I love Torian; he's the only companion that I play as a LI. Most male companions are too beta for me. However, Kira is by far my favorite companion and I would love to have her as a companion on all my characters (except on my BH). I love Kira's 'punky' attitude, her story and Laura Bailey's voice.

I doubt that. I have around 25 characters spread over 2 servers, but on this forum I read that there are players with 40-50 characters or more. Doesn't that show that the replayability of the SWTOR stories is pretty good?

BW is not too late, IMO. If not enough players are into regularly participating in PvP and/or group content, nothing BW does will improve the experience of players who are. In spite of what many want us to believe SWTOR is still mainly a story driven solo game. This appeals to players with a preference for this type of play. This has nothing to do with RP, btw. Again: Reviews by gaming sites on the internet nearly always point out that the story is what sets SWTOR apart from other MMO's. Not the generic stuff like PvP and raids one finds in most MMO's. This is the main reason why I think these mergers will not benefit PvP/Puggers at all in the long run. Just my opinion: PvP/group content may 'die', but this does not necessarily mean SWTOR will 'die'.

In another thread I wrote I was willing to give this thing a chance, but now at least three of my friends are leaving the game, I will let my subscription run out and not renew. After that I will keep an eye on the forums to see how the Star Forge turns out. My expectation is that very soon the complaints about queue times being too long will come back and the usual suspects will start writing that the game is dying again. I maybe be proven wrong of course, and I hope I am for the sake of SWTOR. If I read mainly positive experiences with the Star Forge I may come back at a later date. For now I have found a new story driven shared world game, although this is not as good as the original SWTOR. That said, I do understand BW's decisions and don't blame them for anything. It's clear that they had to do something. However, the removal of Ebon Hawk, for me personally, is the straw that broke the camel's back.

Well, seems BW made some decisions. Under the current circumstances this roadmap seems okay to me, even if I don't want EH to disappear. I doubt pvp'ers and puggers will much be better off, because it's not OPs/PvP itself that puts many players off, it's other players I expect that complaints about queue times being too long will start rolling in again around march/april 2018 at the latest. Obviously by then the usual suspects will state that 'the game is dying' again, because they can and will not accept that there are just not enough players who are as much into PvP/group content as they are. I do think RP is worse off (they're basically being ignored in all this), but we'll see. Unlike puggers RP'ers often play with friends or their guild, so most of them will not LFG. RP'ing on the fleet will probably go away for a large part. I'm not happy with EH disappearing into some mixed bag black hole, but I'll give it a shot, at least for a while.

Indeed you have and it's very sad to see a player like you leave. The Harbinger-level toxicity with personal attacks and insults has taken over the forum and yours was always one of the more reasonable and balanced voices. I do understand the reasons why you're leaving, though.

So, basically you're stating that they're not RP servers, because it no longer says so in the server selection screen? Then what's the reason for recommending them to players who are interested in RP if all servers are basically the same? IMO reality trumps theory. Just removing a designation from a server does not change what's actually going on on that server. Theoretically The Ebon Hawk may not be a RP server (only because the designation has been removed), but in reality it most certainly is. Anyway, we'll just have to wait and see what Bioware decides. If they would decide to merge TEH with another or new server, only then one could say there are no RP servers left. Personally I don't think this will happen.

What server would you recommend to someone who is looking for RP on a US server? The Harbinger, even if it is the most populated server, is not the first one that comes to mind, at least not with me. Removing a label/tag/designation is nothing but an administrative action and doesn't change how people play on a server, at all. And as I wrote before, Bioware still designates The Ebon Hawk as a RP server in the character transfer screen, as does Torstatus. Like it or not, The Ebon Hawk is a RP server.

No, it's not. For the last time: removing the RP designation of Ebon Hawk from the server selection screen did not remove the RP'ers and RP guilds from Ebon Hawk. Ebon Hawk is still a RP server. And if you think labels are that important: the RP designation is still present in places like Bioware's own character transfer screen and on sites like Torstatus. Believe me, I don't worry about games, but I would like to see SWTOR survive, preferably with separate RP servers. If Bioware would decide separate RP servers are no longer feasible, I would accept that and move on.

IF Bioware would decide to get rid of the RP servers, I would definitely leave the game, but not out of anger at Bioware. I understand that Bioware HAS to make a decision at some point. Removing RP servers like EH would mean an important choice being taken away from me and obviously I am not going to pay for something I don't want. Personally, I could not care less about PvP/OPs (to me RP is as much 'MMO content' as PvP/OPs), but I understand that there are many players who are into that type of content. Survival of SWTOR should always be the highest priority for Bioware which means they should not try to please everybody (and of course that includes me ), because that'll never happen. Anyway, I don't envy them for having to make that decision.

Torian Cadera! I like warriors and am not so much into (what I consider) beta males like Doc, Tharan, Vector, etc. Aric and Felix are okay too. I like many of the classic female companions much better than the classic male companions. Kira is my favorite by far (as a 'best friend'). I just can't stand both Lana and Theron.

One's time spend in a game does not represent any monetary value, except the amount one spends on a subscription (in SWTOR that would be around $0.02/hour). A) one is not forced to play and B) one should know that there are much more profitable activities available IRL (work for instance). Bioware does not owe players anything except to keep the game up and running and make sure players can login and play. That's it. One's time spend in games is utterly worthless when it comes to dollar value.

