Merge Jedi Covenant and Shadowlands Servers, Label Low Pop Servers

[RobertFKennedyUS]

This thread has been moved from the General Discussion forum to the Shadowlands server forum by a moderator without the consultation or consent of anyone involved on it. I maintain that it doesn't belong here. -Rob

 

• The server populations are both significantly diminished compared to pre-5.0
  
• Group activities including operations, flash points, unranked warzones, ranked warzones, starfighter, uprisings (and other group activities such as heroics, world bosses, star fortresses) are often diminished to the point of practical non-existence outside of peak times
  
• Some group activities are out of reach for some (high difficulty operations, 16 player operations) because of a lack of people
  
• There is dysfunction on the markets (GTN) due to diminished population
  
• Given how gear-dependent many activities are (i.e. Nightmare operations, ranked warzones) and given that obtaining the best gear often means playing significant amounts of warzones or starfighter, it becomes highly inconvenient to wait for queue times for warzones and starfighter
  
• It's simply a foolish business practice for new and old players to wish to engage in a group activity, but then find out there's not enough people to do it. They will often taken their business elsewhere. This logic applies exponentially as a reason to label low population servers. Obviously anyone who logs in to a dead game is incentivized to look for another game.
  
• An East Coast PVE server should be modeled after Harbinger in terms of its activity and the overall level of contentment with the vitality and utility of the server population
  

 

For these reasons I suggest merging both servers and labeling any low population unmerged servers as low population. Attention and seriousness should be show in not causing guilds or individuals to lose their in-game assets.

Edited June 7, 2017 by RobertFKennedyUS

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

• The server populations are both significantly diminished compared to pre-5.0
  
• Group activities including operations, flash points, unranked warzones, ranked warzones, starfighter, uprisings (and other group activities such as heroics, world bosses, star fortresses) are often diminished to the point of practical non-existence outside of peak times
  
• Some group activities are out of reach for some (high difficulty operations, 16 player operations) because of a lack of people
  
• There is dysfunction on the markets (GTN) due to diminished population
  
• Given how gear-dependent many activities are (i.e. Nightmare operations, ranked warzones) and given that obtaining the best gear often means playing significant amounts of warzones or starfighter, it becomes highly inconvenient to wait for queue times for warzones and starfighter
  
• It's simply a foolish business practice for new and old players to wish to engage in a group activity, but then find out there's not enough people to do it. They will often taken their business elsewhere. This logic applies exponentially as a reason to label low population servers. Obviously anyone who logs in to a dead game is incentivized to look for another game.
  
• An East Coast PVE server should be modeled after Harbinger in terms of its activity and the overall level of contentment with the vitality and utility of the server population
  

 

For these reasons I suggest merging both servers and labeling any low population unmerged servers as low population. Attention and seriousness should be show in not causing guilds or individuals to lose their in-game assets.

 

There is absoluetly nothing wrong with the server population on Shadowlands. PVP pops regulary, starts as early as 8 am and goes well into the wee hours, most times 70s regs pop within 5 minutes of queceing. Plenty of pug Operations groups as well.

 

There is not one of those points on your list that applies to Shadowlands. That there is a limited amount of people who are NiM worthy applies to all servers as a result of taking gear out of Operations at the start of 5.0. Many progression raiders simply left the game.

 

Jedi covenant might have a problem, but Shadowlands doesn't.

 

I have no objection to a merger for Jedi Covenant's sake, providing that they are willing to lose the name of their former server [Jedi Covenant] and accept The Shadowlands server name as is.

 

All Jedi must die =]

Edited June 6, 2017 by WayOfTheWarriorx

[RobertFKennedyUS]

There is absoluetly nothing wrong with the server population on Shadowlands. PVP pops regulary, starts as early as 8 am and goes well into the wee hours, most times 70s regs pop within 5 minutes of queceing. Plenty of pug Operations groups as well.

 

There is not one of those points on your list that applies to Shadowlands. That there is a limited amount of people who are NiM worthy applies to all servers as a result of taking gear out of Operations at the start of 5.0. Many progression raiders simply left the game.

 

Jedi covenant might have a problem, but Shadowlands doesn't.

 

I have no objection to a merger for Jedi Covenant's sake, providing that they are willing to lose the name of their former server [Jedi Covenant] and accept The Shadowlands server name as is.

 

All Jedi must die =]

 

Your comment is totally false and untruthful.

 

Most of the NiM guilds/teams that Shadowlands used to have went to Harbinger (probably around 5 or 6 now, not including individuals who went solo or with friends). I was talking to one of the few ones left and he/she told me that if they could transfer his guild ship they'd move too.

