Consolidated Post: APAC/Oceanic Server Concerns

[D_anger]

oh yeah, anyone legally minded that is keen to write a formal ACCC complaint template, please post below, or PM me and ill post it! I want my money back for the expansion and if i have to complain, i will

 

idea would be for us all to submit the complaint to get it resolved, if its submitted in the same format and written properly, im sure this would be much better.

Edited March 26, 2013 by D_anger

[LadyKohastFel]

Happened to every single one of us. Twice for some. No mercy whatsoever was shown for character names. And you know what happened? More players came back than left. A sizable stable population is more important than a character name.

 

I've found that accents typically can get you the name you want though. So basically a win win.

 

Accents are a pain if you want to whisper someone called Bíll and you type Bill since they look almost exactly the same.

[liaison]

For those leaving keep hitting up their customer service people for refunds on ROTHC if you preordered it.

 

If they don't do it soon we can hit up http://consumerist.com/ - they recently crucified EA over the Sim City refunds, we can do it again.

 

What is the best way to do this? Do I call them, or is there somewhere I can put in a ticket?

[Dirtyshadow]

If we wanted to play with greater populations, we would have bought the game three months earlier and played in US servers. We'd be used to them by now.

The thing is most of us hardcore MMO fans did... we started on Harbinger we nearly killed the server on Day 1 due to our sheer numbers.

 

The Oceanic servers was there solution to get us off Harbinger, we moved to Dalborra server

... now they are deporting us back to Harbinger.

 

WE DONT WANT TO GO BACKWARDS... WE WANT TO MOVE FORWARD!!!

Start acting like a real company and sell your products to the regions you service, advertise / marketing....

not close down the regions you service after 7 months of doing absolutely nothing but thinking about.

your suppose to be market innovators, start acting like it.

Edited March 26, 2013 by Dirtyshadow

[Jarnaktane]

I will try the US Servers (again) while my sub lasts. Probably won't be tanking any OPS or even Flashpoints again though! For those on the US servers who don't understand our complaining, in the simplest of terms, I will have been dead for a full two to three seconds in your view of our shared Flashpoint. I will still be swinging my lightsaber for all of that time, blissfully unaware for that brief but important period that I have wiped your raid.

 

I'm just gutted that so many of the people that have been a part of my gaming experience will be gone from this game for good.

 

The response in Developer Thread was just so embarrassingly inadequate it seemed to add the final "**** you" for a lot of people.

 

Sad day for the game, even the trolls will have less to feast on once this dies down.

Edited March 26, 2013 by Jarnaktane
Correction

[jonathanonmars]

Hey guys sign this petition regarding the retaining of APAC servers and merging it into 1.

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/keep-apac-servers-for-swtor-available-and-merge-them-into-1/signatures.html

[darthnish]

Time frame on merge pls I can't wait to be able to PVp again

[ObiBenobi]

After a year of putting up with stupid thing after stupid thing (why the hell does an MMO website go down when the servers go down????), just to keep playing this game with the friends I have made on a Server without crappy ping for the first time ever in an MMO for me, this is the straw that breaks the cammels back for me.

 

I'm so mad that they just ruled out a server merge and are just going to plonk us back on US servers as if it means nothing to game play.

 

I hate that I'm forced to write this but I seriously have no choice. After being a devoted subscriber all year, preordering the expansion.........

 

 

**** YOU EA

 

 

**** YOU IN THE EAR

 

*********** ********....probably won't even get read because of some bloody filter or whatever. But if someone at EA does read this one day.......way to think only about the $$$$ and not about the game play jerks, stop lying to us.

[SpannersSF]

Time frame on merge pls I can't wait to be able to PVp again

 

Now you're just posting to hear your own voice you read the release, there is no time frame yet.

Edited March 26, 2013 by SpannersSF

[OdiusCaesar]

I have a major concern about the implementation of these character transfers to US servers.

 

I have been a player and subscriber of this game since EGA back in 2011. Since then I have created -many- toons, all of which people in the Oceanic community of Dalborra recognise as being a representation of me as a player. My concern is that if we are forcibly moved to another server, the character names I chose nearly 18 months ago, the character names I have been known by and referred to, may be stripped away from me.

