JeramieCrowe Posted May 7, 2012 Share Posted May 7, 2012 and this didn't generate negative feedback from the community? Interesting. Not arguing with you over it. That makes sense. I'd think it'd make some people with characters in limbo not care to resub. Nah, they returned, and because of knowing it happened, it took, literally, all of thirty seconds to get their character on the server they wanted. Seriously. Even if you were playing and wanted to transfer, you clicked a button on your character select screen, chose the server, 10-second long progress bar, DONE. That's it. That's all it took. You logged in and everything was there. If there was a name conflict, you got a name prompt, entered your new name, DONE. These days, it's really painless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallorik Posted May 7, 2012 Share Posted May 7, 2012 Nah, they returned, and because of knowing it happened, it took, literally, all of thirty seconds to get their character on the server they wanted. Seriously. Even if you were playing and wanted to transfer, you clicked a button on your character select screen, chose the server, 10-second long progress bar, DONE. That's it. That's all it took. You logged in and everything was there. If there was a name conflict, you got a name prompt, entered your new name, DONE. These days, it's really painless. Actualy what they first did in rift was declare a few of the servers that were so bad "Trial servers" and used them for free trial people, you could still tranfer back off them anytime you wanted to. i dont remember them totaly closing down any servers atleast not by the time i left rift for swtor. but they also didnt have 4 times as many servers as they had population for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeramieCrowe Posted May 7, 2012 Share Posted May 7, 2012 Actualy what they first did in rift was declare a few of the servers that were so bad "Trial servers" and used them for free trial people, you could still tranfer back off them anytime you wanted to. i dont remember them totaly closing down any servers atleast not by the time i left rift for swtor. but they also didnt have 4 times as many servers as they had population for. Yeah, they did. They closed down about 40 servers. Some were left up for what you mention, but the a lot were shut down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Griso Posted May 7, 2012 Share Posted May 7, 2012 (edited) But again, just to repeat myself, we're here speculating about what should be done, how, when etc. Not a single feedback from Ea/Bio except the 'early summer' statement so far, meanwhile the community keep struggling... How sad. Edited May 7, 2012 by Griso Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Okovango Posted May 7, 2012 Share Posted May 7, 2012 Yeah, I want server transfers ASAP also, but the way I see it is this is how its going. Everyone whines and complains about how we need transfers NOW, and is trying to get BW to rush and make them asap. But say then they do that? Everyone will then whine and move on to how somehow bioware messed it up and should have waited and released it right or something like that. I'm not a "Biodrone" or whatever, sure they thought way too highly of their game in the first place and made way too many servers, but it seems that no matter what happens the masses always have to complain about something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kthx Posted May 7, 2012 Share Posted May 7, 2012 About a month back i collected links to threads about transfers and merges. This was before 1.2 and things have gotten only worse. No one has cared about those threads so why would a poll do anything different? Seeing that BioWare has responded to players' concerns with a system of free and paid transfers, how do you conclude that "no one has cared"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Helistin Posted May 7, 2012 Share Posted May 7, 2012 Seeing that BioWare has responded to players' concerns with a system of free and paid transfers, how do you conclude that "no one has cared"? Yeah, great job by them. My server has never had a decent population in the first place, and after 4 months i'm still stuck on the same deserted server on some of my toons. As are many others. If this would be any other business and you'd leave your customers hanging for 4 months you'd be looking for a new job for some time now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schriztopher Posted May 7, 2012 Share Posted May 7, 2012 Screw free transfers, MERGE SERVERS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aryouStupid Posted May 7, 2012 Share Posted May 7, 2012 If you read what bio-ware stated about the free transfers in early summer it will be only to specific servers. And if you want to go to any other servers you will have to pay for it. So you will get a selection of X amount of servers to choose from and hopefully one will work out for you. In the mean time early summer is still a month and a half away. How many people does the game lose until then? The game is already pretty much dead on my server, 52 people on the fleet at 6:00 pm on a Saturday. My guild tried to get 1 healer to run an 8 man HM Op and were unsuccessful for 45 minutes to even get a response from anyone. I constantly see people spamming for 30 minutes to an hour for people they need for FP/Ops and usually come up unsuccessful. IMO this free transfer is going to just make people rage quit the game forever and they are going to end up killing the game completely (if they haven't already.) I vote for a complete restructure of the Bio-Ware staff because they have done nothing but make bad decisions since the release of the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Senatsu Posted May 7, 2012 Share Posted May 7, 2012 (edited) but they also didnt have 4 times as many servers as they had population for. Finally someone who gets it. Edited May 7, 2012 by Senatsu Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
