Originally posted by tiefighter25

 

I would guess SWTOR's sub number around 250 thousand and dropping.

Agreed...I think that number is VERY close...It will increase with the Freemium no question...But how many of those Folks stay is the real question...Despite BioWare/EA's best attempt to put a false spin on things, I don't know a single person that quit SWTOR due to it's Sub model...Not one...Now, you wanna know how many people I know who quit?...lol...Just about everyone I know who played...The problem is in the game itself, not the pay model...And from what I've seen they are simply not addressing the reasons folks quit this game in the 1st place...Not at all...Hell they still don't have an appearence tab...lol...MMORPG 101, and they don't have it...It's an MMO that put the MMO part last in priority...It's a mess...And I hate it because I wanted this game to be my final destination...Not just another reason to doubt MMO Developers...

Originally posted by Sevenstar61

Originally posted by SuperXero89

If it's not a success then it must be a failure.

 

That has always been the mindset of the mmorpg.com forums.

Only a Sith deals in absolutes. Dark side is  strong on this Forum 

.. and on every other forum, except the dedicated (& biased) SWTOR fansites whose revenue comes from a perceived success of SWTOR, and the SWTOR official forums, which is heavily moderated and full of EA shills with unlimited account access.

The MMORPG.com people who talk about SWTOR and appear to be on your definition of the Dark Side, are also the same people who supported SWTOR from the start, yet found the game poorly designed, managed, maintained, and supported.  So go ahead and blame all the people who quit, but at some point you really need to step back and find out why those people quit in the first place.

Just to throw this out there, if BioWare never sold their company to EA in 2007, would BioWare still be putting out high quality games like they used to?  In a parallel universe, where BioWare was never sold, would we finally have had the best Star Wars MMO ever conceived?

Originally posted by Yakamomoto
TOR is not even a year old, wait what the first expansion will bring... I guess BW is up for a big, big surprise

Considering the BioWare founding doctors have now resigned (likely after their post-BioWare-sale employment commitment now expiring), many other employees have flat out quit, and half the SWTOR team was layed off, I am not very hopeful that SWTOR will bring any kind of meaningful expansion to the MMORPG scene.  EA now runs SWTOR more than ever, and the suits who make the decisions are not even gamers anyways, just marketers and salesmen.  Essentially the core of what made BioWare into BioWare has left the building, either voluntarily or forcibly.  BioWare is officially no more.

But maybe, just maybe you are correct, and that will be a big, big surprise to me.  Maybe EA is finally listening after they realized that ignoring their fans cost them dearly.  Still I think there will be more hype than actual meat, as we see that EA is still chasing dollars, providing the bare minimum & the smallest investment for the largest return (which is what has been happening since launch).  So the big surprise might be 3D free travel space exploration and combat .. it might be a casino .. it might be an addition of EA's 3D racing games converted to Star Wars vehicle races ...

But it might also just be more instanced PVE dungeons, instanced PVP maps, "mega" space combat on rails, and a new gear grind with all new commendations .. in which case I tell you now, I won't be surprised.

The whole EA blaming is complete, utter BS, sorry.

BW wrote the game design, BW created the game, BW chose the Hero engine, BW laughed at SWG and even marketed the game by saying "it's nothing like SWG", BW created the railshooter and thought it's a great idea, BW also thought it is a great idea to create static planets without day/night change, BW launched with an insane amount of servers, BW was incapable to launch with a bunch of high capacity servers instead and they have an utterly stupid naming system which is completely messed up as people lost their names for the second time now. Et cetera.

Where exactly does EA come in to blame? Right. No where. 

Everytime I hear about someone leaving BW, it can only be a good thing. It can only get better from now on.

Originally posted by Yakamomoto

The whole EA blaming is complete, utter BS, sorry.

BW wrote the game design, BW created the game, BW chose the Hero engine, BW laughed at SWG and even marketed the game by saying "it's nothing like SWG", BW created the railshooter and thought it's a great idea, BW also thought it is a great idea to create static planets without day/night change, BW launched with an insane amount of servers, BW was incapable to launch with a bunch of high capacity servers instead and they have an utterly stupid naming system which is completely messed up as people lost their names for the second time now. Et cetera.

