Server population is dropping...

[Sypiner]

Since the BW Community Rep said that this thread is for the server population discussion my hope is that BW devs and reps will read these posts. I'll talk about my experience. Obviously I have not played on every server, every day, but I think what I've noticed is representative of what many people have mentioned.

 

I got into SWTOR in one of the last waves of Early Access. I recall that as they were letting people in in waves, many servers began to fill up and there were queues. Towards the end of Early Access and at early launch BW pursued the dual strategy of increasing server caps and launching new servers. I was lucky enough that my server, Rogue Moon, was launched a few hours before I got in at Early Access. However, within days my server went to heavy population. By late December (i.e. well after release) most EU servers were between Medium and Full populations. And this was already after the round of server cap increases. I am looking at the EU server list as I write this, and 2/3 of the servers have Light population, while 1/3 is Standard. Unless BW have massively increased server population caps since December (and I don't think they have), I think the evidence is clear that server populations have fallen.

 

When I was playing in December and January, there were always well over 100 people in Fleet at peak times, and often 30-40 people on planets, so getting 2-4 man groups was quite easy. Now, even at peak play times, Fleet is around 40-60. Questing on planets feels almost like a single-player game. I can go an hour without seeing another player. Getting groups for 2-4 mans is near impossible.

 

For now, I am still enjoying the game and levelling my 2 characters. Most of the time I prefer to quest on my own, so the population is not too important. But more and more it is becoming frustrating that getting a group for an FP is only realistically possible at peak times, and even then takes 20-30 minutes to put together. I can imagine that at max lvl, where running FPs and Ops is a much bigger part of the game, the low populations on servers are definitely causing customer dissatisfaction.

 

In conclusion, I would strongly advise BW to either merge servers, or at least offer free transfers. I don't see what is the shame in admitting you have fewer players now than you did 1-2 months post release. What should be of prime importance to BW is to make sure the players who still play the game now continue to want to play it. I am sure BW can understand that in an MMO the ability to find others to play with is quite important.

[Valkirus]

In conclusion, I would strongly advise BW to either merge servers, or at least offer free transfers. I don't see what is the shame in admitting you have fewer players now than you did 1-2 months post release. What should be of prime importance to BW is to make sure the players who still play the game now continue to want to play it. I am sure BW can understand that in an MMO the ability to find others to play with is quite important.

 

They donot need to merge servers. A simple cross server Looking for Group tool for Flashpoints and end game content would solve the problems you mentioned. They are adding it for PVP Warfronts, for the concerns you have mentioned. All they need to do is make a decision to do it also for PVE content.

[Helistin]

If bioware were smart they would have had immediate server merge protocol set up back in beta.

 

The only MMO that has not needed server merges soon after release since WoW has been WoW. Every other MMO has had to merge servers.

 

Somehow i get the feeling they have the ability already to do server merges/transfers but they are waiting after 1.2 to see how much population it brings back to the game.

If thats not the case this game was even more in beta state that i could think of when they released it.

[Valkirus]

Meh...when you are on a server which may show it is standard pop and you cannot get groups to do Flashpoints even after standing in Fleet spamming for a grp...it does not matter how you label it. The issue remains the same, many players are having problens getting into groups for runs. Maybe you have lucked out and got into a active guild which does runs together often? But that is not the same in all cases for many other players. Edited April 11, 2012 by Trineda
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[Noxulifer]

Listen, some standard servers can have quite low populations while other have a bit higher. I wouldn´t say standard is dead though, but perhaps a bit unhealthy...

 

My server, though, IS dead. And it is light. At peak there are no more than 40-50 players in the fleet and 1 - 8 players on each planet. That is just awful and we need a solution to is fast. If they say they will charge us for a char transfer I quit, if they keep us guessing for a couple of weeks, I quit...

Edited April 11, 2012 by Trineda
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[GalacticKegger]

people still play this game?

 

lol

people still grief this game?

 

lol

Edited April 8, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[sambeta]

While there may well be 1.7 million subs it's safe to assume most of those are in the US. For me a low pop on the dxun server stats wise is: 16 people on a starter planet at peak time,

27 people on coruscant at peak time, the highest being 49, 24 people on Nar Shaddaa during peak, tatooine peak was 20, and hoth (this is where it gets depressing for group H4s etc)... A staggering 12 people. It seemingly got worse and worse after hoth as on Belsavis there were only 4/6 people on at peak. I took note of these figures not more than a week ago. When I started my sith playthrough (before moving server) there were only 7 people on korriban at peak.

