EVE Online: It Has Never Been This Good

In just two weeks back to playing EVE full time I have racked up more kills in this month than I ever have.

That’s due to the changes to Faction Warfare. It’s an actual warzone out there. It always was. But now it’s even more so. It’s no longer about running FW missions every so often to pay for the mass of BCs and AFs you need to fleet in.

Now it’s about everything. It’s about Frigs and Destroyers plexing and skirmishing while tyring to earn LP. It’s about Cruisers and Tech IIs meeting on gates. And it’s still about large fleets meeting on the field in a wide variety of ships. We get our cake and we get to eat it too.

Last night was most amount of damage in ISK I have been apart of. A small part of our corp leadership leads out noob FW players in Frig gangs to help give them a feel for Fleets and FW action. Instead of the vast majority of them thinking its all about plexing and escaping, we show them it’s about fighting smarting and learning how to catch things. Frig gangs help move faster. And it means that if you have spies, who cares. The fleet moves too fast for your spy intel to do anything about it.

The night starts off with a catch of a 1.2B Legion. Poor sad pirate was on the gate with a nice size fleet. Their eyes even saw us come into system, but they didn’t move off field fast enough. Our solo Inty scout caught this fat fuck 20KM off gate. Nice start with no losses. In only jump 3 more systems down a pipe into deeper Caldari sections, only to find not 1 but 2 fat Lokis. One must have been bait, as 3 ships pointed him, another Loki warped to his friend along with a Drake. Only fifteen minutes into the Operation and with few losses to brave hero points, the fleet had racked up 3 T3 kills along with 3B in ISK.

After some roaming and small kills we find another pirate camp. They know we are coming, we know, at least those smart enough, that this is a Leroy chance. The idea is we will die, but we are taking something way more expensive with us. We took a Sleipnir and a Cane before losing half the fleet of cheap frigs. Decent trade, for us.

Nothing in my time in FW have I found a fight as fun as the one we accidently run into. Towards the end of the roam, after reshipping, we see what we think is a Armageddon Navy Issue being escorted by 2 Drakes, Ferox and a Brutix only 2 jumps from our full fleet location. We finally have found some legitimate WTs for FW. After piling on the gate our Inties jump in. After decloaking and scramming the Arm Navy Issue and the fleet in flight to the long gate away, we hear: “They aren’t escorting the ANI, they have a Charon!”

It gets pointed as well only 1 jump from high sec safety. Exactly 30 frigs and dessies swarm over the two expensive ships. The Charon finally goes down. Only 23 of us left we go onto the ANI and it goes down. What’s surprising is that the BCs haven’t fled. They burn off, and many escape point range more than once, but yet all remain one by one dying in a ball of fire.

For 7 cheap frig kills, the fleet turned over 5B in ISK in kills. The Charon was empty. And more suprisingly the pod was actually worth more. With all of his implants, the pod kill was worth the most at 1.5B in ISK. This was the big parts of my night. Throughout it, I racked up 20 other kills later on.

If you don’t play EVE and want to start, I can’t tell how much not to listen to those guys going on about Mining and WH space. You want to make money and have fun actually PVPing, then FW is where it is at. I’ve been Pie, I’ve been Anti-Pie, I’ve been 0.0 drone and I have been a carbear. I have never had PVP fun like I have had every day in Faction Warfare. And that’s the important part. Many spend a day roaming for a fight. You can accidnetly get one in FW in less than a minute.

If you want to Mine your life away and resolve to think that the only PVP in EVE is griefers on Hulks, then have fun. You want to think that PVP is not profitable, then continue running your industry.

EVE is a vast place. And your side of the Map is nothing like my side of the Map. EVE has somewhat fair and profitable PVP. It’s just in a unlikely place called Faction Warfare.

Sad, But No Surprises Here

According to Gamasutra and it is also on the official forums, an undisclosed number of layoffs are occurring in the restructure of BioWare’s Star Wars Team.

It is sad to see the effects take place. When people spout anger over a game’s design or progress they say the company in whole. What they really mean is those in management and in decision-making areas. But really, what’s easier to say: “Damn BioWare” or “Damn you managers and directors of the SWTOR division of BioWare”?

