Free Character Transfers Now Available On Select Servers

[Thyferra]

One other problem is that this again is something people will quit over and is something that will result in bad press.

I don't even remember when i read good press about TOR the last time.

[TheRhett]

I've played MMOs for 10+ years, EQ, AC, CoH, LOTRO, DCUO, WoW, SWTOR. Five minutes ago I did something I had never done and I canceled a subscription out of sheer frustration at the way the game was being run. Any other cancellation has been because the game had just run its course for me, but not this time.

 

The most frustrating thing for me is that I really like the game, I WANT to play the game. However, Bioware seems bound and determined to make it as difficult as possible for me to actually enjoy playing with other people. There had to be a better way to handle this server merging than the way they chose to do it. The part that bothers me the most about it is that they genuinely don't really seem to care. They had to know that forcing the last 18% of people to wait 3 days for no good reason was going to cause a firestorm on the forums, and it has. Yet I haven't really seen any communication besides the canned "stop posting mean things" replies.

 

My $15 a month is not going to make or break Bioware, but I just can't continue to financially support an ever lengthening chain of bad decision making. (And this transfer/merger fiasco is just one more bad choice, there have been many others as well) I hope to come back one day, I like the game, and have some friends who still play, but at some point you have to make your voice heard the only way you can, with your wallet.

 

To all of you enjoying the suddenly full servers, I hope you have a great time enjoying the game the way it was meant to be played. I just wish we all could be there with you.

[Jasonito]

I disagree, the moaners would moan unless they got their transfer on day 1.

 

But more people would be satisfied if they had a rough timescale and were given a decent reason why it would take a week to announce everyone. Unhappy players yes, fewer unhappy players quite probably.

 

Yeah I agree, but I think "the moaners" make up a large % of the general complainers (I class myself as a complainer but not a moaner, but then don't we all).

 

Always a bad idea, BW's #1 priority should have been to provide the best results at the end of the process, people might moan because they had to wait a whole week but if the results are good a decent proportion of them would stop moaning after their transfer and just be happy playing on well populated servers.

Totally agree, however it's easy for us to sit here and play devil's advocate when all the negativity is not directed at us. BW's #1 concern is to please its customers, and to try and get new customers. I'm not saying it's right to rush through the transfer process, but I can understand why they would want to.

 

In defence of BW (again, can't believe I'm doing this!) the 2 main complaints I've seen during this whole transfer process is:

1) Other people got to transfer earlier than me, omg for a whole few days they maybe got a better deal from their sub than I did.

2) I've had to rename my toon due to the transfer process, and my toon's name is such an important part of my gaming experience.

 

both totally pathetic complaints by anyone's books. Let's be honest, if people complain about such insignificant issues, then regardless of what BW do they will still QQ

[HelinCarnate]

Or 3) We were told yesterday that there WILL be transfers done today and are getting sick of being lied to.

 

6/14/2012 5:20pm Central time.

We opened up many servers at the beginning of this process and only a few remain to be opened up for transfers. You will see us opening more up tomorrow and into next week. We understand that everyone is excited to transfer, but we do have to see how each day's transfers affect server populations in order to open up more origin servers each day.

 

Edited June 16, 2012 by HelinCarnate

[DarthBama]

I've played MMOs for 10+ years, EQ, AC, CoH, LOTRO, DCUO, WoW, SWTOR. Five minutes ago I did something I had never done and I canceled a subscription out of sheer frustration at the way the game was being run. Any other cancellation has been because the game had just run its course for me, but not this time.

 

The most frustrating thing for me is that I really like the game, I WANT to play the game. However, Bioware seems bound and determined to make it as difficult as possible for me to actually enjoy playing with other people. There had to be a better way to handle this server merging than the way they chose to do it. The part that bothers me the most about it is that they genuinely don't really seem to care. They had to know that forcing the last 18% of people to wait 3 days for no good reason was going to cause a firestorm on the forums, and it has. Yet I haven't really seen any communication besides the canned "stop posting mean things" replies.

