Server Merge Discussion Thread

[MeNaCe-NZ]

You may want to rethink this post.

 

... say what you mean or say nothing at all.

[Sareeph]

... say what you mean or say nothing at all.

I said what I meant. If you can't see why what you posted should be given a second thought then that is your failing.

[DWho]

Exactly.

 

Ebon Hawk is simply not as random group friendly as the traditionally non-RP servers. They are, by choice, more dependent on community connections (guilds, circle of friends, etc) rather then random unknowns looking for instant grouping via GF. I really do not understand why the Harbinger folks cannot grasp this and understand that forcing RPers to a non-RP server is NOT going to measurably increase GF pops.

 

The thing Harbinger people don't understand (and not all of them don't understand) is that not everyone plays the game the way that they do. Harbinger has a much higher percentage of people dependent on random grouping than any other server. You continuously see people stating how barren fleet is as a measure of how busy the server is but that is a poor measure of actual activity. It only shows the people that are looking for random groups in chat or waiting by the terminals and not the actual group activity going on behind the scenes. When I run OPs I am on the fleet for maybe 30 seconds, just long enough to teleport in and enter the OP. A large number of people group up before going to the fleet (even the GF people do). Fleet is where people hang out that don't have anything better to do which is probably why fleet chat gets so toxic.

[MissilyMilcasia]

Ebon Hawk is actually the strongest and most stable economy in the server farm in NA right now.

 

If by "most stable" you mean "most stable at ridiculous prices", then you are correct. I love TEH and play here for a lot of reasons but the economy here, especially in cartel market items, decos, etc., isn't perfect. People here blatantly exploit on prices because its an RP Server and there's quite a few infamous people who buy up the market and price fix on several different types of items consistently, and for the prices to stabilize it takes days (granted, the price fixing people usually set them to absurdly high prices).

 

There's a lot of reasons Ebon Hawk is a really great server- lots of content options (RP/PvE/PvP/sometimes OWPvP), different mix of people, pretty good population, queue times aren't bad in primetime or even sometimes earlier, not nearly as volatile as harb- but the economy is not one of those reasons.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

I said what I meant. If you can't see why what you posted should be given a second thought then that is your failing.

 

Your Nonsense posts are just that, nonsense ... GG.

[Icykill_]

The thing Harbinger people don't understand (and not all of them don't understand) is that not everyone plays the game the way that they do. Harbinger has a much higher percentage of people dependent on random grouping than any other server. You continuously see people stating how barren fleet is as a measure of how busy the server is but that is a poor measure of actual activity. It only shows the people that are looking for random groups in chat or waiting by the terminals and not the actual group activity going on behind the scenes. When I run OPs I am on the fleet for maybe 30 seconds, just long enough to teleport in and enter the OP. A large number of people group up before going to the fleet (even the GF people do). Fleet is where people hang out that don't have anything better to do which is probably why fleet chat gets so toxic.

 

Harbinger also has the highest variety of players that play group, pvp, solo story, solo or Rp. You really shouldn't use Harbinger as an example of people who don't understand because lots of us do because we have friends from all parts of the game. Just because you are on Harbinger doesn't mean you don't understand.

 

Even Harbinger is having fleet population issues. Where we used to have 4 instances 12 months ago at certain times of the day, now we have one or one and half. Harbinger fleet population is now 1/3 of where is was and grouped activity is suffering more than usual if you are outside the 4-5 hour bracket that still seems to have a reasonable population. If you play in that bracket you may not see any issues. But not everyone is able to play the game in that 4-5 hour bracket. That bracket is also shrinking fast. Only 6 months ago that bracket was 7 hours and 12 months ago it was 12 hours. If you go back two and half years ago it was 16-18 hours.

 

Considering the game is online 24 hours a day and is a global game, the expectation is to at least have 16 hours a day to play in (obviously not all in one chunk). When the busiest servers "healthy" time bracket is now down to 4-6 hours and shrinking, I can only imagine how bad the other servers are fairing, it doesnt bode well for the game.

