Server Population is GROWING!

[Icebaron]

Educate yourself about them:

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=322814&highlight=torstatus

 

good link. So, according to you, Bioware is changing what qualifies as light/heavy/full to make it look like the population on all servers is dropping. They are doing this on purpose.

 

Because those are the two options. They are changing the limits on servers to make them all light or they are losing subs.

 

Also remember, people are having trouble getting groups. So you have people complaining their servers are ghost towns, and rather then lower the caps on servers to filter the new players into these lower pop servers, they are RAISING them for some reason.

 

Logically there is but one conclusion anyone would come to.

[corbanite]

It's still nonsense to say that data is meaningless, I'm afriad. The OP doesn't seem to understand much for someone supposedly working with data sets daily.

 

WHen the boundaries for what defines a standard server differ from server to server and also differ on the same server from day to day no meaningful data can be collected.

[Goretzu]

Also, taken from torstatus:

 

population index: light = 1, standard = 2, heavy = 3, very heavy = 4, full = 5

accumulated population index has nothing to do with the number of players!

overview - left-click and drag on the small graph to select time period

reset selection - selects and displays data for only last 7 days

maximum displayable history is 60 days

 

 

http://www.torstatus.net/shards/us/totals

 

 

If you understand that is being said there (in the yellow) then you understand that highlighting that is completely missleading (as it's not saying what you seem to think it's saying).

 

Or to put it simply you're look at the wrong graph!

Edited March 1, 2012 by Goretzu

[Goretzu]

WHen the boundaries for what defines a standard server differ from server to server and also differ on the same server from day to day no meaningful data can be collected.

 

They don't.

[Azzras]

good link. So, according to you, Bioware is changing what qualifies as light/heavy/full to make it look like the population on all servers is dropping. They are doing this on purpose.

 

Because those are the two options. They are changing the limits on servers to make them all light or they are losing subs.

 

Also remember, people are having trouble getting groups. So you have people complaining their servers are ghost towns, and rather then lower the caps on servers to filter the new players into these lower pop servers, they are RAISING them for some reason.

 

Logically there is but one conclusion anyone would come to.

 

Sigh, I yield....THE SKY IS FALLING!

 

Even the websites say that they do not represent the number of players.

 

Enjoy your rage, and continue to sub so you can enjoy your rage.

 

I cannot continue this discussion with you. You are blinded by hatred.

[Matte_Black]

I think it is alot more likely that the change to thresholds that cause the servers to be considered "light", "heavy" or what have you has alot more to do with them increasing performance and having a better handle on what a full server really means than it is that they are trying to obfuscate server populations. Edited March 1, 2012 by Matte_Black

[Azzras]

If you understand that is being said there (in the yellow) then you understand that highlighting that is completely missleading (as it's not saying what you seem to think it's saying).

 

Or to put it simply you're look at the wrong graph!

 

All graphs are based on the same data, which does not represent the number of players...

[corbanite]

Sigh, I yield....THE SKY IS FALLING!

 

Even the websites say that they do not represent the number of players.

 

Enjoy your rage, and continue to sub so you can enjoy your rage.

 

I cannot continue this discussion with you. You are blinded by hatred.

 

this.

[Icebaron]

I think it is alot more likely that the change to thresholds that cause the servers to be considered "light", "heavy or what have you has alot more to do with them increasing performance and haveing a better handle on what a full server really means than it is that they are trying to obfuscate server populations.

 

An intellegent thought, thank you for pointing out something I had not thought of.

 

Possible, but stupid to do on Biowares part because it is basically robbing low pop servers of new recruits. But possible none-the-less.

[corbanite]

I think it is alot more likely that the change to thresholds that cause the servers to be considered "light", "heavy" or what have you has alot more to do with them increasing performance and having a better handle on what a full server really means than it is that they are trying to obfuscate server populations.

 

I also saw they manipulate them to encourage layers to make new characters on certain servers. So they differ from server to server

[Matte_Black]

An intellegent thought, thank you for pointing out something I had not thought of.

 

Possible, but stupid to do on Biowares part because it is basically robbing low pop servers of new recruits. But possible none-the-less.

 

People noted the change pretty early which makes me think it was more tuning issue than PR stunt.

[HerbM]

 

BTW - To the guy playing for 2 weeks. I was like you, it was all shiny and new, and I took my time going through each planet, finding datacrons, doing bonus series, some flashpoints, but after a month or so the luster wore off and I could see flaws in the foundation. I play with a smaller tight group of individuals and when they left, disappointed, the game really lost it for me.

I come here to see if improvements are being made, offer suggestions to what I think would make the game more fun for me and my friends, only to be attacked by others in a personal fashion. Truly wonderful!

 

Sorry to hear about the personal attacks and name calling, that gets old I know, reason I try to stay off the forums for the most part. Or just put on my troll repellent when I do jump on the forums.

 

I do understand the game is all new and shiny to me, but the experience so far is great, at first I started a trooper and did not really get into the game, started a jedi and due to the glowie boken was a little turned off( Buddy pushed me to get to 10 and get the lightsaber), after the quest leading to the light saber I thought this game was pretty cool imo.

