monitoring all of our servers around the clock, and we're raising server population caps where required. However, to ensure our long-term goals of server stability and healthy populations, we do not want to raise population caps too rapidly.

 

What Bioware said about raising caps on servers:

We're monitoring all of our servers around the clock, and we're raising server population caps where required. However, to ensure our long-term goals of server stability and healthy populations, we do not want to raise population caps too rapidly. We want incoming players to populate lower population servers. At the same time, higher population servers will not be 'locked' because we want to allow people to join a server to play with their friends if they wish to.

 

What Bioware said about avoiding servers:

We strongly advise you to not create new characters on these servers, unless you are prepared to queue to play.

 

About character transfers:

Character transfer is a common request for these servers. The ability to transfer your characters is being worked on, but there is no ETA on when it will be available.

 

And just because:

Population caps are being gradually raised on these servers, but raising them too fast will create an influx of new players and perpetuate the problem. We do not expect the queues to alleviate on these servers for the foreseeable future. If you do not want to queue, you should consider playing on another server, many of which have very low or no queues.

 

 

So basically, you're mad because you misread the post by Stephen Reid. A lot of these statements seem to refute your facts. The servers were never locked, we were told that they would be increasing caps, but that it would be gradual, and they suggested rolling a low-pop server if you wanted to avoid queue times. I guess I'm sorry you didn't decide to reroll two months ago?

 

 

Edit:

 

To reiterate reading your follow-up post:

 

Character transfer is a common request for these servers. The ability to transfer your characters is being worked on, but there is no ETA on when it will be available.

Edited February 7, 2012 by Jxspyder

[jonobiwan]

Thriving to me is more than 15 people on fleet during peak hours. That's 14 other people, not counting myself, that are potentially looking for a group to complete some operations, PVP, or whatever the case may be.

 

Some servers have hundreds of people on the fleet.

 

The heavy population servers stay heavy, and the lower pop get lower, because eventually something snaps, and they give up. They re-roll on the high pop server. I won't be a statistic, however. This is my personal choice, and am prepared to live with the consequences. However, my consequences are finding a different game, but to bioware, it's -15 dollars. But! If they allowed server transfers, not only would they get to keep my 15/mo sub, but they'd also get my 20 dollar transfer fee. Winner=Bioware.

 

 

 

If 210 was for one side, I'd agree that would be a healthy population. But 210 combined is extremely poor. I left out the amount of 50s from that post. There were 13 Republic 50s, to 4 Empire 50s.

That's because most are still leveling. Problem is people were expecting this to have absurdly high pop numbers like WOW currently does. People seem to forget even WOW had low pops at the start. Numbers will grow but that takes time. As for server transfer I agree that could be a good thing but it also could be a bad thing.

[Daltin]

That's because most are still leveling. Problem is people were expecting this to have absurdly high pop numbers like WOW currently does. People seem to forget even WOW had low pops at the start. Numbers will grow but that takes time. As for server transfer I agree that could be a good thing but it also could be a bad thing.

 

I used to agree with this. But the numbers have been steady for about 3 weeks now. 5-15 50s at peak hours, Fleet has 12 people, starting zones even have the same amount of people.

 

It's like a time-warp of nothingness. The population count is the same going by planet, and by faction.. But.. There are never any more 50s now than there were 2-3 weeks ago. It's the same 15. 0 lvl 50 PVP Queues since patch 1.1, as well.

 

-

 

Well, you pretty much systematically destroyed my "Bioware never said.." Argument. I clearly didn't do enough research on the topic of "Absolute" caps. My source from that came from a Joystiq.com article that Stephen Reid did, not the post on this website.

 

However, I still feel they made the situation of how "dire" heavy and very heavy servers worse than it was. They could've said how much they were going to raise, or in X amount of days. I would've played in a queue for a week if i had known that it'd be gone in a matter of days.

Edited February 7, 2012 by Daltin

[SirRobin]

For the record, there are almost 70 major chat zones per server. Planets, ships, flashpoints, etc. Just saying. Though as a comparison, it's really no different than WoW.

 

Yes, and none of them are truly "global." They are confined to one zone or another. While indeed WoW had a similar number of divisions and channels they also had some "global" ones, like the defense channels, which let people communicate beyond just their zone. If you want to reference WoW then it might be also relevant to bring up how much faster it is to move from zone to zone in WoW compared to TOR. This ease and speed helped the zones themselves feel more integrated with each other too.

 

TOR's population, "settling," highlights these design idiosyncrasies and hopefully BioWare will add elements to help combat any atmosphere of isolation with default "global" global channels, group finder, guild progression, and boosting social rewards.

