Character Transfer, Server Populations, and You (Part II)

[Ipea]

Greetings,

 

Since players are still concerned about the fate of their characters, we thought we'd remind everyone of Online Community Manager Joveth Gonzalez' post about character transfers:

 

 

 

We hope this helps. Thank you!

 

[/color]

Based on 75% of everything else that comes out of the BW officer its most likely ******** and said just keep people paying

[Jonoku]

Based on 75% of everything else that comes out of the BW officer its most likely ******** and said just keep people paying

 

Proven by the lies I've been given.

[Modredus]

So, to recap what we have been talking about here is simply: Choice!

 

The players’, or better word, the Subscribers’ ability to choose their own game play in SWTOR.

 

It seems quite obvious that the people who continue to remain on the light, better word, “Locked” realms chose to be on those realms while they were available from SWTOR and BW. This isn’t a case where we joined the over populated realms first, then decided we didn’t like that game play style and proceeded to demand new servers “just for us snowflakes”! We were on those servers from the very start, when those servers were “allowed” by BW and SWTOR!

 

Now, BW has decided they are going to be the ones who make those choices for us! The individual subscriber’s desire and choices mean nothing in this game now?

 

This game is a very nice game to play! I play on my Locked server because that is where I WISH to play! I CHOOSE to play on that server because it isn’t over populated!

 

Every single day in Real Life all of us have to put up with the problems that come with life. It is simply a matter of Life! I cannot speak for everyone, but the comments here seem to agree with me when I say that I play this game to have fun and relax and try to vent off the frustrations that come with dealing with the events of everyday real life. I, and I assume most others do too, play to enjoy the game, not to just change one frustration filled environment with another one! And to have to PAY someone else for those frustrations? I seriously doubt that!

 

My family and I left “That game who must not be mentioned”, because of exactly this same condition. The servers were over-crowded, the game play became virtually impossible, too many other players to compete with for the same resources, solo players had very little chance to play successfully without tremendous competition.

 

As for those of you who like to “remind” us that this is a MMR game, the MM may mean “Massively”, but show me where in the description does that “Massively” mean that everyone has to be on the same server? Come on, I dare you to!

 

I have seen a lot of comments about the forced name changes. Seems most people do not wish to have their names changed. Hey, it is your name, you picked it, and you should have every right not to have to change it unless you CHOOSE to! Again, that word: Choose, choice, whatever!

 

What exactly is a name? It is that by which a person identifies them self. You have to see that there aren’t many other things in life which have such an impact on the individual as their name. How many people here are themselves, or know of someone, who has a name in their real life which, quite frankly, they hate? Blame your parents all you want for giving you a name you cannot tolerate, but the bottom line is that you are stuck with it! I know quite a few people who fall into that category. And they CHOOSE not to use that name, but use a different version of their real name, maybe the middle one.

 

So, to all of those who say that the players’ choices of names is irrelevant, meaningless, I say Bunk! Your name defines you, tells everyone who and what you are! It IS you! If the player chooses, wow, there goes that word again, to change their name(s) to accommodate BW’s desire to have larger profits, then so be it. But that is THEIR choice and let them live with it. My name is me and I will be the ONLY person who decides if I wish to change it or not!

 

The bottom line as I see it is this. We, those who remain on those locked out servers, started this game on those servers because that is how we wished to play this game, for which we PAY for that ability! Now, for whatever reason BW wishes to admit to, we are being presented with the facts that we are not going to be allowed to continue to play this game the way we originally wanted to play.

 

This game belongs to Bioware, not us, so BW can make all the choices they wish, and they are doing exactly that!

All we are asking for is the recognition that BW started something with this game and its many servers. Maybe BW was expecting a lot more subscriptions than actually happened, evidence the many light servers. So, since BW isn’t getting the profits they originally expected, they are crowding everyone onto just a handful or servers, which reduces cost and improves profit!

