The reason why I think server mergers need to happen and aren't a bad thing.

[Ascended]

Before I get started into my argument I would like to say that I really do like this game. I'm not bashing any single aspect of the game (with exception to server population) and I am not here to start off some horrible flame wars with the fans of this game.

 

I would also like to point out that I am a European player currently on the low population server Luka Sene. During peak time in the republic fleet we don't get much more than around 50 players and Imperial side sometimes hits the 100 mark, so you should know what I mean by light server population.

 

I have been playing the game since launch and have a Level 50 Commando, a Level 48 Sith Inquisitor and a Level 42 Jedi Sentinel and therefore the argument of "Go and roll on another server" is not valid as I am not willing to start all that again.

 

OK so on to the main point of this post.

 

There are currently only 2 English speaking servers in Europe that are showing a heavy population load. They are The Red Eclipse (PvE) and The Tomb of Freedon Nadd (PvP). The other 40 or so servers are mostly either standard or light and therein lies the problem.

I was placed in this server at the launch of the game and at the time I had no idea what the server population would be so I had no reason to search out for another server.

 

I will say though that I think Bioware's decision at launch to open more and more servers instead of just increasing the capacity of them was their biggest mistake as several months after the release of the game, we are now seeing the number of players staying with the game has stabilised and is holding at the 1.25 million mark (very well done by the way, that is a good figure), however we have enough servers to handle several times that number.

 

I honestly believe that the best thing for this game right now is to merge some of these other light pop servers together to create a better experience for the people who are currently playing on those servers. And my argument is this...

 

Who cares what the media says about this game if you merge servers?

 

Surely you want to keep the customers that are fans of the game happy than care if some media reporter with nothing better to do turns round and calls your game a failure because your are trying to keep your fans happy.

 

Also in who's eyes is the game a failure if you merge servers? I guarantee the customers wouldn't care as they are now all playing on high pop servers and enjoying themselves a lot more. Also that alone is going to get more people into the game from word of mouth, as when it takes mere seconds to get a group for anything you want on any planet you are on rather than the half an hour or longer it currently takes on my server. People who like the game but were disappointed by the lack of players are going to come back.

 

OK so that's the main point of my argument over, but there is also another option to re-balance servers and that is free or paid character transfers. Let's start with paid transfers.

Now I don't think this is as good of an idea and this is why. Every single player on the low pop servers are going to instantly transfer to the only 2 heavy pop servers in Europe. Why is this a bad thing? Well because now you have 2 servers that are way over capacity and have massive queue times, which is also going to put players off as having to wait an hour to even begin playing the game is not good. Also this is just gonna get the players currently playing on those heavy pop servers to move somewhere else and the cycle begins anew.

 

Now onto free character transfers. This is essentially the same as a server merger but only gives players a certain choice of which server they go to. Now if I am sitting on Luka Sene and have the option to move to another server and that server has the option to move to Luka Sene. How do I know what the server will be like? It could be worse as everyone on that server could have moved to Luka Sene and I could be sitting on another dead server with no way to move back again. That doesn't mean that free transfers are a bad thing, just that they need to be handled carefully for them to work.

 

I'm going to give you a quick example on how this could go wrong below.

I'm going to reference back to my WoW days. I started playing on a server called Shadowmoon and free transfers were enabled to move to another server called Magtheridon. We were only given a week to decide to move before the option to transfer was closed and on the final day my guild decided to transfer. Some members of the guild did not make it and were then stuck on Shadowmoon. The only advantage of this is that we were now on one of the best PvP servers in the European game but we did not know that was going to happen. Although as an Alliance guild, being stuck on a PvP server with the best Horde guild in the world (Nihilium) was a challenge at the best of times.

 

So anyway those are my reason for wanting server mergers, I hope you take the time to read the post as it was well thought out and has no intention of starting a flame war but in case you can't be bothered here's the

 

TL : DR What does it matter to your currently paying customers what the media thinks about server mergers if it makes your experience a lot more enjoyable?

 

Thank you very much.

Edited April 25, 2012 by Ascended

[ConradLionhart]

I think it is more a technical difficulty for the devs. The legacy system already complicates server transfers, so a more difficult server merge would be... even more difficult.

[Darth_Moonshadow]

TL : DR What does it matter to your currently paying customers what the media thinks about server mergers if it makes your experience a lot more enjoyable?

 

Because then the paying customers come back here and complain that they were forced to rename themselves because of a server merge they "didn't know of" occurred so now they lose the cool names they thought of.

 

Unless you can get two whole servers to agree to a rename and to not cry about it later, server merges won't happen.

[SaintAvalon]

I think it is more a technical difficulty for the devs. The legacy system already complicates server transfers, so a more difficult server merge would be... even more difficult.

