Server population is dropping...

[Rayla_Felana]

Are you a Bioware dev or employee?

 

I will honestly ask you, do you actually believe that EA or for that matter any other game production company would come out with the stats, the third party source is showing.

 

Even with Blizzard there are third party sources giving the data out on the state of the game. It's always been that way, but we'll be able to determine if the third party source is right come EA's shareholder meeting.

 

That is where all the truth comes out, don't believe me even Morhaime from Blizzard was grilled and skewered by Blizzard shareholders over their losses which occurred with Cataclysm.

 

I have zero doubt Mr. Reid will face the same mantra " throw him on the barby " from EA's shareholder meeting.

 

I can tell you why that chart right there is false, they listed The Red Eclipse (EU) way down the population line, below servers that are almost always light/standard when TRE is the third most populated server in Europe, case closed.

Edited April 10, 2012 by Sireene
reply to edited post

[Holden_Dissent]

Are you a Bioware dev or employee?

 

I will honestly ask you, do you actually believe that EA or for that matter any other game production company would come out with the stats, the third party source is showing.

 

Even with Blizzard there are third party sources giving the data out on the state of the game. It's always been that way, but we'll be able to determine if the third party source is right come EA's shareholder meeting.

 

That is where all the truth comes out, don't believe me even Morhaime from Blizzard was grilled and skewered by Blizzard shareholders over their losses which occurred with Cataclysm.

 

I have zero doubt Mr. Reid will face the same mantra " throw him on the barby " from EA's shareholder meeting.

 

I have no doubt that S will hit the fan if they go from 1.7m to -1m. But what can we do about it really? 1.2 will bring an influx of people back. heck, just shutting down the PTS will bring quite a few back. Transfer for oceanic are in late April and the rest is soon to follow. That's pretty point blank and a finite answer. So, worrying about what other people are doing and why (talking about who is leaving and why) shouldn't be our concerns. My concern is that I'm having fun and even if I had to reroll to bide my time on another server I would. Because no matter how many people are moving/leaving, I'm still having fun and that's all that matters to me. The perks of cross server and mergers etc will come.

Edited April 10, 2012 by Sireene
quote of edited post

[Unkknownsith]

Player transfers were introduced sometime in 2006. That's a whole year-ish of time for the dead server people to get some relief.

 

To be fair, sometime in late 2005 they did open up high->low pop migration. Not the same and definitely didn't fix the issue.

 

I don't disagree with anything you're saying (other than your WoW facts), I just disagree with the time frame in which you expect it.

 

The TRUTH is we shouldn't be facing this at all in this game, lets really look at facts here, there have been a ton of mmo's released right along with the gargantua from Blizzard, all those years EA/Bioware should have been able to anticipate and negate any of the major flubs that happened in other mmo's and failed/damaged mmo's in their own house.

 

Seriously proper /who commands, guild functionality and the ability to group with the player base has been done by all kinds of mmo's out there, hell even FTP designed mmo's have these features in place.

 

Point is even if you look at Wow & Rift, the features were implemented, WHY? would you not implement them when they are obviously becoming standards in the industry.

 

There is no excuse for them not to have implemented everything that are touted as industry successes.

 

I would have seriously thought EA you would have learned from Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer. Dark age of Camelot put out a free expansion patch called New Frontiers, effectionately referred to on mass by their player base as NERF Frontiers.

 

End result it caused the single most player subscription cancellation ever seen. Ton's of people cancelled on mass, why? the arrogant dev staff at that time got reactionary with the player base and the player base answered them; succinctly.

 

EA please learn from mistakes, what you've created is good work, but it's not excellent and you should have all this stuff in place before you launched, most of it is now industry standard now.

Edited April 10, 2012 by Unkknownsith

[Frostvein]

Ah third party sources, always reliable.

 

 

How about this?

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showt...350700&page=15

 

Byerley did a fairly decent job of explaining it. If you search, Notdonnareed had a fairly similar conclusion in regards to population caps as well.

 

350 appears to be the the bare minimum required for standard ranking on the server list. Where this number caps at is still speculation, but it is probably around 2000. 1800 was reported by others a few times.

 

Assuming that the heavy and full servers are at 2500 or more, and noting that there are only 5 or so out of the (last I heard) 200 or so other servers.

 

Even saying there are 10 good servers with an average population of 2500 or more between EU and US, that's only 25,000. The other 190 servers with an average of 500 (which includes the light servers with under 350, and the standard servers with 1800 or so, so 500 is the number I went with) comes out to be a bit short of 100,000.

 

125,000 is roughly consistent with the fact that rarely, if ever, do MMO's have more then 10% of their player base playing. Which, when multiplied out, comes to a bit under 1.25 million subs (given that I rounded up slightly earlier). This number isn't too unrealistic either.