 

Some people may not see this as being a huge issue (yeah sure, it's a game, get over it - right?). But when you've played with people from your global region (firstly on Jekk'Jekk Tarr, and now on Dalborra - soon to be Harbinger), and they've played with you always under those same names and are even able to put a real life face to your character names along with the personality that goes with it, it's a little disconcerting knowing that I may lose that.

 

I have spoken to some people on Dalborra who, like me, have 12 or more toons that they created at painstaking length to ensure the toon looked the way they wanted and the name they chose fit. If we are forced to give those toons second-rate names that don't fit with what we first imagined, I know for a fact some people are going to unsub. Renaming my 16 toons -names that nigh on everyone from Dalborra knows me by- is NOT something I am willing to do just because BioWare decided my account has to be moved. If they want to forcibly move our server's population, the least they can do is let us keep our original character names, especially since the majority of us left on the Oceanic servers are players who have been following and supporting this game since pre-release.

 

Besides, if the server transfers are to help 'better our playing experience', I personally don't think that is possible if we have to go through a renaming process for every single character and then somehow figure out who all our old friends are, what they've changed their toons' names to etc. etc.

 

Also, keep in mind that the people who unsub for this reason are separate from those who will unsub purely due to the loss of our great community and great latency.

 

^ This. I have played this game far longer than my original intention purely for the great communtiy that currently exists within the Dalborra Server and despite the great amount of time (and money) I have put into levelling these toons, I am not prepared to be forcibly shifted to another server where I will be forced to rename all the characters that people know me by and most importantly lose touch with all the people I enjoy playing with.

 

I'd prefer not to leave a game that I come to very much enjoy, but ultimately friends and community are what will determine whether I continue to play this game (and subscribe). If the opinions of our community and server mean anything to you at all, please reconsider this decision and at least open up the possiblity of a Asia-Pacific server merger. A great amount of people I know and play with are unsubbing and leaving the game as a result of these changes, and it is disheartening to see a wall of silence greeting such an overwhelming response from the people on my server; particularly when given repeated claims from Bioware that customer feedback and opinions are important to them.

Edited March 26, 2013 by OdiusCaesar

[soneil]

I really wish people would try the other server out before posting opinion paraded as fact like this. I understand people are upset, in some respects they have more than a right to be. But statements like this simply aren't true.

 

I play from Melbourne, and even at 11pm Melb time on weekdays, i still get GF que pops, although it does get quieter around then. But pops still happen. GF pops all the time anytime during the weekend. WZ's pops are never ending, anytime, day or night, any day of the week. That is better than any aussie server just there, not even mentioning it has a thriving RWZ community compared to the APAC servers too.

 

No complaints about ques at all, maybe you should try it out yourself.

 

This ^.

People are making such a big deal about ping being a problem but seriously - how many MMO games actually base servers in australia? WOW certainly doesn't and I never had a problem with playing in highly ranked arena teams (top tier of pvp for those not familiar with wow) and being part of our server's top progression groups. I wasn't even playing on one of the APAC servers (which in wow are hosted in the US so the ping is the same). go on wow threads and ping for australian players is not something that gets discussed a lot. I think losing our apac servers sucks but if people are getting that worked up about latency - well I think there are far bigger problems that bother me.

 

I started this game playing for a few months before transferring to Gav Daragon. The only - I repeat - the only reason I transferred was because of timezone differences. Not enough people were on when I was on. The community on my old server was incredible and I haven't seen anything like that since. When I first transferred to gav daragon it was pretty good population wise but I never saw any noticeable difference in lag. Sure the numbers were a little different but not enough to actually have any impact on gameplay. Since then, my old server has merged with others and is now far busier during their off peak times than our server is during peak times. I've seriously considered quitting recently because the low population has been a joke. I know people on dalbora apparently haven't been having population problems but it's pretty much been a game breaker for us. There might have been better solutions but for me this is an improvement. WZ wait times are pretty considerable even during peak times. Group finder even worse. And sub 50 group finder - I can literally play for a few hours in peak time without group finder coming up once. Other than scheduled events with our guild, the game has pretty much become single player.

