Character Transfer - Pointless

[Andryah]

I think many people use the phrase "Are you en employee of company X" as a sarcastic rhetoric to point out a fanboy. However, we're way off-topic here. I think the link provided above pretty much ended this thread.

 

The link proved two things... both of which I agree with:

 

1) they want to do it.. which means it will come

 

2) if it were ready today... it would be available today. Clearly it's not.. because there is still more work ("tech" for my dear CT) to be deployed before EU <--> NA goes live for players.

 

Think about it pal... if it was actually ready to go live... why would it not be in the patch with localized server to server transfer? Answer that please. No wait.. I'll answer it for you.... because there is still work to be done before it's ready.

[Andryah]

Oh the thread is not over. Just because the tech exists doesn't mean they can just use it now, which is what I think Andryah is getting at.

 

Exactly.

[Andryah]

Yet you have been proved wrong.

 

specious nonsense.

 

But hey.. you keep on trying.

 

Please.. by all means... explain why if it's ready it's not live in the patch. What possible objective reason could they have for not making EU <---> NA available as soon as it's ready? I'll wait for your reply, this should be interesting.

Edited June 26, 2013 by Andryah

[ClamTheDuckDown]

.... because there is still work to be done before it's ready.

Yeah, thanks captain obvious (Before you flag me with ad hominem, I'm just being funny... like you)

 

Your original answer for OP's question was that they are not here because it's not easy to do inter-continental transfer, while CT pointed out that Bioware has done server transfer several times before (from Production to Test server, from West Cost to east Coast, from APAC to US...and even mass server transfer during the merging). So it's should be relatively easy for Bioware right now. I think we all read OP question as why is it taking this long to do a server transfer yet they are still not fully functional.

[Andryah]

Yeah, thanks captain obvious (Before you flag me with ad hominem, I'm just being funny... like you)

 

Thank you for finally agreeing with reason.

 

Your original answer for OP's question was that they are not here because it's not easy to do inter-continental transfer, while CT pointed out that Bioware has done server transfer several times before (from Production to Test server, from West Cost to east Coast, from APAC to US...and even mass server transfer during the merging). So it's should be relatively easy for Bioware right now. I think we all read OP question as why is it taking this long to do a server transfer yet they are still not fully functional.

 

No, my original point to the OP was that it requires work to interconnect server farms on opposite sides of the world for bidirectional database transfer on demand. Significantly more work then interconnecting local servers within a farm. Derp! A point you now agree upon I gather.

 

All CT pointed out is that he thinks once you wire up server A to B that that magically means server B is wired to C, and X to Z etc. He's wrong... for reasons already covered in this thread.

 

Now... I know that you are bent that someone would actually debate a topic with you in patient and reasoned manner when what you want is sympathy... but get used to it if you are going to post topic content that deserves counter point discussion in a public general forum.

[uniz]

I find it amusing that when someone explains with a technical reason why this isn't happening right now that others get on and attacks everything but his answer. such attackers would have credibility if they actually had the expertise to explain in as much detail he has done in a technical manner if he is wrong.

 

even I understand what he is saying. the us servers and the euro servers are not connected. they need to be connected for a automated transfer to work. in time the euro servers will be, we presume and hope, but just not now. it isn't as easy as connecting a few wires. the pacific servers had to be wired to make their transfers work. why the euros were not done is kinda easy to explain if anyone has any business sense. it cost monies and wasn't needed at the time. business' now days have no foreseeability. this company isn't any different.

[Darth_Moonshadow]

Yeah, thanks captain obvious (Before you flag me with ad hominem, I'm just being funny... like you)

 

Your original answer for OP's question was that they are not here because it's not easy to do inter-continental transfer, while CT pointed out that Bioware has done server transfer several times before (from Production to Test server, from West Cost to east Coast, from APAC to US...and even mass server transfer during the merging). So it's should be relatively easy for Bioware right now. I think we all read OP question as why is it taking this long to do a server transfer yet they are still not fully functional.

 

Oh nothing in the computer world is "relatively easy". You make one tiny tweak, an entire system can blow down and die. Bioware has to be very careful when changing programs and inducting features. One misplaced 1 could make the transfer completely wipe your character and make it impossible to bring back.

[ChuangTzu]

It makes complete sense that they do not yet have this feature.

 

Why?

 

Because they are on different server farms on different sides of the world.

