Server population is dropping...

[stickyickytricky]

just wanted to weigh in again on this thread.

 

I rerolled on The Harbinger and its a lot better to play with actual people. On every planet ive been in on the republic side there are well over 100 players. Last weekend there were short queues to get in, took 10 minutes or so on Saturday night. I joined a guild that has just moved to this server from a dead server. Most of the 30 or so people in the guild are excited to be on a server with others and are excited to be able to find a group for a FP in less than a hour or two.

 

I feel for everyone that will not reroll and is on a dead server like my old one. I still dont think I will resub until I can xfer my characters from my old server. Can 1.2 get me to sub? I'm not sure. As of today I think I have about 37 days left of my 3 month sub I got at launch. I hope to be able to see 1.2 before my time is up.

 

If you can take rerolling on a new server it is worth your time, what do you have to lose if you still have game time left you have paid for?

[Vaalix]

boxes =/= copies of the game

 

I bought mine as digital, doesn't count towards box sales. But yes WoW has used clever marketing tactics to hide their true numbers. Difference is WoW has tools that are built in the game like Cross server PvP/Dungeons that allow people to enjoy themselves if there server is in trouble, this game doesn't and is a very very bad costly design decision

 

of course it counts as a sale.. why wouldn't they count it.. its a general term. maybe copies sold is a better term to use but none the less when they say boxes sold they mean copies..

[Trenter]

The mere fact the forum is constantly complaining about it should be proof enough. You will never see a truthful answer from ea or bioware about the pop. Thats why it was a mad rush to get an asian launch going to skew the numbers just like blizzard does.

 

MMO forums are always filled to the brim with complaints about everything, so no, I don't take that as proof. I look at the server status and think that there's quite a bit of hyperbole going on regarding this subject. I was asking for factual sources showing that there has been big drops.

[commonperson]

And yet you're still here burying your head in the sand.

 

Yeah you're right nobody is leaving we are all delusional. lol!

 

 

 

Yes I am wrong I'm sorry. Clearly nobody is leaving this wonderful game with so much to do at 50.

 

"Lol"s do not make things true. Look, I don't have hard fast numbers. I have observational evidence that my server is fine. If you can actually get NUMBERS not "it seems" or "it looks" but actual day over day/week over week numbers then you can make a case. That means for several hours over time at a highly traficed place. Not just a snapshot of any specific time. Anything else is heresay and pretty much dismissable (on both sides.)

 

The thing that tires me most about the haters and the lovers is they don't provide ANYTHING even resembling data. Anything less, you are a person just looking for a fight.

[icroyal]

Our Server "The Constant" has about 15 people logged on right now and it's prime time. Sigh.

[commonperson]

I logged in last week and there were 2 people in Ilum and like 15 in the fleet.

 

Standard server btw. Not good.

 

In other news, the sky is sometimes blue.

 

You logged in "once" again I reiterate you want to use numbers you need to record your findings. That means over an extended period of time over several days if not weeks. There will be peaks and valleys on any server based on geography and usage. Your "I logged in last week" is hardly evidence. It's more like the school know it all saying his friend told him that aliens are true and his friend never lies so then it must be true.

 

Facts and truth, not factish and truthyness.

[commonperson]

Our Server "The Constant" has about 15 people logged on right now and it's prime time. Sigh.

 

There's a reason why Friday is the night networks put shows to die. Especially now with the weather turning nice. Again a snapshot does not data make. You need extended data over several days if not weeks. You need to capture multiple 24 hour periods. Hell I'd almost make it a project to do it if I cared enough to disprove the naysayers.

 

My question is, if you don't like the game or it's dying why are you here? There's nothing FORCING and honestly I know my self and many others would like to go on the forums and not be faced with hundreds of "you suck game dies blargh!" posts on a regular basis. The only reason I'm on here now is to play catchup on news and having spent a couple of hours on a patio enjoying drinks I'm in no state to be in game. Especially since I've not eaten yet.

 

Come back when you've got data, then you can prove your point. And remember a single metric does not make data. It makes a data point.

Edited March 16, 2012 by commonperson

[Protonic_Flux]

First of all, there's always going to be a fluctuation in server populations in a MMO. Some weeks it'll be up, some weeks it'll be down.

