Consolidated Post: APAC/Oceanic Server Concerns

[darthnish]

Regarding 1) A fix in your eyes but there's no arguing that they are going to do something.

 

Regarding 2) Why is this funny? I've already explained in some detail how a 300ms latency affects my ability to play the game. Are you saying that I'm lying?

 

Also, let's assume you have a twin over in America who plays the game as well as you do. Suddenly, that 1/4 second is no longer a handicap (it's not leveling the playing field), it's a disadvantage - you lose every time you go up against your twin. Would you be happy with that outcome given your hunger for PvP (and I suspect, your hunger to win)?

 

You also appear to be making the assumption that lag affects SWTOR like it affects competing MMOs. In my experience this is not the case. In EVE, the very nature of how combat took place meant that you could fight effectively at much higher latencies. In WoW the game engine was far more robust and well developed - you could stack abilities and they would execute in the order selected in the event of a lag spike. In my experience, SWTOR doesn't do this. In SWTOR abilities that are stacked together during noticeable lag simply don't activate. Combine this with the plethora of bugs and glitches in WZs and it becomes far more difficult to fight effectively.

 

Your final point about Aussies adapting to the lag holds some truth. There are some very good Aussie PvPers out there - no doubt. My question is, how much more successful would they be (or have been) without the lag? Would we see more Aussie / Kiwi / SEA e-sports / pro-gaming teams? Would there be more people playing at a competitive level if they knew they weren't handicapped by latency?

 

Oh and please don't point to SWTOR's Australian servers as justification that lag isn't a factor in attracting / retaining competitive gamers. People have left SWTOR for dozens of reasons during it's short life. The game is flawed in many ways. It just so happens that the prospect of higher latency is the tipping point for another group of players unsubscribing and, unfortunately, your opinion / experience on playing with lag isn't going to dissuade them - especially when your response is to laugh at them and dismiss the point entirely.

 

All right you put up a decent argument, allow me to provide my rebuttal to this debate :

 

The comparison you make with EVE and WoW stands but you fail to realize EVE is not like swtor is quite a different genre on its own as there is quite a delay b/w player actions and as for WoW that game has been out since 2005 and im not surprised it has superior tech to counter act the ping issues many players face globally. Given time im sure SWTOR can also become more streamlined.

 

As to the gaming culture, you should realize it varies quite vastly in different parts of the world, western MMOs completely fail in the asian market, Especially in Japan and Korea where they prefer the more grind intense MMOs like Aion, its not something we can change its something the gaming population as a whole prefers there and the devs there accommodate their primary market rather than cater to the needs of the secondary market,

 

If you look at the countries like America/Korea/Japan and the European countries they have a booming gaming culture and HUGE game developers and hence the booming gaming culture whereas on the other had Australia is yet to embrace and support its gaming market, So im not surprised that there are no major E-sports teams coming out (whereas most of the competitive Esports teams are from those regions along with ads for games running on major media channels thus further promoting said culture, all of this is absent in australia. You may have the population of hardcore gamers but not enough to support a full fledged MMO imo.

 

Also to address your point about Aussie/Kiwi Competitive teams, there are no sponsors for them locally and hence they move or find sponsors abroad, i know of a very gifted Aussie starcraft 2 player who is on an american team and lives in america, thats my point actually if you want to take up gaming on a competitive level (as in make it your JOB) you would have to move to a country where the culture for that exists, very similar to a RL analogy of a good base ball player in Australia would never amount to anything unless he was in America where baseball is a major sport there.

 

EDIT: i forgot to address your "twin" argument, imo if that hypothetical situation happened to me id suck it up and accept the fact that i lost due to ping, but then id immediately re que and play against other people who will likely be less skilled and i will have the advantage in terms of skill and class knowledge and easily best them.

 

In short i play this game to have fun , im not a competitive player nor will i ever pursue it i as a career, so im ok with being a little laggy as long as i can play or enjoy the game as i want to and not be hindered by population issues.

Edited March 28, 2013 by darthnish

[Icykill_]

I loved the part where Musco doesn't mention server latency. There's more to Australia than the east coast, people.

 

Hi Eric,

 

Would you please get us a response from your bosses at BIO/EA regarding the increased latency questions we have been asking... this is a main concern for a large majority of customers.

