I just Googled "oceania population" (i.e. Australia and NZ and some islands) and got 44 million, and a search for "oceania population" gives a whopping 666 million. It took me 1 minute to get those figures. I don't know why Zenimax won't build south east asian servers, but there's more than enough population to support them.

It's difficult for anyone to say without having the numbers. But I think expanding like this is also a business strategy type of thing that they might not want to take, or that the right people aren't convinced to take.

Because regardless of the current numbers, they have to decide: how many players WOULD join, how much investment would it take to market and build staff, at which point is this worth more than investing in their current setup.

And like maybe it is worth it! No one knows until they try. My last employer chickened out of risking something like this.

I've seen a really big increase in what appear to be Chinese-language players (based on names and chat) during latenight on PC NA, so it's been interesting to have more insight into parts of the Asia community on the forums.

milkiie wrote: »

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

It's difficult for anyone to say without having the numbers. But I think expanding like this is also a business strategy type of thing that they might not want to take, or that the right people aren't convinced to take.

Because regardless of the current numbers, they have to decide: how many players WOULD join, how much investment would it take to market and build staff, at which point is this worth more than investing in their current setup.

And like maybe it is worth it! No one knows until they try. My last employer chickened out of risking something like this.

I've seen a really big increase in what appear to be Chinese-language players (based on names and chat) during latenight on PC NA, so it's been interesting to have more insight into parts of this community on the forums.

Yeah I absolutely agree with you. I just wish I could find this data that everyone seems to be quoting lmao. Apparently the ‘current’ population is not enough but no one ever can send me a link to evidence that lol

I would be curious to know! Especially with there being different time zones, region-based guilds, and completely separate zone chats for different languages (that a lot of English-speaking NA players don't even realize exist), I think it's easy for people to underestimate the amount of players in Asia.

RevJJ wrote: »

I play from SEA on PC/NA and therefore mostly play outside of peak hours. This is what you get when you queue for a specific dungeon (normal Scrivener’s Hall) as DPS, outside of peak hours:



During peak hours it’s probably 20 mins.
Cyrodiil is also dead outside peak hours.
Battlegrounds and random dungeon queues take much much longer.
Craglorn is deserted.

Based on that, my impression is that currently the amount of players from Asia and Oceania is much lower than those from the Americas.

Yes, it probably is. Unfortunately, we seem to have a situation where ZOS won't build the servers due to too few players in the region, and the players won't increase until regional servers are built.

Out of curiosity, I checked population on WoW servers, since they do have Oceanic, Taiwanese & Korean servers running. There are players there even though it's far less than EU & NA servers, it was on par with Russian speaking servers for the most part. Still a solid amount. Considering that ESO has mega servers, I'd suspect that a PC OCE megaserver might work, especially if they market it and try to get more OCE/Asian players in. Not sure if servers for consoles would though since they seem far less populated in both EU & NA.

I live in EU, but if I was living in Oceania I'd probably skip over MMOs without local servers because of the ping. I'd guess a lot of players there don't play ESO because of the lack of OCE servers. It's just guesswork from my end however so take it with a grain of salt.

No such relevant data exists really in open space. My guess would be that either people are already committed to servers which are present now to make a move and that asian scene overall isn't really into that casual games in a long run even though it sounds pretty cliché, or it's just not profitable enough with this exact kind of game/franchise.

Given that much of the limited data available (ie: steam charts and various anecdotal evidence - these have all been debated in other posts and I'm not looking to do that here) suggests that eso has experienced a declining (and possibly quite substantially declining) population over the last year, I suspect that ZoS might be reluctant to invest in another megaserver, further spreading out a declining playerbase.

To be fair, one could argue that a new server might result in more players from that region joining the game, but it seems risky. It would be a significant investment (in money yes, but also in time - we all saw how long the process of replacing the existing servers has taken them) and I imagine they wouldn't go down that road without a lot of very clear data showing that a new server would be profitable - and this data would have to look at least a year or two ahead, because it seems like that's how long it would take them to actually get new hardware up and running.

Of course I'm speculating and only they know the true numbers involved. But the tl;dr is, I think it's very unlikely with the game population in an overall decline.

Hoghorn wrote: »

Bucky_13 wrote: »

Out of curiosity, I checked population on WoW servers, since they do have Oceanic, Taiwanese & Korean servers running. There are players there even though it's far less than EU & NA servers, it was on par with Russian speaking servers for the most part. Still a solid amount. Considering that ESO has mega servers, I'd suspect that a PC OCE megaserver might work, especially if they market it and try to get more OCE/Asian players in. Not sure if servers for consoles would though since they seem far less populated in both EU & NA.

I live in EU, but if I was living in Oceania I'd probably skip over MMOs without local servers because of the ping. I'd guess a lot of players there don't play ESO because of the lack of OCE servers. It's just guesswork from my end however so take it with a grain of salt.

i'm curious how you checked the population of wow's oceanic servers when they stopped publishing player numbers years ago. it would be interesting to hear from people who have played on those servers in recent years about their experience. i was playing wow when they introduced oceanic servers and we lost about 20 guildies when they transferred. within a year about half had rerolled on na, complaining of infinite pve and pvp queues outside prime time and very little choice in progression guilds. maybe zos has looked at blizzard's experience and decided that it's not worth it.

