I only lost names for my own duplicates across merged servers. BUT, you are correct, the name purge should have hit any character that is unpaid and not logged in to 12 months. There are a lot of really good names locked up in the database belonging to people that are never coming back.

*Players *Quality raids *A reason to PvP

The problem, historically, has been with psych issue 1. 2 and 3 are in place and have been since day -7. These are issues, however, that the player must engage in to reap the rewards. The story has always been in place with this game, even before 4.0, there was no shortage of story. What *was* lacking was necessary developer attention paid to end game PvP and Raiding. This one issue has been the root cause for EVERY mass exodus since day 31.

Conan Exiles Civ V Empire Total War Well, that's what I normally play anyway, I unsubbed and left over a year ago, I just came back to manually move toons around before the forced mergers and see if the game was any better.

That's your first problem. You are NOT supposed to do that. But, you aren't the only one that does, so chances are you will lose the names.

If you've been here since beta then you clearly made it through two previous server mergers .... if you didn't lose them the last time (when the population was MUCH higher), I'd say you'll be fine.

Rat, The OP is playing from APAC, not the WC. The issue for this person is that up until last week they were able to play on the WC server cluster competitively. Now, they can't. APAC players never had a ping advantage to the WC cluster. They also had no other option after the APAC cluster was shut down in early 2013.

/points to the numerous mass exoduses of players from this game due solely to the quality of raiding/PvP. I'm sorry but your assertion is pretty much false on the face of it. Every single mass exodus in this game was either related directly to ignoring raiding, piss pour raids or ignoring PvP. Every single raid was released with bugs which often could not be worked around. PvP (other than class tweaking) has been largely ignored in this game since 2.0. I mean, if "the story" and "hanging out with friends" are the real lifeblood of MMOs, then none of that should matter and this game should not have population issues. But it has had population issues since day 31.

Unless you *must* be some ridiculous derivative of an actual canon SW name, I don't see name collisions being a major issue considering the state of the game.

I fully agree with this. And frankly, as someone that used to engage heavily in Ilum PvP before the abomination that Ilum is today, there was very little kill trading. The problem was the game couldn't support 20:20 battles and those would almost always be the result following a small skirmish of 3:3 or 4:4. Reinforcements would be called and way too many would show up. Was it fun? Yes. Could the engine really handle it? Nope.

Mercs were plenty killable. Always were (I main a PvP Merc and have since 1.0). The "problem" was average-to-bad marauders grew accustomed to destroying 95% of mercs on the field with little to no trouble since the very beginning of the game.

You won't lose the characters. Period. If they are below level 11 and your name conflicts with someone higher level you will be forced to rename. My understanding is that *any* character not logged in within the last 90 days is subject to having their name purged - but that is only going to happen if someone with the same name ... over level 10 ... has more recent activity. They are NOT going to delete your character(s) even if the merger places you at (example) 10x the normal limit. You will not be asked/prompted/expected to delete your characters. If you do end up over the standard server limit, you simply will not be allowed to create more characters until you are under the standard limit on that server.

As I said above, it's a legal issue that they cannot get around. This has been answered hundreds of times on these very forums. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=869228& http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=832760& In fact, I used to keep that as a spoiler in my signature block.

They legally cannot do that. EU privacy information laws are much more strict than US. Simply put, it would be illegal for them to merge the EU players' information onto US based servers.

I suspect given the mass exodus following 1.2, the mass exodus during 2.x, the mass exodus of waiting 14 months for a new op between 2 and 3, the mass exodus resulting from the broken promise of "new ops" that did not accompany 4.0 and the mass exodus following 5.0 .... name collisions aren't very likely at this point. I made my current signature block well over a year ago, population has only gone down since then. I wouldn't expect a major population spike following Episode VIII, that traffic is going to go to Battlefront II. If anything has held true in the MMO community over the years, word of mouth makes or breaks a game and this game hasn't been widely popular since before it launched in 2011.

I just came back after a 1 year quitting. I do live and play on East coast servers primarily. So, the datacenter merger doesn't necessarily affect me personally. But it does make me wonder how many west coasters resubbed because of server consolidation. Only to now find themselves being propositioned by Bioware for an event involving sex and travel.

I know yall are there. But you guys have been boned since early 2012 with regard to servers. I didn't want to add insult to injury by including you

Where would you transfer to? And why? If you are physically on the west coast, transferring to the east coast super server will be the same result as remaining on the "west coast super server", would it not?

I agree that shutting off CTS before people found this out was a bit shady. At first, I was like you knew since October 2nd that this was coming, but the wording of the mergers most certainly implied one dedicated server per region and language. Bad form BW.

Not that I disagree with you or your post, I'd just like to point out that those of us associated with the military of the United States and many European nations would kill for a ping like that when we play from Afghanistan. Otherwise /thumbsup

There is no such thing as involuntary PVP in this game. OWPVP is now handled via a player opt-in function located on your mini-map - just like queuing for WZs, GF, GSF, etc. So, you are 100% incorrect in that assumption. You obviously weren't around back in 2012 for the forced mergers. Guild leaders submitted a ticket stating the guilds old server and the DMs verified the number of guild bank tabs and then freely granted an appropriate amount of bank tabs to the relocated guild. The devs have already said that names and guild assets are issues they would need to resolve before a new forced merger. This isn't going to happen tomorrow.

And by your logic, I should still be playing on Shii Cho - which was shuttered 6 months post launch. As I said before, its a financial issue not an emotional one.

I understand your point. I'm no longer advocating for anything. But no, Bioware should not retain light population servers from a fiduciary perspective. For the record, the mass exodus was in the time between 3.X and 4.0.

Rat, It is impossible to please everyone, all the time. I understand your point, even if I did have to wade deep into your sarcasm. But the fact of the matter is that players do not have the right to play on the server of their choice (all the time). There are, and have been for quite some time, far too many servers when compared to the server capabilities and player density.

I think most reasonable people would support retaining an RP server like EH.