 

 

KEEP THE FAITH... SIGN THE PETITION FOR A COMBINED APAC SERVER

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/...em-into-1.html

Edited March 28, 2013 by Icykill_
add something

[Takayo]

If they move us to US Servers I will be unsubbing. Plain and simple.

[waylandir]

All right you put up a decent argument, allow me to provide my rebuttal to this debate :

 

The comparison you make with EVE and WoW stands but you fail to realize EVE is not like swtor is quite a different genre on its own as there is quite a delay b/w player actions and as for WoW that game has been out since 2005 and im not surprised it has superior tech to counter act the ping issues many players face globally. Given time im sure SWTOR can also become more streamlined.

 

.

 

you do know eve runs a single server made up of a crap load of computers dont you? and they still have lag as well.

you do know that latency in WoW IS AN ISSUE, I know as i played for several years and ended up giving up on raids due to the latency and constant dc'ng due to it. PvP was also out of the question for the latency issue so dont come into my house and tell me WoW and Eve dont have latency issues and swtor can get just as good. Swotr is great at 25ms, why the @#^$# would I want to go to 400+ just because they planned this from before the launch. Thats probably why they never really advertised, thats why they never said anything until the last minute, thats why they ignored what the players suggested and requested, thats why they never did a poll when you logged into the game or even sent an in game mail about it. THEY NEW BEFORE THE GAME WAS RELEASED IN APAC they were going to do this. Which is why there arguments about population is crap considering they had to merge NA servers and even that hasnt helped on some.

 

Oh, I got an idea, why not close down a couple of the low population NA servers and transfer them all over to APAC, EAware cant complain considering there happy for us to go over there now arent they. Gee.. now thats a brilliant idea, if EA are happy for us to go to 400+ latency it would prove to be regional discrimination to not have equally deficient NA servers come to APAC instead.

Edited March 28, 2013 by waylandir

[darthnish]

you do know eve runs a single server made up of a crap load of computers dont you? and they still have lag as well.

you do know that latency in WoW IS AN ISSUE, I know as i played for several years and ended up giving up on raids due to the latency and constant dc'ng due to it. PvP was also out of the question for the latency issue so dont come into my house and tell me WoW and Eve dont have latency issues and swtor can get just as good. Swotr is great at 25ms, why the @#^$# would I want to go to 400+ just because they planned this from before the launch. Thats probably why they never really advertised, thats why they never said anything until the last minute, thats why they ignored what the players suggested and requested, thats why they never did a poll when you logged into the game or even sent an in game mail about it. THEY NEW BEFORE THE GAME WAS RELEASED IN APAC they were going to do this. Which is why there arguments about population is crap considering they had to merge NA servers and even that hasnt helped on some.

 

tbh i did play wow on a roomates pc , he was getting 160ms from NZ and told me he always had a stable connection, so i assumed that WoW had superior server tech or something, good to know i was mistaken, as for the Aussie servers closing down im not surprised, as i mentioned earlier the population of gamers isn't too high, plus with so many competitive mmos out atm that population is further divided

[Icykill_]

PETITION JUST HIT 600... keep going guys...

 

Eric and EA/BIO are you paying attention

 

KEEP THE FAITH... SIGN THE PETITION FOR A COMBINED APAC SERVER

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/...em-into-1.html

[Yubided]

All right you put up a decent argument, allow me to provide my rebuttal to this debate...

 

*I've trimmed your quote so this doesn't turn into too big a wall of text*

 

Regarding EVE - I'm quite aware of how the combat system works. I played it for six years - tried every facet of the game available at the time except the spying metagame and moved on. Hence my previous point about the very nature of combat making latency far more tolerable. Is it a good game to compare to SWTOR directly... probably not. The point I was trying to make with EVE is that the type of game does determine tolerance levels for latency.

 

I disagree about your WoW point - Wow's engine was better in 2006 when I started playing. I agree that eaware is new to the genre and deserved some slack. However, you'd think that after one and a half years, they might have prioritised fixing their combat system a bit higher. There's also claims that the inherent flaws of the hero engine mean that SWTOR's system will always be sub-par to WoW. I hope that's not the case.

 

Personally, I don't think eaware will ever fix the combat system even if they can. Their behaviour resembles start-up companies on government subsidy or some other form of temporary protection. Eaware has already grown accustomed to the remaining players subsidising their poor decisions no matter what they do or how badly they screw up. For me, it's time to cut the umbilical cord.