[Ruuprect]

On Jedi Covenant the last 2 nights have been 160+ on rep side. It seems preety steady for the past few weeks. But I know some servers are really struggling. I think when they implement transfers the full servers will get fuller ("fuller" is that a word ) and they will close the ligfht servers as ppl transfer out. I also think a lot of ppl on the low pop servers may come back and transfer to better servers when transfers come out which will increase the pop a bit as well.

[Nyaralath]

I really wish more people would jump on Khoonda's Militia. I have a heck of a time finding groups there. Yesterday the fleet was at 15 peeps and nobody wanted to do Flashpoints it seemed. I really, really wish there was a server transfer option. I don't want to re-roll my level 28 Sith Juggernaut.

[Darklyn]

Guys its not dropping, its only a few thousand. Relax guys.

[WhiskyJax]

One of the problems is that the game is instanced in such a manner it can be very hard to get accurate numbers and then if you do get some what do you compare them to? LAst night at 3:30 in the morning i did a class based who republic side and got a total of 375 which given last known sub numbers would be about half of what peak time might be provided the population was evenly spread between the servers and factions.

 

Another thing I have heard alot is " Well Stormwind had 150 players during peak compared 15 in our fleet at such and such time." SWTOR has about 17% of the sub base Wow does so lets take 17% of that 150... 26. Not alot now is it?

 

The numbers seem alot lower then what they are because we have LESS players then what we are used to seeing if we come from larger games.

[SirRobin]

Another thing I have heard alot is " Well Stormwind had 150 players during peak compared 15 in our fleet at such and such time." SWTOR has about 17% of the sub base Wow does so lets take 17% of that 150... 26. Not alot now is it?

 

The numbers seem alot lower then what they are because we have LESS players then what we are used to seeing if we come from larger games.

 

That is another factor I think. Some always expect something to be "the" WoW-killer. Well it seems pretty clear that TOR isn't and won't be. The population densities that WoW could reach during its heyday are probably not going to happen in this game, or any other for that matter.

[mcburly]

almost all of em were heavy last night.

[NotDonnaReed]

That is another factor I think. Some always expect something to be "the" WoW-killer. Well it seems pretty clear that TOR isn't and won't be. The population densities that WoW could reach during its heyday are probably not going to happen in this game, or any other for that matter.

 

I think you hit the nail on the head. SWTOR is filled with gaming refugees who find fault with this game for not being just like the other ones, even though they must've left the other ones for a reason. I hope BioWare keeps doing their own thing and doesn't make any rash changes to please the alarmists.

Edited February 8, 2012 by NotDonnaReed

[SirRobin]

I think you hit the nail on the head. SWTOR is filled with gaming refugees who find fault with this game for not being just like the other ones, even though they must've left the other ones for a reason. I hope BioWare keeps doing their own thing and doesn't make any rash changes to please the alarmists.

 

Anything rash would probably do more harm than good. Probably don't need to remind anyone but this is sort of BioWare's first MMO. So they have some learning to do too.

[Darklyn]

Really because of the amount and sheer volume of players, there is nothing alarming about it. BioWare knows this and thats why they are quite casual as the odd thou is shaved off the sub stats. Cause its nothing in the bigger picture. A couple of thou lost subs is fine when the subs from other sources keep coming in to check out the new kitty.

[Calsidian]

I don't know, I talked to a fanboi and he said TOR is growing faster than bacteria. Fanboi wouldn't lie to me.

[Xzenorath]

My server's doing pretty good... the economy rocks, there's plenty of people, more 50's every day, guilds recruiting, warzones popping fairly quickly... I can't wait to have more people on there but it's far from dieing, I know that much.

[Jxspyder]

Yes, and none of them are truly "global." They are confined to one zone or another. While indeed WoW had a similar number of divisions and channels they also had some "global" ones, like the defense channels, which let people communicate beyond just their zone. If you want to reference WoW then it might be also relevant to bring up how much faster it is to move from zone to zone in WoW compared to TOR. This ease and speed helped the zones themselves feel more integrated with each other too.

 

TOR's population, "settling," highlights these design idiosyncrasies and hopefully BioWare will add elements to help combat any atmosphere of isolation with default "global" global channels, group finder, guild progression, and boosting social rewards.

 

Offhand, that's the only one I can think of, and also the one that was most closely monitored. So while a "global defense" channel might help with world PvP issues...it won't, and shouldn't, do much beyond that.

 

Honestly, the biggest problem with TOR's travel is the IP itself. Unless they create a bank of shuttles in each starport that travel to and from each individual planet...which kind of seems unlikely....there's really no way to create a similar "seamless" travel that WoW has. But then again, the Fleet transport available on pretty much every planet does make that possible.

[Boreus]

I had to wait in a 20 minute queue last weekend, and I see most servers at heavy even on weeknights. Seems pretty normal to me.

