Server population is dropping...

[Walkiry]

It's fascinating to see how you ignore the second link, which makes it clear that this is current data and not an estimate.

 

"[Electronic Arts CEO John] Riccitiello reported 1.7M active subscribers, which sounds like nothing much has changed compared to the earnings report numbers released on February 1. But a month ago about half of those players were still in the first 30 days of the subscription period, which is included with the purchase of the game, while the 'vast majority [of players] is now triggered through that point and they’re recurring subscribers.'"

 

This makes it clear that:

 

1. The figures are provided by EA's CEO and are not an estimate. Why would the CEO have to provide an estimate when he has access to actual figures?

 

2. The figures were reported on March 8, so they are recent. While we don't know the exact date of the snapshot, the same article quotes results from Mass Effect 3, which released on March 6.

 

3. The reference to "a month ago" makes it clear that this is not the same estimate as the February 1 estimate provided in the 2012Q3 Quarterly Earnings Call.

 

In summary, whatever loss in subscriptions the game has suffered since January has been nullified by additional sales (including Asia).

 

I'm not ignoring anything, it's the exact same CEO chat obviously, they just didn't have the pre-Asia/Pacific quote in the second link. When the 1.7 million players number was first given, they already said it meant active subscriptions, meaning people who had paid for at least a month, that's why they were quoting the high retention rate %.

 

It's the same number. That's all there is. It's a good retention number, and there's nothing wrong with it, but it's the same number that was already given: Number of players after the first billing cycle.

 

In other news: No news.

[Trenter]

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.

 

So they were on the other planets then? Or are you seriously saying that the cap for a server to be "standard" would be around, I don't know, 30 - 40 players? This sounds just ridiculous.

 

What server was that, and what time did you log on? Nevermind what time by the way, you said it was at standard. What server was that? I wanna see this for myself. I'll log in on it when it's standard

[Quip]

I actually came to the forums to post on this very issue. I don't care what time of the day it is. I want more than 5... yes 5 people on fleet. And during peak hrs, there used to be 120 or so on fleet, now you are lucky to see 75.

 

Why people are in such denial is beyond me. You cannot dispute the low populations we are seeing DESPITE all the talk about 1.7 million subs.

 

We need server xfers NOW

 

I think people get all defensive because they view your server's low population as a direct attack on their family (in this case the sweet baby SWTOR). They think people are doom-saying when all people are saying is that their server is declining, it could easily be migration causing it.

 

Of course there are those who are yelling doom and those who live to fight with them, but those people are just e-thuggin' and don't matter in the long run. If someone's experience is that bad they need to quit, the fighting is completely pointless.

[Alphashado]

So they were on the other planets then? Or are you seriously saying that the cap for a server to be "standard" would be around, I don't know, 30 - 40 players? This sounds just ridiculous.

 

What server was that, and what time did you log on? Nevermind what time by the way, you said it was at standard. What server was that? I wanna see this for myself. I'll log in on it when it's standard

 

Come to my server. Krath. And tell me there is not an issue. Why WHY do you guys keep denying denying denying?

 

This is supposed to be an MMO, not a single player game. Right now might as well take Massive out of MMO and just call this game an MO. Way too many servers

[Trenter]

Come to my server. Krath. And tell me there is not an issue. Why WHY do you guys keep denying denying denying?

 

This is supposed to be an MMO, not a single player game. Right now might as well take Massive out of MMO and just call this game an MO. Way too many servers

 

I'm not denying anything. There are low pop servers, that's no news. I can just go to the server status page and see that there are light servers. Even WoW has low pop servers. But I think the issue is tainted with a certain amount of hyperbole though. My server, the Progenitor, is a standard server for most of the time. And we very rarely drop under 100 - 110 on fleet during prime time. That's why I think it's weird that the bloke I quoted also claims to play on a standard server, but there the amount of people on the fleet is around 15.

Edited March 9, 2012 by Trenter

[Kinediks]

ROFL

 

2.31AM and you expect there to be lots of people around? Was this as a weekend or a school/work night?

 

Probably server shutdown.

 

Im on one of the lower population servers. Last night we had about 85 people on Imp fleet. 12+ on Ilum, 30+ on Belsavis, and Warzones against the opposite faction. I'm on the Corsair.

 

I would be happy with a server merge. But I guess we'll see how they deliver on 1.2. All i know is they cannot afford to push it back again.

[Kinrain]

I'm not denying anything. There are low pop servers, that's no news. I can just go to the server status page and see that there are light servers. Even WoW has low pop servers. But I think the issue is tainted with a certain amount of hyperbole though. My server, the Progenitor, is a standard server for most of the time. And we very rarely drop under 100 - 110 on fleet during prime time. That's why I think it's weird that the bloke I quoted also claims to play on a standard server, but there the amount of people on the fleet is around 15.

 

I'm on Progenitor too (EU though so might be different). My experience is that between 6pm-12midnight fleet doesn't drop under 100, and after midnight goes down to between 40-80.

 

And like Trenter i'm not trying to deny that some servers have problems. I just have a problem with people (not necessarily you) trying to infer that the game is dying because their server has a low population.