With these kind of number drops and the promise of layoffs of the fiscal year-end report by EA, this came at no surprise to the literate. It just sucks to see those not responsible take the hit. We wish you luck.

What really get’s on my nerves is the BioWare comment on the reasoning behind this layoff process:

“The publisher blamed the drop-off on fewer trial players and on casual customers who decided to not keep their subscriptions going.”

You are joking me, right? It’s the fault of too few trial gamers taking on subscriptions and then it’s the fault of players unsubscribing? Oh, no, there is no way it’s your job to entice them to buy or give them a reason to continue?

Not still sure what you are trying to prove or accomplish. But here’s a slow clap for the management at BioWare. Good job.

Towel Throwing

IGN had an exclussive interview with the director for SWTOR and revealed the contents of 1.3, these include:

•  Group Finder (I guess this is good, don’t know)
• Crafting Changes (And by that they mean we no longer need you Synthweavers/ ArmorMechs)
• More Legacy (Somehow people enjoyed the legacy perks, good for them)
• ….and Server Transfers (This is somehow a feature and not just a basic need)

These announcements come with much joy from the public. Why? I have no clue. A group finder takes roughly 5 minutes to program. Hell, WAR had it at launch. Then even their skeleton crew were able to setup a realm wide one just as soon as it was asked for.

In the interview, questions are posed by someone either on staff at BW or this person would like to be on staff at BW. But no official statements on the following:

• Where the fuck are the missing features of 1.2 to include
  • Cross Server Queues
  • 8 Mans
  • Ranked Warzones
• How about some hints for an overall Open PVP experience?
• Guild Benefits?

Let’s get something straight: Server Transfers are not content. Waiting till 1.3 is stupid. Well really, waiting till tomorrow is also stupid. But that’s not happening.

Anyways, I held on as long as I could. You had a nice game. You don’t deserve a monthly subscription, but nice game none the less.

In other news, One More Day until the big EVE patch. Getting the itch to start a Minnie alt to jump on that sweet sweet LP discount they are about to have. Amarr only controlled 14 territories when I logged last night. Ridiculous.

SWTOR: Subscriptions, Servers and Dart Boards

What happens when you ask BioWare for transfers? Whether it is nicely, with extreme distain, by feedback, by forum posts, or by the door slam end subscription we all get the same response. This response is “Thank you, we appreciate your thoughts. We are monitoring the servers and examining this idea”.

But are you, BioWare? I don’t think you are. But don’t worry. That’s why I have done this monitoring for you. You can thank me later. Or send a threatening email warning me to stop and desist. Either one.

If you keep up with www.torstatus.net you can see what anyone can see. And that’s not only an extremely sharp downturn in populations overall recently, it’s also showing major trends in server desolation. BioWare was happy to report 2.1 Million copies before launch sold and even more ecstatic to share that 1.7M decided to subscribe after the first month. And as of April 1^st, 2012, they are reluctant to not only admit that they only have 1.3M subscribers but even sadder to share that all the free months they provided are among that number.

Now while torstatus.net cannot give us exact populations or even close to subscription numbers it does show us server load indicators. Based on this sole tracking it can examine the trends of players on each server. While it cannot tell us how many players are subscribed, it can tell us roughly how many are playing. And in that trend we can start to draw conclusions.

At the beginning of April 2012, BioWare reports nearly 1.3M subscribed. In which North American servers number 123 servers. Of those:

• 2% can reach Heavy population levels
• 47% hold steady at Standard population levels
• And 50% of the servers are considered Light population
• 1% left for indifference and Full server loads

Compare this to end of April with the same amount of servers with players drawn to Beta events for GW2 and D3 and we see:

• 1% Heavy server populations (down 1%)
• 36% holding Standard levels (down 11%)
• 63% now at Light level (up 13%)

If we look at today, May 18^th, 2012 and consider that the first batch of subscribers in December of 2011 have now reached the end of their subscription cycle and that the free month has ended in many of these cases form 1.2, and then we consider the launch of D3 (not a direct competitor, but a major PC release) we then can examine even more dramatic numbers with same amount of servers:

• 0% Heavy server populations (down 1%)
• 6% Standard server levels (down 30%)
• And a 94% on Light levels (up 31%) <- Pretty Ridiculous

Less than a week ago Light server levels were down under 80%. The release of D3 has hit the server levels harder than expected. Server levels have been in a steady decline for the last month but as of May 14^th have taken extreme dives. A month ago we were witnessing server migrations. Where the lower population servers were steadily losing balance the top 10 servers were growing in populations. As of this week, no server is in the green.