 

I am not going to say, at this time, if I will cancel my subscription or not. I just don’t know right now, time will tell. But I can say this, with certainty, IF I am forced to move onto an overpopulated realm not of my choosing, IF I am forced to change the names of my characters and my legacy, IF my choices mean absolutely nothing to BW and BW doesn’t live up to their part of this agreement of subscriber to provider, then I seriously doubt I will continue to enjoy playing this game as I have so far.

 

At least with Skyrim, I can solo to my heart’s content, and save some money every month. I only have to worry about taking an arrow in my knee. I will miss the option to team with my son and his wife on their characters as we can when we wish to here on SWTOR. But then they will not be here either!

 

Lastly, those who went to the overpopulated servers to start with did so by their choice. It was what THEY wanted! That is fine and I wish each of them great success, truly.

 

I didn’t and I won’t, not by choice.

 

And that choice will ALWAYS ultimately be mine to make! Not BW’s!

 

*************************

 

Oh, I see BW has just posted a friendly reminder that they will not be deleting any of the player’s characters when the forced moved takes place? Going to be very interesting to see how they plan to accomplish that with only 8 slots per realm! Good Luck!

 

That still doesn’t change the fact that BW is making all the choices and the Subscribers aren’t! Well, not yet, wait until the subscriptions are up for renewal and see if choice changes get made!

[Jonoku]

As for those of you who like to “remind” us that this is a MMR game, the MM may mean “Massively”, but show me where in the description does that “Massively” mean that everyone has to be on the same server? Come on, I dare you to!

 

First off I just want to say I don't understand why you pay to play if your more of a solo player. I wouldn't if I were you but whateva. Bioware is obviously struggling, they have like what a month left to address EVERY SINGLE ISSUE.

[G_Rett]

Nobody wanted to change their character names, and the majority of us who pre-ordered (which is probably also the majority of current players) did it so we could get the names we wanted - and many of us were apprehensive about losing our names in the transfer. The main difference isn't that the vast majority of players value a certain playstyle or a vanity pet over their character names. The main difference is that a minority of players just can't handle having to change their character names for any reason and are trying to pass it off as some rare positive quality deserving special consideration.

 

If the remaining population on the 32 East Coast PVE servers are merged into one server, what do you think the chances are of keeping all your character names? Let's say there are 50 players on each server who have not transferred yet, and each has 8 characters. That's over 12,000 character names. If I were a betting man, I wouldn't put the odds in your favor.

 

And you would hate it because you'd be surrounded by everyone else who just can't get over the fact that they lost their character names - and then you'd randomly group with the person who has your main's original name. Dante Alighieri would have to come back from the dead to add "Circle X: Fleet".

 

There's actually 42 East Coast PvE servers; I can bring up the list I posted 2 pages back if you'd like. This brings up a problem that requires a new dimension to the solution. Unfortunately we still don't have those two key raw numbers to see if this is feasible (how many hold-outs there are currently and how much it costs to keep an individual server running for this game), but to put your mind to rest about the possibility of too many players on a single server as a result of it, I believe there's a solution to this, costs permitting.

 

If the actual cost to run a server isn't too high, it might help to open up more than one additional destination server for server subgroups that collectively still have a sizable population. Let's take your assumption that there are 50 people on each of those 42 East Coast PvE servers. That's 2100 players. Now, what would a reasonable maximum number to transfer to each server be? Does 300 sound fare? If so, then there would be 7 additional servers for that sub-group. Can 300 players paying $15 a month ($4,500 a month) sustain a single server? Fraid I still don't know, but if it's financially feasible, why not?

 

Also, to address your point that everyone values/valued the names they chose at the beginning of the game, this is true. However, they clearly valued the transfer perks more and at the time Bioware was giving us a choice in some cases to have one or the other. What would be special treatment is if the people who chose to stay behind to keep their names demanded that they get all the transfer perks as well, including a larger player pool to group with. However, the deal that they could keep their names if they stayed behind has been altered, (Anyone else getting that one scene in Empire Strikes Back coming to mind? It makes me giggle) as it currently stands anyways. They're just looking for a way to reasonably get that original part of the deal; if it's not financially feasible, oh well, an effort was made, but if is, then wouldn't be worth it to Bioware to set up some new destination servers?.