 

And rather than us coming to your server to confirm your server has an issue, why not come to ours? You can join my guild and you'll never have a problem finding a group again. We have members at all levels so even if you reroll you'll have company.

 

Just saying.

 

Sho-Kuda

The Last Legion

The Progenitor (EU RP-PVE)

[Holden_Dissent]

No one ever does /whos on Ops and Fps and wzs

 

maybe that's where everyone is?

 

I'm not trying to discredit what everyone is saying. I've actually logged into a server someone said was dead and counted about 70 players online. This iwas at 8am central and I did not /who wz,fp,or op. So it could've been more like 100. And 100 x 2 sounds like a good number for 8am on a weekday and sound like 180 more than you'd see on a wow server at that same time.

[Holden_Dissent]

Probably server shutdown.

 

Im on one of the lower population servers. Last night we had about 85 people on Imp fleet. 12+ on Ilum, 30+ on Belsavis, and Warzones against the opposite faction. I'm on the Corsair.

 

I would be happy with a server merge. But I guess we'll see how they deliver on 1.2. All i know is they cannot afford to push it back again.

 

That's actually a pretty good pop. Not sure what the problem is.

[VONNER]

Help my server Thana Vesh ... ---->http://i517.photobucket.com/albums/u338/vonner1/star-wars-episode-5-the-empire-strikes-back-1-1024_2.jpg

 

 

 

 

__________

[Karstagg]

guys theres a few key points here that simply are not beeing looked at first more than half of the sub numbers have probably reached level 50 and are either in pvp or ops and unless you can see the numbers of those theres no way to understand a full servers population.

 

second yes there are a bit of those people that will start a new character and some might even go to a different side to play one of them to 50. but the reason for planerts pop numbers to be so low is most have been thru them already so what your seeing is theres not alot of new players at the moment showing they 1.7 numbers staying that way for a few months up until now not the server dying.

 

theres too many factors to say that the servers are dying. also to note as each patch is deployed theres also a part in the notes that refers to server stabilization which can include allowing more to access each server which in turn makes it show standard instead of heavy or full.

 

Ill leave you with my last thoughts theres around 270 servers us/european the report was before asia so spread the 1.7m across 270 servers amounts to roughly 6300 people per server some are lower but you get my point. If you take into account over 70% have reached 50 that leaves around 2000 people including 50s who reroll to spread across all the planets/fp's and across all timeframes per day.

 

Based on simple math its easy to see the numbers are spot on and that you cant rely on how many people you see or dont see in each area.

[Sykper]

Help my server Thana Vesh ... ---->http://i517.photobucket.com/albums/u338/vonner1/star-wars-episode-5-the-empire-strikes-back-1-1024_2.jpg

 

 

 

 

__________

 

Hey man, I got a main there as well...

 

We just decided that whenever server transfers come out, to shift them over to a high pop server thats always under a standard load.

 

Not gonna lie, when the off-world planets on this server have more online on them at anytime, than anytime on imperial fleet on Thana Vesh....well....

 

You get it.

 

On a side note, Leveling a Sniper is a new experience.

[Jordgubben]

we're suddenly only allowed to have multiplayer content for about 7 of the hours in the day??

 

Dude - just accept it, most people have lives and are asleep after 12pm, not much the developers can do about that.

Edited March 9, 2012 by Jordgubben

[BlackZoback]

Most of the naysayer believe that the population is closer to 850k then the 1.7million number that was given to us on feb 1st.

 

Peak server pop is usually around 10-20%(I used 15% even thought its probably closer to 10% due to the impending 1.2 patch) of the total population, and there are currently 220 servers.

 

With 850k people playing peak time there would be about 580 people per server, that's well into the "light" category for all the servers. Those of us with eyes in our head can see this is not the case, as there are only a handful of "light" servers during peak times.

 

Not looking very believable.....

 

So, lets plug in some numbers that lean towards the notion that population is growing like say 2 million:

 

That works out to about 1363 people per server, which puts most of them "standard" category with the rest being "heavy" and "light" with a couple at "very heavy". Those of us with eyes in our heads can see that this is usually the case at peak times.

 

"Light" is based of an informal /who 1-50 population survey of the most populated "light" server I could find and it had 618 people on it.

 

"Standard" is based off the same method for finding the "light" number, found one server with 1038 people and another with 1385 people, both in the "standard" category.

[miikke]

On any WOW server, the auction houses alone have more people then all the planets put together on most SWTOR servers.

 

I'm not saying compare the two population wise, but things aren't working and EA needs to merge servers so that the game may remotely resemble a MMO.

 

MERGE BLOODY SERVERS OR YOU WILL BE PLAYING ALONE WITH YOUR CEO'S IN THE END

 

A disappointed player from Kellian Jarro (dead Server)

[xianpu]

I am on a very low pop server too... (Flames of the Crucible EU) Last night (between 5-10pm) the fleet population didn't go higher than 30 from what I saw. Warzone queues take forever, Ilum has always been completely dead... 8 people there at the most. Cross server grouping would help a little, but the economy would still be dead and the fleet would still feel like a ghost town.