 

If you increase the average population per server to be 600 or even 700/800, you still don't see much of a total increase, only get the subs up to 1.4 mil, 1.5 or so. You still don't have enough of a population to make a difference, simply because there are too many friggen servers

 

 

What say you?

[Rayla_Felana]

How about this?

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showt...350700&page=15

 

Byerley did a fairly decent job of explaining it. If you search, Notdonnareed had a fairly similar conclusion in regards to population caps as well.

 

350 appears to be the the bare minimum required for standard ranking on the server list. Where this number caps at is still speculation, but it is probably around 2000. 1800 was reported by others a few times.

 

Assuming that the heavy and full servers are at 2500 or more, and noting that there are only 5 or so out of the (last I heard) 200 or so other servers.

 

Even saying there are 10 good servers with an average population of 2500 or more between EU and US, that's only 25,000. The other 190 servers with an average of 500 (which includes the light servers with under 350, and the standard servers with 1800 or so, so 500 is the number I went with) comes out to be a bit short of 100,000.

 

125,000 is roughly consistent with the fact that rarely, if ever, do MMO's have more then 10% of their player base playing. Which, when multiplied out, comes to a bit under 1.25 million subs (given that I rounded up slightly earlier). This number isn't too unrealistic either.

 

If you increase the average population per server to be 600 or even 700/800, you still don't see much of a total increase, only get the subs up to 1.4 mil, 1.5 or so. You still don't have enough of a population to make a difference, simply because there are too many friggen servers

 

 

What say you?

 

I say excellent and well thought out post.

 

It restores my faith in threads like these to see population arguments with more than just 'Pop is fine stop trolling' and 'L0l game is dead/dying, TORtanic, lolol.'

 

I definitely agree with the fact that the Pop has dropped, it's impossible to keep launch numbers a few months down the line, because an MMO will always release prematurely, but I certainly don't believe the idea that the game is dead, not even close.

[Incendergel]

There are more servers with low populations than high.

 

There are maybe 4 servers in the US that are booming most noteworthy is The Fatman. Seems to be the re-roll choice. If you play on a lower populated server then hit one of the higher ones the game takes on a whole new look and feel. Honest, it does. About the only downside is the /general chat People who play or have been playing on the higher populated servers don't understand the ghost world aspect of the game and how it ruins the overall feel. There isn't any "massive" in it. If you play Republic and on a lower populated server, game over.

 

The question is really this. Why are the servers so low today than when it went retail?

 

If it really is because of lack of content (which I don't believe for one minute) then the patch drop should bring them back up. On the other hand if it is due to valor change, game design, PvP, or something else, then the patch won't address it. Hell, everyone keeps mentioned the bloody LFG tool. That won't help a lowly populated server I'm afraid either. It will for the PvE flashpoint aspect. Great. However, the world is still dead and no LFG/R tool can fix that.

 

Those who think the game is doing great please re-roll to a lower populated server rather than telling us to re-roll to a higher. You won't want to pack up and move anymore than us. This isn't our problem. This is BioWare's and it needs to be addressed.

 

I don't think the incoming subscriber rate is faster than those leaving. I just don't get the feel that is the case. Too many servers are being reported by subscribers as a ghost town. 3 to 30 people in the fleet isn't right. There is no social aspect to the game. There isn't a thriving economy.

 

Might as well play a console game.

[tloops]

Listen mr.Tloops, just because I disagree with you and your third party site does not mean I am drinking anything, I think there is most definitely a Population drop, but nowhere near as bad as you people would like to make it out to be, I have seen the exact same trolling on every MMO release I have been involved with, just drop the act, until we get actual official statements I won't believe the rubbish spouted on third party sites, I can guarantee I can go and find a very similar 'chart' that states an entirely different 'factual' server population degree.

 

ok for 1 im not trolling,if i was id tell ya the game is as full as could be...and if you can find a site that says the exact opposite that mine did,then do it and stop putting down people who actually are posting evidence to support this post.

Edited April 10, 2012 by Sireene
rude

[greenleef]

Guess what when they listen to the few that say everything is to hard and takes to long to get. Then you get the current state of game people play for a couple months realize there is ZERO chalenge max gear is basicly a hand out and then players mass quit playing.

[Rayla_Felana]

ok for 1 im not trolling,if i was id tell ya the game is as full as could be...and if you can find a site that says the exact opposite that mine did,then do it and stop putting down people who actually are posting evidence to support this post.

 

So what I see here is: I posted clearly debatable 'facts', put them across as some sort of proof, so I now need to go and find some other 'proof' to discredit your 'proof'.

Gotchya.

Edited April 10, 2012 by Sireene
reply to edited post

[Jederix]

Yes. STORY!

