When will there be a "SERVER MERGE?"

[SneakyErvin]

I'm hoping for merges soon, very soon. I dreaded this decline the day I started playing. And its been more and more noticable for each day that goes.

 

Less people on plantes, less people on fleet, less people in WZs, less people in FPs and so on. First thing that caught my attention of the low population for a MMO was when I hit tatooine and expected to see republic players and PvP on a PvP server. It was mostly non-exsisting, and this was back in december.

 

I think many people have left this game due to the lack of W-PvP, which is a big big joke in this game. It's shielded, restricted and the one place my hopes were on, was Ilum, a total disaster. Bad preformance, silly objectives, no real point to it except to get quests done.

 

1.2 wont give us much. More daily quests, 1 more BG, legacy system (kinda fun), new gear, an OP and a FP. But what does it matter when there arent enough people around to enjoy it with?

 

Expand our character slots on servers to whatever is needed to merge incase people play on two designated servers. Then start the merging so servers get up to high pop that actually feels like high pop.

[MefuneAkira]

They already said they are doing it around the end of April, so why is this thread still going?

Lack of info?

[Hoffmaestro]

They already said they are doing it around the end of April, so why is this thread still going?

Lack of info?

 

 

You don't think a link to this information would be a good thing to add?

[Frostvein]

They already said they are doing it around the end of April, so why is this thread still going?

Lack of info?

 

They said they were doing transfers, not mergers, and it was only for oceanic players. They never mentioned mergers or transfers for NA and EU players.

[Nakazia]

Sure there is a reason.

 

People are re-rolling to servers they feel are more populated. Just because you're content to stay on a light server doesn't mean everyone will be of similar mind...

 

I suspect many people made the same value judgments that I did... low population seems to be affecting game play... server mergers are unlikely... server transfers are on the way, but will take some amount of time to be completed... so the four options are:

 

1) Stay where you are and wait for transfers

2) Re-roll on a new server while waiting for transfers

3) Cancel until transfers are provided

4) Cancel and go away

 

Option 1 isn't acceptable to me because of many of the reasons posted in this thread.

 

Options 3 and 4 aren't really acceptable to me, as I'm too interested in the game and having too much fun, even starting over at low levels.

 

Congratulations, Option 2. We have a winner!

 

But only you can make the best choice for you. You know what you want most, and you will choose accordingly.

 

Just be aware... you are choosing one of those 4 options, whether you realize it or not.

 

People are re-rolling to servers they feel are more populated because of biowares inability to properly maintain server balance through out launch and into the first few months of play.

 

I didn't believe my server was even all that bad until the last month or so. When I began I started on the emp side and the population was awesome. 200-250 people on the fleet prime time? Sweet!

 

A slowly declining population seemed like a natural thing to occur, but it hasn't stopped. There's a glimmer of more activity maybe a day or two a week. But most days there's under 150 people total on both the emp and pub fleets even at prime time, out of prime time you're looking at around 50-60 on both sides. Some people would consider this a healthy population I do not.

 

By the time I realized there was a substantial abnormal drop in our population still occuring, I had already vested a lot of time into characters I do not want to simply leave behind, Trade skills I've maxed out, Money I have accrued, and Legacy/Valor I have earned.

 

Sad thing is there are quite a few servers far worse off. I mean literally dead ghost towns.

 

1) Stay where you are and wait for transfers

2) Re-roll on a new server while waiting for transfers

3) Cancel until transfers are provided

4) Cancel and go away

 

For me, I'm teetering inbetween 1) and 4)

 

1) Are the people who care and want to play the game still, they just don't want to give up on what they have accomplished. These are the people who will suffer the most. They will be on these forums and they will continue to voice their displeasure. While they fight the same 10-20 people in PvP over and over again and spam for hours to get a group for a flash point.

 

2) If you're willing to leave what you've done behind. It's a great option, it's just a shame that there really are slim pickings as far as even healthy servers to re-roll on are concerned.. Also the effects of pop surges on so few servers long term isn't pretty, they need to find a way to spread us out more amongst fewer servers overall.

 

3) & 4) Unfortunate side effect of poor planning on Biowares part.

[Kubernetic]

btw can anyone provide this kind of info:

sorcerer - 66

mercenary - 44

operative - 28

juggernaut - 27

marauder - 27

powertech - 26

assasin - 25

sniper - 16

about so called "heavily populated servers"

this one is Fatman reported as Heavy at that time and 259 lvl 50 imperial side?

pfffff

and this is heavy?

