BW could do transfers now but hasn't...why?

[tacoknite]

during the launch with the influx of people they opened a ton of servers that are now empty.

 

They are probably going back and forth on just how many servers to allow free xfers off and to where. That along with the impelementation of the feature. They should have had this ironed out prior to launch but hindsight is always 20/20.

 

i hope they understand that people would rather wait in line for something good, then experience something alone. I personally would for go my legacy , name, to get a server xfer. I will not however go through the story again , i am not an altaholic and it's pretty damning business to expect your customers to re-roll , cause of your mistake.

 

I'd say not this week but next week they'll try to push out some xfers. If not , they'll lose a huge chunk of people. With 1.3 on the pts, i don't know what they hope to accomplish, since people can't copy characters there anyways.

[Celwinn]

 

After thinking about this, I think Server Transfers are a bad call atm. We could very well end up with another 'Fatman" server situation. I know they have said they would do select server transfers but what if they did the following instead:

 

• Server Merge 50 servers (Same type, same time zone) - July 1st
  
• Carefully monitor the population for all of July
  
• Start Transfers Early August (Selected servers)
  
• Open Transfers to any server Late August
  

• 
  

[Irenicus_Jon]

There is the possibility that they haven't been able to work out all the technicalities involved (I would suspect this would be due to legacy system). The problem here is that by now many people have left the game due to various reasons including low population on their servers, it is not certain these people will come back once they allow transfers.

 

I'm one of those people btw and I'm not coming back.

[navocky]

posted few of my bets :

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=462372

 

also concerning a few other things, not just merges. Just speculation on my part though I have no magical inside knowledge

[Photoshop]

I really wish I knew the answer too. A lot of my RL friends playing this game left because they didnt want to resub playing on a dead server.

 

Each day that goes by without transfers decreases the population as a whole.

[NDiggy]

I really wish I knew the answer too. A lot of my RL friends playing this game left because they didnt want to resub playing on a dead server.

 

Each day that goes by without transfers decreases the population as a whole.

 

It honestly looks like they're doing everything in their power to kill this game. At least we get more Legacy stuff in 1.3, that is sure to bring in the subscribers.

[sharkfinsix]

They have no clue how to do it without pissing off there declining playerbase

 

so the plan is to wait until their is no player base left to tick off? over half my guild has directly quit the game in the past month based on lack of server population, which then makes more people quit.

[sharkfinsix]

There is the possibility that they haven't been able to work out all the technicalities involved (I would suspect this would be due to legacy system). The problem here is that by now many people have left the game due to various reasons including low population on their servers, it is not certain these people will come back once they allow transfers.

 

I'm one of those people btw and I'm not coming back.

 

A lot of people, including myself usually, once they leave a game for a new game, don't return, this is a dangerous time for SWTOR. The game will obviously survive and continue on, but it perhaps will never reach the potential we all hoped for. I have something like 60 days left on my prepaid time and i sincerely hope things are fixed by then because i'd love to resubscribe if i am having fun, but most people are already leaving or left and i doubt more then 10%-15% would come back for a new patch or mergers.

[wezley]

the reason they have not done server transfers yet is simple.. look at all of the three weekends and all of the "the games doing great" posts by the senior members.. If bioware can influx numbers of free users over weekends, which is what they are doing with free passes, they can say that the game is doing better than the fans are complaing (great for PR purposes) but thats not it.. the reason they are doing it is so they can turn around and say "server transfers are not needed, because at peak times there are X amount of people on" when in reality only half that number are on.. once they do this they can charge people to move from the current low pop servers instead of giving it away for free

[Kthx]

Then start with the 3 lowest pop servers. You're telling me they couldn't handle that? Heck, as low as the pops on those servers are, they could probably do 6 or even 9 servers.

 

Presumably they looked at the cost and benefits of doing them manually vs. doing it in automated fashion and concluded the latter was the better option.

[ZaRree]

Then start with the 3 lowest pop servers. You're telling me they couldn't handle that? Heck, as low as the pops on those servers are, they could probably do 6 or even 9 servers.

 

Because the cost would outweigh the reward.....

Someone has to do the manual transfers, better to work on an overall system......

[Sarx]

Nerd moment incoming...

 

Have you actually done the math on manual transfers? To figure out how many man-hours it would take, you take the number of players who would take advantage of the service, multiply by the average characters per player, and multiply that by the time (in hours) each character transfer takes.

 

You can then use that number to figure out how much it would cost and how long it would take. For cost, simply take the man-hours and multiply by the hourly pay of a CSR. For how long it would take, divide the man-hours by the number of CSRs working on the project and divide that by the average length of time each day that a CSR spends working on it.

 

Now, using this formula we can plug in some numbers, let's say 200k players would want to use the service with an average of 3 characters each and each transfer takes 30 minutes. 200,000 * 3 * 0.5 = 300,000 man-hours

 

If the CSRs get paid $10 an hour, that's a cost of $3 million. If they have 500 CSRs working on it full time(8 hours/day), it would take 75 work days to get done. (300,000 / 500 / 8).

 

Now, if they started doing manual transfers the same day they started Aussie transfers (Apr 24) and had them working on it 7 days a week, they would have those 200k players all transferred on approximately July 3rd.

 

So, using those numbers, manual transfers would have cost millions and taken longer than the system they are developing now.

