NOW = 1.7 Million Active Subscribers | 3 Months from now = Guess What

[sheisty]

I can only speak for my server which was a standard server since the beginning, Bondar Crystal. And from my experience, the population dropped but only slightly. Just going on fleet populations.

 

Im sure the Asian launch will add new sales, I mean you are dealing with billions of potential customers. So yeah, I can see this being a hit in Asia, im not sure how popular star wars is there, but im sure Star Wars was a huge phenomenon everywhere in the world.

 

But im also not naive. Box sales are not keeping up with the attrition rate here in the US. Im sure the US has dropped in subs just not sure how much. Just based on my server I would peg the drop at around 10-20%. But th9ose are all just guesses since no one knows.

Edited February 27, 2012 by sheisty

[Bigaus]

I have played the GW2 beta.

 

It won't hurt Swtor... at all.

 

yep.. all the highly positive reviews from former DAOC players has me doubting it as well... o wait now.... wat?

 

Ilum > WvW?

[BCBull]

oh good you can't see my first prediction

 

1.3 million tops.

[BCBull]

oh good you can't see my first prediction

 

1.3 million tops.

 

TSW ftw

[sheisty]

yep.. all the highly positive reviews from former DAOC players has me doubting it as well... o wait now.... wat?

 

Ilum > WvW?

 

Sorry but DAOc was a mere blip on the MMO circuit. Basically around 100K at its peak. so opinions from people which hailed a crappy game as good have no merrit imo. I played it and considered it crap. Returned to EQ within a few weeks.

 

Shadowbane had better PvP than DAOC except it was a crappy buggy engine.

Edited February 27, 2012 by sheisty

[OmegaMayhem]

yep.. all the highly positive reviews from former DAOC players has me doubting it as well... o wait now.... wat?

 

Ilum > WvW?

 

I've played it... it is not the shining beacon of hope players are expecting. It is nothing special and will have very little effect on Swtor.

 

Sorry if that hurts your feelings.

[HornedToad]

650k. mainly due to opening new markets.

[Bigaus]

I've played it... it is not the shining beacon of hope players are expecting. It is nothing special and will have very little effect on Swtor.

 

Sorry if that hurts your feelings.

 

not really, just wondering what ToR has to offer in terms of high level pvp? I hit cap and was pretty underwhelmed with a grand total of 3 players on Ilum at 10 pm server time last night. Perhaps all the pvp fans have already unsubbed, in which your statement would remain true.

 

GW2 certainly offers more than that for us large-scale pvp fans. no?

 

Ilum was showcased in a lot of the ToR hype/build up vids... an entire pvp planet? yes please. 3 months into release and it's still a buggy PoS with nobody playing it?

 

You clearly aren't press, so you weren't in the closed press beta. If so, man up and post the link to your website/press release, as I'd be interested to read your feedback (and give your site hits).

 

If you stopped by and played for 20 minutes at GamesCom or something, then lol.

Edited February 27, 2012 by Bigaus

[Evuke]

my guess, 600k

[Evuke]

I have played the GW2 beta.

 

It won't hurt Swtor... at all.

 

that's simply a lie.

 

gw2 is not even in the public closed beta phase yet, the current closed beta is for friends and family of gw2 staff only and i highly doubt a swtor fanboi is one of those.

 

it was only a few days ago they invited applications for their public closed beta for 48 hours and had over 1 million applications.

Edited February 27, 2012 by Evuke

[Bigaus]

my guess, 600k

 

I think it will maintain a healthy 1 million/slightly above in May. fwiw... that's still a very profitable investment for EA/BW.

[OmegaMayhem]

not really, just wondering what ToR has to offer in terms of high level pvp? I hit cap and was pretty underwhelmed with a grand total of 3 players on Ilum at 10 pm server time last night. Perhaps all the pvp fans have already unsubbed, in which your statement would remain true.

 

GW2 certainly offers more than that for us large-scale pvp fans. no?

 

Ilum was showcased in a lot of the ToR hype/build up vids... an entire pvp planet? yes please. 3 months into release and it's still a buggy PoS with nobody playing it?

 

You clearly aren't press, so you weren't in the closed press beta. If so, man up and post the link to your website/press release, as I'd be interested to read your feedback (and give your site hits).

 

If you stopped by and played for 20 minutes at GamesCom or something, then lol.

 

I can't give you that information... I had to sign a NDA to play.

[OmegaMayhem]

that's simple a lie, gw2 is not even in closed beta yet, it was only a few days ago they invited applications for their closed beta for 48 hours and had over 1 million applications.

 

Why don't you learn about what you are talking about before calling someone a liar.

[Bigaus]

I can't give you that information... I had to sign a NDA to play.

 

That's funny. The rest of the press was able to upload videos and blog about their experiences. Guess you got the short end of the stick.