Loooooooooooo

ooooooo

ooooooo

oooooooooooooooooo

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooL

 

Yes, because I was playing on that server yesterday, and right around the same time, on the Republic side, there were:

 

100+ on Tython

130+ on Coruscant

180+ on the Republic Fleet

80+ on Tatooine

 

...and I'm sure you can sort of extrapolate how many might be on Taris, Nar Shaddaa, and probably a little less toward the higher end planets.

 

Not sure how many of these were L50s, but I hope you do understand that the server status labels refer to ALL players on a server, not just the Imperials.

[trueanimus]

Yes, because I was playing on that server yesterday, and right around the same time, on the Republic side, there were:

 

100+ on Tython

130+ on Coruscant

180+ on the Republic Fleet

80+ on Tatooine

 

...and I'm sure you can sort of extrapolate how many might be on Taris, Nar Shaddaa, and probably a little less toward the higher end planets.

 

Not sure how many of these were L50s, but I hope you do understand that the server status labels refer to ALL players on a server, not just the Imperials.

 

1 main server (not an expansion server) doing great...

 

meanwhile back in the real world...

 

 

Expansion server The Razor last night prime time had a max of 50 on imp fleet, 16 in EV, and 3-4 per planet..

 

 

face it.. either they merge servers soon or offer a multi toon server move (since i have 6 level 50s now) or a LOT of people will leave.. on the razor you cant even get a group for HMs and ops are out of the question.. not to mention PVP ques are like 4-5 hours at least.. and this is during prime time!!

[justandulas]

I really hope they do server merges, or that 1.2 brings back alot of people. I love my server (bondar crystal), I've invested quite abit into the server... but it is noticably losing people rapidly for whatever reason. I don't really want to start over from scratch on another server but if 1.2 doesn't bring back alot of people to bondar crystal, or if character transfers aren't implemented soon... i don't see anyway around it.

 

Bondar crystal can't survive long term at this pre 1.2 rate. which is a shame because it really has a terrific community, just not enough people to consistantly play with. Bioware plz, on behalf of your loyal fans who love this game do some huge server merges (2-3 of the light ones merged together) so we can have a nice healthy population to play this game with. Cutting the server list amount down by half and merging them together into superservers will be the best thing for SWTOR's future.

 

I love this game and want to continue playing it for years to come, I just would like more people to play it with and don't want to abandon all the friends on the server or start from scratch again. Both would be disheartening, so please bioware hear the cries of Bondar crystal and possibly merge 2-3 servers together?

 

-Loyal fan and player on Bondar crystal

[Kiphere]

we have what, three threads in the 60+ page range now and not even a nod from something golden in here?

 

There are 150 people on republic sid eon my server right now and it's not even close to one of hte "Lowest" population servers. 15 minutes minimum for a PVP Q and it ends early because there aren't enough people in it... what a tease.

 

Using the "ignore the problem and it'll go away" method works in MMOs, just ask one of hte developers from one of the 20 or so failed MMOs over the last 4 years. Ignore your subscribers and they do, in fact, go away.

[justandulas]

we have what, three threads in the 60+ page range now and not even a nod from something golden in here?

 

There are 150 people on republic sid eon my server right now and it's not even close to one of hte "Lowest" population servers. 15 minutes minimum for a PVP Q and it ends early because there aren't enough people in it... what a tease.

 

Using the "ignore the problem and it'll go away" method works in MMOs, just ask one of hte developers from one of the 20 or so failed MMOs over the last 4 years. Ignore your subscribers and they do, in fact, go away.

 

I'm sure they aren't ignoring us, just busy trying to find a workaround. Not all servers are experiencing these problems, but mine certainly is. It's got to be alot of work, even more so then merging servers in WoW or Rift ever was. We will have identical names, guild names, legacy names, etc that all have to be worked out. Who gets preference on legacy or character names during server merges, and why? these are some of the problems that present themselves on server merges. Again though, I do think something needs to happen on it because my server (bondar crystal) is dying fast as people are just giving up and moving to the fatman. If 1.2 doesn't bring alot of people back, or if they don't merge servers I don't see anyway bondar crystal can survive long term and I don't want to reroll from scratch on one of the servers like fatman but if 1.2 doesn't solve alot of the population problems, it's all but inevitable I'll have to move to a new server. I love this game and want to play it for years, but Bioware has to do something about underpopulated servers. There's no shame in having to merge servers for a better player experience, even the mighty WoW merges servers quite often.

[Kiphere]

It's something they jus thave to deal with. There is no graceful way of dealing with this.

 

I'm an IT architect. When I build a system at work I ask myself if it's scalable in both directions and what concerns come up with motion in either direction. That's something any project should look at, growth and decline.