 

I know a lot of the arguments that people are making here is by adding populations that don't group finder or doing much group content won't add anything to those populations that do. But the populations are getting so small now that just having 10 extra people put into the group mix at certain times can have an positive affect on group content. It doesn't matter what server you are on because there will always be a few that will do group content if given the chance and by consolidating them all in one place it can have an impact even if it is only a small one.

 

The lower the populations drop, the more urgent it is to bring everyone together. As an example, it's better to have 16 people all queued for pvp on the one server than 16 people queued over 3-4 servers.

Edited August 9, 2017 by Icykill_

[Andryah]

If by "most stable" you mean "most stable at ridiculous prices", then you are correct. I love TEH and play here for a lot of reasons but the economy here, especially in cartel market items, decos, etc., isn't perfect. People here blatantly exploit on prices because its an RP Server and there's quite a few infamous people who buy up the market and price fix on several different types of items consistently, and for the prices to stabilize it takes days (granted, the price fixing people usually set them to absurdly high prices).

 

There's a lot of reasons Ebon Hawk is a really great server- lots of content options (RP/PvE/PvP/sometimes OWPvP), different mix of people, pretty good population, queue times aren't bad in primetime or even sometimes earlier, not nearly as volatile as harb- but the economy is not one of those reasons.

 

Price predictability and stability is only one measure of the player economy.

 

I routinely compare EH to Harbinger for prices and demand on a wide range of items. There are always exceptions of course.... but in general.. prices for a wide range of items are higher on Harbinger, even though supplies are generally larger. At the moment.. one big exception appears to be CM dyes as players on Harbinger are dumping a wide range of colors for very low prices, and EH being an RP server tends to premium price many dyes. Many other items.... actually have better prices on EH. Taking another example.... Maintenance and Delicacy companion gifts.... for months Harbinger has been dumping them at very low prices... but now I see better or equivalent pricing on EH. That said... I compare market prices (not exploitative prices, which do exist on both servers, and generally things do not sell real well at said prices anyway.. so it's mostly listing noise), as well as number and variety of listings. You have to look at it holistically.

 

Another area where Habringer and EH are different is how sell off discount pricing flows for newer CM items from new packs. EH tends to hold premium prices for a couple weeks while generally on Harbinger they will deep discount and undercut each other fiercely in the first week. So I can and will buy whatever CM items I am collecting on the server with the best current pricing. But after about 4 weeks there is little difference in prices.... even super rare gold/platinum items.

 

Now.. I grant that a lot of things about the Harbinger community, including economy are a bit more chaotic then other servers...... but the fact remains.. overall.. at this point in time... in NA... EH has the best GTN player economy.

Edited August 9, 2017 by Andryah

[DWho]

Harbinger also has the highest variety of players that play group, pvp, solo story, solo or Rp. You really shouldn't use Harbinger as an example of people who don't understand because lots of us do because we have friends from all parts of the game. Just because you are on Harbinger doesn't mean you don't understand.

 

Even Harbinger is having fleet population issues. Where we used to have 4 instances 12 months ago at certain times of the day, now we have one or one and half. Harbinger fleet population is now 1/3 of where is was and grouped activity is suffering more than usual if you are outside the 4-5 hour bracket that still seems to have a reasonable population. If you play in that bracket you may not see any issues. But not everyone is able to play the game in that 4-5 hour bracket. That bracket is also shrinking fast. Only 6 months ago that bracket was 7 hours and 12 months ago it was 12 hours. If you go back two and half years ago it was 16-18 hours.

 

Considering the game is online 24 hours a day and is a global game, the expectation is to at least have 16 hours a day to play in (obviously not all in one chunk). When the busiest servers "healthy" time bracket is now down to 4-6 hours and shrinking, I can only imagine how bad the other servers are fairing, it doesnt bode well for the game.

