So, when i play during the evening (from about 7PM to 9:30PM), The fleet varies from 200 to 250 (250 being the highest i've seen).
I always look at the servers before shutting down the game. ALL of them are either Standard, Heavy or Very Heavy. What's the problem again? This game is dying? I don't think so. I think the more Bioware fixes problems and add content, the more people will play this amazing story driven MMO.
The server load messages are described by Bioware itself and can be changed. So its hard to judge what actually Standard, Heavy or Low means in player numbers.
But what I dont see anymore are full servers like this, just Standard or low:
When SWTOR launched it had quite a load of FULL servers during the morning / afternoon (off peak times)
If populations were healthy then there should be FULL servers at peak times not just Very Heavy. There are becoming too many Light and Standard servers, and soon there will be merges which is bad for just over a months release
There were bucketloads of FULL servers right after launch, because the population cap per server was like 2000-2500, and they wanted the player population spread out more over the servers. That population cap has over the weeks been raised, in some cases to double that amount.
Originally posted by Mephster
You can't judge a game's population just because your server seems to be busy lol. Dear God please forgive them for they know not what they do!
In the same line of logic, you can't judge a game's population just because your server seems to be empty in some areas at certain times. Case in point, there has been an overall decrease after the free month ended, but it isn't as high as those on low population servers think it is, and it isn't as nonexistent as those on well populated servers think it is.
It seems a bit stupid to raise caps AND add more servers, but even after launch and they so called raised the caps there were still loads of full servers
Populations are just declining, and will continue to decline, and faster as time goes on. People are still levlling toons up. Once people get to 50 will end up quitting unless more varied gameplay systems gets added instead of just story based content.
I have created 8 characters, and got 3 over level 10, and the resto about level 5-7. Once they are all 50 I see no reason at all to play the game any more, and will slow it down further by unsubbing and subbing. With SWGs crafting system I not only subbed constantly, but subbed multiple accounts constanly because there was a tonne of things to do in it.
If nothing decent added within 6 months then SWTOR will become deader than SWG. Most people will have had enough of it by then, paying for a game that can get equal enjoyment from many other single player games that do not require a monthly sub, and then not be able to play it at all after 8 years or maybe sooner when SWTOR shuts down.
SWG peaked to #8 on Xfire in Aug 2004, over 1 year after its release, I doubt SWTOR will be back up in the top 10 again next year, unless radical awesome stuff gets added to it.
What is SWG at on xfire right now?
It should be rock bottom as shut down and not playable, but for some strange reason jumped up to #815 today from #1412 yesterday. The force is strong in it and not keeping it down!
When SWTOR launched it had quite a load of FULL servers during the morning / afternoon (off peak times) If populations were healthy then there should be FULL servers at peak times not just Very Heavy. There are becoming too many Light and Standard servers, and soon there will be merges which is bad for just over a months release
There were bucketloads of FULL servers right after launch, because the population cap per server was like 2000-2500, and they wanted the player population spread out more over the servers. That population cap has over the weeks been raised, in some cases to double that amount.
Originally posted by Mephster
You can't judge a game's population just because your server seems to be busy lol. Dear God please forgive them for they know not what they do!
In the same line of logic, you can't judge a game's population just because your server seems to be empty in some areas at certain times. Case in point, there has been an overall decrease after the free month ended, but it isn't as high as those on low population servers think it is, and it isn't as nonexistent as those on well populated servers think it is.
It seems a bit stupid to raise caps AND add more servers, but even after launch and they so called raised the caps there were still loads of full servers
Populations are just declining, and will continue to decline, and faster as time goes on. People are still levlling toons up. Once people get to 50 will end up quitting unless more varied gameplay systems gets added instead of just story based content.
I have created 8 characters, and got 3 over level 10, and the resto about level 5-7. Once they are all 50 I see no reason at all to play the game any more, and will slow it down further by unsubbing and subbing. With SWGs crafting system I not only subbed constantly, but subbed multiple accounts constanly because there was a tonne of things to do in it.
If nothing decent added within 6 months then SWTOR will become deader than SWG. Most people will have had enough of it by then, paying for a game that can get equal enjoyment from many other single player games that do not require a monthly sub, and then not be able to play it at all after 8 years or maybe sooner when SWTOR shuts down.
SWG peaked to #8 on Xfire in Aug 2004, over 1 year after its release, I doubt SWTOR will be back up in the top 10 again next year, unless radical awesome stuff gets added to it.
I don't see why it would be stupid to not have immediately the full possible cap on at launch, expecially if you want to spread population out and not completely flood the low areas on some servers, while other servers will be lifeless. Population cap kept changing for a number of servers until a few weeks into January. Sure, player population over has decreased after the free month, the rest of your arguments is just conjecture or wishful thinking on your part. As for the SWG comments, it doesn't really mean crap if it's a game you liked that much, for 1 person like you that had multiple accounts in it, there have been others who tried SWG, played a few levels and considered it boring or not worth of their time within weeks. As has been the case for all MMO's, where some people enjoyed them so much they kept subbing and even had multiple accounts, and others who thought it was a pile of shit and abandoned the game quickly. Comes with people being different and liking different things and all that, the 'each person is an individual' kinda thing.