 

I was on Shadowlands recently at 10:30PM EST on the fleet. There was something like 58 or so people on...it was real low. That's about what it is on Harbinger at like 5 or 6 in the morning on the republic side (which is less populated than their imp side). I've seen people have to go without 1 or 2 dps in a 16 player HM raid after pugging to fill a spot for 30-60 minutes at peak time. Augments have sold for half a million creds, presumably because no one else was selling.

 

It has all the problems one could anticipate from a smaller if not eroding population.

Edited June 6, 2017 by RobertFKennedyUS

[Ratajack]

From another thread:

 

Hey folks,

 

We recently removed a thread related to the topic of server merges. This thread was removed because of numerous rule violations contained within it. Since we know this conversation is important to you, I am remaking this as the centralized thread for that discussion. Although we don't have anything to discuss right now on this topic, we want to continue to get your feedback and thoughts on it. Please keep it coming!

 

A few rule reminders:

• Discussion of moderation is not permitted.
  
• Please remain respectful of other forum users. Disagreement and discussion is fine, personal attacks are not.
  

 

Thanks everyone.

 

-eric

 

If this thread has not already been reported as a spam "merge servers" thread, I am certain it will be soon.

 

I'll go out on a limb and predict that this thread will have a shorter lifespan than the average housefly.

 

 

That said, Jedi Covenant and Shadowlands seem to be doing fine based on my experience and that of others on those servers, judging by the posts in the previous "merge servers" threads, as well as the latest thread created by Eric.

 

If a player finds that one of those servers is not to his liking, that player has the option to move to a server more to his liking. There is no need to subject multitudes of players to suffer the nightmares and headaches that server merges would cause, IMO.

[kvandertulip]

That said, Jedi Covenant and Shadowlands seem to be doing fine based on my experience and that of others on those servers.

 

Play much ranked pvp on either of these servers?

[commanderwar]

though I like to say put this post in this thread, there is no reason to make more, better to have all he feedback in one place.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=923727

but to your topic I cannot at all speak for jedi convenant but, I think shadowland is good as is I have no problems with flashpoint, pvp pops. Not done nightmare operation so I would not know. I would be fine merges if we did not lose our names and guilds, they also possibilities we could lose stuff like decos now, if this is not the case then I do not care.

Edited June 6, 2017 by commanderwar

[Ratajack]

Play much ranked pvp on either of these servers?

 

I don't PVP on any server, but I'm not sure how much even server merges would increase queue pops for ranked, though, given the higher entry level requirements for ranked.

 

If ranked PVP is a player's "thing", then Harbinger may the server for that player.

 

While I do not use the LFG tool on Harbinger, I do use it on the other servers on which I play, and I have characters on every US server.

 

Judging by my experience, and that of other posters in various threads, queue pops for most group activities are frequent and acceptable.

 

Let's not ignore the numbers of players who don't rely upon the LFG tool, instead doing their group activities with friends and guild mates.

 

Johnny may have no friends or guild mates with which to run group content and therefore has to rely upon the LFG tool for that group content, but not everyone falls into the "friendless and guildless" category.

 

The fact that a player who relies upon the LFG tool for group content (for whatever reason) may have to wait longer than 5 minutes (a time limit set by many of those advocating server merges, not a time limit I arbitrarily chose) does not mean that a server is "dead".

[Damask_Rose]

Play much ranked pvp on either of these servers?

 

I'm in two guilds on Shadowlands and both field ranked teams. Based on guild chatter they seem to get pops pretty steadily. I only do regs, and I have always gotten a pop within 5 minutes, same for when I que for flashpoints. When I'm comparison shopping for gear, Shadowlands is usually very similar to Harbinger. The main difference I've seen between the two is when I spend more than a few minutes on Harbinger I have to put half a dozen people on ignore, where as I spend 95% of my time on Shadowlands and haven't ignored a one.

[kvandertulip]

Judging by my experience, and that of other posters in various threads, queue pops for most group activities are frequent and acceptable.

 

Please quote to me all the people that have posted ranked pvp queues pops on Shadowlands and JC are acceptable. I'll wait....

[Ratajack]

 

Judging by my experience, and that of other posters in various threads, queue pops for most group activities are frequent and acceptable.

 

 

Please quote to me all the people that have posted ranked pvp queues pops on Shadowlands and JC are acceptable. I'll wait....

 

Note that I said MOST group activities.

 

Ranked is only ONE group activity and hardly the only group activity.

 

Please provide concrete, rock solid, irrefutable evidence that server merges will greatly increase queue pops for ranked PVP.

 

I'll wait.

Edited June 6, 2017 by Ratajack

[kvandertulip]

Ranked is only ONE group activity and hardly the only group activity.

 

So its perfectly fine to completely write off ranked pvp on the East Coast servers? East Coast pvpers should just resign themselves to the fact that they can go have terrible ping on Harbinger or just not participate?

