In the first quarter of 2012, Star Wars: The Old Republic lost three million subscribers - a 25 percent drop - despite launching in December 2011. Now, a poster on the Old Republic's forum has collected data on every server to reveal how many players are playing.
"My guild, and the guild leaders on my server, have been wondering what is going to happen when server transfers go live. How many people are on which servers? Where are they likely to go? Are we likely to have an increase or decrease in population? Should we move someplace else? I started doing some math at this problem in order to try and plan accordingly," the user - Scorpienne - outlined.
Server populations are ranked from 1-5, with 1 corresponding to lightly populated servers while 5 means full. The population is checked and updated every hour; the service calculates the recordings over the last 14 days and publishes the number "ø" - for example, the top-ranked server called "The Fatman" is ø2.38.
The findings estimated that the five rankings for server population governed the following figures: 500 for light severs, 1500 for standard servers, 2250-2500 for heavy, around 3000 for very heavy and more than 3000 for full.
The findings found the "Total Estimated Worldwide Population" of all servers for the last fortnight is 73,693. That number isn't the total number of players who logged in over the period, but players who logged in at a particular moment.
The analysis is described as theoretical population, and underestimates the peak population while overestimating the off-peak population. As users noted in the comments on the post, 214 servers means some are empty. The findings found servers average 344 players at a time.
BioWare Austin, the developers, "restructured" in May 2012 and said some employees would leave the company while others would join other parts of EA. "These are very difficult decisions, but it allows us to focus our staff to maintain and grow Star Wars: The Old Republic," BioWare said, following the statement, to Shacknews.
In a post on The Old Republic forums, Greg Zeschuck - Vice President at EA and General Manager at BioWare Austin - said a "very large" development team was working on the game despite the losses.