So, when i play during the evening (from about 7PM to 9:30PM), The fleet varies from 200 to 250 (250 being the highest i've seen). I always look at the servers before shutting down the game. ALL of them are either Standard, Heavy or Very Heavy. What's the problem again? This game is dying? I don't think so. I think the more Bioware fixes problems and add content, the more people will play this amazing story driven MMO.
The server load messages are described by Bioware itself and can be changed. So its hard to judge what actually Standard, Heavy or Low means in player numbers.
But what I dont see anymore are full servers like this, just Standard or low:
That's true. Probably because 1500 to 2000 players logged in that would cause a server to register as FULL as in the first week, now only registers as Standard. Those are actual ingame headcounts, btw.
When SWTOR launched it had quite a load of FULL servers during the morning / afternoon (off peak times)
If populations were healthy then there should be FULL servers at peak times not just Very Heavy. There are becoming too many Light and Standard servers, and soon there will be merges which is bad for just over a months release
There were bucketloads of FULL servers right after launch, because the population cap per server was like 2000-2500, and they wanted the player population spread out more over the servers. That population cap has over the weeks been raised, in some cases to double that amount.
Originally posted by Mephster
You can't judge a game's population just because your server seems to be busy lol. Dear God please forgive them for they know not what they do!
In the same line of logic, you can't judge a game's population just because your server seems to be empty in some areas at certain times. Case in point, there has been an overall decrease after the free month ended, but it isn't as high as those on low population servers think it is, and it isn't as nonexistent as those on well populated servers think it is.
It seems a bit stupid to raise caps AND add more servers, but even after launch and they so called raised the caps there were still loads of full servers
Populations are just declining, and will continue to decline, and faster as time goes on. People are still levlling toons up. Once people get to 50 will end up quitting unless more varied gameplay systems gets added instead of just story based content.
I have created 8 characters, and got 3 over level 10, and the resto about level 5-7. Once they are all 50 I see no reason at all to play the game any more, and will slow it down further by unsubbing and subbing. With SWGs crafting system I not only subbed constantly, but subbed multiple accounts constanly because there was a tonne of things to do in it.
If nothing decent added within 6 months then SWTOR will become deader than SWG. Most people will have had enough of it by then, paying for a game that can get equal enjoyment from many other single player games that do not require a monthly sub, and then not be able to play it at all after 8 years or maybe sooner when SWTOR shuts down.
SWG peaked to #8 on Xfire in Aug 2004, over 1 year after its release, I doubt SWTOR will be back up in the top 10 again next year, unless radical awesome stuff gets added to it.
I don't see why it would be stupid to not have immediately the full possible cap on at launch, expecially if you want to spread population out and not completely flood the low areas on some servers, while other servers will be lifeless. Population cap kept changing for a number of servers until a few weeks into January. Sure, player population over has decreased after the free month, the rest of your arguments is just conjecture or wishful thinking on your part. As for the SWG comments, it doesn't really mean crap if it's a game you liked that much, for 1 person like you that had multiple accounts in it, there have been others who tried SWG, played a few levels and considered it boring or not worth of their time within weeks. As has been the case for all MMO's, where some people enjoyed them so much they kept subbing and even had multiple accounts, and others who thought it was a pile of shit and abandoned the game quickly. Comes with people being different and liking different things and all that, the 'each person is an individual' kinda thing.
I did not say it was stupid to increase caps. I said it was stupid to increase caps AND increase servers. If they increased the caps to reduce the full servers, then adding more servers was pointless, unless the servers were still getting FULL after increasing the caps.
At the end of the day there are many more reasons why people are quitting that do not have features from other MMOs too, let alone SWG. I am not alone in this. Different people are quitting for different reasons. Add more stuff into the game then it will attract more people, or do you not want this? - Keep SWTOR lacking, and the population to go with it.
There is just simply nothing to do at 50, that you can not get from KOTOR, and without paying a monthly fee. With KOTOR you just bought the game for $60 or whetever it cost at the time, and once you completed it you could play it again for free, but SWTOR you have to pay $15 per month for the priveldge. SWTOR does not allow YOU to expand your characters progression which you can do in every other MMO, which makes paying the monthly fee worthwhile.
Regardless of how many people you guys THINK you are playing with, the instancing and linearity of the games planets ensure that you will see and possibly interact with probably less than 5% of the total server population during a play session..
The total population of a server is so stretched out between tiers and instancing, that it is basically useless in determining how many people you will see and interact with personally..
A good example would be the Freeport server on EQ2.. It frequently reads heavy, however if you were to create a new character you wouldn't know it because depending on the "zone" you will see a few staggered players. Some of the people you see will not even be around your level, the majority of the "heavy" base is near or at max level..
Being top heavy is just like being light or deserted to lower level players, and vice versa. Bottom heavy will make the game appear light to higher level players.. Both terribly skew population counts..
EDIT: Not to mention being totally split up by Faction as well.. The Pop readouts are irrelevant..
So, when i play during the evening (from about 7PM to 9:30PM), The fleet varies from 200 to 250 (250 being the highest i've seen).
