Serious overloading of servers

[AshlaBoga]

Unable to log in ye right ... sounds like you are lying. The most I've seen is a que of a few minutes and this is on the server that is top of the list at prime time. Seems like more then a few people on these boards with an agenda. Not exactly rocket science to get a sub and talk crap on forums ....

 

Capacity is fine.

 

Here's something I noticed.

I was qued on The Harbinger, and it said ~=5 min and it took 1.5 min.

I was qued on Bastion and it said ~= 2 min and it took 20-25 seconds.

 

Anyone else queing for a sever and it takes about 20% of the time that the game estimates?

 

I'd really like answer here because I think the game is overestimating the time it takes to get into a full server.

[Urael]

Here's something I noticed.

I was qued on The Harbinger, and it said ~=5 min and it took 1.5 min.

I was qued on Bastion and it said ~= 2 min and it took 20-25 seconds.

 

Anyone else queing for a sever and it takes about 20% of the time that the game estimates?

 

I'd really like answer here because I think the game is overestimating the time it takes to get into a full server.

 

I was queued on Drooga's last night and is said 20mins. I took 2mins to get into the game. Go figure.

[Morganswar]

if it says 5 and takes 1.5 congrats.. as for your think someone has an agenda? If your happy with an overpopulated server you will be getting happier and happier as they are still open for more transfers in. As for the agenda your freakin right. Most of us have the Agenda as We want to keep smooth gameplay with our Freezes or without glitches in pvp . we want to be able to click a target and it to register. Thats the agenda. It might say there is an issue twiggy when this forum already has 33 pages and its only been here for ashort time. Ya Think?

[plotenox]

OK I don't know if someone has mentioned this yet in this thread or another thread,but I thought of an idea.

If the overloaded servers stay full for a while,then wouldn't you guys think it would help if those servers become eligible for transfers? Not as destination servers but as origin servers.

Like for example,Bioware takes all of the full PVE servers and gives the players in those servers the option to transfer to another PVE server that has a low or medium population. I would think that would help even out the population overflow a little bit.

^Do you guys think this would help?^

 

If that somehow doesn't work,then the only other solution I can think of is the paid transfer option.

Edited June 19, 2012 by plotenox

[Singsang]

Add me to the list of those thinking this was poorly done. There are many options that would have yielded a better outcome, for example:

 

• Staging the transfer more - starting with just the lowest population servers (a smaller set than currently being done), and rechecking the concept of the right destination based on response and play.
  
• More destinations - 1-2 more destination servers per time zone would have made a huge difference
  
• Choice of 3-4 destinations (natural balancing, that would have adjusted a bit as destinations filled)
  
• Quit lying to yourself, and eat the full server merge right from the beginning (yielding much more predictable outcomes).
  

 

The "people are just settling in" response really seems short sighted to me. This change is meant to up retention, and potentially win some re-subs. If they succeed, then the problem doesn't go away. The more likely scenario is, however, that some where the relationship was already fragile will come, see long queue times (25 minutes on my would be destination the last two nights), and say "Great, f'd it up again". Like others have said, I log in to play, not to wait in queue. If I have to wait, then I go do something else - in which case why am I paying for a subscription? Too many think that way, and you'll be down to just a few servers total (it's already looking like it's going to be 10 or less judging by the source->target list).

 

For me personally, it's a damn good thing that 95% of my play is solo or with RL friends at prescheduled times. That has allowed me to stay on my original server. As it is, the other 5% is not doable at this time. For those rare times I use pickup groups, the server transfer has effectively killed my server. Even the fleet often has only 2-3 people on it. 5 on a single planet has become a huge number - I'm usually alone or with one person. On the flip side, I could transfer, and have 25 min queue times during the evenings (when I am most likely to play). Since I often log in, take care of a thing or two I wanted to do in game, and log back out for a period of time to go do stuff with my kids, it makes that portion of my play completely unworkable.

 

For those that haven't yet moved, the situation seems pretty resolvable to me, with virtually no risk. Choose another destination server in each time zone, and open up all remaining "from" servers in each time zone to that new choice in addition to their original choice (you have to leave the original choice so they can choose to join old friends). It would appear the code is largely already written to allow this. Based on the load the destinations are seeing currently, you could have half the number of transfers or less and still have a pretty functional server with plenty of people.

 

oh yeah, and PS: Stop flashing the damn "server transfers are available". The destinations are overloaded, so at least stop *encouraging* people to move until you have that situation worked out! How silly.

Edited June 19, 2012 by Singsang
typoes, formatting - added a PS too

[Morganswar]

perfect solutions as some have stated through variuos posts but they dont seem to listen or take note as I have yet to really see any replies by bio. Call bio they say post in suggetions. post in sugestions they lock and send a link to here. Any responce here from Developement?