[Kharzon]

Interesting that the original post about the 1.7m active subs was from the Q4 report ENDING Dec 31, 2011. We all know what 'active' subs are, don't we WoW players *wink wink* For those that do not understand that: Blizzard used to say over 11/12/13 million subscribers playing WoW and changed that tune. It now says over 11/12/13 million people have TRIED World of Warcraft. Why was this done? Because they were counting all accounts, banned, unsubbed, etc. 1.7 million active subs @ the end of Dec '11 is just that: everyone had to put in a subscription to get their 30 days. Pure and simple. That constitutes active subs. Jan 20th rolled around. I noticed a DRASTIC drop in the player base on two servers I play on, both were 'heavy' and 'full' up until then. Even had Que's. I check the server pop's at all times during the day, from non-primetime to primetime. Now, I have no doubt they upped the server pop cap. No doubt about it.

 

I have no life, none of us do Since the games closed beta, I have been playing 12-16 hours a day. I've skipped days, I've played more hours in given days. 12-16 hours is an easy average. Player pop has gone down. A lot. You may want to fight that realism, you may not. It's always a joy when a fanboi wakes up and goes '***'. Forums are filled with people like that. I see more complaints on the forums over any other MMO. It's not the same 12 or 14 people posting, it's a wide variety of people, from fanboi's to haters. I blame EA. This is the second MMO they've gotten their mits on and it's the second flop. Only this time, it's a half a billion dollar flop

 

I'd not even be getting ME3 if it wasn't for this one, simple truth: ME3 was pretty much done before EA bought BW. The future of EA games? I'll not be buying any. It was a sad, sad, very sad day when I learned that Red Eagle Games signed a distribution deal with EA for the WoT games they are doing, including a MMO. Hopefully, EA will learn to leave well enough alone on the SWTOR fiasco.

 

I estimate 300k subs atm (that's a generous guess), and I think the game will be done, if they don't do something drastic in the next 6 months, by the end of the year.

 

You can paint a pretty picture with poop, but it's still ****.

Edited February 27, 2012 by Kharzon

[Kourage]

 

I estimate 300k subs atm (that's a generous guess), and I think the game will be done, if they don't do something drastic in the next 6 months, by the end of the year.

 

Skipped to the end and read this which makes your entire post worthless. There's well over a million current subscribers. That's a fact.

[Kharzon]

Skipped to the end and read this which makes your entire post worthless. There's well over a million current subscribers. That's a fact.

 

Show me.

[Nemeses]

Just cant believe how many people post that WRONG info that its for the first "free" month.

 

Prediction: ......1.5 million.

 

Doesnt seem to be bleeding subscriptions as badly as other new mmo and I just (cheated) read that its gone past 2mil box sales.

 

This game is bleeding subs faster than any other mmo I have played in, as far as I can see, yes I cant fully back this up, remember this game had a much bigger start base then almost any other MMO in recent times.

 

But just a general look at the players on your own server should say a lot, in the first mother we were getting close to at times over 300 people on Carick, lucky now if we ever see 50.

 

Another thing this guy

did a survey and posted it here, think the post lasted like 30 seconds before BW yanked it as it showed figures they really did not want getting out.

 

Anyways, here is the link to the results of the study - whole bunch of excel charts: http://dulfy.net/2012/02/24/some-numerical-population-data-for-swtor-servers/

 

Some interesting info: I estimated around 71646 concurrent players on 79 PVE/RP servers – with 35686 concurrent players on 46 PVE East Coast servers, 24817 concurrent players on 24 PVE-West Coast servers and 11142 concurrent players on 9 RP servers.

 

In terms of overall estimated fraction balance – 39395 concurrent Imperial players and 32250 concurrent Republic players, a Imperial/Republic Ratio of 1.22.

Edited February 27, 2012 by Nemeses

[Ansultares]

That's funny. The rest of the press was able to upload videos and blog about their experiences. Guess you got the short end of the stick.

Or he's just, you know....trolling.

[Kharzon]

If that's not enough for you, I'll give you two awesome quotes and a link to the forum post:

 

I've been seeing people reference websites like torstatus and mmo junkies when attempting to argue server population points.

 

I thought I would make an independent post - without an argument on whether pop is actually rising or falling, in an attempt to explain them.

 

I have been associated with websites in the past that monitored server population(not currently with any of the ones I'll be mentioning and I am compelled to not post the ones I worked with in the past)

 

I am actually an economist by trade with a background in accounting - many of these websites consult with us so they can better understand the information they receive as well as to better educate those who visit their websites.

 

I will try to be as simple as possible.

 

Here is a link to MMO Junkise Server Status website

http://www.mmojunkies.net/index.phpapp=statistics&module=servers&section=list&game=swtor

 

It appears to show a drop in population. The reality is you can not determine actual population numbers from this chart. They explain why at the bottom of the page

 

Note: Values in y-axis DOES NOT represent player count but instead aggregated server-status. For more information about interpreting them and explanation on how they're acquired, please visit our FAQ page.

