When will there be a "SERVER MERGE?"

[Maeleena]

Something needs to be done I can't find groups to do anything at 50 and my battleground queue is stupid long.

 

No point of logging in if I can't do anything.

Re-roll on high pop server? There are plenty that are still at 'Full' status during primetime. Roll on one of thoese.

[HavenAE]

Re-roll on high pop server? There are plenty that are still at 'Full' status during primetime. Roll on one of thoese.

 

Yes because everyone just loves to pick up and leave their main server and start all over again. WONDERFUL suggestion.

 

[ChicksDigHarleys]

They capped the servers pops too low. I remember seeing twice the number of people in zones during beta, and not having performance issues. I thought I saw somewhere that the servers cap at about 3k people. Split that over two factions and 17 planets, and it's not surprising the game feels dead. My main server is usually "heavy" when I play, and it still feels empty. I don't have a character past mid 30's, so no I didn't rush to the end.

 

That being said, I'd bet real money there will not be server mergers or transfers in the near future. Hate to say it, but either reroll, quit, or suck it up.

Edited January 25, 2012 by ChicksDigHarleys

[Kaedian]

way to insult people without knowing what the hell you're talking about. Biowares "increased caps" caps a server at about 1.5k people. both sides COMBINED. Go through the zones and check how many people are one of those heavy servers. 300ish imperial fleet / 180ish republic fleet on mine at prime time. other zones 120ish for lvl 10-16 planet, 50-60 people per planet up till belsavis, then it drops to 25ish for pubs and 40ish for imps. Corellia 25ish both sides at most time.

 

eidt* oh lets not forget quesh, 9 people republic side, 15ish imperial.

 

The population cap is CRAP. its half what a normal MMO server population is. YOU are the idiot.

 

Perhaps if you can't get a group of three out of a group of 300, it's not the server population that's the problem?

[LordAposno]

Standard means nothing, my server is standard and its still a hard task to get groups together due to lack of players.

 

And with faction imbalance meaning most servers are 2:1 Imp:Rep the situation is magnified for Republic players even on servers with supposedly good populations.

 

Bioware created too many servers, far too fast and diluted the population signifcantly and needlessly to keep early access queues down, and its come back to bite us all on the ***.

 

 

 

 

BW did not create too many servers. The queues were terrible and the wait times were unacceptable. The camping of mobs and rampant kill stealing was intolerable. BW did what they had to do in order to attract and maintain customers. My server still maintains a high population and there are always people around. The worlds are huge and people are spread out or in different instances. A future release of a LFG tool should alleviate the problem of not finding groups. Also try joining an active guild that fits your play style.

[dazos]

this is how it went-

 

brand new game!

servers jammed with activity!

during pre-launch bioware adds several servers.

 

game release! servers jammed!

the people went, "wah! queues!! give us more servers!"

 

bioware said, "gee, we really don't want to do that, cause you know, people will stop playing and the servers will even out"

people said, "we don't care! we'll unsub! you're horrible! more servers now!!!1!"

 

so bioware raises some population caps and adds new servers, and guess what?

 

And the huge problem you seem to miss was. bioware screwed the pooch. They added more servers when they knew server pops were set very low. They easily could have added half or a fourth of the servers they did if they had just started them all out at the higher pop numbers. Pre-launch subs might never have queued, US servers at least, during the pre-launch period if they had all been set to their current pop caps.

 

But why did they wait till after launch to up the server pops. They had a perfect pre-launch period where they could have tested server stability with higher populations and found out the exact number they needed, then added servers post launch at the higher pop caps.

[chaniwan]

My server started as very high, thats why I picked it, expecting it to grow, but, like so many others it did not, now im stuck on standard pop shard with full raid gear and its dead, never more than 40 in all zones, except Ilum theres 11 people..... so yea I really do hope merge soon, before my gamecard runs out, to make me wanna stay.

I know I could reroll(but my guildies would rather quit than start again) also in the EU nearly all the servers are standard pop in the evenings, getting visions of Rift here, thats exactly the same, dead game /sadface

[aivedoir]

My server The Harbinger's fine, so I vote no to merges. Better spend their resources on delivering other things faster, such as that LFG tool.

 

Those threatening to unsub are in the minority. The ones that enjoy this game would re-roll or just wait it out for the server merge.

[solidkjames]

This game is dying check this out http://www.torstatus.net/shards/us/stats

 

All that graph really shows is how many people did not cancel after the first month. Of course the population will decline some over the last week or two, subs are coming up. The real tell tell is how many people actually resubbed.

