Bioware Please Merge Servers

[mmmbuddah]

Not everyone plays during peak hours, true.

 

One could reasonably expect, though, that the majority of a server's population will be living in areas that run close to concurrent with server time, or at least not 6-7 hours difference. One could also reasonably expect that during off peak hours, the majority of a server's population will not be online as they will be engaged in other activities, such as working or sleeping.

 

I find it hard to believe that forcing everyone to suffer the headaches and nightmares that a server merge would cause is going to magically make PVP queues pop within 5 minutes at 3 AM server time on Harbinger ( 8 PM Sydney time).

 

If all European servers were merged into one. You can bet your behind it would solve a ton of things.

[Ratajack]

If all European servers were merged into one. You can bet your behind it would solve a ton of things.

 

And possibly create more problems due to differing languages, in addition to all the other headaches and nightmares that server merges would definitely cause.

[kodrac]

Populated enough to justify them being online.

 

Let me just try to be a voice of reason here... It's a server, not Mr. Coffee. All servers everywhere run 24/7. That's their purpose. They don't have timers or clap on clap off switches. Game population by no means is a requirement to justify them being on or off. So just because no one is online at 4 am on the east coast of USA justifies someone from Australia or New Zealand using it as a benchmark for their PvP queue agenda. I mean lets just call a spade a spade here and be realistic.

[fushnchips]

If all European servers were merged into one. You can bet your behind it would solve a ton of things.

 

And would cause more issues for people speaking German, French the only servers that should and can be merged into one are the US servers.

[mmmbuddah]

And possibly create more problems due to differing languages, in addition to all the other headaches and nightmares that server merges would definitely cause.

 

Chat tabs. Not really rocket science. Just like TESO does. 1 German, 1 French, 1 English

[mmmbuddah]

And would cause more issues for people speaking German, French the only servers that should and can be merged into one are the US servers.

 

So leave all EU players out in the cold with the dwindling populations . Sounds typical US-centric. You just need 3 tabs. Problem solved.

[Talon_strikes]

I believe this is a practical list that everyone can agree with and would be ideal for the playerbase in the long term:

 

West Coast:

The Harbinger - main server

Begeren Colony - RP server

 

East Coast:

The Shadowlands OR Jedi Covenant - main server (whichever is more populated will be the main server)

The Ebon Hawk - RP server

 

EU:

The Red Eclipse - main server

The Progenitor - RP server

 

All other servers that aren't listed should then lead to giving every player stuck on an unnamed server a complimentary server transfer of all their characters to whichever region(s) they choose. BW sets a deadline to do this. Once complimentary transfers end BW will consolidate the unnamed servers in each region into the main servers (e.g. Pot5 into Shadowlands for PvP/PvE; Jung Ma into Ebon Hawk for RP), and if people want to transfer to the other server or to another region they will have to pay a cost for missing the promotion. I think this sounds more than fair for both the studio and the playerbase.

Earlier I suggested this. A few others chimed in to add that maybe the EU should still have a German and French server, but I think we all know at this point that TRE has a bigger foreign population than the language respective servers (though I'm not against one German and one French server).

 

We need this now more than ever. I've only been on Harb for a very few months and I don't think 5.2 is even close enough to the amount of MMO content that's needed to bring back players and sustain healthy populations. Harbinger is now seeing a much shorter prime time and fewer players within that timeframe. Playing group content outside of that window is becoming more and more difficult.

 

I'm not surprised this topic was revived. This needs to happen.

Edited April 4, 2017 by Talon_strikes

[TUXs]

Chat tabs. Not really rocket science. Just like TESO does. 1 German, 1 French, 1 English

Damn...that was an easy hurdle to clear lol.

[Icykill_]

To be fair, that's only 2AM-8AM server time, which means a lot are probably asleep or heading to work.

 

I did take that into account, but as a comparison, Harbinger at 7am is very active. By 8am there are two-three fleet instances a lot of the time.

[Icykill_]

Then you should have quoted THAT post, not the one replying to him clearly saying:

If you need to bend the truth, you're trying too hard.

 

And you're the biggest one against it. Your point?

 

I've not bent the truth in the slightest. I really wish I had not been queued that long.

 

I also don't actually reply to to you know who anymore, I have him on ignore because he makes false statements and twists the truth.

Ie I went back to check that post just see what crap he'd written. He obviously completely forgot the fact that I was trying to be a mediator of both sides. You only need to go back to those posts of mine to see how he's tried to twist the truth "yet again".

Edited April 5, 2017 by Icykill_

[Talon_strikes]

I've not bent the truth in the slightest. I really wish I had not been queued that long.

 

I also don't actually reply to to you know who anymore, I have him on ignore because he makes false statements and twists the truth.

