When will there be a "SERVER MERGE?"

[Journeyer]

How many of the 50 pages of replies have successfully invited friends to join swtor during the free weekends or free 7 days of play time?

 

Bioware will have server merges and character transfers as needed in the future--they have already confirmed this. But perhaps we could read between the lines a bit, maybe? Thinking caps on? They'd like to get everyone who wants to play into the game first, and all of their friends, too. In the game's infancy (it's 4 months old), a lot is still changing. The numbers of players actively logged in remains in flux (according to the very varied reports you guys claim) and there's major content releases coming several times this year.

 

So...calling sky is falling and merging everything up now would be a lot of time taken out of development and content, and the gain is pretty minimal. Bioware wants to grow the player base and give it more game to play, not to consolidate the player base and hang on to "what's left." Bring in some friends, and who cares what the server pop is--you'll be busy having fun. And server merges will come when the time is right from a dev standpoint, not from a player expectations point of view.

[navarh]

I love SWTOR and i play on heavily populated servers

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

Edited April 4, 2012 by navarh

[-Dench]

There are simply too many servers. The low pop servers have no real purpose anymore due to the fact that it is either difficult or impossible to group with other players to play the games group content.

 

This is a VERY LARGE problem for several reasons. The main problem is player retention of accounts who run on these ghost servers. Assuming the players don’t want to reroll (a lot of people don’t, I will never reroll myself) they are stuck on this server until they run out of patience and move on to another game. Poof! One less player in our community. Not cool.

 

The other main problem with these ghost servers is new players (as in new to PC gaming) who happen to make their accounts on these servers. What type of 1st impression are we giving these players? “welcome to Hutta, have fun with the other 3 people on planet!” Come on. This makes the game look very poor to the new player. Now a lot of people in this thread have suggested that people who do this are ”stupid” or don’t know any better, but guess what, not everyone is as smart as the A-listers that post on this forum. Most people are as stupid as I am.

 

All I'm asking for is for information from BW. Yes, we know AUS players are getting transfers this month, which is fantastic. Now, what about the next problem in the same family of issues, such as the North American and European ghost servers? Time frames? Ideas on implementation? I just want some new updates / blogs about the issue.

 

I'm not trying to be hostile, or an eThug. I have genuine questions that I think should be answered. I like this game, and I want it to live. I want my fellow gamer to also have fun, and to enjoy it with me. I get aggravated when I see players complain about a 100% legit problem, leave the game, have people trash them on the forums and BW not having an active dialogue.

[Spemaralcol]

Current Server - Ula Vii

 

Lvl 50 Assassin - Tank Spec. (cap reached mid January).

Currently levelling a Mercenary, so I have something to do.

 

Fleet Population (peak times) - 10 if your lucky.

(Game usually played between 19:00 and 22:30 GMT/BST Mon-Fri, longer at weekends)

 

Social Lvl - 1

 

No of HMs attempted/completed since hitting lvl cap - 0/0

 

Current Equipment:

Armor - lvl126 obtained through REing lvl49/50 Synthweaving gear to 3rd tier

Main Hand/Off Hand - lvl116 obtained through GTN

 

It really is very simple, I cannot progress any further when my server is dead. There are no groups, there is no multiplayer. Don't even think about doing the 4mans while levelling, if you are lucky there may be one other player on the same planet.

 

Server Transfers and Merges are needed NOW, not at some unspecified point in the future while the developers concentrate on pushing out new content in 1.2.

 

New content will be of no use to me, as I will be considered undergeared for it even if I could find a group to join... WHICH I CAN'T!!!

 

This really is not good enough...

 

I am very aware that this is a new MMORPG and, as such, we can expect a few issues that will take a bit of time to fix. These should be the priority, however, not pushing out new content that only players who lucked into a busy server will actually be able to enjoy.

[Kiphere]

Please don't take this as an attack, it's not.

 

How many of the 50 pages of replies have successfully invited friends to join swtor during the free weekends or free 7 days of play time?

 

I havn't because me and all my friends came here together... most of them quit and went to other MMOs/back to WoW when the populations started to tank and they couldn't get enough people to run Ops and had to wait an hour for Qs. We rolled on one of the servers that ended up dieing.

 

Bioware will have server merges and character transfers as needed in the future--they have already confirmed this. But perhaps we could read between the lines a bit, maybe? Thinking caps on? They'd like to get everyone who wants to play into the game first, and all of their friends, too. In the game's infancy (it's 4 months old), a lot is still changing. The numbers of players actively logged in remains in flux (according to the very varied reports you guys claim) and there's major content releases coming several times this year.