 

I don't understand why people are against Bioware doing server merges, why go on and on about how awesomely populated your server is and how we should reroll there? Would it hurt you if the lower pop servers were merged? No! You'd still be on your awesome server, and we would be happy too!

 

Reroll isn't a great solution for those of us on low pop servers... we have characters we've invested time in, guilds and friends. I only rerolled here because queues were horrendous on my early access server and they suggested we should roll to lower pop ones... I wish I hadn't now, but oh well.

[BlackZoback]

If you take a look at server population trends in MMOs like this:

 

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/weekly...hp?serverid=-1

 

You'll see that server population goes up and and down in conjuncture with patch releases, and this is very common in most MMOs.

 

The sky is not falling.

[ShadsAU]

 

The sky is not falling.

 

It was never a sky to begin with. Maybe some low level fog. If the game had launched with 1.2, things might be different.

 

 

Also just like to point out that GW2 has a nifty feature for overflowing servers. Unlike SWTOR which bagged our rift for launching new servers and having to do merging.

 

Oh wait, whats that on the horizon? merging swtor servers? well i never.

[Daluu]

 

Oh wait, whats that on the horizon? merging swtor servers? well i never.

 

That isn't on the horizon yet. They don't have the technology to even character transfer, much less server merge.

[Tiam]

That isn't on the horizon yet. They don't have the technology to even character transfer, much less server merge.

 

True, during beta they couldn't even give us high levels for more than a day or two without it breaking everything. Which is one of the reasons endgame was never fully tested. BW had no clue how to copy chars over for us. We'd get some 40ish random characters that was probably someone elses. They copied it and broke all kinds of stuff.

 

BW Was Not Prepared...

[Ansultares]

When the 1.7 million players number was first given, they already said it meant active subscriptions, meaning people who had paid for at least a month, that's why they were quoting the high retention rate %.

You mean back in February? When they clearly said it was activated accounts, which include players in their "free" month? And lets not kid ourselves, having to actually enter CC information to access your free month is a new industry low.

[Microwavegerbil]

Only on these forums is 1.7 million subs with estimated growth cited as evidence AGAINST said growth.

[DarthTHC]

I am on a very low pop server too... (Flames of the Crucible EU) Last night (between 5-10pm) the fleet population didn't go higher than 30 from what I saw. Warzone queues take forever, Ilum has always been completely dead... 8 people there at the most. Cross server grouping would help a little, but the economy would still be dead and the fleet would still feel like a ghost town.

 

I don't understand why people are against Bioware doing server merges, why go on and on about how awesomely populated your server is and how we should reroll there? Would it hurt you if the lower pop servers were merged? No! You'd still be on your awesome server, and we would be happy too!

 

Reroll isn't a great solution for those of us on low pop servers... we have characters we've invested time in, guilds and friends. I only rerolled here because queues were horrendous on my early access server and they suggested we should roll to lower pop ones... I wish I hadn't now, but oh well.

 

 

The answer is, it won't hurt any of us if lower pop servers were merged into higher pop servers. It would actually be nice, I think. I'd love to have more of you on my server, which is standard normally and high on good days.

 

But when I think of the possibility of that really happening, I don't see it.

 

EA has been talking this game up (see links earlier in this thread). To announce server shutdowns or merges could be seen by investors an action in direct conflict with their words. I just don't see how it can happen any time soon.

 

So the alternative is transfers...

 

But if you think about that for a minute, if they let players transfer out of low-pop servers they wind up in the same place, logically, as merging servers. They wind up with a bunch of zero-pop servers that they might as well shut down.

 

I think their answer is going to be server transfers, but from higher pop servers into lower pop ones, in the hopes that it bolsters those populations.

 

My concern about that approach is that I don't see it working, either. There aren't any servers that have horrid queues. Mine certainly doesn't and I don't recall seeing any complaints about queues on this forum since late December. If nobody on the higher pop servers is feeling any pain, why would they transfer to a low pop server, even if it's free?

 

Even if BW were to allow transfers off of low-pop servers, I think they said the technology would be ready after 1.2 which means sometime in April best case.

 

I'm glad I'm not facing this issue. The only realistic answer for the short term seems to be re-roll. I would probably be irritated enough at that to quit playing.

 

I feel for you guys and I want to help you. The best help I can offer is to say if you bite the bullet and re-roll on my server, I'll spend time doing group missions and flashpoints with you.

Edited March 9, 2012 by DarthTHC

[DarthTHC]

You mean back in February? When they clearly said it was activated accounts, which include players in their "free" month? And lets not kid ourselves, having to actually enter CC information to access your free month is a longstanding industry standard.

 

Fixed your post

[Daluu]

Only on these forums is 1.7 million subs with estimated growth cited as evidence AGAINST said growth.

 

1.7 million subs in January.

 

March 1st is when Oceanic servers went up, we can assume many more players activated their accounts.

 

1.7 million subs in March.

 

 

Math is hard...