 

As for the OP, Bioware specifically said they wanted to limit new servers during launch so they wouldn't have population imbalances after the first month. But idiots SCREAMED and CRIED that they didn't care if they had to play alone as long as there was no queue. So people that toughed out the queues for a few days are not having the same problems as the I want it now crowd. With that being said, Bioware did a good job of not letting the issue get WAY out of control.

Edited January 25, 2012 by solidkjames

[LordAposno]

way to insult people without knowing what the hell you're talking about. Biowares "increased caps" caps a server at about 1.5k people. both sides COMBINED. Go through the zones and check how many people are one of those heavy servers. 300ish imperial fleet / 180ish republic fleet on mine at prime time. other zones 120ish for lvl 10-16 planet, 50-60 people per planet up till belsavis, then it drops to 25ish for pubs and 40ish for imps. Corellia 25ish both sides at most time.

 

eidt* oh lets not forget quesh, 9 people republic side, 15ish imperial.

 

The population cap is CRAP. its half what a normal MMO server population is. YOU are the idiot.

 

 

You are forgetting that the zones become instanced when they reach a certain cap. So the limits you are seeing are on your instance of that zone.

[urborror]

I have a trooper on an underpopulated server and it's indeed pretty bad--hard to get groups, GTN is depressingly dead. I would like some kind of merge or something. Since planets can be "sharded," having 200 imperials on Dromund Kaas won't hurt the imperial sides of the merged servers.

 

"-.15%" week over week looks natural to me, as the game is played a little less since its release. If you're saying the game's supposed to expand through some explosively viral word of mouth, seems unlikely. That doesn't happen much with anything (with movies it's almost 1/100, with "Paranormal Activity" and "Titantic" and perhaps certain tiny art films being the only time word of mouth has ever demonstrably expanded sales.)

 

If EA's banking on "explosive word of mouth" filling up those servers in months to come, this is foolish. It's possible traffic will in fact expand and the game might flourish and grow, but not to a point where merging the undertrafficked servers now would be problematic. Am I wrong?

 

People on undertrafficked Republic servers are getting a crappier experience.

[Dominemesis]

Seems like almost every server is low population. At Peak hours, there are not many people on any one server. Rift had this issue, and in the beginning, they shut down servers, and allowed people to merge to other servers. It's odd that it takes hours at lvl 50 for a PVP game to pop, as there is hardly anyone on the servers. They also need to implement CROSS REALM Ques. WOW did this, and was a huge success. For any new MMO not to include this off the bat, is beyond bizarre to me. I think Bioware is too focused on fixing bugs than getting these servers in line. Wish I never leveled on what is now a "Low POP" server, as most of the time I feel like this is a single player game.

 

Bioware, what say you?

 

I have to agree, without being a hater because there is much that i like in this game, that for as much as they "didn't reinvent the wheeel", its the stuff that they didn't copy from other MMO's that baffles me. UI customization, cross server queues, dungeon finder, sidekick/exemplar system (although the bolster effect for pvp is similar here).

[ChicksDigHarleys]

BW did not create too many servers. The queues were terrible and the wait times were unacceptable. The camping of mobs and rampant kill stealing was intolerable. BW did what they had to do in order to attract and maintain customers. My server still maintains a high population and there are always people around. The worlds are huge and people are spread out or in different instances. A future release of a LFG tool should alleviate the problem of not finding groups. Also try joining an active guild that fits your play style.

 

They were already sharding the planets because of population. They could have just raised the caps and had more shards. Even Cryptic with their crappy engine and servers managed to have EVERYONE in STO at launch on one server with about 100 instances of the starter zones.

 

Let me say that SO FAR, I have little problem finding groups, and I'm not even in a guild, but again, my main server is "heavy" when I play. I can imagine lower pop servers can already have issues, and it will only get worse as the pop shrinks.

[LordAposno]

This game is dying check this out http://www.torstatus.net/shards/us/stats

 

 

 

OH NO...the sky is falling! A -0.xx% drop is minuscule. Also this is from a non BW site, don't believe everything you read. Unless you see this information directly from BW don't believe it. Also the free first month is up. Every MMO looses people after the initial 30 days are over. Then it begins to build again. This game has great potential. I see it around for a long time. I am enjoying the story telling aspect of this game. This game is not for everyone. No one is forcing you to sub. Feel free to cancel and good luck in your next adventure.

[HavenAE]

They capped the servers pops too low. I remember seeing twice the number of people in zones during beta, and not having performance issues. I thought I saw somewhere that the servers cap at about 3k people. Split that over two factions and 17 planets, and it's not surprising the game feels dead. My main server is usually "heavy" when I play, and it still feels empty. I don't have a character past mid 30's, so no I didn't rush to the end.