 

Where exactly does EA come in to blame? Right. No where. 

Everytime I hear about someone leaving BW, it can only be a good thing. It can only get better from now on.

In which case, BioWare had the last laugh :-)

Employee morale within a small company suffers when it's company gets bought out by a big corporation, especially one that they may dislike already.  Gordon Walton's decision to pick up the alpha version of the Hero Engine might have been sound, and it could have been made to work.  But once BioWare got sold, who is to say Gordon just stopped caring what happened to SWTOR, with a conscious decision to resign eventually anyways (which he ended up doing before launch).

Also before EA bought BioWare, BioWare's policy was to only release games once they are finished.  SWTOR was fully under EA's control at launch, and EA decided to release an unfinished game, thus charging customers for 6+ months while it was getting up to a playable state.  Also your other examples were not decisions of BioWare, but rather EA decisions, since they owned the company (derp!).

You can point the finger back to BioWare, but in the end, every game BioWare put out post BioWare sale to EA in 2007 has been garbage.  Nothing in the past 5 years even closely resembles the high level of quality prior to EA getting the reigns.  Why is that?  Yeah I'm sure EA owning BioWare was just a big coincidence to the lowering of game quality while still operating under the cover name "BioWare".

Originally posted by Karteli

You can point the finger back to BioWare, but in the end, every game BioWare put out post BioWare sale to EA in 2007 has been garbage.  Nothing in the past 5 years even closely resembles the high level of quality prior to EA getting the reigns.  Why is that?  Yeah I'm sure EA owning BioWare was just a big coincidence to the lowering of game quality while still operating under the cover name "BioWare".

Though I wouldn't say Bioware put out after 2007 has been complete garbage, I do agree there quality suffered. I have no doubts the reason for the unfinished SWTOR launching was because of EA.

Originally posted by Zecktorin

Originally posted by tiefighter25

Hey OP

Again, you seem to be glossing over that SWTOR just underwent another server merger.

All data indicates that SWTOR has continued to lose population.

TorStatus, X-Fire, and even Scorpienne's population survey.

They all indicate that SWTOR has lost 20% of population since GW2 has come out.

Since the server merges didn't redistribute the remaining population evenly, you might be on a high population server, but that doesn't mean everyone else is.

Every day there are threads opened on the SWTOR Forums with people begging for the 3 APAC servers to be merged due to populations measured in the tens. The same goes for North American server Jung MA.

Jung MA is especially telling, because SWTOR consistiently reports it as standard despite it's very low population; indicating that these new Mega-servers still have individual population caps.

Futhermore, several of the new Megaservers have gone form Very Heavy, to full with log-in waiting queues.

This indicates that the new Megaservers aren't really Mega at all.

All empirical data indicates that SWTOR shut down 6 servers, and now has 16 servers with decent populations. The standard servers around 800-1500. The heavy servers with 1500-3000. Also are 1 dead server in Jung Ma, and 3 dead servers in Australia.

Nothing indicates that the population is growing.

Nothing indicates that the servers are Mega.

Calling a server Mega without any explanation to any sort of technolgy that has increased it's cap doesn't make it Mega.

Ty this is what I wanted from someone who disagreed. All I said is from what I have seen on my server. people like to just use smartass remarks instead and just hate for the sake of hating. Its just arrogance from most people. How ever  going by what you have said it still doesnt add up. okay during prime time with the most people playing at any given time on a saturday lets say all the servers are heavy with 3k people each server.  Your telling me that by that math only 48k people are playing at a given time during this period. Even less of those are subs because of the trial accounts.... some of that data is incorrect as it is because there are now currently 20 servers not 16. The leaving players may be just getting replace with new players and so on and so forth.

48k online might be about right, only about 1 in 5 subscribers is usually online at anyone time in an established game. That would be about 250k subs which isn't unimaginable.