 

They had to jury-rig the APAC players to go either direction. And jury-rig =/= production released paid character transfer.

 

I support them adding EU <---> NA transfer capability by the way.. and I am sure they will have it some day.

 

Just to remind us of your wrongness!

[Andryah]

Just to remind us of your wrongness!

 

All you quoting me and declaring my wrongness does is prove you are unable to read with comprehension.

 

Everything I wrote is in fact true. You are just hung up in your limited world view of what it all means to move data in two directions in automated fashion, on demand, without error, between severs that are not in the same server farm. You think it's magic invoked by waving of hand.. I get it. You are wrong.

Edited June 26, 2013 by Andryah

[Darth_Moonshadow]

Just to remind us of your wrongness!

 

Now you see this? This right here is what I was talking about. He has nothing else to counter with, so he just reverts to petty fourth grade antics in a vain attempt to appear superior to Andryah. Now usually comes the apart where Andryah puts these poor sods on ignore, but they keep barking.

 

This sort of forumite usually ends up following Andryah thread to thread, trying to get a rise out of her and calling her wrong, even when it's in his own interest.

 

Don't be like this guy, Clam. Walk away. Just walk away.

 

Or do like I do and post non sequitors that are weird and random.

 

*dons a false mustache and a sombrero*

 

BRING ME TOSTADAS!

Edited June 26, 2013 by Darth_Moonshadow

[ClamTheDuckDown]

Oh nothing in the computer world is "relatively easy". You make one tiny tweak, an entire system can blow down and die. Bioware has to be very careful when changing programs and inducting features. One misplaced 1 could make the transfer completely wipe your character and make it impossible to bring back.

 

Oh I know how things can blow up easily. That's why I said "Relatively" easy instead of "easy" meaning that they doing EU-US transfer should be easier (again comparative, not absolute) now comparing to when the do APAC-US since they now have some experience on the matter unlike when they first tried it with APAC-US. So it's legitimate to expect EU-US transfer this time around. Unfortunately it's not here yet and OP wanted to know what went wrong since he's been waiting to do EU-US transfer for so long.

[ChuangTzu]

Now you see this? This right here is what I was talking about. He has nothing else to counter with, so he just reverts to petty fourth grade antics in a vain attempt to appear superior to Andryah. Now usually comes the apart where Andryah puts these poor sods on ignore, but they keep barking.

 

This sort of forumite usually ends up following Andryah thread to thread, trying to get a rise out of her and calling her wrong, even when it's in his own interest.

 

Don't be like this guy, Clam. Walk away. Just walk away.

 

Or do like I do and post non sequitors that are weird and random.

 

*dons a false mustache and a sombrero*

 

BRING ME TOSTADAS!

 

Erm, what you to seem to have missed is that andryah said the tech to do the transfers 'on demand' did not exist yet. I said it did. I was right. Look who is now trying to deflect the argument away from what it was?!

[Sziroten]

They just don't do it on the players timetable.. they do it on their timetable.

 

That's the fallacy in your argumentation. We are now 1,5 years into the game. People have been asking for server transfers since... pretty much spring 2012. They came up with server merges eventually at which point they had lost a huge amount of players because they didn't implement server merges fast enough. From an overall point of view... history of SWTOR is proving that "doing it on Biowares timetable" isn't for the best of their game, not to mention that Bioware themselves agreed that their previous way of releasing content every few months did not meet player requests which is why they changed it. Not to mention that we are hearing since release of the game that "soon" we will be able to transfer our characters over to PTS.

 

The point is... technical and financial aspects have nothing to do with how fast it is needed to implement to keep your player happy and if you find out later that it is more costly and requires more technical work than anticipated... it is entirely your fault, even more so if you apparently didn't even think about the possibility.

 

Therefore your argumentation, that it will take time and is not just a snap with the finger is correct, it doesn't have any meaning in terms of player satisfaction and requests at all. A Client does care how long you need but there is no Client in the world which is satisfied by being postponed every other months since over a year.

[AlrikFassbauer]

They hardwired the three APACS to EU and NA. Derp! Simple hardwired one way moves.

 

You state this as a fact.

Have you been standing there while they did it ? Did you happen to watch it physically ?

Edited June 26, 2013 by AlrikFassbauer

[Knockerz]

You state this as a fact.

Have you been standing there while they did it ? Did you happen to watch it physically ?

