SWTOR still bleeding players?

Oh wow... really? Either my server is very mature (it's not) or someone pays way too much attention to kids in general chat.

As far as I know, EA/Bioware haven't touched the server measurements since the server merges back in September. Though clearly, there's no way to be absolutely sure of that.

There was a minor spike in players about a week before F2P came out. Then a HUGE spike at the actual launch of F2P.

From what I can see on our EU PvE server, things have settled back down to the levels matching the week before F2P launched. ie. Numbers are higher than the trend for the months prior to the F2P launch - but nowhere near the numbers from the 10 days following the F2P launch. And yeah, "Full" was temporary - we're still seeing full at weekends, but even that has almost disappeared in recent weeks (though not a definitive gone-for-ever yet).

But judge for yourself, with the data from torstatus pasted together into a single image:

http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/3...ysepdec201.jpg

I should point The Red Eclipse is currently the most populated EU server. It was merged back in September with all the other English PvE servers. We had a couple of big dips in number of those two weeks in October when patches meant the servers were offline. And clearly, F2P launch was November. I last updated my picture in early December - the current details are are torstatus.

Overall, the numbers are still trending downwards, very very slowly. But given the way torstatus collects it's stats - that could be more players, playing less hours per day concurrently. Though my personal experiences are that people are still leaving and those that are joining aren't staying long.

What I can't predict is "The Fatman" effect. Where because TRE is the highest population English EU server... it grows (or at least, doesn't shrink) at the expense of other servers. That may or may not be happening already.

Ask me again in January. It's too close to the F2P launch and Xmas to draw any concrete conclusions.

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After f2p launch servers were full mostly in prime times and weekends were very bad. Then few weeks later things settled down and was ether Very heavy or heavy.

Past week or so it has been mostly heavy few times it goes to very heavy. People have more time during holiday and actually play more games, go look it up from internet i have experienced that myself in other mmo's. BUT problem in here is that Bioware didnt do any events only left us with option to buy cool event items via CM and that made alot people just leave during holiday.

What actually worries me is that overall it hasnt been big drop instead we dont gain any new players.. and thats bad when game has now f2p option aswell.....

Well it took going F2P to get the population back up after almost a year of hemorrhaging players. Give F2P a few months to die down and then we'll see where this game is after that.

That's a good point. F2P was a card they played within a year of launch. If it starts to drop again...

F2P does not bring long term players, CONTENT brings long term players. Most people who came back with 1.5 did HK, did Section X, then they left. They will be back for Makeb.

Currently old players, that left a while ago, finish their class stories for free and new players try out what all 'the fuss' is about. As soon as those players hit 50 with some characters, they will realize (again) that this game has little to offer at the end and we will see a shrink in numbers (again). This will be a slow process however.

As statet so many times before, it wasn't the sub that let players flee - despite what BW thought, because of some words players left behind - it was the game itself (balance, bugs, static design and so on) and the constant lack of considerable content that did. It happened before and it will happen again. That doesn't mean the game will die ultimativelly, but I think it will stagnate like frozen hell. Less people, less money, less capabilities to do stuff - vicious circle.

F2P could have been healthy for the game, but EA/BW failed to deliver a sound variant of it. There are enough models out there that have been successfully tested and don't give the (potential) customer the feeling to be screwed over and over again.

I know, some fanboys will say now that they don't feel this way, but that's irrelevant. Just look at all the people complaining here and elsewhere in the net. That's all money EA/BW didn't get. That's the money missing to do more things for the game and thus for you fanboys as well.

Not at all. I use my brain and see the little number up in the left hand corner showing a lot more people and instances filling faster up than previously at all times of the day. Not counting the point that torstatus just calculates whether it's light/standard/heavy , which covers a large theshhold, and not actual numbers.

Regardless, if you're a hardheaded hater then I'll use your own finisher against you. http://www.torstatus.net/shards/us/stats . Mind you this is covering a time that is well after the f2p move. Does that look like it's trending down? Granted, I've been out of school a long time but I think a + denotes an increase on every server. . There, I'll make it big and bold so there should be no confusion about whether the game is losing or gaining. Sorry if you want everyone to dislike the game so you can leave but the game is picking up not slowing down,.

I would agree content brings new players, but adding sandbox elements would KEEP players. And it's less spendy on BW side. This game is one big theme park: You do what they want you to do.

the main prob with that is I use general chat of fleet as my main way to advertise implant crafting which is the main way I make money in game. So I need to be in general chat for that. I also use general chat to join pugs etc because I'm the rare guildie that still likes to do every operation every week. I've tried leaving general chat or fleet and just sitting in my ship but then I don't make money and it takes much longer to find out about a pug group. Also I still get spammed with whispers from people who make or log on alts. I end up rotating my ignore list constantly throughout the day but when I put their alts on ignore they just log on another char.

posts like these show the problem. For some reason people feel the need to insult others. I use general chat to advertise my implant crafting which makes me a lot of money. And it doesnt matter where I go they follow. Also doesnt prevent the wall of whispers. Unfortunately I have to rely on my whispers and general chat for implant crafting so Im not able to totally remove them from my chat window. And this all started with someone randomly insulting me while being extremely vulgar in general chat. When I asked him to stop that is when everyone else jumped on the bully wagon. It's apparently cool to all gang up on someone for requesting that someone else obey the rules of conduct and stop inappropriate behaviour. And yes my ignore list is full I rotate it constantly because folks log on alts. My only respite is when I log on alts and I hate playing alts.