New updated sub numbers (Official)

[SNEAKYSIX]

my sub ends march 18 so is my brother and some other guildies. some guildies paid for 6months but hate the game but what can they do? might as well play until something better comes out.

 

Such hating lol.. I bet when the other games come out, you and your bro (and 1 friend who hangs with you in hope he might be more cooler than napoleon dynamite.) will all hate them to and make forum BS part of your critique lifestyle.

 

Cya, good luck

[Malefactor]

When you consider the game was launched in NA/Europe and recently asia. The asia launch would of stablized the quarters subscription numbers. So lets take the three localizations and say its divided evenly (and its not) That is only 566k per locatialization. 1.7m may sound like a lot but keep in mind wow had that in the first four months of release in the NA localization alone.

 

Thus numbers only have value if there per localization, and they wont release that information openly (as it generally scares off shareholders).

 

Actually no, it doesn't include the March launch, it states in that article that those are the numbers as of the end of February.

[Trenter]

Here's a thought for you. Maybe, just maybe.... they raised/removed the population caps!

Gasp! Then all of a sudden you have standard instead of heavy because there's more room on the server! Gosh, that was hard to figure out.

 

I am however not saying that's the case, but it's one explanation that was extremely easy to work out without being a brain surgeon.

 

I really don't understand people posting here if they don't like the game. Geez, move on, life's too short. If I ever get tired of this game, you can be sure i'm not going to hunch over my keyboard raging at the masses with no more chance of effecting change than a potato.

 

But good luck to the haters I guess?

 

It was the case:

 

"I want to take a second to correct the reports which speculated that a lack of congestion was a sign of slow participation. Shortly after launch, we doubled the efficiency of each server, allowing us to handle twice as many players and remove the waiting lines."

 

http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ERTS/1670728299x0x539144/d895626f-e715-4f00-bd50-31bf095027fd/Q3_Script_-_20_2112_1251pm.pdf

[Zyanzor]

So you call a loss of subscriber's "expanding"? Well I have news for you this game is way too casual friendly to have people play for the long run.

 

I had to stop right there LOLLOLOLOL!! WoW has been easy mode for years AND with each content patch released it gets easier and easier. That game is still kicking. I hate to say it but the Casuals are the majority in WoW and in this game IMO.

[Kinrain]

Server Population caps have been adjusted since launch.

 

Stephen Reid announcement

 

Seems perfectly justified and pretty sensible to me.

 

SWTOR isn't dying, sorry guys, get over it and find something else to complain about.

 

On that subject, like another poster, I played another-not-to-be-named-mmo for several years and got very tired of its grind so left, i've never been back to complain to the other players from the moment I decided to cancel my account. And I didn't hang around playing a game that I disliked or on the forums even though there was time left on my account.

[Goretzu]

Well, some simple math (unless I overlook something) would say that you might be wrong about your assumptions.

 

1.7 million players (active subscriptions)

 

average 4 hours a day (24/4 = 8)

 

1700000/8 = 212500 (this would be the number of people who would be playing on average any hour of the day globally across all servers), although due to timezones and pek times the number would most probably be closer to 350k at peaks (more on weekends) and less than 100k at lowest.

 

there's currently 173 servers globally according to torstatus.net

212500/173 = 1228,32 (this would be the average number of people online at the same time on both factions per server).

 

1228,32/2 = 614,16 (this would be the average number of players online per faction per server online at the same time, on my primary server there's atleast double that number online for about 6 hours most evenings/nights and atleast triple on weekends)

 

Some servers will have a lower number of players online on average and some will have alot higher but on average I'd say that the numbers seems to hold (on average, not everyday but averaged over let's say a week over all the servers totalled).

 

Btw, even if a player would have an average playtime of less than 1 hour per day they'd still be active subscribers and playing, as long as their average playtime is above 0 hours they count, whether you think they do or not, you see there's this thing that's called real life (family/friends/works etc) that some people make more time for and only/mostly play in big "time chunks" during weekends/day offs.

 

 

 

 

 

An average of 4 hours a day play time, is not the same thing as an averaged play time across the day (which is what you are using).