Thank you.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I've never understood what light, standard and heavy stand for, except that it's probably some kind of representation of the percentage of the maximum number of players a server can accomodate. Do sites like Torstatus have robots that scan the population on every planet per server or something? Do they know how many players a server can accomodate (the cap)? As far as I can see it's not based on data provided by BW. If it is, where can one find this data? I assume BW would not release this kind of information. Even if light/standard/heavy would represent an actual number of players online, I'm pretty sure that not all subscribers will login every day, not even at prime time. To know the actual number of players per server, ALL players should be online at exactly the same time. What if Bioware changed their algorithms? They could, for instance, tweak their number for population cap per server in such a way that light becomes standard or even heavy. We still would know nothing. This is obviously a lack of knowledge on my part when it comes to determining server population.

Yes, and that's most likely what they'll be doing from now on, for the most part anyway. As I wrote before, creating story rich content is much more expensive than creating WZ's and OPs, especially if each class would get their own story. I don't see that happening ever again. Let's face it, what's cheaper than giving players a map (makes me think of those old deathmatch mods my brother used to make) and have them beat each other's heads in? I'm pretty sure the class story part of the game still has the most replay value (level 1-50), much more so than PvP or OPs. And (although I have no proof) I'm also pretty sure that (class) story is still the type of content players want to see added the most. Unfortunately, it's just way too expensive to create.

Well, IF the choice would come down to that, I would like to see them stop making any more 'MMO content' (although in my opinion MMO content does NOT mean just PvP/group content). Back in the day I would have preferred them releasing KOTOR 3 instead of an online game, but right now SWTOR is the closest to KOTOR 3 we got. I agree to a certain extent and in such a scenario I would hope they'd go for story, because that's what sets SWTOR apart from other MMO's. There's plenty of MMO's that offer PvP and raids, but none of them have stories that even come close to the quality of the 8 class stories of SWTOR. I do realize however that PvP and OPs are much cheaper to develop than story rich content. This may be a deciding factor for BW to go the route of what you call 'MMO content', unfortunately.

Perfectly understandable, imo. Information like this represents capital, so EA/Bioware should keep data like this tightly under wraps. This type of information must never be shared with customers (and competitors of course) for obvious reasons. Same goes for most other metrics. It's a business, after all. A customer/subscriber does not have the same rights to information as, let's say, a shareholder. Even shareholders don't get to know everything. And my suggestion for server status: $#&%@!!! FUN NEUTRAL

True, and I'm sure Bioware will take some of our opinions into account, but will base their decision mainly on metrics (to which only they have access) and their accountants' opinion. Again, I can only hope Bioware will not turn SWTOR into North Korea where one party (PvP/LFG) calls the shots and 'citizens' have no choice but to live in a hellhole with no way out. And I will state again that players who want BW to FORCE other players to move so they can feed off those players as LFG fodder are parasites, imo. I just can't understand how one can be happy with another player being forced to do something he/she doesn't want. It's completely beyond me. And then there's that completely and utterly stupid notion that 'MMO' equals PvP and/or group content. That's just as stupid as stating that RP is the only 'real' MMO content, because one needs other players to RP (mmoRPg right?). Massively Multiplayer Online means exactly what it says: many people playing a online game simultaneously. SWTOR is a continuation of the KOTOR games and therefore more solo oriented than other MMORPG's: "Forge YOUR OWN STAR WARS™ saga in a STORY-DRIVEN massively-multiplayer online game from BioWare and LucasArts." There's added content that makes use of the multiplayer environment, but that's not the core of the game.

Removing designations from a server selection screen does not remove RP'ers and RP guilds from a server. With or without that label the Ebon Hawk is still very much a RP server, in spite of what the pro-merger crowd wants us to believe. In the character transfer screen and on Torstatus those designations are still present, btw.

Excellent points.

@Totemdancer: Ohemgee, why do you quote me when you're totally ignoring everything I wrote? I offered some suggestions as to how BW can help RP'ers IF they decide to create megaservers. Geez!

For example, take my suggestion about the transfer/switching fee to and from RP instances on a megaserver. How does this prevent achieving what you describe? It seems to me that some people not only want to see servers like EH removed, but that any idea that might be beneficial to RP'ers in case of a server merge should not be taken into consideration. The easy solution in case of a megaserver would be (imo): just add an option to the character creation screen if you want this character to be created in the RP instance. The default would be the non-RP instance. Since all characters would be on the same server, they could even make LFG cross instance. The created character will be added to your legacy on that server no matter which instance you choose. I'm not saying that BW should never take any action, but better no action than something that's detrimental to a large group of players.

That's wonderful, of course! I am certain that single servers will kill the game, because there will no longer be a way out for players who are unhappy on those servers, except by unsubscribing. OR, as I have already stated, megaservers could work for RP'ers if there's an RP instance that is 'protected' by a transfer/switching fee (the higher, the better). Anyway, for now I'm perfectly happy with BW doing nothing on this matter. I hope they keep that up.

As soon as the removal of RP servers like EH would be announced, I would unsubscribe and I know of at least three other subscribers close to me who would too. I don't want to leave this game, because I love it, but I just won't stand for having choices taken away from me and keep paying for a subscription. Not only is it a matter of being able to choose a certain playstyle, but also of principle. Obviously I pay to enjoy myself and not to finance someone else's enjoyment. This call for single servers is completely parasitic. It is promoted by players who want to leech off others and who are perfectly fine with BW forcibly moving players, who do not want it, to 'their' server. Can someone please tell me: who wants to be in the company of such players? They absolutely do not have the interest of the game at heart, just their own interest. I have a feeling (nothing more) that BW realizes that forcing players to move and removing RP servers will cost them too many subscribers and that it will eventually kill the game. It's understandable that BW is stonewalling on this subject, because they do not want to tick off the pro-merger crowd.

Being forced to move to a toxic hellhole with no way out, except by unsubscribing (because RP servers would be removed), is now just a 'change'? How about leaving individuals, who pay to play, the choice between a RP and non-RP server? Why go all North Korea on SWTOR?