Edited June 6, 2017 by kvandertulip

[Ratajack]

So its perfectly fine to completely write off ranked pvp on the East Coast servers? East Coast pvpers should just resign themselves to the fact that they can go have terrible ping on Harbinger or just not participate?

 

You have yet to provide any concrete, rock solid, irrefutable evidence that even serer merges would greatly increase the queue pops for ranked PVP.

 

Yet, you want to advocate negatively impacting the multitudes of players who would be forced to suffer the headaches and nightmares server merges would cause in the hopes that server merges MIGHT increase the queue times for ranked PVP?

 

So, it is perfectly fine to write off the concerns that many players have expressed regarding those nightmares and headaches that serer merges would cause, to say nothing of those players who are perfectly happy on their current servers?

[kvandertulip]

I don't PVP on any server.

 

How would a player who doesn't pvp, period, have any insight into what pvpers experience on any server?

 

may have to wait longer than 5 minutes (a time limit set by many of those advocating server merges, not a time limit I arbitrarily chose)

 

Please feel free to use some quotes from actual posts to replace your strawmen. I'm still waiting.

[kvandertulip]

Yet, you want to advocate negatively impacting the multitudes of players who would be forced to suffer the headaches and nightmares server merges would cause in the hopes that server merges MIGHT increase the queue times for ranked PVP?

 

I am not advocating anything. I'm just trying to make two points.

 

1) Ranked pvp doesn't happen on Shadowlands and Jedi Covenant, and that should be a consideration in this discussion.

 

2) You are a liar.

[Ratajack]

How would a player who doesn't pvp, period, have any insight into what pvpers experience on any server?

 

This may come as a shock, but it IS possible to gain insight based upon the experiences of others.

 

All one needs to do is to read through this thread and the other server merge thread created by Eric Musco to see posters stating they get frequent PVP queue pops.

 

 

 

Please feel free to use some quotes from actual posts to replace your strawmen. I'm still waiting.

 

Ask and you shall receive. Here is one turned up by a quick forum search. If you wish to see others, the same forum search tool should work for you, also.

 

That is incorrect. If server queues start taking 5 minutes and more to pop like they did on POT5 before I left that server and there is no other server to transfer to I will 100% quit the game. I have been here since day 1 of launch and I will quit the game plain and simple. And it would be solely on the queue time. I enjoy this game very much but there is no way I am going to play this or any other game for that matter that the best you can give me is a 5 minute queue time running PVP instances that take 5-10 minutes to run. Sorry but that's how it is. So far on Harbringer even at 4 am est I usually get a queue pop in less than 5 minutes. During peak times it is usually instant or close to it. When and if that changes to longer than 5 minutes I am gone.

[Ratajack]

I am not advocating anything. I'm just trying to make two points.

 

1) Ranked pvp doesn't happen on Shadowlands and Jedi Covenant, and that should be a consideration in this discussion.

 

2) You are a liar.

 

I'm still waiting for ANY concrete, rock solid, irrefutable evidence that server merges would greatly increase queue pops for ranked PVP.

[DWho]

Ranked PVP does pop of JC but only when guilds are active doing it (meaning that the majority of ranked PVPers are in guilds and thus plan their ranked PVP). The ranked PVP population is tiny on both servers so merging them would have no significant effect on Ranked PVP pops. For a very long time PVP activity has been migrating to Harbinger and away from the East coast servers.

 

Furthermore, neither JC nor Shadowlands are low pop servers. I had posted in the previous thread the observed populations for both including screenshots for JC and Harbinger. The lowest comparison of JC to Harb populations I found was was 80% of Harb at 10 pm Eastern (end of prime time for the east coast and in the middle of prime time for west coast).

 

Someone also posted TorStatus numbers that indicated that there had been a -0.1 population change during the week on JC which was at 0.99 at the time. That means that JC had to have reached Standard population at some point during the week to get to 1.1 on the population measurement in order for it to be a -0.1 change at 0.99. If a server can get to Standard population it is hardly a low pop server when Harbinger only gets there about a third of the time.

 

The only servers that should be considered for mergers are the old PVP servers and even then, people on those servers need to be taken into account. So the answer to the question should JC and Shadowlands be merged is No.

[DWho]

That didn't take long. The comments on the previous threads said the opposite, including one poster who went into great detail about how little group activity was available on Jedi Cov, and that the market had droughts on goods as well. I just think you've flat out lied here.

 

And you are forgetting another poster that said just the opposite Mr. Kennedy

[Lunafox]

Your comment is totally false and untruthful.

 

Most of the NiM guilds/teams that Shadowlands used to have went to Harbinger (probably around 5 or 6 now, not including individuals who went solo or with friends). I was talking to one of the few ones left and he/she told me that if they could transfer his guild ship they'd move too.