 

On red eclipse numbers are better but it still becomes hard to find groups to play with on later planets. I'm just on balmorra now on my sith warrior and it's very hard to find a group for all the bonus quest HC as well as the others.

 

In honesty it's starting to feel like a single player game with a multiplayer feature slapped on later. The only group I can guarantee playing with is the other officers from my old guild.

 

Sorry about this long post but I just felt like I had to throw some input as to what a dying server is.

Edited April 11, 2012 by Trineda
removed quote

[Dissgro]

30-40 people on the fleet on Stereb Cities, 200 people during peek time on the whole server on Imp side (generously rounded up).

These are numbers you cannot work with i.e. play with.

 

BW stated they are working to allow server transfers, but I am afraid it will be too late by the time they implement it.

I guess transfers will arrive no sooner then mid May (it is a hunch); by this time players on ghost servers like mine will have migrated to competition games launching during this time...

 

Imho I doubt BW will allow free server transfers from low populated servers to high ones. It will be the other way around (from high to low) if we are lucky.

Anything else will cost us 15-20€ extra (again just a hunch).

 

 

There are 30 German servers, four to five are nicely populated, the other ones are lonely wasteland ._.

Of course I could reroll on one of those five servers, but I cannot even get myself to level my third alt up to 50, let alone start anew and leave two level 50 characters behind.

 

If I recall correctly (- I might be wrong, it has been awhile) Warhammer Online had the same population issue in the beginning as SW:ToR has now. They simply cloned the population of three servers and put the clones on a new one. You then had the choice to play on these populated servers if you so desired.

If BW would implement such a server merging solution (take five low populated servers make one high one), I would be very happy indeed. Heck, they could even shut the original five down and save a bit of resources for future use...

 

But as it stands now (at least for me), very low population makes me a very sad panda for you have no one to play with.

Edited April 8, 2012 by Dissgro

[corbanite]

Listen, some standard servers can have quite low populations while other have a bit higher. I wouldn´t say standard is dead though, but perhaps a bit unhealthy...

 

My server, though, IS dead. And it is light. At peak there are no more than 40-50 players in the fleet and 1 - 8 players on each planet. That is just awful and we need a solution to is fast. If they say they will charge us for a char transfer I quit, if they keep us guessing for a couple of weeks, I quit...

 

My friend there is plenty of evidence that 80% of the servers are dead. You can check for yourself in the server status tab. "Standard" pop starts with 30-40 in fleet, 15-20 level 50s and about 90 players a faction. That is just ridiculous..... Go check for yourself, it's a fact...

 

low pop server = 40-50 players in the fleet in one example.

standard pop server = starts with 30-40 in fleet

Edited April 8, 2012 by corbanite

[joffmonk]

Listen, some standard servers can have quite low populations while other have a bit higher. I wouldn´t say standard is dead though, but perhaps a bit unhealthy...

 

My server, though, IS dead. And it is light. At peak there are no more than 40-50 players in the fleet and 1 - 8 players on each planet. That is just awful and we need a solution to is fast. If they say they will charge us for a char transfer I quit, if they keep us guessing for a couple of weeks, I quit...

 

my server is similar, possibly worse, 27 people on rep. fleet tonight at 7:45pm...

 

have done 1 flash point in nearly 2 weeks coz there is not enough people lvling up to do them, warzones are joke, 2-3 minutes being outnumbered in nearly every match with just enough people to stop the timer then someone leaves restarting it again.

Its just not fun, its definatly not worth paying for so i cancelled my subs.

BW should have made moves to correct this problem before it got this bad and now its so bad more people are leaving out of frustration / boredom, it Might be too little too late.

 

such a shame another good MMO dieing because of sloppy development, 1.2 might help but a ghost server is still a ghost server, having lots of content is pointless if there is no one online to do it with.

[illgot]

Talked to my friends and they are definitely moving servers. They are doing this because our current server is dead.

 

Wierd thing is, they don't want to join the single full server on our coast, they instead want to join a server with a similar population just more balanced... I told them I will not keep playing and will cancel soon.

 

1.2 did not make it in time and the complete lack of server merges just killed this for me.

