Regarding server queues

[Nogglefish]

Your plan to balance servers isn't working. Hey, you tried, and it was a noble idea. But it failed. Now you have people really angry. It would have been better to have pre-announced server mergers in a month for any server under a set population. A little more work for you, a lot more fun for us.

[Lopys]

Yep, I'll post the actual response for everyone to see, although this will probably be against forum rules and I'll get banned or something... and this was after I specifically stated that I didn't want to lose my current characters.

 

Everyone knows that a droid is derp.

[RadjezZ]

They locked your thread like they lock all others to keep the GD forums from being swamped with a million personal threads about the same issue this thread covers.

 

Its not some conspiracy. If BW answers they answer here. I sound like a BW employee for saying this but its not like they haven't been doing the lock and link to official thread thing for months or forever for all I know.

 

Honestly with millions of people playing if they let everyone make a thread about this there would be about a thousand threads made today.

 

Seeing so many threads about this only proofs this is a real problem and it needs to be adressed.

 

Shutting up people or closing threads does not solve it.

[Sephram]

I got a reply from BW... they said I should choose another server... they are missing the point, I shouldn't have to give up my 40+ hours already invested to roll on another server, and the server I picked was LIGHT at the time I picked it... now it's 700+ queue... is that my fault BW? No!

 

Frustratingly is seems to be a great game so far... I just can't believe BW have take this "There's nothing wrong, just choose another server" stance.

 

Wait a minute, you actually received an official response from Bioware and their answer was to reroll?

 

You're kidding, right?

[Bragar]

I bet you Bioware is taking the 'lets see how it plays out' approach,

Figure it out guys.

 

bet me $10k maybe? But the reason you have to bet is because you don't KNOW the reality, only BW do and they will not tell us. Ignoring a communication issue makes it worse not better. Being open and honest with your customers about issues is proven to result in happier customers. Maybe they need some Customer Service training?

[Jett_Skirata]

Who the **** told you that only registered pre-order guilds have the right to be in the servers?? Meaning that me that was in from EGA don't have the right to play with my friends that didn't pre-order?

 

Biggest problem is the random DCs/Crashes that put you BACK IN THE QUEUE. I don't whine if i join for the first time today, i whine cause the game crashes and i get put back in the queue FOR NO *********** REASON FOR THE 5TH TIME TODAY while in party and 3 people wait for me 30mins each time to continue questing....

Lol, feel the rage flow through you.

 

Nice way to over react. Never did I say only preorder guilds should be in any of those servers.

 

What I said is if somebody new to the game logs on and doesn’t have any friends or a guild on one of the servers with a queue they’re more likely to roll elsewhere.

[Glip]

So i'm staring across the room at my unopened SWTOR retail dvd box and seriously considering not opening it. Yes it all started with the queue on Tomb of Freedom Nadd and the fact that I work for a living and can't spend my time waiting for up to four and a half hours to login and then find myself having to walk the dog and being logged out because I had to go afk (I know I know long rambling sentence).

 

What I need to hear is a solid plan/promise to get rid of the queues so I can get on with enjoying a game that I have really looked forward to. Even a "it will be fixed in a month" would be better than nothing, at least that way I can go away and come back when the game is playable.

 

Well heres hoping for something soonish. btw my queue is currently > 2 hours so that will be another day without SWTOR. Maybe someone would be kind enough to let me know when it is under 30 mins.

 

Thank and good night.

[Sniperfish]

How about no.

 

You obviously do not work in the industry.

 

All of this is planned out in advance, server capacity and the metrics involved.

 

Painfully wrong from someone who does work in software industry. There are hardware solutions, technology solutions, and process solutions. Eg. of the latter: They could use the fact of Beta queues and pre-release queues to know server limits and cap # characters per server.

 

 

Either way...talk to your community BW.

[arturo_bandini]

::Bioware enters group meeting with all the head hanchos.

 

"So....launch day is here, and our staggered plan has met a bit of resistance"

 

"Yeah...even though its better for us (read: CHEAPER) to try and fill out each server rather than merge them and throw some of them out, many people seem to be upset with how were handling it"

 

"So...should we just release server caps and forget about or plan?"

 

"I dont know...if we do that, we risk losing an incredibly minuscule amount of profit. But we will make the consumer happy"

 

"Well..im in favor of making more money, screw the consumer!"

 

"Yes, we'll just not say anything...they all have the attention span of goldfish anyway! Lets all go swim in my swimming pool of money from preorders HAR HAR HAR"

 

"I forgot my suit"

 

"Dont worry about it! We'll all swim nekkid! WOOOOOOOOO"

 

No corporation works this efficiently. More like everybody is trying to cover for themselves and make it look like there's no problem.