Ie I went back to check that post just see what crap he'd written. He obviously completely forgot the fact that I was trying to be a mediator of both sides. You only need to go back to those posts of mine to see how he's tried to twist the truth "yet again".

Don't forget they like to argue for all the Jimmys out there who love to have servers all to themselves!1!!1!1!111! If there are all these Jimmys, then why did BW merge servers multiple times in the past?

Edited April 5, 2017 by Talon_strikes

[Icykill_]

While true, the test only showed that Ebon Hawk is quiet early in the morning. They tested pvp pops on an east coast server most consider RP-PvE between 2AM - 8AM server time, when most of the population would most likely be asleep. That doesn't show the true health of a server, just that a lot of people aren't staying up super late to play.

 

I will be testing again today as I'm taking some time off work.

[Icykill_]

I played on Red Eclipse after Ebon Hawk as I couldn't sleep. I started a new toon and went to lvl 20. When I got to the fleet, the population had increased a lot from when I'd jumped on earlier to just test the Ping.

It was up to 1 full fleet map and looked like it might have either just come down from a second or was ready to go to a second.

Local time in the U.K. was about 2.50pm. While that amount of people is less than what Harbingers is at 3pm LA time, it's still not bad when you compare to what I'm now dealing with at 3pm AEST, when we used to have 2 full fleet maps 13months ago.

I also got some lowbie pops within 15-20 mins (still too long for my liking). Playing at 390-500ms in pvp was rather interesting. If it hadn't been lowbies it would have been nearly impossible.

[Icykill_]

Let me just try to be a voice of reason here... It's a server, not Mr. Coffee. All servers everywhere run 24/7. That's their purpose. They don't have timers or clap on clap off switches. Game population by no means is a requirement to justify them being on or off. So just because no one is online at 4 am on the east coast of USA justifies someone from Australia or New Zealand using it as a benchmark for their PvP queue agenda. I mean lets just call a spade a spade here and be realistic.

 

Thanks Kodrac. That's my point, it's an international game not just a NA game that surrounds NA prime time. Just because the servers are located there thanks to Bio trying to save money at the time, doesn't negate our expectations.

3 years ago after the merge we had a full server that sometimes had a wait queue, so they changed that to give subs priority, but then they upgraded the server to handle the capacity, which brought down the population scale vs server capacity from full to medium. There has been a steady decline since, the same as the rest of the game, but it started to really become an issue around February 2016. By the time we got to the end of March it accelerated and by May it was bad. My whole pvp guild of 50 people left the game and they werent the only ones. There seemed to be a big exodus happening. Bio then introduced a band aid called DvL, which brought back some pvpers and about 8 from my guild. We were all encouraged to reroll alts to participate, which meant some people paid to open up more slots (which they then royally f'd us with 5.0). This was a turn off for a lot of people and also having to lvl up all new characters. So before we even got to October the population was having another exodus. It was around this time that threads started to pop up about mergers and asking the Devs to respond. Then before the expansion they said they understood the problem, but wanted to wait to see what the expansion would do as they didn't want people waiting in queues to login (I paraphrased that). They said they would see how the populations were after the holidays.

People have argued that doesn't mean they would actually tell us their assessment. But most reasonable people would take a comment like that to mean they would see how it goes and if the populations didn't improve, they would take steps on how to improve them and get back to us with what they'd decided.

We are now 5 months after the expansion and 4 months since they said they would look at the issue. The populations have been in free fall since then and aren't bleeding players anymore, they are haemorrhaging them.

I think they are pinning their hopes once again on a major patch to fix the problem (5.2), and I really hope it works. But I think they should have manned up and communicated with us, even if it was to say we are making 5.2 to fix the problem. They should also have have up plan if that doesn't work. The lack of communication has actually accelerated the decline because what ever little faith the players still had remaining has gone. Those people who left may never come back or if they do and 5.2 isn't a major "wow" fest, then they will leave very fast. IMO, if 5.2 doesn't deliver, the game is dead anyway. I don't think mergers or anything else will help. We better all pray that it does.

[Icykill_]

I forgot to add something about my server journeys and that's fleet chat. I've seen lots of people saying how toxic Harbinger fleet chat is and you won't get any argument from me, it is toxic. But it's usually only a select few that destroy chat with their bull crap. If you take them away the chat is actually good and is often funny.

When I did my "tour" I still found toxic people and smack talk on the other servers too. The difference is the lower population and amount of people on the fleet. When you have low populations on the fleets, there is less chat an you also have less toxic people. But that because there are less people. I would say from what I saw, the percentage vs population is about the same as Harbinger.