 

They answered the growth with more servers at launch instead of upping hte caps on existing servers... they had to do that because their engine simply couldn't support 'more' people in one spot, it can barely support what it's got and what it has isn't that much. I think that might be one of the primary causes they aren't jumping on the merge train. If they make all the servers higher population they'll have to deal with more than just name backlash, they'll have to deal with all the people who suddnly took a performance hit because they have more than 8 people walking around them.

[Antipodes]

The reason Bioware hasn't commented yet is the same reason they haven't gone ahead and merged servers. It's bad publicity and people are going to use it as a sign that SWTOR is declining.

 

Yes, the servers do need to be merged but realistically it isn't going to happen till after 1.2. Bioware is concentrating their efforts on that patch for the time being. If it doesn't end up breathing life back into the game (which is very doubtful with how fickle the customer base is), the next thing they will look at is transfers/server merges. Don't expect any comment or announcement before that.

 

In the meantime, it sucks big time and I'm sure it's causing the game to bleed subscribers even faster. The low population on my server is certainly depressing to me when there's nothing to do other than level an alt in empty worlds. It seems that everything now hinges on 1.2 delivering the goods and getting it out ASAP.

Edited April 5, 2012 by Antipodes

[RDX-TWO]

With a lot of people looking for a new home what server are you going to chose and why?

[andrelle]

I'm sure they aren't ignoring us, just busy trying to find a workaround. Not all servers are experiencing these problems, but mine certainly is. It's got to be alot of work, even more so then merging servers in WoW or Rift ever was. We will have identical names, guild names, legacy names, etc that all have to be worked out. Who gets preference on legacy or character names during server merges, and why? these are some of the problems that present themselves on server merges. Again though, I do think something needs to happen on it because my server (bondar crystal) is dying fast as people are just giving up and moving to the fatman. If 1.2 doesn't bring alot of people back, or if they don't merge servers I don't see anyway bondar crystal can survive long term and I don't want to reroll from scratch on one of the servers like fatman but if 1.2 doesn't solve alot of the population problems, it's all but inevitable I'll have to move to a new server. I love this game and want to play it for years, but Bioware has to do something about underpopulated servers. There's no shame in having to merge servers for a better player experience, even the mighty WoW merges servers quite often.

 

I think you should consider rerolling now, since you really enjoy the game. In my opinion, 1.2 will make it worse. Sure, there may be a few thousand more people coming back to check it out. But BW is focused on their Legacy system. Legacy basically encourages the single player mindset. It is all about rerolling and playing up alts for perks. Think about it long-term and what it means. If you continue to reroll to gain legacy perks, you are not going to want to transfer later, or be part of a server merge. And as far as we know, none of the legacy perks are useable in WZs. So, if you want to hit a high-pop server, I would really find one now.

[Jederix]

That was taken out of context.

 

Someone implied that "if the servers are so dead then the number of people that are affected by it must be a small percentage of the playerbase"

 

To which I responded that he must not be good at math. The numbers were taken mostly from here -

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showt...350700&page=15

 

Byerley did a fairly decent job of explaining it. If you look back earlier in this thread, Notdonnareed had a fairly similar conclusion in regards to population caps as well.

 

350 appears to be the the bare minimum required for standard ranking on the server list. Where this number caps at is still speculation, but it is probably around 2000. 1800 was reported by others a few times.

 

Assuming that the heavy and full servers are at 2500 or more, and noting that there are only 5 or so out of the (last I heard) 200 or so other servers.

 

Even saying there are 10 good servers with an average population of 2500 or more between EU and US, that's only 25,000. The other 190 servers with an average of 500 (which includes the light servers with under 350, and the standard servers with 1800 or so, so 500 is the number I went with) comes out to be a bit short of 100,000.

 

Granted, the "standard" population servers with 1800 aren't experiencing the same problems as the ones with 350 or 500, so even if you wanted to go ahead and cut the number in half to account for the standard servers that aren't having the same issues, you are still looking at 50,000 people who are having issues vs 75,000 who aren't. That clearly isn't a small portion of the population

 

125,000 is roughly consistent with the fact that rarely, if ever, do MMO's have more then 10% of their player base playing. Which, when multiplied out, comes to a bit under 1.25 million subs (given that I rounded up slightly earlier). This number isn't too unrealistic either.

 

 

 

So yes, you can disagree/agree with my numbers but this is how I got them. I'm sure I'll be torn to shreds over something I missed.

 

Not by me, you won't. I was just curious where the numbers came from because, frankly, there are a lot of bogus numbers thrown around. Yours at least have a basis in reality.

[Kubernetic]

1 main server (not an expansion server) doing great...

 

meanwhile back in the real world...

