Why is BW sitting on Paid Character Transfers?

[Graydon]

Sure. Check out: http://www.videogamer.com/pc/star_wars_the_old_republic/news/star_wars_the_old_republic_character_transfers_coming_this_summer.html

 

Dallas Dickinson, senior producer Live Services: "First we'll have some targeted free transfers from/to specific servers, but that will be followed with a broader system where you can either take advantage of free promotional transfers to specific servers or paid transfers to the server of your choice."

 

Thanks.

 

It is disappointing that the info comes from some obscure 3rd party website dated April 30. It's hard to take this as an official BW statement.

 

Would be nice (and expected) to see this info on SWTOR's website.

[VulcanLogic]

Yeah, I like my new home on Begeren Colony, all four of my 50 imps are there. Completed hard mode EC last night with a merged guild who is also very active in PvP. But I have a 50 shadow on Space Slug and a 43 Trooper on Ajunta Pall who would like to join them. That way I really only need to level my Sentinel (Chiss level 11) and a Cathar Scoundrel (waitin' for it) to have all 8 ACs on the same legacy. Hurry up with the paid transfers, please.

[Ulran]

Thanks.

 

It is disappointing that the info comes from some obscure 3rd party website dated April 30. It's hard to take this as an official BW statement.

 

Would be nice (and expected) to see this info on SWTOR's website.

 

/signed Unless it's on here in black and white I'm not going to assume anything...

[Rafaman]

Thanks.

 

It is disappointing that the info comes from some obscure 3rd party website dated April 30. It's hard to take this as an official BW statement.

 

Would be nice (and expected) to see this info on SWTOR's website.

 

No problem. Sorry it doesn't quite fit your needs, but there it is. From BW whether you choose to accept it or not.

[Tsillah]

My god...the qq train left the station again...going nowhere.

 

We just BARELY had the free transfers and 1.3 is coming tomorrow.

 

Can you at least understand you can't do everything at the same time?

 

What if a lot of people resub to try 1.3?

 

The impact on the servers.....c'mon, are you guys unable to do a simple 1+1 addition?

 

It just isn't a good idea to bring in paid transfers that soon in the midst of everything else. It's not rocket science.

[Segundus]

I should not have to pay for Bioware's screw-up. I want all my characters on the same server. Paid transfer? Ya, I am paying you a monthly fee so go ahead and take it out of that. No you say? Well, enjoy your sinking ship then Bioware. I'll just go pay another company for a better gaming experience.

[Deyjarl]

Bioware has demonstrated their ability to efficiently mass transfer characters from one server to another, so why did they stop there?

 

The main reason would be letting things settle in from the free transfers first. Which is the right decision imo.

[DarthKhaos]

I should not have to pay for Bioware's screw-up. I want all my characters on the same server. Paid transfer? Ya, I am paying you a monthly fee so go ahead and take it out of that. No you say? Well, enjoy your sinking ship then Bioware. I'll just go pay another company for a better gaming experience.

~blink~blink~ I had no idea BioWare created those characters for you spread out among multiple servers.

Edited June 25, 2012 by DarthKhaos

[Comstrike]

They have way too many servers. To start charging people to transfer to servers they may then close, would only alienate people. The sub base is likely still in decline, though nearing the bottom end of the post lunch bug-out.

 

I think they'll keep the free transfers going until they are ready to formally shut-down servers. First they come clean with what servers are going to be merged with who. Then they'll announce "forced" transfers to where they say, if you are not subscribed. They'll merge. THEN they can give paid transfers to let people go where they want.

 

They have a system well suited for MTs, which is used to manage the Collectors Edition owner, and security fob owner access to in-game store items. Logically they could use the same system. Plus, there is the question of F2P. They may be re-tooling content with a mind towards gating it moving forward and opening it to F2P to level 15.

 

I'm as big a critic as anybody, bigger really. But I can understand the delay in this case.

[DarthKhaos]

Make up your minds people ... ... ... Whew... For a sec there... I almost gave a ~cough~

[Drakonnen]

Add me to the list of people who want paid character transfers or a more broader base of options.

 

I already transfered all my toons to Jung Ma (RP-PvP), which is a good server, don't get me wrong. Then I saw The Ebon Hawk (RP), which I had pre-made characters on in early start was now a very popular server now too.

 

Looking into the Ebon Hawk a little I found that it had a much broader Roleplaying base, even though it was not a PvP server, but since there was rarely if ever any actual world PvP, I figured I could live without it anyway, so I decided to start playing some new characters on the Ebon Hawk.

 

That said, I do feel like I'm kind of wasting what would otherwise be counted as Legacy XP by not having my high level characters on that server, and I wouldn't mind having their financial resources at my disposal, so I'd like ot have the option to transfer them.