 

What This Means - the y axis of the chart is the axis that is on the left and rising - on their charts it rises in increments of 100(so 100...200..300 etc.). This is NOT a count of the number of people logged in to SWTOR. this is a numerical representation of the aggregate server status. This means MMO Junkie has assigned a number value to each server status(example light = 1, medium = 2, heavy = 3) They track what each status of each server is, combined them, and come up with a total number. They then present this info on a graph, over time.

 

I will not go into the faq sections of each website which deal with this but I will explain, hopefully succinctly, why we can not rely on this information alone to determine server population.

 

Stephen Reid, a senior community manager had this to say about server population back in December:

 

"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.”

 

The key to this is the raising of server limits. There are currently several threads on this forum that have people discussing where the population cut-off for very light/light/medium/heavy/very heavy are. It seems many people have seen the cut-off for the same status at different numbers - so one person says there was 500 ppl on and it was medium while another says there was 500 but it was still light on their server etc.

 

This is important when it comes to the graphs for this reason:

 

Server A - at launch

light 0-500

medium 501-1000

heavy 1001+

 

It is a popular server with long queues so Bioware determines it needs to increase the server cap. We don't know how it effects it at this point but the assumption is that the above chart would then change to look something like this:

 

light 0-750

medium 751-1250

heavy 1251+

 

With the addition of new players lets say the population levels out around 1100 players at peak. The MMO Junkie chart in December would have shown that as heavy, assinging the number value of 3 to that server. Now it would show as medium, assigning a number value of 2. This would mean the chart for this server would drop by a fairly large amount(since if at off-peak they have say 5-600 people, beforei t would have been medium-2, and now it's light -1)

 

The chart drop would actually correspond in this scenario with a population RISE.

 

Conclusion

 

We do not know what sub #/population # are right now. There are to many variables. Without a doubt some servers will increase in population and some will drop.

 

I hope I was able to demonstrate though that using these particular tools to chart actual population numbers would be incorrect and can in fact lead to wrong information.

 

The only way they could be valid as a defenitive tool for population growth/decline is if we knew for a fact that the very light/light/medium/heavy/very heavy numbers in fact never changed regardless of population cap changes. We also don't know if Bioware can/does individually change those numbers for their on internal purposes. What if they lowered the cap on other servers for instance, then the graph would go up but population might be dropping? We just don't know based on the information these charts give us.

 

The conclusions just aren't true though.

 

 

You can't tell exact populations with that system, but you can still see over all population trends with it.

 

And from the trends extrapolate that into over all subs, at least in correlation, if not absolute terms.

 

 

 

 

Its almost impossible for subs to be going up long term IF server status is going down long term (unless an MMO company is constantly changing the server status levels), because that would be on par with inventing a perpetual motion machine (which I'm sure game companies would want to do in both cases if it were possible, of course ).

 

So saying that because you can't tell exact numbers therefore you can't tell anything is just patently false.

 

With a reminder that they posted saying they would raise server pop caps 'where needed'. Assumption by most is that all server pops have been increased, but in the second quote you can plainly see how you can tell server pops are dropping, like flies on turds.

 

Original Thread:

 

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

[mSum]

I don't know but my server feels lonely. It sure seems like people have gone away. Maybe just not playing as much and still have subs like me.

 

Wait a minute, why am I paying a sub to play a few WZ a week?

[Tenceriker]

I don't know but my server feels lonely. It sure seems like people have gone away. Maybe just not playing as much and still have subs like me.

 

Wait a minute, why am I paying a sub to play a few WZ a week?

 

You enjoy paying for a few WZs or you just like giving away money. You know you could always donate to Child's Play and cut out ur sub to this game unless you got a multi-month

[Aricus]

I'd not even be getting ME3 if it wasn't for this one, simple truth: ME3 was pretty much done before EA bought BW. The future of EA games? I'll not be buying any.

 

I don't believe that's true, EA bought BIOWARE in 2007 right before ME was released. However; ME2 was pretty much developed at that time but ME3 wasn't. ME3 started its development a little before ME2 release and that game was released in 2010.

[zzzamoszzz]

Everyone can sense this game is on its way to being dead.

 

Combine a falling number of scripts with the long development time for new content given all the voice acting and even the fanboys know that this game is never going to grow much.

 

Such a huge failure relative to the ammount of time and money spent on it. It will be a case study in the industry for a long time.

Edited February 28, 2012 by zzzamoszzz

[Lazirus-]

I'd not even be getting ME3 if it wasn't for this one, simple truth: ME3 was pretty much done before EA bought BW.

"Mass Effect 3: Bioware admit it’s making it up as it goes along"

 

http://www.officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk/2012/01/26/mass-effect-3-bioware-are-making-it-up-as-they-go-along