When will there be a "SERVER MERGE?"

[Skoobie]

It does show all players online.

 

I dont need to assume anything. I know it does because I understand its function.

 

Oh WAIT you mean they made an intentionally broken tool? How dumb does that sound? Really?

 

 

Prove that it shows all players. Prove that there isn't a cap. Prove that it shows everyone in all the instances. Heck, prove that it's not bugged.

 

Dumb sounding is acting like you know better then the company that makes the game.

 

I'm not saying the population is increasing or decreasing, simply because I don't know. But the crying for server merges is way, way premature.

Edited April 11, 2012 by Skoobie

[Granomir]

MERGE - Time for a MERGE. This is Bad for business and the players.

[Frostvein]

Prove that it shows all players.

 

Prove that it doesn't.

[Skoobie]

Prove that it doesn't.

 

I'm not making the claim I know the numbers. I openly admit I don't.

[Raeli]

Prove that it shows all players.

 

It shows all players that are Online, which is the key part. There was a yellow post at some point, but you can easily check it yourself.

 

do a /who no arguments, just empty the search box, and you should get 100 results. No more. Now, do a /who 1-20 or something, you should see a list of players between 1-20, maybe that will be less than 100, if not, make the search smaller, until you get less than 100 results. When you have less than 100 results, you have the entire result list for the people within the range you searched.

[Oddzball]

WHo has a low pop server?

 

I'll go do their server right now. We will see how many folks are online during primetime for a low pop server.

[Raeli]

I'm not saying the population is increasing or decreasing, simply because I don't know. But the crying for server merges is way, way premature.

 

Perhaps your server is okay, but come and play on Niman Republic for a week. See what you think then. Try getting some instance groups, see how many other people you see around.

 

You don't even need the numbers to see that there is a fraction of the population on Niman than there was, and that it's becoming a real problem. Some servers are great, but I'm not on one of them, and there's no way I can get all of my friends and my gf to reroll - and a server transfer, if they're going to cost, won't work either, cause there's no way they're all going to pay to move all their chars across.

Edited April 11, 2012 by Raeli

[Skoobie]

Perhaps your server is okay, but come and play on Niman Republic for a week. See what you think then. Try getting some instance groups, see how many other people you see around.

 

Nowhere did I say this.

 

What I said was we the players don't know the numbers. Some of us try to guess...and that's ok...but they act like it factual. Sad truth is that it's not.

 

 

I also said that the cry for server merges is premature. People are getting all uppity about them, when in reality, even if they were to come, it would be way off in the future. More sad reality.

Edited April 11, 2012 by Skoobie

[Raeli]

Yes, that's right. Instead of just admitting you don't know the numbers, you have to resort to name calling.

 

You can't prove it, and you know it. I hope when you get older, you will learn that it's ok to admit when you are wrong.

 

Hi Skoobie!

 

I explained twice already how it works, you should take a read of those

[Skoobie]

Hi Skoobie!

 

I explained twice already how it works, you should take a read of those

 

You explained twice how you think it works.

 

Until you actually realize "hey wait...Bioware does know the numbers and I don't!" there's really no conversation to be made.

[Oddzball]

Hi Reali!

 

Man i feel bad for you.

 

As of right now your server has;

 

LvL

 

1-10: 2

11-20:3

21-30:2

31-40:4

41-50:9

 

 

Course it is night time in EUrope right now, but damn, thats just sad.

 

Even like a WoW server in Europe at nighttime has like 10 times as many players.

[Raeli]

Hi Reali!

 

Man i feel bad for you.

 

As of right now your server has;

 

LvL

 

1-10: 2

11-20:3

21-30:2

31-40:4

41-50:9

 

 

Course it is night time in EUrope right now, but damn, thats just sad.

 

Even like a WoW server in Europe at nighttime has like 10 times as many players.

 

 

Yeah believe me I know, we're looking at (varying on a daily basis) between 5-30 players on the fleet, I've not managed to have a set of /who return over 150 people in quite a while now.

 

We used to have over 150 people on the fleet at peak time, even now at 2AM we used to have 30-50 people on the fleet.

 

It's really depressing :/

[Dolcia]

DCUO merged all servers into one big server. Thats BW should do and just have multiple instances of planets.