 

You need to know the system architecture. Knowing the system architecture allows you to attack the servers where they are most vulnerable or finding exploits. Obviously, BW will not release such information for the same reason credit card, corporate, military defense, or any sensitive data on servers don't release technical detail of their system architecture.

 

Knowing how to built a mmog system architecture will give you a great amount of technical know how detail despite varied of system architectures deployed by mmorpg companies to reasonable make a judgment on why BW had such difficulty at developing character transfers. There are many papers out there about mmog system architectures. I look at a few and even stumble on some anti-cheap/hack papers.

 

Low Latency and Cheat-proof Event Ordering for Peer-to-Peer Games

 

Peer-to-Peer Architectures for Massively Multiplayer Online Games: A Survey

 

A Hybrid P2P System to Support MMORPG Playability

 

Modeling system performance in MMORPG

 

Is Server Consolidation Beneficial to MMORPG? A Case Study of World of Warcraft

 

A Survey on MMOG System Architectures

 

You can probably find better journals with more detail once you specify exactly what your looking for while searching.

Edited June 26, 2013 by Knockerz

[ClamTheDuckDown]

You state this as a fact.

Have you been standing there while they did it ? Did you happen to watch it physically ?

 

He's the Major Nelson of EA.

[Tachenko_Yuri]

same people, same trolls, same schoolyard name-calling.

 

Nothing to see here, move along

[Roalmo]

I find it amusing that when someone explains with a technical reason why this isn't happening right now that others get on and attacks everything but his answer. such attackers would have credibility if they actually had the expertise to explain in as much detail he has done in a technical manner if he is wrong.

 

even I understand what he is saying. the us servers and the euro servers are not connected. they need to be connected for a automated transfer to work. in time the euro servers will be, we presume and hope, but just not now. it isn't as easy as connecting a few wires. the pacific servers had to be wired to make their transfers work. why the euros were not done is kinda easy to explain if anyone has any business sense. it cost monies and wasn't needed at the time. business' now days have no foreseeability. this company isn't any different.

 

Let me get this right: they actually ran wires from Australia to the US and to the Euro servers? They didn't use the internet? So they didn't set-up a code to do this over the Internet, but actually ran new wires to each of the servers?

[Sziroten]

You need to know the system architecture. Knowing the system architecture allows you to attack the servers where they are most vulnerable or finding exploits. Obviously, BW will not release such information for the same reason credit card, corporate, military defense, or any sensitive data on servers don't release technical detail of their system architecture.

 

Knowing how to built a mmog system architecture will give you a great amount of technical know how detail despite varied of system architectures deployed by mmorpg companies to reasonable make a judgment on why BW had such difficulty at developing character transfers. There are many papers out there about mmog system architectures. I look at a few and even stumble on some anti-cheap/hack papers.

 

Yet you have a programmer taking 1 day for something others need 1 week or 1 months. Is it therefor verified that taking 1,5 years to implement server transfer is reasonable while other games did have the very same principle in place? It's not about rewriting history or re designing the wheel... . It takes money and time, no doubt about it but the "waiting time" is running out and has run out given the people leaving the game in its process.

 

For example... why didn't we see any new PvP content since 1.2? Why are we still sitting at pre-season rateds? Is it so hard to create some more huttball maps or is it not requested (which it is) or is it too expensive etc. ? Knowing that something is difficult is no excuse to never state when you will put it in place and as a company you are entirely ignoring and stupid for hurting your own business by keeping silence for way too long. There is a very good reason why Bioware isn't letting the cat out of the bag regarding 2.4... . There is a very high possibility that what they intent is not what people want and it is not making you "pulling your eyes out because of pure awesomeness" but rather a serverwide facepalm and quitting round right after. Given the number of times Bioware guys want to sell their super awesome speeder/ axe etc. via CM... you know that I'm not far off the truth. You know that SOE also thought that NGE would be the most awesome thing ever to happen to an MMO and look how that turned out.

Edited June 26, 2013 by Sziroten

[Knockerz]

Yet you have a programmer taking 1 day for something others need 1 week or 1 months. Is it therefor verified that taking 1,5 years to implement server transfer is reasonable while other games did have the very same principle in place? It's not about rewriting history or re designing the wheel... . It takes money and time, no doubt about it but the "waiting time" is running out and has run out given the people leaving the game in its process.

