Time to merge the US servers... again. Primetime window getting smaller and smaller.

Every forum thread is sort of like that

I was just using your new thing as an example. Your method so far has been the only thing posited by others that would make me think on a little more *IF going on and on about low population mattered. For me, I know population isn't what it used to be, I recognize just like anyone else how queues (all of them) are slower than they can be during better times. But it's not like I'm looking for someone to show me the numbers that support what I'm already seeing. Bioware is going to have the same reaction I am, and they have the added bonus of smuggly knowing the ACTUAL numbers beyond any shred or shadow of doubt.

The following were gathered on Star Forge at the times listed using the data collection method outlined by TrixxieTriss in this post. I did not check Satele Shan because I only have one Republic character on that server or any of the European servers because I don't have any characters on them.

15:00-15:10 UTC -- It really doesn't take very long to check these numbers in small batches
Republic - 822
Imperial - 978
Total - 1,800

This was an hour before lunch time on the East Coast US. So I waited a bit and checked again just to see if there would be a change during lunch time.

16:10-16:20 UTC
Republic - 880
Imperial - 1,085
Total - 1,965

* Both Shadow and Sorcerer were 100+ people so couldn't get an accurate count. Not really surprising to see the numbers go up. Since I started on this, and can't really play thanks to a sick 2 y/o, I'll just keep checking throughout the day.

18:30-18:40 UTC
Republic - 997
Imperial - 1,280
Total - 2,277

* Again Shadow was 100+ so not a completely accurate count. One trend I am seeing is that Vanguard and Powertech seem to be the least played classes as they have had the least number of players online.

21:40-21:50 UTC -- A screaming 2 y/o kept me from checking on my intended 2 hour mark.
Republic - 1,207
Imperial - 1,534
Total - 2,741

* Shadow, Juggernaut, Assassin, and Sorcerer were all 100+.

01:10-01:20 UTC -- I had intended to check more frequently, but a puking 2 y/o prevented that.
Republic - 1,584
Imperial - 1,861
Total - 3,445

* Guardian, Sentinel, Shadow, Sage, Commando, Juggernaut, Marauder, Assassin, Sorcerer, Operative, and Mercenary were all 100+. Note that this time is about 9 pm EDT.

So, a few things I noticed. The population disparity between Republic and Imperial isn't as high as some like to make it out to be. As previously noted, Vanguard and Powertech seem to be the least played classes. Throughout the day they consistently had lower numbers than the other classes. Would certainly need more data to say definitively. Another thing I noticed is that this is not a very reliable way to get population numbers. How so? Well in my last check there were 11 classes that met or exceeded 100 players online. Sniper was almost included on that list but was just under 100 players (97 at the time). While the difference is likely to only be a handful of players it does mean that none of us on these forums can have accurate server population numbers.

Further, this really doesn't tell us the actual server population only the number of people, or close to it, that are logged in at any one moment. Estimates are that only 10~20% of an MMO's server population is online at any one time. If we go middle of the road and say that the 3,445 players online during prime time represent approximately 15% of the server population then that means the server population is roughly 22,966. If Star Forge is roughly representative of server populations across all servers (+/- a percentage) then there are still over 100,000 people playing. Yes, this is a lot of speculation. Is it fair to use Star Forge to represent all servers? No, not really. But none of us on these forums, unless your posts show up on the Dev tracker, can have accurate population numbers. Even using Trixxie's method is speculation based upon a limited system. Even if someone were willing to login to every server at specific time intervals and track these numbers over an extended period of weeks, aggregating the data from all 5 servers, and plotting graphs to reveal trends... Well, I'd rather play so we're all just speculating.

To some, 3,500 people online spells DOOOOoooOOM!!1!11! To others, meh. This isn't a triple A game in its prime. It isn't WOW, which is anomalous. This game is almost 7 years old, caters to a niche market (a lot of people may like Star Wars, not all of them want to also play Star Wars or play in an MMO setting), doesn't have competitive, e-sports style PVP, and has slow content releases. Yeah, it has a small population. I would be extremely baffled if it didn't.

I did a count on Star Forge in prime time. I’m not going to release the results as such because it just gets people worked up. I did the count for my own tracking and also to see what other data I could pull or use.

