Regarding the alleged SW TOR low population issue

[barkong]

they just need to merge servers, its not fun being on a server thats light/standard, barely anyone in the fleet, with so many heroic quests, no one to group with, sure you can skip the quest but i hate doing that, and they usually give decent rewards.

[Sumatran]

They need to cut the current 122 servers in half. 61 servers is more than plenty.

edit: 122 servers on US alone...

[jaakkeli]

The game is only around 3 months old, it is still growing and won't have anything like WoW numbers in that short of time.

Yeah, that's why most servers have had a 50-75 % drop in population. Niman used to have hundreds of level 50s at fleet and a hundred in Ilum, now it's really damn rare to have a hundred 50s online and that's just on an average server. There is no one leveling either. Done the solo questing stuff, now would like to do group stuff but the game is dead outside a few servers out of, what, a hundred? Can't exactly be arsed rerolling.

I haven't had any problems in Ahto City, and Peragus in the EU, the game is getting better and numbers will prob grow with the new content they are bringing out, especially if it will be anything like 1.2 aka the Jesus Patch.

Jesus patch is a really appropriate name: it would take a miracle for a game this dead to come back to life.

[Raeli]

I understand why Bioware, or whoever controls this type of thing don't want to merge servers. It looks bad. But it looks a lot worse allowing many servers/characters who have leveled up to 50 with no where to go. I'm sure many would be happy to pay for a server transfer if it were available but it isn't and there is no knowing when these will come in to being and in any case, the idea of spending yet more money on a game will leave many with a bitter taste in their mouth... for they didn't choose to roll on a poorly populated server.

I never followed this, you just come out and say "Hey, we made a mistake, in an effort to reduce queue times at launch we put up too many servers, we're going to merge a bunch of the lower population ones now so that everyone's play time can be fun again."

Admitting a mistake doesn't make them look nearly as bad as letting the mistake ruin the game by doing nothing.

[Deleted]

I agree 100% with you, obviously. I'd love and welcome a server merger with another "standard" or even a "light" server.

No idea why they won't do it. They have so many posts complaining and requesting this. I suppose they would too much face? Who knows, but it's bad for their business imo.

Some of the people may argue that this isn't needed, or just go "reroll" etc. But I really like the game and enjoy the raiding, but without being able to recruit from a pool of not much more than 50 of the same people every night the guild will eventually die and so will my subs with it. For raiding is what I enjoy doing and I need other people to do this with.

Don't use the term "fanboys" please. ~Rag

[Sumatran]

Yeah, that's why most servers have had a 50-75 % drop in population. Niman used to have hundreds of level 50s at fleet and a hundred in Ilum, now it's really damn rare to have a hundred 50s online and that's just on an average server. There is no one leveling either. Done the solo questing stuff, now would like to do group stuff but the game is dead outside a few servers out of, what, a hundred? Can't exactly be arsed rerolling.



Jesus patch is a really appropriate name: it would take a miracle for a game this dead to come back to life.

They didnt leave. They rerolled. I am one.

[Niwoe]

Well, for our server part of the issue is the imbalance between Imp and Rep. Our "overall" population is standard- but the IMP side has way more consistently. (In fact I'd say the majority of players are imp). While they sit at 250 sometimes in fleet- I've never seen ours break 80. So overall our population may be "standard" but things are a little dire on the Rep side. It's unfortunate as well b/c we have a lot of ppl on both sides who have come from previous games together and enjoy the pvp. I don't think merging some of these lower pop servers would hurt that much honestly. It would be helpful.

[Hellfury]

I don't think merging some of these lower pop servers would hurt that much honestly. It would be helpful.

Ofc it doesnt hurt anyone, ppl on those servers would be praising god, Bioware have only 2 reasons to not do it/delaying it

- They dont want the bad marketing, like AOC and Aionh ad when merged servers

- Want to cash in on payed server xfers.

[SirRobin]

Ofc it doesnt hurt anyone, ppl on those servers would be praising god, Bioware have only 2 reasons to not do it/delaying it

- They dont want the bad marketing, like AOC and Aionh ad when merged servers

- Want to cash in on payed server xfers.