 

Well, I don't know how technically feasible this is but it would certainly be a solution to the whole, "if they merge servers it looks bad to investors!" argument.

 

Of course, then you're stuck with 100% of this community. That is overwhelming.

Edited April 11, 2012 by Dolcia

[Mifunk]

To be fair, it says in the near future after 1.2. It may come with 1.3, but that's not what it says - maybe I'm being naively hopeful, but I'm just saying, it doesn't say 1.3, so it's not unreasonable from that, and what they've previously said, to expect them within the next few weeks.

 

"JO: I think I already gone a little bit into that direction talking about the group finder and character transfers, so those are things that you are going to see in 1.3. I don’t really want to go into anything more specific about that. No more special hints."

 

Says right there, those are things you are going to see in 1.3.

[Skoobie]

Well, I don't know how technically feasible this is but it would certainly be a solution to the whole, "if they merge servers it looks bad to investors!" argument.

 

Of course, then you're stuck with 100% of this community. That is overwhelming.

 

I never understood why more games don't do it from launch.

 

It seems to work well in EvE, and if DCUO had it from the start then that game would have thrived from the very beginning too, imo.

Edited April 11, 2012 by Skoobie

[Raeli]

Please show me where in this line of topic I argued that the servers weren't dying?

 

Truth is...Bioware knows the numbers, we don't. Plain and simple.

 

I personally think the game is thinner right now, but I bet we see a boost this weekend. I'm not going to run around acting like I know numbers and that I'm out to prove something, however. Bioware knows what's going on. It's their game.

 

 

Okay, but irregardless to the numbers, some servers are worse off than others, which you can see by playing on those servers for a while to see for yourself. Bioware is claiming there isn't any issue, we are claiming that there is. You aren't claiming either, simply nitpicking over the data we are using, which quite frankly, isn't even all that relevant, you don't need hard numbers to see this issue on some servers.

 

Unless you think that it's fine and okay that the GTN is practically empty, getting groups is nigh impossible, and PvP queues are taking a long time - when they do pop, we enter with 6. Of course, if you think that isn't an issue, then we disagree, and there's not much more to say, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to have enough people around for these things.

 

Those are things you can't dispute, unless of course, you're going to say that my UI is also bugged and there actually is 8 people in all my Warzones, and that the GTN UI is also bugged and there's loads of auctions, they're just bugged and don't show. Oh, and the chat is also bugged, and I just can't see most of the chat from people looking for groups.

[Raeli]

"JO: I think I already gone a little bit into that direction talking about the group finder and character transfers, so those are things that you are going to see in 1.3. I don’t really want to go into anything more specific about that. No more special hints."

 

Says right there, those are things you are going to see in 1.3.

 

Fair catch, I missed that! Even more meh :(

[Skoobie]

Okay, but irregardless to the numbers, some servers are worse off than others, which you can see by playing on those servers for a while to see for yourself. Bioware is claiming there isn't any issue, we are claiming that there is. You aren't claiming either, simply nitpicking over the data we are using, which quite frankly, isn't even all that relevant, you don't need hard numbers to see this issue on some servers.

 

Unless you think that it's fine and okay that the GTN is practically empty, getting groups is nigh impossible, and PvP queues are taking a long time - when they do pop, we enter with 6. Of course, if you think that isn't an issue, then we disagree, and there's not much more to say, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to have enough people around for these things.

 

Those are things you can't dispute, unless of course, you're going to say that my UI is also bugged and there actually is 8 people in all my Warzones, and that the GTN UI is also bugged and there's loads of auctions, they're just bugged and don't show. Oh, and the chat is also bugged, and I just can't see most of the chat from people looking for groups.

 

Where did Bioware claim there isn't any issues?

 

They have already said transfers are on the way. My guess is they want the community to try to balance themselves out first via transfer. If that doesn't work, then they may want to initiate server transfers. I think many are trying to rush things and put the cart before the horse. It's the now syndrome, and people refuse to think ahead.

Edited April 11, 2012 by Skoobie

[KiloPapa]

I'm on the European Lord Calypho RP-PvP Server. It has a light population. There are two other RP-PvP servers with light populations. The longer it goes on, the more people that are going to quit because of the lack of community, thus making the population problem even worse.

 

Please fix it Bioware.

[Oddzball]

Jeez, heavy handed moderation right there.

