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

[NastyPiggy]

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

 

So what other reasons are there? It's quite easy to make a transfer system, all they have to do is copy a character to a new server(you know like they did for certain guilds for the test server) and then delete your old character(like you can delete now). It's all there! Why "early summer"? Why not now? Why not a 10 or 15 dollar price tag on the ability to transfer to another server? How does someone in charge go to their boss and say, you know those 110 servers I requested and we bought, well... we only needed 25-50 of them. Right now they can say it wasn't their fault and actually are pointing the finger at casual gamers...

 

EA's Frank Gibeau says that TOR's 400,000 subscriber drop from its February peak is a result of casual players deciding not to renew after a billing cycle.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/05/08/ea-bosses-weigh-in-on-swtor-sub-numbers/

 

SWTOR was released with very little high level content and with that lost a bunch of the HARD CORE GAMERS, not the casuals, casuals took their time leveling, not staying up day and night to max out.

 

Somebody high up screwed up or was lied to. To know that there wasn't much content at the endgame and not having the legacy system in place to promote gameplay under the max level, there was no need to launch so many servers, having queues may not be ideal, but getting in quickly to a game that's like a ghost town is much worse.

 

I'll ask again... why not allow server merges now instead of some arbitrary date in the future? The technology is there, the PAYING customers are making it known that they're not happy with their populations, so what's the reasoning YOU can come up with why it's not happening now? We're now to month 3 or 4 of this game dropping it's numbers at a great rate yet all we've been given is "Early Summer", you know, about the same time when Guild Wars 2 comes out(I'm guessing their hail mary to try to save this game). I'm currently unsubscribed and am only playing here and there till my "free 30 days" are up.

 

BTW... logged in this morning, me and 2 other people were on the Imperial Fleet. Tell me why transfers haven't been introduced yet.

Edited May 16, 2012 by NastyPiggy

[Kourage]

The tech is there, the leadership is not.

 

Sure. It's all there and the system is all set up, they just want to wait till they lose a set amount of subscribers before firing it up. Is that really your thought?

 

What they did before was on a small scale and required a lot of man power. It was not fully automated.

[-Dench]

Sure. It's all there and the system is all set up, they just want to wait till they lose a set amount of subscribers before firing it up. Is that really your thought?

 

Generally, yes.

 

if the tech wasn't there, that would be even worse as it would imply that BW is incapable of things that are considered typically easy in the IT world. database transfers are not complicated. A lot of people on this forum have been tricked into believe that "Legacy" some how makes this significantly more complicated. Its just more data that needs to be moved. Nothing significant.

 

If it was an issue, with their database system being overly complicated or unusual, then you could always hire some temporary sr. database/software engineers to bang it out.

 

I think the issue is a PR problem on top of management infighting. They don't know how to spin it, and they don't know what content to release it with. When they do transfers, its going to look bad. But, lots of people are going to come back, so they most likely are going to want some fresh in game content along with it to keep these returning players happy.

 

Like I said, I think its several reasons, none of which have to do with the actual tech to do the transfer. That part isn't a big deal.

 

I do IT for a living. I'm not database expert at all, but I do have the displeasure of working with a multi million dollar database. they are pretty straight forward.

Edited May 16, 2012 by -Dench

[NastyPiggy]

Sure. It's all there and the system is all set up, they just want to wait till they lose a set amount of subscribers before firing it up. Is that really your thought?

 

So what are they waiting for, it's been a few months since the rapid decline of subscriptions. They initially lost customers because of the lack of high level content, these were the HARD CORE PLAYERS, now they're losing the casual players who log in to find a pretty empty world. Why not appease the customers you still have?

 

What they did before was on a small scale and required a lot of man power. It was not fully automated.

 

Sure, they were picking and choosing who was allowed to transfer by hand, not making it open to everyone. More then likely they had a database administer write a SQL script and whenever a new person was allowed to the PTS they threw their name and server name into the script and ran it, done, this is how things are done routinely in the IT world, you don't do extra work until you're told or allowed to. All that would need to be done is to change that script to a stored procedure then write a front end to it for the web. Of course they'd have to test it thoroughly but it's really not that difficult to do.

Edited May 16, 2012 by NastyPiggy

[NastyPiggy]

I think the issue is a PR problem on top of management infighting. They don't know how to spin it, and they don't know what content to release it with. When they do transfers, its going to look bad. But, lots of people are going to come back, so they most likely are going to want some fresh in game content along with it to keep these returning players happy.

 

Sure PR is a problem, the allowing server transfers would be look at as a bad sign in the industry.