 

Regarding gaming culture - I'm aware of the phenomenon. That said EVE and WoW have both succeeded in the Western and Asian environments. I think it is unrealistic to attribute the failure of a game purely on gaming culture when a niche market in Asia can mean millions of subscribers.

 

As for Australia (Oceania) - yep, we're a minnow. My counter question to that is: How do we grow Oceanic / SEA interest in gaming if we can't secure equivalent levels of service in our own region? It has to start at a grassroots level and that requires infrastructure at a National and Company level. The NBN may have an impact in the near future but until Companies start thinking long-term about how to grow a relatively untapped market like Oceania / SEA, we'll continue to get shafted with second-rate arrangements which damages regional sentiment for gaming as a whole.

Edited March 28, 2013 by Yubided

[waylandir]

tbh i did play wow on a roomates pc , he was getting 160ms from NZ and told me he always had a stable connection, so i assumed that WoW had superior server tech or something, good to know i was mistaken, as for the Aussie servers closing down im not surprised, as i mentioned earlier the population of gamers isn't too high, plus with so many competitive mmos out atm that population is further divided

 

shoot he must have a hell of a computer, I could never get better than 280 ms and that was alone in the wilderness lol. In raids and hard core dungeons it averages between 360 - 14K depoending on what was happening and how many big flashy bangs and whooshes where going on. With eve it crapped out when you got more than about 10 ships fighting (i dont mean AI ones). I have to admit though my 280 was also due to wtfast that cut my latency about 30%.

[NeverDrol]

Dear Bioware unlike the US n Eroupean servers that have fibre optical rampant thought their countries. Only our capital cities here have access to some optical cable and then its not throughout the whole of these cities, most of them are lucky to have optical at all and our roll out in the capital cities will take 10 to 15 year to completely roll out the optical in these cities. Tthis leave most of us with a letency of 30 ms at best n we have looked at what your suggesting n our latency will increase to 250 at best on those with optical leaving those of us with copper line a latency much higher thus making it impractical to continue playin the game at all seing it will be impractical for us to play the game in PvP, Operation & Flashpoints.

Neverdrol

[Bethykins]

I wanted to give an update on some things and answer some questions we have seen in the thread. First, one of the things we have seen multiple people suggest is that if we are going to merge the APAC servers into the NA West servers that we should give you the option to choose which NA West server you transfer to. Knowing that some APAC players have existing characters and Legacies on some NA West servers already, we agree. When we open free transfers we will allow you one time transfer from your current APAC server to any one of the NA West servers. Note: The actual server merges themselves will still happen based on server type, so once we open transfers make sure you move all of your characters to the server you want before the merge happens.

 

We have also seen some concerns that we “haven’t considered what NA West’s populations are at offpeak times.” Actually, this is part of the reason we are making the decision to move APAC into NA West. Currently the equivalent NA West servers are seeing higher populations at offpeak times than their APAC counterparts. Meaning that even during offpeak NA times, the APAC players should see an increase in population after the transfers/merges.

 

-eric

 

 

Hi Eric,

Thanks for bearing with us and being the messenger that everyone shoots. This is good news and will allow players to consolidate their legacies as I do know a number of people from MDN rolled on the Harbinger not the Bastion.

Please keep the information coming in regards to what will happen with player names, legacies, guild banks etc as this will further alleviate peoples worries.

I am sorry to lose the APAC servers (and hope we can change EA/Bioware's minds) but I am less frustrated than I was with this news. I may even continue subscribing.

[waylandir]

PETITION JUST HIT 600... keep going guys...

 

Eric and EA/BIO are you paying attention

 

KEEP THE FAITH... SIGN THE PETITION FOR A COMBINED APAC SERVER

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/...em-into-1.html

 

links broken....

[soneil]

A lot of the replies are showing different priorities. The primary reason I play a multiplayer game like this is for the interaction and gameplay with other people. Other people are more concerned about the competitive aspect. Some like a bit of both.

