I retained 7 of 8 names and the one I lost was the probably my 2nd least favorite.

I stand by my like for the mod system but, I sure would love to have GW2's dye system.

I defintely empathize with the availability of consular pants but, have long accepted that what many see has limitations are also intended visual guides for each role. Just like the Sith tend toward blacks and reds, consulars are meant to be in robes not pants. Certainly it chaffes some number of the players but, ultimately the A-tab argument is always going to boil down to bringing a "solution" to an intended "feature". Until more people are seeking to solve the "problem" of the game's visual style, judging A-tabs as a better method of attaining unagreed upon goals that the current system is not designed to address will be a sort of hollow criticism.

Seems like you paid all the extra money for the extra digital features and didn't want the actual goods that came in the box. The store access maybe why you paid the extra money but, BioWare was charging you for a whole raft of items and features. Expecting BioWare to deliver let's say 75 bucks worth of value on something they at best charged you like 5 for is a little unrealistic. I can understand the frustration but, you made a poor choice.

I can"t help bust supsect that you are either asking in an off-putting or ineffective manner, have somehow gotten yourself on alot of people's ignore lists or have some sort of factor going on specific to your character. Notably bad build or potentially disrespectful character name? Perhaps, not you but, alot of players who prefer cross-server grouping enjoy it because it can be easier to escape bad deeds and easier to group without using lacking social graces. What I have seen is alot of people grouping up in the merged servers so, unless you are giving folks a reason not to specifically group with you, you should have lots of oppportunities. Speaking for myself, I ignore alot of people who are to pushy or frequent with their spamming. If I want to group up, I look at the lists or repsond to private messages far better than to spam.

You may have been reading the forums too much, all decisions do not come down to just one factor. Sometimes the wise choice and the "easy" choice can coincide. I rather they measure twice and cut once than potentially spending a bunch of my game's resources on overtime to rush a fix only to have to spend more to back out of and correct because they did not have all the info when they made their choice. If they have learned nothing while releasing this game, it's that they are bad at predicting our group dynamics. Taking this process cautiously is the way to go.

What the players do is very much where the rubber hits the road. They have the ordered mathemetical solutions developed and have gone forthe with them. Now they are trying to step back and see how the Xfactors impact their sensible fix before setting those final levels. I am sure they have little more than guesses as to how quickly people would transfer, how many people would resub and return or even might coordinate some sort population shift they had not predicted. They said their would be waves and that this would be an ongoing process that they would tell us when it's coming to a close. They are within those parameters and I appluad them moving forward cautiously when when they don't truly know the path ahead.

Play habits during the weekend are different than during the week, they more than likely want to see how many weekend players transfer, what they do and if the systems can maintain their new loads. I'll bet they have alot of staff on and at the ready to tweak and tuen the servers for their new populations and to respond to unforseen but, possible problems, gliches and etc.. I know everyone wants to be in the first waves but, waiting to see how the weekend plays out might be a wise choice. It is to me.

Frankly, I think there was a fair amount of foresight and planning but, in order to remain flexible and adaptive, there is a limit to the amount of detailed planning and communication you can do. For as smoothly as many parts of the transfers are going, there must have been alot of prep but, I don't think they could reliably predict how players were going to recieve and particiipate in the transfers. This means they needed to keep an open plan ready for alot of changes in direction. This is why we are seeing waves of transfers and stops to assess and adapt. It's also why they could only give us so many details, most of them weren't set in stone.

I suspect some of it maybe that they needed to shift players off the origin servers so they can divert the resources from them over to handling the greater loads on the destination servers. Maybe they were able to do some of this prior to the transfers but, I bet finanaces are such where they had to empty servers first before could reallocate hardware as opposed to expanding the destination servers before transfers happened.

I defy you to prove this statement. Every decision has it's merits and flaws but, how about toning down the rhetoric. When you start of your post with such a blatantly inaccurate and unsupported statement, you give the reader little reason to listen or lend any credibility to the rest of what you post.

