Hey all,

I just found that email in my inbox presenting us with yet another free 30 days of game time. I'm downloading the game right now and was wondering what the server population was like, and if anyone could tell  me which server has the highest average population so that I could take advantage of that free character transfer.

Responses appreciated,

Isaiah Moran

Depends on the server.  I decided to take another look at it myself, and Intrepid is gone.  I've run into absolutely nobody the whole time I've been there.  It's to be expected, as almost everyone has transferred to another galaxy, but the fact is, half of the servers are completely and utterly dead.

Edit:  See BadgerSmaker's post at the bottom of this thread for the closest thing anyone has to population numbers: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/240836/The-Star-Wars-Galaxies-6th-AnniversaryEmpire-Day-reentitlement-promotion-.html

Seeing that my accounts were activated for vet trial again, I logged on one of them that has a char on flurry, bloodfin, radiant, lowca, chilastra and tarquinas. Only flurry and chilastra had enough activity to be noticable, the rest... well there was only 1 person standing at vader on radiant and no one on lowca and tarquinas. Seems only 4 of the 25 servers actually has a healthy population, which are starsider, chilastra, flurry, and chimaera. And it's a sham that radiant wasn't tagged for free CTS.

Even on the higher populated servers, battlefields seemed dodgy, still having to wait hours sometimes to get 4 people on one side together.

I have to correct myself, in light of Sookster's comment.  Last night I did see someone else in Coronet briefly.  Again, on Intrepid, the only server I've ever played on.

www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php  I took these screenshots in january, and starstrider was the most populated server at that time, still it wasn't much. And all other planets than tatooine was DEAD. I'm feraing since the server merge all but 4 servers are empty, beacuse everyone moved to those i guess, or whatever happend.

Originally posted by Trubaduren

www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php  I took these screenshots in january, and starstrider was the most populated server at that time, still it wasn't much. And all other planets than tatooine was DEAD. I'm feraing since the server merge all but 4 servers are empty, beacuse everyone moved to those i guess, or whatever happend.

That was six months ago, and before the Free CTS.  Starsider had a population explosion since.  Take another look.

Players report that the server is as busy, if not busier than Pre-CU.

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Originally posted by Trubaduren

www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php  I took these screenshots in january, and starstrider was the most populated server at that time, still it wasn't much. And all other planets than tatooine was DEAD. I'm feraing since the server merge all but 4 servers are empty, beacuse everyone moved to those i guess, or whatever happend.

 

That was six months ago, and before the Free CTS.  Starsider had a population explosion since.  Take another look.

Players report that the server is as busy, if not busier than Pre-CU.

Starsider is the highest population server but at the expense of the others. Most servers are dead. The lag on Starsider is bad due to the population.

Originally posted by EbenEmael

Starsider is the highest population server but at the expense of the others. Most servers are dead. The lag on Starsider is bad due to the population.

If you want some info on server stats, I put some together here: Badger's GCW Profession and Server stats - June

The situation is pretty bizarre, with players all bundling into about eight servers from the 25, leaving 12 on minimal population and five just below average population.

it is an interesting example of how human behavior plays out in online worlds, how players will gravitiate towards each other until a snowball effect has the majority of them in one place.

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Originally posted by EbenEmael

Starsider is the highest population server but at the expense of the others. Most servers are dead. The lag on Starsider is bad due to the population.

 

If you want some info on server stats, I put some together here: Badger's GCW Profession and Server stats - June

The situation is pretty bizarre, with players all bundling into about eight servers from the 25, leaving 12 on minimal population and five just below average population.

it is an interesting example of how human behavior plays out in online worlds, how players will gravitiate towards each other until a snowball effect has the majority of them in one place.

Im guessing its better to have a descent population, or some what of a populatin on 3-4 servers than low on 25. I think people find that a bit more fun.

Originally posted by Trubaduren

Im guessing its better to have a descent population, or some what of a populatin on 3-4 servers than low on 25. I think people find that a bit more fun.

If you average out the current population over the 25 servers, you end up with all servers having about the same population as Shadowfire.

Shadowfire currenly has about 1/3 the population of the top eight servers though, so you can see how heavily skewed the current server population imbalance is.

I hear life on Shadowfire is pretty good, but with people expecting Starsider levels of population, which is over four times the population of Shadowfire, player percpetions play a big part in what is deemed a "healthy" server today.

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Originally posted by EbenEmael

Starsider is the highest population server but at the expense of the others. Most servers are dead. The lag on Starsider is bad due to the population.

