Server population is dropping...

[XtremJedi]

Well, they closed my own thread and told me to discuss it here on the 56th page of an existing thread.... so for form's sake - here's what I posted.

 

So on the whole, I'm enjoying my ToR experience. It's an easy game-play, easy character development game, with some interesting story-line elements. You can do the vast majority of it very casually, without needing to team - which I can live with. It's not challenging and there's a few bugs, but on the whole it's been a pleasant enough experience to play.

 

But... well... I've started to run out of population. I play different characters on 3 different EU servers. On two servers I have characters that have been stuck on the same planet for 4 days now, trying to get Heroic 4s done. I've been logging on at different times during the day and during the weekend, with LFG on and asking in chat - but just not getting many replies (and in some cases any replies). I've been looking at populations from 2 to 8 on the planets most of the time.

 

Oh, and I play mostly healers and tanks.... so it's not like I'm playing classes that aren't needed.

 

The one Heroic I got done this weekend, was when I logged into a fairly low level Sawbones, just to check a stat for a mate... and when I logged in I found a party invite waiting for me. The other 3 people on the server had been looking out for a healer logging in for quite a while and were pleased as punch that I said I'd go re-do some Heroics with them, to help them out.

 

Up until now, planet populations have been fairly low for me on the whole - partly because I'm not one of those 'level as fast as you can to 50' kinds of players - but I've usually been able to scrape together a group of some kind to get the Heroic 4s done... it has just been getting progressively more difficult as time goes on.

 

This isn't universally true... there's one server, on which I'm a member of a decently sized and active guild - and the server still seems to be providing just enough people around to PUG for Heroics... but it's still only just enough.

 

I'm sure that there are probably other options open to me... just skip those commendations, power level through to 50 etc... but they're not really what I want to do. I don't enjoy playing games that way. I dunno... I'm not going to say the M word or even offer suggestions about what should be done - nor do I really want to get suggestions from others. I'll muddle through in my own way, as usual.

 

I'm really just reporting my experience of a pretty frustrating weekend of lack of play. It's affected me enough, to make me actually want to spend the time writing it down, in the hopes that somebody, maybe even a dev, will at least hear me.

 

X

Edited February 27, 2012 by XtremJedi

[skyknightandy]

GO to THE Swiftsure server lots of player every planet never when below 30 players except quesh because its a sucky planet..lol in fleet theres about 100-180 people ,sometime over 200 players Bioware is rising server cap and swiftsure is one of them so go there if u want a massive mutiplayer expirence hope this helps for ghost town servers we got 2 many servers anyways Edited February 28, 2012 by skyknightandy

[Jxspyder]

So I went through 2 redirected posts because this topic hit 1,000 posts...twice. Possibly the longest post on the forums about a fixable issue yet no Dev response. Where was all the, we listen to the community, stuff we were told.

 

First, it's not even close to the longest post on the forums.

 

Second, there has been plenty of dev response, most significantly in regards to server transfers. Just because you ignore the responses doesn't mean they don't exist anymore. Change takes time, it's not like they can click two buttons and everything is fixed.

[Jxspyder]

I suggest you re-read my posts again before posting a reply.

I don't have to prove anything, to you or anyone else for that matter. Because I am not stating that there IS a definate drop in subs. I merely offered reasons why there COULD be and, that IF there is indeed a drop, then it doesn't surprise me.

 

However, if your post is directed at my statements about "natural drop off" in sub levels then that is an acknowledged industry wide fact. ALL MMO's (no matter what product it is) experience some form of reduction in subs just after launch for the reasons I specified previously. To believe otherwise, would be naive to say the least.

 

Nope, you don't have to prove anything.....when you're discussing an opinion. When discussing a "fact" however........

[Tarka]

Nope, you don't have to prove anything.....when you're discussing an opinion. When discussing a "fact" however........

 

Are you trying to state that natural drop off in MMO's doesn't occur and isn't a fact?

 

Or do you believe that every single box sale always translates into mid-long term subscriptions once the first 30 days is up?

 

If you believe the latter, I have a bridge for sale in London if you want it.

Edited February 28, 2012 by Tarka

[pleinar]

I am maintaining a "guild listing" on our server.

 

By the amount of traffic on that post, and the amount of guilds on our server it is hard for me to see that the population is dropping much.

 

Have a look at the amount of guilds here, and keep in mind that there are probably several guilds that havent bothered putting a note in the thread (most likely there are more guilds not interesten in such a thread).

 

This is just our server though, but I can imagine that there are several other servers doing just as well, if not better. Of course there will be servers "struggling" populationwise, and I am sure there will be mergers eventually, but for now it isnt looking all that bad.

[Maltuvion]

Kind of like the people who banter on about their server being literally "dead" with less then 20 people in Fleet, but they can't provide the name of their server.

