Daniel Erickson on Server Population.

[ColonelM]

Why did Bioware choose to go with the multiple server shard model anyways? The technology has been out there to have a single login server and simply instance zones as needed, so there isn't any need for server merges, or to set up artificial division of the player base by making people choose which friends to play with (by having to pick which server to roll on).

 

SOE had this working with Everquest 2 in 2004. If a server can handle 500 people in a zone, and it gets to 450, it just spawned a new instance of that zone and new people entering ended up in zone.2. They even had ways to switch instances, so if your friends were in South Qeynos.37, you could join them.

 

Instead, you now have the classic MMO death knell issue... if you don't merge servers, the game feels empty. If you DO merge servers, players assume the game is dying and get nervous. I really wish MMO developers would stop re-inventing the same tired wheel with the same mistakes. You guys did some really good things with this game, but so many of the issues are things that have already been solved in other games over the last decade, and now you have to re-solve them again, because you didn't look around while designing.

 

I'm a bit confused in this area as well. I seem to remember at launch (or was it in beta?) there being instanced areas. In order to group with some of my friends, we had to switch instances so we could see each other. I wonder why that's not the case anymore. Is it just because I'm not playing on a high-pop server or is this completely gone now?

 

Moal

[Bluerodian]

character transfers are only going to make it worse! everyone will just transfer to the fatman or something like that! cant they see that?

 

we cant see population data, so how do i know that server a has a better pop than server b?

 

this is going to be a disaster. the only pop data is on dulfy.net and thats outdated as it was taken during the guild summit.

 

server mergers are the only real solution right now

 

It depends on how they do server transfers. They may make the low pops free to transfer to, and fatman locked to any incoming transfers. Only thing you can do with Fatman, is leave it.

[Sotaudi]

Whats the bet they'll be micro-transactions?

 

A microtransaction would be purchasing an ingame item or something of that nature. While games that include microtransactions will often include billing for a name change or server transfer in the same mechanics as their microtransactions (i.e., an in-game store), name changes and server transfers or things of that sort are meta-game functions and are traditionally considered premium services and should not be lumped into the same category as a microtransaction.

Edited April 17, 2012 by Sotaudi

[Kthx]

we cant see population data, so how do i know that server a has a better pop than server b?

 

this is going to be a disaster. the only pop data is on dulfy.net and thats outdated as it was taken during the guild summit.

 

You can see server loads on torstatus.net. While not the same as population data, it should give you a very good indication of the relative population levels between servers.

Edited April 17, 2012 by Kthx

[drkmistress]

I think if they do this like Rift did this would be a great move. Didn't Rift server transfers also take in note as to what faction you were? I thought they did though I cannot recall exactly but I do know it did improve game play and was well received by the majority of players. This would make a mass exodus to servers that are already full impossible yet allow those of us on servers where it is difficult to get a group to do anything find a viable new home.

[solidkjames]

12.14.2011 , 11:18 AM | #650

 

 

Yeah let's all get in at the same time where the servers crash and everyone has a queue where they can't play. It seems that in time people would realize that you can't launch with everyone at a mad rush and then in 2 months everyone saying MY SERVER IS A GHOST TOWN MERGE IT OUR I QUIT. Kudos to Bioware for doing it the right way. Carry on children.

 

 

 

Here was my post from 12/14/2011 concerning this very subject when the entire forums were flooded with posts after posts of people SCREAMING how they should be allowed in the game immediately and that servers weren't even full when Bioware was trying to manage this issue so we wouldn't come to the point we are at now. You can't argue with stupid people no matter how hard you try because they will drag you down to their level and always beat you with experience.

Edited April 17, 2012 by solidkjames

[lectotrans]

when transfers go through you can all transfer to Kaas City! we have a lot of nice people! come fill our server up!

[SinisterZz]

Wow finally some responce about this issue. We need to have this asap as Tassaa Bareesh is almost a ghost town.

[TonyIommi]

"overall population of players has not changed"

More like the overall population had its stats padded, to avoid drawing attention from EA. The reason it would not show a significant drop is because of the free weekends, trials accounts, and now the free month automatically applied to inactive accounts.

 

 

They just need to flat out admit the problem, insted of point fingers to take blame off themself.