 

My list of positives so far.....the great depth of story that you follow per character to reach end game ( no I have not even reached lvl 20 yet~ due to starting alts). The crafting system just rocks imo, the fact that you get your new and upgraded schematics from RE is way awesome in my book.

 

The companion system simply put is the best pet system I have to experience in an MMO....have been around in MMO's since the Evercrack days.

 

The negatives to me so far....the glitchy grouping system....buddy joined after my group was on a mission and it made him port right outside the entrance but could not enter it. But that was only once it was real confusing.

 

Reason I posted in this thread instead of the noobs area is to sorta say" Hey guys new players are joining." I am sure there are plenty of bandwagon gamers that have moved on, but that population does that with every new game that is released.

[Snibb]

Question for you guys.

Why would BW change the definition of Standard, Heavy, Light, etc on servers that never get above Standard?

I mean, I agree with you that there is no way of knowing when they change the limits and this makes you take the data with a large grain of salt, but it seems to me that if the server is not pushing the limits, why mess with the limits?

It was easier in the old days when you could do a /who all and see that it returned X number of players. Never tried a /who 1-50, not sure if it would work in this game.

[Matte_Black]

I also saw they manipulate them to encourage layers to make new characters on certain servers. So they differ from server to server

 

Might even be an issue of them setting the bars to thresholds that are more meaningful in how they effect the gameplay or actual physical server operation. Perhaps sharding is activated or deactivated at some threshold or cues the change of some other setting.

[Sathid]

Only to add my personal experience.

 

One month ago on my server, vanjervalis chain which is among the most populated ones in the EU, peaked at around 300 people on fleet. On Sat/sunday evening.

 

Now it peaks at 200.

 

Which i find rather chocking since i would expect an increase in fleet population as more people reach 50 due to the nature of finding grups for endgame content etc.

 

You have to consider that once pppl hit 50 they are rolling alts and taking their time through zones,i know many in my guild are.

 

Il give you for instance myself,my main hit 50 around the third week,i then spent a week doing WZ's with him,then i rolled two alts thati have been lvling slowly at the same pace and doing some content that i missed or skipped with my main,and guess what at one point i had not been to the fleet in over a week.

[Goretzu]

All graphs are based on the same data, which does not represent the number of players...

 

Indeed it cannot, but that what the are saying is not "this data issue utterly meaningless", because why would they then bother to collect it?

 

You cannot make an accumulated population index and directly link to total actual player populations (at least not with the data they have).

 

But that doesn't mean that the data therefore doesn't show population trends, which almost inevitably have some correlation with the number of player actually playing and then eventually the number of player actually subbing.

 

 

 

They only way this data would be utterly meaningless is if Bioware has a completely different cap on each and every server (something that makes little to no sense, unless for some reason they have more than one grade of server - and if that's the case then there's more to worry about than populations IMO )

[Snibb]

Herb, I truly wish you the best of luck and hope your experience continues to be fun.

 

I also like leveling alts, so one thing to watch out for is you may get pretty burnt out on Coruscant/Taris quests after a while if you do a bunch of alts at once.

Also, crafting purples can burn up your money pretty fast because of missions skills and leave you without enough for speeder training at 25 (I think it's 40k + speeder cost.) Purples get replaced pretty fast as you level fast early on.

Other than that, happy hunting!

[Goretzu]

Question for you guys.

Why would BW change the definition of Standard, Heavy, Light, etc on servers that never get above Standard?

I mean, I agree with you that there is no way of knowing when they change the limits and this makes you take the data with a large grain of salt, but it seems to me that if the server is not pushing the limits, why mess with the limits?

It was easier in the old days when you could do a /who all and see that it returned X number of players. Never tried a /who 1-50, not sure if it would work in this game.

 

 

 

There's no reason other than different grades of server.

 

 

If they are trying to encourage people to roll on certain servers then the method suggested actually gives them less influence over that than using standard server status sets across all servers, or just using no server status at all (just online/offline & full with preferred servers in a different colour).

Edited March 1, 2012 by Goretzu

[Matte_Black]

Reason I posted in this thread instead of the noobs area is to sorta say" Hey guys new players are joining." I am sure there are plenty of bandwagon gamers that have moved on, but that population does that with every new game that is released.

 

I know among my friends, the more established gamers who play many games and tend to fall more toward the hardcore end of the spectrum are starting to move on while the more casual, story-oriented types are happy, staying and even winning over a few new recruits who haven't been MMO gamers typically. There is also a fair amount of refugees from underpopulated servers moving to heavier population ones with an eye toward faction balance.

 

My impression is that the game is sort of settling into it's real population as it's type of gamer realizes this is what they want. I think it has probably started to stabilize and there is still some growth potential as wanted fixes go active and more SW content continues to be released in other media. Maybe it will never be WoW. Maybe that is why some like it but, I think it will retain a viable population and a pretty loyal playerbase.

[Andryah]

Question for you guys.

