Let us make an Petition, West Coast Server.

[Yeldah_]

This is not a topic that is going to go away Bio-ware and Electronic Arts.

[Yeldah_]

The people are waiting for you to make an announcement on why Satele Shan cannot be made a west coast server. Or for you to admit that you have intentionally favored one portion of the player base over another.

[Alec_Fortescue]

Given the nature of the game you are pretty much restricting SWTOR's playerbase to East Coast and Euro players. This is an MMO meant to play online - I can't imagine playing with 200-300 ping because the server is 3k km away.

[Ghost_Spectre]

Given the nature of the game you are pretty much restricting SWTOR's playerbase to East Coast and Euro players. This is an MMO meant to play online - I can't imagine playing with 200-300 ping because the server is 3k km away.

 

Actually, I do. For me the server is 9,000 miles from me here in the Philippines. However, I use WTFast to play any game in the US or outside of it. Even with my new Fiber I have 300 to 325ms ping to the server. However, when I activate WTFast, I have a 225 to 245ms ping with no packet loss (well very few and those happen rarely), no massive lag spikes or jitter issues. When I'm playing WoWS, I have a 95 to 110ms ping playing on the server in San Jose, CA even if my own internet service is giving me 300+ ms ping. That's how I'm able to do so. And those who don't know about it should check it out at WTFast.com.

[MikeCobalt]

/signed

I live on the West Coast. As said before, even if not I want to know "Why". For the sake of their wallet is not only a poor answer; it's very indicative of Electronic Art's ways.

[Andryah]

The people are waiting for you to make an announcement on why Satele Shan cannot be made a west coast server. Or for you to admit that you have intentionally favored one portion of the player base over another.

 

They already answered this back when they merged servers. Asking again.. is not going to get a different answer.

 

Anyone on the west Coast should be seeing ping on the order of 90ms.. which is fine to play just about anything in this game.. period. IF you are seeing more then 90ms... do some investigation to find out where and why.

[Andryah]

Given the nature of the game you are pretty much restricting SWTOR's playerbase to East Coast and Euro players. This is an MMO meant to play online - I can't imagine playing with 200-300 ping because the server is 3k km away.

 

Stable ping from the west coast is ~90ms. In other words.. 60-65 ms more than when the server was located on the west coast. Not game impairing by any means.

 

APAC does have a long route.. but again.. their total route only increased by 60-65ms as well.. but on top of the 200+ they used to see to a west coast server.. that does have more impact on them. On the other hand.. there does not appear to be that many APAC players anymore... and to a good degree that was true pre-sever merge... but I acknowledge the server relocation has caused more to stop playing. If there were 100K players in APAC (which is probably about what they had on launch day on their 3 old local APAC servers....the small launch size servers, not the improved larger servers that came in late 2012 or this most recent servers in the newest merge) wanting to play this game.. I can assure you there would still be local APAC servers live for the game.

Edited May 23, 2018 by Andryah

[MikeTheDuke]

/signed

chances of them doing it, 0.

[Alec_Fortescue]

Actually, I do. For me the server is 9,000 miles from me here in the Philippines. However, I use WTFast to play any game in the US or outside of it. Even with my new Fiber I have 300 to 325ms ping to the server. However, when I activate WTFast, I have a 225 to 245ms ping with no packet loss (well very few and those happen rarely), no massive lag spikes or jitter issues. When I'm playing WoWS, I have a 95 to 110ms ping playing on the server in San Jose, CA even if my own internet service is giving me 300+ ms ping. That's how I'm able to do so. And those who don't know about it should check it out at WTFast.com.

 

200ms is still ridiculously high, no matter how stable.

[Ghost_Spectre]

200ms is still ridiculously high, no matter how stable.

 

Yet, I have no issues with it when playing. The only time that may be an issue is in PvP. It doesn't present a problem in PvE.

