FREE Character Transfers are Coming!

[Galbatorrix]

You've done a 180...hacked account?!

 

I agree...this is why I REALLY URGE THEM to give details BEFORE the flipping transfer system is finished or even in testing. They NEED to tell players what they plan because right now, everyone seems to think they'll be transferring to fatman. Right now, there is far too much false hope for the games own good.

 

Let people begin scoping out the transfer TO servers today! Let them start a toon and begin establishing their new identity on their new server immediately. Delaying this will ONLY lead to more frustration.

 

Na, I just realized that it was really unfair for me to constantly defend the game like there were no issues just because I wasn't having some of them myself. I was kind of being a tool, I'll admit.

 

The truth is, I really do like the game but Bioware seems to keep getting in their own way. The game is losing population and the people that are sticking around are either having to play on a dead server now, or in order to actually play the game as an MMO, they have to reroll and eventually pay extra money to move their old characters to their new server. Bioware is basically forcing loyal subscribers that have stuck around during the bad times between the proverbial rock and hard place.

 

They really need to make transfers as easy as possible and not put a bunch of silly restrictions on them to frustrate the population that remains even further.

[TUXs]

Na, I just realized that it was really unfair for me to constantly defend the game like there were no issues just because I wasn't having some of them myself. I was kind of being a tool, I'll admit.

 

They really need to make transfers as easy as possible and not put a bunch of silly restrictions on them to frustrate the population that remains even further.

Not at all. You were enjoying the game, "I" enjoy the game. We're both passionate about it and want it to survive...I think most people do these days. Like you, I have been pretty lucky and not had the issues so many people have...until recently. And every day it's getting worse. I'd REALLY like it if Bioware closed fatman to new toons. Every day it's open, it bleeds the other servers of more and more players...creating a snowball effect of less and less and less players everywhere else, while artificially inflating fatmans population. TIME is an investment...and right now, the ONLY worthwhile investment of time seems to be fatman. Bioware NEEDS to end that.

[Chemmie]

Our server is dead I have one of the remaining guilds I really hope they do this asap. Primetime on the fleet is 15-20 people. We don't have enough steady mains to run ops and there is no one to recruit.

Our entire guild will be transferring if things go as said. We will just all get together and say where we are going. Hopefully maybe the GM can give us a refund on our guild bank slots to solve the entire guild transfer issue people were discussing, if not we'll deal with it I suppose. All I know is I hope it is soon there is nothing to do right now but wait and if it takes too long I'm afraid we will be gone. I LOVE the game and don't want to leave it but right now there is nothing to do on a dead server and even pvp has become difficult.

A listing from EA would be nice on more details on the transfers so we can decide where we are going to go and how to do it ahead of time. Maybe offer all players a free weekend to get on their toons and move them before shutting servers down for those not playing maybe get them back into the game once they see the pop issue has been solved. That is the big reason people aren't playing on our server right now and it is getting worse every day.

Plz transfer soon...

Chem "The Constant"

[Galbatorrix]

Not at all. You were enjoying the game, "I" enjoy the game. We're both passionate about it and want it to survive...I think most people do these days. Like you, I have been pretty lucky and not had the issues so many people have...until recently. And every day it's getting worse. I'd REALLY like it if Bioware closed fatman to new toons. Every day it's open, it bleeds the other servers of more and more players...creating a snowball effect of less and less and less players everywhere else, while artificially inflating fatmans population. TIME is an investment...and right now, the ONLY worthwhile investment of time seems to be fatman. Bioware NEEDS to end that.

 

 

Yeah, I rerolled on Jedi Covenant (Republic) and Canderous Ordo (Imperial) and both seem to have taken hits lately too. I still don't have much to complain about compared to most people (my original server, The Courageous normally has 8-20 people on fleet, and some others probably have it worse than that), but it definitely doesn't bode well. Especially when we still get tons of people in general chat that say they just rerolled to the server.

 

Bioware needs to handle these transfers as quickly and painless as possible.

