Jump to content

How many servers could they condense this to?


HKDeath

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 74
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Top Posters In This Topic

From 123 servers to 8 servers, I can just lol about that.

 

Anyway it's 91 EU servers indeed. If you would have to fit all EU players on 4 servers, it would lead to a massive explosion of the servers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My best guess is merging them to 1/4, so around 30 US and 25 u would be a start.

 

Maybe lower, since ilum is no longer popular that zone won't be there to make a large chunk of the population play powerpoint.tor

 

Condensing that far might be a serious issue. The game is currently sitting on 1.3 million subs. Let's just say that 300,000 of those are inactive or won't be around after a period of time. So then we'll work with 1 million. There are 217 servers total. That means that if all servers were evenly distributed each one would have about 4,600 people. That would put the NA total population at over 565,000. If you reduce the 123 NA servers to 30 and they are evenly distributed (which we know that won't happen) then each server would have nearly 19,000 players on it. I don't think any of the servers could handle this at peak hours. There would be some outrageous queue times. Please correct me if my math is wrong.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From 123 servers to 8 servers, I can just lol about that.

 

Anyway it's 91 EU servers indeed. If you would have to fit all EU players on 4 servers, it would lead to a massive explosion of the servers.

 

I revised it a bit figuring 3 servers of each type.

 

That's still 123 down to 12. But 90% of those 123 and a similar 90% of 91, both according to TORStatus, are light.

 

All these posts have people saying there's like 60 empire and 40 pub (or much less! I'm being generous) on their servers at times. So if that's 100 total people (again being generous) and a heavy server like Fatman is supposedly 2000, then that's 20 light servers to make 1 Fatman, and again that's with generous numbers.

 

Reducing it down to 12 servers sounds pretty much just right.

 

I'm with you though, it makes me lol. But I think we're loling for different reasons.

Edited by HKDeath
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Condensing that far might be a serious issue. The game is currently sitting on 1.3 million subs. Let's just say that 300,000 of those are inactive or won't be around after a period of time. So then we'll work with 1 million. There are 217 servers total. That means that if all servers were evenly distributed each one would have about 4,600 people. That would put the NA total population at over 565,000. If you reduce the 123 NA servers to 30 and they are evenly distributed (which we know that won't happen) then each server would have nearly 19,000 players on it. I don't think any of the servers could handle this at peak hours. There would be some outrageous queue times. Please correct me if my math is wrong.

 

In general, I agree with your assessment.

 

And the thing is, a lot of people are going to either go active in game (on active subscriptions) again or resub when character transfers go live.

 

The 0.1% who are the professional game haters and cry babies that bash this forum 7/24 probably won't, but honestly, who gives a rats behind. They contribute nothing to the game anyway.

 

Anyway, players in population limbo right now, are going to want to move to active servers and play on active servers, so it is going to happen. And timing wise, it's going to fall pretty close with 1.3, so there will be people active in game again for the patch (like always happens with MMOs after major patches. The Asia Pac servers appear to be prototypical of about ideal loading right now, so if they make adjustments to NA and EU in kind, then I am confident things will smooth out nicely. Nobody knows exactly how many servers that woud be though.

 

If Bioware cuts the server farms too lean then there will likely be 3+ hours queues on all servers. So they have to find the right balance, and ONLY BIOWARE has the data and metrics to know what is really going on inside each server in terms of active subs, play time %, etc. etc. So ONLY BIOWARE can make an accurate assessment of how many servers they consolidate population on via transfers.

 

All this alleged expert discussion about how many servers are needed is probably the siliest discussion in the forum right now. Nobody has accurate enough data to do anything other then pull odd stuff out of odd places of their body IMO.

Edited by Andryah
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is the hub of the game. You go through there quite often even if only for a short time. At 50 (I'm guessing as I don't have any lvl 50 characters) there really isn't anywhere else to be. It's the one place that everyone goes through on a regular basis and so is a good indication of server population.

 

Not really.

 

I have a friend on Harbinger, so I recently rolled there to play an alt there with her. I think everyone would agree that Harbinger is a healthy server. If you actually check planet by planet you will find most people are on planets, NOT fleet. Example this afternoon (not even prime play time): Fleet: 85, Balmora 70, Tatooine 65, Dromund Kass 95, Nar Shadda 72, Level 50 instance content, crammed with people, etc. etc. etc. The end game content is flush with people, and since it's an active and populated server, character dwell time in Fleet is low.