 

This would not effect the population of Jung Ma because I'm already not presently playing there anyway, so that argument really does not hold water.

[E-Zekiel]

They have way too many servers. To start charging people to transfer to servers they may then close, would only alienate people. The sub base is likely still in decline, though nearing the bottom end of the post lunch bug-out.

 

I think they'll keep the free transfers going until they are ready to formally shut-down servers. First they come clean with what servers are going to be merged with who. Then they'll announce "forced" transfers to where they say, if you are not subscribed. They'll merge. THEN they can give paid transfers to let people go where they want.

 

They have a system well suited for MTs, which is used to manage the Collectors Edition owner, and security fob owner access to in-game store items. Logically they could use the same system. Plus, there is the question of F2P. They may be re-tooling content with a mind towards gating it moving forward and opening it to F2P to level 15.

 

I'm as big a critic as anybody, bigger really. But I can understand the delay in this case.

 

 

I can say with confidence that the number of people looking to transfer to origin servers is very small...A less populated desination server? Sure. dead/dying origin server? not so much.

My god...the qq train left the station again...going nowhere.

 

We just BARELY had the free transfers and 1.3 is coming tomorrow.

 

Can you at least understand you can't do everything at the same time?

 

What if a lot of people resub to try 1.3?

 

The impact on the servers.....c'mon, are you guys unable to do a simple 1+1 addition?

 

It just isn't a good idea to bring in paid transfers that soon in the midst of everything else. It's not rocket science.

 

 

This is part of our frustration. For me, at least, I've been waiting for months, just to find that my two main characters, on a server I no longer really play on (ieldis), are stuck there or going to Begeren, rather than having any ability whatsoever to join my friends on the Ebon Hawk. Why? because I am on the west coast, and my friends seemed like they might quit (They ended up not quitting), so I rolled on a west coast server to minimize lag. Turned out to be a mistake, but not one I realized how big of a mistake it was gonna be till I had one at 50 in BM gear and the other in his 40's.

Edited June 26, 2012 by E-Zekiel

[Graydon]

My god...the qq train left the station again...going nowhere.

 

We just BARELY had the free transfers and 1.3 is coming tomorrow.

 

Can you at least understand you can't do everything at the same time?

 

What if a lot of people resub to try 1.3?

 

The impact on the servers.....c'mon, are you guys unable to do a simple 1+1 addition?

 

It just isn't a good idea to bring in paid transfers that soon in the midst of everything else. It's not rocket science.

 

Actually you cannot comprehend. There is no 1 + 1 addition requried.

 

Transfers are already in place.

 

You do realize BW just transferred Hundreds of Thousands of characters? With huge success.

 

You do realize consolidating to the destination server with our current characters will not add to the population and therefore have no impact on current subscribers?

 

You do realize people are subscribing and unsubscribing every day?

 

No it is not rocket science...

[anjindex]

Frankly I getting tired of waiting to combine my toons on a single server.

 

This is another vote for BW to pull it's thumb out and allow PAYING SUBSCRIBERS to gather their toons off of dead servers.

[MetalHed]

Bioware has demonstrated their ability to efficiently mass transfer characters from one server to another, so why did they stop there?

 

People are subscribing and unsubscribing everyday, so please don't tell me the server balance is so delicate that consolidating characters onto existing destination servers is going to blow up the populations.

 

This makes me L.O.L. I've sat in the ques for P5 (night before last <60m, last night <40m) waiting to log in, meanwhile Fatman (the other pvp east coast destination server) sits at FULL and VERY HEAVY with no ques at all.

 

Is that a demonstration of efficiency? I think the population is already pretty unbalanced...and this time BW did it, not us.

 

I'm sorry some of you are on dead servers...would you be willing to trade that for waiting nearly an hour to log in???

Edited June 28, 2012 by MetalHed

[MasterKayote]

I can say with confidence that the number of people looking to transfer to origin servers is very small...A less populated desination server? Sure. dead/dying origin server? not so much.

 

They could just restrict the transfers to the origin servers. Only excuse I can come up with is theyre working on the "store" where we can buy these services. Not sure why its taking so long but ... thats the only reason they arent allowing,us to give them more money.

 

That or they plan to offer different free transfers (maybe FFA?) so they dont want us paying for something theyre about to offer freely.

[Pompeia]

According to what a Bioware representative wrotte about transfers, there might be more then one wave of free transfers. Unless Bioware decides to be original (and do diferently from other mmo companies that already did this to their empty servers), there should be one or more still before they close the now dead origin servers, or if there is enough population left on them merge them all together (I'm thinking europe, so one more german, french and english, or more if they think there is enough ppl for that).

 

How would you feel if you payed to transfer your chars to one destination server that would in a couple of weeks be available to you for free? They may be thinking about this issue.

