Most servers are dead - we need transfers now, not in early summer

[oldshatterhand]

BW, why delay the transfers until early summer? Many servers, including my own are already dead. Here are some screenshots taken today on Trayus Academy (EU). The time is GMT+2, which covers most of Europe.

 

11:12 AM, alone on Imperial fleet http://i.imgur.com/S9iKE.jpg

14:15 PM, 63 people online on the entire server http://i.imgur.com/SGC0u.jpg (republic) and http://i.imgur.com/ctAEW.jpg (empire)

 

As level 50, it is impossible to play a Warzone before 5 PM. Between 5 and 8 PM queues range from 15 to 30 minutes, and are only decent (10-15 minutes) between 8 and 11 PM. There is always only one Warzone taking place at a time on the entire server, so if more then 16 people are in queue, you might miss it and have to wait until it ends, praying you won't miss the next.

 

Even at prime-time, we never have even 200 players online server-wide. Usually there are around about 100 on empire side and 50 on republic. Once again, I'm not talking about people on fleet, but about people on THE ENTIRE SERVER. I can provide screenshots for this later tonight, if needed.

 

Honestly, how can playing with less then 200 people on a server even be considered a MMO? There are many singleplayer games out there with far more then 200 people at a time playing multiplayer.

 

So Bioware, why wait until early summer with the transfers? There are many server which badly need it now, after the free 30 days will be over they will be completely dead because no sane person will pay to just stand around on fleet for hours doing nothing.

[Ellvaan]

Greetings everyone!

 

Since the previous thread has reached past our posting threshold, we have recreated the thread here for you to continue your discussion.

 

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Edited May 16, 2012 by Ellvaan

[Rutters]

When you play an MMO, you know about the roll.

 

You roll to hit, you roll to defend, you roll on items/loot. you win some and you lose some. does not break the game.

 

What I don’t like is my 1st roll of the game being the server i choose, that does break the game.

 

My server (Hex Droid) is dead. PVP Q is eternal and when you do get a pop, its 4 v 7 or you join a game that is already lost.

 

Server merge needs to happen, and fast.. logged into the republic side and seen that a total of 21 players for the reb side, logged in on the empire side, total of 40 players. that’s a whole 61 folk on the server across both factions. That is not an MMO.

 

I am not going to re-roll my toons on another server as time spent on this one, also the server I roll on could be dead in a month,

 

This game is great, don’t get me wrong but it needs people to play it with...without them it has 0 appeal.

 

At least give us some hope that you are here BW, not "soonTM" "early summer" " looking into options"

 

I would like to see a statement that has some real facts in., that might be enough for me to re-sub,

 

Rutters

[Kthx]

Cute that when the thread got recreated, the title got changed from "my server is dead" to "most servers are dead".

[Rekkx]

Look! A new issue nobody has talked about before. How refreshing.

[-Dench]

The insanity continues. Most of the player base at this point in North America is being hurt by low server populations.

 

123 North American Servers? Lets try 25. Please.

 

I want to play this game. I want to be apart of a vibrant community. I want to meet new people, chat with them, trade, duel and quest with them.

 

I can't do that anymore. I haven't really been able to do it since late FEB.

 

It's time. No more silence. BW, tell us whats holding this back.

 

The second my toon is on a server that runs at VERY HEAVY / FULL is the second I resub for another 6 months.

 

 

Diablo III is out, and as a former player of D2, I am very happy. If you want me and my money back, you need to transfer my toons to a server that has a population. It's that simple.

[Keymod]

I think they will come before patch 1.3 because LFG would be horrible on a dead server.

[Rutters]

I think they will come before patch 1.3 because LFG would be horrible on a dead server.

 

I think a some idea of the plan should come 1st.

 

BW if you have a plan, share it, if you don’t then this game is way beyond saving.

 

R.

[Nicolettexiv]

BW, why delay the transfers until early summer? Many servers, including my own are already dead. Here are some screenshots taken today on Trayus Academy (EU). The time is GMT+2, which covers most of Europe.

