If you look at the magnitude of the mergers (lets call it what it is) really calls into question a lot of how this was handled. There is a certain break-point in my opinion where a logistical outcome can remain undisclosed because of the tenuous nature of certain variables that might change. BioWare effectively took this stance. But seriously, all East Coast RP servers pointing toward Ebon Hawk? Where the hell is the variable there? That is raw, unfiltered intent.

Considering that all East Coast servers just got pointed at The Ebon Hawk, it looks like the prediction of Super Servers was never off-base or wrong. I still don't understand why there couldn't have been a modicum more honesty about this.

Poor man's merger? Hardly. Calculated population consolidation while simultaneously avoiding the negative PR associated with the industry and investor perception of the word "merger". As I said in a previous thread, my expectation is that this will be called an Unexpected and Spontaneous Player Driver Migration. It'll be made our responsibility, and probably spun into a selling point highlighting the tight knit communities in the game that were driven to migrate to a single server because we are all so in love with each other.

My guess? If you don't transfer you will get to sit on a largely empty server while BioWare drops a press release stating that they had NO IDEA how POPULAR the COMMUNITY SUPPORTING TRANSFER SERVICE would be, and that since ALL EXPECTATIONS have been smashed, they will be relocating remaining accounts to the associated destination server and taking the unnecessary server hardware offline. What you won't see is the word "merger" used anywhere. Because this isn't a merger... It is a spontaneous and unexpected player driven migration.

I Just said this to my guild... I am floored that BioWare just can't get their act together on anything. Seriously, the players have to maintain this list for the playerbase because BioWare can't?

I have asked the same thing. I've yet to see a response. BioWare is handling this whole thing extremely poorly, and many of the people I've spoken to think that they are in a panic-mode dash to avoid bad PR, but are obviously creating whole new PR debacles in the process. The lack of honesty, transparency, and general communication about this is pretty unpleasant. As I stated in my previous thread, they have spent months selling their "Legacy" feature by stressing the importance of identity at the character level, and then silently tossed it aside for what is turning out to be a poorly implemented solution to severe population issues, all the while trying to maintain the image that transfers are a courtesy feature generously provided to the players because GOSH, BioWare are such swell folks gee wiz! They've never confronted their stance change on the importance of identity and name. They have not addressed or apologized for the massive inconveniences they are causing by the name changes. They have not discussed the repercussions of not relocating (as of right now the transfers are still being framed as a "service" and not directly a reaction to a problem they created). All they appear to be capable of is PR Marketing Speak. I want one of the power players at BioWare to come into these forums and address the reality of this whole situation head on. Was this system rushed? What solutions to the naming conflicts were considered and why were they abandoned? I do damage control for a living. I've done it for 15 years. Companies are not judged nearly as hard for making mistakes as they are by how they respond to those mistakes. Right now BioWare is failing pretty badly, and a huge part of this is simply that they have shut down a lot of their communications with their customers. What we are getting is specifically crafted, meaningless, info bits. What we need is a dialog.

I tend to wonder how many names are locked up by all of those "Preview Weekend" events they had.

On the topic of the loss of names, this is kinda where my head is at. The fact is, if I really felt like doing so I could find a massive number of videos and interviews in which the folks at BioWare are stressing the importance of "identity" and such, usually in the context of why the Legacy system is so amazing and fantastic and revolutionary in an MMO. And then along come server transfers and they appear to have casually disregarded that whole position and instead taken a "oh well" point of view. Yeah, I take my character identities pretty seriously, and I am absolutely okay with the people that don't and have no issue with the loss of name. This isn't about my view and a conflicting players view of the topic. My primary anger is simply the lack of cohesion and consistency on the part of BioWare. If identity is so important (as exhibited by all of the statements they made in the past about it being so) then why such a completely contradictory stance now? At this point I have accepted that it is what it is. I'll respond to this whole affair as I see fit once it completes. But I do want to know their plan for the servers that bleed players as a result of the transfers. I don't know that this is too much to ask.

So, I am hoping that I can get a straight answer on this as I think it is of immense importance to the future planning of guilds as the "voluntary transfers" are offered. If my server does indeed end up being an Origin Server, and some % of the population decides not to transfer, what is the expected outcome of this decision? There has been a lot of discussion on these forums concerning this whole transfer affair, and one common statement about the loss of character names, legacy names, and potentially guild names, is that this whole transfer business is entirely optional and if you don't want to lose your character identity you "don't have to transfer". So, I am curious now. What if 75% of the server stays behind? 50%? 25%? Is there a point at which a population drop will trigger a forced migration? Or is this hardware bought and paid for so far in advanced that even if you have 10 active players on a server they'll be looking at years before any repercussions (beyond playing on an effectively "dead" server) for not transferring are felt? I know asking such a far reaching question is flirting with the dreaded "We are not ready to discuss this" non-sense reply , but I think it needs to be asked. I have to believe that you know quite well what the next step is for servers that lose much but not all of its population, and I think considering the magnitude of this decision, we should be given as much information as we can.

What is the fixation with chat bubbles? I don't use them, and as another poster above mentioned I also will intentionally turn them off. So the attachment to them mystifies me a bit. I am honestly curious why this suggestion keep coming up (and "because they are awesome" is a non-answer). Just curious...

BioWare... Please have a seat right over there....