Tarpada Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 I just started playing last week. Other than the frequent and very annoying lag spikes and disconnects, it is a great game. But why so many servers? There are tons of them. Most listed as light, with only a hand full hitting Standard+ on peak hours. I really enjoy running into people from time to time when playing MMOs but so far I do not think I have seen over 15 people on any given planet at one time, excluding fleet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZincThallinide Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 When SWTOR first started it had fewer servers, but they were all completely packed and so Bioware felt it would be smart to open more. Now, however, the number of people playing has fallen and there are too many servers. I've also heard that they increased maximum server capacity at some point after launch.. but I don't know if that ever really happened or what Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NorrinRaddd Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 When SWTOR first started it had fewer servers, but they were all completely packed and so Bioware felt it would be smart to open more. Now, however, the number of people playing has fallen and there are too many servers. I've also heard that they increased maximum server capacity at some point after launch.. but I don't know if that ever really happened or what Yes they did that and it kinda drifted the community further apart and created a few lies and what not, ive been playing since launch and their were more people. I see it like this December 20th Holiday week all the way up untill new years, it makes sense that it seemed as if more people were on because tada it was a holiday more people home means more peoplpe playing. Now this is not an excuse for some light servers but it does make a lot of sense if you think about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mhorham Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 its always like that in every mmo launched. A new game pulls in a ton of people who play the heck out of a game and they needed to accommodate them. Now many of those people ran out of content and play less often. Some have moved on looking for the next new game to explore. Others like me just play less often and shorter hours. Its good to see new people starting because that is what will keep a game a alive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kthx Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 When SWTOR first started it had fewer servers, but they were all completely packed and so Bioware felt it would be smart to open more. Now, however, the number of people playing has fallen and there are too many servers. You conveniently forgot how players were complaining loudly about long queues, which, at least in part, prompted Bioware's decision to add more servers. I've also heard that they increased maximum server capacity at some point after launch.. but I don't know if that ever really happened or what They've clearly stated they doubled capacity. Are you suggesting they are lying? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
run_hello Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 Yeah, what a smooth launch! Whoo! Hardly any queue times at all. Forward a measly four months. Subscribers have dropped off the face of the earth. For some reason they still run with too many servers. Servers turn into ghost towns. Subscriptions drop further. F2P incoming before 2013. It isn't exactly rocket surgery to figure out the pattern but good old "head in the sand" BioWare somehow remains clueless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackmuba Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 This rocket is injured, we need to do some medical science Now!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OddballEasyEight Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 (edited) I just started playing last week. Other than the frequent and very annoying lag spikes and disconnects, it is a great game. But why so many servers? There are tons of them. Most listed as light, with only a hand full hitting Standard+ on peak hours. I really enjoy running into people from time to time when playing MMOs but so far I do not think I have seen over 15 people on any given planet at one time, excluding fleet. When i started playing the game on early access, the shortest ques i ever saw were 2 hours. Thats the shortest mind you... Once the extra servers popped up the ques dropped down to about twenty minutes lowest, but the most populated servers still had several hours of ques. So people who just couldnt wait rolled their toons on the short qued servers and now theyre all crying because of it. Others, like me, realised that the population would drop and stayed on the server they had chosen, despite the ques. Also, bioware added servers because people were whining on the forums about the long ques... WE as a community, asked for these extra servers... sucks when whining comes back to bite you in the butt... Edited April 19, 2012 by OddballEasyEight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Revelationjp Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 It isn't exactly rocket surgery ts. Mixing metaphors 2012 champion! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JackDublin Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 As has been stated, they created a bunch of new servers to accommodate the inflow of traffic upon release. I remember a lot of "Heavy" server players were complaining that they had to wait in queue for 15-30mins. This is why we sadly chose a low population server so we didn't have to deal with wait times. Had we known they would dilute the player population into several low-population servers we probably would have stayed in the Heavy population server. Alas, we did not. And BioWare has yet to solve the new problem. *shrug* At least we got our PvP rewards back, right?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rawfox Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 Do you remember, when the servers opened and we had these nasty queue's all over ? The community went outrage and requested new servers like crazy, 100 pages full of hate here ... I have honestly no idea, why such a server(-farm/shard/cluster) cant swallow more then some thousand players. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