 

The comments about not wanting to play with americans I find appalling to be honest. I've never had issues playing with americans. I found the community on my old server to be more mature and drama free than what I've seen on my current server. Especially lately with some of what's been going on. So making digs are playing with americans are seriously uncalled for IMHO. Our guild's far from aussie anyway as we also have a lot of kiwis as well as members from asian countries.

 

So if people have actually tried playing on a US server and found the lag, play experience was bad etc then I think their opinions and concerns are valid. I think a lot of the comments in this thread though are based on a great deal of ignorance.

 

Edit* For the record, I think apac server mergers would be a better solution but realistically I don't think that will happen for reasons of cost. It's probably just not financially viable for bioware to run a single dedicated server in a different country. Few MMOs do. Certainly none of the big ones I'm aware of so don't expect better ping from wow, guildwars etc. In my opinion cross server group finder and pvp like in WOW would have been a better solution but bioware has never entertained that idea. So what we're getting is not my preferred solution but it's better than playing on a dying server. They should have done something months ago before things got this bad.

Edited March 26, 2013 by soneil

[Knockerz]

BW should have merged the APAC servers a few months ago to see if that would have helped. Now if the populations have continued to shrink and not stabilized at an acceptable level, then I'm sure many more aussies would have been more tolerent of these west coast NA server mergers.

[Draculas_Chick]

How about you start marketing it better here not many people actually know about this game. I mention it to people who have no idea what I'm even talking about. If you want to populate the Oceanic servers and actually do care about the players of the Aussie and pacific servers how about actually backing your game some more and get it out there unless you only really want the american market. Merge the 3 servers see how they go then make a choice. Merging all the servers over to the us ones is completely lazy and shows no loyalty to your players especially to those who pay their subscriptions. So Advertise already and don't take the lack of population out on its players get some ads on tvs etc because unless that point you get people actually knowing about it there will be no support for our servers.

 

Foxtra

[kaug]

Bioware/EA are just going for the cash grab, they have never cared about there customer's just there money, its completely obvious after all this time.

 

There decision here means that they will make more money shutting the servers down then they would merging them into one. Maybe they will fire some more people that were doing the APAC updates/maintenance, save money on hosting. They would of already factored the unsubs into account. After all this time do you really think they give a crap about what the player experiences of merging PVE, PVP, RP would be like? No! That doesn't sound like Bioware/EA to me at all. All the people I've seen QQ on the forum for so long and be ignored. Nothing you can do here will change the dollar line which Bioware/EA make decisions by. It's such a crying shame cause if they listened to there customers more since launch they would of made a lot more money.

 

So with that I'd like to thank all the people that made playing on Dalborra such an enjoyable experience for me. You are all a great bunch of people. I've raided and grouped with a lot of guilds thanks for letting me come along to join in the fun.

 

Unsubbed.

Rusty - Offen - Aono - Kaug - Boktor - Onon

[darthnish]

Now you're just posting to hear you own voice you read the release, there is no time frame yet.

 

I really hope it's before makeb

[liaison]

This ^.

People are making such a big deal about ping being a problem but seriously - how many MMO games actually base servers in australia? WOW certainly doesn't and I never had a problem with playing in highly ranked arena teams (top tier of pvp for those not familiar with wow) and being part of our server's top progression groups. I wasn't even playing on one of the APAC servers (which in wow are hosted in the US so the ping is the same). go on wow threads and ping for australian players is not something that gets discussed a lot. I think losing our apac servers sucks but if people are getting that worked up about latency - well I think there are far bigger problems that bother me.

 

I started this game playing for a few months before transferring to Gav Daragon. The only - I repeat - the only reason I transferred was because of timezone differences. Not enough people were on when I was on. The community on my old server was incredible and I haven't seen anything like that since. When I first transferred to gav daragon it was pretty good population wise but I never saw any noticeable difference in lag. Sure the numbers were a little different but not enough to actually have any impact on gameplay. Since then, my old server has merged with others and is now far busier during their off peak times than our server is during peak times. I've seriously considered quitting recently because the low population has been a joke. I know people on dalbora apparently haven't been having population problems but it's pretty much been a game breaker for us. There might have been better solutions but for me this is an improvement. WZ wait times are pretty considerable even during peak times. Group finder even worse. And sub 50 group finder - I can literally play for a few hours in peak time without group finder coming up once. Other than scheduled events with our guild, the game has pretty much become single player.

