Most people will remain skeptical of that. When you increase the level, you antiquate content. The new levels must offer superior items to lower levels. All the level 50 stuff suddenly loses value. All old pve content degrades into leveling activities. In order to actually have endgame, a massive overhaul of old content or a massive creation of new content must happen. That process requires a vast effort; consequentially, most MMOs only do it on expansions so that the box covers the cost of that development time. While they may do it as free content, it is extremely worrisome. Expecting that kind of overhaul to be complete and free is a bit much, even by my cheap standards. If it is free, it is far more worrisome in my mind because I doubt they'll develop the end game that is needed to accompany the change.

Responses inside.

Yes. The special event is an exodus of the refugees of the other 100+ servers.

On launch day, they told us there were working on them. http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/19815-a-warning-regarding-launch-server-queues They were either lying or it has been over 5 months now.

So, your business model is not that you have a back up plan for lost subs, you actually plan to lose them? That's crazy man. If BW took your approach, the way you appease the queue issues was to make them quit and alleviate the queue. You guys keep talking about a plan that actually relied on dropped subs for a solution! That's the worst business model ever. Forcing people to quit because you think they might quit is dumb. It's like burning down your house because you are afraid it will catch fire.

Incorrect. The decision to have long queues (as you are suggesting) and basically guarantee that people quit by pissing them off from day one is not a good one. Go look at TORStatus. This game kept a good chunk of population for a couple of months. Having a 2+ hour long queue every evening for a month is a great way to get people to quit. Alternatively, they could open more servers and then prep for the decline (which has happened in every single MMO ever). They opened more servers. They just didn't prepare for the decline. There are other options; like using overflow servers (as seen in GW2). BW had options. Their job is to keep the sane customers happy so that those customers keep paying them. Their launch was rather enjoyable because they catered to sane people that didn't want to wait in 5+ hour long queues. It's too bad that they didn't plan ahead.

I'm not doubting your individual case, though it's not true for me. My sub has expired, I'm debating paying again (trying to figure out when server x-fers will land) and I can post in this thread right now.

This is the reason you don't understand Paige or the math. You are trying to force the numbers to be something they aren't. Paige has explained it insanely clearly. It's the number of people playing on average on your server. Paige didn't state a conclusion because there isn't one. It's just data. You understand this. You clearly state it in the post. Yet, you continue to fall right back into strange claims about the math because you are still trying to warp the data into some claim about subscriptions. As for the math errors, you haven't proven any of them. Using BW's subscription claims and haphazard guessing, the numbers do line up. If we assume that all subscribers play 80 minutes every day (9 hours and 20 minutes a week), the numbers tell us that there are 1.3 million subscribers. Of course the assumptions in the OP and the 80 minute assumption are incorrect. However, they do ballpark into a reasonable amount. If you want to run the polls and then do the math to make it more accurate, Paige would love it. I'd be interested too. Just remember what these numbers are telling you and stop trying to force them into a subscription claim. If someone uses these numbers to tell you that subs are down, you are going to need to argue about the average play time. That is a valid argument. Though you'll need to use some real math or you'll both be spitting in the wind because no one will have evidence of anything. If you can't see the point behind these numbers, there is no point in being here since you'll just warp the data to fit your own paradigm.

Feb 29, 2012: Announcement: 1.2 hitting PTS soon. Mar 16, 2012: 1.2 deployed to PTS. Apr 12, 2012: 1.2 goes live. May 25, 2012: 1.3 Announcement for PTS. http://www.darthhater.com/tag/update-1-2 Timeframe: 16 days from announce to PTS. 27 days from PTS to live. Projected Timeframe {Speculation from 1.2} : Patch hits PTS by June 11. Patch goes live by July 10. Yes, they've stated 1.3 should be faster than 1.2. My best case scenario puts it June 19.

You must not be in software dev, so I'll explain. One of the first things you learn is decouple your code. When you build your code, you want to be able to reuse it. That means that when you write a cut function, you really write a copy function that then follows up with a delete function. That is what the cut function does. It copies the data and then deletes it. You can scramble the two together; but it is terrible design. Proper design lets you use that same code for all of the functions (copy, paste, delete). They already have a delete function. It happens every time you delete on a character on your server. All they needed was the copy function. The bottom line is if the programmer wrote it in the way you are suggesting, he should be fired and told to attend a freshman course on software development.

What is the process to move data? You must copy the data. There is no way around it. You get the data and place it in a new location. Following that, you delete the data on the old location. To move a character to the PTS, it takes less work than a character copy since you no longer remove the original data. There is no possible way for it to be more difficult unless they coupled everything into a giant mess. In that case, they should lay off that guy.

The reason this is frightening is because of server transfers. They have no transfer service for the PTS; clearly they don't have one for live. And considering the PTS would actually let them test it, you'd think it would be in for 1.3.

Yes, bugs exist. It would lovely if they got fixed. The bug that the OP experienced has been in the game since day 1. I even know how to reproduce it. I reported it months ago. It's still kicking. At some point, BW needs to fix the stupid bugs.

It would have been better if you had lost.

In regards to number #2, I'd love to see proof of that. Please, post the aforementioned circle. It's easy to make this claim. The more I look at it, the less I see of it. Certain classes are just fodder and not a hard counter to anyone. Other classes have 1 counter AC (even that is questionable). Edit: Please fill in the blanks. Juggernaut: -Hard: -Soft: -Easy Marauder: -Hard: -Soft: -Easy Powertech: -Hard: -Soft: -Easy Mercenary: -Hard: -Soft: -Easy Operative: -Hard: -Soft: -Easy Sniper: -Hard: -Soft: -Easy Assassin: -Hard: -Soft: -Easy Sorcerer: -Hard: -Soft: -Easy