 

For example... why didn't we see any new PvP content since 1.2? Why are we still sitting at pre-season rateds? Is it so hard to create some more huttball maps or is it not requested (which it is) or is it too expensive etc. ? Knowing that something is difficult is no excuse to never state when you will put it in place and as a company you are entirely ignoring and stupid for hurting your own business by keeping silence for way too long. There is a very good reason why Bioware isn't letting the cat out of the bag regarding 2.4... . There is a very high possibility that what they intent is not what people want and it is not making you "pulling your eyes out because of pure awesomeness" but rather a serverwide facepalm and quitting round right after. Given the number of times Bioware guys want to sell their super awesome speeder/ axe etc. via CM... you know that I'm not far off the truth. You know that SOE also thought that NGE would be the most awesome thing ever to happen to an MMO and look how that turned out.

 

No one really knows why BW or any mmorpg company takes so long. There are many factors. Replacing people with new people will cause delays. What happen with swg was poor game design. The game was redesign with the NGE, which was a poor decision on the part of sony. Sony made two games, pre-nge swg and post-nge swg. They should have stuck to their guns and swg might not have turnout so bad for them. Similarly, swtor was not design to be a f2p game it probably delayed content when swtor was redesign to be a f2p mmorpg. However, in the case of sony, BW did the right and only choice to survive. The choice sony made was not to survive, but acquire a new clientele, which they expected was going to be larger, but that never materialized. As a result, their clientele left swg, which resulted in an accelerated demise of swg. In short, Sony's greed was their mistake.

 

The truth of the matter about pvp in any mmorpg is it's always at bottom of the do list. Blizzard, BW, and other mmorpgs are in the same boat. PvPers demand a lot, but aren't population wise as important. I'm specifically referring to people who play rated, which is a minority within the pvp community. How many people do you think play rated? Then there is the problem like wow where the pvp population will be split between rated warzones, rated arena, and casual pvpers who never run rated warzones/arenas. Finally, there is a lot of exploiting in rated if you go off what Blizzard is experiencing. Competitive pvp is waste of resources and will always be exploited. Mmorpgs don't have the manpower to police rated zones unlike real sports that generated income through advertizing, merchandize, and so forth. That is why when rated become available, they will degenerated into exploitation of the system by the player base eventually.

[Sziroten]

...............

 

In the end... no one cares if Bioware is running to EA .... well, we weren't fast enough so all our player ran away but at least we followed OUR schedule to implement the system and it works fantastic! .

 

It's important to understand what a majority of your players want and there are a lot of pvp player in the game... I see it everyday since release... warzones are popping like popcorn, I have to wait much longer on my dd to get a flashpoint, not to mention an operation. It's not a "minigame" like space, it became a huge part of SWTOR and Bioware has to take care of it just as they have to take care of server transfers.

[Trimaxion]

Its all very well to say that stuff should be done on player's timescales not on Bioware's but Unless someone's got an idea for how to give us a feature first and then code it afterwards there's only really 1 timescale that's possible.

 

EA can't possibly be as greedy and money loving as they are accused to be if it really is that simple to produce something everyone wants to pay for yet it's not on the table.

[MorbidSouls]

They're working on it, there's a dev post about it here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=6409055#post6409055

 

So it's coming eventually.

 

Ok that's great, cheers man.

[Sziroten]

Its all very well to say that stuff should be done on player's timescales not on Bioware's but Unless someone's got an idea for how to give us a feature first and then code it afterwards there's only really 1 timescale that's possible.

 

EA can't possibly be as greedy and money loving as they are accused to be if it really is that simple to produce something everyone wants to pay for yet it's not on the table.

 

I'm not asking for it today for tomorrow... people have been asking for this since well over a year and while EA/ Bioware may not be moneygrabbing monkeys they add a lot of fluff to their cartel market which does enrage people hoping for some... content, especially pvp content. It's like your boss can't pay your salary but buys a new car on the same day... there are things you do and things you don't. Playing on the right server is essential to the game experience, we are not talking about trivial things like the greyscale of the revan armor.

 

It is utterly not! understandable how you can transfer with 1.3 your char by hand to the PTS but aren't able to do the same with 1.4 and not so afterwards until only recently. There is no logial explanation for this and was never given by Bioware so if they want people to understand why they make certain decisions it is essential for people to understand why they made this decision.

[Trimaxion]

Surely it's more like your boss can't afford to pay your salary but on the same day buys a lot of new stock to sell to make money...