 

 

Expansion server The Razor last night prime time had a max of 50 on imp fleet, 16 in EV, and 3-4 per planet..

 

 

face it.. either they merge servers soon or offer a multi toon server move (since i have 6 level 50s now) or a LOT of people will leave.. on the razor you cant even get a group for HMs and ops are out of the question.. not to mention PVP ques are like 4-5 hours at least.. and this is during prime time!!

 

I see the misunderstanding... he was referring to that server, specifically. In this particular instance, I was not trying to extrapolate that server's performance to everyone else's.

 

By now I've realized that some people are happiest on their unpopulated servers, and they'll leave the game before they leave the server. I don't understand it, but I guess I never will.

 

I doubt they'll ever merge servers. Many of you are thinking in terms of failure, when BioWare's obvious goal is to bring more people into the game. I'm sure it's hard to understand why they aren't accepting your defeatist attitudes, but then again that's why they're called "defeatist" attitudes.

 

It makes no sense to merge servers now while planning to bring more people into the game, which might simply require expansion servers again. This is why they are in control of their game and you are not.

 

They've announced server transfers are on the way. They've announced that cross-server warzone queueing is on the way. What else can they say other than repeating what they've already said, which players are obviously ignoring?

 

They've provided you with the means and ability to fix your situation, even in this time when server transfers and cross-server queueing are not yet available. How is it their fault if you refuse to do so? They can't be your mommy and daddy. They run a service.

 

If players aren't smart enough to utilize the service and its capabilities, I'm not sure there's much more that they can do to rectify that situation, except to bring in a greater number of smarter players.

 

Don't mean to sound too bitter... but I'm all out of honey in regards to this topic.

[Jederix]

It's something they jus thave to deal with. There is no graceful way of dealing with this.

 

I'm an IT architect. When I build a system at work I ask myself if it's scalable in both directions and what concerns come up with motion in either direction. That's something any project should look at, growth and decline.

 

They answered the growth with more servers at launch instead of upping hte caps on existing servers... they had to do that because their engine simply couldn't support 'more' people in one spot, it can barely support what it's got and what it has isn't that much. I think that might be one of the primary causes they aren't jumping on the merge train. If they make all the servers higher population they'll have to deal with more than just name backlash, they'll have to deal with all the people who suddnly took a performance hit because they have more than 8 people walking around them.

 

They will deal with it, I'm certain of that. I'm certain that mergers will not be the answer. But, like I said to someone else, the only answer you want to hear is merger and anything less will just make you mad.

 

I'm just preparing you to be mad.

[justandulas]

I think you should consider rerolling now, since you really enjoy the game. In my opinion, 1.2 will make it worse. Sure, there may be a few thousand more people coming back to check it out. But BW is focused on their Legacy system. Legacy basically encourages the single player mindset. It is all about rerolling and playing up alts for perks. Think about it long-term and what it means. If you continue to reroll to gain legacy perks, you are not going to want to transfer later, or be part of a server merge. And as far as we know, none of the legacy perks are useable in WZs. So, if you want to hit a high-pop server, I would really find one now.

 

I love the community on bondar crystal, and have alot of friends there that were assigned there by Bioware at launch with me. I am going to stick it out until 1.2 to see if it has any positive impact on the server. I would prefer a straight server transfer rather then rerolling though. I have far too much time and energy put into my character's and legacy to just up and abandon it now. Unfortunately, with cross server wz's and character transfers not here for awhile, I may have no choice if 1.2 doesn't fix alot of the population issue's on Bondar Crystal. I love SWTOR and think Bioware did a fantastic job with the game, and I want to play it for years to come, but it is very discouraging to log into a near death server. If a merger doesn't happen, or if transfers aren't free, then what? I am going to have to convince my friends to all pay a transfer fee just so we can play the game with others. Bioware has around 1/3 too many servers IMO and should start merging 2-3 of the light/standard ones together until they have nothing left but heavy servers. I'd put up with a server que all day, everyday, if it meant the server had a healthy population to play with/against. There is no shame in server merges, WoW does it once every few months in fact.

Edited April 5, 2012 by justandulas

[WhiskyJax]

I will re-post this yet again....

Source : http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=3196835#post3196835

Hello everyone. I can absolutely understand the frustrations expressed here, and I appreciate that for the most part, you're being constructive in your comments. Here's a little more insight into the situation.

 

The character transfer system is being actively worked on by the development team. It's a large, complex project, made more complicated by the Legacy System - and it has to work perfectly. As always, it is not the only task the team as a whole is undertaking, but it's a priority. It has not been deliberately delayed, nor is it being 'held back' for any reason. As you know, the first stage of the system will be a one-off, optional transfer for those who are based in the regions defined in our FAQ. At some point after that, we'll bring a more fully-featured character transfer system online for all to use.

