well, there were 50 on the fleet and another 30 on Hoth when I was on a hour or so ago. That's 80 players total just those two places. Even really late at night (2-3 am server time) I don't recall seeing less than 12 on fleet. So there are enough just from a body count perspective, they just aren't queuing for group content (or are being very specific about which content they want to play). Obviously 12 isn't enough for PVP (and not every one logged on is going to want to play group content so you need more) but it should be good enough for GF if at least 25% of the people are interested and have all the FPs checked in GF (I am convinced the lower than expected pops on all servers are a result of apathy rather that the server population not being viable). That also doesn't take into account ignore lists though so the number of viable players could be lower. It's not proof but based on the number of players on-line, there should be enough to pop the queues for some of the group content if their interest in group content is high enough. Looking to pug R4 is obviously not going to happen but I doubt it happens much if at all on SF either. I'm not saying your selection would be great on what pops through GF but there should be group content available based on the number of players on-line.

And that's the rub isn't it. Any server can feel busy or desolate depending on when you play. I have been on SF really late at night US time and it gets quite dead too (same is true for DM). There are enough people on SS to drive the queues most of the time, the question is why aren't they queuing? (in theory, a flashpoint pops with only 4 people in the queue and there's a lot more than that on SS even in slow times - PVP is a different matter but the not queuing there has a lot to do with Bioware's choices on how to "update" it and PVP seasons is less than inspiring). I don't queue as often as I used to mainly because all of the group content has started to look the same (the increased toxicity on SF hasn't helped either in convincing me to queue GF), one operation runs pretty much the same as the others once you have memorized your rotation - it's all burn for most of them once you get a full set of FP armor (OPs armor is just icing on the cake). Same is true with FPs. Maybe that's part of the problem? PVPers have left and there is nothing left to inspire people to do it. Bioware has stooped to offering bribes (aka PVP seasons) but that doesn't really go far in getting people to queue consistently. Guilds do a lot of their group content internally now as well, which cuts into GF queues. I'm in 2 active guilds on SS and there are nightly group activities going on but it's all organized internally and avoids GF until after the group is built.

Can we get reduced cost character transfers for all players so that we can move our characters to servers more suitable for our game-play? Let the groupies have a crowded server for themselves (since all their content is instanced and there is zero competition for it) and let the people who want to play the story-line unimpeded have theirs. At the very least lower the instance counts to 25 or 50 instead of the 100+ they currently are.

It's nowhere near as desolate as you are being led to believe.

They didn't sell it to Broadsword, they hired Broadsword to administer it. The game and the Star Wars license for it still belong to EA (they just don't have an exclusive license any more).

Well I guess that is acceptable. You're still trapping players on SF but at least you aren't forcing people to change servers that don't want to.

Why shouldn't they just be free or reduced fee transfers for everyone. I'm fine with people wanting to move off SS but I think the ones who want to move off SF should get the same opportunity. The definition of "dead" server seems to be the sticking point. I and a lot of people don't think SS is a dead server. When I am leveling characters, there are people all over the place. I looks and feels as busy as SF in many locations.

I think he is opposed to transfers because that would allow people to move in the opposite direction too (or very few people move from SS to SF). People who are casual group content players would move to the server that best promotes their preferred style taking their group content queue presence with them potentially making it worse for group players on SF. With free (or low cost) transfers I'd definitely move my most often played characters and spend most of my play time there maintaining just a token presence on SF (two guilds in "maintenance mode"). If you forcibly transfer them with a merger, they get no choice. There are lots of good active guilds on SS if you want to play the more "hardcore" content. Many of the "lone wolf" group players hate to join guilds because they have to behave. Group Finder is a toxic mess on SF.