 

For the more competitive people the increased latency is obviously a big blow. It's not for me though. I enjoy a bit of pvp and I always rate pretty well when I do WZs (and used to be in a top arena team when I played wow). It's not a biggie for me though if I lag out and don't perform too well. It can be frustrating of course but for me personally it's far more frustrating to not have enough people to play with. That for me is a far greater priority. I can put up with some lag if it means I can do flashpoints and pvp when I want to, rather than playing for hours and sometimes still not getting a pop.

 

So while I understand the anguish over the latency increase, for me, the move to US servers will be a big improvement and I'm looking forward to it. If I was on dalbora then maybe I wouldn't have a problem with pop times, but I like to play on RP servers. Not a hardcore RPer but that's my preference.

 

I guess what I'm saying is that the people who are demanding the apac servers get merged, are not speaking for everyone. They might be speaking for a lot of people but there are also a lot that are happy enough with this move. I know in our guild there are several people who have already said they are quitting over this. There are also just as many (perhaps even more based on discussions on our guild site), who are actually looking forward to being on a busier server.

Same thing if you look on the gav daragon server forums. I think the amount of people upset with the change vs people who want the change is probably far more even than what people on here are making out it is.

[odonoghuet]

Yeah I get what where you're coming from but you can't honestly think it will change anything?

 

At one point Jack you said something like 'You can't fight a losing battle'.

 

Basic strategy is to not fight losing battles to conserve your strength to fight other battles. There is no other battle to fight once they close these servers.

 

I doubt we can win if we act. I know we can't if we don't.

 

At the least, if we make enough noise about the money they are losing doing this, they might stop the policy before they decide to cut the advertising and choke off other regions. The more they cut off the playerbase, the less will be spent on content. Lag means even less than content to the longevity of this game.

[Yubided]

you do know eve runs a single server made up of a crap load of computers dont you? and they still have lag as well.

you do know that latency in WoW IS AN ISSUE, I know as i played for several years and ended up giving up on raids due to the latency and constant dc'ng due to it. PvP was also out of the question for the latency issue so dont come into my house and tell me WoW and Eve dont have latency issues and swtor can get just as good. Swotr is great at 25ms, why the @#^$# would I want to go to 400+ just because they planned this from before the launch. Thats probably why they never really advertised, thats why they never said anything until the last minute, thats why they ignored what the players suggested and requested, thats why they never did a poll when you logged into the game or even sent an in game mail about it. THEY NEW BEFORE THE GAME WAS RELEASED IN APAC they were going to do this. Which is why there arguments about population is crap considering they had to merge NA servers and even that hasnt helped on some.

 

I'm not entirely sure whether your points regarding latency are about my posts but to clarify, I'm not saying WoW or EVE weren't affected by lag. I'm saying the games handled higher latencies waaaaaaaaaaaay better than SWTOR.

 

Snivy, I'd still like to see an explanation why my criticism's of playing SWTOR at 300+ms latency are funny too. If I'm doing something wrong, I'd like to know.

Edited March 28, 2013 by Yubided

[darthnish]

*I've trimmed your quote so this doesn't turn into too big a wall of text*

 

Having never played WoW i cannot comment on the game's life cycle i was merely expressing opinions and facts shown to me by mates.

 

However , i do have multiple Korean and Japanese friends and they expressed that they prefer their style mmos over the western ones, also if you look at the history of star wars galaxies , a server was opened in Japan to tap the asian market but closed within a year due to the lack of population. Im just saying there are a few quirks that are unique to certain gaming cultures its very rare that a game does exceedingly well in both Asian and western markets and has never been an MMO.

 

As to nurturing the gaming market in Australia, i have no clue mate, i grew up a nerd and stayed one, i didnt have anything influence me to make me who i am, so all i can say is /shrug.

[darthnish]

 

Snivy, I'd still like to see an explanation why my criticism's of playing SWTOR at 300+ms latency are funny too. If I'm doing something wrong, I'd like to know.

 

Oh trust me i much rather have low ping than have to deal with 300ms, but imo its playable and you can do fairly well, as someone playing at a constant 500ms, i can show you a few pointers:

 

1)Have a fixed rotation or skill priority in your head, as in on my scoundrel, if im casting a underworld medicine, i know i want to use Emergency Medpac next so immediately start spamming that keybind half way thru the cast and it goes off instantly on the next GCD, as though there was no latency difference there. This holds true for instants as well but NOT channels, chaining the next skill after a channel ability is a ***** , cause if you spam the keybind during a channel and the GCD is off it will immediately trigger the next skill, how ever if you have a stable ping you can guesstimate when your command will reach the server, ex at 300ms, and using a channel of 3seconds hit the next skill button at around 2.5 secs thru the channel.

