Psiwolf Posted March 1, 2012 Share Posted March 1, 2012 (edited) News Flash - WoW still has imbalance problems. If you look at all US servers for level 85 characters it is 1.8:1 Alliance to horde. If you look at PvP servers it is 1:1.3 Alliance to Horde. Doesn't seem too bad, right? But that only tells part of the story. Start looking at individuals servers and you'll see a different story. My PvE server, Terenas is 4.5:1 Alliance to Horde and Terenas is one of the orignal servers. One of the Top PvP servers Blackrock it is 1:28.7 Alliance to Horde. So tell me again how WoW balanced the populations? WoW is a much older game and, especially on PvE servers many people have toons on both sides. Heck I have 11 level 85 characters, 7 Alliance and 4 Horde. They've been trying to balance the populations one way or the other since the beginning. Including BG buffs, that didn't work out too well. Doesn't matter what kind of reasonable buff you get if you're outnumbered 5 to 1 you need a Superman buff to have a chance. In general the PvP servers are imbalanced toward Horde and the PvE servers toward Alliance. On the PvP servers the higher the realm ranking the more imbalanced the servers seem to be. Wow balanced this by making it near-needless to leave cities, with cross server instances, bgs, and arena. What they need to do is start merging some servers. 300 empire to 50 republic might be a problem for the 50 republic to run instances, have a servicable AH, etc. but with server merges, at least there will be more republic on the server and they may actually be able to form groups easier, etc. Also, lots of horde left Terenas back when they had a whole summer where the server lagged so bad, raiding was neigh impossible, so it may not be the best example. I used to play on alliance Terenas for a while too, but I rerolled to PvP servers since and I haven't gone back to PvE. Edited March 1, 2012 by Psiwolf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iwipe Posted March 2, 2012 Author Share Posted March 2, 2012 That's a lot of effort. One question though, in your graphs, why did you use blue for imperial and red for republic!!! I didn't notice this until after I published everything, it was the default excel coloring. I just thought Excel was smart and automatically colored Empires red and Republics blue - turns out it was the other way Oops, hopefully it wasn't too confusing! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erasimus Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 (edited) Wow balanced this by making it near-needless to leave cities, with cross server instances, bgs, and arena. What they need to do is start merging some servers. 300 empire to 50 republic might be a problem for the 50 republic to run instances, have a servicable AH, etc. but with server merges, at least there will be more republic on the server and they may actually be able to form groups easier, etc. Also, lots of horde left Terenas back when they had a whole summer where the server lagged so bad, raiding was neigh impossible, so it may not be the best example. I used to play on alliance Terenas for a while too, but I rerolled to PvP servers since and I haven't gone back to PvE. Yup, that one summer was really bad. My current guild (and others) actually transferred servers, but eventually they came back to Terenas. I guess my point was that WoW really never did solve the issue of imbalance. What they did, and supposedly some of this is in the pipe for SWTOR, was minimize the impact by creating the battle groups for cross realm BGs and the LFR tool. But some people are already complaining about the "lack of community" and while battle groups/cross realm WZs would help mitigate the population imbalance is also doesn't encourage that sense of community. In fact some of the issues, especially with the cross realm LFR, are griefing parties - groups of people that start an LFR raid and repeatedly wipe the raid on purpose. Since new people are constantly replacing those that leave this can go on for quite some time. People feel less accountable with the cross realm BG/LFRs so you tend to get even more obnoxious party members than usual Back before the cross realm capabilities your reputation on a server actually meant something. If you screwed up too much you could find yourself blacklisted and unable to get groups. Bottom line is that while I support cross realm WZs and even OPs they have their own issues. Edited March 2, 2012 by Erasimus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SantaG Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 I knew we had more Republic on our server! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vase Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 Imperials will say there is no population problem. We win lopsided starting WZ matches and own Ilum 80% of the time due to our "awesomeness". Cool info but still doesn't mean BIOWARE will even try to address it. I bet will be getting worse since empire can at least do one of their dailies where REpubs cant do any. To bad you lost a lot of players all ready. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tharax Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 I don't think imbalance is much of an issue, really. If there were just more people total things would be fine. Server merges need to happen sometime in the not-so-distant future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AstralProjection Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 Holy cow, this is really cool stuff. I know it's not perfect data, but it's definitely interesting and gives a jist of how things look. Maybe it will encourage some people to get some really good player-driven study going to find out in detail what the servers look like over a period of time. Thanks! Though it does kind've hurt seeing my server running away with the #1 for faction imbalance. I knew it was bad, I didn't know it was that bad. Yeah, very nicely done! Was interesting to find out we were the most outnumbered folks in the PVP world, at least based on this sample. To be honest, I never noticed ; ) Sea of red is sea of red. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonTheImpaler Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 level 1 characters access to 2 planets and the fleet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tipkaee Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 (edited) Hmmm looks like my server is 2.19 to 1, imp to republic. I guess the reason republic never wins Ilum is purely a L2P issue. Honestly something needs to be done to ensure a fair fight if Ilum ever wants to be anything of worth. Currently it is a bunch of imps driving in circles collecting supplies. I know other games have given buffs to the less represented faction, or placed ques and player caps on "World" pvp zones. Also i don't think anyone is addressing the issue of smaller markets and the GTN for the republic due to most of the active server slots going to imps. But i guess that is for another topic. Edited March 2, 2012 by Tipkaee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoBlue Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 (edited) Good god, my server's Ilum population is 44 Imps to 5 Reps(8.80:1 ratio), the biggest disparity I see of any server on there. No wonder I stopped going there after 2 days of that crap. Edited March 2, 2012 by SoBlue Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yutaa Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 (edited) So according to your data total population of all PVP U.S. servers is 27739... And as for PVE/RP - 71646. Less than 100K total. Edited March 2, 2012 by Yutaa Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tipkaee Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 So according to your data total population of all PVP U.S. servers is 27739... And as for PVE/RP - 71646. Less than 100K total. The method of data collection is just snapshot data, its not server population, just server population and 1 moment in time. A reasonable multiple for this number could lie anywhere between 10 and 30 depending on who you ask. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raja_Asenn Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 Brilliant and thorough work OP, thanks for all the effort. This data will help inform my guild's decision on transfer destination when the service becomes available, reportedly in April according to Zoeller. We're currently on the Maw, where the balance is 1.76 to 1 against. It wouldn't be an issue save that we want to focus on open world PvP as a sustainable endgame and I don't think you can realistically expect to succeed in that kind of scenario against odds worse than 1.5:1. Ajunta Pall is looking pretty freakin good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yutaa Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 The method of data collection is just snapshot data, its not server population, just server population and 1 moment in time. A reasonable multiple for this number could lie anywhere between 10 and 30 depending on who you ask. If you ask denyers it will be even more... You mean OP just accidentally select extremely low populated services to collect data from in prime time? Or he did it on purpose? Otherwise - part of data snapshoted in primetime speaks for itself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tusken Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 Great post and thanks to the OP! To the very few who can't accept what they see, you need to understand it's just a snapshot. It's the same as a straw poll or exit poll. It gives everyone an idea not necessarily a definitive end all be all conclusion. I appreciate it gives people a starting point to examine the generalities of server population and breakdown. Something we didn’t have before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EternalFinality Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 If you ask denyers it will be even more... You mean OP just accidentally select extremely low populated services to collect data from in prime time? Or he did it on purpose? Otherwise - part of data snapshoted in primetime speaks for itself. He's saying it's a lower bound. And it is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nikkiree Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 wow this game is dying! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BadNewzzz Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 So more rep then imp on Ajunta Pall finally rep can stop complaining about being outnumbered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pizzaness Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 So more rep then imp on Ajunta Pall finally rep can stop complaining about being outnumbered. Except for the minor fact that every other server we're outnumbered, often times in excess of 1.5:1 and it climbs even higher on non-pvp servers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MPagano Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 It wouldn't be an issue save that we want to focus on open world PvP as a sustainable endgame and I don't think you can realistically expect to succeed in that kind of scenario in a game [with no world pvp]. There you go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BCBull Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 Thank you so much OP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJChief Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 Hey everyone, I went on the 44 US PvP servers to create level 1 characters - one on each faction and recorded the population data................. for 7 planets + 3 warzones and the respective fleet. How did you get the numbers for warzone populations as a level 1? Doesn't warzone require level 10? I would also think Imperials have more people in warzones due to being in every Republic zone + having more same-faction Huttball Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dooger Posted March 3, 2012 Share Posted March 3, 2012 (edited) pvp guilds rolled republic for the endless pvp action. The premium version of the game (imperial) is of course preferred by most. I think i wore out my 1 and space bar leveling up through the sheer bulk garbage the republic gets for leveling content Edited March 3, 2012 by Dooger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corebit Posted March 3, 2012 Share Posted March 3, 2012 Does this show that Pubs = carebears and Empire = bloodthirsty?! Nope, he forgot to add that out of the 79 PVE/RP servers, Imperials outnumber them on 59 servers. So Imperials outnumber Republics on both PVP and PVE servers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arlette Posted March 3, 2012 Share Posted March 3, 2012 How did you get the numbers for warzone populations as a level 1? Doesn't warzone require level 10? I would also think Imperials have more people in warzones due to being in every Republic zone + having more same-faction Huttball Who list does wonders Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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