Originally posted by RefMinor

48k online might be about right, only about 1 in 5 subscribers is usually online at anyone time in an established game. That would be about 250k subs which isn't unimaginable.

1 in 5? EVE touts ~500k subs and has around 35k on at average. I'd say average is 1 in 8 - 1 in 10, giving a few thousand leeway since you can train skills offline in EVE. To my knowledge, that's the only game with hard numbers we can go by.

Originally posted by Draron

Originally posted by RefMinor

48k online might be about right, only about 1 in 5 subscribers is usually online at anyone time in an established game. That would be about 250k subs which isn't unimaginable.

1 in 5? EVE touts ~500k subs and has around 35k on at average. I'd say average is 1 in 8 - 1 in 10, giving a few thousand leeway since you can train skills offline in EVE. To my knowledge, that's the only game with hard numbers we can go by.

I've heard 1:10 being slung around before, but the ratios are as reliable as XFire data I suppose.  It would vary from game to game, depending how casual a game might be.

Some smaller games I've played had a very small potential population, but the players logged on a lot, making the ratio more like 1:5.  Ultra casual games, especially some F2P games, might be 1:20 or even 1:50, who knows.

1:10 seems a decent ballpark number for a P2P .. but a margin of error should be assumed, accordingly.  In SWTOR's case I'm really not sure, since the population has been so volatile.  Could it be 20% of the population staying logged in, even idling, for 10 hours a day?  It would seem the gamers left playing are hardcore Star Wars fans (some new players here and there, sure), so it's all up in the air.  This is not just some MMO, this is a SW MMO.  1:5 could fit for a SW game?  Maybe.

Originally posted by RefMinor

Originally posted by Zecktorin

Originally posted by tiefighter25

Hey OP

Again, you seem to be glossing over that SWTOR just underwent another server merger.

All data indicates that SWTOR has continued to lose population.

TorStatus, X-Fire, and even Scorpienne's population survey.

They all indicate that SWTOR has lost 20% of population since GW2 has come out.

Since the server merges didn't redistribute the remaining population evenly, you might be on a high population server, but that doesn't mean everyone else is.

Every day there are threads opened on the SWTOR Forums with people begging for the 3 APAC servers to be merged due to populations measured in the tens. The same goes for North American server Jung MA.

Jung MA is especially telling, because SWTOR consistiently reports it as standard despite it's very low population; indicating that these new Mega-servers still have individual population caps.

Futhermore, several of the new Megaservers have gone form Very Heavy, to full with log-in waiting queues.

This indicates that the new Megaservers aren't really Mega at all.

All empirical data indicates that SWTOR shut down 6 servers, and now has 16 servers with decent populations. The standard servers around 800-1500. The heavy servers with 1500-3000. Also are 1 dead server in Jung Ma, and 3 dead servers in Australia.

Nothing indicates that the population is growing.

Nothing indicates that the servers are Mega.

Calling a server Mega without any explanation to any sort of technolgy that has increased it's cap doesn't make it Mega.

Ty this is what I wanted from someone who disagreed. All I said is from what I have seen on my server. people like to just use smartass remarks instead and just hate for the sake of hating. Its just arrogance from most people. How ever  going by what you have said it still doesnt add up. okay during prime time with the most people playing at any given time on a saturday lets say all the servers are heavy with 3k people each server.  Your telling me that by that math only 48k people are playing at a given time during this period. Even less of those are subs because of the trial accounts.... some of that data is incorrect as it is because there are now currently 20 servers not 16. The leaving players may be just getting replace with new players and so on and so forth.

48k online might be about right, only about 1 in 5 subscribers is usually online at anyone time in an established game. That would be about 250k subs which isn't unimaginable.

Refminor:

There is a player in SWTOR named Scorpienne who has been conducting population surveys since Juneish.

Her efforts are pretty considerable and many take them as mini-gospel. She combines some sort of combination of Tor-Status and player surveys. If you are intrested in her exact methodology, Google-Fu her.