Edited May 22, 2012 by Galbatorrix

[Snacklinn]

Bioware. You are losing players EVERYDAY because you are taking your sweet time rolling server transfers out. I invite you to log on to Infinite Empire, republic side, and see if you have any fun trying to do daily heroics, pull together a group for flashpoints, or queue up for a WZ. Logging on to find 3 people on fleet just makes people log off. Or waiting for an hour for a WZ to pop....I am SURE that's not the great playing experience that you guys envisioned.

 

You have NO bigger priority, from a customer experience perspective, than this problem. Get if fixed. Get it fixed right. Get it fixed quickly. You are bleeding people and disappointment EVERY DAY.

 

PS - your subscription number might not be as bad as play time. But that's just because people are too lazy to cancel immediately.

[Illyean]

They need a clear, concise and comprehensive statement on transfers this week, how it will work and how it wont work. They need to remove every doubt, fear and ounce of ambiguity. If they managed to run it perfectly it will still result in broken guilds and lost players, given BW's penchant for making everything a cluster ****.....

[opus_two]

Friday evening during what I call peak period of the day on Zaalbar "4 people on Fleet Station". I cant find anyone to do heroics. The guild I was with have all quit and moved back to WoW and other MMOs.. BIOWARE should be listening. Transfer people to other servers NOW (I don't care what server) just get the populations up so there is player interaction OR the game is dead.

[Snacklinn]

PS - you're not going to have 1/2 the people to enjoy 1.3 if you wait until 1.3 to release server transfers. Get it right now. Nobody at bioware should be working on anything else.

[Uven]

I am currently playing on a server where the population is more towards the Imperial faction. Im mostly republic but have an imp toon to play when i get bored or when nothing is going on. This morning i was on the republic fleet and there was only 9 people in the area ( yes it was early, about 9:30 am est), but the republic side is lacking players. Also the republic pvp is lacking and in decline because they are fed up with losing to the imperials who have way better gear and farm the comms every day to get it. In short, the server is weighted towards the imps.it is hard enough to find healers when your guild only has 6 healers and only 4 are active for raids.

 

What i want to see happen is them designate the lower populated servers as transfer destinations, to get the population going again, then if they need to begin merging servers and closing dead ones.

[Boozsha]

I really don't understand how server transfers are going to fix the issue. I understand from a money and PR standpoint that they don't won't to do server mergers this early on, but to me it is the only real clear fix.

 

Offering server transfers will only add to the issue of making low population servers even lower. Those people that are left will be even worse off.

 

Also if you they offer transfers are they going to move all your characters to the new server. What good is the legacy system if you are going only be able to move 1 or 3 characters of your legacy. So you might say well you can pay to have more moved, but that would get costly to move 5 to 6 characters, unless they are giving out a nice deal.

 

I myself have rolled on a new server because I didn't feel like waiting for it to happen. When they do offer the transfers will I be able to move characters from my old server to the new one. What will happen to the each legacy? Will they be combined and will I get to choose which legacy name I want to keep?

[Spiritphire]

I myself made a thread asking where 1.3 was and asking anyone to give me one good reason to continue to pay to play a game that has been basically unplayable after lvl 50. no one could and they closed my thread. I am a member of a guild that has/had 150 members, now to let you all know just how bad it has gotten ...over 90% of those players have either unsubbed or outright quit playing.

 

You can't PvP or do ops or FP's without other people to group with.... I play on the Rakata Mind Prison server , we had MX there they all quit to go play TERA, now at peak times on the weekends you are lucky to see 5 people on fleet and most of the time thats the diehard members from my guild. We can't get into WZ or anything else so you tell me .... one good reason to stay and talk my people into coming back to a dead game.

[Galbatorrix]

If they're not going to straight up merge, then they need to do a "behind the scenes" merge.

 

In other words, pick maybe 150 servers to close down. Lock them from from new players and give the people on those servers a choice of 20 different servers to move to (this would give them a greater opportunity to keep their chosen names). As the servers in that group of 20 get full, you change them out for other servers. They would then move inactive accounts to a temp server (it would make the person choose a new server the next time they logged in) and close down the server completely.