Edited April 9, 2012 by illgot

[Enkenon]

I'm not speaking as an expert and I don't know what the actual player numbers are but

it is a fact that my server that is usually flagged as having standard population

is the most "empty" server of all the MMOs I've played.

Even if there are a lot of players on line,I can't tell,cause the instanced nature of the game

makes it look as if there aren't enough.

For this reason SWTOR needs a lot more players on it's servers in order to achieve

the dense populated and lively feeling you get in other MMOs.

Given this fact I don't understand BWs' delay on server merges.

They should have done it yesterday.

Edited April 9, 2012 by Enkenon

[SneakyErvin]

What really annoys me with the low population isnt really the low pop itself, its the way the game is designed around FPs and the need to be on fleet to look for groups.

 

If they just added a x-server WZ and FP queue many problems would be solved quite easily. Aswell as allowing people to find FP groups from anywhere, not just from fleet. Sure I understand BW had great expectations for a resurrection of the MMO genres social aspects, but lets face it, thats not gonna happen.

 

It would have been fully possible if the fleet wasnt the level 50 hub where everyone had to be. Because the place lacks dailies and pretty much anything else to do. Now if the final hub would be corellia or ilum (a non-buggy ilum) things would be completely different. Players LFG would not have to sit and do nothing, they would be able to.

 

Do heroic missions.

Do regular daily missions.

Go find W-PvP (on pvp servers)

Grind mobs or gathering skills.

Socialize.

Hunt datacrons.

 

And so on... This would be with just the addition to move the level 50 hang out hub and move it to a planet with dailies.

 

If they added a LFG tool they would be able to do all those things aswell as go help out lowbie friends with quests on other planets. But honestly, a x-server LFG/WZ tool is very much needed and thats urgently.

 

I liked how it worked in WoW, because I could be bored and sign up to a RDF queue and have a blast, even though I didnt need anything from it. I could also go and farm mats during the queue time and be back where I left off after the instance.

 

It killed W-PvP, but thats not an issue in this game since W-PvP is null and void.

Edited April 9, 2012 by SneakyErvin

[Incendergel]

Thread split again. That should tell you something right there. This is what I posted on Friday which I'll continue again here because people still tie the two together. The subscribers posting in this thread asking for server merges to happen sooner rather than later ARE NOT saying the game is dead...

 

We are saying that there are "TOO" many servers with only a handful being at, or near, full capacity. And while we admit those servers are seeing a population influx or gain it is because new people see the full servers and move there first. Or that they are growing because word got around that they are happening servers. Both of which "appear" to be a growing environment.

 

Those of us left behind on the other servers which are low or lower have a 180 degree different opinion of how the game is being enjoyed. To be perfectly Frank, the game isn't enjoyable at all which leaves us with a few options. Reroll to a higher populated server and start over, or stop playing. Most agree waiting isn't a option because the longer you wait the quicker you find something else to fill the void. Again, the reason for the importance of priority for merging.

 

1. OP's thread title is "Server population is dropping..."

2. We know there is a "Faction" imbalance which favors Imperial side but that really isn't something BioWare can easily fix, even if they should anyway

3. There are too many servers or so it would appear

4. There are servers that are impacted more than others both in population and faction

5. Lower populated servers impact economy, market items, groups, raids, and PvP/WZ's

6. Some people chose to move on their own

7. Some people can't due to time or character investment (or stubborn)

8. The Fatman seems to be the go-forward peoples choice (10 minute queue last night for me)

9. LFG tool won't address 1 - 9 but it will help with raiding and instances - we know this

10. Some argue server merge higher priority than patch 1.2

11. Some servers show a population bump or bounce but not sure tied to people moving or new subscribers

12. We don't know if population is growing faster than people stopping from playing on deserted servers

 

Note: No points above say anything on a bad game or that it is dead. But after 70 some odd pages that is what I take out of it. So people do care and they want BioWare to fix it sooner rather than later before they just say to heck with it and lose the addiction to the friction...if you catch my drift.

 

This was last week. Throughout the entire weekend Fatman had over 200 people regardless of what zone or time of day it was. Over 200. In fact at one point the Imperial fleet was 300 strong. How can you not understand that impacts the overall feel of the game???