I'm going to continue to login to those servers for the next week and at different times to see if my observation was correct before I defend that assessment anymore.

[Ratajack]

I just saw he's back on duty here too. I find the pure stupidly, ignorance, selfishness and the lack of any logic and intelligent point of view in his redundant bs posts amusing or annoying, something in between. I mean any person with let's say more than 3 brain cells feels his brain got offended when reading such redundant brain farts. And I'm almost 100 % sure everybody who thoroughly followed this thread knows who I'm speaking about and has similar feelings. He's a sissy too probably living in mom's cellar since he tries to report people when confronted with intelligent arguments or just some reality or actual solutions based on compromise. Brain collapse is all that his bs "contributes" to this thread or this general major topic/issue. 😊

 

Please point to a single one of these "compromises" that:

 

1) will leave guilds intact with all guild assets intact, including guild banks and the contents thereof, guild strongholds and guild ships with all unlocked areas and all decorations left intact

 

2) will leave all personal strongholds intact with all decorations left intact

 

3) will leave all personal outfits intact in the outfit designer

 

4) will leave all personal legacy storage vaults intact with all items stored therein

 

5) will not require any name changes

 

6) will accommodate those players who have more than the maximum number of characters for a single server spread across multiple servers

 

7) will not force players who prefer a more civilized and respectful community to be subjected to a cesspool community

[Icykill_]

Population test logins only for this time of the day, not true server indicator. I just want to post at same time as checking in case "some" people want to check that I'm not lying 🙄

It's also 1:20pm - 1-30pm AEST 5th April 2017 (yes I have a Tardis because all you US guys are a bit slow .. joking.. we are a day ahead)

 

 

The Red Eclipse

4:20am London time

12-15 people currently on the fleet

 

Ebon Hawk

11:23pm NY time

2 fleet instances

Fleet 1 has 159 people

Fleet 2 has 5 people

= 164 total

 

Harbinger

8:26pm LA time

2 fleet instances

Fleet 1 has 153

Fleet 2 has 51

= 204 total

 

Bastion

8:29pm LA time

1 fleet only and has 10 people 🙄

 

Begeren

8:30pm LA time

1 fleet only and has 63 people

 

I have to say I am completely shocked at Bastion. Honestly, I can't understand how EA accountants allow the server to remain online because of the financial cost vs the people using it. That's not a call to merge it, that's just plain business sense.

 

Edit : stupid Bio servers showing west coast having the same or more lag for me at the moment than east coast. Both between 330ms and 380ms. East coast is actually lower than west coast. 😡

I'm going to investigate if it's any hops causing the issue and I'll get back to you.

 

Edit : no hop issues to either Harbinger/Bastion/Begeren or Ebon Hawk.

West coast to visible EA server IP is 212-220ms

East coast to visible EA server IP is better than I've ever seen for me and is 236-247ms, although there was a 536ms spike at the visible EA server IP.

What that tells me is the actual game servers behind the firewall are the issue here. There is no other rational explanation for why there are no issues at any of the hops between me and the visible IP.

Bioware fix your damn servers 😡

Edited April 5, 2017 by Icykill_

[Ratajack]

Population test logins only for this time of the day, not true server indicator. I just want to post at same time as checking in case "some" people want to check that I'm not lying 🙄

It's also 1:20pm - 1-30pm AEST

 

 

The Red Eclipse

4:20am London time

12-15 people currently on the fleet

 

Ebon Hawk

11:23pm NY time

2 fleet instances

Fleet 1 has 159 people

Fleet 2 has 5 people

= 164 total

 

Harbinger

10:26pm LA time

2 fleet instances

Fleet 1 has 153

Fleet 2 has 51

= 204 total

 

Bastion

10:29pm LA time

1 fleet only and has 10 people 🙄

 

Begeren

10:30pm LA time

1 fleet only and has 63 people

 

I have to say I am completely shocked at Bastion. Honestly, I can't understand how EA accountants allow the server to remain online because of the financial cost vs the people using it. That's not a call to merge it, that's just plain business sense.

 

Edit : stupid Bio servers showing west coast having the same or more lag for me at the moment than east coast. Both between 330ms and 380ms. East coast is actually lower than west coast. 😡

I'm going to investigate if it's any hops causing the issue and I'll get back to you.

 

It's only 8:40 pm in LA now, not 10:40 pm.

 

Do you have a TARDIS?

[Icykill_]

It's only 8:40 pm in LA now, not 10:40 pm.

 

Do you have a TARDIS?

 

Oh, then my stupid iPad Timezone app is wrong. Thanks for picking that up.

I'll fix it now and get a new app 😢

 

Edit : fixed that, the post now has the correct times

Edited April 5, 2017 by Icykill_

[Ratajack]

Oh, then my stupid iPad Timezone app is wrong. Thanks for picking that up.

