Does anyone remember when Empire Fleet would have 5-7 instances up on a weekend? Planets would have 2-3 instances each at a minimum... and that was Satele Shan. Now that server is lucky to have 1 full instance of Empire Fleet prime time on the weekend. Give it by the end of next year and the server could end up looking like Levaithan. What do you think Star Forge will look like a year from now? Do you think we will still have 2-3 instances of Empire Fleet at any given time? Have you not noticed, even on Star Forge the population drop we have had over the last year? Do you want to wait until Star Forge is having issues filling up a single instance of Empire Fleet before welcoming in players from Satele Shan or are you willing to let the Satele Shan population get so dire that their merger would be absolutely meaningless in bolstering the population of Star Forge. The most hilarious thing about this thread is it precisely mirrors the arguments I see against immigration in the real world. "it is fine if it is controlled via paid server transfers, but going to destroy our server if we openly merge" "We will lose our identity if we merge" "People from Satele Shan will ruin our community by bring in people not like us" I have stated it before, a server merge is going to help bolster the NA for a larger population loss in the future. If you want to wait until Star Forges population is as low as Satele Shan before a merge, it's already too late. The good thing is, a merge isn't up to the players. The developers have real numbers on the games population and trends. What we say does not matter. I'm just here because I'm bored and trying to get some of you to understand that merging servers would be better for the over all health of the game. That allowing a large population of players to get bored and quit because they can't get group content to pop on Satele Shan does not benefit the players on Star Forge.

Every player should have set stats based on their class and all players should be given all their skills as if they were max level. FFXIV did this right and there are no separate brackets for pvp because everyone is bolstered to max level with set stats and all skills unlocked.

so in your mind everyone that wants to access to group activities like PvP, killing world bosses, etc have already left Satele Shan and it's fine that Satele Shan remain a dead server because that's how everyone that plays there likes it... and anyone new that joins Satele Shan deserves less access to group content because we on the forums have unofficially deemed it the what... "soloers server"? And that merging servers would be to the detriment to everyone on Star Forge because it would make Star Forge too busy... but not so busy to effect queues or increase the number of instances open in any world on Star Forge. I think I got it. I'm excited because a server merge will help everyone on Satele Shan while also benefiting everyone on Star Forge. You may not like the idea that our server will get a bit busier having more items on the GTN along with more players buying and selling, but I am. I'm also not worried about over crowding. We have the new 7.0 tagging system, the developers are lowering the timers on a lot of objectives and mobs and have been constantly updating them since 7.0. The only thing I am concerned with is losing character names. I haven't kept a single good name over the years so I'm not expecting to keep any after the upcoming merger.

The increase in instances would be the most benefit to Satele Shan players. Currently on Satele Shan it is not common to find more than 1 world instance open. If you run into a group of people farming the same area it can be a wait because there is no other instance open. The increase in world instances and increase in group content is always going to be benefit the people stuck on the smaller server more. You really think "most" players who like group activites have abandoned Satele Shan and transferred to Star Forge so it is fine players may not see group content outside a few hours during East Coast prime time? That no one Satele Shan or Star Forge will benefit from having a greater pool of players to access group activities with or buy and sell more items to?

The increased group activity is for the people on Satele Shan not Star Forge... oh you don't care that players on Satele Shan can't find PvP or have a hard time completing group activities... sure. Increasing the server population means less world instances? How does that work because yeah, I'm totally lost here. Since I now play mainly on Star Forge, if the population is increased 30-40%... then we'll have less instances per world open... in fact we will have world instances shutting down because of the population increase? Right, 100 is just the max character capacity per server atm. Server mergers are going to happen. Server transfer discounts have always been a precursor to server merges to help players pick their server before the merge. There is no point in having a dead server like Satele Shan leaving existing players to think the game is dead and new players to think they wasted their time trying this game out.