 

That's crap and you know it. People on these forums always take the WORST possible interpretation of what they say. For the RECORD he wasn't blaming anyone or anything. He stated what is simply the most evident thing in the universe. People have lives and they play less after the hype has died down a bit. I haven't been on in a couple days, I have exams coming up. The peak concurrent users has died down a bit because people have lives and things to attend to. They've leveld their dudes to 50, so they mostly log on for alts or pvp or raids. Not 6-8 hours a day like before.

[Zsavooz]

the overall population hasn't changed? BS!

[Tsaritsin]

Btw folks, your looking at the wrong bit,

 

Just cast your eyes over to the right, big blue box, 3rd one down,

 

All your problems solved,

 

 

I loled so hard at the Dodo running away with a bit cat chasing it

 

Edited April 17, 2012 by Tsaritsin

[Jederix]

That exact plan bit NCSoft in the butt when they released Aion. As server queues grew to 1 and 2 hours, players figured out how to stay online just about indefinitely, increasing some queues into the 6-7 hour estimated time range.

 

It is actually better to open more servers (within reason) and consolidate later, but the MMO industry (primarily the community) has attached such a negative vibe to any sort of server merges (claims that it signals failure rather than the usual post-launch slump for a new MMO) that companies are wary of doing so. Even Blizzard has more than a few empty and low-pop servers that need to be consolidated, but you won't ever see them do that.

 

Hey now. Common sense has no place when talking about server mergers.

 

Most of those crowing about mergers are those who don't want to have to do anything to have their issues resolved...they definitely do not want to pay for it.

 

Mergers are bad publicity, no matter how badly they may be needed. Why no one understands this I will never know.

[VicSkimmr]

the overall population hasn't changed? BS!

 

I know it's hard to believe, but not everybody plays all at once, and over time people play less. It doesn't mean they aren't still subscribers.

[Suba]

Servers need to be dealt with in a very quick fashion. My guild and I like many others from Bloodfin in Galaxies are on The Fatman. Recently a ton of guilds from other servers have decided it was time to transfer to The Fatman. One guild has over 3,000 members alone spread across numerous satellite guilds.

 

This has caused Queue times at most hours of the day and increased server performance issues. Its great having the server start groaning under stress and have 2-3 people in a raid get kicked from server only to find themselves in a 1000 person queue to get back in.

[LrdScorpio]

For all of those complaining about the decision to err on lower server pops rather than high server queues:

 

The very first rule you learn in any simple high school level business class is the concept of supply and demand. This concept does not solely revolve around pricing.

 

From a business sense, it is better to supply the product to everybody in a sub-optimal way then it is to limit access to ensure only some customers can enjoy the product to its fullest potential. Even though the server management didn't work out perfectly, the chosen course of action was the correct one.

 

Long server queues would make more people mad, would result in more cancellations and be more difficult to manage then low server populations. This is all relative to both scenarios having the same base total population.

[TonyIommi]

That exact plan bit NCSoft in the butt when they released Aion. As server queues grew to 1 and 2 hours, players figured out how to stay online just about indefinitely, increasing some queues into the 6-7 hour estimated time range.

 

It is actually better to open more servers (within reason) and consolidate later, but the MMO industry (primarily the community) has attached such a negative vibe to any sort of server merges (claims that it signals failure rather than the usual post-launch slump for a new MMO) that companies are wary of doing so. Even Blizzard has more than a few empty and low-pop servers that need to be consolidated, but you won't ever see them do that.

 

Instead blizzard implements cross realm functionality and bullies their customer base to pay for transfers to other servers. Gotta love it. Don't correct the problem, just alleviate the symptom. If BW devs are reading this, and I hope they are I would plead with them to correct the ACTUAL PROBLEM and don't go down the blizzard route. Consolidate servers however is required and ignore the stupid trolls whose voices are given to much authority and weight these days anyway. Do the correct thing. SOLVE THE UNDERLYING problem. To many servers and a population spread to thin.

[Aiysis]

Instead blizzard implements cross realm functionality and bullies their customer base to pay for transfers to other servers. Gotta love it. Don't correct the problem, just alleviate the symptom. If BW devs are reading this, and I hope they are I would plead with them to correct the ACTUAL PROBLEM and don't go down the blizzard route. Consolidate servers however is required and ignore the stupid trolls whose voices are given to much authority and weight these days anyway. Do the correct thing. SOLVE THE UNDERLYING problem. To many servers and a population spread to thin.

I remember Blizzard offering free transfers to correct population issues in the past. I don't know if they still do it but they definitely did at one point.