Why would BW change the definition of Standard, Heavy, Light, etc on servers that never get above Standard?

 

To be fair and objective, this is a question that can only be answered by Bioware.

 

It was easier in the old days when you could do a /who all and see that it returned X number of players. Never tried a /who 1-50, not sure if it would work in this game.

 

Actually, you can do this on your servers pretty easy. Since they have a 100 character display limit set, you need to do it in steps. 1-10, 11-20, etc. etc. And do so on both sides of the server. Record the data, measure it from day to day. It would take you about 10 minutes per server, and you can do it with a level 1 character. I have done it so I know it works. Now, on my server, I have to do it in increments of 5, 1-5, 6-10, etc, etc, because of the 100 characer limit.

 

If I cared enough to try to objectively refute the doom and gloom crowd I would probably pick a cross section of servers and times of the day and tabulate the data each week to show real trend data inside servers. But even if I did, the doom and gloom crowd would dismiss the effort because they have an agenda and don't want data to interfere with agendas.

 

In closing, the majority of servers in NA and EU are running at Standard or higher during prime time. There are about 25 servers in NA that are perpetually light, AND ALWAYS HAVE BEEN. I don't follow EU closely, but the annecdotes I hear on the forum is they have somewhwere betwen 10-20 servers in similar state. The only thing we can tell about a LIGHT server, unless we measure it by level daily, is that the server is under 1000 players across all levels and both factions. Could be 999, or could be less then 10 players on line. That said, I do believe that the LIGHT servers are suffering population attritions, some severely so. But we need to be mindful that the LIGHT servers remain a minority of servers in the server farms to this date.

[Andryah]

I know among my friends, the more established gamers who play many games and tend to fall more toward the hardcore end of the spectrum are starting to move on while the more casual, story-oriented types are happy, staying and even winning over a few new recruits who haven't been MMO gamers typically. There is also a fair amount of refugees from underpopulated servers moving to heavier population ones with an eye toward faction balance.

 

My impression is that the game is sort of settling into it's real population as it's type of gamer realizes this is what they want. I think it has probably started to stabilize and there is still some growth potential as wanted fixes go active and more SW content continues to be released in other media. Maybe it will never be WoW. Maybe that is why some like it but, I think it will retain a viable population and a pretty loyal playerbase.

 

Absolutely agree with everything you state here.

[RenegadeCarlyle]

Ok... as of now, I haven't seen anyone mention this, but I'll give me 2 cents on this whole matter. Like any MMO, this game is going to realistically drop subscribers whether its for bugs, the fact that they hate the genre, or because they're dead broke etc etc. Now, Somewhere along this 100 page warzone of a thread, one or two had mentioned that since the servers went from heavy and very heavy and all that in DECEMBER to standard and only a couple of heavies on prime time and whatnot in February. What many people see is that there are less people logged on than at that point. Which is true. Any blind man can see it's true lol.The problem I have is when you immediately follow it up with "THE GAME IS DYING1111!!!!" or something similar. Tell me, what were you doing during the holidays? Were you in school? working your 9-5 perhaps? I know I was not. And neither were most people for that matter I bet. No, many were at home, on vacation from life, when all of a sudden, you get that game you wanted for Christmas... yes... SWTOR. Now, fast-forward to January,and life returns to normal. No more vacation and back to life. Suddenly, there isn't enough free time between homework, work, and just life in general. So please, try to factor in the time of season in your arguments ladies and gentlemen. So yes, while it is true that there are less people online now than in DECEMBER, not all of them are unsubbed and gone because they hate the game and all of that. I'm sure there are a heavy number of students who just don't have time between their girlfriends, homework, and being in school from 7AM to 3PM to really play an MMO. Can't wait until the summer though, when many return to this wonderful land of fantasy and exit real life for 2 or 3 months... until then.

[Sinku]

Errrr. Wrong. I dont pay anything to the money sucking fail called Bioware. Not will I ever again.

 

Learned my lesson.

 

Then what are you doing here? Seriously. Are you trying to be a "Fight for the common man" or some lame thing like that?

 

Or do you just hang around to try and ruin peoples good time?

[Hype-l]

No.. just no. They need merges and xfers now.

 

Im on a server where... There are at max 10 people on ilum for republic at any given time.

most I have seen in republic fleet is 50 on weekends...

 

I'm also seeing the pop decrease every week, just from people I know who unsub every week because they still havent added xfers/merges

[Snibb]

To be fair and objective, this is a question that can only be answered by Bioware....

Very true.

 

...Actually, you can do this on your servers pretty easy....

I actually will spend some time doing this on my server only, maybe once a week on the same day, same time...

 

...But even if I did, the doom and gloom crowd would dismiss the effort...

We're not all doom and gloom you know! I for one would like this game to survive, but I would also like it to improve, and I feel they dropped the ball on some important issues. Important being subjective of course.

 

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss people who bring up issues, however, because you can't fix things if you don't admit there is a problem. And just because you personally don't see any issues, does not mean they don't exist for others.