Daniel Erickson on Server Population.

Mergers & Free Transfers. We need it for yesterday.

This is like having discussions about religion:

"My god is best"
"No, my god is best!"
"What are you talking about, gods don't exist!'

You present no facts, no evidence, nothing. At least provide us some motivation why BioWare is, in your opinion, straight-out lying to its customers.

Not lying so much as mis-representing facts. They may not have lost any subs (yet) because people still have play time left and their renewal isn't up yet. So they technically haven't lost those subs and are considered active until the account isn't renewed.

The reason they report this information in this manner is because they have shareholders. Bad news (like server mergers and a dying game) causes their stock to fall. Falling stock means less money. Less money means people getting fired.

the reason i keep noticing about the low server population is mainly on the republic side. and u know why that is? because if u take a look at most servers there is way more imperial players., depending on the server your on the ratio could be 3:1. So as far as i see it people need to stop rerolling to the imp side then ************ the server pop is low.

Why should they be free? Why could you not just re-roll on a new server, that is a free transfer albeit with out the character? Every MMO I know of has a character transfer service for a fee. EQ's used to be $75.

On second thought, maybe they could provide a free character transfer service for your toon; no equipment, no bank, no credits, nothing but your toon in their underwear and their ship.

Mr. Theology claims BioWare's statements on having a healthy population are "mumbo jumbo" and they they should admit having lost "hundreds of thousands of subscriptions." So he clearly seems to think they are lying.

I don't know what this means. The only players who have not been granted at least one opportunity to unsub are those who started less than 30 days ago.

Lying to shareholders is not good for your professional health either. If Dan Erickson says the population has not shrunk and the Q4 2012 earnings call reveals subscriptions numbers that show a substantial decline, then I would think that would be a much more serious problem for both him and EA. Then again, a number of people here claim that EA lied when it reported 1.7 million subscribers in is Q3 2012 earnings call.

regardless of all the wierd things he said in the link, this is finaly some good news on a subject this stupid.
And tbh SCREW THE NAME LOSS i couldnt care less about that even though im all for keeping my names on the toons i have, but i can see some further issues with this.
IF they merge servers and people loose names, then legacy will be affected to and that means alot of new data that needs to be sortet out, codemnokeys working overtime and CEO´s pulling out hair by the masses
but hey... they screwed it up not thinking it through at launch so its really their own problem as i see it.
But again, great news overall

This is the problem with leaving the player base to "rectify" server population issues. For the most part, we would prefer to be on the "right server "and part of the "right faction". I have walked away from my level 50 Republic toon on a ghost-town server, and am levelling my Empire toon on the busiest server. I know I am making the situation worse for those that have decided to remain, but I want to get the most out of this game, and I certainly wasn't doing so as a Republic character on a server that was very quiet.

A large proportion of the people I have bumped into whilst levelling have done exactly the same as me.

The transfers need to be free because this game is subpar. Bioware/EA is responsible for the population problems. They are the only ones that know the true population values, and on top of that, they should have anticipated the population fluctuations post launch. They are the ones who know that their technology is capable of in terms of supporting servers of large sizes. They released the game too early, and the many problems that sprung from that turned a lot of players away. They used artificial queues to try and direct the flow of new characters, and they opened new servers when it was not needed at all. They have been giving away gametime to save their sinking ship already, only 4 months since that disastrous launch.

If you'e going to tell players to reroll and start from level 1, we're going to do it on another game with a company that has better foresight and planning than this one.

Lots of players buy game time in blocks (3 months, 6 months, 12 months). Those accounts are considered active subs, even if they aren't being used.

Again, it's not technically lying. The game population is definitely in decline. We, as players, can see that every single day. Shareholders, many of whom don't play the game, aren't concerned with server populations. They are concerned with active subscriptions. People who are keeping their accounts active despite not playing, people who have payed in blocks, people with free game time are all considered active subscriptions.

Semantics are frequently employed by companies to make their numbers look better. As long as they don't actually change any information, they're not technically lying. They're just reporting the information in a beneficial manner. It's the difference between 1.7 million subscriptions and 1.7 million active subscriptions. See the difference?