islander Posted May 7, 2012 Share Posted May 7, 2012 (edited) Yeah, I mean at this point I'm kinda just running dailies on two 50's. Maybe doing two warzones a day being it takes about an hour for two of them throughout most of the day :/ I don't know about 4 times too may servers, but definitely twice as many. Edited May 7, 2012 by islander Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeramieCrowe Posted May 7, 2012 Share Posted May 7, 2012 (edited) Finally someone who gets it. They also had 6 hour queue times at launch. BioWare is likely going to cull servers using transfers, what some of are erroneously calling a "merge". You'll get it when it happens, I guess. Edited May 7, 2012 by JeramieCrowe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Posejdon Posted May 7, 2012 Share Posted May 7, 2012 (edited) Sorry but I do not have enough time to read all the topic. I hope to not spend rest of my pre-paid being retired becouse of waiting to character transfer. Already its impossible to find group when 10-30 ppl are online in different levels. It shouldn't be hard to do if asian players already moved. Edited May 7, 2012 by Posejdon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeramieCrowe Posted May 7, 2012 Share Posted May 7, 2012 Sorry but I do not have enough time to read all the topic. I hope to not spend rest of my pre-paid being retired becouse of waiting to character transfer. Already its impossible to find group when 10-30 ppl are online in different levels. It shouldn't be hard to do if asian players already moved. The APAC transfers were MANUAL. Obviously, that's not a solution for the rest of the population. They're writing the code to automate the process now. They had one ready since beta, but some unexpected things with Legacy and a few other things necessitated rewriting it. "Early summer" is worst-case scenario, meaning it could be done before then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sanxxx Posted May 7, 2012 Share Posted May 7, 2012 The APAC transfers were MANUAL. Obviously, that's not a solution for the rest of the population. They're writing the code to automate the process now. They had one ready since beta, but some unexpected things with Legacy and a few other things necessitated rewriting it. "Early summer" is worst-case scenario, meaning it could be done before then. The way populations are going a manual solution may be ok. 'unexpected' is being very generous. Worst case is pure speculation and could just as easily read best case. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeramieCrowe Posted May 7, 2012 Share Posted May 7, 2012 The way populations are going a manual solution may be ok. Hyperbole. 'unexpected' is being very generous. Yes, they're maliciously making you people wait on purpose. Worst case is pure speculation and could just as easily read best case. Yes, this point has already been brought out ad nauseum. I'm pointing out what people seem to purposefully avoid because it's not the "new cool" of negativity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-Backdraft- Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 Why can't bio/developers respond to this post and tell us something.... this theared is getting pretty big and i'm pretty sure alot players want some answers.... This is a major problem; even if we want char transfer or merge servers... THey keep us out in the dark by just saying "transfer is coming in the summer".... Summer? it's long there and they need to act faster... The servers are dying out faster and faster and people are getting tierd of playing alone on the servers not beeing able to do any warzones or instances. I've read many people quitting on my servers just this week because of the empty servers and I agree with them; Bio don't deserv the money right now because this is an easy solved problem for them. It's been like this pretty long now and they announce it's going to take to the summer. Quit drag out on it and solve the biggest problem now; why add more things if you can't even do them because of the lack of players on the servers. I haven't even been able to do "The lost island" once yet; finding groups on my server is a hell and could easy take 2 hours at least. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evangelist Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 Dear BioWare, You really need to merge the low population servers. The difference in the "game experience" between a standard population server and low population server is vast. Take The Ebon Hawke(standard) and Hanharr(light) for example. Republic Fleet on Ebon Hawke normally has around 100 players during peak play times, Hanharr has around < 10. That makes it near impossible to make a group for Flash Points, let alone Ops on the low population server. This also impacts the Galatic Market, the difference in the amount of items available is tremendous. For example, search for Scavenging materials for crafting, Hanharr maybe has one page while Ebon Hawke has a minimum of 5 pages of materials to choose from. Augments? Non existant on Hanharr where there are pages of them on EH. Next is PVP, the low population server constantly starts games with 3-4 vs. 8 and with the removal of the match shutdown due to lack of players this leads to a poor PVP experience for players. Getting rolled/farmed is not fun, when its due to the fact that you're outnumbered 2 to 1 it really is annoying. This also handicapps you as a player in the long run because you cannot earn medals when you're constantly in the respawn area because the low number of players on your side makes focused fire easy. Even if you eventually get up to 8 vs. 8 your team is usually at such a disadvantage by that time that you cannot win. Can people re-roll? Sure. Transfer once you add that feature? Yes. It still doesn't change the fact that you have "dead" servers. Servers that cost money to run, servers that are costing you players due to poor game experience because of low population. I know that server consolidation is genrally seen as a "bad thing" in the MMO world but you really grapped up the roll out and ended up adding too many servers in addition to raising the population caps. When the initial "surge" ended it left you with a smaller player/customer base and some "ghost town" servers. Really, I thought I saw a tumbleweed blowing through the Republic Fleet the other day on Hanharr. You guys diluted the populations too much, and then when people began to unsub/quit/got to the end of thier 30 days it only exacerbated the problem. So please, start merging the low population servers. Don't make people pay to transfer off them, that will only further piss people off and cost you more customers. I never see any server as heavy population, so bleeding off some of them with free transfers to low population servers which is the norm is not an option. You have far more light population servers than you do heavy that is for sure, so start merging them. I know people will run around crying "the sky is falling", that "SWTOR is dying", etc. but you guys need to cowboy up and admit you grapped up and then fix the problem. Sincerely, A Paying Customer (They closed my tread on this so I'm reposting here.