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MMO Population... How Low Can You Go?
mgilbrtsn
Member EpicPosts: 3,430
Just saw a thread, and one of the complaints was a very low population (Wildstar). Got my small mind to thinking. How low of a population can you stand before a game becomes no fun and you won't play.
A lot gets factored in, and I know there is no one size fits all, but just a general. For me, I'm a classic Medium. I wanna see people, even if I don't need/want to interact. I have friends who only like high pop games and ones that couldn't care less if anyone else was playing.
I self identify as a monkey.
Comments
Also quality over quantity, so if you find a place with like minded people it will be infinitely more fun even if a few vs thousands of asshats you can't stand.
I did the trial of Wildstar recently and the population seemed decent to me for the short time I played. I even was able to group up and play with someone for a while, which is always a huge plus and kind of how this genre was intended to be IMO. Reward grouping or simply cooperating at every turn and never punish it.
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I'll go with medium, but depends a lot on the MMO.
To use some examples... an MMO like GW2 that relies a lot on massive open world events would need a higher population, one like WoW (at least when I stopped playing) that relies more on instanced small group content can get away with lower population, while another like The Secret World (and I guess games like the zombie survival type) actually work better with a low population, in some areas (the first town you visit in TSW, for example) having a lot of people around would actually detract from the experience IMHO.
What can men do against such reckless hate?
I had fun once, it was terrible.
You kinda asked one question, what's the lowest pop you're willing to play on, then ended it with a second, what's your ideal population size. Two very different questions to attache to one pole.
Ok, now I see the first question actually came from another thread.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
It's complicated...
If I'm playing a "World of Questing" style game with feature packed raids, instances, story content, and similar... There is no such thing as too many people.
If I'm playing a "Wurm of Wild Craft" type game where I'm affecting the world on an individual level... Someone coming out/running accross me is an interesting conversation, If I need to trade for something I can't(or don't want to) achieve/do It should be a quest in itself.
If I'm playing a "EvE of Conquring Something" type game where it's about putting people into groups to achieve objectives... Well I want a way for someone to be able to "Force content"(and there to be enough that it's interesting), but there to also be times Where I can get away and farm solo style. EDIT: at this point there is a point where there is "too many" but it's hard to reach, also the world needs to be "big" per player. Meaning that when an objective is suddently interesting you have a bunch of people coming in from what was mostly interesting and "attractive" solo/small-group space.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
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A very low population definitely makes it tough on a player driven economy. while I could probably handle 'low' in a standard WoW type game, I definitely wouldn't be able to in a player driven economy.
I self identify as a monkey.
To be fair, Perpetuum is a fairly old game now, it was largely considered to be an Eve knockoff, and really failed to gain any real popularity even back when it launched a few years ago, i would be surprised if all that many people even remember it all that much, the surprising thing is that the game is still running honestly i would have expected the game to have folded years ago
As the OP said I think this has a lot to do with preference, however as someone else said, it's hard to consider yourself as playing an MMO when there ain't nobody around at all. I suppose it also depends on what drives the game as well; I don't play any owPvP sandboxes but would imagine that a very low pop would essentially kill the experience in such games.
For me, as long as I see others in your standard gathering areas, I am OK. Then again, I am still playing Gw 1 quite a bit and so have learned to cope with the lower player count there; besides, the game's hero system makes others less necessary so again, it doesn't hurt so much. Still though I have to admit that I really enjoy being in high-pop areas, especially on weekends/peak times and do the occasional 'hang out in front of the auction/trading places' thing. Tough to do stuff like that on a dead server as well.
Probably will see a lot of answers on this but I think the poll presently shows what I would expect: most of us are going to prefer mid- to high-pop games. Just makes more sense I think, even if you're a full-time solo roller since you generally need others to make money at some point.
"Why would I want to loose a religion upon my people? Religions wreck from within - Empires and individuals alike! It's all the same." - God Emperor of Dune
I don't care so much about the population itself but more about its implications.
Low populations always make me feel like playing a product near the end of its life cycle (or a stillbirth); it might get shut down anytime or at least receive fewer to no content updates etc.
Other than that, I could live very well with super low populations. Even in a zerg PvP game like WAR, the most fun I ever had was on a super-low-pop server. Ironically, low populations can lead to more & better communication and group play. But anyway, soon the above mentioned implications kicked in; servers got merged and the game eventually shut down.
On the other hand, I never felt as lonely as in GW2, even though I was always surrounded by anonymous masses of dozens and hundreds of players; both in PvE and in WvW.
The more people the better. A game like Widlstar has too low of a population for me to even consider, although I did play the game at launch and hated it so there's that.
Medium is the bare minimum I am willing to go with. But yeah I stay away from MMOs with low population.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
I am curious on how much of a 'snowball effect' a lowering of population can have on the mindset of players. Low population is often perceived as a 'failed or failing' MMO (rightly or wrongly). So I wonder if a MMO loses some population, is there a kind of herd effect that takes place and a certain percentage of the MMO pop begins to look for greener pastures because of this perception and not because they have actually stopped liking the game. In the same token, how many people won't try a game they might like because of this perception.
I'm probably not stating what I mean very well, but it would be a neat sociological experiment.
I self identify as a monkey.
Honestly, if i can find a guild that i like to hang out with then low population does not affect the fun factor in my mmo.
Than being said, I do not like playing low pop mmos because i feel the game could shut down at any moment so they wont get money from me. Too risky to bother.
My thoughts, as well. Shadowbane or EVE would suck for me as a low population game, whereas something like LOTRO or AoC I could easily play and enjoy with only a handful of people around. The TSW example was a great one, btw. The more people that are around, the less it feels like being part of the story in that game, especially when there's at crowd at an NPC.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
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It really depends on the type of game but plenty is usually good unless the game locks combat encounters and have few rarely spawning mobs you need to kill for quests.
Any game with loads of grouping (that includes games with dungeon/raid endgame) need to have people around 24/7, particularly the ones who lacks dungeon/group finders.
The more soloplay the game have the less people is needed around though.
But the point with a MMO is to have other players you can interact with, anything else is just sad.
may be your "point", but certainly is not my point ... or the "point" of the MMOs which allows, or even encourage solo play.
May be sad for you ... but if it is fun for many, is there a problem?
Several commenters have already covered some of my thoughts on realm population:
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