[TrixxieTriss]

Actually, I do. For me the server is 9,000 miles from me here in the Philippines. However, I use WTFast to play any game in the US or outside of it. Even with my new Fiber I have 300 to 325ms ping to the server. However, when I activate WTFast, I have a 225 to 245ms ping with no packet loss (well very few and those happen rarely), no massive lag spikes or jitter issues. When I'm playing WoWS, I have a 95 to 110ms ping playing on the server in San Jose, CA even if my own internet service is giving me 300+ ms ping. That's how I'm able to do so. And those who don't know about it should check it out at WTFast.com.

 

Thank god for WTFast. I dont know if I could still play the game without it.

Edited May 25, 2018 by TrixxieTriss

[TrixxieTriss]

200ms is still ridiculously high, no matter how stable.

 

Yet, I have no issues with it when playing. The only time that may be an issue is in PvP. It doesn't present a problem in PvE.

 

200ms is better than 300ms. I wish I still had 200ms as I could still play ranked pvp (sort of) and reg pvp was fine. Playing pve with 300ms is absolutely fine. I’ve never died in pve because of lag, but I’ve died so many times in pvp than people ledgitmately beating me with skill.

 

Bioware should never have closed the APAC servers when they did, it was way too premature based on the total population.

The decision was purely a cost saving measure, the same as they did with moving the west coast server to the east coast.

Player enjoyment, numbers or retention dont seem to even factor into their decisions when deciding to cut costs on servers. If it did, they would have kept Satele on the west coast.

 

But as I’ve said, it’s too late now. Bioware will NEVER move the server back to the west coast. EA control the purse strings and all the petitions and QQing won’t make them change their minds. They aren’t gamers, they don’t understand gamers or care for that matter. They care about their shareholders and the next quarter profit results. The only way you could influence them to care about this game or gamers would be to buy a controlling interest in EA or at least buy enough shares to influence them. So unless you have about $14-15 billion laying around, you can forget about influencing EA to care.

They only did something about BF2 loot boxes because Disney stepped in, if Disney had stayed quiet, you can bet EA would have ignored all the rage and kept the loot boxes.

[TrixxieTriss]

I was just reading an financial article about gaming and shareholder investment in Activision. The journalist wrote this...

 

“Last year, there were 11.1 billion e-sports videos streamed in China and 2.7 billion in North America, where about one-third of gamers reside.”

 

These sorts of articles support my earlier posts where I’ve stated that western gaming developers are missing the boat when it comes to APAC. Yes, China is part of APAC.

 

At least Activision realise this and are trying to bridge the gap. Sadly, EA still doesn’t get it.

Edited May 25, 2018 by TrixxieTriss

[Yeldah_]

Still waiting for an official explanation from the development team on this.

[TrixxieTriss]

Still waiting for an official explanation from the development team on this.

 

You’ll never get one. We didn’t even get an apology back when they lied about it by omission and just did it.

 

Hell will freeze over till they explain it to us. You may as well save your breath and let it go. We lost this battle, it’s over.

[Ghost_Spectre]

You’ll never get one. We didn’t even get an apology back when they lied about it by omission and just did it.

 

Hell will freeze over till they explain it to us. You may as well save your breath and let it go. We lost this battle, it’s over.

 

You're correct Trixxie. After something like this subject, I've never known them to apologize to their customers/fans. Armored Warfare did the exact same thing to APAC CBT players when they moved the PT server to the EU. Then, we were told, "CBT wasn't meant for APAC players' involvement." Yet, they took our money for their big CBT package and thanked us, then the screwed us. I never played the game afterwards.

 

Similarly, BWA/EA operate in the same manner. They do what they want and don't care about those who are outside of their area of operation. One day, EA and their subsidiaries will face a major class action lawsuit for their unethical business practices, exploitation, and stoic manner they treat their customers. Karma has a way of balancing things in life.

Edited June 3, 2018 by Ghost_Spectre

[DavidAtkinson]

Thanks for mentoning WTFast... Never heard of it.

 

I live in Eastern Europe and my connection is around 55-75 ms but after these recent patches. my ping has gotten unstable meaning it jumps back and forth all over the place even up to 125ms 100ms which is game killer for me in PVP as it gets me ability delays....In PVE it's fine, but as soon I go to PVP it can get nuts.