The 'varied' reports are because people are reporting from different servers. I 'wish' I had some of the numbers people are COMPLAINING about. I see people talking about 100+ people on the fleet at prime time and being upset... I'm not sure I've seen a number over 50 in the last month on my server. The numbers are going to jump up after 1.2 and people who blindly support BW are going to say "See, it fixed it!" then 2 months later when they take a nose dive again and we still havn't merged servers they will say "1.3 will fix it!" and we'll get into a bad cycle until they offer up transfers... if they don't offer bulk transfers many people won't take advantage of it and transfers 'off' a dieing server will kill the server and anyone who doesn't take the transfer is even more screwed and will most likely leave. As for wanting to get 'everyone who wants to play the game into the game first' it's a pretty hard sell when I have a friend pop on for a weekend pass, get to the fleet then realize there aren't enough people for him to even run the esseles flashpoint.

 

So...calling sky is falling and merging everything up now would be a lot of time taken out of development and content, and the gain is pretty minimal. Bioware wants to grow the player base and give it more game to play, not to consolidate the player base and hang on to "what's left." Bring in some friends, and who cares what the server pop is--you'll be busy having fun. And server merges will come when the time is right from a dev standpoint, not from a player expectations point of view.

 

1. Developers don't manage the servers in general, I'm not 100% sure of BW's structure but I'm willing to bet the people who write code and develope content are not really responsible for merging databases, if they are... it's not a big deal to merge databases in like systems because, well, it's just copying fields. The biggest conflict is dealing with conflicting names across servers and even that is an easy fix so it wouldn't be "a lot of time taken out of developement"

2. Bioware can grow the content all they like, I can plant 40 acres of corn, my wife and I can't eat 40 acres of corn, nor can we tend it. If they build it, they will not come... they need to take care of what they've got before they lose it.

3. "bring in some friends and who cares what hte server pop is you'll be busy having fun" Yeah, if I bring in 15 friends and we structure our playtime together and pick appropriate classes that work together we can play this game regardless of the server populations. I'm not that popular or that well organized that I'm going to get 15 of my RL buddies to roll the appropriate classes and play at the same time all the time so we can all enjoy ourselves.

 

 

Merges are the 'right' answer and the time is NOW. You need vibrant communities to complain, praise, argue, and PLAY. You need buzz and right now the only buzz about the game is 'it's sort of a ghost town on most servers' which isn't exactly drawing in the crowds. Transfers don't fix the issue, paid transfers certainly dont. If my only option to play the game I'm paying for is to pay more so I can go to a server that actually has enough people to support 'playing the game' I will simply stop playing.

 

 

I wouldn't quit this game lightly... I havn't been this addicted to a game since early WoW. I love this game... The companion system is a stroke of brilliance, crafting is interesting, the story mode gameplay for single player is outright fantastic. I adore PVP as multiple classes and what little PVE content I've been able to do has been good, not the best I've had in a MMO but it's better than a lot of them. There are very few things I'd change about the 'game' as a whole but people are what make a game, not content.

 

I love the story... I'm good with low pop servers but only for so long before I'm "done"

I love the crafting but I have no one to sell too, no mats on the GTN and no one to buy from because my server is too low.

I love PVP but it takes forever to get in a Q because we can't muster 7 other people to Q up and when we do get a Q it dies early. On a good night, at prime time I'll get 5-6 games in a row if I'm lucky.

I wouldn't mind trying some of the Ops/flashpoints but I don't have the hour it takes to form a group because of the low populations, I can't just sit on fleet /lfging I want to 'play' the game.

 

Like I said, I love this game... I want it to succeed, I've played MMOs since early alpha/beta testing for the original Everquest. I've always been active in the communities and I'm working towards being a developer. MMOs are a big thing for me not just as a player but almost as a hobby and hopefully one day a career... I'm not just here complaining, I'm here to support what I see as the best option for making this game succesfull. If the community doesn't get more consolidated so people can actually 'enjoy' this game for what it is, it will go down in history as the best single player MMO ever and we'll never see it's first paid expansion pack.

[KodyPeralta]

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 do believe someone said something on another thread along the line of "Wait until summer, people will have a bit more time and kids will start pouring in again" (Not exactly what he said) I, for one, agree. there is a lot more activity during Summer.

[Blondesolid]

I'd rather have a few merges than cross server que'ing. Build up the community before you start throwing random people all around the galaxy. It just feels like such a no brainer to me for some reason. It's no at all a sign of defeat, it's a sign of holding a successful launch ! Now that the servers aren't being hammered to pieces, put some of us together!

[KodyPeralta]

If I may make a suggestion: Entertainers, or some class like it, from SWG. They brought the community together, and made the Cantina a socializing hub. It would give us players an opportunity to talk to other people, form groups, and then also give us something to do in our spare time.

[Drunkenpig]

I agree. I have yet to see a comment from BW that they plan to merge servers.

They will at some time in the future allow some type of transfer (details sketchy) on some servers.

This wont fix the problem.

The problem is too few people to allow for real MMO play.