[DarthOvertone]

Pretty much this is how you SHOULD be feeling right now.

 

Grab a sandwich or something to drink, or both! mmmmmmmm sandwich.......

 

But anyway, queues are going down, economy is going up, and you have people to play with.

 

You can't win for trying I tell ya!

 

Or surf some pr0n for ten minutes. That's what I do. Gets me fired up for the wife after my gametime is done.

Edited June 19, 2012 by DarthOvertone

[CygnusMX]

I think their are people more qualified brainstorming "how things should be done & consequences"

Than expert gamers who know how to game,who want what they want, and they want it now no matter what

[paowee]

So I'm in a situation where the server I have rolled on since December is now SO full that I'm unable to log in. I'm all for populated servers but this seems to be a large oversight on the part of BW ... do they not have the ability to count players and estimate how capable a server is to handle a specific number of players? I'm sure they do ... so why would they open a server for transfers BEYOND it's capacity? I'm pretty upset about it. What is the rational in increasing a server population by orders of magnitude and preventing people from playing their established characters?

 

im on The Bastion which in the past few days have been more populated than the fatman now and i dont ever have problems logging in (save the first day of transfers). You will be thankful for the population increase when Group Finder comes out. I love doing flashpoints (when i was gearing up, and until now that i'm almost campaign geared). I love how swtor has a lot of flashpoints and with 1.3 it'll be easier to run em all

[ATAMIANM]

I was queued on Drooga's last night and is said 20mins. I took 2mins to get into the game. Go figure.

 

My experience on The Harbinger last night was roughly the same. I was queued at player #168. I was in in about 5-7 minutes. Not bad in my opinion. I think this will smooth out over time.

[Guidani]

My problem with it all, is I didn't WANT to play on a heavily populated server due to lag issues and graphics complexity issues. Before you tell me to turn my graphics down or buy a new video card, consider the fact that I've been playing on a standard server up until the transfers started happening with 0 problems.

 

I moved 1 character over to the Harbinger server, and logged out less than 10 minutes later, severely pissed off because I couldn't even navigate thru the Galactic Trade Market of Fleet without freezing up every 15 seconds. And at the time Harbinger was classed as a High pop server. Now that it's Very High and full? No thanks.

 

I'll ride this out until they give more options to choose from on transferring, or I'll quit playing and Bioware will have to find someone else willing to pay for their mistake.

 

I know I'm not the only one waiting to see what happens, we have a guild of 230+ people doing the same thing. Alot of subscription revenue on the line when you think about it.

[GnatB]

So many of you are missing the point. Many of us are upset because we were on a server with a HEALTHY population and instead of using moderation, Bioware slammed 11 servers on to our server. On Drooga's, nobody EVER complained about server population. We had a great server. I never waited in queues, I never had problems finding groups. I fully empathize with players that were stuck on dead servers, but the point many of us are trying to make is: Why OVERLOAD an already healthy server when they could have merged 11 dead servers into a new healthy server. We have a valid reason to be upset. The gameplay experience has taken a serious downturn. There are not enough resources, instances and daily mission objectives to handle this kind of load.

 

This, This, This and This.

 

If there's one thing I've learned from reading these forums, people will QQ no matter what.

 

"We want transfers!"

"Why do other servers get to transfer before me?!"

"Why can't I choose which server I can go to?!"

"Why can't I transfer my 16 toons from 4 diff servers onto 1 server?!"

"There's too many people now!"

"I'm canceling my sub!!!"

 

You can please some of the people some of the time. But you can't please all of the people all of the time.

 

There are different people complaining.

 

That being said, I rather imagine we would ALL agree that they could have done this w/o overloading the servers to the extent they have. And as many have said, with 1.3 right around the corner, it's almost certainly going to get worse before it gets any better.

[stephenalandavie]

I would rather have to queue then be walking round the infamous ghost fleet. Give it time

[TheNaill]

Logged on last night to the Harbinger. Ended up in a queue for 25 minutes (along with the 50 people ahead of me. I won't wait that long again. We had 2 guys doing an EV HM get D.C.ed and ended up in the same queue. How the hell can you run a raid when it takes 20 minutes to get a player back in after DCing?

[ZephyrMourne]

Please GOD, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, let me transfer off the disaster that is now Harbinger! All my characters are there and since the ill-advised cluster... that transferred 10 other servers here, I CAN'T PLAY THE FREAKING GAME AT ALL. Funny, bet you still take my money at the beginning of the month...

 

People keep preaching patience, but the fact is, there is NO excuse for cramming 10-11 servers on to a single server that was already pretty darned full. None. None. None. None.

 

None.

