Agreed--especially when subscriptions only amount to "paying for stuff the developers should have put in if they had just waited for launch" these days.

People wanted transfers so BioWare gave us targeted, one-way mergers. Of course people are complaining! This isn't quite what people were asking for. The OP is demonstrating, as many others have, how stupid the veil of "transfers" really is; if these were truly transfers, the OP's server--and many more like it--wouldn't be empty right now. BioWare should have either given us traditional transfers (a one-time transfer to the server of your choice) or they should have manned up and done forced mergers (instead of these "optional" mergers). Instead of committing either way, they tried to mask soft mergers as transfers and now players are now either on their empty home server or have joined their properly-populated destination server.

Especially when you refuse to use facts. Right, jarjarloves?

The problem with using fan work comes down to ownership rights. There's a bit of legal work involved when someone submits something as a non-employee. Things like contests, however, take care of the legalese up front by requiring contestants to accept an agreement that usually acknowledges that their submission will lawfully become the property of the contest sponsor if they're chosen (sometimes they don't even have to be a winner).

They could, but I've rarely seen a developer do anything less than force merge and then shut down the empty server. Why? Because the populations on these newly-emptied servers are not sustainable from a gameplay perspective; whole communities have been separated or even gutted by the process. Those left behind are facing non-existent economies, worse queues for PvP than before, and a complete dearth of community.

A merger doesn't have to be forced for it to be a merger. When one server population migrates, en masse, I can't see it as anything but a merger. You also mean to say that they gave players what they asked for: a choice between staying on their even more obnoxiously under-populated server or moving to a more populated, expanded-capacity server. That's not much of a choice if you ask me; I would have preferred to stay on my home server, Lord Adraas, but once the first wave started migrating to Ebon Hawk, it was inevitable. I'd be stupid to play on Lord Adraas now. Had these been open transfers, I'd have nothing to say, but the fact that these were targeted and one-way means they're nothing but mergers.

I'm not playing any game other than trying to keep your facts straight. You tried to prove someone wrong using your own fuzzy math. You were wrong. I also made no judgement about the numbers--only reported them. Defensive much? I wonder why?

1.7 million subscriptions were reported in March. 1.3 million subscriptions were reported in May. That's a difference of 400,000 in the span of two months.

You're basically saying they're mergers in everything but name. The answer does matter, because you have to wonder--assuming the goal was to balance server populations--why BioWare allowed servers to empty out. The fact that these were one-way "transfers" to targeted servers makes them more like mergers than transfers.

All sorts of this. OP, there's really no reason not to transfer, provided you're able to.

Ask yourself this question: "What is the purpose of allowing server transfers?"

I don't think I've ever agreed with anything you've said on this forum, but this post right here gets it.

The writing is on the wall, but too many refuse to read it. Great article, OP. Thanks for the link.

So open your eyes and trickle your way through the rest of what I said. You'll eventually understand that what someone says can be very different from what someone means.

I believe it was Erickson who said it at the guild summit during the roleplaying panel. Not sure when, exactly, but it was said at the summit.

You're absolutely correct: throughout this process, if someone doesn't want to move, they don't have to. They can sit on emptier servers than they did before the mergers. At some point those servers become more expensive to maintain for the amount of use they're getting, so they will ultimately close them down--sending everyone off to the newly merged servers like everyone else. There is zero incentive for someone to stay behind on their origin server if they want to play a populated MMO. There's also zero incentive for BioWare to maintain empty servers when they could just shuffle everyone off to the big ones. Keep arguing until your face is blue, but these aren't transfers.

So the population of one server being given more incentive to move to another, very specific server instead of staying on their own, is not a merger? Inevitably, the origin server is going to empty out and if the goal is to get everyone onto populated servers, logic would dictate they'll close down the empty ones. Think what you like, but they aren't transfers. Not by a long shot.

You can't honestly believe these were anything but mergers...

Your server is dead because these weren't transfers, but thinly-veiled server mergers. As it is, mergers are ugly and the stigma they bring makes companies like BioWare and EA nervous. So they hide behind calling their extremely limited, one-way service "transfers" instead of what they really are. Most of us know better. Your server will inevitably closed, mate. It was their intention from the start.

I'm not sure which came first: disposable gamers or crap games?

Ohlen is so awkward. I really think they should find someone more compelling to sell the game. I always get the feeling he's thinking really hard about what he's going to say and it comes off as forced and uncomfortable. I miss Reid.

They're just too stiff, I think. I do see their spiritual lineage, though. Having played SWTOR, I can't see the cut scenes in GW2--in their current iteration--as being anything other than forced. Still, I can appreciate their value as a newly-minted staple of cinematic questing and thank the Maker they feature only seldom.

ESO was finished the moment they announced its features would have more in common with SWTOR than any other game. I was extremely disappointed, as a long time ES fan, to discover that it's basically just SWTOR 2.0.

The good news is that they're aware of complaints that the game world feels dead. The bad news is that James Ohlen thinks the problem will be solved by bigger server populations.

I can understand why it's shocking or confusing for people to grasp; it's a very different paradigm. That said, it makes sense and having experienced it in practice, it works brilliantly. I can't help but think, "Duh! Why hasn't this been done in every other game to date?"