 

I do not believe that there will be any free offers for transfering from europe to usa, pvp to pve or vice versa..etc..but we may get more then one destination server of the same kind - because some ppl ended up not beeing abble to transfer their 16 tons because they were on 2 origin servers that got the same destination.

 

And yes, I got parcialy lucky for having mine on 2 diferent destination servers, but I also have 16 chars and I want to split the factions in half for legacy and HK-51 porpuses (when I made them there was no legacy at all).

[DasHunta]

I think the issue is they have stated somewhere they are manually applying transfers at this time [someone correct me if I'm wrong please...]

 

They were trying to automate the process before starting paid transfers.

 

^this

[E-Zekiel]

I somehow doubt it's manual and think you're being sold some lies for dirt cheap if you believe that without substantial evidence, given the enormous number of transfers and the fact most were done in ~15 minutes tops.

[Graydon]

Another week for Bioware to sit on their butts and ignore requests and pleas for paid transfer service.

 

Threads regarding paid transfers are created daily without a single response or status update.

 

Gotta love Bioware's M.O. They truly believe if they ignore the issue....no matter how popular, it will go away.

 

Very disappointing Bioware. Wake Up!

[GalacticKegger]

Another week for Bioware to sit on their butts and ignore requests and pleas for paid transfer service.

 

Threads regarding paid transfers are created daily without a single response or status update.

 

Gotta love Bioware's M.O. They truly believe if they ignore the issue....no matter how popular, it will go away.

 

Very disappointing Bioware. Wake Up!

They aren't ignoring anything. From the FAQ:

At this time we do not have a scheduled time frame for launch of a potential paid Character Transfer Service. However, we are committed to making improvements to the Character Transfer Service over time to provide players with a great gameplay experience.

 

Translation - they're not done with the free transfers yet. Here's guessing they are waiting for the dust to settle from the original transfers, which may include waiting on stragglers to get with the program. I would venture that many of the origination servers may eventually be removed from the destination server selection loop and repurposed, else thinned pops could reoccur. But they can't do that until they are satisfied that everything that could have been done to afford players the opportunity to transfer for free has been done.

 

Might I recommend checking out the Dev Tracker Summary: June 5, 2012 to June 12, 2012 for more information.

Edited July 2, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[Exsidium]

In before they shut this down.. I've posted this twice, once got shut down because I called it a "petition" instead of a "discussion", and the second because someone else posted a similar post a few days prior. So be prepared to be shut down and have this very active thread linked to a very dead one. I'm with you though. We need this, and we need it soon, or a better answer than the vague wording in the FAQ.

[Jonoku]

They aren't ignoring anything. From the FAQ:

 

 

Translation - they're not done with the free transfers yet. Here's guessing they are waiting for the dust to settle from the original transfers, which may include waiting on stragglers to get with the program. I would venture that many of the origination servers may eventually be removed from the destination server selection loop and repurposed, else thinned pops could reoccur. But they can't do that until they are satisfied that everything that could have been done to afford players the opportunity to transfer for free has been done.

 

Might I recommend checking out the Dev Tracker Summary: June 5, 2012 to June 12, 2012 for more information.

 

Yes we know, they copied and paste the same answer over and over again. They have until tommorow for me, and this isn't the only problem I have with the game.

[Taurusaud]

Just give them time. Bioware needs to figure out how to charge your credit card in order to give you the paid transfer. This stuff takes time. If they haven't gotten this implemented by next year then maybe you can complain but right now you have no point.

[GalacticKegger]

In before they shut this down.. I've posted this twice, once got shut down because I called it a "petition" instead of a "discussion", and the second because someone else posted a similar post a few days prior. So be prepared to be shut down and have this very active thread linked to a very dead one. I'm with you though. We need this, and we need it soon, or a better answer than the vague wording in the FAQ.

What do you want them to say? Honestly, what specific words would remedy the situation? An exact date or time frame with specifcs entailing what it will do & look like? Insider information? If they don't have an exact date, timeframe or specifics then they can't announce them. And I doubt anyone in these forums merits insider anything.

 

Just an idea but ... what Bioware might consider to help this is put together a separate "eyes-only" Official Response "library" forum where the only people who can start a thread or post in it are Bioware employees. Populate it with specific "hot-button issue" threads, where each is titled to reflect a specific topic. (Thus making a subject easy to find/search for.) That would provide inquiring minds a one-stop shopping place for official answers so members won't have to corroborate FAQs, Q&A releases, DevTracker blogs, Podcasts & Twitter, or do a forum-wide search for Bioware thread posts. Because they DO post in threads, their posts just get buried under newer posts in rapid fashion.

Edited July 2, 2012 by GalacticKegger