 

Reasons can be everything from people taking vacations at the end of a long hard winter, to financial difficulties, to there being a interesting movie opening in the theaters. There are also other MMOs out there, believe it or not. So people playing 2 games may be drawn from one ot the other from time to time. I know the new expansion coming out for CoH has cut down on my ToR time dramatically.

 

And I almost forgot! Isn't Mass Effect 3 out now? How many tens of thousands of people are playing that instead of ToR?!

 

It's WAY too early to be crying doom and gloom for The Old Republic. The game isnt even 6 months old yet!!!! For heaven sakes people. This game shouldnt even be close to making it's stride as a MMO for at least a full year to a year and a half in. The game we've gotten at launch is NEVER the game the designers wanted when they set out to do this. It's been that way for every MMO that has ever been released, anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something.

 

 

Now I know I'm throwing walls of text at you. But I hope you take the time to read it. No MMO reaches it's potential at launch, but alot of MMOs can die before they ever get the chance to be good.

 

 

Let me tell you the story of Tabula Rasa, and Auto Assault. Both excellent games, both ran well, could be monsterous loads of fun (Expecially AA) and both had massive potential.

 

And both games failed. They failed because right off the bat everyone expected a 100% groundbreaking breathtaking earth shattering MMO right away.

 

I'd really like to you to pay attention to this next statement, because if you take nothing else from this post, please take it.

 

 

 

Great MMO's are not made in 1 day, they are grown over time.

 

 

Lets take a look at what alot of people consider the best MMO ever made, World of Warcraft. Honestly, with any other title the game would have died in the first 6 months. With any other company backing it the game never would have reached 2 years old. I know I'm going to take alot of heat for that, but I'm a bounty hunter so I have good heat vents.

 

As players lets try to focus on the positive, and not the negative. The fact that I'm not on the forums screaming at the devs mean they're hitting the ball out of the fricken park. Anyone who knows me from CoH knows that to be true. Enjoy the game, and have some patience. Bioware's doing a good job.

Edited March 16, 2012 by Protonic_Flux

[btmarine]

19 people in fleet right now, been in a queue for 45 minutes...8pm friday night

[ChaseOvermire]

I see populations on my server dropping as well. I almost never see anyone on any planets and theres maybe 100-150 people on the capital ship. The Republic side is even worse, at 7PM PST I (Its a west coast server) there were 42 people there the other night.

 

I started in a guild that had 57 very active members, I have not seen any one log in other than myself in over a month. I don't know any one of my friends who still plays this game anymore.

 

I have hopped on to several different servers that claim to be heavier and don't really see much improvement. The games not the best out there but its not terrible either...I am not surprised it isn't more popular, though I am surprised how slow Bioware has been with the fixing of issues.

[BobaFurz]

Let me tell you the story of Tabula Rasa, and Auto Assault. Both excellent games, both ran well, could be monsterous loads of fun (Expecially AA) and both had massive potential.

 

And both games failed. They failed because right off the bat everyone expected a 100% groundbreaking breathtaking earth shattering MMO right away.

 

Tabula Rasa an excellent game ? Common this is a good laugh...

 

The main problem of Tabula Rasa was that no end game content did exist and people left en mass. It was heavily instanced and you just follwed the story, I see similarities with swtor but swtor offers more at lvl 50.

Edited March 17, 2012 by BobaFurz

[ZedFighter]

Anyone remember Warhammer's timeline?

 

I think SWTOR is going the same direction but faster

[Soluss]

19 people in fleet right now, been in a queue for 45 minutes...8pm friday night

 

My guild is always light on Friday nights. Its simple really.... good weather is here and its Friday night. Alot of people use that as family time... going out time ... maybe going away for the weekend etc.

 

Lots of people like to unplug and Friday is the best day to do that.

[RobCivicCRX]

You know it's funny. People keep posting these threads saying the servers are dying but I haven't noticed a drop in the population on any of the 4 servers I play on. Now they're coming out with this everyone is rerolling on the mega severs theory and it's funny to me because none of those are servers I play on yet I still seem to be able to find groups with no problem on my supposedly "dead servers".

 

Is there any such thing as Ghost Vision Goggles? If there is maybe these people are wearing them and that's why they can't see the life all over their servers.