The Fatman server now holds an index level of 2.44 meaning that it is no longer considered a Heavy Server. It is a Standard server with capabilities of being Heavy 44% of the time. This is down 13% from last month. What was the quickest growing server is now taking the harder of the population losses. This maybe a good thing to the veterans of the server that for a short time were suffering from a queue times to log in.

The top 6 servers are all suffering in the Standard populations only 63% (average) of the time. This means for the other 37% they are Light populations. Not a great number to see for the top 6 servers among 120. Even servers like the Harbinger are suffering a 0.42 loss meaning they no longer are capable of hitting Heavy Server loads. They now live on the cusp of Standard levels with plenty of downtime in the Light levels.

Of the vast majority of servers that remain in Light status at almost all times, except for the 2% of downtime for maintenance are under dropping in activity. Average losses from last month equal nearly 17%.

When looking at Torstatus.net you do have to keep in mind that the index is a population index it’s a server load index. Meaning that the low end servers showing 0.98 index, are not a equitable number to an actual active number. The 0.98 shows the server’s activity as it compares to the level. A 1.00 would mean the server sits at Light population at all times. The 0.98 means that it had at least 2% downtime to servers being down. This does not mean that there are X number of players. It’s only a server level indicator.

As for Europe in early April at more than 45 Servers:

• 2% Heavy (Same as NA)
• 43% Standard (-4% compared to NA)
• 55% Light (+5% to NA)

As of today:

• 0% Heavy (Same awesome number as NA)
• 6% Standard (Same as NA, but up from last week)
• 93% Light (-1% from NA)
• 1% downtime or other

Our 3 servers in the Pacific are somewhat healthy (imagine that lower server numbers are doing slightly well *cheek slap*)

• 1 Server is Heavy 21% of the time
• 2 Servers are Standard roughly 72% of the time

Even these are taking losses at heavy numbers averaging 14% losses this week.

What completely off base ridiculous analysis can I conjure to make conjecture about actual subscription numbers, do you ask? You didn’t, but I love making predictions.

I like to consider that the index number that torstatus uses can translate to a variable level. Where Light equals X number of active players. Standard equals X+Y. Heavy equals X+2Y. Based on that very broad association (it’s far assumption when you consider the analytics, even I realize that) I can assume that according to server indexs on April 1^st, 2012 the total servers for TOR totaled 234.50 for 171 Servers. At 1.3M approximate subscriptions, that would mean very roughly that each servers averaged around 5,543.1 subscribers (not meaning active).

This means that a month and a half later with an index of 192.29 for all servers, we could roughly assume that the subscription base is nearly 1.066M (18% drop) today. If we consider the driving forces behind D3 release this week and Beta events for upcoming MMOs, we can consider the last month’s statistical drops in index values to be somewhat recurring for the next 2 months. If the the next 30 days is anything like the last 30 days the total population index should drop another 21.29. Meaning that near GW2’s release (just before at the latest estimates) SWTOR should have 947K in subscriptions (<1M).

Take this to an even more ridiculous projection. If we look at the loss in population from D3 this week, we can consider the same drop on GW2’s release. Meaning that as of the end of July after its release, if SWTOR has only released 1.3 and not expanded into the Asian market they could be seeing near 770K in subscriptions.

Granted my numbers mean nothing. They come from basic number division and not even suitable market trends. And they assume the BioWare stays the same course. What is the likelihood that a company has outraged subscribers asking for basic actions, and that company refuses to act and decides that months from now another basic incomplete patch and using the same number of servers for launch after losing over 40% of your population is a suitable stance? Surely, no company is this stupid to overlook the basic server consolidation that all MMOs have to face. Okay, well maybe sometime in Summer. There’s no need to rush or anything.

Now, what I do suspect in all seriousness, that the draw from attention to the fixing the prior patches, refusing to merge servers and lack of communication for the future is due to a need we’ve seen from Western MMOs before. I have seen this, you have seen this, but no one is mentioning it. You have a company fully operating at near 100% without layoffs on the same game they just released less than 6 months ago, yet very little in content has occurred. Geeh, I wonder where those recources are at the moment? I’ll let you draw your own conclusions with this factoid:

• World of Warcraft has over 10M subscribers. Only 2M of which are in North America. Only 1.3 are in Europe.