Here's her announced results on the SWTOR Forums: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=484899&page=25

Although she is rather pro-SWTOR, she reckons the concurrent population of SWTOR as of 9/16, just prior to the mergers,

at 27 thousand.

Her are here results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aregkvys5QFodFJ2OWN5U0hwaVFBYWdqUUh1WmdZUFE#gid=51

And her survey: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aregkvys5QFodDlvU05lQ3o2S3ZrYU9SYjRwM29OSnc#gid=0

As the other data sites suggest, a 20% loss of population since GW2 was released just prior to the server merges.

I've already stated why I thought the Mega servers aren't Mega.

Of the 20 remaining servers, the 3 Australian servers, and the 1 RP-PVP server have negligible populations.

Assuming all the planets lined up and the 16 servers all hit 3,000 players,

(the previous cap before MEGA, the new cap has been heit on several occasions, leading me to believe it is still 3,000 MEGA or not.)

16 servers x 3,000= 48 thousand max concurrent population.

Several people keep pointing out that the MEGA servers are real because they will be needed for the influx of new FTP players.

I ask you this, many believe that the HERO engine canot handle populatons over 3,000 even with phasing. (Consider for a moment that WoW's servers max cap is 4,000-8,000) How would the new Mega technology address this?

The new Popilation Test Server (All US East coast charcters were available to play on 1 server in theorey, but the server was never tested for load. No one played on it.)

What makes you think that Bioware won't just open servers as needed form there stash of 200 unused servers when the game goes FTP?

The 220 servers Bioware initially invested in has a max concurrent population of 220 x 3,000=6,600,000 players.

Those servers do not require Mega vaporware, and are tried and tested.

People say I'm overly negative (perhaps I am , I know the ban hammer.) But I'm not screaming the game sucks, I just point out that sometimes EA goes into extreme spin mode, and I'm not willing or able to play along with it.

Originally posted by tiefighter25

Several people keep pointing out that the MEGA servers are real because they will be needed for the influx of new FTP players.

Makes sense. People believe it for a reason.

I ask you this, many believe that the HERO engine canot handle populatons over 3,000 even with phasing. (Consider for a moment that WoW's servers max cap is 4,000-8,000) How would the new Mega technology address this?

False. See link below. It's entirely about the server architecture, not the Hero Engine's limitations.

What makes you think that Bioware won't just open servers as needed form there stash of 200 unused servers when the game goes FTP?

Because they wouldn't close all those servers and go through that painful merging (on the players and press) only to re-open them a few months later. 

People say I'm overly negative (perhaps I am , I know the ban hammer.) But I'm not screaming the game sucks, I just point out that sometimes EA goes into extreme spin mode, and I'm not willing or able to play along with it.           I'm not denying they spin a lot of PR. But I honestly believe mega servers isn't one of them. 

You can still try to convince others that there are no difference between mega servers and normal servers, but common sense points towards there being a difference. It's only pure speculation either way though.

Just wanted to point this out: 

"The folks behind the HeroEngine unveiled some pretty impressive statistics at this year's Game Developers Conference, foremost of which is the ability to support "large, seamless worlds" on single servers. By large, they mean over 100,000 users on a single shard."

http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/65862&ei=dHPKScXzJ4PvnQfn7PydAw&usg=AFQjCNF71O8j6p0vL50qeKqx0wtFBDRGqQ

"Much like a cluster, an individual shard could be expected to accommodate thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of players. For a classic MMORPG like World of Warcraft, the numbers are probably thousands to tens of thousands per world/shard."

http://hewiki.heroengine.com/wiki/Maximum_Players

Originally posted by Draron

You can still try to convince others that there are no difference between mega servers and normal servers, but common sense points towards there being a difference. It's only pure speculation either way though.

Could you point us to information regarding the mega servers?  I've seen plenty of unofficial chatter, along with a bunch of assertions as to these new capabilities, but nothing yet as to specifics as to what a mega server really means.

New architecture? New hardware?