I always look at the servers before shutting down the game. ALL of them are either Standard, Heavy or Very Heavy. What's the problem again? This game is dying? I don't think so. I think the more Bioware fixes problems and add content, the more people will play this amazing story driven MMO.
very heavy is like 1000 people total though. I think standard must be 500 possibly less? I mean for primetime that's really bad.
Here's, in my opinion, the biggest mistake Bioware did so far:
-Add more servers before and at launch.
Queue is not a bad thing. They listened to the whiners and added more servers.
There's no "light" servers at peak time, but instead of having a bunch of standards, they could have the following:
-Heavy
-Very Heavy
-Full
No.
If it had been you who had paid and were in a queue for 30 days solid would that have been OK? clearly not, If you booked an airline ticket turned up at the airport and were told - sorry, you know how everyone likes to travel at Christmas you will just have to wait until the New Year would that be OK? Or you pay a charge to get water/gas/electricity and for weeks it is unavailable. Now if Bioware (or whoever) came out with a service level statement e.g. you may have to queue for up to 60 minutes but after that your account will be credited a day (or whatever) then so be it. But this won't help to sell the game so they don't; so your expectation is that you should be able to log on to play when you want. OK 'we' may be jaded and know how these things work but that doesn't alter the fact that:
People pay and people should be able to play. And please don't go on about 'the free month'.
SO: could it be done differently?
Lots of people wanting to log on at launch: a given. The company wants to minimise servers in the interests of cost and player experience: a given. People leaving after the first month: a given. Leaving after months 2-3 probably another given.
So known problem so why can't companies plan accordingly if the game is going to be run on multiple servers. (If it is on one or maybe just a few super large servers - not an issue). (Not jusy Bioware.) Can 'we' come up with something better that 'we' would be happy with.
A suggestion for starters (post others): what if in the first 4-6 weeks you don't get to choose your server (and maybe names are generic as well). So how would this work? (And this is not SWTOR specific). And remember this is a suggestion not a technical solution.
At some point in th elogin process you go to an 'allocation server'. Maybe this is at login, maybe not. Maybe there are several 'allocation servers' each linked to a cluster of 'servers' (PvE, PvP, RP, Timezone related etc.). There obviously needs to be some balancing to prevent the allocation server being swamped. (Or maybe it is a super powerful server - whatever). The aim is to make your login as quick as possible with zero (minimal) wait.
The job of the 'allocation server; is to allocate! you to a 'play server', its job done it moves on to process the next person.
How? On day 1 you are either alone or in a guild. If you are alone the login server allocates you to any server. If you are in a guild and other guild members are on it allocates you to the server they are on (leaving some capacity for other guildies).
Subsequently you may have some friends and maybe these are taken into account as well. Maybe you can set up and maintain a preference list. PvE/PvP/RP (fixed), friends before guild; guild before friends; a ranking of friends - whatever. Some set of rules that guide the allocvation server which does the best job it can and puts you on a play server.
Time marches on and launch + 4-6 weeks comes along.
At this point a planned transfer takes place. A grand allocation is made based on guilds, friends, balancing populations etc. There will be problems - probably; but these are the same problems that will occur when all the cries for server transfers happen anyway. However at this point servers don't need to be 'full' just 'high' - headroom can be maintained.
So new players can come along and join a guild playing on X say etc.
The key thing however is that the transfer is known about. And then - maybe - have a second round of transfers after 3 months say if needed. Make it a plan, say it is going to happen. That way people will know that the initial allocation is to deal with queues and then there shouldnt be 'my server is empty/full need a transfer' posts.
If full servers on day 1 was unexpected then, maybe, you could say OK. Except people don't. Take WoW; Blizzard were swamped on day 1 and people on the first twenty servers are still posting about how WoW had the worst launch ever. Not the case for the other zillion people but people pay to play. Period. The question is: 'how can it be handled differently if a company is going to employ multiple servers?'
The POINT is this. Even if we assume some servers have, say 100 people on Coruscant or Alderaan - which I haven't see on any of the planets level 30+, even THEN with the giant size of the planets, they are far too few. In beta, when Coruscant had 250 people on Coruscant, even then it felt empty, and Bioware said, the zones will be more filled with players later. But the contrary happened! And the game is what, 6 weeks old?
This is just wrong. But the design shots them in the knee. I know so many who groan after having been on some of the super sized planets, like Taris. I haven't seen anyone who wasn't sighing a relief, "god, finally done with Taris!" If you take WOW or LOTRO or what, you move faster through smaller zones, and the experience varies more. Maybe they should have made planets more diverse, with more different zones on one planet, I can't say.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
When SWTOR launched it had quite a load of FULL servers during the morning / afternoon (off peak times)
If populations were healthy then there should be FULL servers at peak times not just Very Heavy. There are becoming too many Light and Standard servers, and soon there will be merges which is bad for just over a months release
There were bucketloads of FULL servers right after launch, because the population cap per server was like 2000-2500, and they wanted the player population spread out more over the servers. That population cap has over the weeks been raised, in some cases to double that amount.
Originally posted by Mephster
You can't judge a game's population just because your server seems to be busy lol. Dear God please forgive them for they know not what they do!
In the same line of logic, you can't judge a game's population just because your server seems to be empty in some areas at certain times. Case in point, there has been an overall decrease after the free month ended, but it isn't as high as those on low population servers think it is, and it isn't as nonexistent as those on well populated servers think it is.
