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

They should - I agree. There's no reason to have two NA servers.

You do realise just as many players from all parts of the game have been leaving. It’s not just one part of the population. ie conquest players, group content players and even story players (due to lack of content)

If you try to play any group content at the times the OP is trying, you will see a drop in flash point and operations participation as well,

I think if we could see Biowares data on what mix of people play pvp or we could see a properly run poll somewhere, you would see that there are a lot of casual players who pvp as well as doing other stuff.

Obviously I don’t know the percentages of the player population of who play pvp full time, play pvp casually or just dabble in pvp. But I believe it is much higher than you think and I dont believe it’s right for you to try and say otherwise.

Are there problems with pvp, yes. Are the problems because people don’t like pvp generally? The answer is no.
There are many underlying problems with pvp at the moment, even with this supposed “pvp content patch”. Nearly all of them stem from Bioware and not the players. Even the things from the players, Bioware have allowed to fester from inaction for too long and bare some of that responsibility (any toxicity)

If people are turned off from pvp, a lot of its because of bugs, dysnc, matchmaking not working, poor class balance, wintrading-cheating-hacking (mainly in ranked, but not limited too) and few loud and obnoxious toxic fools

Every single one of those things ruins a person’s experience and enjoyment of pvp, including my own. But every single one of those things is completely within Biowares ability to control.

* They’ve let bugs go unfixed for years.
* They’ve allow those bugs to fester and multiply with every expansion and content patch,
* They’ve created the dysnc problems and they are getting worse everytime they add any new content to the game. Not just in pvp.
* They’ve allowed for extremely poor class balance since 5.0 and what they did change had either no affect on the situation or made other classes worse.
* They’ve supposedly introduced a matchmaking system in 5.9.2 which has made pvp teams worse than with no match making. This is ruining pvp in a big way for a lot of people (myself included)
* They’ve allowed cheating in this game since day one, but their lax attitude towards it for so long only emboldens cheaters to do it.

Every single one of those things can be contributed to Bioware directly or in the case of the cheating or toxicity, fostered by Biowares in action.

This whole 5.9.2 patch has been a royal mess for pvpers. The only thing that seems to have gone smoothly and is working as intended is the cross faction.

When you consider the patch was touted as a pvp patch, they sure spent a lot of time and energy working on strong hold decorations, hooks and design at the detriment of the pvp aspect.

If they had spent time on properly testing the pvp aspect of the patch and better listening to the feed back of the testers, maybe we wouldn’t have had a bug riddled patch and matchmaking would have worked and dysnc would have been fixed,

As it stands, this patch has had the reverse affect and is making pvpers stop playing (myself included). The whole situation is reminiscent of the conquest patch all over again. Which made dedicated player leave the game.

If people aren’t pvping, it’s not because they wouldn’t get enjoyment or want to play if things were working, it’s because it’s broekn on so many lvls.
It’s for that reason that I think it’s unfair to try and paint pvp as something people hate playing. I dont think they hate playing pvp. I think they hate playing broken pvp.

You can put all the incentives in the world, like UCs and it won’t get people to pvp is it’s not fun because it’s broken. So you really can’t gauge wether the UCs really ha e a positive affect on pvp participation.

Of course there will be those people who don’t like pvp, I get that. Just like there will be plenty of people who dislike other parts of the game. It doesn’t make any part of the game less important than the next because a bunch don’t need like content A and another bunch don’t like don’t B, which a third bunch doesn’t like A or B.

I’ll keep coming back to this point over and over. Every part of content in this game matters. None will not survive long with out the rest. If you disregard story, pvp, flash points, Operations and even strong holds for too long, then the whole game suffers and they have a flow on affect.

I think we all saw what the changes to conquest did to the game. Even people who didn’t really participate in conquest were affected when people had to change their play style or people left the game. Every bad thing that affects one part of the game, always seems to negatively flow through to all other parts.

I had high hopes this patch would breath some life back into pvp. On paper it was exciting. But I warned that if they messed it up, it would have the reverse affect and that is where it’s heading.

Those remaining pvpers who might stick it out will require some help from the community and the Devs to allow them to play. That may end with Bioware doing mergers or trying something else.
But I think we should all remember, it’s not the pvpers fault. They (we) are as much a victim of circumstances as everyone else will be if mergers are part of the solution.

It's summer, populations are lower, and it's still more crowded than I like.

Meanwhile, W0Ws expansion is the fastest selling one yet (3.3 MILLION copies the 1st day)...people WILL pay for new and good content...MMOs aren't dead yet.

Why is it always THIS game that has seasonal happenings as excuses as to why the population is down?

Oh, it's summer, people are outside at the pool or the beach, BBQ'ing with friends. Oh it's fall, kids are getting ready for school. Oh, it's winter, people are preparing for family to come over for Thanksgiving and going X-mas shopping. Oh, it's the New Year, people are getting back into their normal work schedules after the holiday season. Oh, it's spring, people are taking advantage of the warmer weather and many school kids are on spring break.

It's so ridiculous. I truly have no words for this being an argument as to SWTOR's population woes.

In all fairness, it is more than likely because this is the first expansion in WoW history to be released in every region at the same time, which probably heavily skewed the first day sales.

Source: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ne...-rule-them-all

Cata sold 3.3 million on day 1.
WoD sold 3.3 million on day 1.
Legion sold 3.3 million on day 1.
BfA sold 3.4 million on day 1.

This isn't new. It's technically higher, but barely.

I don't care if it's new or not, it's what has been reported by Blizzard, so I assume it's truthful. It saddens me because this game could be rivaling those numbers, but instead, Bioware became a victim of their own arrogance, and to this day they still haven't learned a thing.