[Modredus]

First off I just want to say I don't understand why you pay to play if your more of a solo player. I wouldn't if I were you but whateva. Bioware is obviously struggling, they have like what a month left to address EVERY SINGLE ISSUE.

 

You are right! You do not understand! But then, I didn’t ask you did I?

You pay to play your way, I will pay to play my way, both of us will be happy then!

Smile

Edited July 14, 2012 by Modredus

[VulcanLogic]

A cruise ship line thinks demand will be high so they build 100 extra ships. Demand is high at first, but it drops off. So they decide to sell off those 100 extra ships, but the few people who like traveling on low population cruise ships are pretty miffed. Those people then demand that the cruise line continue to run low population cruises or they'll stop coming. They don't like shuffleboard or buffet queues, and have had their room numbers forever. Cruise line looks at operating costs and wishes those people well. That's business.

[Modredus]

 

That is true!

 

And that is what may happen here.

 

Life goes on.

 

Either way, I would still hate to see SWTOR go off line forever. It IS a very good game!

[Durgah]

A cruise ship line thinks demand will be high so they build 100 extra ships. Demand is high at first, but it drops off. So they decide to sell off those 100 extra ships, but the few people who like traveling on low population cruise ships are pretty miffed. Those people then demand that the cruise line continue to run low population cruises or they'll stop coming. They don't like shuffleboard or buffet queues, and have had their room numbers forever. Cruise line looks at operating costs and wishes those people well. That's business.

 

I love analogies and although I agree with the operating cost example above lets add to the example.

 

They sell off those 100 extra ships unfortunately only a part of your family may actually transfer to the remaining ships. They understand that you want to enjoy all the activities on the ship with your family but sorry, space is limited. Luckily the stranded family members will be somewhere, the cruise line is just not sure where at the moment. That is better than just throwing the family members over the boat though right?

 

And lets not forget that with the new ship population merge there will be brand new adventures:

1. Queuing for the bathroom

2. Buffet loot sniping (maybe they will spawn more of those hotwings so lines don't form)

3. Slow motion walking. We crammed so many people on the ship that moving around in popular areas is a game in itself.

 

Oh and by the way, although your birth name may be important to you our ship registry has to have unique passenger names. This opens a whole new venue of entertainment or so says our happy customers Bob_12 and Cassy88.

[FunkeFisher]

Greetings,

 

Since players are still concerned about the fate of their characters, we thought we'd remind everyone of Online Community Manager Joveth Gonzalez' post about character transfers:

 

 

 

We hope this helps. Thank you!

 

[/color]

 

What I still don't understand is why they refuse to give us any details on what this means. Of course we're worried about the fate of our characters, even if they won't be deleted will they just be spread across these other mega servers as character spaces are available, will the character slots be increased? Why on earth is this information not seen as something we should know at the SAME time forced mergers are brought up? It really makes me think that they hadn't even considered that people may have too many characters for this merge and are stalling til they have an answer.

 

I've accepted that I need to move, I've even saved somewhat reasonable names to change my characters into to (despite hating with a passion that we must not rename the characters this "story focused" MMORPG cares nothing about) but I'm holding off on making the move until I see how excess characters are being dealt with. Might actually be easier for future alts on different servers(assuming thats the answer) if I save some of my highest legacy characters for that trip.

 

The Devs are needlessly withholding too much information from us in regards to major changes in the game and it makes it hard to have faith that whatever solution they come up with will make any sense at all since no actions so far have made much sense...

[MacColin]

Just canceled my subscription because of this. Several of my toons disappeared after the transfer. Others came over with scrambled names. And I hate that I am forced into moving all of my toons onto 1 server when they came from 2 or 3 originally. Now I cannot create any more on the destination server. Game is more unstable than ever. And here they are wasting time on making it more difficult for people to play by increasing populations until I can no longer log in on a Saturday evening.