 

The program helped me stabilize my connection and it never gotten over 78MS so far and it's keeping it stable around 55ms. So you saved my day.

 

Bless you all.

[TrixxieTriss]

Thanks for mentoning WTFast... Never heard of it.

 

I live in Eastern Europe and my connection is around 55-75 ms but after these recent patches. my ping has gotten unstable meaning it jumps back and forth all over the place even up to 125ms 100ms which is game killer for me in PVP as it gets me ability delays....In PVE it's fine, but as soon I go to PVP it can get nuts.

 

The program helped me stabilize my connection and it never gotten over 78MS so far and it's keeping it stable around 55ms. So you saved my day.

 

Bless you all.

 

Glad to help 😊

[Yeldah_]

You’ll never get one. We didn’t even get an apology back when they lied about it by omission and just did it.

 

Hell will freeze over till they explain it to us. You may as well save your breath and let it go. We lost this battle, it’s over.

 

I am not so eager to surrender. What's more I will keep coming back to remind them of their mistake until I rattle enough brain cells for the development team to see sense. Everyone knows that MORE servers NOT less is key to the games health; regardless of the cost involved. The most appropriate path ahead is rarely the easiest one.

[cadencepulse]

/signed -- as long as they only move one east coast server to the west coast and retain the other east coast server

[TrixxieTriss]

I am not so eager to surrender. What's more I will keep coming back to remind them of their mistake until I rattle enough brain cells for the development team to see sense. Everyone knows that MORE servers NOT less is key to the games health; regardless of the cost involved. The most appropriate path ahead is rarely the easiest one.

 

You know it’s not the dev team that made that decision? I’m willing to bet my subscriptions that the Devs would prefer servers in each region and possibly even argued against the moves.

 

It’s always been the EA bean counters that make strategic decisions to remove/move servers from locations.

 

It’s one of the reasons they closed the APAC servers. When they did so, they lost most of the APAC players. And I can tell you as someone who played on APAC every day of the week, that we had a similar amount of players as what Satele Shan currently does and the other 2 servers had similar numbers to what Shadowlands did before the last merge. All APAC players wanted and stupidly asked for (probably should have stayed quiet), was for one super server for APAC, which would have given us more people on the one server than is currently playing on Star Forge.

EA saw it as an opportunity to cut costs and the bean counters don’t understand that increased lag leads to less enjoyment and makes people leave. You can guarantee those people’s bonuses aren’t linked to player retention.

 

EA, not Bioware and especially not the dev team, have zero control over the server locations. I believe this is why Keith probably stayed quiet about the moves until they were done. I would say he initially asked them to merge the west and east coast servers into one per coast and didn’t realise that EA would just move them all to one data Centre. It’s also possible the reason we have 2 servers instead of one because EA only read Keith’s business proposal to merge servers and have only 2, as just having 2 servers and they disregarded needing to have them in two regions.

 

What you need to understand is EA are basically an adventure capitalist setup that invests in studios they buy for the intellectual property and the profits they can make for their share holders. They aren’t gamers, they aren’t a customer focused business and they don’t care what we require to play the games. As long as they maximise profits and don’t lose money, players/customers are fodder to be exploited for their shareholders.

 

It’s why they buy studios, run good games into the ground and move on. EA have a track record of doing this over the last 20 years. Do a google search and you will see the way they have applied this policy and destroyed basically every successful game/studio they’ve acquired.

You only need to look at how they panicked when swtor didn’t pay for itself in the first month. They quickly switched to F2P and added a cash shop. Sacked or moved most of the talent out of the game or studio and pulled a majority of the funding from the game. Sadly the game had paid for itself in first 6 months, but EA had lost interest because it wasn’t another WoW straight out of the gate.