 

11:12 AM, alone on Imperial fleet http://i.imgur.com/S9iKE.jpg

14:15 PM, 63 people online on the entire server http://i.imgur.com/SGC0u.jpg (republic) and http://i.imgur.com/ctAEW.jpg (empire)

 

As level 50, it is impossible to play a Warzone before 5 PM. Between 5 and 8 PM queues range from 15 to 30 minutes, and are only decent (10-15 minutes) between 8 and 11 PM. There is always only one Warzone taking place at a time on the entire server, so if more then 16 people are in queue, you might miss it and have to wait until it ends, praying you won't miss the next.

 

Even at prime-time, we never have even 200 players online server-wide. Usually there are around about 100 on empire side and 50 on republic. Once again, I'm not talking about people on fleet, but about people on THE ENTIRE SERVER. I can provide screenshots for this later tonight, if needed.

 

Honestly, how can playing with less then 200 people on a server even be considered a MMO? There are many singleplayer games out there with far more then 200 people at a time playing multiplayer.

 

So Bioware, why wait until early summer with the transfers? There are many server which badly need it now, after the free 30 days will be over they will be completely dead because no sane person will pay to just stand around on fleet for hours doing nothing.

I know I'm repeating old arguments.. However, having been a resident of several dead servers, and eventually one thriving one (before the AUS transfers removed half of the player base) - I have a suggestion.

 

Rather than sponsored transfers, taking players from the 3-5 thriving communities and infusing them into the 110 dead servers - further threatening existing communities, and not actually helping those servers that ARE dead... why not simply close 50-70 of the 110 (seemingly eternally) light servers, and just merge those players to the remaining servers? Then, rather than trying to spread a sparse player base even thinner, you could actually bolster all of the remaining communities. Maybe aim for a borderline heavy population during the prime time slot on each server's time zone (rather than the "just barely hitting standard, for 30 minutes, during peak times.."). By doing this, you build the communities you are striving to "protect" rather than dealing a blow to their population even further, and this game ceases to feel like a single player game - aside from the fact that SPGs don't require a group to down content. This results in an increased number of active players, and a living community. Which provides greater motivation for your players to keep playing - as they could then have the opportunity to experience content, build in-game relationships (guilds, groups, etc), rendering the "there's nothing to do" argument less valid. If you see a drastic increase in subscriptions, and server stress, slowly open new servers for them (one at a time), and THEN open the option for sponsored, directed transfers to then bolster that server, with excess from the 1-3 most densely populated, provided it won't then seriously wound the community (much like the APAC transfer appears to have done on the Harbinger).

 

I re-rolled to a thriving server, as stated earlier, and was able to experience content - all of it, from the heroics, to flashpoints and operations, for the first time in four months of playing. On my prior server, finding a PuG was impossible, let alone 8 players. I never saw ANY of the heroic content. I saw maybe 2-3 flashpoints (with exception to Black Talon/Esseles) and that was back when the server first opened and people were actually logging in. But as the community died, my desire to sign in died. Apparently the same for many other players, as now that server is even less populated. It took me nearly two months to work up the desire to re-roll. Now, being on a densely populated server, I've been able to be involved with guilds, I have a large friends list of players to choose from for PuGs if things are slow, I'm running Operations 2-3 times per week and actively progressing through content. I feel there's almost too much to do. (ha) However, without a rich population, this isn't an option for many players.

 

While I was re-rolling to get a feel for the top 5 servers, I asked in general chat on the starting planets (as well as general on fleet) how many players were re-rolls, and wasn't surprised when I discovered that the majority of them are. I've encountered people from my old server that had re-rolled onto my current one, and half of my guild has re-rolled from elsewhere also.

 

I truly enjoy this game, I enjoy the community I finally was able to find (even our designated trolls), and the content has been both fun and challenging (Analyzing the new endgame mechanics upon the launch of 1.2, Hard Mode Denova runs - finally downing Z&T, Tanks..). I have enjoyed the progress so far, and look forward to what is to come in the future. I simply hope Bioware can implement a satisfactory resolution (for both BW/EA and players) to the population issues, and consider addressing the problem head on, rather than make it worse.