 

If you want some info on server stats, I put some together here: Badger's GCW Profession and Server stats - June

The situation is pretty bizarre, with players all bundling into about eight servers from the 25, leaving 12 on minimal population and five just below average population.

it is an interesting example of how human behavior plays out in online worlds, how players will gravitiate towards each other until a snowball effect has the majority of them in one place.

It's simply that people want to play on a populated server. Many people stated before the FCT went live that they were going to go to Starsider. They did not want to take a chance of getting stuck on another dead server.

Starsider has plenty of people. I can't really say much about the others.

Originally posted by law573

Starsider has plenty of people. I can't really say much about the others.

They have enough i assume, to be able to do the stuff you need with a community. Those on others severs, not so much i guess.

It is amazing how people like BadgerSmaker can possibly claim that ANY of the current servers have more populations than ever.  I checked it out 2 days ago for kicks and despite appearing to be populated Star had a minimal amount of players, and they were concentrated in 2 areas.  In Pre-CU, Lowca had twice as many players than what I saw on Star, and Lowca was a "light to medium" server.

Bloodfin is a shell of what it was, Bria the same, and Flurry was nearly 100% empty.

It's ok to say that servers like Star and Bloodfin have SOME players on them, more than most of the empty servers, but to make claims like the "population of Star is higher than ever" is just lunacy.

It's one thing to be a fanboy of a game but it's another to mislead potential players and returning vets as to how many people still play this game.  Another year, same old stuff though.  Some of the players of this game are so lonely on the servers they will say anything to get people to log on...

You can't mislead people who can go check with their own eyes.   Neither you nor badger can judge for others.    Anyone who actualy listens to stuff on these boards be them positive or negative and takes it all as totaly accurate is going to have issues.  

Bottom line let them log in and see for themselves and leave it at that this stuff about "misleading" is on both sides and is just a way to keep up heated discussions on something that only a player can judge

Calling what one person says as misleading and saying the complete total opposite is unfair

now they can't be both

1) totally deserted

2) highest popution possible

anyone with a brain in their head is gonna go check for themselves and decide it the population is large enough to actually play the game.   If you see something that says "light" then the traffic is lowest there.  If you want high population then go to where is says the population is highest.

There are some servers that will be closing down because the free server transfers was actually a merge so just dont go to them.   I can't remember all the servers that were "transfer from"  servers but there is a list somewhere.   Don't play on those servers play on the servers that are "transfer to" servers.    That is where the people are .  Of course I am never sure why these questions are repeatedly posted when most gamers usualy look at the server population guages from the company to see what server has people when they start a character.

Obviously you have to pick one that has traffic when you actually play so when you make your character check the server traffic ratings and pick one to your liking.  The rest is just for arguments sake.  No one knows what the present population of swg is they are only guessing, but if you want to play on a high pop server people can tell you what servers those are.

Originally posted by ummax

You can't mislead people who can go check with their own eyes.   Neither you nor badger can judge for others.    Anyone who actualy listens to stuff on these boards be them positive or negative and takes it all as totaly accurate is going to have issues.  

Bottom line let them log in and see for themselves and leave it at that this stuff about "misleading" is on both sides and is just a way to keep up heated discussions on something that only a player can judge

Calling what one person says as misleading and saying the complete total opposite is unfair

now they can't be both

1) totally deserted

2) highest popution possible

anyone with a brain in their head is gonna go check for themselves and decide it the population is large enough to actually play the game.   If you see something that says "light" then the traffic is lowest there.  If you want high population then go to where is says the population is highest.

There are some servers that will be closing down because the free server transfers was actually a merge so just dont go to them.   I can't remember all the servers that were "transfer from"  servers but there is a list somewhere.   Don't play on those servers play on the servers that are "transfer to" servers.    That is where the people are .  Of course I am never sure why these questions are repeatedly posted when most gamers usualy look at the server population guages from the company to see what server has people when they start a character.

Obviously you have to pick one that has traffic when you actually play so when you make your character check the server traffic ratings and pick one to your liking.  The rest is just for arguments sake.  No one knows what the present population of swg is they are only guessing, but if you want to play on a high pop server people can tell you what servers those are.

 

 

I agree with this. The truth probably lies somewhere in between, regarding claims of whether servers are totally deserted or highest population ever. I'm not much of one for hyperbole, which is why I often disagree with Badger's assertions that a given population is the highest it's ever been and such. On the other end of the spectrum, I used to roll my eyes at some of Wildcat's assertions about population size being incredibly low and scenarios for the game's closing, especially since none of us had any empirical evidence to back up such claims on either side.