 

300 in the fleet. Standing around the class trainer or daily warzone quest hub and see nothing but subscriber and guild tag names is utterly amazing. Something I've not seen since pre-launch.

 

 

The Fatman(currently flagged as standard) 59 people, Korriban @ 0713 PST

Dragon Trail(currently flagged as light - when isn't it) 6 people, Republic Fleet @ 0714 PST

[Kunitsukami]

straight out accusation with no facts.. nice one. Unable to fathom that someones experience is different from yours. You want to feel that the game is dying and busy servers are empty then that is your choice.

 

Not all servers have a good pop.. not saying they do. But don't call me a liar because I am enjoying the game on my standard server

 

Irony, she is a cruel mistress. When you accuse someone of accusing other people of things without using facts, there's something you should use to make your point otherwise you become what is called a hypocrite.

 

Everyone here is agreeing with me, and it's true you can see it by going back on a medium population server in WoW like Stormrage EU, which has thousands on at non-peak times. This game has, sadly, become purgatory whilst people wait for either GW2, WoWPanda, or for another MMO to rise.

 

Only difference between this and purgatory is that there are people in purgatory.

 

Come on guy, you have to admit that 100 people on the major... actually the ONLY major city/environment of an MMO at peak times is horrifically weak.

 

I ask only 1 question of you and that is all... is 100 people on the imperial or republic fleet on some of the busiest EU servers, like Legions of Lettow, a "busy" MMO?

[Alasseon]

[...]

Come on guy, you have to admit that 100 people on the major... actually the ONLY major city/environment of an MMO at peak times is horrifically weak.

 

I ask only 1 question of you and that is all... is 100 people on the imperial or republic fleet on some of the busiest EU servers, like Legions of Lettow, a "busy" MMO?

 

It is terrible indeed. That is why I chose to reroll on The Tomb of Freedon Nadd (the EU's 'Fatman' server).

[Incendergel]

 

I ask only 1 question of you and that is all... is 100 people on the imperial or republic fleet on some of the busiest EU servers, like Legions of Lettow, a "busy" MMO?

 

Just going to second what Kunitsukami said. I'm also going to change it a bit to support some of my arguments.

 

Is 33 people in the Republic Fleet, during prime time, a healthy MMO server?

 

Of those 33 people 11 are level 50. Knowing 33 are in the fleet imagine how many are spread out across the various quest worlds. Do you think you can do any flashpoints? Do you think you can do any of the heroic + side quests? Do you think you could field any sort of weekly or daily raid? How long do you think a warzone would take to start? Once the warzone starts do you actually think you will field a full group of 8 or do you think it will start with uneven teams and turn into a loss?

 

Low populated servers ARE damaging the game. It doesn't matter if the server you play on is happening or not. A majority of the remaining servers are under utilized as it relates to hardware capacity and subscribers both of which cost BioWare money.

 

It costs them money when people leave faster than those joining and it costs them money in the HVAC / data center space with under utilized hardware.

 

You do the math.

[KrittaB]

Yeah but I believe that merges would have been better cause at this point it's clear SWTOR is no WoW killer. Why not try to help create a solid community on a few servers and then send out all the F2P passes?

 

It would guarantee a decent experience for most players rather than the lame experience everyone is having. First impressions are hard to get over..

 

Mergers will not happen. They just won't. Just the idea of it would be a nightmare to implement. Who get's priority on names?

 

They'll implement server transfers and a cross-server LFG tool. That's all we'll get, and that's all we'll need. Plus the more they wait, the more people realize that they can simply reroll onto another server and solve the problem themselves without Bioware's involvement. That's a win win scenario for Bioware.

[Unkknownsith]

I don't understand why merging servers is a sign weakness. So they opened to many to soon, so what I was a mistake. Own up to it and merge some servers to get a better community going. Tarro Blood was an early access server and it is now dying. Give me transfers or a merge, just something.

 

Merging servers in the computer industry has always been a sign the game is flopping, it's always been that way. First server mergers happen, then they continue to merge and next the game is opened to FTP status which generally is a death knell sign and says the game failed; it's always been like this in the games industry.

 

Personally I'm really peeved about this, Bioware usually has things very much on the ball. With the latest reactions from the Dev base about the critiscm from the "OH SO IMPORTANT CUSTOMER, WHOM PAYS YOUR SALARIES" I suspect now that their are a ton of Mythic Employee's working in this mmo. Why do I say this, the same knee jerk and hostile reactions were shown both in Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer, both of which died hard deaths because yet again the people in power gave their customer bases the finger when they complained.