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urdnaxela Posted May 8, 2012 Share Posted May 8, 2012 (edited) The APAC transfers were MANUAL. Obviously, that's not a solution for the rest of the population. They're writing the code to automate the process now. They had one ready since beta, but some unexpected things with Legacy and a few other things necessitated rewriting it. "Early summer" is worst-case scenario, meaning it could be done before then. erm... are you sure? manual as in they selected the players manually (maybe) but the procedure had to have been automated. if not then... lol, considering the bugs that "leak" in minor patches can you imagine what will happen when they start transferring tens of thousands of players from one server to another? i really thing that the functionality is already developed but (i hope) they need some time to make sure it's bug free (or at least not having too many bugs - there will be problems for sure no matter how long they test it). nevertheless they really need to start moving (maybe even give us a concrete date as to when the transfers will happen) since people are disgruntled to say the least. and let's keep in mind that many other "minor" patches will come, and many other stupid bugs will appear as PTS is still closed and transfering chars to PTS is still not an option (so - wadda ya know, no tests on the live environment, since they sure as hell prove that they don't bother doing those tests themselves). so yeah, i'm eagerly waiting for the transfers (having 2 50 columni geared chars on what are now dead servers and some low level alts on same dead servers) but i dread the process itself - i fear that it may be so bugged and will rise so many problems that it might turn into the tombstone for this game (which i do like and i do want to see it succeed). P.S. i understand the reluctance of giving people affected by the low population blight a concrete date, since those people could unsub until the transfers are in effect, but you'd really rather have people usubing and planing on a return when the transfers are a reality rather than having people unsub because of frustration - those people will hardly ever come back. donno - but this makes a lot more sense to me from a business point of view. Edited May 8, 2012 by Urdnaxela Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Briseius Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 Dear BioWare, You really need to merge the low population servers... Let me stop you there. This would compromise character names in a nutshell. I like many take my characters names very seriously and would be devastated to see their name forcibly changed. By offering 'Selective optional free individual character transfers' they effectively remove the burden of forcing name changes, but rather let the player weigh the option of integrity vs. sustainability. Regarding the 'issue' of BW-selected servers eligible to transfer into, I'm sure their focus is just that, funnel diluted player populations into a more concentrated collection of server. Curious however to see their approach to: - Legacy upon character transfer (Duplicated or lost?) - Guilds upon character transfer (Follow transfer, or deleted?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Khellus Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 I don't think the free transfers will be to get people on heavy servers to transfer. more likely it will be to get low populated servers to move to servers that are standard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alterin Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 I would say this needs to happen soon, but really, it needed to happen a month ago. An excuse to take a Diablo 3 break WILL be nice though. It's just a shame that coming back to this game or not when transfers finally happen is so iffy. It's also a shame that the free month they gave us is completely wasted on a virtually single player game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mothermonterr Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 THey cant even roll out the matrix cube fix in time, and you think that this feature is coming soon. So sad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DSafana Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 Transfers are coming, but sadly for me, it's not soon enough. I really didn't want the game coming out next week to be where I spend my free time. I currently have 6 level 50's and all crafter professions maxed. The problem is, I am on a dead server. I log on and wait an hour for a Queue or even a 4 man group just to do hard modes. I usually just set my crafters on runs and log off, I wanted this game to keep me involved for a while. I wanted 1.2 to implement cross server queues for ranked Warzones to keep me involved, but instead they implemented mostly stuff that could have been put in later. It's obvious their priorities are messed up when the ranked warzones wasn't even tested on PTS until the final week. Nobody was going to quit the game because the legacy wasn't introduced, but people will quit if there are no people on the server to do anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guavarama Posted May 9, 2012 Share Posted May 9, 2012 Character transfers are a very bad idea and in my opinion a major cop out! If they do character transfers some servers will become in an even worse state and then they will just tell the remaining population to move to another server as they no doubt shut it down..... It is also seen as another corporate stunt to gain more money off its clients as to transfer to certain server will probably cost money. I respect that as they are a business and it is an administration fee etc but it could have been an opportunity to show people that they are not crap at managing an issue lots of other games have failed on. They need to get rid of 1 out of 3 servers I think. I'm sure people would rather wait to get on a server than get on and find no-one is there to play with. I won't rant about the reasons for low populations as this isn't the topic as I will post on a few other threads with Merges and pops as topics. Thanks for reading. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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