 

The end result would be that they're left with 70 servers, most of which would be standard to very heavy depending on the time of day.

Edited May 22, 2012 by Galbatorrix

[Spiritphire]

If they're not going to straight up merge, then they need to do a "behind the scenes" merge.

 

In other words, pick maybe 150 servers to close down. Lock them from from new players and give the people on those servers a choice of 20 different servers to move to (this would give them a greater opportunity to keep their chosen names). As the servers in that group of 20 get full, you change them out for other servers. They would then move inactive accounts to a temp server (it would make the person choose a new server the next time they logged in) and close down the server completely.

 

The end result would be that they're left with 70 servers, most of which would be standard to very heavy depending on the time of day.

 

thats one of the best ideas i have heard yet

[Spiritphire]

I dont expect to see anything coming anytime soon check this link out

 

 

http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/22/bioware-austin-lays-off-staff-on-star-wars-the-old-republic/

 

thanks bioware

[AdamLKvist]

I dont expect to see anything coming anytime soon check this link out

 

 

http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/22/bioware-austin-lays-off-staff-on-star-wars-the-old-republic/

 

thanks bioware

 

So naive

[carowga]

Come to Daragon Trail, we're fun!!!!

[skelliott]

Transfer or merge it really doesn't matter to me. I am on Ven Zallow and the population is always light. I don't want to start over so I am all in for this. I really don't care if I have to rename my toons either.

[Uven]

Transfer or merge it really doesn't matter to me. I am on Ven Zallow and the population is always light. I don't want to start over so I am all in for this. I really don't care if I have to rename my toons either.

 

what i hope to see if i have to move with the rest of my friends is that if you move your first chatacter that started the legacy, then the legacy should be saved any other characters that follow should stay within your legacy

[Daethorz]

Either they do it soon, or SWTOR dies completely, i have sat back and watched my server lose a quarter of its population PER WEEK. Edited May 23, 2012 by Daethorz

[Daethorz]

If they're not going to straight up merge, then they need to do a "behind the scenes" merge.

 

In other words, pick maybe 150 servers to close down. Lock them from from new players and give the people on those servers a choice of 20 different servers to move to (this would give them a greater opportunity to keep their chosen names). As the servers in that group of 20 get full, you change them out for other servers. They would then move inactive accounts to a temp server (it would make the person choose a new server the next time they logged in) and close down the server completely.

 

The end result would be that they're left with 70 servers, most of which would be standard to very heavy depending on the time of day.

Why 70, heck go all the way down to 20.

[Benets]

They have enough employee to block your thread but they do not have enought to allow you to transfer you char. Man i thought no game could have worst service than wow but i am about to change my mind.

 

They forced me to keep talking into this thread that is not what i was excactly talking about but i'll have to pass my text to this thread.

 

"Is this game a MMO? MMO stands for Massive Multiplayer Game. Having 100 players in the same server isn't massive. Have 20 players in the same location or map isn't massive. I play all the time Battlefield 3 with more people at same map than SWTOR that is supposed to be a MMO. They need to at least merge servers before next patch, the transfers and merges should happen a long time ago, like 3 months ago now we'll need to wait for another month to get my char into a playable sever? This is nonsense. Meanwhile a lot of players quitting cos' they do no have people to play with. This is not an MMO. This is simple a Multiplayer game.

 

Seems that we want the game to be good more than BIOWARE/EA wants.

Merge servers ASAP, this week or next."

[InnerPieces]

(My thread was closed and I was asked to participate in this thread... so rather than rewrite what I've previously stated. Honestly, my posts have very little to do with the OP as written, but the mods seem to disagree... so here goes. Please keep in mind these responses were in context in a different thread. Here, they might seem a little out of place. Anyway, for what it's worth... my 2 cents...)