One thing of note is class popularity. All classes but Powertechs and Vanguards are popular. Both those classes had minimal representation. About 1/3 of what other classes have.

There is a faction discrepancy on Star Forge with Imps having about 1/5 more players. Mainly in lower lvls. But level 70 is fairly equal.
What really shocked me is the amount of characters between level 1-40. Easily more people leveling new characters than playing level 70. (I guess people are sick of grinding)

Leads to my question, why aren’t more of them pvping in lowbies and Mids?
IMO, the answer is there is no incentives to play those brackets because it’s faster and easier to lvl up in pve.
I believe low lvl pvp is where people should learn to pvp and not lvl 70. It’s more relaxed and conducive to training.
Bioware really need some incentives to get people learning in those brackets. Not waiting till lvl 70 and then running into people raging at them for being noobs. Everyone ends up having a better experience and the quality at lvl 70 improves,

The other thing I was able to use the search for was to see how many pvp matches were happening across all brackets and what maps seem to pop the most. As well as how many people in total were playing. I found all this pvp info particularly interesting.
Mandalorian Arena pops the most of all the Arenas (Bioware have thing for their new maps. Always a great way to make people really hate them )
Combined Hutt Balls pop the most 8 man matches (most people leave cause of all the dysnc. They should be removed until they fix that. People hate playing them because of it and it’s making people who like Hutt Ball hate it)
Yavin and Odessen pop next = about equal
There is a noticeable gap here.
Civil war and Nova after that = Civil War a little more than Nova
Hypergates
And then poor old Voidstar which seems to pop the least (a very big difference from the top popping maps)

There also aren’t as many matches happening as I would have expected at lvl 70. Below lvl 70 they are almost non-existent and only seem to be arena when they pop.
It seems the lvl 70 queue would be lucky to have 80-100 people in it during primetime. That’s certainly not healthy

A one off study isn’t near enough data to come to any definitive conclusions. But I will say that a lot of pvpers have been saying for a long time that voidstar hardly pops and huttball pops too much. What I saw seems to support that.
This is something Bioware can fix. They need to make the pops more balanced and not favour their new maps and Huttball. Ideally Huttball should be removed from the rotation till the fix the dysnc.
What worries me is they have another Huttball map planned for 5.9,3 and I fear it will have just as much or more dysnc. If they can’t fix the other two maps, well
I feel the bugs, dysnc and poor map rotations are all contributing to people’s dislike of pvp. These are all things Bioware can control and improve to stop people leaving the pvp and also the game.

When a population drops, you should look at why. The community gives them plenty of feed back and they ignore it and only look at spreadsheets. That’s not how you understand what your players want.
If they don’t want to listen to our feed back on the forums, then they should at least send out a survey to all subscribers and find out what they like, what they don’t like and what Bioware needs to improve. Ideally they’d also send it to all cancelled subs in the last 12 months to find out why they left.

Population decline can be halted and probably even be reversed a little if Bioware took actions to improve the fun in the game, fix the bugs and dysnc and add incentives to play the whole game and not just race to lvl 70 and then people leave. All of those things can be done without adding more content. If they did that while we are waiting for the expansion, it would help. It certainly couldn’t make things worse.

I would bet that most players playing characters under level cap are playing for the fun of the PvE parts of the game... whatever that might be for any given player.

I know it is difficult for you to wrap your arms around the fact that PvP has been the leading source (not the only source.. so don't come back with exception examples ... just the leading source) of server die-off for years now.. but it is. This game is mostly about PvE.. and apparently so are most of the players that play PvE. Which in no way takes away from the PvP facet of the player base.... but it does put your continued anxiety over the state of PvP into perspective. PvP servers.... since launch and through the period we actually had PvP servers.... ALWAYS died off first in terms of population and player activity. PvP just is not the thing in this MMO that you want it to be.. and almost 7 years in now... there is no reason to expect that to change. We all could wish it to be different, and make endless threads about it and present ideas to reverse this persistent fact... but that does not change what the player base chooses to do.

If you want to blame the studio for the poor state of PvP in SWTOR... have at it. I guess one could say they deserve the grief for not making PvP more central to the game. But it won't change a trend that is now going on 7 years old.. and even predates launch.