[neillien]

Wait a minute, you actually received an official response from Bioware and their answer was to reroll?

 

You're kidding, right?

 

Nope, I'm afraid not... I posted it just above if u wanna read it xD

[Blackuz]

EU PvP server Legions of Lettow - 1062 in order please fix

[P-Funk]

P-Funk EGA in this game could and should be counted as a launch due to the massive ammounts of preorders

 

Its pre-launch, a slow ramping up to the full day when everyone gets in. The number of people who will be buying the game in the next day or two will exceed the number who pre-ordered and actually played. Many didn't even use the EGA at all. My brother didn't and he's been into this game since before me.

 

Its like saying because they let people set up tents at Burning Man 7 days before the event opened the doors to most people that that was the start of the event. Its not, its the gradual build up of the populations.

 

The influx we're seeing today is obviously much greater than we saw during EGA.

 

BTW, you didn't say why it should be counted as launch.

[Anecdote]

How about no.

 

You obviously do not work in the industry.

 

All of this is planned out in advance, server capacity and the metrics involved.

 

They want the new influx of players to start filling up the new servers and see what happens with queues before they make any moves.

 

They have to do that right now. If you raise the caps, you'll eventually have a server that performs like ****, while still having light-medium servers sitting there, waiting for players to join.

 

If you offer transfers right now, before another wave comes on the 25th, then those "light" servers you are transfer too, could become over-crowded and you'll have the very same problem there as well.

 

You CANNOT knee-jerk-reaction this kind of scenario because you can create more problems than you alleviate using this kind of shortsightedness.

 

I agree, the queue's suck, I'm dealing with them as well as my entire guild.

 

But they are doing the right thing right now by taking a brief, wait and see if some of the population (for instance, those not guilded) will slide over to some of the less populated realms. This is a more gradual migration because those types of players (non-guilded) will not be taking 20 to 50 to 500 players with them (thus potentially creating the same scenario on another server), which would be the case if you offer free transfers at this stage of the game.

 

quoted for relevance to the conversation and hopefully more people will see/respond to it

[Astakhan]

What are you talking about - they had years of being able to check with other developers about how to handle population loads and they dropped the ball very badly. I am astonished that you can think that 3 hour or longer queues are EVER acceptable in an online game.

 

PS I have this bridge I think you will want to buy

 

My server isn't at 3 hour queues, but if mine was, I would be astonished if we didn't re-roll on another lighter-load server. This is a game that a lot of people will be playing for months or even years to come, 5 days of lost play time is nothing if you have to wait 3 hours to play every day.

 

It's a rock and a hard place. If you launch with too wide-spread of a population, you risk server merges and people leaving the game due to under-population after the initial launch rush.

 

There is no perfect launch of a highly anticipated MMO. It does not exist.

[Shakkaka]

So i'm staring across the room at my unopened SWTOR retail dvd box and seriously considering not opening it. Yes it all started with the queue on Tomb of Freedom Nadd and the fact that I work for a living and can't spend my time waiting for up to four and a half hours to login and then find myself having to walk the dog and being logged out because I had to go afk (I know I know long rambling sentence).

 

What I need to hear is a solid plan/promise to get rid of the queues so I can get on with enjoying a game that I have really looked forward to. Even a "it will be fixed in a month" would be better than nothing, at least that way I can go away and come back when the game is playable.

 

Well heres hoping for something soonish. btw my queue is currently > 2 hours so that will be another day without SWTOR. Maybe someone would be kind enough to let me know when it is under 30 mins.

 

Thank and good night.

 

They already got the $60 out of ya ... I don't think they care what you do from here on out

[Amandar]

Dear Jeff Hickman, Executive Producer – Live Services.

 

On one hand, you do not want people to wait too long

FYI - much more than 30 minutes is too long.

 

Either way, we have one clear objective – to make sure folks have fun.

FYI - waiting more than 30 minutes is not fun for anyone. Not being to play the character you leveled during Early Game Access due to the long wait times is even less fun.

 

While we can’t promise that there won’t ever be queues, we can promise you that we are taking this matter seriously and constantly reviewing them to make sure that they are manageable and reasonable.

I don't think anyone seriously expected there would not be reasonable queues at launch. However, I also don't think anyone expected for 57% of the servers to be full with long queue times while 34% of the servers are classified as "Light".

 

If all of the servers had 15-30 minute queues, reasonable people would not complain. Why give players Early Game Access and get them vested to a server only to deny them access once launch occurred? Please temporarily prevent new character creation on servers that have experienced "Full" status for more than 2 hours during peak hours and increase access to those servers so that queue times average 30 minutes or less during peak hours.

[Malist]

How about no.

 

You obviously do not work in the industry.