 

The comments about not wanting to play with americans I find appalling to be honest. I've never had issues playing with americans. I found the community on my old server to be more mature and drama free than what I've seen on my current server. Especially lately with some of what's been going on. So making digs are playing with americans are seriously uncalled for IMHO. Our guild's far from aussie anyway as we also have a lot of kiwis as well as members from asian countries.

 

So if people have actually tried playing on a US server and found the lag, play experience was bad etc then I think their opinions and concerns are valid. I think a lot of the comments in this thread though are based on a great deal of ignorance.

 

Edit* For the record, I think apac server mergers would be a better solution but realistically I don't think that will happen for reasons of cost. It's probably just not financially viable for bioware to run a single dedicated server in a different country. Few MMOs do. Certainly none of the big ones I'm aware of so don't expect better ping from wow, guildwars etc. In my opinion cross server group finder and pvp like in WOW would have been a better solution but bioware has never entertained that idea. So what we're getting is not my preferred solution but it's better than playing on a dying server. They should have done something months ago before things got this bad.

 

I have tried the USA servers, I even have a few toons there, as I have friends that play in the USA, and I can tell you from experience that playing with a 300ms ping practically makes the game unplayable.

 

I use to play wow, and I played it since 2004, I switched as soon as I heard SWTOR they had aussies servers. High latency is horrible to play with. Try doing NM EC and hit those 1 second interupts, or get those droids facing the wall before they wipe the raid. It is not going to happen at 300ms, fact, it doesn't!

[MyPetMonkey]

While I am staying for a while I consider the above post to be s true thing of beauty. It is a sad day for us my friend to be losing a player that can express themselves so wonderfully (no sarcasm intended). A poet of the soul. Adios.

 

Oh how a typo can be so crushing when in bold!

[steoop]

Hey everyone,

 

I have an update for you on our long term plans for the APAC servers. Before I do that though I want to let you know up front that we still have quite a bit of work to do to make this happen so I cannot provide any timeframes for you today.

 

We know that when we asked you, the community, for your opinions on what we should do, we received quite a variety of suggested solutions. Some people wanted to be able to transfer to higher populated North American servers, some suggested merging the three existing APAC servers into one large APAC server, and then there were a host of other ideas as well. However, the one common theme from the suggestions, which we heard clearly, is that everyone wants the opportunity to play on higher populated servers. With this in mind, we have evaluated all of the options and determined that the best solution, that will offer the best long term play experience, is to merge the APAC servers with higher populated North American servers.

 

Getting to the point of being able to merge the servers is going to be a multistep process. First off we need to update our Free Character Transfer System to include the game changes that we have made recently along with the upcoming changes in Game Update 2.0 and the Digital Expansion: Rise of the Hutt Cartel. We will then offer Free Character Transfers to anyone currently playing on an APAC server to a North American server of the same gameplay type, specifically:

• Mastar Dar’Nala (PvP) will transfer to The Bastion (PvP)
  
• Gav Daragon (RP-PvE) will transfer to Begeren Colony (RP-PvE)
  
• Dalborra (PvE) will transfer to The Harbinger (PvE)
  

We will also need to update our server merge technology at which point we will ultimately merge each of the APAC servers into the corresponding North American servers as indicated above. We are moving as quickly as we can to make this happen, but we want to make sure this is a smooth transition, so it will take some time.

 

Why did we decide not to merge the three APAC servers into one large APAC server? We decided this for two main reasons. 1. The issue in doing this is that two play-styles (PvE, PvE-RP, or PvP) would need to sacrifice their desired play-style in order to have one server with a higher population. We feel that it is important that each player is allowed to continue to play SWTOR in their preferred play-style. Therefore, accommodating all the existing play-styles was a primary goal. By allowing you to move to a NA West server, you will be able to keep your play-style. 2. The move to North American servers better delivers on our ultimate goal of providing the best play experience, with the most possible players, long term.