[MadBlue]

There's actually 42 East Coast PvE servers;

 

Yeah, that was a typo. I actually counted the servers then hit the 3 by mistake and didn't realize it when I made my estimates.

 

Let's take your assumption that there are 50 people on each of those 42 East Coast PvE servers. That's 2100 players. Now, what would a reasonable maximum number to transfer to each server be? Does 300 sound fare?

 

My server had at least 600 people on line at a time at peak hours - and that's not the entire population of the server, it's just how many people were logged on at a time. Krayt Dragon had a healthy enough population (we were the #4 EC PVE server) that we were surprised to be an origin server and not a destination server. I just can't see BioWare creating servers with a max of 300 people when the populations of healthier servers were transferred to destination servers.

 

Also, to address your point that everyone values/valued the names they chose at the beginning of the game, this is true. However, they clearly valued the transfer perks more and at the time Bioware was giving us a choice in some cases to have one or the other. What would be special treatment is if the people who chose to stay behind to keep their names demanded that they get all the transfer perks as well, including a larger player pool to group with. However, the deal that they could keep their names if they stayed behind has been altered, (Anyone else getting that one scene in Empire Strikes Back coming to mind? It makes me giggle) as it currently stands anyways. They're just looking for a way to reasonably get that original part of the deal; if it's not financially feasible, oh well, an effort was made, but if is, then wouldn't be worth it to Bioware to set up some new destination servers?.

 

Well, admittedly, the fact that the promise that you wouldn't be forced to move has been broken is just plain bad policy. Maybe they didn't know what they were going to do at the time and it turned out that there were so few people left on the origin servers, it didn't make any sense to do anything other than merge them into the destination servers. Most of the people who transferred voluntarily read the writing on the wall regarding the Origin servers in spite of what BioWare said.

 

That being said, if BioWare opened up another option to people on origin servers now - other than just leaving them there, it wouldn't be fair to many of the hundreds of thousands who already moved who weren't offered that choice. Meanwhile, you're still in the same position that you were in on day one of transfers, in that your names aren't available on your destination server.

 

If name and server populations are an issue, see if you can reserve your names on a server in the AP region and transfer there from your destination server, when that becomes possible. You're more likely to find your name there because most of the population there transferred from NA or EU servers to a fresh server - so you won't have the issue of so many names locked by inactive accounts (and, for the record, that's what appears to have been the case with the names I and many of my guild-mates lost when we transferred to The Shadowlands, so I imagine it's the case in general), and, since you're on the opposite side of the world, you'd be playing when most of the people there are asleep - voila! Instant light population server!

[BadOrb]

Greetings,

 

Since players are still concerned about the fate of their characters, we thought we'd remind everyone of Online Community Manager Joveth Gonzalez' post about character transfers:

 

 

 

We hope this helps. Thank you!

 

[/color]

 

Considering I mentioned to sticky this quote ( that doesn't appear when you requote it twice ) somewhere and everywhere 24 hours ago , then I think maybe you have made a blunder again , please inform people quicker when you know these things , thank you.

 

BadOrb.

Edited July 15, 2012 by BadOrb

[Modredus]

This is utterly useless!

 

Hey Bioware, this is indeed your game and you are free to do with it whatever you desire. If you do not care about the subscribers, or a portion of them, and you want to force them to play your way, or the highway.

 

My money and I will choose the highway!

 

I am not begging you to consider the remaining players feelings on this matter anymore.

 

Do as you will.

 

But mark this. I started on this game on Sedyn Kyne server and intend to stay there, or agree with BW to move to a moderate to standard server, or leave, period!

 

Even now, this situation has made the game play less enjoyable.

 

You started out a great environment to play on. Now you are turning into a copy version of WOW.

