When will there be a "SERVER MERGE?"

[miikke]

I just posted the following on the "Official Q&A Thread for March 2nd, 2012 Q&A Blog Post"

Biowares official forum where we can ask them questions directly. I urge others do the same.

There is a thread in the forums which is called <<When will there be a "SERVER MERGE?">>

On that thread there have been alarming facts about how "dead" some servers are and how Bioware is "ignoring" peoples complaints and requests.

 

The numbers which are posted by a great deal of players are quite disturbing, eg many servers (mainly EU) have at peak times less than 200 people in total playing. These are legitimate complaints as they are not submitted by just a few people, but by many.

 

What is Biowares' official response to the ever diminishing populations on many servers and what is it going to do for all those players who would rather quit the game then to re-roll onto a more populated server and spend another 2 months leveling and gearing their characters.

 

ie.

1. Is there going to be a free character migration from low populated servers to larger ones?

2. Is there going to be a server merge for those servers which are seriously underpopulated? And if so, when can players expect to see that.

 

I love this game, but listen to us all, dont ignore us.

[Saedorn]

This thread honestly made me go LOLOLOL.

 

Seriously, the authority on all things vital to gaming has spoken; 50% of a server gquit the game. Threads like this are honestly just pointless. They aren't constructive, they're baseless and completely unsubstantiated.

 

Now, before the troll above me can do so I'm going to just quote the obvious reply to this post

 

Posts like this are honestly just pointless. They aren't constructive, they're baseless and completely unsubstantiated.

 

^^ Pretty much summarizes what I know most of you are going to say about my post.

 

<3 to all!

[Mysquine]

I just posted the following on the "Official Q&A Thread for March 2nd, 2012 Q&A Blog Post"

Biowares official forum where we can ask them questions directly. I urge others do the same.

There is a thread in the forums which is called <<When will there be a "SERVER MERGE?">>

On that thread there have been alarming facts about how "dead" some servers are and how Bioware is "ignoring" peoples complaints and requests.

 

The numbers which are posted by a great deal of players are quite disturbing, eg many servers (mainly EU) have at peak times less than 200 people in total playing. These are legitimate complaints as they are not submitted by just a few people, but by many.

 

What is Biowares' official response to the ever diminishing populations on many servers and what is it going to do for all those players who would rather quit the game then to re-roll onto a more populated server and spend another 2 months leveling and gearing their characters.

 

ie.

1. Is there going to be a free character migration from low populated servers to larger ones?

2. Is there going to be a server merge for those servers which are seriously underpopulated? And if so, when can players expect to see that.

 

I love this game, but listen to us all, dont ignore us.

 

Would like to copy/paste that and do the same, although I have a feeling because its so longwinded (With the best intentions) they will probably not answer it. Although if enough people ask the same question - who knows!

 

 

This thread honestly made me go LOLOLOL.

 

Seriously, the authority on all things vital to gaming has spoken; 50% of a server gquit the game. Threads like this are honestly just pointless. They aren't constructive, they're baseless and completely unsubstantiated.

 

Now, before the troll above me can do so I'm going to just quote the obvious reply to this post

 

 

 

^^ Pretty much summarizes what I know most of you are going to say about my post.

 

<3 to all!

 

Some ways I agree, others I don't. Raises awareness and although its not "Constructive" in some ways, its trying to grab the attention of Bioware and the developers to try and get them to talk with the public, and get a known issue sorted.

 

Sure there are posts which are terrible, and you can lol at some text if you want, but if nothings done about it then what do you expect? How many more ideas or constructive comments can we make about the issue? Theres a few ways of dealing with it i.e. Server Transfers / Merges. Thats about all you can really suggest. The rest is just discussion between concerned people.

Edited February 27, 2012 by Mysquine

[Vlacke]

Crevasse City IS ALREADY DEAD! Log on at 9 pm and you will see less than 20 PEOPLE ON THE FLEET. Yeah, you read correctly...LESS THAN 20 PEOPLE DURING PEAK PRIME TIME.

 

Wrong server choice, your fault.

It's not so hard to re-roll on a better server like many people including me and my friends have done.

Once they allow character transfer you can move them to that new server of your choice, end of discussion.

Every time i look at both EU and US server list during prime times i see a large number of standard/heavy/very heavy servers so those who are hoping for some ridiculous server merges will be disappointed because it won't happen anytime soon.

[Saedorn]

@Mysquine

 

You sir, are intelligent and I like you.

 

Here are my issues with this complaint at this point;

 

1.) We don't know the thresholds for a server being designated 'full, heavy, standard, or light'.

2.) Are we talking about people who live in Australia playing on East Coast US servers (yes, it happens, A LOT) and then complaining the server is empty when they login?

