Dilemmas
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West Coast people; type your server IP into https://gsuite.tools/traceroute - Do you see any East Coast hops? Because I don't think you will. All traces end in California, but we can be pretty sure the servers aren't in California, so that must be EA providing false WHOIS or something to obfusticate the server location, which leaves Texas, which every server seems to jump through before reaching California.
The safe bet is on Texas being the location for all US servers now, and BWA is having teething issues with the new arrangement, which is causing the lag.
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If it was located in Texas, the ping would not be as high as it currently is for the people on the west coast.
I'd be more interested to know what people's lowest recorded pings are in these cases, not so much the spikes (even if they're currently forming an average), which could be caused by technical issues on BW's side rather than the actual location.
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I made a couple observations that I think are pretty interesting, using the site https://gsuite.tools/traceroute
Let's first look at the hops made by The Harbinger (East Coast, IP 159.153.65.219), and by Jedi Covenant (West Coast, IP 159.153.65.234) - they both go through Texas and end in California.
Now, let's look at an EU server; TRE (159.153.78.101) - the hops end in CA also, kind of strange for an EU server, yeah? But actually, instead of jumping through Texas on it's way to CA, it hops through Ireland. It's been known for a while that EU servers are based in Ireland, so that hop before CA must be the actual server. If we follow that logic then we should assume that all US servers (both WC and EC) are actually currently located in Texas, near Houston.
That's where my logic takes me anyway.
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Not really. You get routed to their network, what happens in there is not transparent to the outside.
As an aside, I am a bit weirded out by the assumption in this and other threads that they moved hardware from datacenter A to B. I know game and technology are old, but if they are not running on virtualized environments, I'd be very surprised. So a move most likely is "just" syncing storage and redirecting traffic.
I'm from the EU, so I went on both servers and checked the ping for a while; it mostly stayed in the 98-105 (ignoring spikes) range on both Harb and JC, tried a traceroute too and got pings in the 90s for both servers.
Is this anything to go on? I'd figure I'd receive a much more varying ping from actual West Coast and East Coast locations.
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Depends on how you tested. If you just did a geolocation search, odds are you got the location that is registered for that IP range in the whois database. Which will usually be the corporate HQ, and has nothing to do with where that ip is actually assigned to.
Yes, that's what I did.
If that could be false, then is there any way to find the real location for sure?
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I did some testing on The Harbinger (EC, IP 159.153.65.219) and on Jedi Covenant (WC, IP 159.153.65.234); both of these IP addresses are located in California.
Am I missing something? Or perhaps the servers for EC and WC were always located in California (the West Coast), because I have seen this claim made in the past as well.
When Kieth uses the term ''data center'' and its ''West Coast location'', do we know that this is actually synonymous with the server and its actual geographic location? Or is it that their datacenters/servers were previously just located in separate places in California?
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong and have misunderstood something, but I think everyone flipping out in here needs to wait for some clarification.
EDIT/UPDATE: I'm from the EU, and went to log in on both servers: my ping remained exactly the same (98-105, ignoring the occasional spike). I also ran a traceroute on both servers and received pings in the 90s. It seems unlikely I'd receive identical pings from both sides of the US.
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There are many factors for that, IMO.
The cataclysm expansion changed the word of Azeroth. Zones are different now, and quests changed or were removed, etc.
The introduction of cross ream queuing and the later introduction of cross realm zones had a drastic negative impact on the sense of server community on every server due the loss of behavioral accountability.
People are looking through rose colored nostalgia glasses.
Even in this game, though, we have people asking for a return to, and a continuation of, the "vanilla" stories.
Change always provokes the desire for the past, but when WoW launched; it launched with enough content to tide people over until they added more; and they did add more, steadily, year by year they added large amounts of content to what is now considered ''vanilla'' WoW. Before even their first actual expansion, they built upon the base game until there was a solid foundation. A foundation that a considerable amount of players today are content to revisit. This was not even close to the case with SWtOR. You can search for ''WoW content at launch'' to find the content timeline, compare it to SWtOR and see for yourself.
Nostalgia plays a part, but if it were merely rose tinted vision then it wouldn't last long enough to sustain communities like Nostalrius.
WoW was not the first MMO, but it redefined the shape of the genre and created a new standard. When SWtOR decided to imitate WoW, it couldn't afford to be a mechanical imitation with a half-assed roadmap and shoddy, lackluster delivery post-launch.