And NO.. incentives will not make sub-cap characters get played in PvP if the player is simply not interested in PvP (for all the various reasons discussed over and over and over again in the forum about this very topic over the years). I guess you could over-incentivize it to try to move the meter.... but then you would also attract all of the least enjoyed aspect of PvP for players that are not predominately PvP players and undermine any incentive effort. You can lead a horse to water.. but the horse decides whether to drink or not.

And yes.. I fully understand that you will continue to create new threads to point out every observed flaw about PvP in SWTOR and make definitive suggestions as to how the studio can "easily fix it". I admire your zeal.. even though I think it is both misplaced and destined to drive you to quit in frustration. Why not set up a Rishi instance and organize some coherent and persistent PvP fun on your server under your desired conditions and constraints and then go get those players who want to PvP to come play? Why must everything be placed at the feet of the studio when they have actually given players and guilds a method to conduct instanced PvP on their own terms and conditions?

That part isn't entirely fair to most of the PvPers in this game. Open World PvP was why those servers existed, not the warzones and arenas. They became smaller quicker because it turns out people who don't have experience with "types" of servers unwittingly chose those servers, were ganked to oblivion, and either left the game or wizened up to what each server category really meant, and the population of gankers and much smaller population of "real PvPers" was left so small that they were always going to be the first servers to die off.

I think it was an outstanding idea to make a separate instance in the "normal" () servers, but if you actually go to those instances, even when they were introduced, it is very rare to see 5 people of the same faction, but most often there are like 3-4 people total in there, and most of them ignore each other because they're in there for uninterrupted/non-ninja questing.

The OW PvPer in this game is non-existent (or so small as to be inconsequential, as Iokath has proven) and bears no weight in the arguments that Trixxie and other dedicated warzone/arena PvPers are making. Bioware will likely never throw another bone to OWPvP again, but standard PvP still has their ear (to a minimal extent, as has been discussed already, but at least there's hope knowing Keith is a PvPer)

In my experience in MMOs.. once you provide PvP players instanced PvP.... most of them concentrate exclusively on that kind of PvP. This was true even for WoW more then a decade ago.. when they first put in Battlegrounds.. it largely sucked the life out of rolling open world PvP battles that used to run pretty much 7/24. Of course SWTOR had instanced PvP up front.... so we never got to see what an true OW only PvP would evolve into with this MMO.

I'm sure there are still some who love to OW PvP and who can and will organize some adhoc OW PvP between guilds or groups of like minded players on both sides... but it's going to be a minority of PvPers who do this... so I disagree with you that PvP servers die off faster then PvE servers back in the day because of no OW PvP. It's there and always has been.. but it requires players to do more then sit in a queue and shoot the #$%^ in Fleet until it pops.

No disagreement... and I would submit that it further proves my point that PvPers really only want to do instanced PvP... and apparently mostly through random GF queuing with complete strangers. Now.. maybe if OW PvP had similar rewards for effort in PvP.. more would play outside the instances.. but given that takes time and effort to get to the PvP part...probably not as players do not seem to want to forage for their PvP.. they want it delivered to their door.

The fact remains... every PvP server that ever existed in this MMO has died off much earlier then the roughly equivalent PvE server in the same point in time. Remember when people were walking away from the game when server populations started plunging a month after launch? .... where there was no server transfers or merges yet.. so PvPers in NA declared collectively to aggregate through rerolls on The Fatman... and declared The Fatman to be THE stable, populated, and active PvP server where all NA PvPers should play. Yeah.. and yet The Fatman did not fair well in population stability over the long term and being a PvP server.. it did not attract PvE players much. There is no Fatman anymore... it went into the dead bucket in a server merge cycle... and of course.... in 2018.. there is no such thing as a PvP server anymore.

I'm understanding of the plight of PvPers in this MMO.. but I also understand that there are PvPers smashing their heads against the forum walls wanting/demanding/pleading for more in the way of PvP in SWTOR.. yet that simply is not the trend... not since day one after launch. I think the game works OK for the more casual PvPer and players who do a blend of PvP/PvE.. but I do not believe it meets (nor ever will meet) the needs and wants of the enthusiast PvPer who really only wants to play PvP (which in my view really should be spending more of their PvP time in esports style games where PvP is core to the game). They certainly deserve to get their wants and needs met in terms of PvP... but they may very well have to go find a game more suited to their needs and wants in this regard.