3.) The complaint is generalized to say 'servers need to be merged'. Which servers? What timezones? What areas are you in that are empty?

 

Yes, I realize fully World of Warcraft did it better, it did everything better didn't you know (that was sarcasm for the challenged).

 

Let me tell you a few little known facts about World of Warcraft that people either don't know, or have conveniently forgotten (I played since beta all the way to Cata).

 

Laucnh day - The servers ALL crashed repeatedly for hours, it was a wretched launch experience, Shadow Hand at least at SWTOR launch was actually up and stable from the outset, as were the majority of other servers from what I saw on the forums.

 

Login queues - If your server had a queue, forget about logging in that day, period. This one went one for almost two MONTHS before they finally really had a handle on it, SWTOR had this issue dealt with within 3-4 weeks of launch.

 

Bugs - Blizzard invented re-invented the word 'soon', see quote below...

 

Another common term implemented by Blizzard often misleading players into excitement for future content. "Very Soon" is guaranteed to arrive between now and the end of time with a higher chance of arriving on the "now" half of the time table. Although this means closer to now than "soon" there is no guarantee that you will live long enough to see the content finally release.

 

Now ←-------------- Very Soon -------- Soon ---------------→ End of Time

 

Bioware? I expect no different, honestly.

 

Level grinding in WoW - Is a hampster wheel, the only difference is that the wheel is slightly bigger.

 

I digress but my point is, that people are expecting this game to have the polish of a 7 year old game. Not going to happen.

 

There are things this game does EXCEEDINGLY well, and things it does TERRIBLY. Make a logical, and sound argument and I'd get behind it 100%.

[diogolp]

Although I am rerolling, it clearly is not the answer.

 

What happens when everyone rerolls? Bioware ends up paying for maintenance on empty servers and the player base ends up wasting time leveling again.

 

 

I logged on my server this morning and was the only one on fleet. Granted, it was 9am server time. But then I logged on on my alt's server, which is a west coast server (making server time 6am) and there were 20 people on fleet. Add to that that my main (the only one on fleet at 9am) in imperial, but my alt reroll (the one with the 20 people on fleet) is republic.

 

The difference is huge. And the difference in gameplay too. This is an absolutely great game, provided you have enough people to play it with.

 

Someone mentioned having at most 3-4 50 warzones going at the same time. On my main server, at peak times it is 1-2 at the same time. Which will make any match making or rated warzone system irrelevant on that server.

Edited February 27, 2012 by diogolp

[HaLeX]

"If your toon is on a low populated server, stop blaming the developers of the game. They didnt make you roll on that server"

 

No they didn't force us, but an official Bioware release said that players should select low pop servers to avoid long waits. I did that, and now my toon is on a dead server. I figured the numbers would come up but they never did. So i left a 46 Sorc Empire and started a Republic toon on Mindtrick, its much better but I am not happy that I wasted alot of effort on that empire toon. Bioware should at least make a statement on the matter. They screwed up, just admit it and get to work. I rerolled because I think they will fix it eventually, but my future sub is not nearly as solid as it was when I started this game.

[Mysquine]

 

 

@Mysquine

 

You sir, are intelligent and I like you.

 

Here are my issues with this complaint at this point;

 

1.) We don't know the thresholds for a server being designated 'full, heavy, standard, or light'.

2.) Are we talking about people who live in Australia playing on East Coast US servers (yes, it happens, A LOT) and then complaining the server is empty when they login?

3.) The complaint is generalized to say 'servers need to be merged'. Which servers? What timezones? What areas are you in that are empty?

 

Yes, I realize fully World of Warcraft did it better, it did everything better didn't you know (that was sarcasm for the challenged).

 

Let me tell you a few little known facts about World of Warcraft that people either don't know, or have conveniently forgotten (I played since beta all the way to Cata).

 

Laucnh day - The servers ALL crashed repeatedly for hours, it was a wretched launch experience, Shadow Hand at least at SWTOR launch was actually up and stable from the outset, as were the majority of other servers from what I saw on the forums.

 

Login queues - If your server had a queue, forget about logging in that day, period. This one went one for almost two MONTHS before they finally really had a handle on it, SWTOR had this issue dealt with within 3-4 weeks of launch.

 

Bugs - Blizzard invented re-invented the word 'soon', see quote below...

 

 

 

Bioware? I expect no different, honestly.

 

Level grinding in WoW - Is a hampster wheel, the only difference is that the wheel is slightly bigger.

 

I digress but my point is, that people are expecting this game to have the polish of a 7 year old game. Not going to happen.

 

There are things this game does EXCEEDINGLY well, and things it does TERRIBLY. Make a logical, and sound argument and I'd get behind it 100%.