It seems a bit stupid to raise caps AND add more servers, but even after launch and they so called raised the caps there were still loads of full servers
Populations are just declining, and will continue to decline, and faster as time goes on. People are still levlling toons up. Once people get to 50 will end up quitting unless more varied gameplay systems gets added instead of just story based content.
I have created 8 characters, and got 3 over level 10, and the resto about level 5-7. Once they are all 50 I see no reason at all to play the game any more, and will slow it down further by unsubbing and subbing. With SWGs crafting system I not only subbed constantly, but subbed multiple accounts constanly because there was a tonne of things to do in it.
If nothing decent added within 6 months then SWTOR will become deader than SWG. Most people will have had enough of it by then, paying for a game that can get equal enjoyment from many other single player games that do not require a monthly sub, and then not be able to play it at all after 8 years or maybe sooner when SWTOR shuts down.
SWG peaked to #8 on Xfire in Aug 2004, over 1 year after its release, I doubt SWTOR will be back up in the top 10 again next year, unless radical awesome stuff gets added to it.
What is SWG at on xfire right now?
Maybe you should wait eight years before comparing.
I did not say it was stupid to increase caps. I said it was stupid to increase caps AND increase servers. If they increased the caps to reduce the full servers, then adding more servers was pointless, unless the servers were still getting FULL after increasing the caps.
At the end of the day there are many more reasons why people are quitting that do not have features from other MMOs too, let alone SWG. I am not alone in this. Different people are quitting for different reasons. Add more stuff into the game then it will attract more people, or do you not want this? - Keep SWTOR lacking, and the population to go with it.
There is just simply nothing to do at 50, that you can not get from KOTOR, and without paying a monthly fee. With KOTOR you just bought the game for $60 or whetever it cost at the time, and once you completed it you could play it again for free, but SWTOR you have to pay $15 per month for the priveldge. SWTOR does not allow YOU to expand your characters progression which you can do in every other MMO, which makes paying the monthly fee worthwhile.
Well, that is the case with any MMO, right? If you add, people come and stay. If you don't, they leave. But the KOTOR comparison is a bit off. Last I checked I wasn't able to group up with others to run an operation or hit flashpoints. SWTOR has exactly what you find in your basic themepark MMO. Warzons, ala Battlegrouds. Operations ala Raids. Flashpoints ala instances. By your statement something like WoW is just like KOTOR. So when KOTOR gives all that and the interaction I get from the guild and people one can group up for heroics or anything else then your comparison would make more sense.
As for adding stuff, what do you think they are doing? Last I checked 1.1 added another flashpoint and they already showed the plans they have for future updates that would add to the game. But saying there is 'nothing' to do at 50 is simply a stretch and untrue. You have just what you have in other games just not in the total volume as it is still a newly launched game and none ever launch with dozens of endgame instances and raids. So what you have to do at 50 is the same you have to do at 85 elsewhere...dailies, instances, raids, pvp (except there is no Arena feature in ToR which they stated something on those lines is coming as well).
I get some will argue that bs expected to sell 4 million and only sold 2 million.so?the economy is bad everywhere most wont shell 60 $ for a mmo when they can get a full tank of gas instead and go job hunting
you better start making that GENIOUS comment about every game in the WORLD!
I did not say it was stupid to increase caps. I said it was stupid to increase caps AND increase servers. If they increased the caps to reduce the full servers, then adding more servers was pointless, unless the servers were still getting FULL after increasing the caps.
At the end of the day there are many more reasons why people are quitting that do not have features from other MMOs too, let alone SWG. I am not alone in this. Different people are quitting for different reasons. Add more stuff into the game then it will attract more people, or do you not want this? - Keep SWTOR lacking, and the population to go with it.
There is just simply nothing to do at 50, that you can not get from KOTOR, and without paying a monthly fee. With KOTOR you just bought the game for $60 or whetever it cost at the time, and once you completed it you could play it again for free, but SWTOR you have to pay $15 per month for the priveldge. SWTOR does not allow YOU to expand your characters progression which you can do in every other MMO, which makes paying the monthly fee worthwhile.
Well, that is the case with any MMO, right? If you add, people come and stay. If you don't, they leave. But the KOTOR comparison is a bit off. Last I checked I wasn't able to group up with others to run an operation or hit flashpoints. SWTOR has exactly what you find in your basic themepark MMO. Warzons, ala Battlegrouds. Operations ala Raids. Flashpoints ala instances. By your statement something like WoW is just like KOTOR. So when KOTOR gives all that and the interaction I get from the guild and people one can group up for heroics or anything else then your comparison would make more sense.
As for adding stuff, what do you think they are doing? Last I checked 1.1 added another flashpoint and they already showed the plans they have for future updates that would add to the game. But saying there is 'nothing' to do at 50 is simply a stretch and untrue. You have just what you have in other games just not in the total volume as it is still a newly launched game and none ever launch with dozens of endgame instances and raids. So what you have to do at 50 is the same you have to do at 85 elsewhere...dailies, instances, raids, pvp (except there is no Arena feature in ToR which they stated something on those lines is coming as well).