 

To me, the 30 days free game time was a way to stop having those horrible subscription numbers brought up for the time being. I've unsubscribed but I'm still an active player for another 34 days. So instead of me no longer being subscribed, they can count me as an active subscriber for 1 more month and with that, their subscription numbers don't reflect the true customer base for the game.

[-Dench]

their subscription numbers don't reflect the true customer base for the game.

 

I agree 100%.

[kaya]

They really need to drop everything else and get server merges done yesterday.

Rogue Moon (EU) is far from the worst server out there.

Generally 2 wz's going at peak time and 1 from during the afternoon / night.

But the population is dwindling fast despite that and its well on its way to dieing.

The server is just stale - i fight the same 2 dozen imps day in day out every week with the same 2 dozen reps.

I know every single one of them - their habits, their gear, their ability and know within secs if im in a team capable of beating them.

I used to group q but i stopped bothering because im pretty much guaranteed to end up in the same wz as my guildies and the occasional one we end up on differing sides gives a small degree of entertainment.

 

Guilds have pretty much been reduced to 2 after merges to retain enough people to do ops. This left a lot of people out in the cold as some people just dont like each other and with 2 guilds on the server capable of putting together an op theres just very little room for some nice but difficult people as they've picked up grudges. They're all dissapearing for obvious reasons.

 

I love the game but the server stinks of death and the non existant influx of new players makes the whole thing feel very stale. People who've been on every day since the game started and quite obviously love playing the game are cancelling their subscriptions. Once their gone BW will have a hard time gettiing them back.

I haven't run HM denova yet but its the only appealing thing left to do in the game without a fresh group of players to meet. Once thats done (in the next week or 2 i imagine) I just dont see myself renewing despite enjoying the game a great deal.

I guess i might come back - but once i leave an mmo i tend not to.

 

They can justify not having server transfers out now however they like - it doesn't change the situation that its not fun to be on a server thats more or less dead.

[ALXinstincts]

HALP! Dune Bantha EU is on it's final breath. Half the community is dead already, if we don't get a fix soon the other half will die too. 3-hour window for PvP every day, hardly any PuGs ever LFM, a dead economy and scr*ping together one or two raids a week from the handful of members we have left... same problems as everyone else. Edited May 16, 2012 by ALXinstincts

[vertigo_]

Guilds have pretty much been reduced to 2 after merges to retain enough people to do ops. This left a lot of people out in the cold as some people just dont like each other and with 2 guilds on the server capable of putting together an op theres just very little room for some nice but difficult people as they've picked up grudges. They're all dissapearing for obvious reasons.

 

This is exactly what is going on, on my server. As GM of 1 of the 2 guilds, I have developed a reputation for poaching and merging. But I had to, to get more talent in for our 16 man. Now neither guild can put together a 16 man, we run denova in 8's. The grudges/personal vendettas mean once you leave 1 guild, and dont like the other, you pretty much re-roll or quit. I know I will not take back anyone I kicked or who left on bad terms. The talent pool is shallow.

[NastyPiggy]

They really need to drop everything else and get server merges done yesterday.

 

They don't have to drop everything, they probably need 2 people to work on it, 1 being a DBA and the other one of their software engineers on the web team. After that whoever they need to do the testing to make sure it's solid.

 

It's as easy as someone giving the ok to do it, this is why I say it's political, it's very easy to get the coding done in 1 day then however long you need to test it before releasing it. It just reflects badly upon a brand new game and with that, you can point fingers at certain people in charge of the game and it's development.

[Sinphonic]

bw just doesn"t care. they say they do but they do nothing. no comments nothing. while servers sit with 0 - 20 ppl max @ peek hours. bw does nothing.

 

ffs answer ppl and make things happen now. not 2 months from now when itzs too late.

[Luxidenstore]

Playing on The Red Eclipse, which has always been one of the biggest EU servers, but both sides have taken a very, very noticeable hit on the playerbase. We're far from as being in as bad a situation as those of you on deserted servers, but if even the thriving servers is slowly dying, the future does look very grim.

 

I have almost lost faith myself.

[kaya]

 

It's as easy as someone giving the ok to do it, this is why I say it's political.

 

Well the 'politicians' should know that they're bleeding customers who LIKE the game, which is an absurd situation to put yourself in.

Losing customers because they simply dont like a game is normal and to be expected but leaving their servers in their current state is doing serious harm to the game.

[Voidillusion]

Playing on The Red Eclipse, which has always been one of the biggest EU servers, but both sides have taken a very, very noticeable hit on the playerbase. We're far from as being in as bad a situation as those of you on deserted servers, but if even the thriving servers is slowly dying, the future does look very grim.