Originally posted by ummax

You can't mislead people who can go check with their own eyes.   Neither you nor badger can judge for others.    Anyone who actualy listens to stuff on these boards be them positive or negative and takes it all as totaly accurate is going to have issues.  

 

I don't believe I made any claims of SWG having a higher population than ever overall, looking at my stats I figured that an average population today is that on Shadowfire, and that's not a particularly busy server.  I'm pretty sure that all servers had a higher average population back when the game was new, what SWG being such an incrediblly groundbreaking game and relatively little competition from other games.

I was however musing over the possibilities of Starsider specifically being busier than it has ever been previously, but I have no way to prove that, I never played there in Pre-CU.

All I aim to do is provide some stats that players can use to make informed decisions about which server to play on, once they are in game they can then see for themselves how those stats translate in game play terms.

According to Badger's graph, Starsider has 2000 players, is that correct?

That's less than the lowest population servers in WoW....LoL!

...and I just logged into my account that has been dormant for 5 years, transferred a character to Starsider and wow! Mos Eisley was empty! Not a single person there....I think this game will be good for nostalgia, and that's about it.

On the good side, there were lots of things to kill for PVE :)

It's so depressing seeing something like this, can't they just shut it down? There's no way it could be making money...

Originally posted by Postal13

According to Badger's graph, Starsider has 2000 players, is that correct?

That's less than the lowest population servers in WoW....LoL!

No.  I only have statistics that show players who are factionally aligned and have spent a month or so gaining GCW points to achieve Lieutenant rank, thats a rather small subset of the current player base.

You logged into Starsider and found nobody in Eisley?  I'll go for the good old "screenshots or it didn't happen". :)

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Originally posted by Postal13

According to Badger's graph, Starsider has 2000 players, is that correct?

That's less than the lowest population servers in WoW....LoL!

 

No.  I only have statistics that show players who are factionally aligned and have spent a month or so gaining GCW points to achieve Lieutenant rank, thats a rather small subset of the current player base.

You logged into Starsider and found nobody in Eisley?  I'll go for the good old "screenshots or it didn't happen". :)

Even though it was the middle of the aftenoon on a weekday, I'd still expect to see someone...

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Originally posted by Postal13

According to Badger's graph, Starsider has 2000 players, is that correct?

That's less than the lowest population servers in WoW....LoL!

 

No.  I only have statistics that show players who are factionally aligned and have spent a month or so gaining GCW points to achieve Lieutenant rank, thats a rather small subset of the current player base.

You logged into Starsider and found nobody in Eisley?  I'll go for the good old "screenshots or it didn't happen". :)

Well I still have a station account and Starsider was the loc for my main.  It has been quite empty if I log in during the weekdays during the day.  There is more activity in the evenings and weekends, but still has a very empty feeling.   I still log in and do space fighting on the weekends once in a while, don't do anything on any of the planets any more being that my main was a creature handler and is now a medic   Space is about the only activity that is still fun.

Originally posted by BadgerSmaker

Originally posted by Trubaduren

www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php  I took these screenshots in january, and starstrider was the most populated server at that time, still it wasn't much. And all other planets than tatooine was DEAD. I'm feraing since the server merge all but 4 servers are empty, beacuse everyone moved to those i guess, or whatever happend.

 

That was six months ago, and before the Free CTS.  Starsider had a population explosion since.  Take another look.

Players report that the server is as busy, if not busier than Pre-CU.

Who?  What players?  Names?  I'm going to have to go with the old..  "screenshots or it didn't happen" : )

Going with the only hard numbers we can get from SWG it shows a increase of toons of 38.5% in the GCW site.

On 5/30 there were 8,209 different ranked toons

On 7/10 there are 11,374 ranked toons

Increase of 3165 toons ranked.

http://swg.activeframe.de

Originally posted by Gutboy

Going with the only hard numbers we can get from SWG it shows a increase of toons of 38.5% in the GCW site.

On 5/30 there were 8,209 different ranked toons

On 7/10 there are 11,374 ranked toons

Increase of 3165 toons ranked.

http://swg.activeframe.de

The increase in GCW ranks characters has been attributed (many, many times) to the fact that you can get GCW points at a ludicrously fast rate now. As I said previously, it's like arguing that there's 254% more people in the real world now because there's 254% more automobil drivers in the world compared to 1910. It's a nice, convenient assumption, unfortunately it just doesn't stack up.