 

My subscription to SWTOR runs out tonight and I will not be renewing due to the fact that I'm stuck on a dead server. I've already given BW way too much money to play an MMO with no multiplayer. When/if transfers are ever offered I won't be resubscribing unless they're free.

Edited April 17, 2012 by Aiysis

[Sotaudi]

Why did Bioware choose to go with the multiple server shard model anyways? The technology has been out there to have a single login server and simply instance zones as needed, so there isn't any need for server merges, or to set up artificial division of the player base by making people choose which friends to play with (by having to pick which server to roll on).

 

SOE had this working with Everquest 2 in 2004. If a server can handle 500 people in a zone, and it gets to 450, it just spawned a new instance of that zone and new people entering ended up in zone.2. They even had ways to switch instances, so if your friends were in South Qeynos.37, you could join them.

 

Instead, you now have the classic MMO death knell issue... if you don't merge servers, the game feels empty. If you DO merge servers, players assume the game is dying and get nervous. I really wish MMO developers would stop re-inventing the same tired wheel with the same mistakes. You guys did some really good things with this game, but so many of the issues are things that have already been solved in other games over the last decade, and now you have to re-solve them again, because you didn't look around while designing.

 

The single server login approach is not without problems. Character names are important to people. They are also what makes the character unique. If you go with a single server login approach, you either create a greater likelihood that names will be taken or go with the ludicrous approach STO did by allowing non-unique character names, but tacking on an account name or some other lengthy identifier to make the name unique. This creates names that don't fit for roleplaying purposes and just look ridiculous (e.g., Darth@Vader'saccount). The longer names also make invites, tells, and other communications more cumbersome.

 

Even without that, just because you or I don't mind dealing with instances like EQ2 had doesn't mean that it is a popular solution. Besides, your assumption that such instancing is not already in the game is incorrect. The game has the ability, and it has been used. It was fairly common to run into multiple instances of the same zone or on the fleet when the game first launched. And guess what? A lot of people absolutely hated it.

 

So your concept that the game is behind the times is incorrect as is your assumption that these problems have been "solved." Just because single logon based systems exist doesn't meant that it is the best approach. Among other things (e.g., smaller, more personal communities), going with a multiple server based approach allows for the use of the same character name on different servers without adding long individual identifiers to the name. And the game already has phasing of zones to control populations, but some people hate it. Having a single login and phasing zones would only exacerbate the problem.

 

I'm a bit confused in this area as well. I seem to remember at launch (or was it in beta?) there being instanced areas. In order to group with some of my friends, we had to switch instances so we could see each other. I wonder why that's not the case anymore. Is it just because I'm not playing on a high-pop server or is this completely gone now?

 

Moal

 

The mechanism is in the game. You are just not seeing it because the population has spread out and it is not as necessary.

[StyxzieWaterz]

I'm glad he picks some random interweb site to post that on vs somewhere like...oh...HERE MAYBE?! THESE are the players being effected...not the damn readers somewhere obscure.

 

You obviously have no idea how journalism (or PR for that matter) work.

 

OT: Free xferes and mergers are in now away indicative of mmo's vitality.

 

WoW just finished a big server consolidation about three months before cata dropped iirc. The game was doing fine then.

 

I swear, ppl just have some odd vendetta against TOR. Like it is some serial violator of sidewalk etiquette or something.

[TonyIommi]

I remember Blizzard offering free transfers to correct population issues in the past. I don't know if they still do it but they definitely did at one point.

 

My subscription to SWTOR runs out tonight and I will not be renewing due to the fact that I'm stuck on a dead server. I've already given BW way too much money to play an MMO with no multiplayer. When/if transfers are ever offered I won't be resubscribing unless they're free.

 

They don't. They offer free migrations. Which is if your on one of the high pop servers you are welcome to leave and join a low pop one. Of course few if any actually partake in this offer because it's *********** ******. Rift offers them for free and I would hope swtor follow suit. Swtor doesn't have 10 million people so it really can't bully it's player base into payin for subs like warcraft does.

[RickRedOne]

I know it's hard to believe, but not everybody plays all at once, and over time people play less. It doesn't mean they aren't still subscribers.

 

Plus you have all the people who say they have quit, but continue to post because they still have a subscription, and are thus still subscribers.

[Deewe]

looks like a lot of PR smoke screen to me and after the fact excuses. Some outright lies as well. Server populations are down across the board, forget about "people have shifted when they play"

Quite so. Allowing controlled characters transfer to selected servers would not have created huge queue times.