Didn't help WAR either but it was pretty obvious by that point, inside and out, that lots of folks were bailing out. Yet its pretty much a catch 22 for BioWare and EA. Upset, and possibly lose, some on the lighter servers or risk giving the impression that your game is "dying" and possibly have some choose not to try your game in the first place? Not to mention giving folks an excuse to start posting post-mortems.

Given that it appears that TOR stalled even before the end of January, I suspect keeping the game as attractive as possible for potential subscribers comes out ahead of helping the percentage of existing subscribers that are on lighter servers and unhappy about their "lightness." Not to mention that there might not really be a whole lot of cash to be made off of paid transfers since the trip to fifty is so short.

---------- Post added 2012-03-19 at 02:08 PM ----------

Here is something I've been pondering for a bit. I've looked at various times, out of curiosity, but the three Asia Pacific Servers always seem to be "light." When is their "prime" time?

[GW2lacky]

i think it is running at 1.5mill subs right now and that is a good pop but what people want to see is 9mil+ but that is not going to happen and no where in the EA/bioware/lucas art did they put that forth.

SWTOR is stable and the game will grow

rift is stable and has done nothing but grow

wow is losing subs but the F2P addons like pets and mounts are still making it more money then the year it got to 11mil and will grow.

if you fear it is dying and dont want to start you can safely start if your server is dead roll IMP but if you just want the game to die i ask why the game is not taking any thing from you and real humans make it and live off the pay wanting other people hurt just seems so useless.

I think 1.5m is a lot and I wish the game would grow but its hard to think your speculation is accurate. I've now leveled through entire planets where I have been the ONLY one (@ prime time) before I finally decided to re-roll. Hopefully the game can pick up and hook WoW players waiting for MOP or something (I'm a direct transplant from WoW), but it feels like there are very few people in the starting areas even on the higher population server I moved over to.

[varren]

Honestly I don't see this game growing much with all these other massive time sink games such as Diablo 3, Guild Wars 2, and MOP all coming out this year.

Just as I predicted before release, this game does not appeal to the "casual ADHD" gamer as I like to call it. The leveling is only enjoyable if you can appreciate the voice acting and story behind it and not spacebar through everything. And lets be honest, the end game is awful as I also predicted.

Atleast backup your claims of awful endgame with points of contention. Otherwise your argument is just game bashing without substance and that is not posting constructively. -Cula

[Slothanator]

Honestly I don't see this game growing much with all these other massive time sink games such as Diablo 3, Guild Wars 2, and MOP all coming out this year.

Just as I predicted before release, this game does not appeal to the "casual ADHD" gamer as I like to call it. The leveling is only enjoyable if you can appreciate the voice acting and story behind it and not spacebar through everything. And lets be honest, the end game is awful as I also predicted.

Atleast backup your claims of awful endgame with points of contention. Otherwise your argument is just game bashing without substance and that is not posting constructively. -Cula

Really ? I felt the main story was good the side quest cutscenes are mostly space bar material.The endgame isn't bad but there really isn't a challenge besides over coming bugs or being killed in 2 seconds on NM jarg/sorno in 16 man. The pvp is semi balanced I suppose no end game pvp at all and no reason to end game pvp in 1.2. Yes you get a different model gear (probably just a different color from normal) however who isn't going to use the orange gear ? People aren't going to use "vanity" gear over all the augment slotted orange,who would turn down 5~ augments of their main stat for vanity gear and expect to play seriously. I guess it will be good for when we want to play normal warzones and crush rushford kids in credit bought pvp gear. Because who doesn't want a vendor giving out white crystal/gear you should have to work to obtain. Give the higher rated war hero gear augment slots or its literally useless even for vanity.

Game is turning into a joke in my opinion.

[Jaronicity]

Here is something I've been pondering for a bit. I've looked at various times, out of curiosity, but the three Asia Pacific Servers always seem to be "light." When is their "prime" time?