Thing is Raids, Heroics/Falshpoints and Warzones do not interest me
SWG had at 90:
Player Housing / Cities
Entertainers
More involved and deeper crafting. SWTOR your comapnions do it for you - good for everyone but makes the real crafters redundant
Trading / setting up a shop
Creature Harvesting
Mission Terminals - These can be fun when getting both Imperial and rebel missions in same location and they they battle it out!
Invasions
Theme Parks - Rebel/Imperial/Jabba/Meat Lump/Death Troopers
Seasonal Events
Chronicles system
Space, space mining, building better space ships and components
Better REing
Collections system
Exploring everywhere and whenever you want
Levelling up howver you want - via mission terminals or the Legacy quest series or hunting creatures / NPCs around your level by visiting the planet
Beast Master, not only able to just control beasts, but create them as well.
SWTOR does not have any of the above in any meaningful way at max level -That is a lot of stuff. People in SWG did not just stick around for the instances and PVP, they stayed to do some of the above stuff as well.
Basically you could do whatever you want when you want, in SWTOR you are restricted by the story. Jedi Knights always get T7 to begin with, in SWG you could choose to get a droid R3 or Probot or R2 or Battle Droid or go for any creature from a Beast Master. Whatever many different storylines SWTOR has to give, you could have infinite with SWG.
To level to 50 you do not need to group up so is the same as KOTOR, but then you can get so many other games that give you a much better multiplayer experiences without paying a monthly fee, and Flashpoints are just more story based quests that require to group up.
SWTOR will be just like ME3 when it releases, you will be able to play single player and multiplayer without paying a monthly fee.
Ehh? Ok, on my server, JekkJekk Thar, at evening EST Corellia had 18 people, Alderaan had 30 people and Voss had 16 people. There is a clear player bleed. You may like or dislike the game, but twisting facts just ain't right.
Say about Cryptic what you want, but their "one server" idea was WAY better. Why not make one server and then dozens or hundred copies of a planet? In that way you never would have a difficulty. But this is just bollocks. I predict server merges before the year is over.
The JekkJekk Tar server is the unoffically Oceanic and Western US time zone server. I think it being dead during German Prime time play hours makes sense....
You assume too much.
I play during US East Coast prime time. Otherwise my critique would have made no sense, ya ne?
Oh..well playing during EST prime still doenst help that your on the Oceanic / West coast server. It is the server I play on, it isn't dead.
Originally posted by matraque Originally posted by Metentso Server load is going up like a rocket:
Well... their EU data is off... Servers are Standard and UP. the sites shows all of them as Standard.
Not to mention that nobody, other than Bioware knows what "Standard" means. We can make some guesses, but Bioware could be raising or lowering those numbers daily and we'd never know. It might not even reference the total number of people logged into the server...the number of people in a particular zone could be affecting those numbers.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
So, when i play during the evening (from about 7PM to 9:30PM), The fleet varies from 200 to 250 (250 being the highest i've seen).
I always look at the servers before shutting down the game. ALL of them are either Standard, Heavy or Very Heavy. What's the problem again? This game is dying? I don't think so. I think the more Bioware fixes problems and add content, the more people will play this amazing story driven MMO.
Even if Bioware releases a statement saying they have 5 million subs and adding new servers, those same people will be saying what a failure the game is.
I wouldn't let it bother you.
It's a failure to me as it didn't keep my attention past the 30 day free period.
Well... their EU data is off... Servers are Standard and UP. the sites shows all of them as Standard.
Not to mention that nobody, other than Bioware knows what "Standard" means. We can make some guesses, but Bioware could be raising or lowering those numbers daily and we'd never know. It might not even reference the total number of people logged into the server...the number of people in a particular zone could be affecting those numbers.
Thats the problem, you don't have to know specific numbers to see a trend if the definition for respective level stays the same but I think they changed it.
Well... their EU data is off... Servers are Standard and UP. the sites shows all of them as Standard.
Not to mention that nobody, other than Bioware knows what "Standard" means. We can make some guesses, but Bioware could be raising or lowering those numbers daily and we'd never know. It might not even reference the total number of people logged into the server...the number of people in a particular zone could be affecting those numbers.
Thats the problem, you don't have to know specific numbers to see a trend if the definition for respective level stays the same but I think they changed it.
Originally posted by Metentso Server load is going up like a rocket:
Well... their EU data is off... Servers are Standard and UP. the sites shows all of them as Standard.
Not to mention that nobody, other than Bioware knows what "Standard" means. We can make some guesses, but Bioware could be raising or lowering those numbers daily and we'd never know. It might not even reference the total number of people logged into the server...the number of people in a particular zone could be affecting those numbers.
Thats the problem, you don't have to know specific numbers to see a trend if the definition for respective level stays the same but I think they changed it.
You must know the actual numbers to see a trend. If Bioware is gradually increasing the cap for what "Standard" (and the other categories) mean, then what you'd see in charts is a gradual trend over time where the population looks like it's dropping. If you have the actual number, then you can normalize it and actually see a trend. These charts are worse than XFire because there's no check on how accurate they are at all.
XFire suffers from lots of issues with the numbers they generate, but you can at least see a trend for the people who use XFire. These charts are just as useful as the anecdotal evidence that everyone (including me :-) ) throws around.
