Population Estimates for the Top 20 US Servers

[Leuthispar]

Oh... hangon... so something like this....

If we calculate the total population, and put 'em on to 2000-person servers (busy, but with room to grow), it would look like this. "2k-servers" means how many 2000-person servers are needed.

 

41 PvP servers; average pop = 385; total pop = 15,813; 7.9 2k-Servers

70 PvE servers; average pop = 479; total pop = 33,553; 16.8 2k-Servers

3 RP PvP servers; average pop = 680; total pop = 2,040; 1.0 2k-Servers

9 RP PvE servers; average pop = 598; total pop = 5,390; 2.7 2k-Servers

 

Again, US only.

 

Paige

 

Great work with the numbers, and I'm glad someone put the work in to reveal the reality behind the rapidly withering server population, since BW and EA are already in full damage control mode and refuse to comment on numbers except when feeding the investors and public innacurate and beefed up numbers of subscribers.

 

So based on your data if the number of servers was to be reduced so that they can have healthy populations without log-in queues and yet still have room for growth(most people who have left will not come back, especially with the release of 4 other huge mmos over the next few months) we should have instead of:

 

41 PVP servers: 10

70 PVE Servers : 20

3 RP/PVE Servers: 2

9 RP/PVP Servers: 4

 

So from 123 US servers to 36, that is 30% of just the US servers a mere 5 months after launch. While some people say that 30% is normal retention rate for most mmos, that number is usually reached around a year after launch and subscriptions have somewhat stabilized, we're halfway there and there are still huge amounts of people quitting. I personally like this game and would rather stay playing for a long time but don't see much left in another year. The constant denial by both the brown-nosing community and the BW/EA staff about actual number of players and subscribers is preventing the issue to be accurately recognized and proper action taken to fix it. If this data is accurate then I'm sorry to say but a few char transfers will not fix the issue but merely slow down the exodus of players especially with the launch of 4 other long awaited mmos in the next months.

[Tiaa]

I need to stop going to those forums. They are so DEPRESSING.

 

That's because anyone you see on this forum constantly barely plays the game.

[Reshals]

I am on Juyo (US East - PVE) and Torstatus has it at a 1.29 which according to the OP's original formula puts our average at 540 population...

 

Evenings and weekends its not hard to find random PUG groups for Flashpoints or to Queue for WZs and get them back to back or at least every 5-10 minutes.

 

But if you don't normally play at peak evening times, which I don't b/c of when I work, it can be frustrating if you don't find a good guild active in your play time. I have been fortunate to find a guild on my server that runs two ops a week that I can usually make it to and we regularly clear EV and KP on Hardmode. We haven't tried and probably aren't ready for EC but I can't complain after reading so much on the forums about people not able to run anything.

 

I would love to see Juyo population Double what it currently is, but don't neccesarily want Fatman level population due to waiting queues just to log into the game... if Fatman is 3500 average with 20 minute waits I'd prefer somewhere around maybe 2250 average with no wait times ...

 

If the would just cut the number of servers by HALF that would be a significant improvement and still leave room for the playerbase to grow if needed (Wishful thinking I'm sure) ...

[Nyghtfal]

All I know is if it weren't for my wife - who had no interest in the game herself until she tried the weekend beta last year - I'd have no reason to log in anymore, and my main character is only 25. In fact, neither one of us have felt the least bit inclined to join a guild.

 

Frankly I'm about ready to jump ship and head over to GW3 once it's released. I renewed my WoW account the other day and rolled my first Druid. I never realized shapeshifting could be so much fun (grin). My only other character is an 85 Frost Mage.

Edited May 9, 2012 by Nyghtfal

[Bloodstealer]

My thought is, I'm glad I picked Fatman when I first purchased the game.

 

Well that adds alot to the discussion.. take you long to think that up did it!

 

 

I have been on Colonel Tobin since launch.. was one of the whine servers cos of queue times from the outset only differnence now is the whines are still about que times... but not the right queues

 

When I took a glance last night around 6pm (5pm-11pm is normally a peak time that I see) there were 68 total.. though this number i believe is often bugged... could be less but I am certain it wasn't anywhere near the 250ish the maths kinda suggests, all evening.

Saying that I think the maths look a pretty solid way of approximating things.. but the peaks and troughs of populations, which should normally been easily identifyable based on times of the day for the most part seem to be fairly flatline across the 3 other servers I have placed toons on to test the water with.