[Shingara]

My server red eclipse has always had a healthy number since launch and if anything i have noticed its getting alot busier espec at lower end content.

 

 

I think alot of peeps are just peeved of because they dont have the epeen factor of ow look at my shiney shiney that you dont have.

Edited February 8, 2012 by Shingara

[Ravoss]

I am in a PvP match every <3 minutes on weekdays and can do a HM FLashpoint whenever I want (Fleet).

 

I am however upset that at 5am this morning, my server (Ordo), was LIGHT!!!! This just got real!

[Harlin]

No. Server merges aren't needed. I'm on Sanctum and there's always people on somewhere. The fleets are crowded and I avoid going there if possible.

 

Advice: Make a character on a server that has a better population.

[Bazouk]

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.

 

 

it just dropped by one more

[Bregah]

No. Server merges aren't needed. I'm on Sanctum and there's always people on somewhere. The fleets are crowded and I avoid going there if possible.

 

Advice: Make a character on a server that has a better population.

 

You know, I tried this.

 

I was on The Razor - level 50 jugg tank and 30 sorc heals. Dying server.

 

Rerolled on Space Slug (has about 6 to 8 times the level 50 population as The Razor).

 

Got to level 15 and realized - this game isn't fun enough to do the same thing all over again, so I unsubscribed.

 

I'll be following the game for a while, but with so many other games coming out I want to play, I just suspect TOR missed it's window of opportunity on me to make me a long-time consumer.

 

If this game, CURRENTLY, had dual specs, LFD tool (cross server, because my orginal server has had, in prime time, ONE level 50 healer online at least 1 time in the past 2 weeks, with around 47 total 50's - but ONE healer!) and/or free server transfers, I most likely wouldn't have unsubscribed.

 

But I have seen nothing from Bioware on any of these 3 things, so figured why waste my time on a low pop server, and...the game just isn't good enough to redo (at this point).

[xFreeSouLx]

I do not understand, why ppl from more then standart server populations

reply to this thread.. your servers doing fine, good for you.

/shoo

this is about servers where light population almost all the time...

 

No. Server merges aren't needed. I'm on Sanctum and there's always people on somewhere. The fleets are crowded and I avoid going there if possible.

 

Advice: Make a character on a server that has a better population.

 

first, me and my wife (especialy she) don`t have another month to get lvl 50

(ok lets pretend we have)

second, she want to play same class, and it`s realy anoying and borring to do absolutly same quest`s

and story line..

we registered at Eye of Ashlanae, (coz she don`t have half a hour to wait in queue, she can play about 3 hours per day..) - it was standart populated, now it`s light almost all the time

and dying.. illum usual 3-10 players rep side...

Imps totaly dominating...

 

today i was standing more then 2 hours in pvp queue (by mine 50 lvl char) it was 16:00 gmt

and didnt get any single wz match, so i leaved queue, yesterday i played 1 match same story..

 

my opinion:

BioWare should put other things aside and give us char transfer or better - Server Merge (better for us better for them, less servers less money spend supporting them),

if they don`t do it, they will loose alot of players, it is happening right now.

 

/sign

We need Merge Servers

Edited February 9, 2012 by xFreeSouLx

[Jxspyder]

You know, I tried this.

 

I was on The Razor - level 50 jugg tank and 30 sorc heals. Dying server.

 

Rerolled on Space Slug (has about 6 to 8 times the level 50 population as The Razor).

 

Got to level 15 and realized - this game isn't fun enough to do the same thing all over again, so I unsubscribed.

 

I'll be following the game for a while, but with so many other games coming out I want to play, I just suspect TOR missed it's window of opportunity on me to make me a long-time consumer.

 

If this game, CURRENTLY, had dual specs, LFD tool (cross server, because my orginal server has had, in prime time, ONE level 50 healer online at least 1 time in the past 2 weeks, with around 47 total 50's - but ONE healer!) and/or free server transfers, I most likely wouldn't have unsubscribed.

 

But I have seen nothing from Bioware on any of these 3 things, so figured why waste my time on a low pop server, and...the game just isn't good enough to redo (at this point).

 

If you haven't seen absolutely anything on any of these issues, then you simply aren't looking hard enough. In the obvious places, such as the dev tracker and blog posts. The places where they've told us these things.

 

They've provided a LFG tool, it just requires people to use it. As for the requirement that it be cross server, that's exceptionally subjective, with quite a few people who disagree with you.

 

Dual specs are something they've talked about, and while they couldn't fit it in for launch, wanted it to be available after. This was announced before the game even launched.

 

As for transfers, it's something they're working on implimenting. I wouldn't expect it to be free though.

 

And, I'm sorry you feel that way.