 

All of this is public record. You only need to put the pieces together to see how EA have systematically reduced funding and resources from this game over the last 6 years. Swtor was easily paying for itself, but EA wanted more profit from the revenue. The way they see it, cutting costs gives them more profit in the short term, which suits their investors and their corporate pay bonuses for that quarter.

 

It’s when you understand all of that, you can see that we will never get them to move the server back to the west coast. Keith isn’t dumb, he knows we need better ping and regional server because he’s a fellow gamer. But he probably knows it would be a losing battle and would be a waste of his time and energy to try. He may have even asked after people started to abondon the game because of the move. We will never know, but I am willing to bet he didn’t want the servers moved to the same location. So trying to “rattle his brain cells” or saying he has the power to change it is pointless. It’s not the Devs who can make this happen. Only EA execs can make it happen and they don’t read swtor forums or give a crap if they do.

Edited June 15, 2018 by TrixxieTriss

[jimmorrisson]

This game was better off prior server merge. I suspect that the two east coast server plan was a cost cutting move to impress EA for job promotion purposes.

 

Hey folks,

 

As many of you know, on Tuesday Keith explained that in preparation for United Forces we moved all current west coast servers into our Virginia data center. Here’s some of the key questions we have received about the North American datacenter change:

 

Why not communicate this ahead of time?

We made the decision to not communicate this information ahead of time because we wanted you to have the ability to immediately login and determine the impact to your gameplay experience. This meant we could quickly start gathering feedback on what you were seeing in-game (more on this in the next question). However, we have seen posts from players who made specific decisions based on location (such as character transfers) and we will be in touch with them to discuss. To ensure there is no confusion about this update in-game, we adjusted the server selection screen to reflect that all NA servers are on the east coast.

 

My ping has gone up since the change and it is affecting my gameplay, what options do I have?

Please continue to report it! As Keith mentioned in his forum post this is something we are actively tracking and working with our network partners to address where possible. We will be working through this especially over the next two weeks as we ramp up to United Forces.

 

Could there be one data center in the Central US so that pings are more even for each coast?

Creating an entirely new datacenter is a daunting task, even above and beyond the substantial changes we have already made this year. This just isn’t something that was viable in the scope of the changes we made for United Forces.

 

Since all of NA is in one datacenter, shouldn’t we just have one server?

Moving all of NA together would create a very heavily populated server. This would introduce several challenges: 1) Players would likely experience queues accessing the server and 2) It would increase the chances for server instability and downtime. There are also a variety of other issues, but a key concern was combining all of North America would result in substantially more character name collisions.

 

We hope this answers some of your questions and lets you know what’s going to happen over the next couple weeks. Please remember, on November 8th we will move all players to their new servers during an extended maintenance (currently looking like 12 hours). We are also discussing starting a few hours earlier than usual (e.g., 2 or 3am CT), but will let you know a few days beforehand.

 

Thanks everyone.

 

-eric

Edited June 16, 2018 by jimmorrisson

[Yeldah_]

You know it’s not the dev team that made that decision? I’m willing to bet my subscriptions that the Devs would prefer servers in each region and possibly even argued against the moves.

 

It’s always been the EA bean counters that make strategic decisions to remove/move servers from locations.

 

It’s one of the reasons they closed the APAC servers. When they did so, they lost most of the APAC players. And I can tell you as someone who played on APAC every day of the week, that we had a similar amount of players as what Satele Shan currently does and the other 2 servers had similar numbers to what Shadowlands did before the last merge. All APAC players wanted and stupidly asked for (probably should have stayed quiet), was for one super server for APAC, which would have given us more people on the one server than is currently playing on Star Forge.

EA saw it as an opportunity to cut costs and the bean counters don’t understand that increased lag leads to less enjoyment and makes people leave. You can guarantee those people’s bonuses aren’t linked to player retention.

 

EA, not Bioware and especially not the dev team, have zero control over the server locations. I believe this is why Keith probably stayed quiet about the moves until they were done. I would say he initially asked them to merge the west and east coast servers into one per coast and didn’t realise that EA would just move them all to one data Centre. It’s also possible the reason we have 2 servers instead of one because EA only read Keith’s business proposal to merge servers and have only 2, as just having 2 servers and they disregarded needing to have them in two regions.