Edited May 16, 2012 by Nicolettexiv

[Nicolettexiv]

"Early Summer"? How are they defining early? And summer for whom? If the US, Summer officially begins on June 20th. If it was "early" summer, could that mean in the first few weeks following June 20th? So, maybe by mid-July? That's over 7 months after the game's launch, and the problems have been evident, and numbers rapidly declining, since January.

 

Meanwhile, players like me who have re-rolled after already establishing characters, are now finding that unless we roll Fat Man, we'll be on a sparsely populated server. I rolled to the heaviest population PvE server which just lost over 1/2 of its player base to APAC transfers. So, that's four 50s in total, several 40s and 30s, that I would have to leave behind, in order to get to a Heavy, not even Full, server.

 

And once GW2, Tera, D3, etc. have hit? Will even THOSE numbers, as they currently stand, remain? Some will leave. Yes. But on a server with 25 people at peak, for the ENTIRE faction, not just fleet, losing any one of them is noticeable.

[ACE-GIRL]

The insanity continues. Most of the player base at this point in North America is being hurt by low server populations.

 

123 North American Servers? Lets try 25. Please.

 

I want to play this game. I want to be apart of a vibrant community. I want to meet new people, chat with them, trade, duel and quest with them.

 

I can't do that anymore. I haven't really been able to do it since late FEB.

 

It's time. No more silence. BW, tell us whats holding this back.

 

The second my toon is on a server that runs at VERY HEAVY / FULL is the second I resub for another 6 months.

 

 

Diablo III is out, and as a former player of D2, I am very happy. If you want me and my money back, you need to transfer my toons to a server that has a population. It's that simple.

 

AMEN my friend, sadly i will NOT be resubbing, this is the final straw for me. I would still be playing now if they would have merged servers as they died. Now they have to do it all at once. I will not wait another 1-2 months!

Its way too late and i lost all confidence, i refuse to be a customer to this debacle, even if it was free all servers are ghost towns and I literally have never been so bored in my life sitting in fleet hoping more than 10 level 50s will login:(

 

I havent had fun in this game since patch 1.2 or a short while before, 1.2 content was barely enough to make me resub, now my server has like 15 people on the pub side and nobody on fleet, i loggged onto Infinite Empire one last time before unsubbing and i was the only person on fleet, was the same last night also. no more than 20-30 people during peak time last few days and even then they would log on then log right back out once they saw nothing was going on.

[Sekketh]

spent all day yesterday trying to get 1 pvp match let alone my daily done

 

same thing today

im not going to play D3 as i find the movment mechanics outdated still right now it seems a better buy at least until server transfers are up but i do think that its just about to late

[NastyPiggy]

More then likely this is political. Someone(s) don't won't to lose their job(s). Someone ordered more servers, more rack space, more personnel to handle everyone and now won't go back and say it was a huge mistake. The amount of money wasted on all the servers would be huge and more then likely someone's job would be lost over it, so instead of fixing the game, they'd rather watch it die while they don't take the blame for their blunder and possibly lose their job. It's easier to say the game had this wrong or that wrong instead of saying we spread out the community and turned this MMO into nearly a single player game with multi-player capability(sometimes). Someone is just saving their job and the free weekends aren't to get new players, it's to try to keep the paying players from being in ghost towns(even though it's already happening). Edited May 16, 2012 by NastyPiggy

[laiboch]

More then likely this is political. Someone(s) don't won't to lose their job(s). Someone ordered more servers, more rack space, more personnel to handle everyone and now won't go back and say it was a huge mistake. The amount of money wasted on all the servers would be huge and more then likely someone's job would be lost over it, so instead of fixing the game, they'd rather watch it die while they don't take the blame for their blunder and possibly lose their job. It's easier to say the game had this wrong or that wrong instead of saying we spread out the community and turned this MMO into nearly a single player game with multi-player capability(sometimes). Someone is just saving their job and the free weekends aren't to get new players, it's to try to keep the paying players from being in ghost towns(even though it's already happening).

