I mean the amount of people playing at the same time dropped after Christmas because people went back to work. I really thought they would have planned for this and would start merging servers to keep concurrent users high on each server. I really thought by everything they said before launch that the plan was to not have too many servers. They then opened loads and opened more and claimed it was because they upped the player count, yet this was not true. 

I think for every server based MMO in the future they need to get ready to merge servers a month after launch. It's obvious concurrent users will drop after the excitement has worn off or they go back to work as lots of people take time off work to plan for a launch. Bioware have left it way too late to where mergers look like a failure and to the point where I know people who have quit purely because their servers is dead and will never come back now.

The whole game is just a complete failure on Bioware's part. I mean the core game was good, it just needed a few things that Bioware either have no plans for or have taken too long to put them in. I mean my biggest gripe was why are we all sitting in the fleet stations with no reason to go into the world? Why are fleet stations even there when we have capital cities sitting there empty? Other stupid things like spending too much time on 1.2, stripping it of most of it's features shortly before it was released and then making the balance of PVP worse with it. The other thing I hate about 1.2 is they ruined the feel of PVP for me, before 1.2 I loved how tactical and slower paced it was, then after you die a lot faster and duels don't last as long.

I dunno... Bioware have just proven they cannot manage an MMO, I mean nearly as bad as SOE and I wouldn't be surprised if Bioware hand the game over to another develop to manage while they work on their own thing.

If they didn't plan for it, then merging servers would be impossible. Ditto for server transfers.

Because blizzard would have teased them?

The real question is why they didn't used something like GW2s overflow servers instead for the first month, it would have solved the problem as well without making the game look like afailure.

EA doesn't care about the game, they want to appease the investors.

merging = a sign of tough times

You merge, investors lose faith.

Unfortunatly EA only looked at the short term, the game's doing even worse than it possibly could because of this.

Originally posted by Loke666

Because blizzard would have teased them?

The real question is why they didn't used something like GW2s overflow servers instead for the first month, it would have solved the problem as well without making the game look like afailure.

 I thought that's why Bioware had several instances for each zone. 

BW probably didn't have the time to add what EA would see as a non-essential feature.

All they had to say before the game launched is they plan to merge servers after the Christmas rush because naturally players logging on at the same time will decline. Then they make all them servers for Christmas and get rid of half of them after...

It's simple andf it doesn't strike fear that the game is dying. However doing it now is just admitting the game isn't doing as well as they hoped.

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Originally posted by Xssiv

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Originally posted by Loke666 Because blizzard would have teased them? The real question is why they didn't used something like GW2s overflow servers instead for the first month, it would have solved the problem as well without making the game look like afailure.

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 I thought that's why Bioware had several instances for each zone. 

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Originally posted by lizardbones

I wondered by they did that. Having individual servers seemed kind of weird and out of place when they had 'channeled' zones. Why not have a few big servers, where the zones just increased the 'channels' indefinitely? Then they could at least brag about some sort of back end architecture being innovative and increasing the number of available players for all activities.

This worked really well for Champions. Even when the population dropped, the game still felt busy and there were plenty of people around and plenty of people chatting. I mean really, if Cryptic can do it, surely Bioware could have done it.

 

I agree, it was one of the few things Cryptic got right with STO. Even though that game has never had more than 110,000 players, it always looks populated.  With all the planets in TOR and all the sharding, everyone is spread out so population caps should have been much higher than they were.

BW expect this game to be a selling hit, to even kill wow very soon after launch.

I believe they even expect to add hundernds more servers , maybe they even have servers ready to be added so they can boast they have 200+ servers like wow...

So nope, they are totally not ready for what have happen...

Red Type hirts my eyes.. k thx

Originally posted by Loke666

Because blizzard would have teased them?

The real question is why they didn't used something like GW2s overflow servers instead for the first month, it would have solved the problem as well without making the game look like afailure.

Agree with you one more Loke.

They had to of known they were going to up server loads. So why not launch in that capacity, or at the very least with 25% or less servers.

All them voice actors must have tapped into their server budget.

Originally posted by tixylix

I mean the amount of people playing at the same time dropped after Christmas because people went back to work. I really thought they would have planned for this and would start merging servers to keep concurrent users high on each server. I really thought by everything they said before launch that the plan was to not have too many servers. ...

...

You know what I think why EA Bioware didn't merge servers earlier? Because they thought they would need the servers.

EA Bioware expected "multiple millions of subscribers" to play this game - and during their quartly report in July 2011, a few months before launch, they announced they were prepared to serve these "multiple millions". The mindset of management at EA Bioware was that they had a game that would sell by the millions and compete with WoW. To be honest, many of the fans expected these multiple millions as well.

And Gibeau said, "We've got a very aggressive plan to be able to scale multiple millions of users coming into the Star Wars franchise and service this fall." (From this link: http://www.ingame.msnbc.msn.com/technology/ingame/ea-preparing-multiple-millions-star-wars-gamers-121764

EA Bioware was prepared for a smash-hit and a mega success, they were not prepared to deal with a moderate success or with a failure to meet expectations.

Management genuinely believed they had the WoW-killer. It's hard to believe that so little of the total budget went into creating the actual MMO. They thought they be at the very least Challenging WoW sub numbers and instead subnumbers are nosediving. They didn't see this coming like many on thios site did. They fooled themselves and their investors.

I dunno man check any Bioware game and they only sell a couple million, Bioware don't make games that are that popular... tend to just be popular on the net and by reviewers.

Originally posted by tixylix

I dunno man check any Bioware game and they only sell a couple million, Bioware don't make games that are that popular... tend to just be popular on the net and by reviewers.

A couple million for RPGs, and they arent popular?

Hah.....I almost thought you were being serious.

Originally posted by Moaky07

A couple million for RPGs, and they arent popular?

 

Hah.....I almost thought you were being serious.

Compared to other RPG giants like Square Enix and Bethesda Softwork, yeah they're not that popular. And what popularity they had has been declining significantly.

I agree with some of the expectation that Bioware had. I think they figured they had the goods to take on a few million subs.

I also suspect that they knew the server loads were going to drastically affect the frame rates and tried to spread people out as much as possible. I always thought my server seemed quite empty shortly after lauch despite the large numbers estimated and otherwise.

The phased/overflow system contributes to the empty feeling at times. Shortly after 1.2 lauched I logged in to transfer my guild to someone else. Fleet was a ghost town, I actually walked around wonder where these people were. I saw at max about 20. It was depressing.

Originally posted by Larsa

You know what I think why EA Bioware didn't merge servers earlier? Because they thought they would need the servers.

EA Bioware expected "multiple millions of subscribers" to play this game - and during their quartly report in July 2011, a few months before launch, they announced they were prepared to serve these "multiple millions". The mindset of management at EA Bioware was that they had a game that would sell by the millions and compete with WoW. To be honest, many of the fans expected these multiple millions as well.

And Gibeau said, "We've got a very aggressive plan to be able to scale multiple millions of users coming into the Star Wars franchise and service this fall." (From this link: http://www.ingame.msnbc.msn.com/technology/ingame/ea-preparing-multiple-millions-star-wars-gamers-121764

EA Bioware was prepared for a smash-hit and a mega success, they were not prepared to deal with a moderate success or with a failure to meet expectations.

This is why EA is making a statements today, that SWTOR is off their radar.

It didnt perform nearly like they wanted to, and especially in reltion to money invested.

At this time they are probably trying to fugur out how to at least get invested money back, guess layoffs were first step.

Content that they presented is probably way in development, but after that is released its really questionable what will happen if situation doesnt improve drastically.