 

No server is going to have a steady number of players throughout each 24 hour cycle. This makes what you've calculated completely meaningless in this context (it's like trying to calculate the needed capacity for public transport, but completely ignoring rush hour and the graveyard shift).

 

Using maths isn't the same thing as understanding it, it seems.

 

 

 

 

 

Peak time would be when most people put in those 4 hours a day, leading to much higher pops at that time than your numbers show.

 

As the pops just aren't that high then, it means a lot of people aren't playing much at all or..... something incredibly strange is happening.

Edited March 9, 2012 by Goretzu

[Spell_Bound]

I love coming to these threads just to watch the butthurts complain, and see more of this "THE SKY IS FALLING" crap.

 

Server pops have all increased slightly over time.

An MMO never retains all of its first sales. There is always a 15% to 20% dropoff, as people grind to max level then unsub and wait for more endgame content. Then resub.

 

The people who come on here to rage about how the game sucks or claim the sky is falling are my favorite people.

 

Get butthurt over how a game that doesn't cater specifically to your *** won't die.

[Goretzu]

Yay math!

 

And this kids, is why you pay attention at math in school.. so big numbers don't scare you and make you jump to the wrong conclusions.

 

 

 

Except he's completely wrong.

 

He's using an averaged player count throughout a 24 hour period, when quite clearly a server isn't going to have the same number of people at 3am as it does at 6pm (relative local time).

 

This makes what he's calculated meaningless in this context, as rather than ~600 people needed at prime time per server the number would need to be much, much higher to account for 4 hours a day average play time.

 

 

 

Which goes back to the puzzling point, why SWTOR seems to have so many people subbing, yet not playing.

[WereMops]

An average of 4 hours a day play time, is not the same thing as an averaged play time across the day (which is what your using).

 

No server is going to have a steady number of players throughout each 24 hour cycle. This makes what you've calculated completely meaningless in this context (it's like trying to calculate the needed capacity for public transport, but completely ignoring rush hour and the graveyard shift).

 

Using maths isn't the same thing as understanding it, it seems.

 

 

 

 

 

Peak time would be when most people put in those 4 hours a day, leading to much higher pops at that time than your numbers show.

 

As the pops just aren't that high then, it means a lot of people aren't playing much at all or..... something incredibly strange is happening.

 

I'm not sure that I'm the one having problems with the math, my numbers show the average simultaneous people playing over time not the number of players minimum playing, as I said, during peak hours (approximatly a span of about 6 hours in the evening/night) and especially weekends (a span of about 12 hours afternoon-late night) on my server that number is atleast doubled-tripled, my server usually only dips below that number of people during the off off peak hours of the night as far as I have seen, the math holds.

 

EDIT: when you check how many people are on, the fleet is just a small part of the total population, my server had a total empire population of about 1200 during peak last thursday but only 113 in fleet.

 

EDIT2: anyway, I seem to recall that the 4 hour average playtime was during the first 1.5 months according to some dev quote posted in this thread, that average might well be a lot lower

Edited March 9, 2012 by WereMops

[Trenter]

Which goes back to the puzzling point, why SWTOR seems to have so many people subbing, yet not playing.

 

Personally I think there's a certain amount of hyperbole involved there. The new thing is to report on "dead servers". Was just looking over the EU server status last night, around 8:30 pm, and it showed 6 light servers, 11 heavy ones and the rest were standard. My server, The Progenitor, was standard as usual. We had around 120 people on the fleet when I logged on right after. Not saying you can only go by fleet numbers, or that you should at all, but i had no problems getting groups for what I wanted.

 

Some servers are light. Most aren't.

[Goretzu]

I'm not sure that I'm the one having problems with the math, my numbers show the average simultaneous people playing over time not the number of players minimum playing, as I said, during peak hours (approximatly a span of about 6 hours in the evening/night) and especially weekends (a span of about 12 hours afternoon-late night) on my server that number is atleast doubled-tripled, my server usually only dips below that number of people during the off off peak hours of the night as far as I have seen, the math holds.

 

 

I'm sure you are.

 

 

Your numbers show the average IF people played consistently throughout each 24 hour period - which quite obviously they don't.

 

A server has much more people on at 6pm than 3am (relative to local server time)

 

As they don't do that what you've calculated is meaningless in this context.