 

The amount of players they will lose will be more costly. The guild I joined this game in was Assigned the server I am on... Prime time has less than 100 players on line most of the time. A really really good day has about 150. Bioware assigned the server and now those of us still on the server sit and wait for HOURS most of the day for a single queue pop.

 

In the last few weeks 3 entire guilds simply quit the server about 8 players switched to a higher pop server and the rest simply quit playing. Hell even "Larger" guilds are stoked when they have 6-9 players on line. All Bioware is going to accomplish with not merging servers is to make even more players on dead servers leave for ANYTHING else they can find with a strong population. Honestly there are several games that are starting to look really good to me because I will actually be able to find a group and do something other than sit on fleet crafting things that no one will buy because the other 30 players are doing the EXACT SAME THING.

[rawfox]

BW, why delay the transfers until early summer?

 

I think it is a marketing thing.

[NastyPiggy]

The amount of players they will lose will be more costly. The guild I joined this game in was Assigned the server I am on... Prime time has less than 100 players on line most of the time. A really really good day has about 150. Bioware assigned the server and now those of us still on the server sit and wait for HOURS most of the day for a single queue pop.

 

In the last few weeks 3 entire guilds simply quit the server about 8 players switched to a higher pop server and the rest simply quit playing. Hell even "Larger" guilds are stoked when they have 6-9 players on line. All Bioware is going to accomplish with not merging servers is to make even more players on dead servers leave for ANYTHING else they can find with a strong population. Honestly there are several games that are starting to look really good to me because I will actually be able to find a group and do something other than sit on fleet crafting things that no one will buy because the other 30 players are doing the EXACT SAME THING.

 

I'm been in the IT business for over 20 years, it's not uncommon for this to happen at all. Power struggles and people saving their job while risking other people's jobs. Yes, the game may fail but they can point the finger at other people then at themselves and with that, the ability to move to another job if they want.

 

Let me ask you this... do you not think the technology is out there to allow players to move to other servers, lets say it's not... how long do you think it would take to make a quick little webpage that you could move a player over to another server with? It's really very simple, we're talking a couple of web pages and probably 1 stored procedure to move someone. The question is WHY aren't they allowing people to migrate to higher population servers when they have people mass leaving the game? It's politics, someone is trying to save face. Blowing a ton of money on new servers and their support points the finger at one person, letting the game fail you can point the finger at multiple people and none at yourself. I'm sure it's more complex then this, but simplistically, this is what's going on. Someone is saving themselves at the cost of the game.

[Iollaum]

Charcater transfers don't solve this huge problem only complete server merges would create a good solution for everyone.

 

If they only come up with character transfers a lot of people would transfer to the allready few overpopulated servers creating long waiting queues for everyone there. Everyone transfering to another low populated server just risks sitting there alone again. The second problem is you loose all the bindings to people you get to know on your server (of the few who are left) as longs as not everyone from your server you know transfers to the same server as you.

(Btw. I hope "character transfer" means you transfer all your characters right?)

 

If they instead merge a handfull of low populated servers together all the above disadvantages would be non existant, character transfers could than be the bonus option for people who really want to change to a specific server for some reason. But the majority needs merges.

 

The question is WHY aren't they allowing people to migrate to higher population servers when they have people mass leaving the game? It's politics, someone is trying to save face.

Yes that could be one of the very few explanations for this because you are right transfering one character (or all) from one server to another shouldn't be that big of a deal and if it was they have a serious problem with their data model...

Edited May 16, 2012 by Iollaum

[Voidillusion]

But the majority needs merges.

 

No question about it.

 

But atm i think all of us would settle with transfers. At least i would.

[ACE-GIRL]

I'm been in the IT business for over 20 years, it's not uncommon for this to happen at all. Power struggles and people saving their job while risking other people's jobs. Yes, the game may fail but they can point the finger at other people then at themselves and with that, the ability to move to another job if they want.