Take a wild guess where the other 7M is?

Now … what big announcement should we be expected from BioWare to the shareholders of EA in the next months?

Still not getting it? Well here are some more hints. It’s not going to be called 1.3, 1.4, 1.5 or 2.0. And it rhymes with Basia.

Anyways. That’s my prediction. If they stay on track with their current base of patches (incomplete ones) taking 2 to 3 months to release,  holding server merges for another 2 months, and they delay in a release for Asia, I will stand behind my prediction that 1^st quarter earnings for EA will report under 1M subscribers and go even further to say near 800K is more realistic.

But then again, I’m shit and what do my predictions mean when actually reliable awesome analysis are out there with amazing hard line numbers. 1.25M by March 2013. That’s only 11 months off. You can’t get more reliable even if you were the Mayan Mother Fucking Calendar.

SWTOR: Server Merges Timing Compared to WAR and Suicide

My post yesterday rustled some feathers. And the first comment came from a long time reader, Akalukz, who said “same thing happened with WAR, not sure where the surprise is”.

This got me thinking: Why am I surprised? Why does this seem like an atrocity? Why does my butt hurt?

BioWare/EA definitely feels like the bad guy. The worst kind of bad guy. This isn’t hate against the machine for delivering unasked for goods (CCP). This isn’t displaced anger in consequence to lack of content (Mythic). This isn’t profound disappointment with unfinished PVP open world promised (Trion). This is simply, unadulterated despise for not allowing a basic player need in an any MMO. And that’s the ability to actually play with other players.

This anger stems from a growing assumption that this problem was getting worse and worse. We expected the reason was due to political cause for the sake of saving face to the ignorance of stockholders. When the number of loss in 400K was shown on the fiscal report we just assumed, “well, hell, the cat’s out of the bag”. There is no more save face here. Now maintain what you still have, save some cost on servers and do some transfer mergers. You have 60+ server begging (literally) for it to happen. I’ve yet to see someone say “Yeah, I don’t really want to merge. I like playing with the same 5 guys”. I’ve literally never seen an MMO let a server get this bad. Let alone 60 of them. Fuck, even Tabala Rasa wasn’t this bad off. And they sucked.

So why the hell am I surprised coming for years of frustrations with Mythic WAR?

So I did a little math and historical analysis based on EA’s prior MMO project and now a subsidiary program under EA BioWare.

• Warhammer Online Sold 800K copies by release date.
• WAR launched in September of 2008 with 750K subscribers.
• In October of 2008 they lost roughly 100K (18.75%/13.33% Loss) after the “Free Month from Box”
• In November of 2008 rough numbers of 500K were being thrown around (37.50%/33.33% Loss)
  • This realization led Mythic to merge a number of servers with a response by the end of the Month. 
  • Free Transfer with designated servers were allowed with mandatory merges by December.
• Sadly, by the end of December (for numberous reasons) of 2008, rough numbers indicated about 350K left (56.25%/53.33%)
  • Another merger of servers took place by February of 2009
• Finally by first real content patch “Free Expansion” in May of 2009 WAR had leveled off to 300K (62.50%/60%) and from there took a steady decline for the rest of its life.

What does this have to do with anything? Well if you look at the timeline and the percentages, they should be eriely fucking familiar.

Just over a 80% retention for the first month of game launch.
And then a 40% loss in population in the first 6 months.
All too familiar.  

• December 2011- SWTOR launches with 2.1M in sales
• January 2012   – EA says 1.7M retained to subscriptions (19.05%)
• May 2012 – EA Fiscal reports 1.3M subscribed (38.10%)

Before Mythic even saw the 40% loss they opened transfers. So, yeah, I am surprised. We, the players, have no fucking clue exactly what you gain by keeping up running costs for multiple servers. No clue.

What’s “suicide” in the Title for? That’s a funny story.