not really. PvE and PvP gain advantages when the servers merge. The chances of finding group content, killing world bosses, invading enemy bases, completing flashpoints, PvP queues, GSF queues, all increase when the two servers merge because the available population will increase for both servers. Solo content opens up more. The more world instances there are, the more chances a player has to find an empty zone. If there is only one world instance, you have no chance to drop to another instance. There have been many times on SS where we only had one instance but I had to wait in line behind a few people because we were all crowd in that single instance. Just bad luck to have 4-5 people working the same missions. On SF I can usually find another PvE instance available for the lower worlds because it is busy enough to have 2-3 instances open. Once the worlds become PvP flagged I can usually enter the PvP instance of any world and solo as much as I want rarely seeing anyone. Trading becomes easier. The GTN is stocked with everything from both SS and SF. At the moment the GTN on SS is empty and expensive. Once the servers combine everyone on that server will have access to more items. Stronghold decorators should be excited. Strongholds and decorations will be combined from both servers. Unlike transfers which only copy the highest number of decorations, server merges combines what you have on both servers. Transfer one character now so you can double your decorations and plan your strongholds so you can have at least one of each stronghold. Outside of prime time Satele Shan server is pretty dead. I have 45 characters there and basically abandoned Satele Shan and primary on Star Forge. On Star Forge I can now find groups almost 24/7 where as on Satele Shan even during prime time I am waiting 10-20 minutes for a single PvP group to pop. Outside of 4-8 pm EST and I may as well not bother queuing up on Satele Shan. The only real negative to server merges is the least active players will lose their names. Players with over 100 characters total may get locked out of making new characters until they fall under the 100 character limit. My only suggestion is plan for the future, make as many characters as you can on each server with a lot of different looks so when the servers combine you can pick 1 of 200 premade characters to level.

SS had one instance of fleet for Empire and one instance of fleet for Republic. SF had three instances for Empire and two for Republic. I dropped down to each instance and got a count before I totaled them up.

Satele Shan population at 1pm on a Sunday: Empire 83, Republic 74. Almost two hours of waiting and no Arena or Warzone for my sub level 45 character. Star Forge population at 1pm on Sunday: Empire 207, Republic 147. I queued up for Arena and Warzone just to see what would happen and a game popped up in less than a minute. This was also on a sub level 45 character. A greater population means greater chances for group content. Try to find groups on Leviathan at various times of the day then compare that to Star Forge...

I was like "Oh this is what the SPACER widget is for" and that did not work either.

I am currently in instance 3 of DK with no one around. More than a few times on SF I find myself seeing 2-3 instances of planets I am on and never have issues with over crowding unless I am stuck on a planet with one instance. Yes, I occasionally see a couple of other people but I am playing an MMO, I should never expect to see zero people in the open world.

GW2 was doing this. I used to work to unlock all the armor pieces I could find then delete them from my inventory. You could use any unlocked items for outfits. If Bioware did this but charged us a bit of CC to unlock account wide (if we didn't want to collect it directly with every character) then a few credits to recall a copy they would make players happy, create a credit sink, and make a profit all at the same time.

7.0 tagging system eliminated most of the issues with crowding. You can tag a mob now and it shares loot and objective tracking excluding players of the opposing factions. The developers have also been lowering the spawn timers for both mobs spawns and objective spawns required to complete missions. The more people on a planet the more instances of that planet open up which leads to less crowding. I know, it's the converse of what many here are arguing, that if more people were active on their server it will create crowding situations in mission areas. What happens if there is one crowded instance. Where are you going to go to finish your mission? What happens when there are four times the amount of people but now you have 5 instances availble. Now you have 5 instances to pick from one of which is usually has very few people in it. You get to avoid crowds more when there are a larger amount of players on a planet keeping multiple instances open. So many of you argue "I don't want to be too crowded", "I don't want to see people while I play an MMO", "I don't want people to make fun of my group while we erotic roleplay in gen chat on fleet"... none of these complaints are valid reasons to stand against merging the two NA servers because none of those will be negatively impacted by having more instances open... except maybe if your group continues to erotic roleplay '50 Shades of Sith' in gen chat on fleet.