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Personally, I would have been happy if SWtOR went with the ''buy to play'' model, had paid expansions or DLC, free access to all content that had been paid for, a cosmetic cash shop and optional subscription for fast-track benefits + a trickle of premium currency and minor QoL stuff like ESO's craft bag.
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What people seem to forget is that even WoW wasn't WoW at first release. What I mean by that is it wasn't this massive theme park of max level rides like it is today. It took much much longer to level and the game was more about getting to max level than being at max level. Pretty much all MMOs start out like this.
The trouble with SWTOR at release was so little to do at max level while it was too quick to get there. Had they slowed down progress or spent more time on end game FPs/Ops over the class stories then it would have been a bigger success. With success comes money and they'd have had the cash to then expand their max level theme park.
I think that while WoW may not have been what it is today, what was there in vanilla was good enough that a massive community of people still have the strong desire to play vanilla WoW on private servers, and there's a well-known demand for Blizzard to introduce legacy servers to satiate this in some legitimate way. I don't see this ever being the case for SWtOR because what SWtOR had to offer in vanilla was nowhere near as compelling, and could never gain a lasting following.
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There were other options to F2P to keep the game going.
One big one would have been making expansions paid for like every other game does.
Like WoW and FF:ARR?
Neither of them failed miserably and had a mass exodus of players shortly after launch. In fact; FF:ARR shows exactly what it takes to get back in the subscription market after a catastrophic failure - A total redesign from the ground up.
Games unwilling to do this will likely have to turn to some form of f2p in today's MMO market, and we have plenty of examples that prove this besides SWtOR. The problem is; that SWtOR should be thriving now, (especially with such a namesake a Star Wars) but its f2p model is a joke compared to other MMO's that have been forced to adopt it.
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I wonder if even our glorious Lord Kanneg is going to avoid acknowledging this thread, and if so, why? My money's on it being a sensitive topic with the higher ups and shareholders, and that the idea to them; is that at board meetings, subscription numbers are the only numbers. It would explain some things like the recent doubling down on the f2p restrictions, like the removal of passes, and the implementation of an exclusionary system like CXP - all ideas with a clear intention of brute-forcing an increase in subs.
A lack of open-mindedness towards the business model seems prevalent everywhere here, I wouldn't be surprised if; in the end, this is just an issue with the exec management. Meaning that maybe, it's just not up for discussion ... sure feels that way.
By the way, these should be at least somewhat telling of sentiments outside of this echo-chamber:
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Discuss the free to play model, the re-implementation of passes, and/or the addition of something akin to the WoWToken.
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whatever the reason, ea decided to change to a F2p/P2P model. they wouldnt have done this if it was making loads of money. None of us know just what the financials were, just that they had to make huge changes in the game. They didnt do it because they were bored making money.
Yes, you're probably right. I was never actually debating the truth of this idea though.
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You are still missing the point - it wasn't that he said I implied "was making no money" that I misunderstood. He gave two options in his response - "not making money" AND "Not meeting EA's targeted goals". Thus he chose to shoe horn me into the "not making money" statement to try and act as thought there were no evidence out there to support this.
It can indeed be seen as saying "making no money" or "not profitable enough" are the same thing but NOT when the poster I quoted decided to differentiate them him/herself and then put me into one category for the sole purpose of being able to say "there is no proof of that".
Thus I stand by my response.
As for witch hunting .... huh?
They didn't differentiate in the way that you seem to think, not as I read it anyway. The poster was just suggesting that there was no proof that the game actually needed to close as you were suggesting (i.e. not making any money), and that EA rather just wanted increased profits that may not have been necessary to the game's survival.
Again, I am not arguing the truth of this idea, simply that you are missing the point. I'm getting pretty tired of this though, so if you still disagree then I will leave it.
As for, ''witch hunting'', it's more or less what you're doing by going after anyone that does not hold the same opinions as you, sometimes going so far as to search them out or see opposing arguments where they don't exist.
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Perhaps I was indeed taking it quite literally but it seems a fairly silly thing to imply that I was saying "the game was making no money" when they believed the game wasn't making enough money? How do you even get that from my statement? Clearly it's not "no money" and clearly it must be "enough money to stay open" which of course will be whatever goal EA have set.
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it wasn't just a slip in terminology because they actually tried to correct me by saying "wasn't the amount EA/(BW?) wanted. " So again - how do you get "no money" vs "wasn't the amount EA/(BW?) wanted." from what I posted about the game being on the way out?
First of all, I think it's logical to assume that when someone says the game ''wasn't making money'', that their meaning is along the lines of ''not profitable enough'', or; ''would not have been worth keeping open''.