 

I know a lot of the argument people are making here is by adding populations that don't group finder or doing much group content won't add anything to those populations that do. But the populations are getting so small now that just having 10 extra people put into the group mix at certain times can have an positive affect on group content. It doesn't matter what server you are on because there will always be a few that will do group content if given the chance and by consolidating them all in one place it can have an impact even if it is only a small one.

 

The lower the populations drop, the more urgent it is to bring everyone together. As an example, it's better to have 16 people all queued for pvp on the one server than 16 people queued over 3-4 servers.

 

Alright, then lets approach it this way. Once Bioware has the guild transfer issue fixed move everyone to one or more of the more populous servers but don't close down those servers. Then allow everyone a free legacy and guild transfer off of that server and back to where they came from (alternatively you could ask people if they want to move but you would get a lot less movement because that is what it is like now and nobody is moving). Then you have consolidated the population but allowed those who don't want to be on those high population servers to go back to an environment they prefer. That way the people who want to move and those that don't care are consolidated and you get your tiny improvement in random group pops while those that do care get to be where they want to be.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

EH has the best GTN player economy.

 

How are you defining "best" here - best for you personally? Best for buyers? Best for sellers?

 

I read your post but I'm not picking up on anything that screams "EH is best" to me?

[Andryah]

How are you defining "best" here - best for you personally? Best for buyers? Best for sellers?

 

I read your post but I'm not picking up on anything that screams "EH is best" to me?

 

Setting aside the obvious things like hawker prices that never sell, the flurry around a new CM pack release (which I already covered earlier), and the price fixers here and there that try to corner and dictate the fair market on an item....

 

... generally speaking, prices are more stable (less actual fluctuation in the sell range), more persistent, and with somewhat better fair market price points then I see on Harbinger across a wide range of items, both CM and non-CM. There are some equipment exceptions where something is very desired for RP... where they carry a premium price vs Harbinger. I would say that the crafted items market is a bit better and with more variety on Harbinger, but not so much as to penalize a patient shopper on EH. Sometimes, prices are out of sync a bit between the two servers, but this is more about fluctuations around fair market pricing rather then actual differences.

 

As for me, I am both a buyer/collector and a seller, on Harbinger, EH, and BC, and Harb and EH have generally had very good player economies over time which is why I settled into them a long time ago... they are just a bit different in some segments. BC is no comparison.... as it is a much smaller market.

Edited August 9, 2017 by Andryah

[Talon_strikes]

Alright, then lets approach it this way. Once Bioware has the guild transfer issue fixed move everyone to one or more of the more populous servers but don't close down those servers. Then allow everyone a free legacy and guild transfer off of that server and back to where they came from (alternatively you could ask people if they want to move but you would get a lot less movement because that is what it is like now and nobody is moving). Then you have consolidated the population but allowed those who don't want to be on those high population servers to go back to an environment they prefer. That way the people who want to move and those that don't care are consolidated and you get your tiny improvement in random group pops while those that do care get to be where they want to be.

Dead servers shouldn't exist. This is an MMO, not a singleplayer game.

 

Oh btw, with the server transfers back in 2012 they ended up closing the servers while transfers were going on and then finally merged them. Your argument doesn't hold water.

Edited August 9, 2017 by Talon_strikes

[Ashianti]

I don't know if for SWTOR it is a technically feasible solution, but an alternative to server mergers could be to "pool" some or all queues to instanced multiplayer content such as Warzones.

 

This would eliminate queue waiting and the larger pool of people playing should also make things more interesting, meanwhile the "open world" server community wouldn't be affected.

 

Perhaps also GTN would need to be merged, but I don't use it that much personally so I can't say.