 

Lost half the last two pages.

 

Anyway, frankly I was a little surprised that the "server design" BioWare choose was so 1990's.

 

I see no reason why they couldn't have higher caps on their servers first off, I also don't see why they didn't go with fewer servers and many instances so you had the ability to switch instances if nobody was around to do a quest or flashpoint.

[Raeli]

Where did Bioware claim there isn't any issues?

 

They have already said transfers are on the way. My guess is they want the community to try to balance themselves out first via transfer. If that doesn't work, then they may want to initiate server transfers. I think many are trying to rush things and put the cart before the horse. It's the now syndrome, and people refuse to think ahead.

 

 

 

Is there any discussion of merging servers or adding incentives to move players to low pop servers?

 

JO: No, we’re not going to. Merging servers is not something we are looking at. We have a very healthy game right now, so that is not something we are looking at in the near future. We're always going to look at ways to make sure a server is healthy. There are a whole bunch of different ways you can do that. We're discussing them. We want to make sure players feel like there are enough players on their server to play with.

 

http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/20070-pax-east-2012-interview-with-james-ohlen-and

 

Pretty much there. They say their game is healthy, and because it is healthy, there are no plans for merges. Maybe they're not outright denying that there is any issue, but they're certainly not acknowledging any issue, and certainly trying to downplay it.

[Skoobie]

Jeez, heavy handed moderation right there.

 

Lost half the last two pages.

 

Anyway, frankly I was a little surprised that the "server design" BioWare choose was so 1990's.

 

I see no reason why they couldn't have higher caps on their servers first off, I also don't see why they didn't go with fewer servers and many instances so you had the ability to switch instances if nobody was around to do a quest or flashpoint.

 

They certainly were in a tough situation at launch. Most if not all servers with queues, many with HOURS long waits. People freaking out all over the place (and honestly...I think that set the somewhat unfortunate tone the forums have taken). Bioware rolled the dice.

 

We can look back now and see how things have progressed. But who knows what may have happened if the left the queues alone. I would have been very ugly.

[Antipathize]

People will wait in queues, it shows that there is a healthy population. When you are at a restaurant and there is a wait for a table, that's a good sign. Yeah, it might suck, and yeah, you will lose some customers, but you'll lose far more if every table is empty, and then you have a wait to get to one.

[Oddzball]

They certainly were in a tough situation at launch. Most if not all servers with queues, many with HOURS long waits. People freaking out all over the place (and honestly...I think that set the somewhat unfortunate tone the forums have taken). Bioware rolled the dice.

 

We can look back now and see how things have progressed. But who knows what may have happened if the left the queues alone. I would have been very ugly.

 

I mean the design. Straight up something out of 1990.

 

Ultima Online when it launched in 1997 had servers that could support more users on a single server then this.

 

Trust me I KNOW they were kinda damned either way either queues and people complaining, or to many servers and population problems later on, but who on earth was their engineer who made those servers that have such a small user load?

 

I hosted an MMO server one time on a small server (This MMO was just as advanced as SWTOR is now) and my server was horrible and still could handle a bigger user load.

 

What is the server cap for SWTOR servers? I would sure like to know because "Standard" load is somewhere around 1k from the data i can collect on my own and that's just sad really.

[Greyshayd]

I hate the low pop for republic on my server! I was on balmorra with my lv 31 sentinel and there was only LITERALY ONE OTHER GUY ON THAT ENTIRE PLANET! LITERALY!! and the repub fleet the max ive ever seen at the same time is 30 people and most of them wer afk leaving only 5 or 6 other people to talk to while on the other hand the imperial fleet has 160 people on it and i just HATE IT as i am a big time republic person! Hurry up with those merges bioware! and make it right so u don't merge my server with another hig population imperial server so they get 300 people while republic is 50 people. and DONT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON WARZONE QUEUES! I END UP WAITING FOR 10 MIN TO GET A SINGLE GAME AND ALMOST ALL THE PLAYERS ARE BELOW LEVEL 40 WHILE EMPIRE IS EVERYONE 30 AND UP AND TONS ARE 50'S!!!!!!!!! SO HURRY UP WITH THOSE MERGES SO THE MAX PEOPLE I SEE ON A PLANET IS 30! HURRY UP BIOWARE OR IM CHANGING GAMES!