 

That being said, I'd bet real money there will not be server mergers or transfers in the near future. Hate to say it, but either reroll, quit, or suck it up.

 

Servers aren't capped anymore. Problem is there isn't going to be an enormous influx of people to fill them up any time soon. I honestly think Bioware thinks that's what's going to happen and again it's another sign of their inability to understand the MMO industry. The majority of your players come in at launch, then you might get a weak trickle of new blood for the first 3 months. If you fail by 3 months expect you won't be getting any new blood.

 

 

Problem with low pop servers is the game feels dead most of the time unless it's peak hours. New players will come in, see a "dead game" then turn around an walk right back out the door.

 

They have 124 NA servers the majority of which are light most of the day until prime time then you'll see a lot of standards and I honestly haven't see a FULL one in several weeks. this isn't WoW they do not have 6 million people to provide access to in NA, they do not need 124 servers in NA alone.

 

They need to start merging so they have fewer servers and more heavy-full loads, otherwise they are going to find their playerbase dwindling quickly. They can take all the time they need to fix things but having low pop servers will kill this game quicker than anything else.

 

 

Once they get things fixed and if they start seeing a large influx of new players coming in, then they can open servers back up. But right now having as many servers as they do is just stupid, not to mention a waste of money and resources on upkeep.

Edited January 25, 2012 by HavenAE

[jedip_enguin]

BW did not create too many servers. The queues were terrible and the wait times were unacceptable. The camping of mobs and rampant kill stealing was intolerable. BW did what they had to do in order to attract and maintain customers. My server still maintains a high population and there are always people around. The worlds are huge and people are spread out or in different instances. A future release of a LFG tool should alleviate the problem of not finding groups. Also try joining an active guild that fits your play style.

 

No they were not, the queues were what was to be expected from a newly launched highly anticipated game with a absurdly low server population cap being enforced to keep the servers stable.

 

The kneejerk reaction to add more servers in response to whiners who did'nt know what to expect from an MMO launch has landed us here.

 

I'm glad you get to play on a server with plenty of people on it, but your experience does not reflect my own (nor that of many others)

 

As to guilds, guilds can only exist with a population to sustain them, I think perhaps you missed the core point of this post ie that there is insufficient population on a lot of servers to maintain active group play (this includes setting up guilds to run ops/fp's etc)

 

And more to the point, I fail to see why everybody has such a big problem with this, merges would create a far more centralised population which would mean more opportunies for everybody for all types of group play. It would also reduce Biowares overhead and would be fairly easily managed as at this point the population as a whole will have stabilised and will rise/fall in a much more predictable pattern than it did during launch month.

 

Too much credence is being given to the idea that server merges=game death, and frankly it's getting irritating, and whining from those that say 'zomg the population on my server is fine' is misplaced as if your server population is good you have nothing to fear as your server is highly unlikely to be merged.

 

So we have nothing to lose and everything to gain, so whats the damn problem?

[inseeisyou]

A few weeks ago everyone was screaming for more servers and higher population caps.

 

Now they want the servers merged.

 

Many of us tried to explain this dynamic when everyone was so upset about the ques but most people either didn't care to listen or were unable to comprehend. I hope that now at least at your next MMO launch you will understand what the caps and ques are for...

[nite_shade]

Seems like almost every server is low population. At Peak hours, there are not many people on any one server. Rift had this issue, and in the beginning, they shut down servers, and allowed people to merge to other servers. It's odd that it takes hours at lvl 50 for a PVP game to pop, as there is hardly anyone on the servers. They also need to implement CROSS REALM Ques. WOW did this, and was a huge success. For any new MMO not to include this off the bat, is beyond bizarre to me. I think Bioware is too focused on fixing bugs than getting these servers in line. Wish I never leveled on what is now a "Low POP" server, as most of the time I feel like this is a single player game.

 

Bioware, what say you?

 

They all left to come back to rift by the looks of it!! (and judging by the Rift chat channel, theyare not very happy with TOR and BW!) I did Having the small zones all instanced, doesn't help.. most of the time i had about 30+ on any zone I was in... max was about 200 (which was a very rare).. Most of the time though it was less than 30.. they really need to get rid of the instance's in TOR, in this day and age there should be no instancing.. MMOs nee dto be seemless.. with the exeption of dungeons/flashpoint etc....