I checked WoW progress site, so nowhere near perfect data, they check for this with population:

* Population - amount of unique players that meet any of the two conditions:
- has a level 70 character and killed something in Vault Of The Incarnates Heroic Mode
- has a level 70 character in a guild that killed something in Vault Of The Incarnates Heroic Mode

At least it gives an sample of population who've done that on different servers and regions. Even if it is a small sample size it's a better indicator than just guessing.

Elsonso wrote: »

vsrs_au wrote: »

I just Googled "oceania population" (i.e. Australia and NZ and some islands) and got 44 million, and a search for "oceania population" gives a whopping 666 million. It took me 1 minute to get those figures. I don't know why Zenimax won't build south east asian servers, but there's more than enough population to support them.

Adding three megaservers is no trivial task. It is expensive, and disruptive. As I see it, it isn't about populations (gamer or base) but revenue generation. If there isn't a clear business case for going through the effort to secure a site, build three megaservers, and then maintain those servers that is offset by revenue coming from players using that server, then why do it?

Do you know something we don't? You seem to know that there is no clear business case for building the new servers. There may or may not be such a case, but you seem to be assuming there isn't.

Amottica wrote: »

milkiie wrote: »

vsrs_au wrote: »

I just Googled "oceania population" (i.e. Australia and NZ and some islands) and got 44 million, and a search for "oceania population" gives a whopping 666 million. It took me 1 minute to get those figures.

Thanks but I’m not talking about the general population, I’m asking for the player population. As in the amount of people in Asia who play eso.

the game was Designed for a large population and would not split the population.

This sounds right. Anyone with a history of playing MMOs can look closely at the differences between those games and this one. The way that items are not obselete each expansion, in that they are no longer usable compared to the best available, the way that the level cap doesn't keep increasing, the way that much old content is still relevant...

Unless they can show that there is a high interest in having ESO in that region, I doubt they'll put forth the effort to put servers there. I have doubts that they'll bother with that region for other reasons (Simply put, the game may be unappealing for the broader Asia audience, depictions of fantasy elements aren't exactly going to score high on consumer ratings as there's definitely a western flavor to this game).

I don't want to speak for EU's behalf, but maybe someone can shed some light on how active those servers are.

As for the Simplified Chinese support comments, it seems like the timing is too convenient with the closing of the WoW servers.

As for other implementations...

Would it hurt for them to implement Oceanic shards within the megaserver for trials and dungeons, or battlegrounds where everyone is from that region? No. This way we can have people from any region enjoying the same PvE content.

Can they do that same implementation for open world PVP? No.

With fewer resources, ZOS can probably accommodate some of the PVE requests within the current servers, but without there being a display of huge interest for this game within that region, I doubt they'll be putting up an Oceanic/Asia PC server. Console is probably out of the question, lol.

Dr_Con wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

milkiie wrote: »

vsrs_au wrote: »

I just Googled "oceania population" (i.e. Australia and NZ and some islands) and got 44 million, and a search for "oceania population" gives a whopping 666 million. It took me 1 minute to get those figures.

Thanks but I’m not talking about the general population, I’m asking for the player population. As in the amount of people in Asia who play eso.

the game was Designed for a large population and would not split the population.

This sounds right. Anyone with a history of playing MMOs can look closely at the differences between those games and this one. The way that items are not obselete each expansion, in that they are no longer usable compared to the best available, the way that the level cap doesn't keep increasing, the way that much old content is still relevant...

Unless they can show that there is a high interest in having ESO in that region, I doubt they'll put forth the effort to put servers there. I have doubts that they'll bother with that region for other reasons (Simply put, the game may be unappealing for the broader Asia audience, depictions of fantasy elements aren't exactly going to score high on consumer ratings as there's definitely a western flavor to this game).

I don't want to speak for EU's behalf, but maybe someone can shed some light on how active those servers are.

As for the Simplified Chinese support comments, it seems like the timing is too convenient with the closing of the WoW servers.

As for other implementations...

Would it hurt for them to implement Oceanic shards within the megaserver for trials and dungeons, or battlegrounds where everyone is from that region? No. This way we can have people from any region enjoying the same PvE content.

Can they do that same implementation for open world PVP? No.

With fewer resources, ZOS can probably accommodate some of the PVE requests within the current servers, but without there being a display of huge interest for this game within that region, I doubt they'll be putting up an Oceanic/Asia PC server. Console is probably out of the question, lol.

That would be an extremely high interest similar to that seen on the NA and EU servers for Zenimax to consider adding three more servers to serve the Asian nations.

And the idea of Oceanic shards is really the same as adding a new mega server. After all, that is exactly what it would be.

Khami wrote: »

I'd like to point out one thing.

The decision to add another server for Asia/Oceanic isn't on ZoS, but on Microsoft. Being the game is 9 years old, they're not going to add another server for that portion of the world.

ive heard microsoft wanted zos to add the chinese language thats why they finally did it last year, this can easily be their first step to attempt to expand into the asian market or just a late move that shouldve happened much earlier in the games life cycle

Also they can see IP addresses and if population of gamers in the area is too low,compared to other areas,then they won't add one.Also it's probably looked at on crwon and ingame purchases from those areas,low amount of paying customers,no new servers.Just because alot of ppl may play it if there was a new server,doesn't mean they'd make enough to pay for new servers with alot of free players.