I'll fix it now and get a new app 😢

 

Edit : fixed that, the post now has the correct times

 

And here I was hoping there was a even a minuscule chance to get my hands on a functional TARDIS.

[Cruxa]

Chat tabs. Not really rocket science. Just like TESO does. 1 German, 1 French, 1 English

 

And what about group finder (fps, ops) and PvP? Have different queues for the different languages or, what's more likely, force german or french players to either not use group finder at all or accept that they'll be grouped with people they possibly don't understand (which was nothing they had to expect when buying the game)?

Edited April 5, 2017 by Cruxa

[Icykill_]

Just getting ready to enter what should be AEST prime times. I will edit this post as I play.

Current local time is 3:44pm AEST (10:44pm LA time)

I'm going to compare it on Harbinger (because the other servers won't pop pvp) as we go through to see what happens

Current fleet population is 174

 

Lowbie pvp pop has gone from 10-15 mins (an hour ago) to non existent at moment. I've been queued for 20 mins and counting. I suspect the 2-3 PvP Bots queueing on the Imp side are impacting this as well. No one wants to play with pvp bots.

 

Edit : Just got a pop in lowbies (Proving grounds, hate it).. It's now 4:14pm AEST. That's a 49 min wait (queued about 3:25pm) There are also 2 lowbie pvp bots standing at the pvp terminal. (Requeued at 4:19pm)

Edit : PvP pop @4:32pm (13 min wait) but pop with 6 people and two of them are bots and a Bot controller. Left the match when all 3 of them ran into the Hypergate tunnel and hid as soon as the match started.

Edit : There are another 2 (different) bots waiting at the terminal. 😡😡 I'm going to suspend this experiment in lowbies at this time. Jumping to Mids to see how that is.

Edit : queue imps mids 4:38pm. No pop, Switching to reps and queued 4:54pm. PvP pop @4:57pm. (3min wait) it's arena 2v4 and all reps. I'm in the 2 only side 🙄. Queue 4:58pm, PvP pop @5:08pm 8v8 win (10min wait). Queue 5:15pm, PvP pop @5:22pm 4v8 (7min wait) then game ends, not enough players on our team. Queue 5:24pm, PvP pop @5:36pm arena 1v4 (I'm the one) 😡... Queue 5:37pm, PvP pop @5:45pm 8v8 win (8min wait). Queue 5:53pm, Queue starts to die, 6:28pm, suspending mids experiment. Will try lvl 70 and see if it's any better.

Edit : queue reg lvl 70 Imp 6:29pm, PvP pop 8v8 @6:42pm (13min wait), Queue 6:47pm, PvP pop @6:59pm, 4v8 (12min wait) game ends not enough players. Queue 7pm, 😢 Waiting 7:44pm. Logging off

Edited April 5, 2017 by Icykill_

[Ratajack]

Chat tabs. Not really rocket science. Just like TESO does. 1 German, 1 French, 1 English

 

Is the language for in game messages based on server, French for French speaking servers, German for German speaking servers, English for English speaking servers, etc.? If so, what happens when playaers get in game messages in a language other than their own?

 

As another poster pointed out, what happens when the LFG tool groups players who speak different languages and are therefore unable to communicate and co-ordinate?

 

It's not just chat that has to be considered when talking about forcing players who speak different languages to all play on one server.

[Cruxa]

Is the language for in game messages based on server, French for French speaking servers, German for German speaking servers, English for English speaking servers, etc.?

 

The language for system messages is based on the language chosen for the game, which is independent from the server you play on. There are quite a few people that play on german/french servers but use english files, mostly because a translation (for example for skill descriptions) isn't always accurate.

When you choose english language that not only applies to voiceover, skill descriptions/names, menus etc. but also system messages. So I assume that would also be true if you play with a german/french client on an english speaking server. System messages should still be the language you've chosen.

[Ratajack]

The language for system messages is based on the language chosen for the game, which is independent from the server you play on. There are quite a few people that play on german/french servers but use english files, mostly because a translation (for example for skill descriptions) isn't always accurate.

When you choose english language that not only applies to voiceover, skill descriptions/names, menus etc. but also system messages. So I assume that would also be true if you play with a german/french client on an english speaking server. System messages should still be the language you've chosen.

 

Thank you for that information. It's been years since i installed the game, so I didn't recall having had to choose a language.

 

That said, however, that does not address the issue of the LFG tool forming a group composed of players who do not speak the same language, and would be unable to communicate or co-ordinate. It seems to me that would, at the very least, reduce the effectiveness of the LFG tool, if not render it almost useless , wouldn't it?