 

Bonne chance les amis

[CaptainScitch]

Where to start.. I have not played since April , was discouraged when the Special Content only lasted 1 to 2 weeks and was left with a pocket full of tokens and noplace to spend them, I went to play Skyrim and came back to dead servers, both my Imp and Rep Legacy are on different servers I created the toons in the first wave of early access, all my friends play there on both servers and they are both on the origin server list. The Last Thing I want is to get stuck transfering to a locked or full server , or one that will be when people start comming back when Diablo wears thin. So I'll wait till it becomes more evident what server is going to be a medium population, but cancelling my Sub has been bouncing around my head. Until they add holiday content to mix things up every month or two, they will have issues. Tons of people in SWG , CoH , and WoW just to name a few live for the holidays and the little break they offer. As for the lack of a Blockbuster game that was promised ... I love this game, I blame it on execs that didn't put the full EA firepower behind it for advertising ... WoW hires stars to promote their game years after it launched ... Star Wars has it's own Holywood connections it should have tapped into. Imagine Harrison Ford playing his Bounty Hunter .... just an example .. I know that it would be unlikely as he avoids Star wars, Billy Dee Williams, Anthony Danials, ....... who needs Mr. T , Chuck Norris , or mini Me .. They coulda Made Yoda playing a Smuggler ... that would be funny, and it would show me that EA is willing to back them. EA also left 38 Studios out to dry with the Game Kingdoms of Amalur .. good game ... no product promotion. EA ...... Advertising is not a 1 time thing for launch. You fail your own customers by not growning your client population.

[thatguycloud]

See what I don't understand, what was the point of the "mergers", too many low populated servers and what not? Well, you should've figured something out when you lost that crap load of players early on. I don't exactly like the fact that the initial launch of an MMO is mainly for names, friends, race to level cap and everyone who has unique and original names (not like myself) are basically getting tossed in the dirt. No, you won't delete characters, you'll auto-transfer them with names of "FLVNDSVMNQALJ" and make them rename. Hey, spit more in their faces because you made too many servers at the initial launch. I'm sure BW calculated from pre-orders and such on what they could make, but come on.. There was what, 15 PVP / RP / RP-PVE, and 9 PVE servers at launch? Seems a little silly to me.

 

These "Founders" in my opinion deserve to have names they used. Considering TOR is all about character attachment, a lot of players are going to be unhappy with the 'Force' migration, and now basically having characters they don't want. Keep your Origin servers, transfer them to another location, or something. Let those people who actually were there, waiting 48+ hours for their Early Access invites, keep their names. Regardless how many updates you try and rush to compensate, or how many rewards you give, you will have unhappy players due to that basic element. Figure out a way to bring all those people that once left, back into the game and save the servers. It's the people that pay for these after all, not BW anymore. I feel for all the people that get frustrated when things like this happen. And unfortunately TOR isn't like WoW where character names DON'T matter. As an RP'ers main concern is a character name, followed by actual RP. I simply just do not think it is fair what has been done. It wasn't fair that people lost hope in TOR within the first few months, but it sure as heck isn't fair to rub dirt in the loyal players' faces because of it.

Edited July 15, 2012 by thatguycloud

[Jonoku]

You are right! You do not understand! But then, I didn’t ask you did I?

You pay to play your way, I will pay to play my way, both of us will be happy then!

Smile

 

I don't like your attitude bud, I say what I want, you say what you want, everyone is happy by then.

[G_Rett]

If name and server populations are an issue, see if you can reserve your names on a server in the AP region and transfer there from your destination server, when that becomes possible. You're more likely to find your name there because most of the population there transferred from NA or EU servers to a fresh server - so you won't have the issue of so many names locked by inactive accounts (and, for the record, that's what appears to have been the case with the names I and many of my guild-mates lost when we transferred to The Shadowlands, so I imagine it's the case in general), and, since you're on the opposite side of the world, you'd be playing when most of the people there are asleep - voila! Instant light population server!

 

What you have here is an almost perfect solution, you even cover the issue for avoiding an overly populated environment. The only trouble with it is that there'll be a decent amount of latency if a character is transferred to a server that's on the opposite side of the world. This, however, can still be overcome, but only if the player is willing to adopt a night owl's sleeping practices; that way they can avoid the server loads that come with prime-time hours. Playing late at night would free up the option to play on a more local server.

There's still the problem for people who can't play late at night or very early in the morning, but they might be willing to brave the latency like the Australians did back near launch.