 

 

Like I said it's like trying to calculate Public transport capacity, but ignoring that it will be much higher than the average during rush hour and much lower in the middle of the night. Averaging total number out doesn't produce a relevant or realistic picture (it end up with you "needing" 20 buses per hour, when in fact you actually need 100 buses during certain hours and 1 or less during other hours).

 

People that play an average number of hours a day DO NOT play them averaged out over a 24 hour period, there are large peaks and troughs.

 

 

 

EDIT2: anyway, I seem to recall that the 4 hour average playtime was during the first 1.5 months according to some dev quote posted in this thread, that average might well be a lot lower

 

It was mentioned in the 1st feb report and maybe in the last one too (can't remember).

 

But that is exactly what I'm saying, for there still to be 1.7 million subs, the average time played per day per player must be much lower than 4 hours per day now.

Edited March 9, 2012 by Goretzu

[Goretzu]

Personally I think there's a certain amount of hyperbole involved there. The new thing is to report on "dead servers". Was just looking over the EU server status last night, around 8:30 pm, and it showed 6 light servers, 11 heavy ones and the rest were standard. My server, The Progenitor, was standard as usual. We had around 120 people on the fleet when I logged on right after. Not saying you can only go by fleet numbers, or that you should at all, but i had no problems getting groups for what I wanted.

 

Some servers are light. Most aren't.

 

 

 

Yeah I actually think server pops are now generally levelling out.

 

However I don't believe a lot of people haven't left (they have) or that currently there are 1.7 million people playing 4 hours a day (the numbers quite simply don't add up).

 

If SWTOR manages to level out at 1,000,000 long term subs it will be a massive success by any measure.

 

I'm worried that there are a massive number of subs just not playing, and I hope Bioware sees that too, because although it would be exceptional for them if they had loads of subs that didn't play much, I think the reality is a lot of those subs will dry up unless they get those subs playing.

[Catch_TwentyTwo]

This predicting the future doesn't say anything. "At current rate we expect..."

 

My bro and I extended our playtime in januari with a GC, which ends 20 march.

 

He already quit, i'm quitting the 20th. And so are many more people on my server.

 

Also can anyone tell me how it's possible the servers were heavy/full all the time during 1st month now all are low/standard even though EA claims there was no drop?

 

Oh no. You and you bro left? The game is Doomed, Doomed I tell ya!

[Vecke]

Personally I think there's a certain amount of hyperbole involved there. The new thing is to report on "dead servers". Was just looking over the EU server status last night, around 8:30 pm, and it showed 6 light servers, 11 heavy ones and the rest were standard. My server, The Progenitor, was standard as usual. We had around 120 people on the fleet when I logged on right after. Not saying you can only go by fleet numbers, or that you should at all, but i had no problems getting groups for what I wanted.

 

Some servers are light. Most aren't.

 

I agree. I think it's mostly a combination of anecdotal observations and hyperbole. Considering that Bioware kept adding servers to avoid queues that first week (and recommending lights servers to new players), it's reasonable to assume that as the auch rush died down and as the devs expanded the server capacity, there would be some unfortunate servers that were left significantly lighter than most of the others.

 

But now we know that the "dead server" observations were no indication of the game's overall population. It's also safe to assume the calculations and graphs and "testing" operations people were doing were (mostly) grossly inaccurate.

 

The game's doing well. That's no longer conjecture; it's academic. Folks can go on about how incredibly successful it'll be in another two months and folks can go on about how it's going to be a massive failure. But right now, the game's doing well from a subscription standpoint.

 

These new sub numbers and the forum response to those numbers have shown me two things:

 

1. We (the players) simply do not have access to the required information to make even an educated guess on overall population numbers. We're dealing with numbers that are simply too large to base any assumption on anecdotal evidence (no matter how scientific we collect that anecdotal evidence).

 

2. No matter what numbers are released and no matter how much proof is given, there are going to be people that ignore it because it contradicts their personal world view.

[Gohlar]

I'm worried that there are a massive number of subs just not playing, and I hope Bioware sees that too, because although it would be exceptional for them if they had loads of subs that didn't play much, I think the reality is a lot of those subs will dry up unless they get those subs playing.

 

This is the case. I am one of these people. Christmas gift cards.