[Halofax]

They all left to come back to rift by the looks of it!! (and judging by the Rift chat channel, theyare not very happy with TOR and BW!) I did Having the small zones all instanced, doesn't help.. most of the time i had about 30+ on any zone I was in... max was about 200 (which was a very rare).. Most of the time though it was less than 30.. they really need to get rid of the instance's in TOR, in this day and age there should be no instancing.. MMOs nee dto be seemless.. with the exeption of dungeons/flashpoint etc....

 

 

Rift is terrible, and Rift is heavily instanced. ****

[HavenAE]

And btw merging servers can also help fix faction imbalances..

 

by taking high pop rep servers and merging them with high pop empire servers.

 

Same thing WoW has been doing for a while to fix Alliance/Horde imbalances.

 

 

But all you people sitting there saying "My server is just fine, I see all kinds of people on my server" You're not helping. Kudos to you for luckily picking a server that has a healthy populations but others didn't get that luxury, stop being drones and fanboys and thinking BW can do no wrong. In fact no one is even really saying they did wrong, this is a normal scenario in MMOs really. Bioware just needs to take action on it.

[kidbs]

You are forgetting that the zones become instanced when they reach a certain cap. So the limits you are seeing are on your instance of that zone.

 

There haven't been multiple instances of a Zone since the first few weeks of the game. There are only single instances due to the current population. Grats for being on a populated server and all but not all servers are like yours. They need to either merge low population servers or give people the option of transferring.

[HavenAE]

Rift is terrible, and Rift is heavily instanced. ****

 

Uh huh... And if people left this game to go back to Rift (a terrible heavily instanced game) whats that say about this one?

[Cerion]

Sorry, but I don't see an issue. When I log on, I see servers in US are mostly Standard, with a few more Heavy than Light.

 

When I get to a planet, I typically see upwards of 50 players in the list.

 

Perhaps if you're having trouble grouping it's because people just don't want to group up?

[Valeena]

I agree with a server merge, but it's not to be negative or to insinuate the game is dying. It's great they raised the population cap, but now I would personally like to see the side list say Heavy/Full again before I see it say Light. Let's utilize the new server cap and put more people on them! I don't mind waiting in queue for 15-30 minutes, if it means playing with other people. I joined a server with a queue time for this reason during launch, but now my server is considered Standard/Light. I wouldn't mind re-rolling on another server, but what would that solve? Nothing, because there are no CONSISTENT Heavy/Full EASTERN PVP servers, the only Full/Heavy pvp server is Swiftsure. Also, it's great if your server is just fine. Mine is too, but how long will that last? Introducing server merges to get the ball rolling will open up the option later incase your server ever does start to fail. I'm sure it's not an easy task to do on a whim, or to convince a company to do.

 

Server merge before it becomes a problem, not when it is a problem.

 

I don't support cross-realm Warzones, they ruin communities and I enjoy knowing the people in my community. I would rather server merges.

Edited January 25, 2012 by Valeena

[LordAposno]

No they were not, the queues were what was to be expected from a newly launched highly anticipated game with a absurdly low server population cap being enforced to keep the servers stable.

 

The kneejerk reaction to add more servers in response to whiners who did'nt know what to expect from an MMO launch has landed us here.

 

I'm glad you get to play on a server with plenty of people on it, but your experience does not reflect my own (nor that of many others)

 

As to guilds, guilds can only exist with a population to sustain them, I think perhaps you missed the core point of this post ie that there is insufficient population on a lot of servers to maintain active group play (this includes setting up guilds to run ops/fp's etc)

 

And more to the point, I fail to see why everybody has such a big problem with this, merges would create a far more centralised population which would mean more opportunies for everybody for all types of group play. It would also reduce Biowares overhead and would be fairly easily managed as at this point the population as a whole will have stabilised and will rise/fall in a much more predictable pattern than it did during launch month.

 

Too much credence is being given to the idea that server merges=game death, and frankly it's getting irritating, and whining from those that say 'zomg the population on my server is fine' is misplaced as if your server population is good you have nothing to fear as your server is highly unlikely to be merged.

 

So we have nothing to lose and everything to gain, so whats the damn problem?

 

 

 

 

 

Yes it was needed. My server had queues of 3-4 hours, which is completely unacceptable under any circumstances. I know the high pop servers had many of the issues I described.

Maybe BW roller out too many servers and should have rolled them out at a slower pace, but all the servers were full at the beginning. Server mergers a month after game release would be a knee jerk reaction. The game is growing and will continue to grow. The lower pop servers should see an increase to population in time. Try rolling an alt on a higher pop server. I know people don't like to start over, but its worth it if you can not find groups. Also the future release of a LFG tool should help people find groups.