Sitting around waiting for the Pop to occur for a warzone, many players on the server agreed to spam CSR tickets urging for Server Transfer. Some filed this as a ‘Suggestion’ many others as Harrassment. The party harrassing said player? BioWare. For not allowing immediate transferes. One player wrote to the affect – “We have no economy because there are no players, we have no PVP because there are no players, we don’t have anyone to socialize with because there are no players. Give us server merges or god help me I’ll kill myself.”

I don’t personally know what he was thinking, but sure enough what followed was what we expected. Police arrived at his door to check on his well being. No joke.

Granted the player’s actions were profoundly moronic. What did he think they were going to do? It really makes me laugh. Your players are so hard pressed to recieve merges today, they are willing to sacrifice themselves for this service.

SWTOR: Populations, Dead Servers, PVP and Inaction

BioWare has a little bit of an attitude. I mean this in respect to population balances and server populations. My guild is probably the last of the diehard PVP guilds for Republic left on Bondar Crystal. Being of the “I don’t know what raid means” type players, we get sit there waiting in queue for Warzones studying the intricacies of population. When you are sitting for 30 minutes plus at any one time, you get to ponder these things. What we have found is that many of us have alts on other servers. Many guilds have up and left and made new home in other servers. So we started to do some number tracking.

SWTOR servers are based on 5 levels of population: Light, Standard, Heavy, Very Heavy, and Full. If full it shows a queue time. The only server that I know that can do this is Fatman. Otherwise Jedi Covenant is the only other server at Very Heavy. When we started checking our alts on other servers we started noticing trends.

What I wanted to know is what the difference between Light and Standard is? We simply logged on alts and took quick tallies of the population in Fleets. Though those in Fleet are not your whole server population, it tends to give you a decent glimpse at the server size. X number of people idle (Crafting, LFG, or Queuing) should be in the same ratio versus the population. This is our basic assumption.

From what we can tell, Standard Server Populations need to have over 150 idle persons in a fleet. This is roughly at least 300 idle persons for both sides. We measured this due in part in comparison to two other Light servers that were labeled Light yet had roughly 125 people idle in fleet. The problem we found is that there is giant difference in the amount of idle persons between Light Servers. Doing quick /who on all 50s we found that a Light Server with 100+ people in fleet had roughly Four warzones going at all times. Asking those in general what their normal wait time was on this server. Most answered near instant with sometime having to wait up to five minutes.

Two of our guild mates had alts on PVE servers with roughly 60+ people on fleet. They had 3 warzones and the poll in General granted near the same answer. One disgruntled person that had to wait 15 minutes queuing solo. We informed him of our 30 minute queue now taking 45 mins during this test and he informed us that we should “kill ourselves”.

On our server Bondar Crystal we had 18 people in Fleet. On a good night we have seen that reach 30. What we concluded is that BioWare was missing two levels of server population. After Light there should be, Very Light (Opposite of Very Heavy) and Dead (Opposite of Full).

We had a larger problem trying to communicate that to BioWare. We went to the forums and started a post. Saying that, though 60+ servers are technically Light status there is giant difference between us. There are some bottom rung servers that are actually playing with Dead populations. We suggest an immediate resolution for what we saw on Xfire, roughly 6 servers that have about as bad as ours. We are the 4^th worse. As soon as you publish the post, it is locked and deleted. You get a message that says, “We have a post already for server populations. We want these all in one place”.

Yes, while that may be true BioWare. You have 1 post for hundreds of people to express opinions on a broad subject. We want to specifically talk about the worst of the worst and an immediate resolution. Diluting this specific issue voiced by a very small minority, by clumping them into a very very very large thread is ridiculous. You are making a small amount of players, overwhelmed by the opinions of a majority that have no idea what you are talking about.

Seeing that we weren’t going to receive a resolution, many talked in over in ventrilo on what to do. We already knew that many weren’t coming back. Despite having a free month to play on, and almost nothing else to waste time on, they rather do anything but play on Bondar Crystal. Long queues frustrated them. We’ve lost half our guild to that alone. In small cases, some have gone to experiment on other servers, but many refuse to join in. Frustrated that the time spent on their one character is a waste. And with Legacy 1.2, starting on another server is a slap in the face. I particularly don’t want reroll. I think it’s needless when there is a much simpler solution to this dilemma.

Unfortunately, the official word is merging options in Summer. Leaving a tattered PVP guild on a dead server to sit there and wait?