 

It's all data in a database, it's so simple to merge it's not even funny.

 

Merging is easy, convincing a company that removing servers won't make the game seem like it's "hurt" is the hard part.

 

Companies have this idea that if they shut down servers or "merge" servers that they are sending a bad message...

 

They just forget that when people have no one to play with they will instead quit the game making it far worse.

 

Merge the servers, save the world.

[Ascended]

Hmm well it should simply be a matter of changing your legacy and or character name if it is duplicated on the new server. WoW has been doing that for a long time.

[LordTie]

With transfers they need to be from over pop servers to light pop servers only.

[Ascended]

It's all data in a database, it's so simple to merge it's not even funny.

 

Merging is easy, convincing a company that removing servers won't make the game seem like it's "hurt" is the hard part.

 

Companies have this idea that if they shut down servers or "merge" servers that they are sending a bad message...

 

They just forget that when people have no one to play with they will instead quit the game making it far worse.

 

Merge the servers, save the world.

 

Thank you

[SaintAvalon]

Hmm well it should simply be a matter of changing your legacy and or character name if it is duplicated on the new server. WoW has been doing that for a long time.

 

Rift did mergers and the few that qq'ed were in the minority as most were happy to have people to play with.

 

Rift now allows transfers every 7 days free of charge, it's simple, the trick is to make the company realize that merging is better than losing your subscribers to the lack of players.

[Ascended]

Because then the paying customers come back here and complain that they were forced to rename themselves because of a server merge they "didn't know of" occurred so now they lose the cool names they thought of.

 

Unless you can get two whole servers to agree to a rename and to not cry about it later, server merges won't happen.

 

Well if that's the only bad thing that happens, I think players will get over it for the chance to play with hundreds if not thousands of new players would over rule any argument I had about having to change my character name.

[llesna]

Given how underpopulated some of the servers are (according to torstatus), server merges are badly needed for a lot of servers.

 

It really can't come soon enough for a lot of players.

 

I was fortunate enough to roll on a decent (but not really high-enough) population server (RPPvE, The Progenitor) and given how much trouble I have with grouping sometimes, I shudder to think how it must be for other servers!

[Ascended]

Rift did mergers and the few that qq'ed were in the minority as most were happy to have people to play with.

 

Rift now allows transfers every 7 days free of charge, it's simple, the trick is to make the company realize that merging is better than losing your subscribers to the lack of players.

 

So is Rift a better game because of that?

[SaintAvalon]

So is Rift a better game because of that?

 

Rift is a better game (in competing with itself of course) by allowing transfers.

 

If they didn't merge people would have quit. I almost quit prior to mergers because all the things to do in game were moot because there was no one to do them with.

 

Merge happened and I had a full set of people to play with.

 

Basically it's this: Don't merge inflate success by stating you have x amount of servers and how awesome the game is for having that many...

 

or... Merge servers and prevent people from simply quitting because they can't do **** in game.

 

EDIT: Quick edit, I'm on your side Ascended. I'm not saying Rift or any other game is "better", i'm just tying to show others how easy this task is.

 

4 People are on the fleet including my gf... that means if I log in right now we have 5 people on the fleet..

 

woohoo... Sure it's late night, but other games (WoW, Rift, etc) have more people on at any given time, hell even Everquest 2 has more online.

Edited April 25, 2012 by SaintAvalon

[Darth_Moonshadow]

Well if that's the only bad thing that happens, I think players will get over it for the chance to play with hundreds if not thousands of new players would over rule any argument I had about having to change my character name.

 

You'd think that.

 

They won't.

 

They will cry and moan for months on end and *quit because "Bioware is trashing my uniqueness by making me rename".

 

Players are irrational.

 

*And by quit I mean continue to pay $15 a month to sit on the forums and bash Bioware over and over.

[Ascended]

Rift is a better game (in competing with itself of course) by allowing transfers.

 

If they didn't merge people would have quit. I almost quit prior to mergers because all the things to do in game were moot because there was no one to do them with.

 

Merge happened and I had a full set of people to play with.

 

Basically it's this: Don't merge inflate success by stating you have x amount of servers and how awesome the game is for having that many...

 

or... Merge servers and prevent people from simply quitting because they can't do **** in game.

 

EDIT: Quick edit, I'm on your side Ascended. I'm not saying Rift or any other game is "better", i'm just tying to show others how easy this task is.

 

4 People are on the fleet including my gf... that means if I log in right now we have 5 people on the fleet..

 

woohoo... Sure it's late night, but other games (WoW, Rift, etc) have more people on at any given time, hell even Everquest 2 has more online.