 

All of this is planned out in advance, server capacity and the metrics involved.

 

They want the new influx of players to start filling up the new servers and see what happens with queues before they make any moves.

 

They have to do that right now. If you raise the caps, you'll eventually have a server that performs like ****, while still having light-medium servers sitting there, waiting for players to join.

 

If you offer transfers right now, before another wave comes on the 25th, then those "light" servers you are transfer too, could become over-crowded and you'll have the very same problem there as well.

 

You CANNOT knee-jerk-reaction this kind of scenario because you can create more problems than you alleviate using this kind of shortsightedness.

 

I agree, the queue's suck, I'm dealing with them as well as my entire guild.

 

But they are doing the right thing right now by taking a brief, wait and see if some of the population (for instance, those not guilded) will slide over to some of the less populated realms. This is a more gradual migration because those types of players (non-guilded) will not be taking 20 to 50 to 500 players with them (thus potentially creating the same scenario on another server), which would be the case if you offer free transfers at this stage of the game.

 

 

This makes total sense - Total sense for a game that didn't have a million people let in almost a week early. I am non-guilded but will not switch servers since I'm over level 20, not a chance. A lot of us switch servers when new MMOs come out the first day. 'So and so decided to switch the guild to this new server, sorry guys'. Not a big deal when it's only a few hours of play, but is not a potential solution for groups of people with serious time already devoted.

 

Offer throttled transfers, lock them down if they feel too many people may be leaving a server.

[saltorio]

Yep, I'll post the actual response for everyone to see, although this will probably be against forum rules and I'll get banned or something... and this was after I specifically stated that I didn't want to lose my current characters.

 

Greetings,

 

I am Protocol Droid M0-T0, human cyborg relations.

 

We are currently aware that there are long queue times on some of our available servers. If you are trying to enter a server and you are encountering a very long queue, we strongly encourage that you consider selecting a different server. Many of our available servers do not have long queue times and selecting one of these will get you into the game quicker.

 

We expect populations across all of these servers to remain very healthy so with that in mind; please do not hesitate to select a server that has a shorter queue time to begin enjoying the game faster.

 

We would like to thank you for your patience and understanding on this matter. If you have any other issues or queries then please do not hesitate to contact us further.

 

Galactic support is our specialty….

 

Sincerely,

 

Protocol Droid M0-T0

Star Wars: The Old Republic Customer Support

 

Wow. Just... wow!

 

I wonder if they realize that they're the ones who put many of us on the now-overpopulated servers we're queueing up for hours to get on, because that's where they pre-loaded our guilds.

[Masterdarkdroid]

Tomb of fredom nadd iv spent all day in the que first erly this morning for 4hrs only to be kicked 15 mins l8er when i was in pvp, requed another 4hr que only to be kicked again 20 mins l8er when questing entering personal zone, and yes u guesed it now 1600 in the que another 4 to 5 hr w8 this is becomming a real joke.. yes i know ppl say its free to play at the moment but iv payed my bucks i sould at lest exspect some play time

[manoman]

Ok. Last post of the day. No game play today. Launch. Wait 45 mins, error 3. Wait 43 mins, error 3. Wait 30 mins, error 3. Awesome launch BW. Reason or not this is just messed up.

[Astakhan]

Painfully wrong from someone who does work in software industry. There are hardware solutions, technology solutions, and process solutions. Eg. of the latter: They could use the fact of Beta queues and pre-release queues to know server limits and cap # characters per server.

 

 

Either way...talk to your community BW.

 

You made my point, thank you.

 

Re-read what my reply was in reference to.

[Metanor]

I got kicked from the game- I didnt loose connection neither did my computer crash- simply kicked from the game. I was throw to the back of the queue for bloodworthy- position 1440- Estimated time 1h 40min. That happened at 6 I m now on 513th place in a queue.

 

At this very moment I have massive desire call bioware team nasty names or even walk to their office and get physical...I did not pay 60 pounds for a bloody game to be stack in a queue just because bioware's team apears to be incompetent at managing the servers.

The game itself is absolutly smashing and I would love to play it...but i wont subscribe to the game that forces me to wait 3 hours just to access my character. I m preaty damn sure many people from the servers with massive queues have similar opinion...

[Wazbones]

You seriously have to sort this out Bio-Ware, or there will be no-one left after the free 30 days.

[UncleTom]

You seriously have to sort this out Bio-Ware, or there will be no-one left after the free 30 days.

 

Except for those of us who have great patience than a 12 year old.

[Shockpulsar]

I'm guessing the problem here is that MMO players are infact pushovers and has long has they fix this a little before next month they wont actually lose any subscriptions so theres no rush, let us wait in queue while they count up the money they made with their EGA crap.