notebene Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 Yeah, it's unfortunate they caved to the queues. They should have rode them out. I created 5 'sets' of characters to get all the names I wanted across 5 servers. Before they added servers, they were all full, some of the first servers. The Harbinger, Mask of Nihilus, Vornskr, Lord Praven, Hyperspace Canon The Harbinger is the only one now days that creeps to heavy, the rest (including my home Vornskr) show standard. I like to believe Vornskr is a 'heavy' standard though. What I'd like to see them do is maybe make name + legacy unique and start merging some boxes. In the future, if you create a character and a name is taken (we'll say 'Bob'), you could start playing as 'Chip' and then once you get legacy, be allowed to rename that first character (presumably you would then pick 'Bob', which would be open because it's not paired with your chosen Legacy..."Jestersinjinsin"). Every future character wouldn't even need to check for uniqueness because Legacy names are already unique. Now, maybe an 'easy' solution from my perspective, because I highly doubt anyone has my name+legacy combos, so I'd be safe. I do see quite a few (while cute), shall we say, 'uncreative' combos that I bet quite a few people have, even with varied spellings, and they might be in for name changes, but it would certainly reduce it over 'only' the first name. My two cents. But as a 3rd string Monday morning QB, I really wish we would have waited the queues out a few weeks. It's not like (unsubstantiated)% of us weren't already used to the concept anyways. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rhizoprionodon Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 Part of the issue is that there is no incentive to join lower population servers. This consistently leads to new players joining already bulging servers, and encourages people on low level servers to roll alts on other servers (this was especially common pre-legacy). How about bioware make rare loot rates inversely proportional to server population size. That will encourage new players to fill from the bottom up, since they will have a higher chance of rare drops. Otherwise people are just going to keep filling the full servers. If you don't want to go that route, why not peg some servers as full (canderous ordo comes to mind) and prevent new players from joining them? Finally, if bioware chooses to merger servers, why not have a frank conversation with the servers effected. It would not be difficult to use a google docs style poll to determine the best approach for the light population servers. Just be careful, because some people need the lower populations in order to run the game more smoothly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RocNessMonster Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 When SWTOR first started it had fewer servers, but they were all completely packed and so Bioware felt it would be smart to open more. Now, however, the number of people playing has fallen and there are too many servers. I've also heard that they increased maximum server capacity at some point after launch.. but I don't know if that ever really happened or what You're exaggerating quite a bit. there were still standard and even a handful of light servers for launch. Every server had artificially high queues meant to scatter the population. There was absolutely zero need for new servers after they removed the artificial queue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
evildestroyer Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 Reason for having so many servers is because Bioware is not very smart. When game launched servers had 30mins-1 hour queues so they kept adding them but should have predicted their game was a failure and that many people would quit but no. All of this could have been avoided if they just increased server population caps but oh well we can enjoy looking at all the empty servers at server select screen though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diamondking Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 Also, bioware added servers because people were whining on the forums about the long ques... WE as a community, asked for these extra servers... sucks when whining comes back to bite you in the butt... Aye, I remember this. I'm sure all the people who chanted: "We want more servers or we quit" are the same crowd going: "We want server merges or we quit". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarpada Posted April 19, 2012 Author Share Posted April 19, 2012 Regardless of whether or not servers used to be full. They are not currently. Combining servers that are Light-Standard during peak hours would not result in long queues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tyraelium Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 Bad foresight on BioWare's part. The queues at launch were unacceptable, and the emptiness of the servers right now is unacceptable as well. There must be a mechanism in place for transfers and server population balance. They may blame the technology, but when you can instance every planet and every zone, there is no need for the hundreds of servers we have. Ultimately, it is BioWare/EA's fault. You can try and blame the community on this one but players can just leave when they are dissatisfied with the game. They shouldn't have launched with so many servers, they shouldn't have launched if they didn't have the technology to support large player populations, and they shouldn't have launched without a transfer service to keep populations balanced. The game's launch was very heavily rushed, and it really did a disservice to the longevity of this game. Can't believe no one had the balls to stand up and point these things out in their offices before they went ahead with the launch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cmder-Shepard Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 There was so many servers at launch. People whined about the ques to get in so they opened more, probably a little to many more looking at it now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