 

 

That entire post is ridiculous. you play on 4 servers out of how many total ? That means you know how every server is doing does it ?

 

The server I chose, Uthar Wynn (look I named it Ooo) had queues for maybe a few days during launch then was very heavy and heavy for at least a few weeks. Now though you are lucky to wait half an hour for a wz to pop and the GTN is not exactly exploding with goods. Also a whole guild of 30 odd people either re-rolled on another server or stopped playing because of the dwindling population.

 

Im glad your happy with your 4 chosen servers but not everybody is the same and it isnt because we chose to play on "light" servers. Either players left, stopped playing or re-rolled. So now I have 2 50's sitting around doing nothing other than raiding once or twice a week, is that a quality product that I should be paying for each month ?

 

I rolled on the highest populated eu pvp server(only because another guild im in did it and it changed their experience so much) and its great I just cant force myself to level and get battlemaster and rakata gear all over again not to mention the 0 legacy I have on there. It is overall a much better experience than Uthar Wynn although I really dont know if I can be arsed starting all over again really.

 

That is just 1 server that is factually in decline I cant comment on others but everybody should really not pretend the problem doesnt exist at all, you just look silly.

Edited March 17, 2012 by RobCivicCRX

[Andryah]

Anyone remember Warhammer's timeline?

 

I think SWTOR is going the same direction but faster

 

Sorry, SWTOR is already well past the Warhammer history timeline of collapse.

 

Want to try something else maybe???

Edited March 17, 2012 by Andryah

[ZedFighter]

Sorry, SWTOR is already well past the Warhammer history timeline of collapse.

 

Want to try something else maybe???

 

Source?

[Andryah]

Source?

 

I was there.

 

Now, we have to keep in mind that many DAOC veterans jumped all over Warhammer, expecting it to be DAOC2. When it wasn't they jumped off just as fast. There were other demographics as well, but I honestly believe the DAOC vets were the largest single demographic, and the one that got disillusioned the fastest.

Edited March 17, 2012 by Andryah

[Kharzon]

You know what I see? I see two articles that SAY someone Officially said there are 1.7 million subscribers. I don't see any quotes or anything like that from someone official. Hogwash. It's pure BS. 3 reports ago it said there was 1.7 million ACTIVE subs and in that article it actually posted about it being from the quarterly report ENDING December 31st. As we all know, each and everyone one of us had to sign up for a subscription when we put in our game keys or you didn't get to play.

 

It's called 'if someone actually gets a hold of that report and see's the true numbers, they can always blame any website that's said it was said officially as a misquote'. It's a blame game. It's blowing pipe smoke up investors butts.

 

A gentleman did a week long, hop around the servers, check each zone's population (you can do it with the Who window easily enough) and use some mathematics to get a nice estimate in population numbers. It's a pretty good read. I'll not post the link, you can find it easily enough. While he did not do the pvp servers (pvp is the smaller of the two groups anyway) and outside of that, the conclusion was there are less than 90k active players on the NA servers. That's a phenomenally HUGE different vs 1.7m.

 

The reason? Most of the problems with the game, bugs, etc have been reported well over a year ago. Now, not faulting Bioware with this: EA is to blame. Why? Here's how: If Bioware was able to release in it's scheduled time, ie, towards the end of the 1st quarter (oddly enough, right about the time 1.2 is going to hit) we'd have had the things from 1.2 in the game and they'd have kept most of their subscriptions. Releasing the game in the state it was, with players now expecting certain things to be standard in MMO's, was so much EA's fault. They've done it twice now for a 100% fail in the MMO market.

 

Fanboy's are going to be Fanboy's, but lets face the facts: This game is a half a billion dollar flop.

 

I was looking forward to Red Eagle Games making the Wheel of Time MMO until I saw they signed an agreement with EA for distribution. Now, I'm holding myself in reservation. It might not be a bad thing since:

 

"Red Eagle Games joins a growing list of developers who have signed on with EAP, with such partners including Harmonix, id Software, Valve, Epic Games, Grasshopper Manufacture, and, most recently, Double Fine. The EAP program provides independent game makers with such services as QA, marketing, and distribution resources."

 

As long as it's just distribution and they have NO SAY in it's release, we're all good. I refuse to buy another EA pushedouthalfdonegame.