 

My $15 a month is not going to make or break Bioware, but I just can't continue to financially support an ever lengthening chain of bad decision making. (And this transfer/merger fiasco is just one more bad choice, there have been many others as well) I hope to come back one day, I like the game, and have some friends who still play, but at some point you have to make your voice heard the only way you can, with your wallet.

 

To all of you enjoying the suddenly full servers, I hope you have a great time enjoying the game the way it was meant to be played. I just wish we all could be there with you.

 

I did the exact same thing. If people like you and me who genuinely like the game have resorted to this, then I have to think many more people did the same.

 

Another impact of this is going to be cash flow moving forward. If (big if) I decide to come back, there is no way they are getting more than a month out of me at a time. No more 6 month subscriptions for me.

[Satans_Puppet]

How can being unable to consume the content we pay for be a pathetic complaint? Today I sat through three warzones that I waited 20 minutes for and even then we only had six on our team. The Reps all quit out after the third time would would have put an end to PvP entirely on our server for the night thus bringing the PvPers on the other sides gaming session to an end.

 

We were told there would be more transfers on friday, that didn't happen. This weekend some of the community will be doing the devs a favour by testing stuff on the public server, THAT should have been put back a week and it shoulda been all hands on deck to ensure that the entire customer base were involved in transfers. Whose to say they'll start again on Monday, it could be wednesday.

 

Most of the moaning is born of being constantly kicked in the nuts by customer services that doesn't seem to care and community planning that really doesn't work even though they do have a tough job with the teams behind these decisions making idiotic moves.

[Jasonito]

So not being able to play for a service you are paying equally for, while others are, and being disgruntled is somehow childish? It sounds more to me like you are ok at being taken advantage of.

 

I'm as able to play as i was last week or the week before. I've posted numerous disgruntled posts on this forum before now, back before 1.2 I moaned about the downtime, I've moaned about the bugged IA class quest, regardless of the fact that I managed to complete it. But moaning because there is a ongoing server transfer, and you wasn't front of the queue, is selfish and childish. If, by the middle of next week, we still haven't been transfered, then I'll be moaning with the best of them. But atm your only gripe is that some people are getting something now that you have to wait a little bit for. Yes that is very childish.

[Jasonito]

Or 3) We were told yesterday that there WILL be transfers done today and are getting sick of being lied to.

 

yeah fair play, you have a good point, like the other guy said, they've not been great at giving out information, and to be fair it does lead you to think that either they lie to us or they are very bad at planning things. I tend to think the later.

[Satans_Puppet]

So the 1.3 update with all that cool stuff you'd be willing to wait after everyone gets it despite paying the same amount as everyone else.

 

I'm just peed off because once again this is a poorly executed plan. I left for a month or more during the 1.2 debacle because I was so frustrated with the community management just not informing us of what was happening. But they don't care because I paid for a six month subscription, I should have realised that was a mistake when I realised that the Deluxe Edition was a total waste of dosh.

 

Although the camera is fun in warzones

[bjbm]

I'm done complaining. At this point, its all moot as its much set in stone the botttom 20% is forgotten by BW. Whatever little goodwill that was generated by opening these transfers have evaporated for the unlucky 20%. This will end up being another PR disaster among a long line of disasters. I'm sure they will lose subs because of this, and honestly BW, I don't know how many more you can lose.

 

As someone said earlier, I can't remember the last time anyone had anything positive to say about tor and its a damn shame really. So much potential is lost with this continued mismanagement and atrocious miscommunication.

[skyknightandy]

All right folks, I have an update for you.

 

As mentioned before, because of the logistics in monitoring the rate of character transfers and population shifts onto destination servers, our cadence for opening up origin servers will change day-to-day.

 

As we approach the weekend, we want to be careful about where to allow additional servers to transfer to so as not to overwhelm current destination servers. Many weekend players will be logging in, contributing to our overall analysis.

 

This means that we need to monitor populations and rate of transfers over the weekend before opening up new servers. We understand that players are anxious to transfer, but please be patient during this process so that we can deliver the best gameplay experience that we can offer.