Edited March 9, 2012 by Gohlar

[nocturnalgamer]

Anyone can predict the future. They may not be right but they can make a guess.

 

It's fine that you enjoy it, but with the changes I have seen thus far coming in 1.2 and the botched legacy system I expect it will grow stale for a great many of us who have come to expect more from mmos.

 

Speak for your self, I'm sure I am not the only one that hates when other people try to speak for others. I have been playing mmos since 03 and personally enjoy this game a great deal. I will never play another mmo after this.

 

I hate fantasy games like wow and others I quit wow after story was announced

[Sdesser]

So you call a loss of subscriber's "expanding"? Well I have news for you this game is way too casual friendly to have people play for the long run.

 

This game attracts solo players with its "story". Once they try out the different stories and maybe play a few "operations" whats left with them?

 

Don't try to tell me this games operations and pvp have any holding power. Getting geared in record time isn't going to keep subscribers. This game is too damn easy and there is no carrot on the stick incentive to keep playing since you can get geared so fast.

 

Also with rated warzones coming out there will be no gear upgrade for doing well in rated warzones? Really? How is that going to incentivize people to keep pvping over other well known pvp mmos. The game's engine isn't even built for smooth, fluid pvp action.

 

I like the game for it's pve content but it is way too easy and 1.2 won't change the fact that this game has no holding power.

 

Expect subscriptions to go down. They may fluctuate up and down but it won't grow at an enourmous pace.

 

 

First of all. Have you read / watched the live stream? They are going to improve all the aspects of the game. New Ops coming out, supposed to be more of a challenge than current ones. Nightmare mode won't be launched with 1.2, but later on (just like it goes in wow for example). Nightmare mode has it's own tier of gear, unlike at the moment.

 

Rated Warzones WILL be the source of best pvp gear in game. New gear won't be a token for "I've got too much spare time" but actual skill (What I hope at least).

 

At least for me, if the new Nightmare mode is as demanding as they're saying, I'm excited for it and it will be keeping me in the game for a long time along with rated warzones and leveling alts now that they're making leveling less painful and more rewarding with the new Legacy system changes.

 

Hope you'll stick around till 1.2. That's what I'm doing

[MarkMoore]

....

 

2. No matter what numbers are released and no matter how much proof is given, there are going to be people that ignore it because it contradicts their personal world view.

 

If by personal world view you mean "the server I am playing on", then "Yes" I will continue to complain. I try not to get into the hypothetical numbers figures, the figures and facts I have quoted in separate posts are based on me logging on and wanting to play and do 4 man heroic quests, but being unable to due to single figure populations on the planets I am questing on. I also see from other peoples posts that I am far from alone. There are a great many unhappy people out there who are currently part of your "it's doing well" subs figures, but actually are not happy. I am one of those who really wants it to succeed and so at the moment am hanging on to see what 1.2 brings and also if anything is done to address the low pop servers. As always between the "yay its doing brilliant and will last forever" groups and the "oh no its already failed and will die in a month" groups, the truth is somewhere in the middle. All I can say is that I am one of the unhappy ones, not because I think the games sucks, quite the opposite. I want to play but find I can't. (and please don't tell me to re-roll, that's insulting and a BW cop out).

What I do find interesting was that a separate post to actually petition for a server merge was very very quickly shut down. Rightly or wrongly, that might have given a better indication of the scale of peoples unhappiness

[Smuglebunny]

Yeah i have to say. The game isnt failing. But there are too many servers.

 

I am on The Defenestrator, and its totaly dead, I cant do any pvp. This is my first real mmo and I didnt know we were isolated by server.

 

I would LOVE a server merge. I have a 41 commando and a 33 jugg. Im not doing everything over again. Merge the defenestrator into a higher pop server and Im good.

 

And my opinion is that this game is growing.

 

The problem is that most people are concentrated on certain servers.

[Drewser]

In December EA had a press release stating total investment in this game was over 500k, not 200k. AND you have to take into account the continued payment of all employees every month.

 

That 500k number was analyst's guess not a statement from EA. If you have link where EA confirmed that, post it.

[Drewser]

It is also is misleading.

 

 

There's no way we're currently at 85% retention with people averaging 4+ hours a day game-play.

