Server merging, only way to save SWTOR?

[Drakinor]

JUST A THEORY KEEP THAT IN MIND

 

I have played many MMOs (EQ, WOW, EVE, RIFT, LOTRO, DDO, EQII, etc) and other than wow many of these had/have lower pops that SWTOR, but feel larger. My point is this, in playing many of these MMOs I always felt there were plenty of people to play with, which is kind of the point of playing a Massively Multiplayer Online game. RIFT for example had aprox 400k players when I played it last. That is about 1/3 of what SWTOR has (currently at aprox 1.3 million) but RIFT had fewer servers so that population was more concentrated. With that concentration grouping was very easy to do, there were more players per server to play with.

 

Its a safe bet that many people here have or are still playing WoW. Yes its a behemoth of an MMO but imagine if those 10.2 million people were spread across 100k servers? If that were the case many servers would feel empty causing angst and frustration among the player base. We currently have 1.3 million people that play this game with us. There are roughly 120 US servers alone. Total a little over 200 hundred servers. Lets just say every server has the same amount of players for ease of math. 1.3 million divided by 200 equals 6500 players per server TOTAL, again for equality will divvy it up equally between two factions, so 3250 players per faction. Obviously they are not all on consitently, lets say roughly 60 percent are on during peak hours. 1950 players on your side tops. Again for equality well divvy em up equally per planet and fleet. So 121 people per area tops.

 

Still sounds like alot right? Well what if 30% are doing pvp? That leaves 85 people per area, another 10% is afk? 76 per area. Lets just guess only 15% want to be bothered to group at any given time. 11 people or 2 full groups and one LFM. Needless to say that doesnt leave much, and its doubtful all 11 people are looking to do the same thing.

 

Now before you flame or start saying "Show me hard facts on those numbers" remember this is all theoretical, no true numbers are being used and are just a wild guess to prove a point. Not to mention we all know that those numbers are likely higher than reality on many servers. For instance when I am on Dark Reaper during peak hours Rep fleet is usually around 30 and Imp around 50, most planets while leveling are between 2-10 people.

 

TL;DR, Pop is spread too thin causing discontent among players. Simply merging the servers to where there are few light, many standard/heavy and a few very heavy/full would do wonders to bring playability back up.

 

Would love to hear other thoughts, suggestions, constructive criticism. Hopefully, if we all make a point to speak up loudly enough, EA BW will hear us and revive this game. I honestly love the game, the story, character development, pvp, all of it but its hard to enjoy an MMO by yourself. Warzones are fun but you can only do those over and over for so long before it becomes tedious.

[TheLordMagnus]

starwars is not dead your server is dead and around 20% of the servers have pop issues

this game will play for many years stop the gloom and doom posts all mmo games have this problem server mergers will never happen they have already said this many times they have no plans to do it ever toon transfers will be comming later in the year IF they come and will most probly be restricted to certian servers and only being allowed to move 1 a year

 

so sorry about your server and the people that are having same problem but the game is farrrrrrrrrrrrrrr from being needed to be saved they still have over 1 million subs and to make money they only need 500k so no starwars aint dead

 

as for your numbers and math hahahahahahahahahahahahaha:p

sorry i had to do that its to funnie

Edited May 12, 2012 by TheLordMagnus

[Ellvaan]

Greetings everyone!

 

We appreciate your constructive feedback! Since we have a few threads on the various topics regarding Server Population and suggestions for it, we are going to close this thread in the interest of consolidating feedback and ask that you please continue your discussion here:

• Server Population
  
• Server Merges
  
• FREE Character Transfers are Coming!
  

 

You can find more information regarding Character Transfers in our Community Q + A Blog for April 27th, 2012:

 

Arymono: When will character transfers be available for everybody?

 

Dallas Dickinson (Senior Producer, Live Services): We will be rolling out our Character Transfer Service in early summer. First we’ll have some targeted free transfers from/to specific servers, but that will be followed with a broader system where you can either take advantage of free promotional transfers to specific servers or paid transfers to the server of your choice. We know everyone has more questions about character transfer, and we’ll reveal more details closer to the launch date.

 

We also wanted to refer you to our Developer Tracker for more information by Senior Online Community Manager Stephen Reid:

 

The final character transfer system is in development now and is a high priority for the development team. However, as this is a complex technical challenge with many 'moving parts' it will not be available until some time after the Asia-Pacific character transfer process is finished. When we have more details and a more accurate ETA to share, we will do so.

 

We look forward to your feedback!