 

at a boy.....just yesterday bioware was a baby look at it now all grown up graduating......lol

[Jakev-]

yeah fair play, you have a good point, like the other guy said, they've not been great at giving out information, and to be fair it does lead you to think that either they lie to us or they are very bad at planning things. I tend to think the later.

 

Stop fueling the fire let people including myself QQ on the forums if your so content with your current server whether you moved yet or not.

[Satans_Puppet]

yeah fair play, you have a good point, like the other guy said, they've not been great at giving out information, and to be fair it does lead you to think that either they lie to us or they are very bad at planning things. I tend to think the later.

 

It's the latter... gotta remember that community management go off what they are told by other teams and considering how tempremental we are they probably think the less information we have the better we'll be.

 

I'd be happy with information posted with a disclaimer saying that things are subject to change as development isn't a snap your fingers and its done kinda thing, things go wrong and deadlines get pushed back.

 

But it seems planning for 100% of the community in these transfers didn't factor in to any plans.

[Jakev-]

Bioware, Id like to know Why My server is the LAST PICKED (ok theres Darth Malak..) PVP server to be transferred.

ALL the west coast PVP servers transferred

EVERY East coast PVP servers besides Darth Malak and Belgoth's Beacon Have been transferred

What did they do forget about us? IT IS not fair. Every pvp server will have fun this weekend, Me and whatever few people left on Belgoth's Beacon and Darth Malak have to sit here and stare at 5-10 people on our Fleets. There is no reason not to transfer us, We couldnt tip the server populations that badly with the 300 subscribers left on our servers.

[Yomitako]

I'm done complaining. At this point, its all moot as its much set in stone the botttom 20% is forgotten by BW. Whatever little goodwill that was generated by opening these transfers have evaporated for the unlucky 20%. This will end up being another PR disaster among a long line of disasters. I'm sure they will lose subs because of this, and honestly BW, I don't know how many more you can lose.

 

As someone said earlier, I can't remember the last time anyone had anything positive to say about tor and its a damn shame really. So much potential is lost with this continued mismanagement and atrocious miscommunication.

 

I highly doubt forgotten. I don't have much time to play this weekend anyways, due to work (wait what? I have a life outside of this game? Can't be!). I'll be checking back Monday for Vornskr's turn. If it didn't happen to you, it was gonna happen to someone else. At no point has BW screwed anyone over in this process (save for character/legacy/guild names, but that's minor, at best). We're still gonna get our transfers.

[HelinCarnate]

yeah fair play, you have a good point, like the other guy said, they've not been great at giving out information, and to be fair it does lead you to think that either they lie to us or they are very bad at planning things. I tend to think the later.

 

I think they are very bad at planning and keep lying to try and cover it up.

 

 

I have learned to be a pessimist. That way I am either proven right or I am pleasantly surprised.

[Yodajediman]

Man. This thing is killing ajunta pall......http://cdn-www.swtor.com/sites/all/files/smilies/rakghouls/rakghoul_03.png

[BH_Bandos]

I'm normally very quiet on the forums because I don't see why people feel the need to complain about everything. I really enjoy this game and the company of the players that occupy the servers I play on. While I have noticed that BW isn't...sympathetic...to the criticisms I find valid, I haven't found a real reason to complain. Until today.

 

This character transfer update has made my favorite server lose just about all of its active population (it was fairly quiet to begin with, okay?). Furthermore, this has only ruined the balance of the server populations. The server-switching idea might have worked with a little tweaking, but here are the reasons it's not working very well:

1. Populations weren't great to begin with. I'm sorry, but with the nickname "TORtanic", chances are a lot of the servers are going to be empty. This only makes it worse.

2. Too many people quit. Again, a lot of subscriptions have been canceled due to "the TORtanic's sinking". Those of us who do truly enjoy this game are too numerous for one server and far too few for all of them. Worse - there are probably more inactive characters than active, and you never know when one might spring up suddenly. Not that they all will - that's never going to happen.