 

But I also agree... with another poster... the flipside of the equation brings about much more prevalent perfomace issues.. at least with poor pop server stats I have seen FPS around 25 - 40 FPS in Denova (when it finally pings), on a n other server I have been lucky to over 20FPS period!

[Bloodstealer]

All I know is if it weren't for my wife - who had no interest in the game herself until she tried the weekend beta last year - I'd have no reason to log in anymore, and my main character is only 25. In fact, neither one of us have felt the least bit inclined to join a guild.

 

Frankly I'm about ready to jump ship and head over to GW3 once it's released. I renewed my WoW account the other day and rolled my first Druid. I never realized shapeshifting could be so much fun (grin). My only other character is an 85 Frost Mage.

 

Errm you could be waiting a while to hop into GW3.. seeing GW2 is only just arriving...

[Tiaa]

I wonder why this thread isn't filled with angry people saying the numbers aren't true?

 

I guess it's harder to argue with math.

 

I think it's pretty obvious this game doesn't even have 1.3 million players.

 

I.

Edited May 9, 2012 by Tiaa

[thomasgallant]

I wonder why this thread isn't filled with angry people saying the numbers aren't true?

 

I guess it's harder to argue with math.

 

I think it's pretty obvious this game doesn't even have 1.3 million players.

 

I.

 

I cant say the math is wrong.. though in the origional estimates he seems to be using the average at 250.. for a light server that can have up to 500... 250 people either way can be alot of a difference..

[NasherUK]

I read 10-15%, so in theory if you calculated a population for all servers and them multiplied by 7-10x you would get an estimate of current active subs.

 

Yep, which comes to...no where near as many as they claim since they don't physically have enough servers to hold them all

[Scorpienne]

I wonder why this thread isn't filled with angry people saying the numbers aren't true?

I guess it's harder to argue with math.

I think it's pretty obvious this game doesn't even have 1.3 million players.

 

Well, I dunno, I'm trying not to be inflammatory, and I'm more than willing to consider a different and perhaps better analysis if someone has one to offer. I'm a scientist by trade, so I don't care *what* the answer is, I just want to try to do good science and come up with the most accurate "true" result. Having said that, it *is* pretty hard to argue with math! ;-)

 

I think it's possible that there are 1.3M active subscriptions. I can find about 100,000 players online at any given time, on average, over the last two weeks. If only about a tenth of the population is online at once (which is a complete unknown, but seems more-or-less reasonable when you consider casual players that login once a week for a few hours) then that's a million players right there. Given the approximation of the math that light = 250, standard = 500 and so on, those numbers could *easily* be off by 30%, which gives wiggle room up to 1.3 million. This is all highly speculative, of course, and depends strongly on how much of the total population is online at any one time - but - it's entirely possible that there are 1.3M subs. Or maybe it's not entirely impossible that there are 1.3M subs. <shrug> I'll do the data dance again in a month or so and see if the numbers change.

 

Paige

[thomasgallant]

Yep, which comes to...no where near as many as they claim since they don't physically have enough servers to hold them all

 

is your math assuming everyone is playing at the same time??

 

becuase you know that isnt the case right? i have no doubt that if everyone tried to log into the game at the same time the servers would all fill up and we would have the queues we used to have in beta..

 

i dont know if you figured that into your math..but that would explain why there seems to be not enough servers to hold eveyrone.

[Scorpienne]

I cant say the math is wrong.. though in the origional estimates he seems to be using the average at 250.. for a light server that can have up to 500... 250 people either way can be alot of a difference..

 

Oh absolutely! Mythbusting and I have never claimed those numbers are ironbound. They are definitely uncertain. They could easily be off by 50% either way. I don't think they're off more than 10x (an order of magnitude) though, given the data he's accumulated.

 

Paige

[Torcer]

I wonder why this thread isn't filled with angry people saying the numbers aren't true?

 

I guess it's harder to argue with math.

 

 

I.

 

Probably because I look at the server in the OP with 600 average population and think, “Boy, I wish my server had a average 600 pop.”

 

/sigh

 

What's frustrating is that it's so unnecessary, it's like being punished for WANTING to play TOR.

Edited May 9, 2012 by Torcer

[Scorpienne]

is your math assuming everyone is playing at the same time??

 

becuase you know that isnt the case right? i have no doubt that if everyone tried to log into the game at the same time the servers would all fill up and we would have the queues we used to have in beta..

 

i dont know if you figured that into your math..but that would explain why there seems to be not enough servers to hold eveyrone.