More players per server?  Now this one is important because I see a bunch of people interpreting "Mega" as some kind of super massive server capable of maintaining many more logged accounts, than was previously capable.  Is this true?

Bigger hard drives to hold more players?  OK they raided WalMart and bought up some Tera-byte drives :P  Is this what EA meant by Mega?

If you have some links, share 'em please.  Or start a new thread with your findings.  Because many of us Star Wars fans who want to find love with this game just don't have much confidence in EA anymore.  Mega is just so vague and got carried by the wind with all the speculation threads on the official forums, perhaps thanks to EA viral marketers, whatever.

Originally posted by Karteli

Could you point us to information regarding the mega servers?  I've seen plenty of unofficial chatter, along with a bunch of assertions as to these new capabilities, but nothing yet as to specifics as to what a mega server really means.

New architecture? New hardware?

More players per server?  Now this one is important because I see a bunch of people interpreting "Mega" as some kind of super massive server capable of maintaining many more logged accounts, than was previously capable.  Is this true?

Bigger hard drives to hold more players?  OK they raided WalMart and bought up some Tera-byte drives :P  Is this what EA meant by Mega?

 

If you have some links, share 'em please.  Or start a new thread with your findings.  Because many of us Star Wars fans who want to find love with this game just don't have much confidence in EA anymore.  Mega is just so vague and got carried by the wind with all the speculation threads on the official forums, perhaps thanks to EA viral marketers, whatever.

Nothing official by Bioware on official statistics of the new populations, sadly. We don't know for sure either way, was just offering some links and opinions on why it most likely isn't EA's PR spin.

They did mention mega servers = more sustainable population on them:

"We have upgraded destination servers in order to support a significantly higher number of players! In addition to this, all characters on origin servers have now been automatically moved onto the upgraded high population destination servers."

http://www.swtor.com/systemalerts

And this from back in May (back when the game had over a mil subs):

PC Gamer: Will they be cross-server at launch? Is that planned for the future?

Daniel Erickson: They will not be cross-server as we are coming up on a huge move to servers with massively higher population caps than we have today.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/05/23/the-old-republics-daniel-erickson-talks-legacy-system-update-group-finder-and-adaptive-gear/

@Draron:

I just wanted to point out that the finalized Hero engine and the Aplppha protype Bioware based SWOTOR on are two different beasts. Same genus, different species, as Simtronics was quick to point out last December.

I think even with the phasing technology being used by SWTOR's servers, they would probably still have problems with caps above 3,000. Even with the multiple phases of fleet on busy servers, there is significant lag. Plasyers have complained about lag in Operations where there were multiple phases running simulataneously (from forum chatrer.) And of course, there was Ilum. Ilum, which they said they've been working on since they took it off line is not being reintroduced with the new Mega technology.

I think I raise some valid concerns. The quotes you are pulling from Simtronics are about their finalized engine. (Just finished pretty much, years after Bioware started working with the Alpha)

There is a simple way to prove the new servers are Mega, same as Scorpienne who I mentioned earlier uses to poll server populations. Do a /who of everyone on both sides (Imperial and Republic) of one of the new Mega-dervers and get a population well above 3,000; then take screenshots for posterity's sake.

If you could get screenshots as stated above, then I would have to learn to like crow. In case you are right and I am wrong, I really hope crow tastes like chicken.

Originally posted by tiefighter25

@Draron:

I just wanted to point out that the finalized Hero engine and the Aplppha protype Bioware based SWOTOR on are two different beasts. Same genus, different species, as Simtronics was quick to point out last December.

The second link is from the wiki, an up to date resource for the engine.

I'm not arguing over the population of the game itself atm, I think your misunderstanding. Just clarifying on the mega servers.

And doing a snapshot of the population at one point in time won't prove anything of the servers being "mega". If there's not enough people to fill them, there's no way to test until F2P comes.

Originally posted by Zecktorin

 

Im kinda neutral on the game. yes it is fun to me, but It could have been so much more.

