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.

To add another one to this list. You cannot travel to your stronghold from where you finish the Daily Mission "Too Close to Home" on Makeb. This is new since 7.2 as well Had to go all the way back to the light-bridge entering the area before I could Travel to Stronghold

How much do you play a day? That many warzones and areans is a massive amount of play time just by themselves (even at 5 minutes each that is over 10 hrs a day every day) much less any wait times there might be. Doesn't leave much time for anything else.

There haven't been enough players to keep servers "active" 24/7 for years. That takes a population probably 10 times what we have since the vast majority of players are going to be online during their local "prime time". In order to get 24/7 coverage there would have to be enough players in other regions that play on a non-regional server and there is no drive for that. That is why they need an APAC server as that is the only population that really doesn't have an option where to play in their local primetime. Server activity is an opinion. You are not going to find players of different styles of play agreeing on it. If there are enough players to get good pops for group content, RPG players may find it too crowded and good RPG populations may result in poor group play pops since it is pretty clear that most players play the RPG content more often than they play the group content. A server merger would probably be alright (though risky) if they significantly lowered the number of players required to open a new RPG instance. The 100 players per instance on a lot of planets is far to many, 50 or even 25 would be better since all instances can communicate with each other. I also think Broadsword/Bioware/EA should be looking at an endgame for the game. While we all hope it will last another 10 years, things change and game shutdowns are often sudden and unexpected. While they are doing all the updates to the game to make it more "modern" they should be looking at a version that could function offline (or in a fashion something like games on the EA Play system that requires minimal support from a "game server"). The servers mainly track what other players are doing with the majority of the game code actually on your PC.

This is what I expect to happen. Splitting them into two geo-locations more or less doubles the cost of maintaining them and part of the reason for going to AWS is reduced cost (it's possible operating two separate AWS servers is cheaper than the ones in NC but I'm skeptical of that). I'd suspect the location of the US server would be in Chicago and the EU one to be somewhere like Berlin (to be slightly better centralized). An APAC server probably would be somewhere in northern Australia (for simplicity - not to be ethnocentric but having everyone working on the datacenters involved sharing a common language has a distinct advantage - and a lot of Germans are pretty fluent in English now). The risk of one "server" per region is downtime for the region.

This is incorrect. cloud servers are physical servers just like any other server. They can be moved if needed but will not shift willy-nilly based on who is online at any one time. The only movement will be within a region (EU,US,APAC) and even that will be rare. There won't be one mega server that moves around the globe with the changing of the time of day. Edit: to clarify "moved" . The running software can be shifted to a different data center (though this is not a flip the switch kind of operation and would require some amount of downtime to accomplish) but the data centers all have fixed locations.

That just compounds the problem. When a new class or race comes out you will have to delete all of those characters anyway Edit: or if you decide you don't like one of those characters and want to create a different one, you now have dozens of characters to delete before you can create a new one.

That has not been true for years

It also doesn't take into account the people actively avoiding fleet (spending as little time there as possible - personally, I only go to fleet to dump tech frags and commendations which amounts to a few minutes once a week while still playing the game >15 hours a week). Fleet is pretty much people passing through between the starter planets and the capital worlds and PVP and OPs people standing around the terminals waiting for their pops. It's a terrible indicator of overall population, though an argument could be made it is an indication of group play populations (though even that is a stretch since you can queue for all group content from your stronghold - which isn't necessarily the one attached to fleet)

The issue comes when you have more characters than unlocked slots. Although you can continue to play the characters you have created, you cannot create any new ones until you have less characters than character slots available whether that be by purchasing additional character slots or deleting characters. There are a lot of currently subbed people that would fall into that situation. It's pretty much the flip side of the argument pro server merger people make when they say they shouldn't have to pay to move characters to a different server (or more often they want the server merge to transfer dozens of characters and their belongings for free). You shouldn't have to delete characters or pay for additional slots for a merge you didn't want just so you can start a new character.

Just checked it and a level 8 character on Tython (Star Forge, subbed account, legendary status) got <100 credits for completing a mission in the kalikori village area. They get about 2K xp per mission so I think you have xp and credits mixed up. Edit: To complete the thought on credit gains on starter planets: A starting first level character on Tython (subbed account, legendary status, no xp boosts) gets 117 credits from clearing all the missions in the Gnarls or less than half that if they are not doing exploration missions (which is also significant fraction of the mob drops that can be sold for credits): Attack of the Flesh Raiders: 57 credits Halt the Assault (Bonus): 0 credits Clear the Path (Bonus): 0 credits Early Lessons: 30 credits Captured Padawans (Bonus): 30 credits Total credits from clearing the entire Gnarls zone was just about 250 credits and included selling everything that dropped from mobs (gear, grey items, etc). MOst gear dropped sold for 10-15 credits and mobs dropped between 10 and 15 credits (grey stuff sold for 5 credits or less in most cases)

Only if you are level 70/80. On planet level the rewards on the starter planet are much lower

That's an interesting abbreviation for the company considering Bioware's past record (and most of the people at Broadsword) will be "Bioware" employees).

When the problem is as bad as it was (completely out of control prices and alternate currencies being used regularly - which cost real money and bordered on pay to win in some cases) draconian is unfortunately what is needed. The other options suggested were worse, like no trading CM items at all (all bind on pickup), taxes assessed on total wealth, credit wipes, etc. I'd much rather have this than any of those. Waiting 30 days (or a week) is a small price to pay. It also slows down credit sellers replacing their mules that get banned because it takes a month for a new alt in the credit seller guild to be able to contribute to the credit seller's bank or be used to move credits around without fees. All in all it complicates the way they do business.

It's not really about guild officers controlling access. It was about guild officers using the guild bank to bypass the trade fees (which was popping up as the workaround for the trade fees within minutes of Bioware announcing they were going to add fees to non-credit trades of high value items). Want to trade 10 hypercrates (as an alternate currency to credits) to someone for a operation carry or other high value item, just join the guild for a couple hours (or even minutes) then leave (completely tax free trade if there isn't a "cooldown"). Having to wait 30 days reduces the incentive to join guilds just for the tax free trades through the guild bank. 30 days might be too long but it should be at least a full week (7 days not just til the next weekly reset).