[Icykill_]

Alright, then lets approach it this way. Once Bioware has the guild transfer issue fixed move everyone to one or more of the more populous servers but don't close down those servers. Then allow everyone a free legacy and guild transfer off of that server and back to where they came from (alternatively you could ask people if they want to move but you would get a lot less movement because that is what it is like now and nobody is moving). Then you have consolidated the population but allowed those who don't want to be on those high population servers to go back to an environment they prefer. That way the people who want to move and those that don't care are consolidated and you get your tiny improvement in random group pops while those that do care get to be where they want to be.

 

Why would they move everyone and leave servers open for people to transfer back? That is completely illogical because it costs them money to run those servers. If they move everyone off them they will shut them down to save money. You seem to forget they are running a business.

[HuaRya]

The thing Harbinger people don't understand (and not all of them don't understand) is that not everyone plays the game the way that they do. Harbinger has a much higher percentage of people dependent on random grouping than any other server. You continuously see people stating how barren fleet is as a measure of how busy the server is but that is a poor measure of actual activity. It only shows the people that are looking for random groups in chat or waiting by the terminals and not the actual group activity going on behind the scenes. When I run OPs I am on the fleet for maybe 30 seconds, just long enough to teleport in and enter the OP. A large number of people group up before going to the fleet (even the GF people do). Fleet is where people hang out that don't have anything better to do which is probably why fleet chat gets so toxic.

 

That's why there is TORstatus and the neat thing to do with that is check the wayback machine and see how fast this game has dropped in population. It seems that by having the remaining active players spread out on 17 servers may be accelerating as described by others in this thread.

 

Tonight I actually lucked out and got into an uprising 'landing party' while doing it I was really impressed at the detail of the map and the fun mechanics for the fights. You even get to see transports come over the water and drop troops. I know there are people on lesser populated servers that if things stay the way they are will never be able to do that content as it simply doesn't pop.

[Jedi_riches]

Seems as good a place as any to ask but what are players opinions on the population of the Progenitor (what I think is the old English rp server). I am looking for options for where to play characters

[casirabit]

Harbinger also has the highest variety of players that play group, pvp, solo story, solo or Rp. You really shouldn't use Harbinger as an example of people who don't understand because lots of us do because we have friends from all parts of the game. Just because you are on Harbinger doesn't mean you don't understand.

 

This is funny. I made a toon to check out this server. I level up enough to go to the fleet to ask about roleplayers. Guess what, you say they understand? Maybe some but that is not what I got in general when I asked about roleplaying guilds and/or roleplayers. I was actually told if I was a roleplayer that either I need to be quiet and not do roleplay there or I needed to leave. So explain how they understand about the different aspects of playstyle. Sorry I don't believe it not after what I experienced.

 

After what I experienced I want no part of Harbinger so the toon I created I deleted. Why would I play on a server where my playstyle is not welcome.

Edited August 9, 2017 by casirabit

[Ratajack]

This is funny. I made a toon to check out this server. I level up enough to go to the fleet to ask about roleplayers. Guess what, you say they understand? Maybe some but that is not what I got in general when I asked about roleplaying guilds and/or roleplayers. I was actually told if I was a roleplayer that either I need to be quiet and not do roleplay there or I needed to leave. So explain how they understand about the different aspects of playstyle. Sorry I don't believe it not after what I experienced.

 

After what I experienced I want no part of Harbinger so the toon I created I deleted. Why would I play on a server where my playstyle is not welcome.

 

Unfortunately, your welcome to the Harbinger cesspool was not at all unusual, IMO.

Edited August 9, 2017 by Ratajack

[Naholen]

I would probably say start with merging the PvP server into one. Whichever has the highest population becomes the primary. The biggest draw back of server merging is name retention, but at least more people to play with. (Or against such is the case.)

[DWho]

Dead servers shouldn't exist. This is an MMO, not a singleplayer game.

 

Oh btw, with the server transfers back in 2012 they ended up closing the servers while transfers were going on and then finally merged them. Your argument doesn't hold water.