 

2)Interrupts: pulling a interrupt off is the hardest thing , personally anything below 1.5 sec cast is not worth your time, and the best part is if you catch someone mid way thru casting and throw an interrupt it will hit them at the end of the cast, wasting there time and infuriating them

 

It will take some getting used to, but once you master it , you should have little trouble

Edited March 28, 2013 by darthnish

[odonoghuet]

Quite ashamed of my APAC brethren for the personal insults and name calling of a Community Manager.

 

Eric doesn't make the decisions. He's the poor fella that has to deliver the news to everyone and cop the flak.

 

If you're upset, then don't shoot the messenger.

 

He is not the messenger, he is the community manager. He is paid to be the face of the company. He is not a mouth piece but the guy who writes the spin for the actions the company makes. And his spin is a transperant lie.

[Macropodmum]

links broken....

 

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

[waylandir]

I guess what I'm saying is that the people who are demanding the apac servers get merged, are not speaking for everyone. They might be speaking for a lot of people but there are also a lot that are happy enough with this move. I know in our guild there are several people who have already said they are quitting over this. There are also just as many (perhaps even more based on discussions on our guild site), who are actually looking forward to being on a busier server.

 

Speak for yourself, you go on about we dont speak for everyone (never said I have) then go on about what others actually think. Maybe they should come and say it themselves, either way dont go making statements about what others want after you've gone and said others arent speaking for everyone. Sheeesh!!!

 

Same thing if you look on the gav daragon server forums. I think the amount of people upset with the change vs people who want the change is probably far more even than what people on here are making out it is.

 

What do you expect, I didint even know about this move until a freind phoned and told me about it, wouldnt surprise me if only a minimal percentage know about it on any of the APAC servers. So here you are again trying to base peoples feelings on what, who may or may not have posted in the forums?. Are you a EA or Bio employee in disguise... (just asking), your comments are strange considering how you end them. On the one hand we dont speak for everyone, but you obviously do considering who you've alledgedly spoken to about it, then in comparing grav's forums (which is not a true indication of the player base itself) are more in the middle about it. And I am the first to admit (as ive said above) it wouldnt surprise me if a small percentage only knows about the move so none of the APAC forums can truly say they represent any set number of players, but I dont think they have (and im not going through 446 pages in this thread alone just to see).

 

Now as the thread title says, concerns over the consolodation and wether you and your (alledged guildies/freinds) are happy for it to happin is not really the topic, the topic is to deal with those who have concerns over the move and I (if not we) are happy for you to be happy about going to a NA server., but if you dont mind, myself and some others (numbers to be determined) would like to continue to discuss the topic which is "APAC/Oceanic Server Concerns".

 

But thank you for your comments and I (if not we) hope you are happy on your NA 250ms+ server..

[waylandir]

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

 

Thanks Mac, I cheated and used the link on another page

all signed

[Yubided]

Oh trust me i much rather have low ping than have to deal with 300ms, but imo its playable and you can do fairly well, as someone playing at a constant 500ms, i can show you a few pointers:

 

1)Have a fixed rotation or skill priority in your head, as in on my scoundrel, if im casting a underworld medicine, i know i want to use Emergency Medpac next so immediately start spamming that keybind half way thru the cast and it goes off instantly on the next GCD, as though there was no latency difference there. This holds true for instants as well but NOT channels, chaining the next skill after a channel ability is a ***** , cause if you spam the keybind during a channel and the GCD is off it will immediately trigger the next skill, how ever if you have a stable ping you can guesstimate when your command will reach the server, ex at 300ms, and using a channel of 3seconds hit the next skill button at around 2.5 secs thru the channel.

 

2)Interrupts: pulling a interrupt off is the hardest thing , personally anything below 1.5 sec cast is not worth your time, and the best part is if you catch someone mid way thru casting and throw an interrupt it will hit them at the end of the cast, wasting there time and infuriating them

 

It will take some getting used to, but once you master it , you should have little trouble

 

Fair enough and good advice. Thank you. I suggest recording the number of this post and pointing people to it who complain solely about the latency issue, especially if they aren't having issues with abilities missing mid rotation. It'll save you having to rewrite or truncate responses that might get misinterpreted. Better yet, use those youtube skills of yours for a demo vid.