 

My point being, Fleet is really only a transitory grouping point for level 50s anymore on healthy servers. The planets are alive, active, and have a lot of activity on them. Fleet, not so much.

 

Unhealthy servers, it's pointless to even discuss because they are going to open server transfers and set the rules to drive people to higher populations on fewer servers and close the servers that are not needed after transfers settle in.

 

Using Fleet as any basis to judge a servers population is inaccurate and pointless.

Edited by Andryah
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is a fine balancing act. I've never had a queue that I had to wait for and I wouldn't want to wait more than 5 minutes to be able to log on - not even if they were paying me 1000 credits a minute for wait time.

 

Having a consistent queue is far more likely to cause me to unsubscribe than an empty server. I doubt if I am alone in this attitude.

 

After logging-in instantly to an almost empty server for a month I happily endure Fatman's 10-20 mins primetime queue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

After logging-in instantly to an almost empty server for a month I happily endure Fatman's 10-20 mins primetime queue.

 

Yeah, how do you feel about a 2-3 hour queue? Because if they cull out too many servers, that's exactly what the players will be left with on every server.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In general, I agree with your assessment.

 

And the thing is, a lot of people are going to either go active in game (on active subscriptions) again or resub when character transfers go live.

 

The 0.1% who are the professional game haters and cry babies that bash this forum 7/24 probably won't, but honestly, who gives a rats behind. They contribute nothing to the game anyway.

 

Anyway, players in population limbo right now, are going to want to move to active servers and play on active servers, so it is going to happen. And timing wise, it's going to fall pretty close with 1.3, so there will be people active in game again for the patch (like always happens with MMOs after major patches. The Asia Pac servers appear to be prototypical of about ideal loading right now, so if they make adjustments to NA and EU in kind, then I am confident things will smooth out nicely. Nobody knows exactly how many servers that woud be though.

 

If Bioware cuts the server farms too lean then there will likely be 3+ hours queues on all servers. So they have to find the right balance, and ONLY BIOWARE has the data and metrics to know what is really going on inside each server in terms of active subs, play time %, etc. etc. So ONLY BIOWARE can make an accurate assessment of how many servers they consolidate population on via transfers.

 

All this alleged expert discussion about how many servers are needed is probably the siliest discussion in the forum right now. Nobody has accurate enough data to do anything other then pull odd stuff out of odd places of their body IMO.

You sure BW has the numbers? Didn't someone tell us a few weeks ago that active subs had not declined?

Anyways, they certainly will have to shut down 10's of servers which is going to be a huge negative PR hit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I revised it a bit figuring 3 servers of each type.

 

That's still 123 down to 12. But 90% of those 123 and a similar 90% of 91, both according to TORStatus, are light.

 

All these posts have people saying there's like 60 empire and 40 pub (or much less! I'm being generous) on their servers at times. So if that's 100 total people (again being generous) and a heavy server like Fatman is supposedly 2000, then that's 20 light servers to make 1 Fatman, and again that's with generous numbers.

 

Reducing it down to 12 servers sounds pretty much just right.

 

I'm with you though, it makes me lol. But I think we're loling for different reasons.

 

Nah, my server is number 20 on TORstatus.net, and really doesn't need any more people on it. There are plenty. I'm thinking more in the neighborhood of 50 servers, easy.

Edited by JeramieCrowe
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Its also worth noting that some players want to play on small to mid sized servers, forcibly shrinking the number until ALL servers are full doesnt give an option to play on a thinner population.

 

well they could totally have 3 servers for low pop so far most of the people like populated servers so they will get people that like light servers only

but for me atleast harbinder is not heavy and i don't really like that because i do like to do a lot of fp and hm so i miss the aussies cause they always kept the server populated on standard at least

PS: i'm going down with my bussines of crafting because of this D:

Edited by mariioow
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You sure BW has the numbers? Didn't someone tell us a few weeks ago that active subs had not declined?

Anyways, they certainly will have to shut down 10's of servers which is going to be a huge negative PR hit.

 

At this point, a hit to perception will not nearly be as bad as the hit to reality if they don't start pushing populations together. Also, the claim you're referring to was when Daniel Erickson said their subs weren't declining but concurrent usage was. The report that was made public says that 1.3 million subs was the count by the end of March and another statement made later in the report said that by the end of April the count was 1.3 million as well. Considering that the comment made by Erickson was around that time he was probably telling the truth. Bioware knows far better than we do what their numbers are. These reports they release are always months old. So we're going on what was true months ago. They're going on what they've seen day in and day out.