 

Bioware... should have known better.

[sciphadeias]

Bioware, for the love of god PLEASE do not touch Prophecy of the Five.... I came over from Davik Estate and I LOVE what the transfer have done.... The game is WAY more enjoyable and I am VERY pleased that you guys did these transfer. I have no lag issues and I am grateful for a queue....

 

Please for honest feedback if you need set up some in game surveys like you did when the game was in beta; at least if you want to gauge honest feed back of how the server feels over all about the transfer.....

 

One of Sony Online biggest mistakes with SWG is that they took the forums post at face value.... Please go one step further if you want an honest feel for what things are.....

 

DON'T TOUCH PROPHECY OF THE FIVE!!!!!!!! Much love

[AERHAE]

Tonight on Prophecy of the five, we ran Eternity Vault.Everything was good until we got to the second boss.

Lag was bad,the boss was bugged,we could not kill it.After about two rounds of this we come in on the third time,well we tried too and it kicked everyone out of the instance to not let us back in an now we are locked out for 6 days an some odd hours.

Last night we ran Denova made it to the last boss and we kept dieing,every time we died we would repair an go back in,but on the last time we went to repair,on our way to repair everyone died outside of the instance in the hall way on their bikes going to repair.We just died for no reason.

Tonight after that EV run,I filled out a ticket to CS,just went back to look at it to see if it had been updated and guess what,it looks like my ticket is gone with no answer at all,its like I did not even fill out a ticket at all.

So yes there are some issues,I have no idea what they are.

[Morganswar]

Bioware, for the love of god PLEASE do not touch Prophecy of the Five.... I came over from Davik Estate and I LOVE what the transfer have done.... The game is WAY more enjoyable and I am VERY pleased that you guys did these transfer. I have no lag issues and I am grateful for a queue....

 

Please for honest feedback if you need set up some in game surveys like you did when the game was in beta; at least if you want to gauge honest feed back of how the server feels over all about the transfer.....

 

One of Sony Online biggest mistakes with SWG is that they took the forums post at face value.... Please go one step further if you want an honest feel for what things are.....

 

DON'T TOUCH PROPHECY OF THE FIVE!!!!!!!! Much love

 

Glad your happy out of how many?... The Que everyone is talking about Einstien isnt to go into pvp.. its to get into an over populated server just to be able to log on.. Most would be happy going from an under or low pop to a medium or heavy pop. Not happy to goto an over populated server. And you are an exception to the rule. Maybe you bought your PC in the last 6 months or built it. Many players i play with are form all over thre world and often more then excede the minimum requirements but have major issues when its overpopulated. Sorry to say its not their PC its a server issue.

[oakamp]

. Not happy to goto an over populated server.

it wont be over populated server forever,

arent u in swtor during the past few months?

population will drop SOON,

take it or go to a ghost town server,

u have many choices,

have fun,

[Jholiday]

This is not a computer or connection issue. Here are my specs and I couldn't play hardly at all. Side note there were over 109 people in Denova chatting about it. It was happening to every guild there.

 

Desktop

I7 2600k overclocked to 4 hz

12 gb 2000 mhz ram

2 intel 80b ssd. In raid 0 with the game on it.

2x 6850 gpus in x-fire

 

Network

Time warner 50mb down 5 up, custom router (pfsense) withh redundant ethernet hookups into 2gb nics on both sides.

if I have trouble its the server side.. not mine

 

I have often dual boxed swtor while playing d3 while watching netflix hd spread between 3 monitors.

This is a major server problem.

[Aerich]

So many of you are missing the point. Many of us are upset because we were on a server with a HEALTHY population and instead of using moderation, Bioware slammed 11 servers on to our server. On Drooga's, nobody EVER complained about server population. We had a great server. I never waited in queues, I never had problems finding groups. I fully empathize with players that were stuck on dead servers, but the point many of us are trying to make is: Why OVERLOAD an already healthy server when they could have merged 11 dead servers into a new healthy server. We have a valid reason to be upset. The gameplay experience has taken a serious downturn. There are not enough resources, instances and daily mission objectives to handle this kind of load.

 

THIS. Sweet Jeebus THIS. People on Origin servers had a choice... you could go to the new ultra max pop server or stay behind if that sort of thing wasn't for you. People already on the destination servers had no choice in the matter at all and frankly that decision was crap. This was all solely done for all the people whining about pvp/lfg queues. Well yeah I guess if you're going to spend all your time sitting on the fleet talking in general and waiting for a queue to pop then the new server pops give you funny feelings in your pants. Everyone else however is screwed. I spend the majority of my time with alts and questing/leveling. The population on the planets now is abhorrent. I literally stood in a LINE to do a quest the other night. And I've given up trying to dailies at all. Where once I could do Ilum or Blackhole in 15-20min it now takes me close to an hour per planet (Belsavis considerably longer). Seriously, dailies are mindless grindy and soul crushing enough without adding in hordes of people to fight with for spawns. Just not worth it anymore.