 

What's your point?

 

Senator Constipex 58 people online right now. On the entire republic side. At peak.

[JonJW]

I cancelled my sub today. -1

[Hizoka]

you know wow lost nearly 60% of its starting subs the first month because their servers were never up more then 20 minutes at a time. But wow did it right?

[MJHoyle]

Nice thanks to the GM pointing me here since the topic is so swamped in millions of other topics wasn't easy to spot it right away.

 

Launch day every server was either full or heavy. Getting any mission done was a chore of fighting for repops before someone else rushed in and grabbed everything.

 

A month went by and the servers were down to standard or full. Finding people to do things wasn't so bad. Met some people, did a few heroics and flashpoints, although nothing past the level 30 flashpoints.

 

Another month gone by, almost all servers are light, very few are standard, nothing above standard. Finding people to do stuff with is near impossible. Some heroics I've eventually abandoned because even after several days have had no luck finding people to do them with. Only flashpoints I hear shouts for are Taral V but even that isn't shouted for often. Made a new character a few days ago, I solo'd all Ord Mantel missions, took 2 days to find anyone interested in doing Coruscant or Taris heroics, yesterday took 13 hours to find a full team for Taris missions, 4 hours of that was in a team of 2 others and we couldn't find anybody else to join. Today flag up for 6 hours in Nar Shaddaa and still nothing.

 

It's not that everyone is at 50 and the servers are still the same number of players, otherwise the server status wouldn't be showing as light most of the time. If it's this bad after just 2 months off launch then I dread to think what this is gonna be like in another 2 months' time. Personally I think the people who wished this game to fail have caused it to fail.

Edited February 28, 2012 by MJHoyle

[MarkMoore]

Have to agree with above poster. I don't WANT to be a doom sayer, and lots of quite aggressive posts here claiming this that or the other and people countermanding them, but some cold hard facts: I am a regular but casual plater, a few hours a night, maybe a few more at weekends, and skip the odd night all together sometimes. Been playing since early release and my highest char is still only level 38.

In past few weeks I have been unable to do almost any heroics on the planets I am on due to low population. So after only 2 months of release, that's a whole large mass of content I cant do (effectively redundant because I wont come back to it once my level gets higher). How the hell is that supposed to encourage new subscribers (if we have any depending on who you listen to)

I did some planet surfing this evening (just the ones I have been to or am on, so none of the higher level ones)

Am on Kellian Jarro EU server and these were the number of people on these planets

28/02/12 18:21 GMT - Balmora 18 Replublic

28/02/12 18:26 GMT - Ord Mantel - 9 Republic

28/02/12 18:57 GMT - Coruscant - 24 republic

28/02/12 19:00 GMT - Tython - 7 republic

28/02/12 19:02 GMT - Alderaan - 12 republic

28/02/12 19:06 GMT - Nar Shaddaa - 15 republic

28/02/12 19:09 GMT - Taris - 16 republic

28/02/12 19:12 GMT - Tatooine - 14 republic

28/02/12 19:15 GMT - Fleet - 40 republic

 

There not sure these figures qualify calling this an MMO, perhaps just MO!

Given that some people on those planets are afk at any time, some are datacron hunting, getting a group for Heroic 4+'s is next to impossible.

 

Why can people (and BW) see that this is a downward spiral. I play the game, get disheartened because I cant find anyone to group with, quit because of it, even less players to group with

[jonobiwan]

There are less players but not enough to call the game a failure. This is common after launch to loose players. It does get frustrating sometimes but i would hardly call the game a failure.

[MarkMoore]

Deleted: Double posted for some weird reason Edited February 28, 2012 by MarkMoore

[cbowsin]

I did some planet surfing this evening (just the ones I have been to or am on, so none of the higher level ones)

Am on Kellian Jarro EU server and these were the number of people on these planets

28/02/12 18:21 GMT - Balmora 18 Replublic

28/02/12 18:26 GMT - Ord Mantel - 9 Republic

28/02/12 18:57 GMT - Coruscant - 24 republic

28/02/12 19:00 GMT - Tython - 7 republic

28/02/12 19:02 GMT - Alderaan - 12 republic

28/02/12 19:06 GMT - Nar Shaddaa - 15 republic

28/02/12 19:09 GMT - Taris - 16 republic

28/02/12 19:12 GMT - Tatooine - 14 republic

28/02/12 19:15 GMT - Fleet - 40 republic

There not sure these figures qualify calling this an MMO, perhaps just MO!

 

I did some random headcounting (excluding Ilum, Belsavis, a few other planets, FPs, Ops, WZs, People on their ship) and only counted over a hundred people!

 

Bioware, why I has no one to play with?