Letting you play on the server you chose to create a character on and play on is not "punishment". In fact, very few players have all their characters consolidated on one server. They either got lucky and started on a server that remained reasonably populated or got very lucky with the transfer process. It's hard to claim you are being punished by enduring what most players are and you that you chose to set-up. I hope we all are allowed to consolidate our characters as we like in the future but, let's ease up on the "punishment" rhetoric.

We seem to be in the same boat then. I lost one name among three characters on my way from Lord Adraas to Ebon Hawk. If your old server is dead, it would seem like your community mostly made the transfer too. I traded a sort of unoriginal name that I could have taken a very close permutation of for a bunch of extra play opportunites on top of all my old ones. I bet BioWare hoped that entire servers would transfer. Again "hoped" but, it was not a gurantee and there are a few outliers. I view "forced" differently, especially when things are in play but, let's assume this was "forced". What's your point? The play experience is a better one. If the game is bad and devs can't code out their way out of a paper bag, why are you here and how does whining about it improve anything?

You seem in an awful big hurry to characterize this as "forced". To what end? What do you prove by convincing people they were forced? There just isn't enough information to declare it so absolutely and no benefit in doing so. They could offer multiple destinations to the remaining origin server players because the intial destinations are too full tomorrow and you'd be wrong.

I think fresh servers would have been better because it would have freed up names tied up by inactive accounts but, it would have required an extra measure of transfers of the population of large healthy servers(work, effort, manpower and expense). It was also a little safer to base your destination servers on larger, healthier populations if you aren't transplanting those core populations too.

I had to change 1 of 5 from 2 servers. I have 3 more on another server(Veela) with many of the same names that have yet to be tapped to transfer.

I'd imagine that yesterday's transfers probably freed up alot of server hardware or started a process that will from the origin servers. Presumably, that equipment and associated staffing can be moved over to the destination servers to allow for greater capacity. I'd imagine there may be some lag in transfering those resources but, I am no server expert and have little idea how the actual hardware is configured. Makes sense to me in conceptual terms though.

Pump the brakes there Dude. They aren't done getting everyone together and the fix for most of what you are talking about is in the test server.

I do feel like the core of the issue is that players have invested to much into their names. I can appreciate that they spent alot of effort to get them first and love them dearly but, they aren't a sure enough thing to let so much ride on them. It's unfortunate that many are losing cherished names but, from what I have seen, most people have retained the majority of their character names and their are some alt code avenues to keeping very similar names. If people use such alternatives enough, the community will become more adept at avoiding the pitfalls such alt codes can create in their usages.

I think it would be a smart move for BioWare to give everyone who endured all the shuffling one free character transfer of their choice once the dust settles and they begin to offer paid transfers. It would not fix everything but, in alot of cases, being able to consolidate that one prized character who got left out in the cold would mitigate much of the pain.

Can we just ban this phrase from the forums?

I think most people rather not have their servers recieve an influx of players of a different style of play. Most wouldn't want to be sent to a server type they did not choose either. Probably best to to match to like for the time being and allow such swaps to paid transfers to ensure that the player is a little more invested in that type of community as opposed to just sent there possibly againt their preferences. As a player on Lord Adraas, I think I'd prefer they err on the side of leaving us on the small side and not disrupting the culture. Our population level could be better but, has been tolerable to me.

I'd agree that this is merge via transfer but, you do have some choice. You could wait and let things play out more. It's entirely possible that as they fill up the destination servers that they may offer other server options or make other server types available in later waves.

Two major problems crop up when they inform the players. 1.) It takes away flexibility to adapt to the process as it plays out since players will grow upset when what they were told doesn't turn out to be true. All of the sudden, in order to take advantage of a good change midstream in the process, you open yourself to being labled a "liar. 2.) Players will try to game the system or manipulate the process to their own ends. Often this counteracts the overarching goal or causes other problems.

If nothing else, most of the playerbase will now understand that some cueing at peak hours is not such a bad thing.