 

I was on Shadowlands recently at 10:30PM EST on the fleet. There was something like 58 or so people on...it was real low. That's about what it is on Harbinger at like 5 or 6 in the morning on the republic side (which is less populated than their imp side). I've seen people have to go without 1 or 2 dps in a 16 player HM raid after pugging to fill a spot for 30-60 minutes at peak time. Augments have sold for half a million creds, presumably because no one else was selling.

 

It has all the problems one could anticipate from a smaller if not eroding population.

 

No, his comment was dead on. You just want to have your way with this. And also, what was wrong with the other thread? <.<

[Lunafox]

Play much ranked pvp on either of these servers?

 

These servers were always PVE servers above all else, that was their original designation from the get go. They are full of people who like to PVE. PvP servers had their own until they killed them, and if they migrated over to PVE servers expecting them to be full of PVPers, well, they've got another thing coming. I don't PVP and never will here. That doesn't mean there is a population problem, it just means people don't dig on PVP on formerly PVE servers.

Edited June 6, 2017 by Lunafox

[Lunafox]

How would a player who doesn't pvp, period, have any insight into what pvpers experience on any server?

 

 

 

Please feel free to use some quotes from actual posts to replace your strawmen. I'm still waiting.

 

Edit: Not worth my time.

Edited June 6, 2017 by Lunafox

[RobertFKennedyUS]

though I like to say put this post in this thread, there is no reason to make more, better to have all he feedback in one place.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=923727

 

I see no reason that it should be an issue.

 

(1) My previous thread on this preceeded your linked thread by 5 months. I restored that thread within hours of the old threads destruction and the creation of the other thread.

 

(2) The subjects are not the same.

 

(3) You can have 50 million threads on any other given topic, yet for some reason if there is a related thread on server merges, it is wrong, but not the other ones. The only reasons are censorship, trolling and an ends justify the means approach to this topic.

 

This is not an exhaustive list on this subject or any other that have far less raison d'etre than this thread:

 

• 
   
  
• So we ever gonna get Kira back? Or a multitude of other companions?
   
  
• Are old companions like Kira coming back?
   
  
• Are we ever getting missing companions back?
   
  
• Which companions are back?
   
  
• When do you get your original companions back in KotFE?
   
  
• How to get companions back after story? <SPOILERS>
   
  
• Soo where exactly are the old companions and will we get them back eventualy?
   
  

 

And even if one chooses to ignore the differences and the history, no one cares about the profusion and duplication of a never-ending list of topics.

Edited June 6, 2017 by RobertFKennedyUS

[RobertFKennedyUS]

And you are forgetting another poster that said just the opposite Mr. Kennedy

 

No, you made that up.

 

No, his comment was dead on. You just want to have your way with this. And also, what was wrong with the other thread? <.<

 

No, it was dead on the wrong target, a complete miss. You just want to lie with this. Where did I say there was something wrong with the other thread?

Edited June 6, 2017 by RobertFKennedyUS

[RobertFKennedyUS]

Judging by my experience, and that of other posters in various threads, queue pops for most group activities are frequent and acceptable.

 

I don't think so. About 6 months ago on JC, a friend and I q'd up as healer and tank for a HM Group Finder flash point at somewhere around 4 or 5PM Eastern. Think we waited for about 45 minutes without a pop.

Edited June 6, 2017 by RobertFKennedyUS

[DWho]

No, you made that up.

 

 

 

No, it was dead on the wrong target, a complete miss. You just want to lie with this. Where did I say there was something wrong with the other thread?

 

You are incorrect. It was me that said it and I will say it again so that you can read it. I have no problem getting any of the group content I want to participate in within the normal prime time for the server. unranked WZs pop every 3-5 minutes, I can run story mode flashpoints with only about a 15-30 minute wait (which is pretty good since nobody runs anything other than the solo ones from GC anyway). I run 3 Operations a week with my guild (all Hard mode). I have no problem buying or selling what I want on the GTN and prices are reasonable.

 

As far as outside of Prime time goes, it is unreasonable to expect group content pops to be good when it is the middle of the night in the time zone of the server and before you go "but Harbinger does", I would point out that Harbinger effectively has 2 prime times that overlap (one for the US and one for APAC which results in an overall extended prime time). Merging two servers in the same time zone will do nothing to change the population drop off outside prime time.

 

Your problem is using Group Finder to do the content not that the content is not being done. Your assertion that because you cannot get a pop through group finder means that the content is not being done due to low populations is incorrect.

 

And since you are going to say I am lying (since that is what you do when someone disagrees with you), let me put this bluntly. There is no reason to believe anything you say either.