It's an overall game decay problem, not a server related problem. The declines on all servers mirror each other. Fixing the problem with lack of content is what is necessary, not mergers. They need to find a way to bring more players into the game (and keep the old ones) with better content. Content for all types of play not just one or two. The approach of "focus on one type of content in each mini-update" has been a failed experiment (much like "story" flashpoints). Longer waits between updates would be acceptable if the content wasn't something that was consumed in an hour or two like the 10th Anniversary Celebration content was (which was widely panned by the player-base after PTS testing and opened with it's star attraction, the new flashpoint, badly broken). There was so much hype that this was going to be the greatest expansion ever to celebrate the game's 10th anniversary and then it fell flat. They need to fix the reason people are leaving (lack of significant content - as opposed to completely restructuring gameplay and calling that an expansion) not just merge servers to see how many people they can cram into one before it breaks. Reduced price transfers keep everyone happy instead of driving 5-10% of the people from the game with a merger. With the current overall game population, 5-10% could be a breaking point.

As are you. You feel it is dead because PVP doesn't pop as fast as you would like. No difference at all in our positions. You clearly favor the group content over everything else and I take a more balanced position. I'm not against giving those few group players who feel "stuck" on SS a way off but you are vehemently against letting the players who like playing on SS stay.

This particular part of your statement has been disputed by quite a few other players that actually play most of their time on the SS server. I see no reason to take your word for it that SS is dead when I play there a lot and it doesn't feel dead to me. I play group content as often on SS as I do on SF and have seen little to no difference in my ability to do the content. Of course I don't just queue and sit in my stronghold (or on fleet) and wait for the pop either so maybe that's part of it. People who play more different types of content seem to have a lot less issues with the game population than those that focus on only a few types.

Other things lost with server merges: 1) Any legacy content can now only be completed once instead of once per server. 2) The feeling of accomplishment as you ding off those achievements a second time (or 3rd, or 4th) is lost. 3) Half your CQ point gains. If you are in guilds on both servers you have to choose which guild gets your conquest points (all those legacy only objective now count only once). This alone would probably halve my playing time and make me consider going Preferred since CQ is about all I do with high level characters in the game anymore. 4) Lost Storage space. Merging SS and SF cuts your Legacy storage in half (only 1 bank per server) 5) All legacy based game rewards are halved (CCs, GS tokens, other legacy currencies gained through play) 6) Half (or more) of the playable content since you are now limited by the characters you have when you exceed the unlocked slot limit (right now a sub could have 120 characters (on 5 servers) to play without having to buy any slots and could make a new character by buying only a single slot (as opposed to having to buy 96 slots - or delete 97 characters) I know this means little to characters who focus on a few characters for group content but it is a huge issue for people who have been playing the game for a long time and accumulated dozens if not hundreds of characters). You are pretty much telling them they have to play group content if they want to play their high level characters.