 

There seems to be an awful lot of people still with an active sub (assuming those sub figures are correct) that simply aren't playing (and by aren't playing I mean are averaging less than 1 hour a day).

 

 

 

The retention rate of people I came to SWTOR with is about 10-15% at the moment playing at all-wise..... however it's possible they still have subs open showing an 85% retention, but given that the literally aren't playing (at all) that number has got to come down to the 10-15% eventually.

 

Which is what I wonder if we're seeing globally (not 10-15% definitely, but still way, way lower than 85% are playing regularly).

 

 

If not then Bioware has literally found the MMO Goose that lays the Golden egg - an MMO that people don't play, but still pay a sub for!

 

Just goes to show you Torstatus was meaningless as you were told and denied to be used as a tool to estimate subs.

[Galentor]

So you call a loss of subscriber's "expanding"? Well I have news for you this game is way too casual friendly to have people play for the long run.

 

This game attracts solo players with its "story". Once they try out the different stories and maybe play a few "operations" whats left with them?

 

Don't try to tell me this games operations and pvp have any holding power. Getting geared in record time isn't going to keep subscribers. This game is too damn easy and there is no carrot on the stick incentive to keep playing since you can get geared so fast.

 

Also with rated warzones coming out there will be no gear upgrade for doing well in rated warzones? Really? How is that going to incentivize people to keep pvping over other well known pvp mmos. The game's engine isn't even built for smooth, fluid pvp action.

 

I like the game for it's pve content but it is way too easy and 1.2 won't change the fact that this game has no holding power.

 

Expect subscriptions to go down. They may fluctuate up and down but it won't grow at an enourmous pace.

 

a) 1.7 mil right now and ~2 mil by the end of June is a very impressive figure no matter how you wan't to see it. If you where looking for WoW'ish numbers then you obviously have no clue about todays P2P MMO market status.

 

b) I have some important news for you my friend: the casuals are the VAST majority of the gamer population these days and the ones dictating the norms by witch decisions are met. The hardcores are less than 10% and they may be vocal indeed but they are in no possition to seriously influence anything. Blizzard grasped this some years ago and steered WoW accordingly.

[GorZie]

lets wait for the next big holiday break. Easter is about to come, I guess we will again have to queue for playing.

[Rouge]

Good numbers.

[Samborino]

Yeah I actually think server pops are now generally levelling out.

 

However I don't believe a lot of people haven't left (they have) or that currently there are 1.7 million people playing 4 hours a day (the numbers quite simply don't add up).

 

If SWTOR manages to level out at 1,000,000 long term subs it will be a massive success by any measure.

 

I'm worried that there are a massive number of subs just not playing, and I hope Bioware sees that too, because although it would be exceptional for them if they had loads of subs that didn't play much, I think the reality is a lot of those subs will dry up unless they get those subs playing.

 

I dont think they are lying about their numbers though, they said the average player "when they log in" plays 4 hours in a session ( i beleive)

 

You have to remember, that BW made a key mistake which lead to spreading out the population way to much. First as a quick fix for queue's they added 70-80 or so new servers on day 2 of launch ( i dont know the exact numbers) then a few weeks after that they doubled the max server population of all servers. This lead to problems because suddenly the 700,000 subscribers that came after the new year (roughly) went to the more populated servers because they werent full anymore or they spread themselves out among a bunch of standard servers.

 

This leads to a few servers having very large populations and then a majority having very modest populations, they have a huge amount of servers for the number of players they have. I guess it was neccesarry to do a quick fix but they could have added less servers and they are going to probably have to do something about it soon, because they effectively doubled their server capacity meaning even the most populated servers dont have queue's and new players will flock to those servers. The games subscription base just isnt evident on most servers since its so spread out, and now that BW has the right max server pops they need to consolidate some servers to raise the overall population of servers. They were in a sticky situation at launch with the queue's and they did the best they could by adding new servers , but they should have added just a few and let the customer base deal with it for a week or 2 until they increased the max server pops. A server that is standard now would have been a server that was very heavy or full at launch.

 

Here is a transcript from their conference call where they talk about more than doubling the max server population. http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/19915-electronic-arts-q3-fy12-earnings-call

Edited March 9, 2012 by Samborino