I played SWG on Valcyn after four years in EQ. I hope to go back to SWG in a few months when the recently announced plans are implemented (I refuse to pay for an account in the meantime).

In the six months I played (finished 3 January), the server population grew and grew, then declined a little, then they introduced player cities, mounts and vehicles. These additions caused the player population to spread out across the planets. Areas that were previously good gauges of population such as Coronet Starport became much quieter because people had their own cities and transport. It became much harder to tell who was playing. There is also an /anonymous function for PvP that totally eliminates your character from all /who listings, which many people now use.

Before I left, I noticed an increase in the peak hour population around Coronet Starport. Most of the old-timers seemed to be leaving the game, but there seemed to be a huge influx of newbies and those who returned because of the vehicles. Being Star Wars it also has a sizeable population who have never played another MMORPG. They are experiencing the addiction and adrenaline for the first time and they don't notice the absence of content and goals compared with other MMOs.

So after all that, I'm really not sure. I'd say the population may be static numerically, but set to decline for the next 2-3 months. After that it could do an Anarchy Online and start winning people back again, because now that it's feature-complete they've begun fixing the broken classes and adding better content.

Edited by: Doctor Tale at: 1/17/04 12:06 am