 

Let me ask you this... do you not think the technology is out there to allow players to move to other servers, lets say it's not... how long do you think it would take to make a quick little webpage that you could move a player over to another server with? It's really very simple, we're talking a couple of web pages and probably 1 stored procedure to move someone. The question is WHY aren't they allowing people to migrate to higher population servers when they have people mass leaving the game? It's politics, someone is trying to save face. Blowing a ton of money on new servers and their support points the finger at one person, letting the game fail you can point the finger at multiple people and none at yourself. I'm sure it's more complex then this, but simplistically, this is what's going on. Someone is saving themselves at the cost of the game.

 

Oh wow, i was thinking the same thing, its the only explanation that really makes sense.Someone on the top is searching for a new job as we speak, and while they hold things off with tauntauns and 30 day free subs and "free weekends" they can buy themselves time before the inevitable consolidation of half of the servers! GENIUS

[ACE-GIRL]

Oh wow, i was thinking the same thing, its the only explanation that really makes sense.Someone on the top is searching for a new job as we speak, and while they hold things off with tauntauns and 30 day free subs and "free weekends" they can buy themselves time before the inevitable consolidation of half of the servers! GENIUS

 

Or, they people in charge have all been sent pink slips and EA has taken over for damage control ...i.e. Downsizing

[Soljin]

Out of my group of friends I was the one that created the guild, brought everyone to the game from other games...talked it up and helped get the others pumped to play.

 

All those people left in the last few weeks, and my server is now at 15 people on fleet at peak times. Off peak it averages 5 to 9 players on fleet. This game is now unplayable for me as well...I tried rerolling and just dont want to play another toon to 50 go through the gear grinds etc....I want to further my main toon.which is my second level 50 character.

 

Due to BW not detailing transfer info and starting manual transfers for severly suffering low pop servers...I cancelled my Sub. I will check back from time to time to see if they have stopped the madness and started moving this game in a fun direction...But as it is now I feel they have dropped the ball bigtime!

 

I may play again in the future for sure...But I fear I am not alone and BW's lack of urgency on the server population issue may have a permanent negative effect on this game...Im sure they will recover in some sense...However I think this will impact the credibility of the game forever and will certainly cause A major revenue hit to their game.

 

Best of luck BW...because right now Luck is the only thing that is looking out for your game...From what I can tell you are lost.

[Lurchy]

Maybe they are just gonna take the massive 6m + 1m free exodus on the chin on 20th june and treat everything up to then as a paid for beta .. then consolidate the fragmentary population on the dead severs to a couple of other servers with maybe the option of a pay for tranfer to the slack handful of still heavy servers

and start again with 1.3 dumb the game down even more and just market to kids and uber SW fan boyz.

 

I think its safe to say at this stage that they know they have already lost most if not all of the veteran/experienced MMO community.

[Kourage]

Sooner the better, but not before they're ready & able.

[-Dench]

Sooner the better, but not before they're ready & able.

 

The tech is there, the leadership is not.

[SupremeLegate]

The tech is there, the leadership is not.

 

I've noticed people mentioning that the tech is already in place and that they have already used it to move people to the Europe and Asia servers, but what people seem to forget is that those moves happened before the 1.2 Legacy Patch. With that patch each character a person had became connected to each other, as well as things being unlocked via Legacy.

 

Think of it this way; if a character is a glass of water it is pretty simple to move from one place to another, but if you have to move several glasses of water it becomes a bit more difficult. You get as tray and use it to move the glasses, but if you do it too quickly you run the risk of spilling the water or even losing a whole glass.

 

Now as much as I want to be able to move my characters to a server with actual people on it, I don't want the Devs to rush it or to say something only for it to change later. As for the game dieing and all that, that's crap. On Hyperspace Cannon it would appear like the game is dead, but on Jedi Covenant or Red Eclipse there are droves of people, usually 'refugees' from dead servers.

 

So be chill-out and be patience.

 

And for the Devs reading this, having some idea of how long I'll have to wait would be much appreciated.