** edit ** At the very minimum, you'd have to know that the definition of the categories does not change. You would need to be sure that "Standard" at the beginning of the period means the same thing as "Standard" at the end of the period.
** edit edit ** Also, looking at the post above mine, they may not even be reading the information correctly from SWTOR.com.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I think anecedotal evidence is pointing to a fall off in server population. Maybe not on every server, but across the spectrum this is probably true.
As somone said, you can't go by the H/M/L they publish, I remember Funcom sticking the server loads on Medium in AOC even when they became ghost towns.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Thing is Raids, Heroics/Falshpoints and Warzones do not interest me
SWG had at 90:
Player Housing / Cities
Entertainers
More involved and deeper crafting. SWTOR your comapnions do it for you - good for everyone but makes the real crafters redundant
Trading / setting up a shop
Creature Harvesting
Mission Terminals - These can be fun when getting both Imperial and rebel missions in same location and they they battle it out!
Invasions
Theme Parks - Rebel/Imperial/Jabba/Meat Lump/Death Troopers
Seasonal Events
Chronicles system
Space, space mining, building better space ships and components
Better REing
Collections system
Exploring everywhere and whenever you want
Levelling up howver you want - via mission terminals or the Legacy quest series or hunting creatures / NPCs around your level by visiting the planet
Beast Master, not only able to just control beasts, but create them as well.
SWTOR does not have any of the above in any meaningful way at max level -That is a lot of stuff. People in SWG did not just stick around for the instances and PVP, they stayed to do some of the above stuff as well.
The majority of what you posted wasn't in SWG at launch. There was no space, no space mining,no legacy quests, no Chronicles system, heck there wasn't even mounts in the game. Plus you were restricted to ONE character a server unless you were willing to pay another 15 a month. So if you put all your skill points in to be the best crafter, that was all you could do in the game. We won't even go into the many professions that were gimped and useless. I suspect that if you had been in SWG at launch you would have been the many who canceled complaining about a lack of things to do.
Comments
The server load messages are described by Bioware itself and can be changed. So its hard to judge what actually Standard, Heavy or Low means in player numbers.
But what I dont see anymore are full servers like this, just Standard or low:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TREUj8L-B_I
It should be rock bottom as shut down and not playable, but for some strange reason jumped up to #815 today from #1412 yesterday. The force is strong in it and not keeping it down!
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There were bucketloads of FULL servers right after launch, because the population cap per server was like 2000-2500, and they wanted the player population spread out more over the servers. That population cap has over the weeks been raised, in some cases to double that amount.
In the same line of logic, you can't judge a game's population just because your server seems to be empty in some areas at certain times. Case in point, there has been an overall decrease after the free month ended, but it isn't as high as those on low population servers think it is, and it isn't as nonexistent as those on well populated servers think it is.It seems a bit stupid to raise caps AND add more servers, but even after launch and they so called raised the caps there were still loads of full servers
Populations are just declining, and will continue to decline, and faster as time goes on. People are still levlling toons up. Once people get to 50 will end up quitting unless more varied gameplay systems gets added instead of just story based content.
I have created 8 characters, and got 3 over level 10, and the resto about level 5-7. Once they are all 50 I see no reason at all to play the game any more, and will slow it down further by unsubbing and subbing. With SWGs crafting system I not only subbed constantly, but subbed multiple accounts constanly because there was a tonne of things to do in it.
If nothing decent added within 6 months then SWTOR will become deader than SWG. Most people will have had enough of it by then, paying for a game that can get equal enjoyment from many other single player games that do not require a monthly sub, and then not be able to play it at all after 8 years or maybe sooner when SWTOR shuts down.
SWG peaked to #8 on Xfire in Aug 2004, over 1 year after its release, I doubt SWTOR will be back up in the top 10 again next year, unless radical awesome stuff gets added to it.
I don't see why it would be stupid to not have immediately the full possible cap on at launch, expecially if you want to spread population out and not completely flood the low areas on some servers, while other servers will be lifeless. Population cap kept changing for a number of servers until a few weeks into January. Sure, player population over has decreased after the free month, the rest of your arguments is just conjecture or wishful thinking on your part. As for the SWG comments, it doesn't really mean crap if it's a game you liked that much, for 1 person like you that had multiple accounts in it, there have been others who tried SWG, played a few levels and considered it boring or not worth of their time within weeks. As has been the case for all MMO's, where some people enjoyed them so much they kept subbing and even had multiple accounts, and others who thought it was a pile of shit and abandoned the game quickly. Comes with people being different and liking different things and all that, the 'each person is an individual' kinda thing.The server load messages are described by Bioware itself and can be changed. So its hard to judge what actually Standard, Heavy or Low means in player numbers.
But what I dont see anymore are full servers like this, just Standard or low:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TREUj8L-B_I
That's true. Probably because 1500 to 2000 players logged in that would cause a server to register as FULL as in the first week, now only registers as Standard. Those are actual ingame headcounts, btw.I did not say it was stupid to increase caps. I said it was stupid to increase caps AND increase servers. If they increased the caps to reduce the full servers, then adding more servers was pointless, unless the servers were still getting FULL after increasing the caps.
