How can we see overall sub numbers?

They said the subscription numbers were 1.3 million while the server population was still healthy. Since then 95% of servers had a huge drop in population. We're talking a greater than 75% drop.
These are facts I just stated.

Based on said facts, the odds that the population is above 1 million is so low(using statistical analysis, not my opinion), it's ridiculous to claim there's more than 1 million current subscribers.

No, they are facts. There were websites that were tracking the number of people logged into each server.

that plan was before final marketing push and additional costs. It MIGHT be off, yes. Numbers can change. Bam.

I am guessing that with over 2 million box sales it would be fair to assume about 50% retention

So 1 million. Then Bioware announced 400k subscriber loss (which i honestly believe they didnt lie about, but instead obfuscated the total number)

So 600k. Now that was a few months ago now. We have since seen all servers bar 2 or 3 drop to a light load. Even the Oceanic servers are now seeing the dropoff that the US / EU servers had.

A fair guess would be below 500k subscribers currently.


If you do not believe then please login and have a look at the numbers in fleet on a few servers. Its unrealistic to think there are more than 500k at this point in time.

You make a good point, I didnt know it was open to everyone a week before. So that would be the same day they released the 1.3 numbers and it just so happens that they all had their accounts expire 2 am in the morning so Bioware count count them out as lost subs in their report that day.

the only way to see something about population trends is to visit http://www.torstatus.net/
there are no sub numbers or actual numbers, just trends. and apparently, even with the transfers, the server population continue to decrease.

Synxos, I believe you are incorrect about "95% of servers" having a "greater than 75% drop" in population. I've been tracking the numbers of LOGINS. I can't track SUBS. The LOGINS have declined, but certainly not that much.

The data:
Pre-transfer http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=449144
Post-transfer http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=484899

Let me state VERY EMPHATICALLY that I CANNOT KNOW SUBSCRIBER numbers. I can only estimate the population of concurrent logins using torstatus, as explained in bloody detail in the above posts. Here's the data I have (summarized below). This does not look like a 75% drop in logins to me. To be fair, since I don't know anything about sub numbers, I cannot prove or disprove your estimate of a 75% drop in subs. I can only say that while *logins* have declined, it's only been maybe 30-40% AND they're skyrocketing back up after transfers started (there's a lag in response because these are 2 week averages).

Date Estimated 2 wk 24hr average of concurrent logins
5/8/2012 100,002
5/11/2012 95,859
5/14/2012 95,946
5/16/2012 85,995
5/18/2012 83,194
5/21/2012 76,255
5/23/2012 73,693
5/25/2012 72,203
5/28/2012 66,574
5/30/2012 66,323
6/1/2012 65,772
6/5/2012 63,243
6/6/2012 62,891
6/8/2012 62,601
6/11/2012 62,431
6/13/2012 62,923
6/18/2012 66,996
6/20/2012 68,576



I would be fascinated indeed to see these statistics as I'm a devotee of stats. Please post a citation here or send me a PM with the link? I would be very grateful.



Again, this is a new resource that I am unaware of, but am desperately interested in. Please also link me to this?

Torstatus grabs a copy of this webpage http://www.swtor.com/server-status every 5 minutes and sucks it into a database that does the math to show you the pretty summaries and graphs. However, the ONLY data that Torstatus can get is "light", "standard" and so on. It can only read the status. Torstatus then says 1 = light, 2 = standard, and so on, calculates a 2 week running average, and reports it as a phi value (details here).

The only way I know of to actually *know for sure* how many people are logged in to a server is to go through and /who the population by level band. I've been doing that for my own server (the Ebon Hawk) and provided a warehouse for others to do so if they felt like it. Survey is HERE. Data are HERE.



I'm looking forward to the status and the population numbers website. I'm gonna be over the MOON to know I don't have to do that anymore...


Thanks,


paige

Ypou realize the massive drop in population to which you're referring has nothing to do with active subscriptions right? It is completely plausible that the in-game population dropped because people stopped logging in because they were playing Diablo III, but that doesn't mean they all cancelled their subscriptions.

there is a big difference between the top server and the lowest server of the top 20 servers. And I am sure those top 20 have had increases. But what about the over 100 ones below those? So you are correct..the overall pop threads have decreased.

One question with the skyrocket after the transfers. Could that be because you still credit light servers with 250 average? In all honestly I do not think that number is accurate anymore.

Its like they took all the people from the light servers and added them onto other servers but still were counted being on the light servers.

Thats the reason you see a skyrocket.

Have you noticed any change in the server caps? Or are the basically the same?