Is The Fatman Saving SWTOR?

[Khellus]

The sub loss is not bad but it comes at the same time as they opened the 3 asia/pacific servers. so many servers that where decently populated where left weakened by the two events. which than began a mass exodus to more populated servers, making these servers barren. If Cross server WZ's would have been added during this time line it would have counter balanced alot of elder game player, but it was delayed until TBD.

This was poor implemnting of servces and someone should have their knucles racked with a ruler.

So now they will have to create a transfer system, that will encourage those who havent already rerolled/quit to merge themselves on mid range servers.This will take priority over x-server, but only slightly.

With these two systems on the burner i would bet open world pvp (ilum revamp) has been set back even further in the to do list.

There are several servers that reach heavy/full RP-pvp RP Pve PVP( i believe 2 pvp 2 pve and 1 each for rp and rp-pvp), but the fatman is the only one that seems to never go below standard at any hour.

[Talon_strikes]

There is also a nice list a mid pop servers.

I kinda feel a bit iffy about "STANDARD" populated servers in my opinion. When I was on the Vulkar Highway the server still felt dead when it was "STANDARD". I hope players do not think that if the Fleet alone has a lot of players that means the server is doing just fine—because in my opinion it may not. Starter and capital planets may be dead, but more possibly the ones you reach towards endgame are more likely dead.

 

I'd really like to see a lot of these servers cutoff from the game so lots of the servers can truly feel like an MMO. I've seen threads with players QQing that they will not make alts until transfers—and those won't arrive till early summer.

[Lakhesis]

The three Australian servers have been awesome since the free transfer for oceania players. Always heavy - very heavy every night but never full. Pings at about 50ms are absolutely awesome and has rarely been seen before in Aus/NZ.

 

Yeah, they're doing their damnedest to piss off oceanics via the multiple maintenances a week thing, but other than that their oceanic support is magnificent. I'm still paying them largely because they're running locally based servers - if they weren't locally based I'd probably have canceled my sub already. I do enjoy mucking around casually with swtor, but I'm not particularly devoted to it & I see significant (although slowly improving) flaws which are counterbalanced primarily by high pop oz based servers (for me anyway).

 

Oceanic region servers are an excellent size. Fleet gets a touch laggy occasionally in primetime depending on your settings, but it's not like you're doing combat there so whatever. Plenty of people to do stuff with at just about all hours. Perfect pop imo.

[ronnymortier]

Tomb of Freedon Nadd is the European Fatman. Heavy to very heavy at peaktimes, full with queues sometimes during the weekend. Torstatus has it listed as number 2 on their top 20 server list. The game feels very much like an MMO there. Groups are formed in minutes. Lots of fun.

 

My 2 main characters are stuck on The Exile's Crystal. That server is not 'light'. It's a tomb. And there are a lot more servers like that.

[Typeslice]

Really? To be honest, I've never noticed! I usually just see many of the servers as "LIGHT" and very few as "STANDARD".

 

I'll go look into more of the population statistics of any other servers and see what I come up with. It is nice to hear a few other servers feeling like The Fatman server.

 

It's never as good or as bad as you think. Don't believe the hype. Game is going to be fine long term. Numerous Standard servers have very active communities and guilds, mine included (Darth Bandon).

 

BW launched with too many servers because people QQ'd about early access, then QQ'd about queue times. We reap what we sow. Once they offer transfers, and eventually close dead servers, the will be where they should have been from launch and the game will thrive.

[KnightFireX]

Is it just me, or is The Fatman server the only server saving this game from dying?

 

In the server, it's actually not that hard to group for any mission and players even ask to do any kinds of Operations on the Fleet. Socialization is pretty easy and can be quite fun—especially if you have a nice, tight-knit guild to socialize with. You find the Fleet, Capital and Starting Planets as the most populated within the server, with the other planets having a decent-to-high population.

 

Being in a highly populated server doesn't mean it comes without its cons, because the general chat is usually full of trolls and spam of guild recruitment posts (ones that are posted every 20 secs or so), and there will be players who really just make the experience of the game not-so-enjoyable.

 

Despite all the bugs, the lack of content you reach during endgame and its other cons (mentioned above), is The Fatman keeping most of the game alive? It's population, activity and communities within the server might be what's keeping players to stay (and making more players re-roll each day).

 

Apparently SWTOR has had a decline of nearly 25% of players, but that—and the end of the Rakghoul Plague Event—just seemed to affect The Fatman server population just minimally.

 

I've created this thread for a mature discussion intended for a Podcast that I'll be appearing on Monday the 14th.

 

So could The Fatman's factors in not just population, but the experience of the game and activity of the communities, be saving SWTOR? /Discuss!

 

Maybe if you and other spent more time in game and less time on these board complaining about the lack of people in game then you wouldn't have problems finding groups.

 

I'm not on Fatman and I've never had a problem find groups to game with on my server.

[Haeso]

Is it just me, or is The Fatman server the only server saving this game from dying?

 

No, it's killing it if anything. Trust me, everyone rerolling to a handful of servers and abandoning everyone who doesn't want to reroll will only kill the game faster.

[contacts]

Maybe if you and other spent more time in game and less time on these board complaining about the lack of people in game then you wouldn't have problems finding groups.