 

I have almost lost faith myself.

 

This being true is very troubling...very troubling indeed.

[NastyPiggy]

bw just doesn"t care. they say they do but they do nothing. no comments nothing. while servers sit with 0 - 20 ppl max @ peek hours. bw does nothing.

 

ffs answer ppl and make things happen now. not 2 months from now when itzs too late.

 

Of course they care, they're creating revenue with this venture, this created a lot of jobs for BioWare. The question is where in the management process are they not allowing what needs to be done because it would reflect on them badly.

 

Don't many people understand how odd it is to say "early summer" when it's quite possible to have server transfers available now? They absolutely could pick which servers they could allow transfers to and from at this time.

[NastyPiggy]

Well the 'politicians' should know that they're bleeding customers who LIKE the game, which is an absurd situation to put yourself in.

Losing customers because they simply dont like a game is normal and to be expected but leaving their servers in their current state is doing serious harm to the game.

 

This happens all the time, way more then people can understand. Look at all the automotive execs that got bonuses after their companies got bailouts from the government. IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME just on a different scale. It's sad, but it's quite common.

[islander]

bw just doesn"t care. they say they do but they do nothing. no comments nothing. while servers sit with 0 - 20 ppl max @ peek hours. bw does nothing.

 

ffs answer ppl and make things happen now. not 2 months from now when itzs too late.

 

I think they care. I think their coders have proven to be somewhat incompetent, that's all. Unfortunate.

[NastyPiggy]

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.

 

You do understand, moving a character to another server under legacy would be the same as deleting a character under legacy. I wanted to change mains and use my same name, so I deleted a level 50, valor level 74 powertech and guess what, legacy handled it. Legacy is more then likely nothing more then a couple of new tables in the database, 1 to match up each one of your character's ID to your now unique legacy ID and then another table of what you've unlocked. Legacy has zero impact on how to transfer since it's already handling deleted characters(characters no longer on that server). I'm guessing most people would be amazed to know that most of your toons data is just connected through hash tables that connect IDs of items with IDs of your characters which now are connected to 1 Legacy ID.

[ACE-GIRL]

I think they care. I think their coders have proven to be somewhat incompetent, that's all. Unfortunate.

 

They should recruit more game devolopers from India, obviously the talent is not skilled enough to blast through these issues, which of course would be a non-issue if someone said "hey, shouldn't we have a system in place for server merges" before the game launches.... lmao I actually had more fun reading forums then i would have had if i was sitting on a dead server right now! This is my last post and im done

 

Truth is i think they had lots of cutbacks and this game is doomed, all they can do is prolong its demise! SWTOR=RIP

[NastyPiggy]

They should recruit more game devolopers from India, obviously the talent is not skilled enough to blast through these issues, which of course would be a non-issue if someone said "hey, shouldn't we have a system in place for server merges" before the game launches.... lmao I actually had more fun reading forums then i would have had if i was sitting on a dead server right now! This is my last post and im done

 

Truth is i think they had lots of cutbacks and this game is doomed, all they can do is prolong its demise! SWTOR=RIP

 

The developers can only do what they're allowed to do. Management tells the workers what they can and can't do and with that... politics comes into play. Do you focus on future content or current problems? Do you gain and keep more customers with future content(with people coming back and retaining who you have) or do you lose more people because you let current problems slide. It's almost all political, very little to do with technical at this point.

 

You can go to battle with the best soldiers possible, but if you have someone in charge making horrible decisions then you're going to get slaughtered.

[Wootie]

bump, yes, please hurry up with the merges/transfers before everyone is gone...

[Photoshop]

Agreed, we need transfers now, early summer will be too late.

[Tiggress]

Roll a toon on Fatman while you wait....You will experience a whole new game...populated, with lots of friendly voices,,,lots of chances to run any heroic or flashpoint at your level...even last night at midnight, PVP was booming, and fleet was at 75 plus....planets are around 50...and again this is late night....SO while you wait, go rolla toon on FATMAN, you will be happy..

[KantaUO]

I was the only person on fleet yesterday...awesome. Close my server please

[Kourage]

Krayiss Obelisk

 

now

http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/5577/fleets.jpg

My level 1 mule and some level 39. That's it. I just logged out to go back to Fatman so, now there's only 1.

 

 

Oh and check out our awesome economy!

http://img848.imageshack.us/img848/359/gtnt.jpg

 

Not even 1 full page of scavenged materials.

Edited May 16, 2012 by Kourage