Really? Today was the first time I've seen it "Light." And I live in Australia. This was at like 10:00 AM so maybe people were at school or work. Literally every other time the PVP and PVE servers have been Heavy or Very Heavy - with the RP one usually being standard. One of my friends/coworkers I got to play was complaining last week about there being queues and she didn't know what they were (lol). If I had to guess based on my play-times, I'd say right now would be prime time to play which, as I've mentioned in other threads here, is most unfortunate since I don't get home from work until 6:30 on Tuesdays and by then I can only get one or two warzones in or they start maintenance earlier .

[Nellise]

Ofc it doesnt hurt anyone, ppl on those servers would be praising god, Bioware have only 2 reasons to not do it/delaying it

- They dont want the bad marketing, like AOC and Aionh ad when merged servers

- Want to cash in on payed server xfers.

Or there's the most likely reason, they aren't able to do server merges technically. For 1.2 guild testing, they said they had to manually transfer characters to the test server, they had no automated system. Server merges would involve transferring thousands of characters which they obviously aren't able to do yet in any sort of reasonable manner. They can't announce something they aren't able to do.

[Jaronicity]

Really ? I felt the main story was good the side quest cutscenes are mostly space bar material.The endgame isn't bad but there really isn't a challenge besides over coming bugs or being killed in 2 seconds on NM jarg/sorno in 16 man. The pvp is semi balanced I suppose no end game pvp at all and no reason to end game pvp in 1.2. Yes you get a different model gear (probably just a different color from normal) however who isn't going to use the orange gear ? People aren't going to use "vanity" gear over all the augment slotted orange,who would turn down 5~ augments of their main stat for vanity gear and expect to play seriously. I guess it will be good for when we want to play normal warzones and crush rushford kids in credit bought pvp gear. Because who doesn't want a vendor giving out white crystal/gear you should have to work to obtain. Give the higher rated war hero gear augment slots or its literally useless even for vanity.

Game is turning into a joke in my opinion.

You mean aside from the ranked Warzones they're implementing, right?

[Deleted]

Honestly I don't see this game growing much with all these other massive time sink games such as Diablo 3, Guild Wars 2, and MOP all coming out this year.

Just as I predicted before release, this game does not appeal to the "casual ADHD" gamer as I like to call it. The leveling is only enjoyable if you can appreciate the voice acting and story behind it and not spacebar through everything. And lets be honest, the end game is awful as I also predicted.

Atleast backup your claims of awful endgame with points of contention. Otherwise your argument is just game bashing without substance and that is not posting constructively. -Cula

(@ Culdain, not that I don't agree with you, but aren't you better off making a post and arguing your case, or better still, letting one of the members do it rather than editing someone's post. And chances are he will not read your comment anyway!)

I disagree regards the end game content. End game/Raids is actually pretty good imo. It's the only reason I log on to the game these days, as do all the rest of my guildies, but it's fun and some bosses can be testing if you are not that used to MMO's. I agree with Slothanator though about the bugs that you have to over come on certain bosses. It is a shame that SOA seems bugged still, which is really their flagship boss imo.

However, the game does suffer from a lack of "things to do" which is why many find it a bore. They could have done a lot more with the in game space missions but being told where and how to fly is just too restricting. The dailies are a grind - and it's frustrating that you have to be group to do a good number of them, which only exacerbates the issue people have when they find themselves on a low population server.

[Sparklehorse]

Mergining server is a MUST,because this starts to look like AOC and WAR and we all know what happend...

I'm sorry but this statement is just false.

I was there from beta through release for both of those games and this one is completely different.

AoC was a travesty from the beginning. The initial surge of new customers abated very swiftly. In fact that game lost about a third of it's subs after the free month and then by the next month it was clear the game was dead in the water. Once people realized that there was nothing but unfinished content after Tortage and that the devs couldn't do something as simple as making items stack in the bank or make party members visible on the map when grouped, not to mention how horrible the game ran, it was inevitable. AoC was trash, plain and simple.