 

So far I REALLy enjoy the instanced story line, absolutely love the crafting. I absolutely HATE the fact Bioware wasn't smart enough to put in what is considered industry standard amentities such as Macro's, Guild Tools, a Looking for group finder and a standard combat log tool.

 

Yes we understand why you didn't, no macro's to stop gold Farmers, we understand that. However no macro's makes guild recruiting a real pain in the arse.

 

In Wow my guild was 256 members strong with a baseline of 24 members always online at any one time, having been grouping with another guild for when we were short some people for our 2nd raid team - we decided on a merger and now the merged guild is 521 members strong with 35-50 online at any given time.

 

Why do I tell you this, because we sent officers over here to form a branch guild in Old Republic. The advanced members who did come over to build our branch guild here have mainly all left, why? community members picking fights with them over their frustration with NO Looking for group finder, an inability to even recruit members.

 

So as it stands now my officers who are the GM/Co-GM have informed me if things don't pick up soon after 1.2 drops they will be heading back to Wow on a permanent basis.

 

Not because they don't like your game Bioware/EA. They will be leaving out of pure frustration at the inability to grow the guild here, we can't convince the main guild in wow to come because of members very bad experiences with "hot shots" picking fights with them over their frustration not to be able to 1. lock in solid groups for either questing or heroics 2. NO Guild Tools to be able to grow the guild.

 

It's sad because your instanced story line and marvelous crafting really make this game enjoyable, lack of Communication and Guild Tool Functionality is really killing what should have been a blockbuster winner with exponential growth.

 

Hopefully you learn from this post rather than get knee jerk reactionary, because as it stands now with server populations dwindling, YOU don't have the luxury of becoming reactionary with your customer base.

Edited April 9, 2012 by Unkknownsith

[Kunitsukami]

Servers mergers are extremely rarely done by actually merging the servers, they usually call it "server migration" as they just get everyone from one server to reroll on another one for free whilst having to choose a name again. 99% of the time the busier server gets to keep their names as that's the one being migrated onto.

[Molik]

easy answer: your server population dwindled, and instead of rerolling another character on a more populated server, you people scream "MERGE" cause your too lazy to reroll, fyi it isnt going to happen for a while if at all so heres a easy answer:

 

REROLL!!!

[Unkknownsith]

easy answer: your server population dwindled, and instead of rerolling another character on a more populated server, you people scream "MERGE" cause your too lazy to reroll, fyi it isnt going to happen for a while if at all so heres a easy answer:

 

REROLL!!!

 

Nobodies going to do that when they've spent the time building 1 or more 50's, what they will do is just hit the cancel button and go back to an old tried and true mmo that they perceive has more stability.

 

Again Bioware shouldn't be screaming REROLL, what they should be doing is finding out why their game is dropping players and FIX the reason PDQ.

[Jederix]

James Ohlen's response to the character transfer question from PAX East:

"That is one of our #1 priorities right now. I walk into our programmer’s office and ask them everyday if we can get that feature out faster. So yes, it is coming soon. We need to make sure when you xfer over that it comes with everything like legacy, guild and all that stuff. It is not as easy as it might seem."

 

Lies. All armchair developers know that there is a switch they can flip and BOOM, instant server transfers allowed!!

[Frostvein]

Lies. All armchair developers know that there is a switch they can flip and BOOM, instant server transfers allowed!!

 

Can I ask you a simple question then?

 

Why wasn't such an important feature ready at launch?

[thegimble]

easy answer: your server population dwindled, and instead of rerolling another character on a more populated server, you people scream "MERGE" cause your too lazy to reroll, fyi it isnt going to happen for a while if at all so heres a easy answer:

 

REROLL!!!

 

WHY?

 

Why should a person who has got to level 50 and taken over a month to do so have to do it again. Sometimes i do wonder if Bioware have their oen people on forums. Instead of having thousands of people go on another server and start from scratch Bioware only needs to spend a bit of its resources into getting server merged to balance it out.

 

People are not too lazy they will just go back to WOW or move onto Diablo 3 and GW2. So instead of callnig everyone else lazy its Bioware that's lazy and eventually lack of population will eventually become the downfall.