 

Even more it would help balancing factions.

[Ansultares]

They’re also all tech solutions, so none of them are going to show up tomorrow.

Are we talking one month, three months, six months?

[TonyIommi]

I know it's hard to believe, but not everybody plays all at once, and over time people play less. It doesn't mean they aren't still subscribers.

 

I for one haven't had time to play as much. I still love the game and am still subbed but exams are this week for one and mass effect came out for another. Only so much time in the day. I still log into prime time to raid or pvp or such.

[Kubernetic]

Tbh, I think they should give the merging priority, take imperial and republic numbers into account, and merge servers in a way that balances it out as much as possible. I know overall there are way more Empire players than there are republic, so regardless we will still have some imbalance here.

There are a couple of reasons why I think merging servers should take priority over transfers.

 

1. It will leave servers dead, no question about it. If we have to actually pay for the transfer you will have people left behind because they either can't afford the extra few bucks, or are not willing to use their money to transfer because the server is failing, out of no fault of their own. As such leading to enjoying the game less, and ultimately quitting the game entirely.

 

2. Merging a server over allowing server transfers will allow us to still keep our original servers community to some extent, whereass character transfers will split the community into much smaller groups.

 

3. You will solve most if not all of the current issues with dying servers all in one go.

 

Now, you don't have to merge servers to the brink of collapse, there are plenty of servers now that barely got players on them, or have one side drastically outnumbering the other. Fpr instance, on my Server, the Peragus Mining Facility. We have around 50-70 players on the Republic fleet at peek times, on the imperial side its atleast double that. During daytime we have maybe 20 people on the fleet on republic side, while again, imperials got double that. This is neither alot of players, nor is it particularily balanced.

 

And as you say, if they can handle double the amount of players now than they could at launch, Merging half of the servers shouldn't even get us close to queue even at peak times and/or special events.

 

 

Just my 2 cents.

 

These are all great points, and I agree with all of them. I've been a proponent of the server transfers coming first, but I believe that BioWare is probably doing this as they usually do, which is start from scratch and build it once, as well as can be done. The same coding system which will enable one-to-one transfers is probably the same system that will enable many-to-many transfers (server merges), and can just be used dynamically based on whichever is needed at the time.

 

If they can get away with it without being seriously hammered and ruining their chances at growing the player base over time, then I would fully support mergers, as long as there's some way to compensate players who are forced to change their names.

 

As you can see from these forums, many of the players are quite attached to their names, and it would be a huge shame if they forced entire servers full of people to have to change their names due to a management decision, or an outcry by other users. Those people have a right to their names too.

 

One solution to this issue is of course to separate the uniqueness of names based on the actual account name. This should obviously be something other than the login name of the game client, but this would make it more like other games where your Legacy name could be <legacy>@<username> or something similar, which would enable people with duplicate names to keep them, even when being transferred into the same server. This changes their naming dynamics a little bit, but I'm not sure there's another way other than just basically forcing all of these other players to abandon the names they have chosen (and may identify with), and that just doesn't sound right to me.

 

But otherwise, I do agree with the notion of server mergers. It would indeed help maintain the communities that have been built, might be able to balance out some of the usual player faction imbalances (in some cases), would help prevent "stranding" users who couldn't pay for transfers on the old dead servers, and fix most of the issues.

 

To all o fthose re-rolling on Fatman as some kind of "lesson" to BioWare... your actions are not doing ANYTHING to make anything happen faster. All you're doing is making it so that you will be in an overloaded queue, when you could have had many more hours playtime if you had only selected the next most popular servers and filled those up as well.

 

Remember, all you have to do is use the sorting options at the top of the server chart, and arrange them based on population from highest to lowest. Fatman should show up at the top (currently) in North America, and the next server down will be the next most currently populated with playing users, and the next server down will be third most populated, etc.

 

But again, BioWare is doing everything they can to get the server transfers out as fast as possible. And what they have NEVER said was that they were going to split the servers up, like splitting Fatman into multiple servers.

 

Maybe the best course IS to merge servers (as a free service), then charge (a moderate to larger amount) for transfers (outside of the Aussie/Kiwi zone) so that those who have intentionally rolled characters to Fatman to "punish" BioWare will end up having to pay to transfer their characters out of Fatman, or transfer new characters to it.