 

 

 

 

(Just a long quote @ Saedorn so Its put into spoilers to save room!)

 

Thank you Sir! I couldn't agree more though - there are a lot of factors to take into consideration. At this point and with the upcoming launch on March 1st for Asia and Australia I'm sure quite a few people will benefit from the free transfers, however some servers and others may not.

 

Whatever the outcome is, we won't know until it happens however I will say this: Its a step in the right direction - Why? Because we know that they can move people between servers, and I'm sure this is going to be their test to see how it works and responds.

 

With this in mind hopefully word of a (I'm praying "free") character transfer service will shortly follow and provide those that chose not to re-roll onto another server (like myself due to the progress on multiple characters in regards to endgame content) a "way out".

 

Overall the game is great, levelling was good fun and you can lose yourself in the quests with the voice acting (Its defiantly different) and was quite a smooth launch if you look at server stability (Crashes ect) and in all fairness queues were not bad - I played WoW from Alpha pre-release and I remember the days of 20+ hour queues with thousands of people trying to get into one server.

 

They've done a good job - they need to keep it going - the Q&A with the Devs is a step in the right direction too - but I feel that they need to take the time to address the concern of many players from around the globe in regards to server population on specific servers.

 

I myself play on Uthar Wynn EU and there has been sadly, a decline in players and guilds re-rolling else where. In some ways our guild is regretting listening to what they said about moving to a lower population server on release, but hey its just how it goes

Edited February 27, 2012 by Mysquine

[Faeldawn]

Would you like somebody to ask you to stay? Would you like a hug? Would you like other people to leave with you? Would you like to lead a revolt and claim you and your minions will all quit unless something happens?

 

I'm just trying to work out what response you intended for such a fruitless post....

 

Your a hypocrit, and im also a hypocrit for posting this

[TheOnlyKyrenS]

Not anytime soon. Server merges look bad for stockholders.

[Maltuvion]

Not anytime soon. Server merges look bad for stockholders.

 

So is several server's already dwindling populations slowly leaving the game.

[Nemeses]

Thats pretty much what I'm thinking but for the money I've put into this game and the years I've been waiting for it you've got to stay hopeful.. Right?

 

I can see them making a huge profit out of this problem with introducing paid transfers and not free, but that opens up alot of problems like multiple characters and so forth and huge costs to move them.

 

Things have gotten better in regards to patches fixing a few more problems, but I would have thought an experienced company in the current day would be able to avoid some of these problems

 

Either way, alot of people not just myself feel like the service we are paying for is more of a paid Beta-test, and if things continue I think we will just leave it at that. Im glad people are enjoying the game on populated servers and personally I wish I could - maybe then you wouldn't get so frustrated at all of the bugs.

 

Edit:

 

Also another topic closed and pointed to here.. Seems the Mods are watching, but still - No response what so ever :/ Is it that hard to discuss what you guys are thinking of doing with the public more than a week before its released?

 

I for one will not pay for a transfer, if they do not fix their problem and just look to milk more money, most likely its why they opened all the servers, knowing they can steal some more money in the future getting people to pay from transfers.

 

 

BW have turned into a unreliable dishonest lot, the amount of lies they pump out is farcical, from saying they fixed bugs to changes extremely poor, but like all stupid people they never get that every lie gets found out.

Edited February 27, 2012 by Nemeses

[Nemeses]

So is several server's already dwindling populations slowly leaving the game.

 

But BW will rather lie about this than fix it.

[muzzle_flash]

Not anytime soon. Server merges look bad for stockholders.

 

As does the game you hailed as the second coming quickly turning into a laughing stock among the greater gaming community..

 

I think server merges would be the lesser of two evils here...

[WhiskyJax]

But BW will rather lie about this than fix it.

 

There are too many servers for example

1 .7million subs /216=7880 per server if all were on at once,

 

3900 per faction if divisons were perfect

most say 15-20% pop on during peak which = 585-780 per side

17 planets 13 different flashpoints per faction 3 warzones

 

if the pop is close to 1000 000 those numbers drop down to 463 per side at 20% = 14 players per zone at peak

I would imagine they are working on a fix, maybe some kind of cross server warzone finder but that takes more then a few weeks to develop.

 

One fix would be to add a faction percentage to the server listing and free transfers (perhaps with a legacy reset) later on. Please ask for this in the suggestion forum

[Nemeses]

There are too many servers for example

1 .7million subs /216=7880 per server if all were on at once,

 

3900 per faction if divisons were perfect

most say 15-20% pop on during peak which = 585-780 per side

17 planets 13 different flashpoints per faction 3 warzones

 

if the pop is close to 1000 000 those numbers drop down to 463 per side at 20% = 14 players per zone at peak

I would imagine they are working on a fix, maybe some kind of cross server warzone finder but that takes more then a few weeks to develop.