 

Subject: Doing Right by Us with Server Transfers

 

Post 1:

 

Hi BioWare,

 

I don’t complain much or often. In fact, the only reason I am complaining now rather than just adding one more cancelled subscription to the list is because I truly enjoy playing the game. Like many others, however, I have been anxiously awaiting server transfers so I can play with the friends I made before SWTOR.

 

Unlike many others, I did not simply wait around and deal with long queue times, etc. during the early access. Over the first three or four weeks after launch, I tried various servers trying to land on one that had a balance of reasonable queue times and population. It seemed as though the fourth time was the charm for me and I finally found a decent server. Of course, most of the people on that server at the time were also avoiding long queue times and, as a result, left the server by the end of December to return to their high population servers. It seems as though none of them returned and few joined after that leaving my primary server as one of the least populated in the game.

 

I am not generally one for double work and, knowing server transfers would eventually come, I decided to stick it out. The problem is, now that transfers are on the horizon, it seems as though I am about to be left in the cold once again. You see, I have two other characters on two different servers I’d love to play. I’m not going to restart them (again). I also know I am not going to pay (especially more than a month’s subscription) to have them moved so they are playable for me. I would cancel my subscription and just do something else with my time and money first.

 

I understand wanting to try and recover some of the losses of the mass cancellations. I understand wanting to get every dime out of your customers you can. All of that aside, however, targeted server transfers is not enough to make up for the shotgun style of server creation you used during the first month after launch. As I’ve explained, some of us tried to help you by being willing to play on different servers than we intended and now we’re stuck there.

 

The easy solution, from my perspective, is to cut us early access people a break. Why not let us all (at least early access) have one free server transfer. Granted, I have several characters I’d want to move from servers I don’t play on anymore. However, I could live with one or two and still feel as though I should remain a part of the community. Just one free transfer from any server to any other server would be satisfactory.

 

This is not the only solution, I am sure. Feel free to work with us. I simply hope you remember you need to work /with/ us on this as some of us have obviously worked with /you/ in the hopes you’d eventually do the right thing. This does not have to be the huge problem it’s about to become. Please do the right thing by us.

 

Thanks!

 

 

Post 2:

 

I know plenty of people are concerned over a current lack of server transfers and I am glad people are just as concerned about /how/ they are implemented.

 

I realize there is a real danger of server merges in the near future. I consider that a danger because I am one of those people who care deeply about character identity. The problem with merges is you stand the chance of losing not only your character identity but also your legacy identity. I put a lot of time and effort into building backgrounds, character concepts, and all of that. When servers merge, there are conflicts and BioWare then has to decide how to resolve the character identity conflicts and that is virtually guaranteed to upset / satisfy people on a 1:1 ratio which doesn’t make things much better for BW.

 

Honestly, I couldn’t care less about an extremely temporary and meager +4 endurance crystal. I couldn’t care less about the very short early access. Launch was right over Christmas and, with a family, I had very little time to play over the holiday anyway. The one thing that prompted me to take a leap of faith and pre-order the game was the chance (for the first time – for me) to have a real chance at choosing the names I want. Funny how the one benefit to pre-ordering I looked forward to the most had nothing to do with what BW was offering.

 

Anyway, whether or not you care about character or legacy identity, I do. Again, it was the primary reason I pre-ordered. To merge servers would be to not only force people to the same servers and still not addressing the issue of friends getting together, but you also run the risk of forcing players to lose their character / legacy identity. In other words, it really wouldn’t help people like me all that much.

 

I like the idea of open and free transfers, of course. If I choose to leave a server and go to another any risk of identity loss would be on me. After all, I’m making that choice. It’s a much easier pill to swallow in that case.

 

I am trying to be reasonable, however. I don’t expect BW to give us unlimited, free transfers. While Rift might offer them for free, most gaming companies look at micro-transactions as a way to supplement the income of a game. That is why I didn’t suggest open and free transfers across the board. It’s unreasonable (in my opinion) to expect BW to accept a total loss of additional income. However, there is the real danger of losing far more subscriptions and failing to regain many of those that have been lost by forcing us to pay or forcing changes on us that will result in changes of character concept or identity.