I hate reading anything on this site, If it's not the game with the most Hype, then usually it a failure and all the haters hate on that game, meanwhile the fanboys are on the hyped up game. What is that realistically. Well hyped = GW2, hated SWTOR and any other game that isn't hyped, IMPHO.

Originally posted by tiefighter25

@Draron:

If you could get screenshots as stated above, then I would have to learn to like crow. In case you are right and I am wrong, I really hope crow tastes like chicken.

The /who result cap is or was 49 when I stopped playing (same as WoW).  It would be many screenshots, but then the integrity of each screenshot could be criticized.

Originally posted by Draron

Originally posted by tiefighter25

@Draron:

I just wanted to point out that the finalized Hero engine and the Aplppha protype Bioware based SWOTOR on are two different beasts. Same genus, different species, as Simtronics was quick to point out last December.

The second link is from the wiki, an up to date resource for the engine.

I'm not arguing over the population of the game itself atm, I think your misunderstanding. Just clarifying on the mega servers.

And doing a snapshot of the population at one point in time won't prove anything of the servers being "mega". If there's not enough people to fill them, there's no way to test until F2P comes.

The same "light" "standard" "heavy" seems to apply after the Mega Servers was implemented, with servers not really changing much from their population denominations prior and post "mega" servers.  This just seems to add to forum ponderers like us as to exactly what a "massive" increase to population cap really means.

Thanks for the links by the way!

Now I'm wondering what a "massive" increase to population caps actually means .. 100 or 500 or 5000? EA still spins enough crap .. lol.  Current subscribers as of June 30, 2012 (reported in early August 2012) fell below 1,000,000 but was well above 500,000.  EA loves to play with numbers, especially higher numbers that don't fit =)  505,000 for instance is well above 500k in my book.

Originally posted by Draron

Originally posted by tiefighter25

@Draron:

I just wanted to point out that the finalized Hero engine and the Aplppha protype Bioware based SWOTOR on are two different beasts. Same genus, different species, as Simtronics was quick to point out last December.

The second link is from the wiki, an up to date resource for the engine.

I'm not arguing over the population of the game itself atm, I think your misunderstanding. Just clarifying on the mega servers.

And doing a snapshot of the population at one point in time won't prove anything of the servers being "mega". If there's not enough people to fill them, there's no way to test until F2P comes.

Well in regard to the population, I did point out that several servers have already hit full capacity following hte mergers. (Along with waiting queues.) Some have explained that is because Bioware is slowly "breaking in " the new servers. Where they garnered this knowledge, I don't know and they don't say.

One would think that after closing 6 servers, the resulting population in one of the new destination servers could peak above 3,000 players to test the new meganess.

That said, the very heavy servers aren't over 3,000. If 2,500 is very heavy, what is full?

As I mentioned before, the Jung Ma server is curious indeed. Players are reporting 70-120 on fleet, both sides, and the server is reporting Standard. The same thing, but with lower populations is being reported by Gav Dragon.

To me, all data indicates that the same population is being dispersed on less servers following the merger.

I see no evidence of the server's new meganess.

Of course I could be wrong. Perhaps the new servers are being "Broken In" and the server status reporting is borked, and will find out in "the Fall?" when FTP finally arrives.

This new mega-technology, just seemed awfully convienent from EA's prespective, not very well documented, and could use further clarification.

So in the end I guess we agree to disagree. We'll find out in maybe November. I guess we can peg this up to another "Coming Soon"?

If they have made great strides in server technology and a possible new space project, one would think they would market it better. I dunno.

Just to stay a negative Nancy, I could say that the quote you are pointing to in that interview,

"PCG: Will they be cross-server at launch? Is that planned for the future?

DE: They will not be cross-server as we are coming up on a huge move to servers with massively higher population caps than we have today."

..was just an excuse to explain why they weren't making Group FInder cross-server.

The other link was Bioware saying the cap was increased, no explanation how. (And a btw, your name might be gone.)

But as you point out, all will be revealled with the FTP launch.