It’s particularly a bad call by BioWare. Seeing a server population issue and noting this is the case. And then realizing this needs a remedy and placing that remedy months from now is absolutely moronic.

Want to know why you lost 400K in subscriptions? It because of shit like that. What’s another couple hundred right? Drop in the bucket?

It will be an interesting week. I see the GW2 stress test tonight, followed by the release of Diablo III on Tuesday, and I have a feeling that the 18 we had in fleet last night to be the largest number we will see for a while. This realization hit me hard as I probably played my last Warzone on my Sage. What a great character. Too bad that he’ll be in dust by the time I can play him again.

Part of me hopes that Diablo III’s release should hit the active populations hard enough to escalate BioWare’s plans. But … if they don’t care today, that won’t change tomorrow. Pretty sad horizon for players who won’t be going to play D3. Even sadder to realize the perfect 16 man guild we built specifically for the 1.2 Rated Warzones now comes down to only 4 people willing to keep playing.

Prelude Number 2 Is Up

Delayed heavily. But the second part to my fan fiction just went up if you are interested.

http://starwarslegacy.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/prologue-part-2/

Regards,

Nick

SWTOR: Allies Patch

This is interesting, but mostly extremely annoying.

You have a content patch coming within the next month and have a name for it, yet … no one even has a clue to what’s in it.

You have outraged subscribers and leaving populations. Torn pissed off that you have ignored the needs of PVP, massively missed to deliver on the last patch, and now are just overall beyond pissed off that you don’t even want to discuss it.

I’m going to give you tip, go talk to your friends over at Mythic. Ask them how vague and silence on plans works out. It took them two years to realize that you need to engange your community. Not slightly, fully. Unfortunately, two years too late.

It might be a good time to layout the plans for this “Allies” patch to the community and see how receptive it will go over. This way you know you aren’t wasting time on items that won’t retain or draw in players. You need positive buzz.

I’m hoping Allies 1.3 includes these:

From 1.2:

• 8 Man Static Teams for Warzones
• Cross Server Warzones
• Ranked Warzones

Much Needed:

• Open World PvP
• Dynamic Objectives
• Server Consolidations

Inovations:

• After completing the above you maybe permitted to provide ‘new’ ideas

I swear if Allies means Legacy Companion crap, you will be reporting a very very sad 2nd Quarter Report. We don’t belive your 1.3M for a second. Time to get serious.

Discovery

Discovery can be amazing.

“We were running some research on chemical imbalance and I think we discovered a cure for cancer.”
This is a pretty cool discovery.

“We were investigating star formations and we think we found a new galaxy.”
Pretty neat.

But discovery can be used incorrectly. For example:

“Man, was I shocked when I went to your bathroom and I discovered your toilet.”

“I was doing 80 in a 55 and I discovered the speeding ticket.”

Those last two are pretty stupid, aren’t they? Short of being said by someone coming from a 3rd world country, there isn’t really a dicovery going on here. This is pretty much the feeling I get when I read this.

“Erickson said … He says that the team discovered that SWTOR had a huge PvP community…”

Holy shit Batman! A PvP community! A player base in a modern MMO that specifically prefers playing other players?!? You surely jest? This is absolutely outstanding. Have you called CNN? This shit right here is revolutionary.

Okay the sarcasm is coming in little strong here, I know. So let me get to the point:

YOU NEED TO GET THE FUCK REPLACED BY SOMEONE WHO ISN’T BASING THEIR DESCISIONS ON MMO GAMING FROM TWO THOUSAND FUCKING THREE.

“We discovered we have PVPers“. Later that day, Erickson discovers that he has fingers when he goes to pick his nose.

Realistically Mean

Here’s the reality of the situation:

• You are a month overdue on the PVP promises you made in 1.2.
• You have not even hinted at a solution to Open PVP Warfare.
• You have not announced a date or the contents of 1.3.
• An MMO that boast major PVP game play that has a smaller basic version of WAR, a game produced by a studio you control by the way, is releasing most likely at the end of June.

************************

I’m going to make claims, statements, and demands. I will follow with 3 predictions based on which route you take in the next month. It’s harsh and unfounded. But tell me as a fellow gamer, you don’t feel the same way, or you aren’t making your decision based on a different reason.