[SinisterZz]

heya 160 people on my server at rep side at peak times tassaa bareesh server. Plz roll on our server because Bioware doesn't give a **** about server merges... Edited February 29, 2012 by Sireene
lang

[jonobiwan]

heya 160 people on my server at rep side at peak times tassaa bareesh server. Plz roll on our server because Bioware doesn't give a **** about server merges...

 

That's actually not too bad....

Edited February 29, 2012 by Sireene
reply to edited post

[Tomokie]

I think my server (chuundra) population is in decline as well..

 

An average of 30-40 people online (used to be around 100-200) in the afternoon on the main space station.. alliance side (republic).

 

An average of 100 imp side.

 

It's up to Bioware to find out .. why people are leaving..

 

I'm currently leaving, becuz of the lack of any decent end-game PVP content.

No cool arena's like in Wow, GvG like in Guild wars, RvR (raid vs raid/realm vs realm) like in Warhammer Online.

 

Just some PvE end content :|

No alternatives to level your alts by doing pure pvp or dungeon grinding..

You're forced to solo grind :| (IN A MMO!)

Edited February 29, 2012 by Tomokie

[evoleye]

A month ago I got off my dead server and rerolled onto Canderous Ordo US east server. Best move I made in this game. Talking with people in the newb area's, quite a few are refugees from dead servers. Right now this server is pushing Very Heavy / Full almost every nite... the last of its kind.

 

Come join us. Stop playing with yourself and play with some real people. ;]

[Tomokie]

Does Bioware publish server population figures?

 

Like wow? http://www.warcraftrealms.com/realmstats.php

[skyknightandy]

A month ago I got off my dead server and rerolled onto Canderous Ordo US east server. Best move I made in this game. Talking with people in the newb area's, quite a few are refugees from dead servers. Right now this server is pushing Very Heavy / Full almost every nite... the last of its kind.

 

Come join us. Stop playing with yourself and play with some real people. ;]

I totally agree stop playing with yourself reroll ON this dudes server or reroll on "THE SWIFTSURE" ok just do one of these 2 servers start rerollingto one of these two servers and you wont regret it trust me and this dude best move you can ever do untill Bioware can come up with server transfer

[Hyryu]

I'm on Mind Trick and can tell a definite drop in population in the past couple of weeks. It doesn't bother me too much right now but there will come a time when I'm not content just piddling around doing my own quests solo. When I first started about a month ago it took all of 5 minutes to get a group together to kill a world boss. I'm pretty sure it would take a lot longer than that now.

 

Good grief though, I don't know if this game is populated with a bunch of angst ridden 12 year-olds or what but you can't make a simple post without an army of naysayers or angry pitchfork wielding villagers lining up to beat you down.

Edited February 29, 2012 by Hyryu

[shepardcomander]

You mean to tell me a mini rail shooter is insufficient to hold players' attention/dollars? Pre-launch there were numerous posters who insisted that a lack of meaningful space combat was perfect for keeping the masses indefinitely. Where be they now?

[Strangefate]

Does Bioware publish server population figures?

 

Like wow? http://www.warcraftrealms.com/realmstats.php

 

 

I don't think they do, but http://www.torstatus.net/shards/us/totals collects data from Bioware's server status pages, while it doesn't give you accurate figures, it gives you trends and it does show you on the left a list of servers which you can sort by population... that way you can tell how far down the list you are.

 

I rerolled from a PVE server on page 5 of that list to a PVP server on page 1 of that list, and now that server is always on page 2. So either there's a lot of migration to specific servers or my new one is slowly dying again faster than the others.

 

If you click on total population of all servers and mask the whole bar, you can see that population is steadily declining... and if you click on population trends, light server states are steadily raising.

 

I would agree that it is normal enough, especially after the first free month. I don't think the game is a failure personally and I'm having a lot of fun with it as it is. I also think the lack of content at 50 is understandable for a brand new MMO and anything we can complain about or say is missing can only get better over time.

 

 

That said, population IS dropping, be it normal or not. If most servers were full it wouldn't be an issue, but when servers are half full and its hard enough to find groups, it hurts a lot when a few people leave.

 

I don't even care for server mergers, they should just give us server transfers ASAP and let us migrate as we please, before we get frustrated with our dying servers.

[Kourage]

I don't need official population number or server status to tell me there are less people in the zones then there used to be. I've been playing all day and night and not seen more than 35 in Imperial Fleet today. Only 59 level 50s on at the moment. That's actually higher than it's been all day.

[brentonj]

I don't need official population number or server status to tell me there are less people in the zones then there used to be. I've been playing all day and night and not seen more than 35 in Imperial Fleet today. Only 59 level 50s on at the moment. That's actually higher than it's been all day.

 

Almost every server is dying.