Lets look at some other numbers too. On NS there was 1 instance of 75 players on SF and one instance of 40 players on SS. That's 115 players (which is less than 120) thus instead of the 40 players you had on SS you have 115 players on SF. You can pick and choose to get favorable numbers as can I. They are both true but my experience is that more planets will have more crowded instances. To add, most new players don't know how to change instances and so are stuck on whatever one they log into (experienced players don't have that problem which is why they generally underestimate the frustration of new players in crowded environments) Every one of the arguments you have made was made before the last server merger (in 2017 I think) and of all the benefits you are touting for merging servers, a grand total of none of them came true and we lost 5-10% of the population within weeks of the merger and never gained its back. I've been through several mergers and they are extremely unpleasant situations. 1) You end up having to rename a lot of characters that are on the server being merged into the "larger" server (sometimes names you may have had for years). 2) Your legacy bank is packed full since you only have 1 Legacy bank per server, so there is no where to shuffle off excess gear you want to keep. People are asking for more legacy tabs which indicates a lot of people have nearly full Legacy banks on each server they have characters on. 3) you will likely be over your unlocked character slot limit meaning any new character you want to create, for whatever reason, requires you to either purchase multiple character slot unlocks or delete lots of characters. Your idea to create dozens of "placeholder" characters is just silly because the main reason you would want to make a new character is a change to the game that affects only newly created characters- like races, hairstyles, combat styles, etc which you can't "reserve" in advance. 4) During the merger things go missing (and even finding something you have is a pain.). Tickets do get resolved, usually, but it takes months because the priority is keeping the merged server running. 5) If you are lucky, there is an overflow bank where everything gets dumped in that doesn't fit in you legacy bank and you have to wade through hundreds of items to find anything because there is no rhyme or reason to how it is decided where the stuff goes. It took me months to get mine all sorted out and stacked properly. 6) Your carefully planned attempt to maintain some sort of challenge in the game by having a full legacy only on one server is out the window since all achievements are merged (which also means you can no longer complete them a 2nd or 3rd time for the enjoyment as I stated in one of the other posts about why people want to play on different servers). This effectively removes playable content from the game. 7) lots of settings get reset to the defaults and have to be reset I have watched two guilds disintegrate as a result of a server merger (people claim not merging servers caused PVP guilds to disintegrate but it doesn't matter what kind of guild it is, those players are gone - so there is no upside there for a merger). The players in them were fed up with the hassle it caused and just plain quit the game. These were very active guilds prior to the merge with dozens of people online at a time. Now those same guilds are logged into by the old guild master once every couple of weeks to maintain control and nothing is ever done with it. I inherited two other guilds (voluntarily from the old Guildmaster) that had the same thing happen. That's four guilds gone shortly after the merger (and they were big guilds at the membership maximum) Then there is the image of having only 1 server per region. Most people interpret that as a dying game whether it is true or not and thus don't even bother with it. Your pie in the sky idea of what a server merger will mean is misplaced. Server mergers are always a negative impact on the game and never its salvation.

Except that a more packed server is only better for group play (which is the minority of players playing the game, its an RPG-MMO after all so that is expected), it is significantly worse for leveling play which is what all new players do first. Not merging the servers and allowing transfers is a far better solution as it does not negatively impact anyone. Let's take a look at your primary "example" of why servers need to be merged. Supposedly there is this huge number of players stuck on SS that can't get group content. That really begs the question of, if there are so many, why can't they get pops. Are they just not queuing for some reason (like it's not their preferred play-style perhaps), because if there really are so many "trapped there" and they would actually queue, pops shouldn't be a problem. It seems far more likely there just aren't enough to get pops even when they all queue, therefore, no need for a server merger to "save" them. Just checked Coruscant myself: SF: 122 (on three instances - 1 instance had only one other player and shut down right after I left) SS: 60 on 1 instance again, about 50% not 30%. That's not bad for a secondary server that has been all but abandoned by group oriented players. Again, I see no need for a server merger when transfers are available. Having a low population server is not some sort of detriment to that game unless it is the only server. Edit: SS is hardly "almost dead" being the 2nd or 3rd most populated server in the game

yup, middle of the night. Adding the population from SS won't improve that at all. Regional as in NA vs Europe. If you only have one server in the US and it goes down, there is nowhere else to play without substantial lag (and by the way, cloud servers are not magically immune to down-time either). Ask the APAC players how much fun it is to play competitive modes at 250-350 ms lag and you won't likely have your favorite character on the European server so you'll have to make due with a lesser character (or "worse" yet have to make a new one - OMG what a thought). Not true. Maybe PVP players it is 30% but overall population is more like 75%. As I noted in one of the posts above on Coruscant there were 90 players on SF (only 1 instance) and 50 players on SS (also only 1 instance) during prime time (~7 pm Eastern). So that is more like 50% and that's only counting 1 planet. I'm pretty sure everyone except you understands what different play-styles means. If all those "group" players that are "trapped" on SS and don't queue because they can't get pops would queue, maybe they would actually get pops instead of coming to the forums to bellyache. Just transfer your favorite characters to SF and be happy instead of complaining (that's what us "casual" players had to do when SF became crowded with every PVP player and their uncle abandoning SS for an 5 sec improvement in pop time and brought all the toxicity of SS with them after the last merge - they bellyached alot about SS no longer being the largest server first so I guess there is some precedent for bellyaching about size.) I think this is more about keeping your character names (in a merge oldest character keeps it while with a transfer the character already on the server keeps it) and wanting a bunch of free transfers to transfer all your loot to a server where it's worth more. 90CC transfers for a couple weeks should sort out the issue. With all the free CCs Bioware has been throwing around, transferring a dozen characters should be pretty simple (how many more than that do your really play regularly). It seems like Bioware is planning that with their back-end Character Transfer maintenance so you might want to wait until the next "up[date"