Warhammer was a little different. There was a lot more hope for this one. We, as gamers really really wanted this one to succeed and prior to release, it looked like it had all of the tools in place. We didn't find out until release how woefully under prepared the developers were to handle the wants and desires of the modern MMO gamer. What released was a pretty solid PVP game with laughable PVE. We warned them many times in the beta that the PVE side of the game was severely lacking and you just couldn't build a WoW killer without solid PVE but the game got pushed out of the gate too early. Then came the balance issues, they were bad, I mean really bad and although the initial rush of players stuck around a little longer, it was clear 3 months in where this one was gonna end up.

Which brings us to SWTOR.

3 months in and we are a couple weeks away from a huge content patch that addresses a huge number of the communities issues. I've been testing it, this patch IS awesome. On top of that and in spite of the naysayers who seem to propagate like horny rabbits on most MMO gaming sites, we have seen approximately a 15% attrition rate. In todays MMO market this is nothing short of extraordinary. Now I know those numbers are a couple weeks old but one has to suspect, that with the addition of Asian/Aussie servers, who's numbers have not been taken into account as of the last announcement, that the number either held at around 15% or if it did go up, it was by a very small margin.

Look, I get it, people log onto standard servers during odd times and they think the game pop is dying. Some servers probably really need an influx of players, this is par for the course for a game with this much interest and this many players. Smart players pick a strong server and stay there, even if there are ques, during the initial launch weeks because they know how the system works. Lesser experienced players, or players with less patience pick the servers without ques then complain a month later when the fair-weather lookieloos drop after the free month wears off. Now all the sudden those new servers with no que times are Standard instead of Heavy and although Standard is still quite healthy, it just doesn't look the same and so the threads start. "My Server is dying!!!"

I'm not so blind that I don't realize population has decreased since launch. It would be nothing short of a miracle if they had not considering the finicky nature of todays MMO gamer. I'm also not going to hide myself from a sky that isn't falling. All of the evidence we have before us points to a positive outcome for SWTOR in spite of what some people would have you believe (remember, they only need 500,000 subs to remain viable and turn a profit.) We have an IP that is strong, developers that listen, a population that (while spread very thin across a lot of servers) seems to be healthy and holding relatively steady. Now if we could just get a better community I would be in MMO heaven.

[Sparklehorse]

Yeah, that's why most servers have had a 50-75 % drop in population. Niman used to have hundreds of level 50s at fleet and a hundred in Ilum, now it's really damn rare to have a hundred 50s online and that's just on an average server. There is no one leveling either. Done the solo questing stuff, now would like to do group stuff but the game is dead outside a few servers out of, what, a hundred? Can't exactly be arsed rerolling.



Jesus patch is a really appropriate name: it would take a miracle for a game this dead to come back to life.

I personally would like to see the numerical proof you have that server pops have dropped 50-75%. Feels like one of those magical numbers pulled from a magical place to me. You really can't make such a brash statement like that without some numbers to back it up. Not anecdotal evidence mind you, numbers aren't anecdotes.

You can say "Server pops are dropping because I see less people on my server," and then allow the debate as to whether or not this is real or just your perception.

You can't say "Server pops are down 75% because I see less people on my server," and then expect anybody to take you seriously without some evidence to back up that exact number.

[Junkdepot]

(@ Culdain, not that I don't agree with you, but aren't you better off making a post and arguing your case, or better still, letting one of the members do it rather than editing someone's post. And chances are he will not read your comment anyway!)

The comment goes with the infraction he received at the same time (notice the red tags where the 'Report Post' link is typically). I guarantee he'll read the comment after getting the infraction notice.

OT: I actually enjoyed leveling the first two times around, but I didn't see the draw in doing it a third so I could get on a server that wasn't slowing down in population. If they offer free server transfers, I'll probably come back as I really do enjoy the game.