 

I'm not on Fatman and I've never had a problem find groups to game with on my server.

 

yeah, me and the other 2 people in fleet atm. or me and the other 8 people in fleet at prime time. how about trying to pvp when there isnt even 8 level 50 players on the entire server? its not for lack of trying, its just an almost complete absence of other players.

[RixoFutu]

It can be suprising, but USA aren't the whole world. In Europe there are also very good servers, one or two (Red Eclipse, LoL).

[johnyangelo]

http://www.torstatus.net/

 

Basically all of those TOP 20 servers are pretty much playable. I would even say that servers up to 1.30 are playable.

 

/thread

[Haeso]

http://www.torstatus.net/

 

Basically all of those TOP 20 servers are pretty much playable. I would even say that servers up to 1.30 are playable.

 

/thread

 

 

So, because slightly over a tenth of the servers are playable, that house maybe an eighth of the population, everything is okay? Because I read that as the opposite of okay. I'm hoping I'm misreading your stance, rather than you actually believe maybe an eighth of the population having a playable experience is okay...

[rjkishida]

one or two servers can't save a game. just that simple. you need more subscribers than that to keep a game afloat.

[DarthSabreth]

no, not really... Lord Adraas on the empire side has a really nice population. but they really do need to merge the servers badly.

 

I rolled republic on Kath Hound and that server is dead, i think the only thing holding them back at the moment from doing this is the legacy system. moving folks around with out disrupting the legacy system must be difficult to say the very least.

[RTCBrad]

ToFN is just as populated as Fatman.

[SojournerNC]

During this same time period...Blizzard has been pimping Pandas like crazy. I've never seen such a huge beta from them ever. Give it time. The allure of giant balls of fur will only last so long. Blizzard is out of story, out of ideas, Pandaria is a last ditch to milk folks till Titan.

[Tiaa]

Considering approximately 2/3 of the game's servers boast stable and sustainable communities no, the Fatman is not the only thing keeping the game going.

 

2/3.

 

That explains the cries for server mergers.

 

Oh wait...

[DarthSabreth]

During this same time period...Blizzard has been pimping Pandas like crazy. I've never seen such a huge beta from them ever. Give it time. The allure of giant balls of fur will only last so long. Blizzard is out of story, out of ideas, Pandaria is a last ditch to milk folks till Titan.

 

ROFL the sad thing is that it was originally an april fools day prank for the RTS the frozen throne. but it eventually worked its way into the lore. I myself cant believe they went with pandas. seems like a effort to drive up the sales in asia.

 

http://www.wowpedia.org/Pandaren_(April_Fools)

[amnie]

I don't ever want to tell my grandchildren I played on a server called 'the fatman'

[lesican]

The Shadow Runner, an EU PvP server.

 

Peak Times we have 20 people on fleet on the republic side. I queued for 4.5hrs the other day for a wz. When it eventually popped we triple capped on Alderaan as the enemy only had 4 people.

 

I really like this game, but I find it hard to play in its current state.

[Joeblows]

ROFL the sad thing is that it was originally an april fools day prank for the RTS the frozen throne. but it eventually worked its way into the lore. I myself cant believe they went with pandas. seems like a effort to drive up the sales in asia.

 

http://www.wowpedia.org/Pandaren_(April_Fools)

 

Thats actually a wise and smart business move.

[ConradLionhart]

Thats actually a wise and smart business move.

 

But when SW:TOR tries to expand in more territories and give free weekends, people complain about it.

[chaosdefined]

Considering approximately 2/3 of the game's servers boast stable and sustainable communities no, the Fatman is not the only thing keeping the game going.

 

I would love to know where you decided to pull that information from!

 

Have you been on every single server spending weeks 'experiencing' their thriving communities?

 

Or did you roll on every single server and spend 10 minutes seeing how much people spammed General Chat for pugs?

[FlyinSpaghetti]

Considering approximately 2/3 of the game's servers boast stable and sustainable communities no, the Fatman is not the only thing keeping the game going.

 

That depends of your definition of stable and unstable.

 

When there's less than 20 per planet during peak times, nobody grouping up for flashpoints or ops, ultra long PvP queues and a dead end economy then I class that as unstable. From what I've seen more than two thirds of servers are like what I've described above.

Edited May 9, 2012 by FlyinSpaghetti

[JeramieCrowe]

Is it just me, or is The Fatman server the only server saving this game from dying?

 

Nope. My server has about 150 on Fleet every day. On weekends, it actually usually instances. Two days ago, there were 71 on Coruscant. Alt-rollers galore! Don't see as many 50s as you think there should be? It's because 1.2 worked like a charm! A week and a half ago, I personally got a full 24-man together in 20 minutes....not once...not twice...but THREE times in two days on Tatooine using only Tatooine chat (there were 90 there) and the global LFG channel.

 

My server is listed on TORstatus.net as 20th. That means that 19 servers are as good as or better than mine, and that at least 10 to 20 more past mine are decent.

 

So, the upcoming transfer/shut-down culling of low-pops should work as beautifully as it did for RIFT last year. Check it out. The proof is in the RIFT pudding.

[chaosdefined]

 

My server is listed on TORstatus.net as 20th. That means that 19 servers are as good as or better than mine, and that at least 10 to 20 more past mine are decent.

 

Which server would that be out of interest?