 

I am aware that these numbers are just speculation, but I think 200k players transferring and $10/hour pay for CSRs at Bioware are both conservative estimates if anything.

Edited May 22, 2012 by Sarx

[Wesgile]

most of the aussie transfers are done in just a week.

and the numbers are definitely much more than the lowest 50 or more servers combined together.

 

that said, as long as the flow had been established, automating it shouldn't be the hardest thing to do.

i'm sure they could've rolled the transfers weeks ago if they content on using a website interface and manage the transfers there. but no, they just had to integrate it to the game client with pretty graphics and ui...

 

it's like they really don't understand the severity and/or magnitude of the problem at hand.

[NDiggy]

Presumably they looked at the cost and benefits of doing them manually vs. doing it in automated fashion and concluded the latter was the better option.

 

The costs are nothing if they can prevent the core group of players from leaving this game. Once they leave they don't come back. The good PR alone would do wonders for the reputation of BW, which is heavily tarnished at this point.

[Kllashaa]

It would be great if a Bioware rep would respond to OP.

[NDiggy]

Nerd moment incoming...

 

Have you actually done the math on manual transfers? To figure out how many man-hours it would take, you take the number of players who would take advantage of the service, multiply by the average characters per player, and multiply that by the time (in hours) each character transfer takes.

 

You can then use that number to figure out how much it would cost and how long it would take. For cost, simply take the man-hours and multiply by the hourly pay of a CSR. For how long it would take, divide the man-hours by the number of CSRs working on the project and divide that by the average length of time each day that a CSR spends working on it.

 

Now, using this formula we can plug in some numbers, let's say 200k players would want to use the service with an average of 3 characters each and each transfer takes 30 minutes. 200,000 * 3 * 0.5 = 300,000 man-hours

 

If the CSRs get paid $10 an hour, that's a cost of $3 million. If they have 500 CSRs working on it full time(8 hours/day), it would take 75 work days to get done. (300,000 / 500 / 8).

 

Now, if they started doing manual transfers the same day they started Aussie transfers (Apr 24) and had them working on it 7 days a week, they would have those 200k players all transferred on approximately July 3rd.

 

So, using those numbers, manual transfers would have cost millions and taken longer than the system they are developing now.

 

I am aware that these numbers are just speculation, but I think 200k players transferring and $10/hour pay for CSRs at Bioware are both conservative estimates if anything.

 

Thanks for doing all the math and failing to read the OP. I suggested taking 3 or 4 of the lowest pop servers per week and starting transfers. This would come nowhere near as close to the number of players they transferred to the Aussie servers, which took only a week. For a server where there are only between 5-15 players in fleet at peak times per faction, I doubt you'd need to transfer that many accounts. A generous estimate might put 500 active subscriptions on those servers. That would be 2000 accounts per week for 4 low pop servers. Hardly a drop in the bucket to relieve the worst servers and gain some good PR in the process.

[NDiggy]

It would be great if a Bioware rep would respond to OP.

 

They just fired their lead Community guy so I doubt we'll see a response, not that we would have before. BW seems to prefer using Twitter to convey information instead of their own website.

[Roalmo]

Nerd moment incoming...

 

...let's say 200k players would want to use the service....

 

Err.. you actually think there are 200k players on all the low servers COMBINED???

[NDiggy]

Err.. you actually think there are 200k players on all the low servers COMBINED???

 

Probably not even 200k active players period at this point.

[Sarx]

Thanks for doing all the math and failing to read the OP. I suggested taking 3 or 4 of the lowest pop servers per week and starting transfers. This would come nowhere near as close to the number of players they transferred to the Aussie servers, which took only a week. For a server where there are only between 5-15 players in fleet at peak times per faction, I doubt you'd need to transfer that many accounts. A generous estimate might put 500 active subscriptions on those servers. That would be 2000 accounts per week for 4 low pop servers. Hardly a drop in the bucket to relieve the worst servers and gain some good PR in the process.

 

How many servers do you believe need to have free transfers? I've heard some people say that the bottom 100 should have transfers for free and/or merges.

 

Edit: my bad, the math in this post was off. But the number of players using would depend on how many servers need transfers. If you need to do transfers on 100 servers, 4 per week would take 25 weeks, nearly half a year.

Edited May 22, 2012 by Sarx

[Kllashaa]

They just fired their lead Community guy so I doubt we'll see a response, not that we would have before. BW seems to prefer using Twitter to convey information instead of their own website.

Yeah. I'm not sure why they're continuing to withhold information. A real status update would be nice. Given the negative response to 1.3 news on Mon, then layoff news on Tues, it'd be a nice gesture if Bioware stopped all the vague promises to the community.

[williambr]

They just fired their lead Community guy so I doubt we'll see a response, not that we would have before. BW seems to prefer using Twitter to convey information instead of their own website.

 

They did just fire their lead community guy thats been training his replacement for months:eek:

 

They can't do transfers automatically or they would. Its hurting their business. This thread is like saying that someone on fires not putting out the fire thats burning him cause hes hoarding water.

 

They are panicking and trying to work the code so transfers can be automated and not manually transferred one at a time with all sorts of glitches i.e legacy not transferring, people with the same name, achievements and so on and so fourth.

 

There is no conspiracy to hide the real info, its like asking someone how long its going to take them to do something they haven't done before. They are hoping its real soon, but if they promise anything, it will be treated like the rated warzone fiasco imho.