[SirRobin]

Really? Today was the first time I've seen it "Light." And I live in Australia. This was at like 10:00 AM so maybe people were at school or work. Literally every other time the PVP and PVE servers have been Heavy or Very Heavy - with the RP one usually being standard. One of my friends/coworkers I got to play was complaining last week about there being queues and she didn't know what they were (lol). If I had to guess based on my play-times, I'd say right now would be prime time to play which, as I've mentioned in other threads here, is most unfortunate since I don't get home from work until 6:30 on Tuesdays and by then I can only get one or two warzones in or they start maintenance earlier .

Odd, its always been light when I was looking, though it now shows "standard." Guess I was just looking at the wrong times.

---------- Post added 2012-03-20 at 08:28 AM ----------

Or there's the most likely reason, they aren't able to do server merges technically. For 1.2 guild testing, they said they had to manually transfer characters to the test server, they had no automated system. Server merges would involve transferring thousands of characters which they obviously aren't able to do yet in any sort of reasonable manner. They can't announce something they aren't able to do.

That would surprise me because BioWare took over Mythic and Mythic was "cloning" entire servers during WAR's early days as well as merging them later. Maybe there is some sort of technical hurdle but its not like they don't have the know how.

You mean aside from the ranked Warzones they're implementing, right?

Have not been paying too much attention to the 1.2 news so I'm wondering. Are the new warzones still 8v8's?

---------- Post added 2012-03-20 at 08:54 AM ----------

However, the game does suffer from a lack of "things to do" which is why many find it a bore. They could have done a lot more with the in game space missions but being told where and how to fly is just too restricting. The dailies are a grind - and it's frustrating that you have to be group to do a good number of them, which only exacerbates the issue people have when they find themselves on a low population server.

That is what mostly killed TOR for me. There is a lot about the game I liked but it often felt like I was spending as much time watching the dialog, and waiting for the wheel to pop, as I was actually travelling and fighting. Once I started space barring my way through the game it lost its main charm as a "BioWare" game, all the "story." For my tastes it is simply too linear and too short. That whole "one planet one path," per faction of course, became a brutal grind once the tiny 8v8 warzones lost their charm and the space mini-game never appealed to me to begin with.

---------- Post added 2012-03-20 at 09:19 AM ----------

I'm sorry but this statement is just false.

My memory of the two is a little different than yours. I gave my AoC Beta to someone else because I just didn't have the time test both AoC and WAR. AoC had a number of technical and management hurdles which were never overcome until it was way to late to make a difference. WAR had an initial design that was at odds with what the bulk of its testers, and later community, actually wanted. Mythic tried to fix it near the end of development but it was too little too late.

TOR's, at the least, "settling" population numbers does look similar to what happened to those games. Including the usual split between those believing nothing is wrong and those declaring the end is nye. AoC had a miracle patch even before launch and WAR had the patches putting the delayed classes back in and adding various bits and pieces. I recall a couple of WAR's patches were particularly yummy.

I understand that some would herald 1.2 with ticker tape parades if they could. That's okay, it may be a great patch. But the flaws with TOR's design, and perhaps reasons why its population is actually "settling," go deeper than BioWare not having things like the legacy system fully implemented yet.

---------- Post added 2012-03-20 at 09:25 AM ----------

I personally would like to see the numerical proof you have that server pops have dropped 50-75%. Feels like one of those magical numbers pulled from a magical place to me. You really can't make such a brash statement like that without some numbers to back it up. Not anecdotal evidence mind you, numbers aren't anecdotes.

You can say "Server pops are dropping because I see less people on my server," and then allow the debate as to whether or not this is real or just your perception.

You can't say "Server pops are down 75% because I see less people on my server," and then expect anybody to take you seriously without some evidence to back up that exact number.

However that desire for more than anecdotal evidence goes both ways doesn't it? The only "official" numbers we have as far as "active" accounts are 1.7 million at the beginning of February and almost 1.7 million at the end, of February. BioWare's vague population "categories" certainly are not helping matters. If someone started playing in December and their server has gone from Full most of the time to Light then its going to look like a big drop to them. Yes they may only have their personal knowledge and http://www.torstatus.net/ to fall back on but that hardly means their assumptions are "magical.