Board Game Arena

Hi, I'm relatively new to BGA (joined over Christmas) and and the beginning I decided not to pay for a membership to avoid finding it too easy to start a game (ie, in order to have to wait and not binge play). However, in the last couple of weeks I've found that being assigned a table as a non-paying member takes much longer (sometimes up to 30-40 minutes for games like Splendor or Catan, for example), whereas a while ago it was much quicker. Has there been a change to how non-paying members are given a table? Should I just pay up to solve this or are waiting times the same for paying members? Thanks!

There hasnt been a chancge as far as i am aware. Over summer there is usually a bit of a dip in the number of tables because of holidays etc. You will also find as more games are added people migrate over to them games and play less of the previous game.

You may find that taking a premium membership can decrease your wait time as you can set up the table and pick up the non-premium memebrs waiting, however its difficult to tell if there is a bunch of people waiting on tables, if not there will be little to no difference in your wait time.

Yes, I've been premium my whole time on BGA and with some games you just have to wait. It's only if there's a large pool of non-premium people waiting that it would make a difference, and as SiRan said, there's no way to tell that. For very popular and very unpopular games, wait times are probably not much different, I would suspect games with a mid-range of popularity, it might make a difference, but I doubt you'd notice.

And it can only make a difference for premium games. Non-premium games have the same waiting time for premium or non-premium users. (Only *after* the game starts you may have some 30-second wait if all players are the table are non-premium, if I remember correctly.)

nvallet wrote: ↑19 July 2025, 22:46 Has there been a change to how non-paying members are given a table?

Not as far as I know.

nvallet wrote: ↑19 July 2025, 22:46 Should I just pay up to solve this or are waiting times the same for paying members?

As already said by others, going premium probably makes not much of a difference.

SiRan90 wrote: ↑19 July 2025, 23:45 Over summer there is usually a bit of a dip in the number of tables because of holidays etc. You will also find as more games are added people migrate over to them games and play less of the previous game.

This is generally true, but I don’t think it fits well for games like Catan and Splendor, which are among the top ten BGA games.

nvallet wrote: ↑19 July 2025, 22:46 However, in the last couple of weeks I've found that being assigned a table as a non-paying member takes much longer (sometimes up to 30-40 minutes for games like Splendor or Catan, for example), whereas a while ago it was much quicker.

It would be interesting to know, if other players had the same experience. I have no idea, because I usually don’t play these games.

I tend to think this might be „personal“ of some kind. For example, since these two games are higly popular and many people try to join: maybe your internet connection isn’t as fast as other’s, so you miss the tables?

Some players may not be accepted due to bad reputation or red thumbs, but I have no clue if this applies to you.

It might also depend on your playing hours. I think BGA is used more at the evening time and weekends in America and Europe, so chances for new tables are higher at that time. But I guess you probably haven’t changed your playing time.

Also, there might be a difference on how you join a table. Do you use the new lobby (= joining by the game page) or the old loby (= joining by Play now)? Do you use automatic or manual matchmaking? You can try to change these and see if it helps you.

It looks like this is happening to other players as well: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=43862 Both players are premium, and they also seem to play very popular games (like Splendor, Azul, Ticket to Ride, Wingspan).

cigma wrote: ↑21 July 2025, 08:01 It looks like this is happening to other players as well: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=43862 Both players are premium, and they also seem to play very popular games (like Splendor, Azul, Ticket to Ride, Wingspan).

Assuming these complaints are about the wait time for real time games, it would be nice if this https://boardgamearena.com/serverstatus ... mes_played could be filtered by real time to see if there has been a drop off recently. Because in the aggregate there doesn't seem to be anything amiss, but I'm guessing the Games Played stat is heavily weighted to turn-based games.