3. The flow of traffic is like refugees fleeing a country. Far too many are sucked into the allure (or maybe even guild responsibility) of the destination server. Now we have a lot of near-blank origin servers. This would be a good thing if not for the contrarians that would be outraged for getting rid of these empty servers. What's worse is that it's multiple servers piling into one server - can't there be more of a choice in destination?

4. People will disagree with whatever BW does. That goes for solutions like this, should anyone listen to me, but I might as well try.

 

Perhaps it's best these changes be reverted and the original populations be restored (hard as that may be).

[MasterKayote]

Actually the fact that they ARE waiting to see how the transfers affected the destination servers show that they think critically and well. You want 20 min wait cues? I don't.

 

They have prime time play coming up (Satuday night), after they have some data from all the destinations at prime time they will know how many more they can move to them, if they need a 12th destination server, or both.

 

And how exactly do you suggest there will be any difference? Whether the servers are packed or empty this weekend is irrelevant at this point. There are are a handful of servers of each type remaining ... they will hardly make a difference no matter where they go and I HIGHLY doubt (even at worse case scenario where the servers cannot fit a single person) theyre going to start a new destination server now and leave it with a fraction of what the others have. If they were half way done with transfers maybe their excuse would make sense .. this however, smells of steamy fly infested b/s.

[Chartman]

You pay the same amount for lunch as the guy in front of you.

 

I pay the same amount of taxes as the next guy, but sometimes when I file my taxes my return check doesn't come for weeks while others get their's first.

 

At the grocery store, my bread costs the same as the guy who's in line in front of me, and sometimes they even open up a new register for the people BEHIND me who want to buy bread too but have already been waiting less time than I.

 

This is life. Sometimes we're at the front of the line, sometimes at the back, and there's no inequity about it.

 

Some poor analogies:

 

If I pay the same for lunch as another person but I dont get my meal and they do, I would get my money back, and if it was a place with good customer service, I'd also get a free lunch.

 

I pay taxes, you pay taxes, if you get your money before I do it is due to when you submitted your refund request and whether it was digitally or by mail (Digital refunds come quicker).

 

We are talking about services rendered, not products purchased so your grocery store analogy doesnt work at all.

 

Go back to your heavily populated server and let those of us with nothing better to do (Because the fleet has a pop of 12) rant and rave, and in general find some entertainment from something at least about this game if not the actual game.

[Jasonito]

I think they are very bad at planning and keep lying to try and cover it up.

 

 

I have learned to be a pessimist. That way I am either proven right or I am pleasantly surprised.

 

hehe I try so hard not to be an optimist for exactly that reason lol

[Shneakie]

Have any of you read news of spending the weekend monitoring rated WZs?

[Woobies]

Have any of you read news of spending the weekend monitoring rated WZs?

 

Yeah but being on a low pop server still, I am not going to waste my time standing around on an empty fleet waiting for WZs to pop this weekend...not even going to bother playing.

[Shneakie]

Yeah but being on a low pop server still, I am not going to waste my time standing around on an empty fleet waiting for WZs to pop this weekend...not even going to bother playing.

 

That seriously missed my point. I too am on a low pop server. Why are they monitoring rated WZs instead of finishing what they started?

[reagan_youth]

Bioware, Id like to know Why My server is the LAST PICKED (ok theres Darth Malak..) PVP server to be transferred.

ALL the west coast PVP servers transferred

EVERY East coast PVP servers besides Darth Malak and Belgoth's Beacon Have been transferred

What did they do forget about us? IT IS not fair. Every pvp server will have fun this weekend, Me and whatever few people left on Belgoth's Beacon and Darth Malak have to sit here and stare at 5-10 people on our Fleets. There is no reason not to transfer us, We couldnt tip the server populations that badly with the 300 subscribers left on our servers.

 

Now that I've had time to cool down and exercise for the day, I'm not as angry as I was earlier today. I still haven't decided if I will uncancel my sub (still have playtime until July 18). I'm waiting to see if we get shipped to one of the two servers or if we somehow get screwed into making a fail server of the two outcasts.