At the end of the day there are many more reasons why people are quitting that do not have features from other MMOs too, let alone SWG. I am not alone in this. Different people are quitting for different reasons. Add more stuff into the game then it will attract more people, or do you not want this? - Keep SWTOR lacking, and the population to go with it.
There is just simply nothing to do at 50, that you can not get from KOTOR, and without paying a monthly fee. With KOTOR you just bought the game for $60 or whetever it cost at the time, and once you completed it you could play it again for free, but SWTOR you have to pay $15 per month for the priveldge. SWTOR does not allow YOU to expand your characters progression which you can do in every other MMO, which makes paying the monthly fee worthwhile.
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Regardless of how many people you guys THINK you are playing with, the instancing and linearity of the games planets ensure that you will see and possibly interact with probably less than 5% of the total server population during a play session..
The total population of a server is so stretched out between tiers and instancing, that it is basically useless in determining how many people you will see and interact with personally..
A good example would be the Freeport server on EQ2.. It frequently reads heavy, however if you were to create a new character you wouldn't know it because depending on the "zone" you will see a few staggered players. Some of the people you see will not even be around your level, the majority of the "heavy" base is near or at max level..
Being top heavy is just like being light or deserted to lower level players, and vice versa. Bottom heavy will make the game appear light to higher level players.. Both terribly skew population counts..
EDIT: Not to mention being totally split up by Faction as well.. The Pop readouts are irrelevant..
very heavy is like 1000 people total though. I think standard must be 500 possibly less? I mean for primetime that's really bad.
No.
If it had been you who had paid and were in a queue for 30 days solid would that have been OK? clearly not, If you booked an airline ticket turned up at the airport and were told - sorry, you know how everyone likes to travel at Christmas you will just have to wait until the New Year would that be OK? Or you pay a charge to get water/gas/electricity and for weeks it is unavailable. Now if Bioware (or whoever) came out with a service level statement e.g. you may have to queue for up to 60 minutes but after that your account will be credited a day (or whatever) then so be it. But this won't help to sell the game so they don't; so your expectation is that you should be able to log on to play when you want. OK 'we' may be jaded and know how these things work but that doesn't alter the fact that:
People pay and people should be able to play. And please don't go on about 'the free month'.
SO: could it be done differently?
Lots of people wanting to log on at launch: a given. The company wants to minimise servers in the interests of cost and player experience: a given. People leaving after the first month: a given. Leaving after months 2-3 probably another given.
So known problem so why can't companies plan accordingly if the game is going to be run on multiple servers. (If it is on one or maybe just a few super large servers - not an issue). (Not jusy Bioware.) Can 'we' come up with something better that 'we' would be happy with.
A suggestion for starters (post others): what if in the first 4-6 weeks you don't get to choose your server (and maybe names are generic as well). So how would this work? (And this is not SWTOR specific). And remember this is a suggestion not a technical solution.
At some point in th elogin process you go to an 'allocation server'. Maybe this is at login, maybe not. Maybe there are several 'allocation servers' each linked to a cluster of 'servers' (PvE, PvP, RP, Timezone related etc.). There obviously needs to be some balancing to prevent the allocation server being swamped. (Or maybe it is a super powerful server - whatever). The aim is to make your login as quick as possible with zero (minimal) wait.
The job of the 'allocation server; is to allocate! you to a 'play server', its job done it moves on to process the next person.
How? On day 1 you are either alone or in a guild. If you are alone the login server allocates you to any server. If you are in a guild and other guild members are on it allocates you to the server they are on (leaving some capacity for other guildies).
Subsequently you may have some friends and maybe these are taken into account as well. Maybe you can set up and maintain a preference list. PvE/PvP/RP (fixed), friends before guild; guild before friends; a ranking of friends - whatever. Some set of rules that guide the allocvation server which does the best job it can and puts you on a play server.
Time marches on and launch + 4-6 weeks comes along.
At this point a planned transfer takes place. A grand allocation is made based on guilds, friends, balancing populations etc. There will be problems - probably; but these are the same problems that will occur when all the cries for server transfers happen anyway. However at this point servers don't need to be 'full' just 'high' - headroom can be maintained.
So new players can come along and join a guild playing on X say etc.
The key thing however is that the transfer is known about. And then - maybe - have a second round of transfers after 3 months say if needed. Make it a plan, say it is going to happen. That way people will know that the initial allocation is to deal with queues and then there shouldnt be 'my server is empty/full need a transfer' posts.
If full servers on day 1 was unexpected then, maybe, you could say OK. Except people don't. Take WoW; Blizzard were swamped on day 1 and people on the first twenty servers are still posting about how WoW had the worst launch ever. Not the case for the other zillion people but people pay to play. Period. The question is: 'how can it be handled differently if a company is going to employ multiple servers?'
The POINT is this. Even if we assume some servers have, say 100 people on Coruscant or Alderaan - which I haven't see on any of the planets level 30+, even THEN with the giant size of the planets, they are far too few. In beta, when Coruscant had 250 people on Coruscant, even then it felt empty, and Bioware said, the zones will be more filled with players later. But the contrary happened! And the game is what, 6 weeks old?