By saying that the game is ''on its way out'' you suggest that the game is going to close. I doubt EA would shut something down if it's profitable enough to keep open (unless there are motives that we cannot ascertain), therefore by extension, it's reasonable to assume that you are implying that it is not profitable enough to keep open or, that it ''wasn't making money''.
So, the question is; would EA have kept the game open had it remained in its previous state - or was it just a push for reaching the profits that they had previously projected?
I don't care about the answer. The point is that taking things literally to a fault is pointless, and doesn't mean you can accuse someone of strawmanning you just because you refuse to read between the lines or consider the full implications of the things that you say.
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That was an interesting read actually, thank you. But you didn't have to prove your point to me, and I think you've completely missed mine - I never suggested going F2P didn't ''save'' SWTOR, or that I agreed or disagreed with the sentiments of anyone that you replied to.
The point was that your accusation of strawmanning was ridiculous (I have already explained exactly why), and that your witch-hunting mentality here caused you to be unreasonable.
Shhh now.There's no place for the truth in the company of White Knights.
All The Best
I'm hoping that wasn't meant for me in particular
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Read the post you quoted - did I say the game made NO money or is this a strawman argument you are endeavoring to create? Hint ... it's the latter.
You implied that the game wasn't making enough money to stay open before it went F2P, and they questioned if that was really the case... if you're going to take ''wasn't making money'' literally, it just makes you look pedantic. You also brought the point up of F2P saving the game yourself (and it's obviously a financial decision), so for someone else challenge your idea that it was a necessary decision by EA/BW isn't a strawman
You also assume that everyone who disagrees with you is doing so because they want to defend SWTOR's business model against you, but this is the first thing the person has said to you in this thread and they implied no such thing.
That's the trouble with witch hunting; you start to see things that aren't there. Might wanna take a step back...
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It only has tons of votes because the reddit sub linked to it.
Honestly, the business model of this game is not bad at all. The recent CXP stuff is game design, not business model. People are just raging now.
The Massively OP writer who is whining about not being able to afford a cash shop item on the GTN is the biggest laugh. I mean come on, that is pathetic. 'QQ I can't afford Darth Emo's unstable lightsaber, worst business model evar.'
Everyone got used to the cosmetic cash shop a long time ago, and it saved this game. And really there are only a few items where you'd have to throw money at Bioware to get them. For the vast majority, all he'd have to do is gather or craft or sell flashpoint/ops drops.
What is really going on? It's not about the business model at all. Bottom line: the redditors/ops people hate having to grind. That's it. That's all the hate right now. So many just want to show up on ops night, play for two hours or so, get their token and/or gear drop, and see you next week.
No... I'm afraid not. That reddit thread doesn't have the traffic to push the votes that far, and SWTOR was already leading the way by a few hundred votes before it was even posted.
Keep rocking those rose-tinted glasses though.
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Actually they pretty decide what get the majority happens almost all of the time if not aways. That why I never understood why with them not let the public vote before that actual announcement rather than after swaying the votes.
http://massivelyop.com/2016/12/15/massively-ops-best-of-2016-awards-best-mmo-business-model-2016/ If you notice on who got the best business model gw2 won and got 1000 votes while wow got 91 I can tell you those number would of never been like that if they did it before the actual announcement.
I would have voted for GW2 without even thinking twice. I'm sure many others did too.
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I'd like to see where you get those numbers from.
I am on about cartel chip 250 and I already have two Cartel Market Certificates. The 250 cartel chips cost me 187 500 credits, so it's really not as bad as depicted here.
At my first Cartel Market Certificate, I just thought I was extra lucky (at about 50 cartel chips), but after the second, I was beginning to think that I cannot be that lucky.
Maybe they have buffed the odds in stealth?
I'm a few thousand chips in (4k? I can't remember) and I have 2. You're very lucky so far, but that luck should average out as you keep going - you're bound to hit a massive cert drought as you continue.
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Signed.
I'm done. Grinding CXP is even more pointless in PvP once you figure out how to optimise via bolster, and the continued lack of ranked rewards leave me feeling like there's nothing fun to earn for myself.
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I agree to an extent. The only problem i have with naga is that it becomes dirty and unresponsive pretty quick.
Love the Naga, but it usually breaks after roughly 2 years or less. Seems pretty common. Got myself a Corsair Scimitar this time, build quality feels much better.
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RIP Ravage (could it be any more boring?).
Long live Blade Barrage.
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Hey Eric,
Is feedback on these changes is being read and discussed?
~ Eudoxia
SWTOR Live Stream today December 20th!
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