 

Ahh when I asked is Rift a better game, I didn't mean better than SWTOR, I just meant better for the players.

 

I'll tell you that it is a situation that needs to be resolved quickly to keep people playing the game and I think any negative press would pale in comparison to the advantages of merging the servers and keeping the current player base happy, even if you had to change your character/legacy name.

 

Although I am sure some WoW fanboys would be laughing gleefully all the way the there next boring expansion with pandas, but really who cares about those people?

[Shingara]

I dont even think they need server merges, what i think they need are server migrations, there are some servers that are way over populated and faction inbalanced, shift some peeps about via there choice and balancing the servers out is alot better.

 

Some of the ones that are emptied by the server migrations keep up for the free trial weekends and job done.

Edited April 25, 2012 by Shingara

[Ascended]

You'd think that.

 

They won't.

 

They will cry and moan for months on end and *quit because "Bioware is trashing my uniqueness by making me rename".

 

Players are irrational.

 

*And by quit I mean continue to pay $15 a month to sit on the forums and bash Bioware over and over.

 

I think in a way your are right, SOME players are irrational. SOME will complain. SOME will quit (or keep bashing the forums). But the majority of people currently on the low pop servers will welcome the merger and the chance to play the game the way it was intended, An MMO, a MASSIVELY multi-player RPG. Having 5 people on the fleet with no one to play with is not fun, no matter how good the levelling is (and it is good).

[SaintAvalon]

I dont even think they need server merges, what i think they need are server migrations, there are some servers that are way over populated and faction inbalanced, shift some peeps about via there choice and balancing the servers out is alot better.

 

Some of the ones that are emptied by the server migrations keep up for the free trial weekends and job done.

 

Problem with this is people have friends with them, or have made friends in game and don't want to lose them. Server transfers for entire groups gets more complicated. What if a high end guild decides to make the jump and they also happen to have most of the population.

 

If Still Alive transferred from my server our server would be dead, i'd quit the game at that point because we'd have no one on our server.

 

They need simple mergers for low pops to make them med to high pops.

 

Full pop servers need a lock to prevent others from rerolling to them, this is a derp thing they have yet to do.

 

Then they need to allow those that choose to move off of a Full Pop server to move to one of the newly merged servers.

 

This creates perfect harmony

[Shingara]

Problem with this is people have friends with them, or have made friends in game and don't want to lose them. Server transfers for entire groups gets more complicated. What if a high end guild decides to make the jump and they also happen to have most of the population.

 

If Still Alive transferred from my server our server would be dead, i'd quit the game at that point because we'd have no one on our server.

 

They need simple mergers for low pops to make them med to high pops.

 

Full pop servers need a lock to prevent others from rerolling to them, this is a derp thing they have yet to do.

 

Then they need to allow those that choose to move off of a Full Pop server to move to one of the newly merged servers.

 

This creates perfect harmony

 

I cant see how one guild has the most population on a heavy server. And migrations are exactly what your on about not merges, a merge destroys the host servers and takes the name of one of the servers being merged. Migration shifts groups of players from high pops inbalanced servers to low pops to balance and take them to standard.

 

Also merges dont allow choice, you dont have the choice to stay on a server that is shutting you simply get shifted so migrations are yet again what your on about not merges.

[Ascended]

I dont even think they need server merges, what i think they need are server migrations, there are some servers that are way over populated and faction inbalanced, shift some peeps about via there choice and balancing the servers out is alot better.

 

Some of the ones that are emptied by the server migrations keep up for the free trial weekends and job done.

 

Yea but migrations are basically the same as the free character transfers that I wrote about in the original post.

 

Also what I would do is close the really low pop servers after the migration as you don't want free weekend trial players being dumped on empty servers as that is not gonna get you more customers. They need to see it as a massive vibrant community with tons of people at any given time.

[Darth_Moonshadow]

I think in a way your are right, SOME players are irrational. SOME will complain. SOME will quit (or keep bashing the forums). But the majority of people currently on the low pop servers will welcome the merger and the chance to play the game the way it was intended, An MMO, a MASSIVELY multi-player RPG. Having 5 people on the fleet with no one to play with is not fun, no matter how good the levelling is (and it is good).

 

Indeed, but currently the only way around that would be a X server tool. Granted, there will be people complaining about that as well, as anyone who is a Warcraft General Alumni will tell you, but it solves the whole "find someone to play with" problem without people losing their names.

 

Either way, none of these ideas will work. People will complain because they like to complain. As I stated in another thread:

 

FACT: Nothing an MMO developer will ever do will make the whiners happy. They will continue to cry and moan for features until they are implemented then afterwards cry and moan about how much the features suck even though it was made to their exact specifications.

[Shingara]

Yea but migrations are basically the same as the free character transfers that I wrote about in the original post.