 

I can understand the frustration of those of you who have been playing on the US servers and waiting for transfers. We know your enthusiasm and excitement for the game - you wouldn't have taken the steps you did to get the game earlier than the official launch if you weren't enthusiastic. We're working as hard as we can to get the system in place. If we could have brought it online earlier, we would have. However, priorities post-launch had to be directed towards the game itself. The team's been working flat-out to improve the game, including bug fixes and additional content.

 

When we announced our launch territories last year we knew many more fans were excited to play The Old Republic. That's why we moved quickly to launch in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore, with more territories being lined up for future launches. Our primary focus when launching in any new territory has to be to reach more players. Ultimately, that's best for the continuing success of the game. We want everyone who wishes to play on the new servers to be able to do so, hence character transfer being offered. With that said, in this case we felt it was important to get the game into the hands of new players as soon as possible. That, combined with our post-launch development priorities, meant that character transfer did not make our launch date for these territories.

 

The development team remains committed to delivering a robust character transfer system for all, with our first priority being for Asia-Pacific players. If we can bring the system to you earlier than expected, we will, but for now we’re aiming towards late April.

[Touchbass]

Does everyone not realize if they open transfers it's going to make another batch of servers terrible as well? The people re-rolling are already effecting tons of NA/EU servers, tranfers could kill dozens of others

[justandulas]

Does everyone not realize if they open transfers it's going to make another batch of servers terrible as well? The people re-rolling are already effecting tons of NA/EU servers, tranfers could kill dozens of others

 

What other choice do we have though? We don't want to abandon our hard work on our toons (some people high lvl legacy, other's high valor pvp) but it's very disheartening and discouraging to play on a server that is hemorraging players for whatever reason. I would like 2-3 servers merged together until there's nothing like but heavy pop servers but if transfers become available, how many of us really attached to our characters wouldn't move to a server like Swiftsure or the fatman? I want my server to thrive and succeed as I really like the community Bondar crystal has, but it cannot survive at this pre 1.2 rate of attricion. If 1.2 doesn't bring alot of people back, it is inevitable that most of my server will run off to the fatman.

[WhiskyJax]

What other choice do we have though? We don't want to abandon our hard work on our toons (some people high lvl legacy, other's high valor pvp) but it's very disheartening and discouraging to play on a server that is hemorraging players for whatever reason. I would like 2-3 servers merged together until there's nothing like but heavy pop servers but if transfers become available, how many of us really attached to our characters wouldn't move to a server like Swiftsure or the fatman? I want my server to thrive and succeed as I really like the community Bondar crystal has, but it cannot survive at this pre 1.2 rate of attricion. If 1.2 doesn't bring alot of people back, it is inevitable that most of my server will run off to the fatman.

 

Odds are right now that one of the things they are doing are figuring out which servers they are going to move characters from and to as i am sure we will not be able to pick any server.

They screwed up with the servers but we have to understand that the fix isn't easy.

 

Whats going to happen when people are not going to be allowed to just transfer where ever they wish?

 

Whats going to happen when they find out they will lose their character name and legacy because someone else on the server they move t created it 10 min earlier then they did?

[Kthx]

Odds are right now that one of the things they are doing are figuring out which servers they are going to move characters from and to as i am sure we will not be able to pick any server.

 

Since they clearly have stated that server mergers are not likely, I will take those odds. What do I get when I win?

[Touchbass]

What other choice do we have though? We don't want to abandon our hard work on our toons (some people high lvl legacy, other's high valor pvp) but it's very disheartening and discouraging to play on a server that is hemorraging players for whatever reason. I would like 2-3 servers merged together until there's nothing like but heavy pop servers but if transfers become available, how many of us really attached to our characters wouldn't move to a server like Swiftsure or the fatman? I want my server to thrive and succeed as I really like the community Bondar crystal has, but it cannot survive at this pre 1.2 rate of attricion. If 1.2 doesn't bring alot of people back, it is inevitable that most of my server will run off to the fatman.

 

Yeah that sucks, I would like to see the bottom 40-60 servers merged and we're good I've talked to a few people on Fatman, it's way to populated. I feel bad for the natives there

[WhiskyJax]

Yeah that sucks, I would like to see the bottom 40-60 servers merged and we're good I've talked to a few people on Fatman, it's way to populated. I feel bad for the natives there

 

We are our own worst enemy really

PLay on Lord Adraas myself, currently 550-600+ imp side and prb 2/3 that repub not bad for 5cst any one looking to roll an alt i recommend it