 

I still feel strongly that the best option BW can offer at this point is to allow those of us from the first month of play (it doesn’t even have to just be early access, though the pre-order folks probably deserve it most) to have at least 1 free character transfer to the server of our choice. To really hit a home run, BW could allow all of us from the first month of launch to have X number of free transfers so we can consolidate our toons on one specific server we choose. Then, take a second look at the numbers and see where things are. If you still have servers where the population barely spikes 60 people during prime-time, then yes a second step (like merges) might be necessary.

 

I just hope BW understands that the targeted transfers as described up to this point are not nearly enough for me. I may not be able to speak for others, but I sincerely doubt I’m in the minority here. I hope BW can see the wisdom in allowing us free transfers now to help solve the issues created by the launch / server tactic. It allows us to consolidate our characters on the server we want to play with the friends we want to play with. It cuts down on the initial surge of money from those who are willing to pay but that loss is short term. Once things settle down (say after a month) they start charging for server transfers like most companies do. The point is, they want to earn back some of the subscriptions they lost and retain some of the subscriptions they are about to lose. Free server transfers (for a limited time) will accomplish these goals far more effectively than forcing a change or expecting us to pay more money to solve an issue we did not create. If the game continues to run for years (as we all hope it will) there will be plenty of time for extra revenue from micro-transactions, like server transfers.

 

I could be wrong. I guess we’ll see.

[Robbygoof]

I agree...this is why I REALLY URGE THEM to give details BEFORE the flipping transfer system is finished or even in testing. They NEED to tell players what they plan because right now, everyone seems to think they'll be transferring to fatman. Right now, there is far too much false hope for the games own good.

 

Let people begin scoping out the transfer TO servers today! Let them start a toon and begin establishing their new identity on their new server immediately. Delaying this will ONLY lead to more frustration.

 

COMPLETELY TRUE!!! Bioware is sooooo overly guarded and does not inform or prepare its population for what is coming. They only give you the highlights or an outline and ABSOLUTELY NO DETAILS. There are still TONS and TONS of MYSTERY actually in the game and SOOOOO much SPECULATION that there are not even all the facts about the game that is there now then they add ontop of that even more MINIMAL INFO, which MOST of us see as thier attempt to HIDE the TRUTH then we are shocked and DISAPPOINTED with the results because everyone speaks out about what they think would be best on the forums and THEY DON'T INCLUDE those ideas in their process. IF I CANNOT TRANSFER FOR FREE TO ATLEAST A STANDARD POP AVERAGE SERVER CONSIDER ME CANCELED!!!! I think we loyal few that have stuck it out and waited for the transfers to even be possible deserve atleast that! My main server has less than 200 on even at peak times, comeon bioware give us a break would ya, We are the ones that 6months to a year before release we were preordering the game waiting in anticipation watching for every morsel of info we could find on the game playing for prerelease, talking it up to friends and having them join us even. Now I know your a bussiness and you are there to make money however I believe that the DESPERATE NEED for server transfers was actually CREATED BY YOU, BIOWARE when there was a larger influx of players then anticipated you increased BOTH server cap AND created a ton of new servers, way more then actually needed.

Then you ABANDONED US that chose to go to a lower pop because we didnt want the wait times. NOW you are doing it AGAIN by CHARGING US FOR YOUR MISTAKE. I say you should right your own wrong then you can charge away, Free server transfers for EVERYONE that had gotten the free month for reaching 50 or legacy 7 by the date you set! I think that is very fair!

Edited May 24, 2012 by Robbygoof
Additional Idea

[Leggomy]

I certainly hope the 1.3 patch isnt being held up because of transfers. Id rather they go ahead put the rest of it out I can wait on transfers until June or whenever early summer is.

[JeramieCrowe]

I certainly hope the 1.3 patch isnt being held up because of transfers. Id rather they go ahead put the rest of it out I can wait on transfers until June or whenever early summer is.

 

June is practically next week...