 

Do I expect too much? Nope, I expect the game I'm playing to have the basic's. This game did not even do that much.

 

/flameon

Edited March 17, 2012 by Kharzon

[Andryah]

You know what I see?.....

 

So, did you unsub then?

 

Wait, I have a better question.... being so enlightened about the state of the game a year ago and all..... WHY did you subscribe to begin with??? That's kind of short sighted on your part IMO.

[Akirator]

You know what I see? I see two articles that SAY someone Officially said there are 1.7 million subscribers. I don't see any quotes or anything like that from someone official. Hogwash. It's pure BS. 3 reports ago it said there was 1.7 million ACTIVE subs and in that article it actually posted about it being from the quarterly report ENDING December 31st. As we all know, each and everyone one of us had to sign up for a subscription when we put in our game keys or you didn't get to play.

 

It's called 'if someone actually gets a hold of that report and see's the true numbers, they can always blame any website that's said it was said officially as a misquote'. It's a blame game. It's blowing pipe smoke up investors butts.

 

I'd do a little research before you go spouting flames at everybody.

 

It was the CEO of EA that everybody is quoting and he spoke at the Wedbush Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference in New York City.

 

http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ERTS/1734122591x0x551670/86A5C9A0-1EE8-480F-887B-04BF50C8D268/ERTS_Wedbush_03082012_Transcript.pdf

 

That's a transcript of the speech and backs up what everybody is saying in regards to the 1.7M recurring subscriber number.

[Tygranir]

I'd do a little research before you go spouting flames at everybody.

 

It was the CEO of EA that everybody is quoting and he spoke at the Wedbush Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference in New York City.

 

http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ERTS/1734122591x0x551670/86A5C9A0-1EE8-480F-887B-04BF50C8D268/ERTS_Wedbush_03082012_Transcript.pdf

 

That's a transcript of the speech and backs up what everybody is saying in regards to the 1.7M recurring subscriber number.

 

Not to mention his statement is legally binding.

[Andryah]

I'd do a little research before you go spouting flames at everybody.

 

It was the CEO of EA that everybody is quoting and he spoke at the Wedbush Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference in New York City.

 

http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ERTS/1734122591x0x551670/86A5C9A0-1EE8-480F-887B-04BF50C8D268/ERTS_Wedbush_03082012_Transcript.pdf

 

That's a transcript of the speech and backs up what everybody is saying in regards to the 1.7M recurring subscriber number.

 

Indeed.

[Ansultares]

While he did not do the pvp servers (pvp is the smaller of the two groups anyway) and outside of that, the conclusion was there are less than 90k active players on the NA servers. That's a phenomenally HUGE different vs 1.7m.

He has since done surveys of PvP and RP-PvP servers, and nowhere do I recall him making the assertion that the game has 90k active players. That thread was a good read, though.

 

Anyway, the game has passed the AoC milestone; we'll see if it passes the WAR milestone. Don't forget to adjust for the IP.

 

Not to mention his statement is legally binding.

Was this the speech where he used the term "activated" subscriptions, to include free month players? Edited March 17, 2012 by Ansultares

[Tygranir]

Was this the speech where he used the term "activated" subscriptions, to include free month players?

 

Nope, this was the one at the beginning of march, where his wording was "Active accounts"

[Andryah]

He has since done surveys of PvP and RP-PvP servers, and nowhere do I recall him making the assertion that the game has 90k active players.

 

Agree. The 90K number tossed out by Kharzon is absurd and is just him spouting inaccurate hyperbole again.

 

You can get a pretty good feel for the login population just by counting the Standard servers in the NA farm. STANDARD has been proven to = 1000-1500 at Biowares current server settings. Simple math shows there is between 120k-180K people logged in tonight just in the NA server farm. Typically, 10-15% of a subscriber base is logged in at any given prime time slot (except during launch and patch frenzys when I think it's more like 20%). Now add in the EU server farm at their prime time and you see the 1.7 million figure quoted from the CEO is not a stretch at all. In fact, it looks bigger then that.

 

Further, we are clearly going to see a patch spike on the servers when 1.2 goes live. It would not surprise me to see a good number of servers go red after patch. The Light servers are going to remain problematic though, so they will have to be addressed with the server transfers coming (and probably shut them down after people transfer off).

Edited March 17, 2012 by Andryah