It is to force players to interact and play the game more. Considering I have 60 to 70 characters spread across all the severs I won't really bother with items like this. I completely skipped the feast weapons for the same reason. If they had a legacy bound option for more tokens or at least allowed an unlock for collections I would spend time actually unlocking it.

when they merged servers in the past all previous characters, strongholds, decorations, etc were merged together. So if you had the max of 100 characters per server and two servers merged, you would end up with 200 characters. I haven't read anything about deleting a character in a 200/200 scenario. You may just end up with 199/199 and be restricted from making a new character until you hit below 100. Strongholds were the same, I had something like 20 strongholds, mostly copies of the same ones I just happen to have unlocked on all the servers. Decorations stack and get added together. There are a few limited decorations which you should only have 10/10 of and I ended up with 30/10 after a few merges. Legacy names are no longer unique. Character names still are. I don't think I have kept a single character name I wanted through the years of merges. Every time I come back my played characters all have to be renamed. Hopefully Bioware moves from unique character names to unique account IDs

Galactic Season objectives can be group oriented and are shared across faction. It is not uncommon to run across more players when trying to kill a World Boss or take out guards at the other factions base. Heroics and other dailies are usually faction oriented and rarely cross over locations. so you run across people 2-3 times a week? In an MMO?

except for the starter worlds which usually only have one or two instances and no PvP option, you can easily drop down to a less population instance of the game or the PvP instance which has almost no one in it. Even on Star Forge when I am in a PvP instance I rarely run into people on planets. Wanting to play alone or not seeing people can and will easily be accomplished if you change out of a busy instance. I can only think of a handful of times I met people in a pvp instance while doing dailies and even less times that person was an opposing faction because very few dailies cross locations. We always left each other alone and with the tagging system we have now, even if it is crowded you can tag a mob for the mission loot or kill count you need.

There is a 50% discount on server transfers so I think we can almost guarantee Bioware has set up plans for a server merge. I wasn't around for every server merge but the ones I experienced had server transfer discounts preceding a merger. I just find it odd that people would vote against a change that would obviously improve the game by giving all players increased group content in an MMO.

who cares what you or I want? What's better for the game in general, one server, The Leviathan, always being vacant of players and two servers, Satele Shan and Tulak Horde, only having a decent (not healthy) population during peak hours, or one mega server/merged servers where group content is always available and the GTN is constantly stocked with items. What you or I want is meaningless when it comes to what is better for this game. And I can already tell you that having numerous dead servers where people can't find group content is not healthy for this games population.

It could also be the combat class. The combat class still has issues if you are Empire but using a Repub combat class.

Star Forge has around 2-3 times the population of Satele Shan. SS is lucky to have more than one active fleet while SF has 3-4. SF also stays active longer. It is a bit busier on SS for life day but we still have issues with population. With transfers being 50% I don't think it matters what any of us want. I think mergers are already being planned.

I don't think Bioware has the develop time to drop 24 new items unless you want a bunch of low quality sets that are just mixing up assets.

104.29 billion legacy, 4.29 billion character, 4.29 billion guild bank.

not a fan of the new layout or the way medals are earned

Let event items stay Bind on Pickup or Bind on Legacy, but they should all be added to Collections. Let players have the option of unlocking these items account wide for Cartel Coins. Bioware gains profit, players don't have to worry about keeping specific items in their bank or worry they will accidentally deconstruct or delete those items. Or don't allow players to unlock these items account wide. These event items could act like [Advanced Black-Purple Striated X Crystal] which allows characters who have collected them to claim more copies but does not have an account wide unlock option (though thinking about it the lack of an account wide unlock option maybe a bug). The last few events which introduced weapons I have mostly ignored because I don't want to keep and track a lot of random items on my characters.

I've exited a few Huttball games with 3 medals. I'm usually the top earner being a tank and running the ball but now I'm on the bottom.