Is this request to merge because of low population?, or is it to avoid having to pay to transfer? Because, the server I'm on is quite active at all times of the day/night.

This is probably the most important part of the entire post. More people are leveling than are playing end game (assuming everyone who is level 70 plays end game or the number of "end-game" players might be even smaller). This is something that has been disputed by the people who are having difficulty with random groups for a very long time and now there is "proof". There are "lots" of people playing the game that are not queuing for PVP or Raids.

I agree. weekdays fleet has less than 20 ppl on at a time. the ques for grouping takes too long and eventually ill leave game.

I’ve a feeling people are just sick of the grind at lvl 70. There is so much more to do in this game than just grind CXP stuff.
You have all the side planet side quests, there are things to explore, datacrons, heroics, low level flash points and even low lvl pvp
I wonder how many people at those lvls are actually doing all of that or are they just rushing to lvl 70 again? I’m sure not many of them are pvping or it would pop more. Which leads me to think that a lot are F2P.

I’d like to see incentives to play the whole game again. Not just the low lvl pvp (which needs help). There is so much good stuff in the vanilla part of the game. Even Makeb is great. The whole game is great as an MMO until you get the 2 expansions that rob you of playing in a group to finish the stories.

The stories are still cool, but they have to be done by yourself, there aren’t any real rewards and the chapters aren’t replayable (as such) on the same character. You have to play them on another, which can get tedious because the stories are the same for every class.

I think Biowares mistake is marketing and making the game only about lvl 70 and by making it too easy to lvl and removing a lot of little rewards you got along the way. They’ve incentivised people to rush to lvl 70 and basically disregard everything along the way. If they made the game more about the journey and all aspects like it used to be, I think it would be more healthy.

I have a feeling (obviously no proof), that a large portion of those lower lvl people I saw are F2P who play till they get to the end game stuff they need to subscribe to. Then they either restart another class to do story or they leave the game.
One of the reasons I believe this is because of low participation in lowbie pvp (F2P are restricted) and also low participation in flash points (I think they are restricted ?).

F2P are obviously restricted from playing lvl 70 content because of CXP and end game restrictions. It makes me wonder how much more involvement would there be in end game stuff like pvp and raids if passes were still available to by on the CM and F2P had some way to achieve CXP 150 and wear 236-242 gold armor.

Which leads me to question, do Bioware count all the F2P people as their main audience or do they count their subscribers? Numbers on a spread sheet saying “we have have this many people playing”, doesn’t equate to the same amount of money being made or a health game. F2P are fly by night players who I believe rarely bring funds into the game and more because they are so restricted in participating. I don’t know, maybe they do buy bling on the GM and only use it in F2P sections of the game. But it I would say it’s kess than it used to be under the old F2P model.

I’ve never been a proponent of F2P in this game, I think Bioware made a mistake early on and gave too much of the game away for free. But in doing so, they set expections for that audience as they drove subscribers away. Then they flip flopped on that model in 5.0 and a lot of those F2P / Prefered people left the game. I think that hurt the game more than we all know or will ever know (until someone writes their memoirs after the game closes).

I think it’s time that Bioware added passes back to the CM and eased up on the Prefered player restrictions. They should be allowed to participate a bit more in lowbie, mid and higher end pvp. They should be allowed to participate in some end game story (with in reason). They should be able to collect CXP up to a certain lvl (maybe 150). They should be able to collect UCs and wear 236-242 good gear.

It’s obvious people are playing the game, just not in the lvl brackets and content we expect. Which I think points to more free to play and preferred people being limited to that zone. Seeing as the areas we need them in are suffering lack or participation or population, it makes sense to get them into those lvl brackets in some fore to give subscribers some people to play with.

Anyway, that’s just my opinion and what I think it means. I could be partially wrong, completely wrong or right.
It sure couldn’t hurt lowbie pvp to open it up to F2P people. It hardly pops as it is. Maybe they’d get a taste for it and want to subscribe and play higher lvl pvp.