player population

[JinUwUuuu]

Hey everyone. been recently getting into mmo maybe just eso lol. i think this game came out alittle earlier than eso. before i hop into it. are there still a good population playing?

[your.sheepy]

Depends on your definition of "good" and your timezone, so... come play and see?

Swtor is certainly not as populated as ESO. It uses an engine that ESO tried and discarded. Lack of cross faction and cross server group does not help either. But then, this game is best known for its solo contents.

[Thander]

On the US servers the game is pretty active from 12pm to 12am. The other hours there will be a reduced population. On planets the population varies from 200 on the starting planets where lots of free players are trying out the game and the fleets (main hub for each side) down to 25 or so on the higher level planets. Normal flashpoints and warzones have 5-15 minute queues, master mode flashpoints and galactic starfighter have 20-30 minute queues, ranked warzones have 60+ minute queues.

Operations are usually not done through the queue system. The ease of forming a premade group for them depends usually on how hard the particular daily operation is. The easier ones you can get a group within 30 minutes, but the harder ones might take you several hours. Premades are also not a good environment for learning the mechanics, so you have to join a guild to teach you those things.

Subscriber population across all servers is around 200,000. The average is somewhere around 203,174, but it has peaked to a million with the launch of new expansions and I'm sure has gone even lower than this 203k during content droughts. I derived this number from a couple statements EA has made over the years:

• In 2019 EA reported SWTOR made nearly a billion dollars so far. At this point almost a year later, it's probably surpassed a billion, so I just call it a billion: $1,000,000,000 total revenue
  
• EA said in 2013 that income doubled after adding Cartel Market to the game. Therefore, half of the money they make comes from cartel coin purchases and half comes from subscriptions. In other words half of the billion over the game's lifetime comes from subscriptions: $500,000,000 from subscriptions
  
• SWTOR sold best case around 3 million boxed copies at launch for $60 each. 3,000,000 x $60 = 180,000,000 revenue from selling boxed copies. Subtract from the 500 million since this is part of subscription revenue: $500,000,000 - $180,000,000 = $320,000,000 monthly subscription revenue
  
• SWTOR has been out for 8 years and 9 months since launch. That is: 105 months
  
• The subscriptions revenue is spread out over the 105 months of the game's lifetime: $320,000,000 subscription revenue / 105 months = $3,047,619 subscription revenue per month
  
• The monthly subscription revenue is split by the $15 per month paid by each subscriber (it could be $13 per month if everyone subscribes 6 months at a time but not likely): $3,047,619 monthly sub revenue / $15 per month = 203,174 average subscribers per month

SWTOR has a smaller community than the big MMOs, but the good side of this is that everyone has a chance to make a name for themselves. In the high population games like WoW, you see lots of players but rarely ever see them a second time. It's much harder to make friends and get to know people. In SWTOR it's much easier because if you are active in operations or warzones or any other endgame content, you will naturally begin to see the same faces.

Guilds also get a chance to build a reputation. It's not just a name. Guilds that have been around a while have a history that veteran players come to know. It might be winning conquests or being a top progression guild or PvP specialists or Republic Trooper RP. There's even guilds known for throwing parties every weekend and inviting the server to come for contests and prizes. This just doesn't happen much in the huge population MMOs. Too many people, really hard for anyone to shine.

[your.sheepy]

Originally posted by Thander:

The half a billion from subscriptions is spread out over the 105 months of the game's lifetime: $500,000,000 subscription revenue / 105 months = $4,761,904 subscription revenue per month.

Don't forget that the game had 1.7m sub in the first four months, 1.3m for the next two, about 750k for next two, and 400-500k by Nov 2012, making 180 to 200 mil revenue from the first year alone depending on the details.

Source:
https://www.reddit.com/r/swtor/comments/1mnz3t/why_did_swtor_go_freetoplay/

[Extreme]

Depends on servers the most populated one in EU is Darth Malgus in USA probably Star Forge but in general the population is good in my opinion btw Steam only tracks players that have Steam version so its not all playerbase but both version Steam and website use the same servers