Bioware may still want to consider those extra servers for those who don't find these solutions here that are hidden amongst hundreds of posts or simply aren't willing to play at odd hours or with latency, but only if those servers wouldn't be too costly. They could also allow people who transferred early and lost names to transfer to these new servers as well, though I don't know if it would be better to have another wave of transfers that have limited destination servers , or to simply make transfers open ended with a small fee. I suppose they could also try to disseminate what we've discovered here to the masses, though I'm not sure what would be the best way of doing that.

[Modredus]

I don't like your attitude bud, I say what I want, you say what you want, everyone is happy by then.

 

Frankly, I don't care!

 

But you are right about one thing.

 

You said what you wanted to say.

 

I said what I wanted to say.

 

So I guess we are both happy now, RIGHT?

[Jonoku]

So I guess we are both happy now, RIGHT?

 

Yesss

[brainasium]

As far as losing you character's name because you were forced to move to another server, how's this for a fair solution?

 

In the event server merges are announced, allow the character that was created first to keep its name. Please don't make all characters from the server that's being absorbed have to change their names. Here's an example to spell it out:

 

It's been decided that all the characters from "Little Server" will be moved to "Big Server". There is a character named "GeorgeLuc" on both servers. Little Server GeorgeLuc was created 01/12/2012, Big Server GeorgeLuc was created 05/24/2012. Even though Little Server GeorgeLuc is being moved he gets to keep his name because he was created first.

 

Please keep in mind, it's not the guy on the low population server's fault. He didn't know his server was going to be merged when he created the character on it. Bioware, please consider this or another equally fair method when it comes to forced mergers. Choosing a diplomatic way to go about it may save you hundreds of subscriptions. Thanks!

[Stbilbo]

Has anyone else found the move to a high population server to be "not" such a good thing? I spent more time on one part of Black Hole than I used to take doing all the missions and had to give up for people jumping all thhe targets. I will NOT spend my time in a game "waiting" for respawns. Is there a plan to fix this? I will not continue in this massively over populated server for long. Moved from Khoonda to Jedi Covenant.

[Jursy]

Has anyone else found the move to a high population server to be "not" such a good thing? I spent more time on one part of Black Hole than I used to take doing all the missions and had to give up for people jumping all thhe targets. I will NOT spend my time in a game "waiting" for respawns. Is there a plan to fix this? I will not continue in this massively over populated server for long. Moved from Khoonda to Jedi Covenant.

 

Until BW states differently, it looks like the "fix" is to force more people to the already crowded servers. I couldn't take it, I deleted my toons and went to the overseas servers.

[mavsynchroid]

Really hoping full character transfers come soon. I have a lvl 50 sent on a pvp server, and very much want to transfer him to Jung Ma, where all of my other characters are

[mavsynchroid]

As far as losing you character's name because you were forced to move to another server, how's this for a fair solution?

 

In the event server merges are announced, allow the character that was created first to keep its name. Please don't make all characters from the server that's being absorbed have to change their names. Here's an example to spell it out:

 

It's been decided that all the characters from "Little Server" will be moved to "Big Server". There is a character named "GeorgeLuc" on both servers. Little Server GeorgeLuc was created 01/12/2012, Big Server GeorgeLuc was created 05/24/2012. Even though Little Server GeorgeLuc is being moved he gets to keep his name because he was created first.

 

Please keep in mind, it's not the guy on the low population server's fault. He didn't know his server was going to be merged when he created the character on it. Bioware, please consider this or another equally fair method when it comes to forced mergers. Choosing a diplomatic way to go about it may save you hundreds of subscriptions. Thanks!

 

I actually disagree with this. It's no one's fault, so the person who's been minding his own business on a server he's always been on, should not all of a sudden have to change his character name because someone with the same name decided to transfer over.

 

In the end it just comes down to luck as to which server you picked, and if you are the one who's deciding to transfer your character, it's only fair that you change your name if it's taken. The other person who's established himself on a server he chose from the beginning should not have to change his name at all.