 

I will continue to provide updates as soon as I have them. I know the next big question will be “when” and as soon as I have that information to release, I will do so. Thank you for your continued patience on this. I know it took longer than you would have liked but I intend to continue to give you information as soon as I can!

 

-eric[/quote

 

If you fix the Ping issue this suggestion would be ok. But as you continue on pondering on how this is going to work you may want to think of other strategies. As the longer you brainstorm in your meeting rooms people are leaving the game in the APAC servers. Sometimes I feel your read our post then think well thats not gonna do it for us cost wise so stuff them. There are many loyal subscribers here and you have just given us a very sour taste in our mouth.

[SxkagexS]

if he can make our ping more better why 3 month of this my ms still was 200~2000 ms random jump!?

 

i plying in that ms was totally max eff to me,if my lower ms was 500,no ned ply at all,pvp,ops run,i think fp same can't run it!!

 

i knw my english bad

[Apeth]

Hey everyone,

 

To clarify a bit more about this decision. We did previously ask what folks on the forums would like to do as an APAC solution and some, but not all, offered up the solution of merging all APAC into one. The other option on the table was to merge APAC into the NA servers. When we discussed the options internally we looked to address everyone’s primary issues with APAC, low populations were creating a less than optimal game experience.

 

We went and looked at what current server populations looked like across all of APAC and to put it simply, even merging all of APAC together into one server would not solve the population problems. Even with that solution you would still see long queue times for things like Warzones and Group Finder. It was because of this that we decided that moving APAC into the NA servers was the best option.

 

One thing to note is that there is no catchall solution here. If we move APAC to NA some folks will see increased latency, but they will have healthy server populations and can remain on their chosen server types. If we merge everyone into one APAC server, latency will remain in place but the current population issues will exist and players will lose their preferred server type. Leaving things as they are leaves all of the current issues in place without a solution at all. This is one of the reasons getting the plan out to you folks took so long, we had to think long and hard about all of the implications of our decision.

 

-eric

 

the voice of reason right here, I hope you APAC guys read this.

[jsmithh]

At least, let us choose where we want to move our character ! I'd rather play in Europe rather than NA. Less lag and people are generally nicer.

[BIG_M]

 

If you fix the Ping issue this suggestion would be ok. But as you continue on pondering on how this is going to work you may want to think of other strategies. As the longer you brainstorm in your meeting rooms people are leaving the game in the APAC servers. Sometimes I feel your read our post then think well thats not gonna do it for us cost wise so stuff them. There are many loyal subscribers here and you have just given us a very sour taste in our mouth.

 

All this has done is remind me of the fiasco before the game came out over a year ago with the so called green and red zones, and shows us how ea/bioware really treats their customers when they consolidate with us to get an answer then ignore our general consensus completely of wanting the apac servers merged into 1 server with most people being happy with it being a pve server

[Jarnaktane]

the voice of reason right here, I hope you APAC guys read this.

 

Yep, this is the one which is inadequate! No "sorry to see you go", no "how can we keep you", just "it was a tough decision for us to make."

 

Oh *tear

 

#MyPetMonkey for poet of the year!

Edited March 26, 2013 by Jarnaktane
Correction

[ObiBenobi]

Unsubscribed.

[Dirtyshadow]

If you fix the Ping issue this suggestion would be ok.

The no.1 cause of our Ping is the Pacific Ocean.

There is only one way to fix Ping from Australia/Oceanic Region customers to North America West Coast server

 

Improve the connection quality and the internet routing to the server, and the only proven way in gaming that comes close to that is to provide/access a Tunneling Routing service across the Pacific Ocean!

 

Wow had unofficial ones, but they sometimes werent stable... if EA provided an official tunneling server, where we could log into Sydney and get direct routed to NA West coast server network, that would be epic. That would be a innovation, but then again this is EA, they alreayd proven this year they have no concept of how the internet and game connectivity actually works.

Edited March 26, 2013 by Dirtyshadow