Those who think the issue will be magically solved when the gimped "update" that is 1.2 comes live. Hold back the horde of new subscribers. Wooo, whole new worlds, an increase in the level cap, new capabilities in crafting, new characteristics we can develop. Woo....

Wait, that was a WoW update. Sorry.

 

No, some people will come back online to check it out and play a bit more for a couple of weeks, so instead of 4 people on Hoth (as there were last evening when I was playing on Naddist Rebels - pvp server East Coast that has next to zero population, no doubt the pve heros stay away from it) there might be 8. Woo, maybe I can get a 2 man together now.

 

Sorry, we need mergers. Forced mergers, automatic mergers, on a scale of ten to one. And we need it now. Not next year.

[KodyPeralta]

I agree. I have yet to see a comment from BW that they plan to merge servers.

They will at some time in the future allow some type of transfer (details sketchy) on some servers.

This wont fix the problem.

The problem is too few people to allow for real MMO play.

Those who think the issue will be magically solved when the gimped "update" that is 1.2 comes live. Hold back the horde of new subscribers. Wooo, whole new worlds, an increase in the level cap, new capabilities in crafting, new characteristics we can develop. Woo....

Wait, that was a WoW update. Sorry.

 

No, some people will come back online to check it out and play a bit more for a couple of weeks, so instead of 4 people on Hoth (as there were last evening when I was playing on Naddist Rebels - pvp server East Coast that has next to zero population, no doubt the pve heros stay away from it) there might be 8. Woo, maybe I can get a 2 man together now.

 

Sorry, we need mergers. Forced mergers, automatic mergers, on a scale of ten to one. And we need it now. Not next year.

 

I take it your a WoW Fanatic... If so... Quit raining your doom forecast/rise of WoW predictions on us, would you >

[-Dench]

If I may make a suggestion: Entertainers, or some class like it, from SWG. They brought the community together, and made the Cantina a socializing hub. It would give us players an opportunity to talk to other people, form groups, and then also give us something to do in our spare time.

 

I agree with this 100% and I've said it here before. The game needs non combat toons to bring the community together.

[Solo_Han]

How many of the 50 pages of replies have successfully invited friends to join swtor during the free weekends or free 7 days of play time?

 

I got all my friends that would play an MMO, they did, then they left. Some it simply wasn't for them (can't be helped), others - more recently - due to the lack of a multiplayer feel on the server (can be helped).

[SHIronman]

If I may make a suggestion: Entertainers, or some class like it, from SWG. They brought the community together, and made the Cantina a socializing hub. It would give us players an opportunity to talk to other people, form groups, and then also give us something to do in our spare time.

 

meh thats what twitter and facebook are for.

[Jederix]

Character transfers are on the horizon in the sense that they have been announced, with a target date for Asian servers. Server mergers have not.

 

Mergers never will be. No company in their right mind, unless their game is truly in its last death throes, would ever merge servers.

 

Way more bad PR in that one move than having a million dead servers can ever generate.

[Jederix]

I really know what u have miniscule, but I can't say that.

 

Wow, typical. No school today, I'm guessing?

[Jederix]

Bioware will have server merges and character transfers as needed in the future--they have already confirmed this.

 

Show me the quote where they say "server mergers are coming."

 

Yeah, there isn't one.

[DiabloDoom]

I think I've spent more money shoving quarters into the Time Crisis 3 and 4 at the local arcade than I've spent on TOR so far, but I digress.

 

However, if repeating the same quests over and over again isn't what you think of entertainment, then, unfortunately, MMOs are not for you.

 

Question: Isn't repeating the same action over and over how you play EVERY game (and how you go through life? i.e. breathing)?

 

I can name plenty of MMO's without questing. Anyway, if you can't accept or even grasp the fact that some people don't wish to start all over again on a new server then stop commenting. For an abundance of people in games like these they grind to the endgame because the endgame is what is considered the fun aspect of the game for them, not the grind to the endgame (almost like toiling all day in a job for your pay). Also your semantic argument is flawed and filled with spuriousness.

[Solo_Han]

Not sure how many of you have noticed this but:

 

BioWare and LucasArts are excited to announce that we have extended the amount of friends a player can invite in the Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ Friends Trial! Players who have an active Star Wars: The Old Republic subscription will now be able to invite up to twenty five of their friends into a 7-day free trial to explore the Star Wars™ galaxy.

 

From 3 to 25..? Seems like a desperate attempt from the no nothings on the board to sort things out without merging.

 

When a game comes out, people usually play it with their friends. I subbed as well as two of my mates. With 3 invites, that allows us to invite 9 other people into the game already. Which is, honestly, more than enough...

 

Now we have the ability to invite a total of 75 people!? How many friends does BW think I have? Let alone how many that would be interested in playing a Star Wars MMO.

[Kiphere]

Mergers never will be. No company in their right mind, unless their game is truly in its last death throes, would ever merge servers.