 

I know how the server mergers were done previously, I don't need you to tell me how it was done. The point was to do it differently. By doing it this way you do not force people to play where they do not want to play. Your opposition to that is saying, in effect, the only way to play this game is the way that you want to play it and anyone who wants to play it differently is wrong. This is very selfish on your part. Allowing people to move back off the large server to a smaller server in no way affects your game play. You get your higher population server. Is it that you are afraid that the servers would redistribute themselves back to the way they are now because that is the way that the majority of games population wants to play. The Merge server crowd is unwilling to redistribute themselves to improve their game experience but when someone on the other side suggests an option to let the people who don't want to move make that choice (maybe they will maybe they won't) the merge server crowd say no we must force everyone to play the way we play.

 

On the MMO point. This game never was an true MMO it was always an online RPG with MMO elements. From the beginning 80% of the game was set up for solo player content. That was one of the things that made it better than an MMO.

[Ratajack]

Dead servers shouldn't exist. This is an MMO, not a singleplayer game.

 

Oh btw, with the server transfers back in 2012 they ended up closing the servers while transfers were going on and then finally merged them. Your argument doesn't hold water.

 

What does MMO mean? Massive Multiplayer Online. That just means the game is capable of supporting large numbers of multiple people online. Nowhere does it stipulate that a player MUST group to be an MMO player, nor does it stipulate that there MUST be thousands of people online simultaneously or that those players online MUST be able to find groups within 5 minutes.

 

 

I think some people are adding their own "spins" to define the term MMO to fit what they want, and not what MMO actually means or is.

 

Now, I'm not saying that it must be a "solo" online game, only that there is more to an MMO than some seem to want to admit.

[TUXs]

That's why there is TORstatus and the neat thing to do with that is check the wayback machine and see how fast this game has dropped in population. It seems that by having the remaining active players spread out on 17 servers may be accelerating as described by others in this thread.

 

Tonight I actually lucked out and got into an uprising 'landing party' while doing it I was really impressed at the detail of the map and the fun mechanics for the fights. You even get to see transports come over the water and drop troops. I know there are people on lesser populated servers that if things stay the way they are will never be able to do that content as it simply doesn't pop.

Agreed. It's well past the time to do something. But even when they do, it's too late for most.

[DWho]

Agreed. It's well past the time to do something. But even when they do, it's too late for most.

 

If it is too late for most (which is a major exaggeration anyway), why do anything. Mergers cost money and they will not increase Bioware's profits in any way. Since you used the exaggeration "most" I will as well. "Most" people don't come to the forums so one could argue that "most" people are happy with the game the way it is.

[TUXs]

If it is too late for most (which is a major exaggeration anyway), why do anything. Mergers cost money and they will not increase Bioware's profits in any way. Since you used the exaggeration "most" I will as well. "Most" people don't come to the forums so one could argue that "most" people are happy with the game the way it is.

I agree. Don't waste the $...just close the dead ones down and let people move or not. If "most" people were happy with the game as it is, why the hell are populations continuing to decline?

[DWho]

I agree. Don't waste the $...just close the dead ones down and let people move or not. If "most" people were happy with the game as it is, why the hell are populations continuing to decline?

 

If its too late for "most" why are there still people playing the game? MMO (or more correctly in this case online games since this is not a true MMO) populations decline over time. This is a 5 year old game. Even WOW and Everquest, two of the biggest MMOs ever, have a fraction of the population they once had.

Edited August 9, 2017 by DWho

[TUXs]

If its too late for "most" why are there still people playing the game? MMO (or more correctly in this case online games since this is not a true MMO) populations decline over time. This is a 5 year old game. Even WOW and Everquest, two of the biggest MMOs ever, have a fraction of the population they once had.

Probably because those of us still playing enjoy the game enough to do so?! I imagine the same is true for those playing W0W and EQ, but I'm not sure as I've never invested a minute of time into either of those games.