 

One fix would be to add a faction percentage to the server listing and free transfers (perhaps with a legacy reset) later on. Please ask for this in the suggestion forum

 

If there is still 50K+ EU subs I would be surprised, its a pity posts like yours hinder rather than help as like all BW apologists you give them a out with cross server pvp, thats not a fix at all.

 

The only fix here is 2 pronged 1) allow free account server transfers.

 

2) Allow full guild transfers server with a opt out policy not a opt in one, but if BW do ever sort out a free transfer for entire guilds it will be with a opt in again because they pretty stupid, and if people ask why should it be a opt out then they just as stupid and will not receive a answer.

Edited February 27, 2012 by Nemeses

[DarthKhaos]

I for one will not pay for a transfer, if they do not fix their problem and just look to milk more money, most likely its why they opened all the servers, knowing they can steal some more money in the future getting people to pay from transfers.

 

 

BW have turned into a unreliable dishonest lot, the amount of lies they pump out is farcical, from saying they fixed bugs to changes extremely poor, but like all stupid people they never get that every lie gets found out.

Amazing. You're saying BioWare created a bunch of servers JUST so that they can milk paid character transfers cash from you when they haven't even announced if they're offering paid character transfers to you. Amazing...

[Nemeses]

Amazing. You're saying BioWare created a bunch of servers JUST so that they can milk paid character transfers cash from you when they haven't even announced if they're offering paid character transfers to you. Amazing...

 

Lets see what happens , same as I can't prove what I'm saying is true nor can you disprove it, but if we look at it my theory sure as hell fits better. lol do you honestly believe that paid for transfers are not coming? ..if so I have a bridge in London for sale

 

Lets see:

 

1) deliberately low caps, servers quickly fill up, (remember now BW promised they would not, unlike other games open a ton of server ..yeah right!), so BW just open a ton of new servers, instead of raising the cap.

 

2) History has alway told us in almost every single mmo if not everyone (because even wow dipped for a while) thats after the free month the game would lose a lot of players.

 

3)Opening more servers instead of raising the cap = cheaper, so we know its all about the cash (stupid and shorted sighted or what!)

 

4) Now the first month has gone as known there would be a dip if not a huge one so subs lost will be lot = no cash, so .. hey low caps more server, = very quiet servers = pay for a transfer = more money ..woot great plan and it working!

 

Edited February 27, 2012 by Nemeses

[MackumDog]

I have been reading there will be two servers, a republican one and an Empire one,

[Ushela]

Wrong server choice, your fault.

It's not so hard to re-roll on a better server like many people including me and my friends have done.

Once they allow character transfer you can move them to that new server of your choice, end of discussion.

Every time i look at both EU and US server list during prime times i see a large number of standard/heavy/very heavy servers so those who are hoping for some ridiculous server merges will be disappointed because it won't happen anytime soon.

 

Actually SIR, I was TOLD by BW to roll my toon on a low pop server when I started playing about 1 week into the game from launch. BW publicly announced to new incoming players that they should roll on a low pop server. My friends and I did that. So, HOW IS THAT MY FAULT, MR.????

 

And FYI, I already have rerolled. But guess what? I dont want my lvl 50 that I invested much time into being stuck on a rotting server. So, either merge the low pop servers so its fun to play again, or give us transfers. Or better yet BW....how about just ACKNOWLEDGING the issue instead of ignoring it would be a start in the right direction....

Edited February 27, 2012 by Ushela

[WutsInAName]

OP, in about 12 years after the subs for this game go below 10 million, and yes, this game will have 10 million subs within 2 years. I guarantee it.

 

 

LOOOOOOOOOOL. zmog my sides hurt from this one.

 

 

Good luck with that, they will be LUCKY to retain half the population numbers they had at launch. This will not be the game 'people keep coming back to' after leaving.

[tmpearson]

Too late.

[evildestroyer]

Each day passes, my servers pop decreases. Its getting a pain to see 50 people on fleet during peak times.

 

People say reroll, i have two lvl 50s, one is a BM no way in hell ill reroll, i rather quit playing and wait til GW2 than reroll.

 

SWTOR can easily have 50 servers instead of ~126. The longer they wait to merge the more people will leave.

 

Time is ticking.

[Holden_Dissent]

alotta sad sackin going on in this thread.

[Nemeses]

alotta sad sackin going on in this thread.

 

Its funny how the fanbois have nothing constructive to add, its why S.O.E ....oops BW love em so much they can always be relied on to derail any thread.