 

I want an answer from Bioware about what they intend to do to facilitate every other aspect of the game that doesn't revolve around a bloody group finder as the rest of the game has been severely and negatively impacted by all of these merges. Will they be giving people on the destination servers the choice to move off if the ultra pop thing isn't for them? Will they be drastically reducing the pops for the planets (and dear god especially the daily planets)? Will they implement a command that FORCES a person to accept a group invite so we can all move through the content at a reasonable pace? What's the plan?

 

I'm utterly baffled why Bioware chose to shove everyone on to existing healthy servers instead of merging dead servers with other dead servers. Or why only the origin people got a choice while the destination people got none at all. All I know is that I put up with the questing nightmare at release because, hey, it was release and to be expected. But if this kind of population is going to be the new status quo then forget it... time to move on to a different game. Then again maybe that's what Bioware wants; someone cancels and that's the signal to dump on 5 more servers! Yay! Then maybe eventually everyone like me will be gone too and the only people left will the the ones who enjoy doing nothing but standing around on the fleet using the group finder and Bioware can spend all of it's time and resources trying to beat Blizzard at their own game! World of Torcraft ftw!

[Talarchy]

Once peopl realize server transfer wont magicly create new content, it will be fine

^ this.

 

I transferred back in March. Queues were full, took 20 mins to log on.. great a populated server!!!

It's now June, it got so quiet I unsubscribed.

 

Server transfers help you get on a populated server, they don't make the game exciting for you. Bioware seems to think that's something you need to do for yourself.

[SevenOneFive]

on my server im lucky to see another player. im currently on voss im lv 46 and im usually the only person on the planet and when i checked the server status for the other servers its either heavy or light

[Dunzo]

Meanwhile on other servers....

 

*tumbleweed*

[Mangler_I_am]

THIS. Sweet Jeebus THIS. People on Origin servers had a choice... you could go to the new ultra max pop server or stay behind if that sort of thing wasn't for you. People already on the destination servers had no choice in the matter at all and frankly that decision was crap. This was all solely done for all the people whining about pvp/lfg queues. Well yeah I guess if you're going to spend all your time sitting on the fleet talking in general and waiting for a queue to pop then the new server pops give you funny feelings in your pants. Everyone else however is screwed. I spend the majority of my time with alts and questing/leveling. The population on the planets now is abhorrent. I literally stood in a LINE to do a quest the other night. And I've given up trying to dailies at all. Where once I could do Ilum or Blackhole in 15-20min it now takes me close to an hour per planet (Belsavis considerably longer). Seriously, dailies are mindless grindy and soul crushing enough without adding in hordes of people to fight with for spawns. Just not worth it anymore.

 

I want an answer from Bioware about what they intend to do to facilitate every other aspect of the game that doesn't revolve around a bloody group finder as the rest of the game has been severely and negatively impacted by all of these merges. Will they be giving people on the destination servers the choice to move off if the ultra pop thing isn't for them? Will they be drastically reducing the pops for the planets (and dear god especially the daily planets)? Will they implement a command that FORCES a person to accept a group invite so we can all move through the content at a reasonable pace? What's the plan?

 

I'm utterly baffled why Bioware chose to shove everyone on to existing healthy servers instead of merging dead servers with other dead servers. Or why only the origin people got a choice while the destination people got none at all. All I know is that I put up with the questing nightmare at release because, hey, it was release and to be expected. But if this kind of population is going to be the new status quo then forget it... time to move on to a different game. Then again maybe that's what Bioware wants; someone cancels and that's the signal to dump on 5 more servers! Yay! Then maybe eventually everyone like me will be gone too and the only people left will the the ones who enjoy doing nothing but standing around on the fleet using the group finder and Bioware can spend all of it's time and resources trying to beat Blizzard at their own game! World of Torcraft ftw!

 

Okay- I completely understand the complaint here. On the other side of the coin- My server opened transfers to another server Corellian Run....tonight I log in- I am literally the only dude on the fleet. Obvious that everyone else is leaving too- AH empty just me, and probably 7 other people (my guild) left on the server. What are my options as an ORIGIN server? I can have my very own SWTOR server.....or move to another server that's obviously over-populated (read FULL 15< wait) On top of that- we (Origin Transfers) get the highly probable non-option of having forced Name/Legacy changes- Not to mention rebuilding our guild there.

 

I completely agree that they should have merged lower pop servers with other lower pop servers. BIOWare is about to lose my 47$/month.