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SWTOR population surge?
Creslin321
Member Posts: 5,359
So SWTOR, like nearly every MMORPG released in the last 5 years, has shown a fairly steady decrease in server population over hte last month. This is to be expected. Doesn't mean the game is dying...just that all recent MMORPGs tend to be stuffed to bursting at release and then settle down.
But something interesting happened over this weekend. According to the graph here: http://www.torstatus.net/shards/us/trends, SWTOR actually had a fairly significant population surge this weekend...reaching levels close to the beginning of January.
Any idea why this happened? Was there an influx of new players? Or did lots of people jsut decide to play SWTOR instead of watch the superbowl? It also could be something awry with that site's measuring methods...they just measure the "status" of the server.
What do you all think?
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Comments
My vote; SWTOR players doesn't like football.
;p
Perhaps the announcement of having 1.7 millions subs brought more folk in. That's my best guess. Wouldn't be the first time people flocked to something just because it made news using "numbers" and the good ole popularity pardigm coupled with peer pressure. This effect also has results with the stock market and brokers.
That's got Superbowl and I stil have 10 day's on my sub written all over it.
I hate sport's also and would gladly play SWTOR over watching football anyday even with SWTOR's not being my idea of a good game.
Are they running TV ads? I caugfht one out of the corner of my eye and couldn't work out if it was Lucas cashing in on something (3D?) or an ad for TOR. I can tell you it had lightsabres. That was the UK this evening though with sky+ (tivo) it could be from another time.
Everyone at EA/Bioware was forced to login during the weekend to and encourage family and friends to do the same as part of their new marketing strat to try and save the game from dying out. Who knows? But they need some good news because a month of downwards trends can't be ignored and written off as launch pains for too long.
Odd, this one doesn't show any spikes...
http://www.mmo-junkies.net/statistics/
It might very well be superbowl related since it's primarily the US servers that show this phenomenon. The EU servers aren't doing badly, just nothing out of the ordinary.
I didn't notice any difference on my server so can't say for sure. Actually, I take that back. It was virtually dead Sunday evening but that was to be expected due to the Super Bowl.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
swtor isn't a bad game. it has alot of buggs, but they did say they fixing it, and 1 of the big patches that will do that is on march. the thing that made me dislike swtor was customer service. the customer service is so bad. i had 1 customer rep reply at me with, it is just better to unsub. i was like whoah, is that how you guys recruit and keep your gamers. i don't ask much from games, since most games is an actual copy of each other. i'm not sure how gw2 will be, and i am looking forward to it, but all in all this was the main reason that made me dislike swtor. customer service made me feel like i wasn't worth their time as a customer. but thats just me
I like football but did not notice any surge....I un subed while Madonna shook here 53 year old arse at the halftime show lol
Considering both the EU and US servers jumped at exactly the same time and with the same ratio, my bet is on EA/Bioware adjusting the limits on the servers to make them look more full than they are. So a heavy server might now be 1000 players instead of a previous 3000 or something like that. They've said they can adjust them and have done in the past, so that makes the most sense.
Actually, people have done tests as recently as the past week, I myself did some only a few days ago to check and in the end disprove what someone was saying, and the numbers were still what they formerly were: namely Standard going up to 2000-2100 players logged in for the servers where that used to be the case, and 'heavy' starting from 2000/2100 to 3000 (for some servers up to 3200, I assume those were the ones with the highest population cap).
So, while all assumptions may sound reasonable without checking stuff, what you're saying actually doesn't make sense when compared with actual measurements and ingame counts that contradict what you're saying.
Me, I'm going to stick with hard data and facts, they're less prone to out-in-the-wild guesses and wishful thinking :-)Eh...I don't know about that. What I will say is regardless the data or some supposedly gathered by players I didn't notice any difference at all on my server except for Sunday evening which as I said isn't surprising considering the Super Bowl.
Trust me though when I say that isn't a good thing. I would be more than happy to say that I did notice a surge.
: /
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
xFire also showed that increase. I mentioned it in the "Seems like SWTOR has peaked on xFire" thread (hard to see in the middle of dozens of posts discussing xFire).
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
Are you sure about that steady decline though? It lauched during a holiday so it's normal that it had a large number of people playing more than they usually would. Then as the holidays ended, the population is "normal". I'm not saying launch wouldn't have been big if it would have launched in February, but I am saying that people were playing more than normal since they weren't working.
As for this current surge, I have no idea really.
I don't find it surprising. Frankly, I think if BW doesn't many players that do like the game are simply eventually going to reroll on the servers with healthier populations.
Know that was my plan. Although apparently I chose the wrong one. It's better than my original choice but frankly...it still fucking sucks overall. As I sit here trying to form a group once again for an fp with a fleet hovering around the 30s to low 40s in population.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
lol at using the Super Bowl as an excuse both for the increase and the decrease of numbers. When I logged on Saturday night (read: not Super Bowl), the servers were packed.
Looks to me like XFire spikes every weekend, but every weekend spike has been lower than the last, including this past one.
My guess is that it's at least a bit more accurate than measuring server status, with no idea what tweaks the devs might be making to server caps or anything like that.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
While i did see the servers less full i realy think they did increase the server caps or its just because more players did progress to higher lvl zones.
Ofcours its bit less busy overal but thats kinda normal after launch from new game or expansion but in general my server still is realy busy when i do zone checks and i am playing republic side , did hear alot of servers have faction balance problems so far the one i am on ( the proginator eu rp server ) its pretty even so far i think.
Not saying that the game will keep this strong just stating what i see from my server but yeh lets see how it goes in couple of months .
Also i realy dont understand why ppl still use xfire to prove something i realy dont know anybody in my guild or reallife friends that use xfire . Realy think more fps players use xfire for joining same server etc but for a mmorpg i realy doubt it.
I really don't see what is so surprising about this if it is true. Some people got burned out from playing more than they should have and started paying attention to real life responsibilites they probably left dragging.
Others joined the additional servers like myself that were clearly way too fucking many and got frustrated with the fact there weren't many players. Some got frustrated and went to sulk in their corners. Now they're back either rerolling or giving it another go.
Yes, there are those that decided the game wasn't for them and those awesome folks that say everything is wonderful everywhere and all servers have thousands upon thousands playing but the reality is things have settled down and now play will go on as normal. Which means a moderate increase in players over time but nothing like BW or the fanboys expected but it won't go up in flames like some others wanted.
It will, at the end of the day, end up having a moderate retention rate and be one of the more populated mmos on the market least for the near future.
Not one worth the amount of fucking servers they have but hey...
What can I say.
Oh yeah...still looking for an fp group on these servers that some dicks say are just brimming with players everywhere.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
Even if only 0.1% of MMO players use it, it's still better than nothing, and has shown to be a relatively accurate indicator of gaming trends, so far. That doesn't mean it proves anything, but I'm not sure why anyone would be looking for proof of anything. Only EA/Bioware themselves need that level of accuracy, and I'm sure they already have it.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
... or maybe they altered the reporting metrics of what what "heavy" population load is?
And yes they are advertising the game. LA is re-releasing one of the Star Wars movies in 3D in theatres as well. So they are doing a joint advertising campaign.
Other than that, it seems the norm for games to do better on super bowls days, US anyhow, for some reason. Guess people tend to stay home more or something. Some watch the game, others play on computers.
or maybe they didn't?