 

Who knows you might have an impact on those sitting on the fence about going or staying. Bye for now.

[Ailie]

I'm glad they're allowing people to choose servers, now all those on GD who blamed this whole situation on us RPers, (or more specifically me) can go anywhere else but Begeren Colony

 

See look, I even wrote that nicely... I could have said what I actually thought and along similar lines to what I've been told in the last few days, but why stoop to that level )

Edited March 28, 2013 by Ailie

[iheartnyc]

He is not the messenger, he is the community manager. He is paid to be the face of the company. He is not a mouth piece but the guy who writes the spin for the actions the company makes. And his spin is a transperant lie.

 

Not that simple. Face of the company would be the CEO.

 

Rationales behind decisions to shut down servers are protected by the business judgment rule and even EA's shareholders are not privy to that information.

 

I think Eric would be breaching all sorts of internal regulations and possibly even corporate governance laws by disclosing what is and should be protected as sensitive commercial information (e.g., details about costs, revenue).

[WizardsDestiny]

A message of reason:

 

While I would love to keep the Asia Pacific Servers and I am still quite set against the merge, I want to talk about some fact. And I know many, including myself, won't like it.

 

I travelled to the Harbinger today to create a Sith Inquisitor to test. Upon arrival, rather than like last time when I was subject to abuse from American players because I was Australian and disappointed about the transfer, I was given sympathy by many more players and welcomed into their server. Tonight, while the server was Standard-Heavy, I played on Korriban. It was no different than to playing on Korriban here.

 

I have a Laptop which plays games quite well, but my Internet connection can sometimes leave a lot to be desired speed wise. However, I've never experienced bad lag in the game, and now I haven't on the Harbinger either. I detected minimal difference. There was a jump every minute and a half or so where the game stuttered for a fraction of the second. The rest of the time, play was fine, and there were about a hundred more players to play with.

 

I recieved support from friendly players. As one of those players pointed out and I agreed with, nasty players are not limited to certain servers. While we have a hugely friendly community on Dalborra, the Harbinger is no different; the trolls and said nasty players are just in more abundance because of the greater population. I didn't get to sample Warzones and Group Finder, but with a little luck I don't think it'll vary that much from playing on Dalborra.

 

I can't say for certain though, and I repeat I would like to stay on Dalborra and have a 'super-server.' Nonetheless on my second trip to the Harbinger I encountered a fair amount of kindness and very very little lag, no dfiferent to the AP Servers.

 

What the problem is is that Bioware has made really no official huge statement on their website but a forum post, and malicious rumours begin to spread. We'll lose all of our names (Which I did not) and the game will be unplayable. As someone with poorer connection I can dismiss that as untrue, and you'll only lose names if they're very obvious I think, or if you have a spot of bad luck.

 

I ask Bioware to thus be more official and tone down these rumours and replace them with fact so less people unsubscribe. They are going to impact our popularity even more so and I have lost friends and 24 guildmates due to a complete lack of communication and unwillingness to be formal by Bioware.

 

Please, Bioware. I understand you may want to combine servers; fine, but we'd still prefer a merge. Nonetheless, if you're going to make it concrete decision, announce it properly on the Website news section and in the launcher so everybody knows and discourage them from subscribing. If you're really clever you'll even send emails to those who left and invite them back with a special reward of some kind; perhaps all AP Players can receive a title of some kind or an item to commemorate their heritage. We don't all want to forget our great times and friends on Dalborra, Master Dar'Nala and Gav Daragon.

 

This is a post of reason and fairness without rudeness to anyone. Please read it and take it seriously.

[CremeFreiche]

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

 

Well, I can say that if this happens I will cancel my subscription since Bio-ware will effectively be alienating an entire region of people, I would almost deem it as a type of discrimination against anyone that resides in the asia - pacific.

 

Another point of interest is that on the Gav Daragon Server we get quite a lot of American gamers that state that the American servers are not populated enough so they play on our server.

 

I would like to refer Eric to the petition in the undermentioned hyperlink:

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

 

Merge servers if you dare Bio-ware.... you will lose a significant Asia Pacific customer base.

 

Trent