Edited by Varteras
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You sure BW has the numbers? Didn't someone tell us a few weeks ago that active subs had not declined?

Anyways, they certainly will have to shut down 10's of servers which is going to be a huge negative PR hit.

 

Mmorpg need to get real. It's like those corporations that cooked their book/hide their losses some how and out of the blue come out with heavy losses or go bankrupt. Pretending everything is fine when it's not isn't going to help you financially. I would say politicians are even worst in that many decisions are based on what is politically correct and not what needs to be done.

 

 

BW needs to condense the servers and try to keep all the condense servers at standard to heavy.

Edited by Knockerz
Link to comment
Share on other sites

When SWTOR released they Bioware could not accommodate the population on existing servers and had to OPEN new servers ... Down the road this contributed to current population problem. Right now the heavy servers have QUE so unless they overcome that technical issue ( shard can't handle it ) how are they going to condense so many people ( 1 - 1.3 mil ) into small number of servers ( ~ 10 ). Its got to be a larger number like 50 servers. Question of what is the max player count one shard can hold and also max concurrent users. It seems other games (WoW, EvE etc ) had shard servers that could handle much larger populations then 5k here. Not to mention way more could play concurently before a que formed. Edited by Stovokor
Link to comment
Share on other sites

honestly they should just make 30 US servers, lower the number of people it takes to create a new instance in the fleet, raise the # before a queue starts (I think they are low ballin it caz I have seen ZERO zerver lag EVER even in beta stress test)

 

But they gotta keep the 3 Asia/Pacific servers because its 1 for each catagory. Though I guess they could combine PVE/RP

 

I dont pay attention to Europe

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i doesn´t think that nombers need to be so low. Reducing the Servers by 1/3 (exept for asia) should work fine.

NA 123 -> 80 - 85

Eu eng 45 -> 30

EU ger 30 -> 20

EU fr 16 -> 12

asia 3 -> 3

overall 217 -> 145 - 150

 

For the server transfer:

1. determ which servers are planned to be closed.

2. don´t allow character transfers to this servers and don´t make free character transfers to the highest populated servers.

3. allow free move from the servers that will be closed and all servers with queues to the servers with a standard population.

4. after 4 weeks merge the servers to get "forgotten" or frozen characters from the servers and close them.

 

5. repeat this if single servers are still underpopulated.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Asia servers only really cater to the Australia / New Zealand population as most of Asia is better off playing on US servers.

 

Just a heads up the Oceanic servers are starting to fade as more players let their subscriptions lapse. My guild is now officially dead despite having 100+ players at launch.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nah, my server is number 20 on TORstatus.net, and really doesn't need any more people on it. There are plenty. I'm thinking more in the neighborhood of 50 servers, easy.

 

I agree, 50 servers worldwide at current pops would seem about right. I mean even the '20th' ranked server only had c150 on both fleets @ 7.30 pm last night ;)

 

However whatever the right number now , based on current trends that number is decreasing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't care how many servers had to be merged, as long as it happens (server transfer looks like it will not be enough). And I don't care how they do it... I mean sure, they are afraid that everyone will calling the game is dying when they announce server merges (but honestly, many already talk about that this game is dying anyway). But here my suggestion should anyone from BioWare actually read this post: don't start new servers when expanding into new regions, instead move already existing low pop servers there, and give everyone there a free transfer to a server in the region they are from.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Again, look at all the posts about how many people are on some of these dead servers and then look at the population of the Fatman (which also seems to be dropping btw) and think how many dead servers it would take to make 1 populated like Fatman.

 

You would have to merge at least 10 light servers just to get 1 more Fatman type heavy one.

 

Even if they went mild and just merged 5 to 1, they'd still wind up with only 25 US servers and about 18 EU servers for example. And those wouldn't even be full, just standard.

 

I think 2 things that need to be taken into consideration are

#1 The standard server pops just aren't enough people. It still seems like a dead game when your pop is at standard.

#2 Not sure if you guys noticed but people who unsubscribe now are getting sent surveys asking a ton of questions about what if TOR was Free 2 Play. This game is going F2P. So how many servers do they feel will be necessary to accommodate F2P players.

 

So yeah with the inevitable F2P in mind 25 US, ~20 EU, and maybe even bumping Asia up to 5 sounds about right.

Edited by HKDeath
Link to comment
Share on other sites


×
×
  • Create New...