One counterpoint to this observation: Today I did Face Merchants on both SF and SS. On SF there were 90 players in the instance and all the mobs were standing and no one else was there. On SS there were 50 or so people in the instance and there were 4 people buzzing around on speeders from spawn point to spawn point. It's pretty random. You are just more likely to encounter farmed out areas on the more populous instances but there is no guarantee a low pop instance/server will be better (just a higher probability it will be).

It's the "starter" worlds that cost the game new players (Pretty much through Nar Shadaa). They are frustrated with leveling and quit before they even decide to subscribe. There are nowhere near enough players on any of the servers where merging them will provide a significant increase in playability of group content outside a few core hours. That is just due to the overall low population in the game. Better to keep two servers in each region and let them sort themselves out as to playstyles to maximize the number of players still playing the game. Lower cost transfers is acceptable, mergers is not for a variety of reasons (regional redundancy, better play experience for new players, less exposure to toxicity, etc)

People like to be rewarded for playing and those little pop ups that say you have completed X achievement have a bit of a cathartic effect. It's also nice to play with less than a full Legacy if you want the game to be slightly more challenging (all of those datacrons and buffs add up, especially on the first few planets).

This was more what I was concerned about although the two locations would be in different parts of the same US state (300 miles or so) and would be more logging on from one location for several months and then from a different location the rest of the year.

So is it possible to play one SWTOR account on two different sets of hardware. That is, can I have SWTOR installed on PC1 in Location 1 and PC2 in Location 2 and then play on PC1 when I am at Location 1 and PC2 when I am at location 2. Or similarly have it installed on two PCs in the same location but only play on one of them at a time. Is this a TOS violation for multi-boxing or is the only issue the potential for the "one-time" password each time I switch hardware?

They are exceedingly rare so it's unlikely you will find them on the GTN (They would sell for a lot more than 1Billion credits). Are they even tradeable or are they bind on pickup?

I think it is the split stack "command". It should work on stacks in your inventory as well if you want to split them up for some reason. I don't remember where I came across the "trick" but it was quite a while ago.

It's Shift-Right Click on the mat (or something similar) to bring up a menu that lets you buy more than 1

Focusing purely on endgame is what is stupid. End gamers leave through attrition and if you don't bring in new players, the game dies. Heavily crowded instances are what cause those new players to abandon the game (because they can't level their characters efficiently to get to end game levels) and the population falls and never recovers.

This is a major problem that would need to be dealt with before server mergers can even be considered. The current instance counts are set way too high (they are about 100 on most planets) and planets with shared areas (like CZ) are particularly problematic because you may see a really low number of people on your "instance" but there could be a lot more of the enemy faction and everyone is going after the same mobs and objectives. Most of the people commenting about instances don't understand that merging two servers with one instance each will almost never result in two instances (or more) on the merged server. Even with SFs greater population, the combined population will still be lower than the number required to open another instance and well above what the planetary area can reasonably sustain (this wasn't really a problem until conquest/GS and the "rampage" objectives which encouraged high level players (and guilds) to mow down mobs on low level planets for easy points - something that gets worse with more players in an instance). At least twice a week I come across guild groups of a dozen or more depopulating entire regions like a swarm of locusts (they aren't even interested in the loot, which results in longer respawn times because it extends the decay timers). On most planets, the threshold for opening a new instance should not be more than 50 and on some small planets it should be no more than 25.