 

Also what I would do is close the really low pop servers after the migration as you don't want free weekend trial players being dumped on empty servers as that is not gonna get you more customers. They need to see it as a massive vibrant community with tons of people at any given time.

 

I never said i didnt disagree with you infact if you read what i wrote you shall see exactly that

 

And if there is only 2 maybe 3 servers for trial weekends across US, EU and Oceana then the servers will be fine as they will only be used for a weekend, they are mainly in the starter areas and can be migrated to a server auto or a choice when they buy the game and subscribe instead of bloating the database on live servers with stored template chars which have to be cleaered and can simply be wipped on a weekend trial server.

[SaintAvalon]

I cant see how one guild has the most population on a heavy server. And migrations are exactly what your on about not merges, a merge destroys the host servers and takes the name of one of the servers being merged. Migration shifts groups of players from high pops inbalanced servers to low pops to balance and take them to standard.

 

Also merges dont allow choice, you dont have the choice to stay on a server that is shutting you simply get shifted so migrations are yet again what your on about not merges.

 

Read my post again.

 

I didn't say anything about mergers being choices... Merge the low pops to give us higher pop servers.

 

That's merging.

 

Then you take migrations allowing people to move from full servers to those newly merged servers...

 

The old servers can wither and die for all i care.

 

My post covers all the types of "merging/migrations/etc" terms you want to use. My post also covers low pop, medium pop, and high pop/full pop servers. As well as how to handle each, starting with mergers first so you can see where the balance is at before you open migration from full servers.

 

Simple... still.

 

EDIT: The minority will qq after merging because of naming issues... and other irrelevant issues. Those people will complain no matter what, and in the end they will quit or enjoy having lots of people to play with. So it's worth moving people, sometimes people don't know what's good for themselves, in those cases we ignore them and force them to do what's good for the whole.

Edited April 25, 2012 by SaintAvalon

[Ascended]

I cant see how one guild has the most population on a heavy server. And migrations are exactly what your on about not merges, a merge destroys the host servers and takes the name of one of the servers being merged. Migration shifts groups of players from high pops inbalanced servers to low pops to balance and take them to standard.

 

Also merges dont allow choice, you dont have the choice to stay on a server that is shutting you simply get shifted so migrations are yet again what your on about not merges.

 

No the problem with your argument is that there are only 2 Heavy pop servers in Europe but 38 (ish) Low pop ones. Taking the players off the heavy pop servers and letting them spread all over the other 38 (ish) servers is going to make things worse as your just gonna end up with 40 (ish) low to medium servers. What you need to do is say "Right, we are going to close 19 of our lowest pop servers and allow those players to move to either 1 other PvE or 1 other PvP server". Then you close those 19 servers and have a vibrant community on 20 servers not a dying community on 40 servers.

[Shingara]

Read my post again.

 

I didn't say anything about mergers being choices... Merge the low pops to give us higher pop servers.

 

That's merging.

 

Then you take migrations allowing people to move from full servers to those newly merged servers...

 

The old servers can wither and die for all i care.

 

My post covers all the types of "merging/migrations/etc" terms you want to use. My post also covers low pop, medium pop, and high pop/full pop servers. As well as how to handle each, starting with mergers first so you can see where the balance is at before you open migration from full servers.

 

Simple... still.

 

Not simple, they would have to find low pop servers with good faction balances or one that key off against each other to merge, also people might not want to move there chars from there low pop to the server thats being merged to but want to move where they created alts to play with and migrate there chars to it.

 

So thats 2 things BW would have todo. 1st merge 2-4 low pop servers and sort all that out, then move who doesnt want to move to the merged servers. Then they would have to sort out all the people who are on a sabaticle from the game till later and move them to the merged server and leave the option open for a free migration of it if they wish.

 

WoW has been doing it for years, thats how they have kept so many servers live even with extremly low pop servers becuase they allow migrations from and too for free, The fact that battlegroups on wow make it feel some low pop servers are higher pop then they actually arnt doesnt hurt either.

 

So even after all this SWTOR will have to sort out some form of battlegroup bands for servers for battlegrounds and a random dungeon finder if they are as hints suggest allowing that also via cross server grouping.

[Ascended]

Indeed, but currently the only way around that would be a X server tool. Granted, there will be people complaining about that as well, as anyone who is a Warcraft General Alumni will tell you, but it solves the whole "find someone to play with" problem without people losing their names.

 

Either way, none of these ideas will work. People will complain because they like to complain. As I stated in another thread:

 

Yes of course you are right, people will complain just for the sake of complaining. But it is only the minority of players that are vocal on the forums anyway so I really don't think this will cause Bioware much concern.