This is just wrong. But the design shots them in the knee. I know so many who groan after having been on some of the super sized planets, like Taris. I haven't seen anyone who wasn't sighing a relief, "god, finally done with Taris!" If you take WOW or LOTRO or what, you move faster through smaller zones, and the experience varies more. Maybe they should have made planets more diverse, with more different zones on one planet, I can't say.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Maybe you should wait eight years before comparing.
Well, that is the case with any MMO, right? If you add, people come and stay. If you don't, they leave. But the KOTOR comparison is a bit off. Last I checked I wasn't able to group up with others to run an operation or hit flashpoints. SWTOR has exactly what you find in your basic themepark MMO. Warzons, ala Battlegrouds. Operations ala Raids. Flashpoints ala instances. By your statement something like WoW is just like KOTOR. So when KOTOR gives all that and the interaction I get from the guild and people one can group up for heroics or anything else then your comparison would make more sense.
As for adding stuff, what do you think they are doing? Last I checked 1.1 added another flashpoint and they already showed the plans they have for future updates that would add to the game. But saying there is 'nothing' to do at 50 is simply a stretch and untrue. You have just what you have in other games just not in the total volume as it is still a newly launched game and none ever launch with dozens of endgame instances and raids. So what you have to do at 50 is the same you have to do at 85 elsewhere...dailies, instances, raids, pvp (except there is no Arena feature in ToR which they stated something on those lines is coming as well).
you better start making that GENIOUS comment about every game in the WORLD!
Thing is Raids, Heroics/Falshpoints and Warzones do not interest me
SWG had at 90:
Player Housing / Cities
Entertainers
More involved and deeper crafting. SWTOR your comapnions do it for you - good for everyone but makes the real crafters redundant
Trading / setting up a shop
Creature Harvesting
Mission Terminals - These can be fun when getting both Imperial and rebel missions in same location and they they battle it out!
Invasions
Theme Parks - Rebel/Imperial/Jabba/Meat Lump/Death Troopers
Seasonal Events
Chronicles system
Space, space mining, building better space ships and components
Better REing
Collections system
Exploring everywhere and whenever you want
Levelling up howver you want - via mission terminals or the Legacy quest series or hunting creatures / NPCs around your level by visiting the planet
Beast Master, not only able to just control beasts, but create them as well.
SWTOR does not have any of the above in any meaningful way at max level -That is a lot of stuff. People in SWG did not just stick around for the instances and PVP, they stayed to do some of the above stuff as well.
Basically you could do whatever you want when you want, in SWTOR you are restricted by the story. Jedi Knights always get T7 to begin with, in SWG you could choose to get a droid R3 or Probot or R2 or Battle Droid or go for any creature from a Beast Master. Whatever many different storylines SWTOR has to give, you could have infinite with SWG.
To level to 50 you do not need to group up so is the same as KOTOR, but then you can get so many other games that give you a much better multiplayer experiences without paying a monthly fee, and Flashpoints are just more story based quests that require to group up.
SWTOR will be just like ME3 when it releases, you will be able to play single player and multiplayer without paying a monthly fee.
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Server load is going up like a rocket:
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
Oh..well playing during EST prime still doenst help that your on the Oceanic / West coast server. It is the server I play on, it isn't dead.
Well... their EU data is off... Servers are Standard and UP. the sites shows all of them as Standard.
eqnext.wikia.com
Well... their EU data is off... Servers are Standard and UP. the sites shows all of them as Standard.
Not to mention that nobody, other than Bioware knows what "Standard" means. We can make some guesses, but Bioware could be raising or lowering those numbers daily and we'd never know. It might not even reference the total number of people logged into the server...the number of people in a particular zone could be affecting those numbers.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
It's a failure to me as it didn't keep my attention past the 30 day free period.
I often find myself wondering why I had to log into a server in the first place.
Thats the problem, you don't have to know specific numbers to see a trend if the definition for respective level stays the same but I think they changed it.
Look here for EU servers: http://www.swtor.com/server-status
now look their stats for EU: http://www.mmo-junkies.net/statistics/
it's not matching.... Their stats cannot pick up server population properly
eqnext.wikia.com
You must know the actual numbers to see a trend. If Bioware is gradually increasing the cap for what "Standard" (and the other categories) mean, then what you'd see in charts is a gradual trend over time where the population looks like it's dropping. If you have the actual number, then you can normalize it and actually see a trend. These charts are worse than XFire because there's no check on how accurate they are at all.
XFire suffers from lots of issues with the numbers they generate, but you can at least see a trend for the people who use XFire. These charts are just as useful as the anecdotal evidence that everyone (including me :-) ) throws around.
** edit **
At the very minimum, you'd have to know that the definition of the categories does not change. You would need to be sure that "Standard" at the beginning of the period means the same thing as "Standard" at the end of the period.
** edit edit **
Also, looking at the post above mine, they may not even be reading the information correctly from SWTOR.com.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I agree, the population is nearly non existant.
I think anecedotal evidence is pointing to a fall off in server population. Maybe not on every server, but across the spectrum this is probably true.
As somone said, you can't go by the H/M/L they publish, I remember Funcom sticking the server loads on Medium in AOC even when they became ghost towns.
Same thing will likely happen here.
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