evildestroyer Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 well call i can say this is the main reason why i wont be resubbing once my game time runs out in 3 days. I honestly love this game but i just can NOT stand playing on a ghost server, my server had 45 min queues at launch and now my server barely hits standard, Guilds on my server struggle for raids due to people quitting the game so fast, and PVP queues can be 30 mins at times usually there will be only be 1 LV 50 match going on. Had they merged or allowed transfers i would have still enjoyed playing the game, and i gave bioware time, February, March and April and still no xfers or merges. With Diablo 3 and GW2 coming out soon i can care less now, Bioware lost a customer and i wont be back i am sure many other people feel the same way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anthonytats Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 Personally, i still dont see this whole "**** GHOST SERVER>!?!?!?" My server was on "Standard" last night on prime time. It had 180 people on fleet. I then went to Tat. Another 159. Korri and Kass both had about 90 people each on. Taris 70. This was just the Imp side. I personally dont see the problem with the server sizes. The problem is people look at "Full servers" and think "**** ONLY SERVER THAT HAS PEOPLE!!!_??!!??" So they then forget about their account and go sit in a 6 hour queue to get into Fatman/Tomb of Freedon Nadd etc. They then come and whinge how they have to queue for ages on one server. Thats the main problem. People all want to jump on the highest populated server. I love the server im on which ive not even seen reach heavy yet. The community is great, i know many people by actual names now. A lot of the Guilds are friendly with each other. Its a great community for the game. This has all come from Bioware doing staggered launching on the 13th December week (Which was the best idea possible) in the hopes that people would spread out between servers and they would then raise the server pop for certain populations. They did this very nicely for 2 days, 25 min queues now and again. Then they decided to listen to the whiners that were crying because they preordered on the 7th december they deserved to be in that instance. So they opened all the servers up. This meant everyone jumped on one or 2 "Full servers" and started crying about queues. Bioware updates all the populations and doubles it. A load of "Hardcore players" jump on Fatman and get 50. Then cry about nothing to do and stop playing. It spreads to other servers (Courtesy of the forums) that the ONLY way to play properly is to go on Fatman. Everyone rerolls on that, 2 hour queues. More whining. And here we are to this day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnimalMotherr Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 I think people just make up their own statistics. Over half of the US servers are standard or higher around 8pm eastern time. i've seen three at a time with wait times (or FULL). People get so overly dramatic about the servers. Bioware has announced that they are going to release server transfers, but they can't just materialize something out of thin air. They have to write the programs to make it happen. As for the actual OP's question, its been explained. People *****ed at launch that there wasn't enough servers so BW gave us more. They need plenty of servers to ensure new players have room. I think people forget that it was their decision to play on the server they chose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
funkiestj Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 As for the actual OP's question, its been explained. People *****ed at launch that there wasn't enough servers so BW gave us more. They need plenty of servers to ensure new players have room. what they need is the ability to adapt -- if Bioware adds the ability to easily transfer toons then the problem will solve itself. I think people forget that it was their decision to play on the server they chose. Server population changes over time. Not everyone can predict the future. If we have the ability to adapt (transfer toons) then we don't need to be prescient. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreySix Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 Fort Garnik is empty, just the way I like it. Make sure you and your friends stay off of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anthonytats Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 what they need is the ability to adapt -- if Bioware adds the ability to easily transfer toons then the problem will solve itself. Server population changes over time. Not everyone can predict the future. If we have the ability to adapt (transfer toons) then we don't need to be prescient. You REALLY think that Transfers will help? All people are whining about is they want transfers so they can transfer off to Fatman/Freedon Nadd etc. Great. Lets all transfer our accounts to one server and QQ about queues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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