Daniel Erikson commented in some Conference interview some time before game release how each class has around 200 hours worth of story. Unless I have to sleep through 150 of those 200 hours, I don't see more than 50 hours of unique class story at ALL. All planet stories are common to classes on the same faction.

 

Both the Deceived and Hope trailers are massive slap in the face of the playerbase. There are no epic world PvP as shown in those trailers. Game doesn't support anything more than 8 v 8 PvP. Illum is a disaster. There's no large scale massive PvP fights as shown in the Sacking of Coruscant in the Deceived trailer. So, that trailer is a massive lie.

 

Perfect example of "This game did not live up to the hype I created in my own head for it."

 

When I watched the trailers, I thought "awesome, can't wait to play another Star Wars MMO", not "OMG the World PVP is going to be awesome!"

[Rayla_Felana]

Perfect example of "This game did not live up to the hype I created in my own head for it."

 

When I watched the trailers, I thought "awesome, can't wait to play another Star Wars MMO", not "OMG the World PVP is going to be awesome!"

 

LOL to true.

[Jederix]

WoW had a good, comprehensive server only LFG tool in 2005 - something SWTOR doesn't have.QUOTE]

 

Please tell me you aren't referring to the LFG Global Channel. It was like trade chat on steroids. It was a perfect example of what "not" to do when trying to create a LFG system more evolved than spamming chat channels for hours.

 

90% of the people on the old LFG Global Channel in WoW were attention whores, nothing more.

[Skirata_Kal]

Perfect example of "This game did not live up to the hype I created in my own head for it."

 

When I watched the trailers, I thought "awesome, can't wait to play another Star Wars MMO", not "OMG the World PVP is going to be awesome!"

 

Well said! The only thing conveyed by the trailers is background story. Anything beyond that is the player's fault (and this is coming from someone who enjoyed/misses the epic pitched battles in Hillsbrad, STV and at summoning stones in old school WoW).

[Fronteria]

Life's too short to play this mediocre game.

[Shrikestalker]

Life's too short to play this mediocre game.

But not short enough to post about it. Gotcha.

 

Please tell me you aren't referring to the LFG Global Channel. It was like trade chat on steroids. It was a perfect example of what "not" to do when trying to create a LFG system more evolved than spamming chat channels for hours.

 

90% of the people on the old LFG Global Channel in WoW were attention whores, nothing more.

 

Please don't ruin other people's rememberings from the past. Nostalgia tastes much better when not sprinkled with the salt and pepper of reality.

Edited April 10, 2012 by Shrikestalker

[Rayla_Felana]

Life's too short to play this mediocre game.

 

Yet you are here on it's forums. /self-own

[Skirata_Kal]

Yet you are here on it's forums. /self-own

 

Let's see if the next argument is about the forums being more fun than the game.

[Shrikestalker]

Let's see if the next argument is about the forums being more fun than the game.

 

It'll be "Well, I've got the sub plan but I hate the game so I'm going to get my money's worth posting about how much I hate it" or something equally.....

Edited April 10, 2012 by Shrikestalker

[Antissa]

I haven't been on in over a week and neither have any of the 50+ people in the guild

 

And you are complaining about low pop on servers?

[GreySix]

Yet you are here on it's forums. /self-own

 

"I hate this game, and I hate this place ... which ... is why ... I continue to post ... instead of doing something else with my time."

 

It's like watching old men at a park griping about the pigeons they're feeding.

Edited April 10, 2012 by GreySix

[Shrikestalker]

And you are complaining about low pop on servers?

He's using the Yogi Berra defense in reverse:

 

- On why he no longer went to Ruggeri's, a St. Louis restaurant: "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."- Yogi Berra

[eHug]

Let's see if the next argument is about the forums being more fun than the game.

 

Well observed. Plus you can play forum pvp while being at work!

[Balrizangor]

"I hate this game, and I hate this place ... which ... is why ... I continue to post ... instead of doing something else with my time."

 

It's like watching old men at a park griping about the pigeons they're feeding.

 

This gave me a good chuckle ... Nice analogy also, sadly someone will post some stupid response about why they post on the forums of a game they supposedly hate yet spend all their time reading and posting about ...

[Kthx]

If you increase the average population per server to be 600 or even 700/800, you still don't see much of a total increase, only get the subs up to 1.4 mil, 1.5 or so.

 

So is 1.5 million the new "dead"?

[eHug]

"I hate this game, and I hate this place ... which ... is why ... I continue to post ... instead of doing something else with my time."

 

It's like watching old men at a park griping about the pigeons they're feeding.

 

Actually I went from a complete SWTOR nerd to someone who's only pays/plays since my friends still do. I can't really explain why some people leave their friends as soon as they get bored of the game they play with them. Is it because most people playing MMORPGs these days believe they are playing single player games thus don't play them with friends anymore?