The projected player population for launch has been somewhere around 10k for quite some time, however, I'd say that 300k players is more than likely over time. The NA servers are already garnering a lot of attention, same with the EU server and I'm willing to bet that APAC will experience a similar level of growth closer to launch.

In my opinion, 300k players is completely realistic, but it's not something I'd expect when the game initially launches.

You're forgetting the oceanic server, and yeah it should be fine as the 100k population per server is players+NPCs. The ideal goal here is to have players replace the NPCs as the game progresses.

With a good advertising campaign and a well-timed launch date, I'm sure we'll have a strong start. CoE is certainly a niche game, but it is beautiful and unique, so no reason to think we won't have a strong playerbase. I think the people who settle into CoE will be more loyal than players of other survival/mmo games, just look at the many strong communities that were formed a year ago and still remain together and thriving with nothing more than monthly dev journals and their personal desire to see this game come to fruition.

If i remember correctly the "base number" was going to be 200k players and 100k NPC.
Then, it's 200k players, not activ ones.Also if you are using the term "activ", you should define it, since every person will have a different point of view concerning what is an "activ'" person and what's not... For example, we can probably all agree that someone playing 12h/day 7d/7 is an activ person, but what about someone playing 1h/day every day ? every other day ? And just saying, this "activ or not activ" is an endless discuss ;)

About the game being playable with 30k (where is that number coming from ?). Same question, what is "playable" for you ? I.e. Someone playing a FPS with 100 ping can find it playable or "unplayable". And I would say, the answer would primarily depend on what you do and what you expect the game to be. As mentioned quite a few times already, the map will be huge and so people will most likely stay where they are and play with a "close community", therefor, if the next kingdom or even duchy is quite empty you probably won't notice.

Posted By Lemros at

Do you guys thinks that 300 000 active players is realistic when currently only two MMO games are pulling that number?

Is there any way/plans to do server merges if necessary? I would hate to see game have issues because there are going to be 3 half full servers. Or will be game playable with 30 000 players on server?

Umm, that is basically untrue. 300.000 Thousand active players at the same time is a true statement, but 300.000 active playerbase is something that a lot of MMOs have, that is what we are aiming for in COE, but even that is actually not true, because they need altogether 200.000 active characters (not even accounts) to be financially stable (unless I've mistaken the communication).

The preferred numbers are 100.000 active characters on each server, bringing that up to actually 400.000 thousand characters, which could be around 300.000 active accounts actually, depending on how many active characters people have on average.

The point is, that currently more than 11.000 people pledged to the game, without there even being an alpha or Elyria mud or KoE or anything to actually test the game out, so that number is very easy to reach, people just don't realize it.

Just to ask, what happens if we get way over 300k is sbs set for high populations?

Depends.

If:

• The game mostly meets or exceeds expectations game play wise.

• The game is marketed well

• The game is constantly updated after release

• SbS maintains a very fair business model.

• The community remains vocal and active.

• The Competition (Crowfall, AoC, and Camelot: Unchained) fail to meet one or all these requirements, or are otherwise outclassed by CoE.

Then EVENTUALLY having 300k+ active players is completely realistic.

Posted By TheEvilBassist at 6:11 PM - Fri May 19 2017

it should be fine as the 100k population per server is players+NPCs.

Indeed. OP, a server can NEVER be "half full" because its complement of players and NPCs COMBINED make up the kind of total populations you are speculating from.

A CoE server for 100,000 people could have 10,000 players on it and be an absolute blast to play on. And it wouldn't be 9/10 "empty" as there'd be 90,000 NPCs getting around.

In short, you can speculate on what a good total of active players might be. But to use figures like 100,000 in relation to those players is very misleading as those numbers ALWAYS involve a component of NPCs being included, so the game's never "empty".

Posted By Iccubus at 6:47 PM - Fri May 19 2017

Just to ask, what happens if we get way over 300k is sbs set for high populations?

Yes. With the use of SpatialOS they can potentially expand a server indefinitely by adding more continents as needed. Indeed the only reason there is plans for multiple servers in the first place isn't because of overpopulation, they could make a server world that could fit all of us, but to reduce the potentially game breaking lag that would be experienced by players that live in other parts of the world.

In short, there is no need to fear about server overpopulation.

Basically, the game is already financially viable based off of what Caspian said at PAX. (Casp stated several times over the weekend that they were financially ahead of their needs for the game.)

So, if the game has only currently paid players, they still have enough for launch.

As for not being able to pull the numbers If WoW can still pull in over 5.5 million players per month... Source I'm pretty sure SBS can pull a worldwide population of a few hundred thousand.

I have been through many launches and I am excited for this one. I think this game will be able to pull good numbers as long as the dev. team keeps focused on the important things and dont fall behind in their development. They all seem to be very confident in things.

Posted By jaspurc at 04:39 AM - Fri May 19 2017

I have been through many launches and I am excited for this one. I think this game will be able to pull good numbers as long as the dev. team keeps focused on the important things and dont fall behind in their development. They all seem to be very confident in things.

They've been very on the ball, and successful I think. Aside from the normal delays that always come with programming, they've delivered on all promises to date (that I know of). Best team I've seen in terms of transparency too.

Caspian has assured people plenty of times (as have other Devs), that the team doesn't plan to release the game until they feel it's ready, so be prepared to see some delays if the bugs multiply too quickly.

That said, all this sale stuff has been hinting a domain selection (and thus early Alpha) happening HASHTAG SOON(TM).

Posted By Antaryon at 10:35 AM - Fri May 19 2017

Umm, that is basically untrue. 300.000 Thousand active players at the same time is a true statement, but 300.000 active playerbase is something that a lot of MMOs have, that is what we are aiming for in COE, but even that is actually not true, because they need altogether 200.000 active characters (not even accounts) to be financially stable (unless I've mistaken the communication).

The preferred numbers are 100.000 active characters on each server, bringing that up to actually 400.000 thousand characters, which could be around 300.000 active accounts actually, depending on how many active characters people have on average.

The point is, that currently more than 11.000 people pledged to the game, without there even being an alpha or Elyria mud or KoE or anything to actually test the game out, so that number is very easy to reach, people just don't realize it.

Form what I have read only WoW and FF has over 300 000 active players but I could have misunderstand it or misread it I am not native english speaker so that is very much possible,

I probably express myself wrong. I dont expect CoE to fail I love idea of this game. I was just intrested if there is any fallback plan in case of population drops.As I understand world should be able to work with way lower numbers because PC are basically played NPC so that part sould be fine. I hope we will never have to find out if low pop servers will be problem

Thank you all for your answers

Yeah any possible merging in the future would be problematic with a closed economy and maps that are not the same. But you could probably write in some kind of story event that accounts for a shifting geography.

Well @Lemros, there could be extreme cases of course, but think about this as an example: I am playing currently on an unofficial low rate LINEAGE 2 EU server. It has a good administration, but has almost zero marketing and fairly hard to find with Google, unless you know what you are looking for. The point is, even that server has about 1000 players playing on it, and it is a very niche server with non existent marketing. So 10.000 people on each sever is very easy to reach with the current publicity of CoE, and I estimate that number to be the bear minimum viability for a server (not that I know hard numbers, just guesstimateing).