 

Way more bad PR in that one move than having a million dead servers can ever generate.

 

You're pretty wrong here.

 

1. the only 'buzz' about SWTOR right now is that it's a fun single player game and that the servers are ghost towns. This buzz has been around for a little while now and is only getting worse. the PR hit from merging servers can be mitigated easily and it's a single event that will not stay in the memory for long. the prolonged complaining on multiple forums, review sites, etc, about how servers are barren is going to keep driving potential new subscribers away until that goes away. People aren't going to come to a game they percieve as being empty. Sure the initial "Servers merging, F2P around the corner?" headlines will have a negative effect for about a month but after that people will have forgotten abou ***.

 

2. MMOs that are still doign just fine to this day have merged servers and not 'died' so "death throes" is a little extreme.

[Icysunx]

There will be a server merge in May when Diablo launches and the the amount of high population servers goes from 4 to 1.

[GellonSW]

Mergers never will be. No company in their right mind, unless their game is truly in its last death throes, would ever merge servers.

 

Way more bad PR in that one move than having a million dead servers can ever generate.

 

 

This type of nonsense is completely false. MMOs have merged servers in the past not because they are in their death throes but for consolidating resources and costs. This happens in EVERY TECHNOLOGY market. ALso the last statement is completely silly and ludicrous. A company already under scrutiny for decreasing population would rather combine their server populations to KEEP what players they have vs a million dead servers and drive off the few players there. I seriously hope you do not manage or run a business of any kind or you're self employed because this mindset is what drives business into the ground.

Edited April 4, 2012 by GellonSW

[Kiphere]

There is no other fix for this issue...

 

Even if 1.2 brings back a number of players it wont bring back enough. There are too many servers, there need to be less servers. Better to do this now and take the lumps that come with it than lose more subsribers due to boredom from lack of people to group with/queue with.

 

You already lost the people who don't like the game, you're losing the people who DO like the game now and those people you can't afford to lose. We all have differing levels of patience on this topic, mine is pretty immense but after I get my 1.2 alts up to 50 it'll start to fade as well, others... they don't have the patience I do.

[cipher_nemo]

There is no other fix for this issue...

 

Even if 1.2 brings back a number of players it wont bring back enough. There are too many servers, there need to be less servers. Better to do this now and take the lumps that come with it than lose more subsribers due to boredom from lack of people to group with/queue with.

 

You already lost the people who don't like the game, you're losing the people who DO like the game now and those people you can't afford to lose. We all have differing levels of patience on this topic, mine is pretty immense but after I get my 1.2 alts up to 50 it'll start to fade as well, others... they don't have the patience I do.

 

You're mixing FUD with fact. Total subscription numbers are not the problem. Number of subscribers who log in at any given moment and too many servers are the problem (especially when they have less to do and don't play as often as they did before).

 

But even server merges don't fix the problem. The PvE dailies are flawed by design in that they can't handle a large number of people doing them at once. So you want a low server population for PvE solo content that's not instanced. But you don't want a lower server pop since this makes for broken PvP and weak PvE group content that's a PITA for PUGers.

 

So what's the solution? There are a few ways to solve this, but ultimately free server transfers combined with a cross-server LFG for instanced content will solve most of this. To solve low server population, a moderate reduction/merging of servers would help, but it will also further break the PvE non-instanced solo dailies.

Edited April 4, 2012 by cipher_nemo

[Kiphere]

You're mixing FUD with fact. Total subscription numbers are not the problem. Number of subscribers who log in at any given moment and too many servers are the problem (especially when they have less to do and don't play as often as they did before).

 

But even server merges don't fix the problem. The PvE dailies are flawed by design in that they can't handle a large number of people doing them at once. So you want a low server population for PvE solo content that's not instanced. But you don't want a lower server pop since this makes for broken PvP and weak PvE group content that's a PITA for PUGers.

 

So what's the solution? There are a few ways to solve this, but ultimately free server transfers combined with a cross-server LFG for instanced content will solve most of this. To solve low server population, a moderate reduction/merging of servers would help, but it will also further break the PvE non-instanced solo dailies.

 

zones can be instanced in this game, back at launch there were multiple instances of "Dromund Kaas" etc. So your point sort of falls.

 

Cross server Q and cross server LFG for instances/ops brings a lot of headaches and damages overall community. Merging servers + the ability to instance planets which I'm 99% sure is already in game rectifies all the issues without introducing any new ones.

[evildestroyer]

zones can be instanced in this game, back at launch there were multiple instances of "Dromund Kaas" etc. So your point sort of falls.

 

Cross server Q and cross server LFG for instances/ops brings a lot of headaches and damages overall community. Merging servers + the ability to instance planets which I'm 99% sure is already in game rectifies all the issues without introducing any new ones.

 

Again with the damaging community crap.