 

Hmmm.... okay, so there's 94 Eur/Aus servers and 123 US servers, so 217 servers overall... so 1,300,000 / 217 = 5991 people per server. If we assume only 10% of the population is logged in at any one time, that says that the average population is 599 people. If I average the average populations of all 217 servers given my math, I get about 460 people per server... that's darned close - within 25%. I think my numbers might be off 30%-50% of the real numbers.

 

Link to spreadsheet with math. I welcome people to look at the numbers and see if they'd do the analysis differently.

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aregkvys5QFodFJ2OWN5U0hwaVFBYWdqUUh1WmdZUFE

 

There are a *lot* of assumptions, 10% pop logged in at once, my math being 30%-50% off, but it's pretty close, I think.

 

Did I mention that *I love math*?

 

Paige

Edited May 9, 2012 by Scorpienne

[Serbegorn]

Very depressing, my server was full with ques at launch, at 6th place a month before 1.2, 16th place 2 weeks ago, now its not even in the top 20. But im sure some fanboy will point out that its somehow my fault.

 

L2P, lol jk.

[kitsinni]

Nevermind I read the chart backwards lol Edited May 9, 2012 by kitsinni

[islander]

Dear OP:

 

It's a nice idea this guy did. He's still off.

 

All I know, is on Kinrath Spider, during PRIMETIME hours, the server never has more then 300 people online. It reliably caps at around 200-225 Imperials at best, and the Republic side is much, much leaner.

 

It's absolute desolation out there, and my server is FAR from alone. I want to play with a couple thousand people - not a couple hundred.

[Cretinus]

From what I've been reading in the forums lately, it seems that maximally 600 players per server at prime time would be a good estimate of the current situation. This has nothing to do with the amount of subs per server (which should be at least 1.3 million / 218 servers = about 6k subs per server), but rather with people's playing habits.

A healthy population would be something like 2400 players per server at prime time, i.e. 4 times more than currently. This means that the amount of servers should be 1/4 of what it is now.

Edited May 9, 2012 by Cretinus

[Scorpienne]

Dear OP:

 

It's a nice idea this guy did. He's still off.

 

All I know, is on Kinrath Spider, during PRIMETIME hours, the server never has more then 300 people online. It reliably caps at around 200-225 Imperials at best, and the Republic side is much, much leaner.

 

It's absolute desolation out there, and my server is FAR from alone. I want to play with a couple thousand people - not a couple hundred.

 

Islander, you've got the heart of one of the main limitations of the work. I don't think the numbers are that off, it's just the way the system is set up. All we know is that light seems to *stop* at 500 people. It might be 4 people, or 400 people, but it's all still "light". I don't know of a way to estimate the population of a light server other than to say it's the median between 0 and the maximum value of light, which is approximately 500, so I called it 250.

 

http://www.torstatus.net/kinrath-spider/history/7d#!/kinrath-spider/trends/7d

 

Kinrath Spider's phi value is 0.98, which is essentially too low to register. All we know is that it averages 500 people or less most of the time because it's almost always light. I can guestimate that as a population of 250 players... but it could be much less, or more.

 

Paige

[Powderhorn]

By my understanding, Bioware can and is tracking all of the various server populations, their peaks, troughs, etc. in hard numbers. For reasons that will be left to each individual to decide upon, they will not disclose that information. Thankfully, Paige has done a lot of legwork for us on this one.

[Zalgred]

The Corellian Run server has a very healthy population... In peak hours its always heavy.

[Nyghtfal]

Errm you could be waiting a while to hop into GW3.. seeing GW2 is only just arriving...

 

D'oh! Right... hehehe

[Darkhosis]

I play on Shadow Hand where the average according to your charts is 600. If the population is 600 then 600 people aren't enough to sustain a server. My server is quite dead feeling if not technically dead already. All I know is the numbers dwindle day by day. The GTN is dead already and finding a group.... Well like the New Yorkers say- Fuggeddaboutit!

[Scorpienne]

That's a good question... I "guestimated" that 2000 active characters (so maybe 20,000 actual accounts, assuming 10% activity) is enough to keep a server feeling "good".

 

My server, Sanctum of the Exalted is about 600-1000 people during peak hours. It feels good to me.

 

What are your experiences? How many people is "enough"?

 

Paige

[konstan]

Tarro Blood, 100 people on the fleet during peak hours.

I still find people to raid with, but its down to maybe 3 or 4 guilds running regular raids.