Servers on the decline again....

TL;DR - It's about a 4% drop from last Monday's numbers which is small and well within the variability we've seen in the last month. Let's wait for more data - too early to ID a drop at this point in time.


I think that I can say that I know as much about estimating what's going on with server populations as any other resident of these forums (link to my threads here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Links to my spreadsheets here, and here.)

I've done a lot of math and a lot of study at this problem. I have pondered Torstatus numbers for months, talked to the Torstatus guys, done censuses of servers, and gone to the mat for and against what feels like half the numbers people in this community about numbers going up and numbers going down and numbers going sideways.

Here's what I've seen for the numbers of simultaneous concurrent logins (as a 2 week average from Torstatus). If you want to know how I got to these numbers and what they might mean, go here for an explanation.

Date Logins
6/27/2012 32,834
6/29/2012 34,310
7/2/2012 35,383
7/10/2012 35,160
7/16/2012 35,853
7/23/2012 35,827
7/30/2012 34,490

There's a teeny twitch downward in the last couple of weeks... but that's well within the range of variation seen in the last month or so.

Let's put this in perspective. Taken together as a summed aggregate, all 26 destination servers summed together dropped 1.76 phi. Taken together as a summed aggregate, all 26 destination servers summed together have a combined phi of 48.85. So that's like a 4% drop.

Could be that BW added capacity. Could be that people are on vacation. Could mean that people are playing The Secret World, or going to see The Dark Knight Rises, or watching the Olympics, or who knows what. Or it could be people quit the game.

Let's all take a deep breath and be rational. I will look at the numbers again next Monday. One data point isn't a trend. Even two data points aren't a trend. Let's just see where the data goes.

Paige

The F2P model will be here in time for Christmas. Full cash shop with lots of goodies that would have been in regular content releases.

They have been hinting at it now for 2 months. The subscriptions will not sustain their required profit model.

F2P has turned DDO, LOTRO and several others from cancellation into very profitable.

EA is driving industry cash shop models from alternative downloadable content for console games to traditional pay per content PC games.

My prediction is that 1.4 will be the last regular update and with it will come the announcement of the full F2P model for November.

And there is nothing but good in such a move.

It's still Monday in the US, where most of the servers are located. You're in Oz?

My interest is in continuing to play the game.

The more a few very vocal people tell EA that everything is perfect, the less EA is likely to do to improve the game. The less EA does to improve the game, the more quiet/silent people leave the game. The more people leave the game, the less likely I am to be able to keep playing it because it will simply stop or go to a "F2P" model that charges me way more than I'm paying monthly now if I want to keep doing the content I'm doing.

Then again, there are better ways to get things done than to try to educate the masses and I really need to internalize that wisdom...

No Europe, but I mean the current Monday in Europe many servers are on high/very high right now, not the standard as seen during the sunny days last week.

Stated interest in continuing to play the game is in stark contrast to referencing and agreeing with external sources (or even internal posts) that the game is dying, or is fail (or whatever the term is this week) while dismissing anything to the contrary that actually supports the game or its community. That's not wisdom to be internalized. That's subversion.

I just wanted to put a point of view across that I don't see mentioned much.

Call me crazy but I have multiple accounts, 3 to be exact, 2 I play regularly but not at the same time and a 3rd I play now and again, I also subscribe to 2 other MMO's but obviously can't paly them all at the same time, I play very little in the evenings and an extremely unhealthy amount at the weekends

I can't be the only one that does this.

Long story shortish, although i'm not coming out on either side of the argument, there must be alot of people like me, that are fortunate enough to be able to play lots of different games at the same time.

It's just that from reading alot of posts, you'd think that this game should be the be all and end all for everyone that posts, and people could hold multiple subscriptions to different games and dedicate varying amounts of time to each.

Just another point of view......

Could be that this thread is pointless.

This. Servers are NOT declining...I log on to see heavy to full servers all the time.

Could not have said it better...............