 

What you need to understand is EA are basically an adventure capitalist setup that invests in studios they buy for the intellectual property and the profits they can make for their share holders. They aren’t gamers, they aren’t a customer focused business and they don’t care what we require to play the games. As long as they maximise profits and don’t lose money, players/customers are fodder to be exploited for their shareholders.

 

It’s why they buy studios, run good games into the ground and move on. EA have a track record of doing this over the last 20 years. Do a google search and you will see the way they have applied this policy and destroyed basically every successful game/studio they’ve acquired.

You only need to look at how they panicked when swtor didn’t pay for itself in the first month. They quickly switched to F2P and added a cash shop. Sacked or moved most of the talent out of the game or studio and pulled a majority of the funding from the game. Sadly the game had paid for itself in first 6 months, but EA had lost interest because it wasn’t another WoW straight out of the gate.

 

All of this is public record. You only need to put the pieces together to see how EA have systematically reduced funding and resources from this game over the last 6 years. Swtor was easily paying for itself, but EA wanted more profit from the revenue. The way they see it, cutting costs gives them more profit in the short term, which suits their investors and their corporate pay bonuses for that quarter.

 

It’s when you understand all of that, you can see that we will never get them to move the server back to the west coast. Keith isn’t dumb, he knows we need better ping and regional server because he’s a fellow gamer. But he probably knows it would be a losing battle and would be a waste of his time and energy to try. He may have even asked after people started to abondon the game because of the move. We will never know, but I am willing to bet he didn’t want the servers moved to the same location. So trying to “rattle his brain cells” or saying he has the power to change it is pointless. It’s not the Devs who can make this happen. Only EA execs can make it happen and they don’t read swtor forums or give a crap if they do.

 

I agree with everything you have said Trixxie, with the exception of one thing. If what you say is true (that EA staff never read forums from this site) and that the development team have no control over vital changes to the game, what is the point of the Star Wars the Old Republic (SWTOR) forums as a mode of communication? Every single gripe on the SWTOR forums since their inception is 100% pointless if the Bio-ware staff in charge of said forums have no power to change anything. What we are relying on here is that gripes go up the chain. The players gripe to Eric and Keith, they gripe to their superiors etc. etc. This goes on (in theory) until it hits someone in Electronic Arts headquarters who can actually do something. We are all here to try and make things happen. Even if you think this is a losing battle (likely) nothing will change unless we try.

[TrixxieTriss]

I agree with everything you have said Trixxie, with the exception of one thing. If what you say is true (that EA staff never read forums from this site) and that the development team have no control over vital changes to the game, what is the point of the Star Wars the Old Republic (SWTOR) forums as a mode of communication?

The forums are mainly so players have a place they think they can QQ at the Devs and each other. Most of the feed back we’ve provided in the last 6 years is ignored like the players base doesn’t count.

We occasionally get thrown a bone, but my guess that only happens when the Devs are already thinking along those lines.

For many years before Keith took over, communication from the Devs was nearly non existent on this forum,

Most of the dev posts are to “tell” how it is, like a dictatorship. At least that’s how it was when Ben was in charge,

 

Every single gripe on the SWTOR forums since their inception is 100% pointless if the Bio-ware staff in charge of said forums have no power to change anything. What we are relying on here is that gripes go up the chain. The players gripe to Eric and Keith, they gripe to their superiors etc. etc. This goes on (in theory) until it hits someone in Electronic Arts headquarters who can actually do something. We are all here to try and make things happen. Even if you think this is a losing battle (likely) nothing will change unless we try.

 

Like I said in my other post, the guys at the EA office don’t care about the players or gamers. It doesn’t matter what the dev team say to accountant, all he is looking at is his spread sheet for the next 3 months.

Yes, the Devs still have some creative control over content, but they have zero control or influence when it comes to cost or funding. They get told how it is and have to work within the constraints put on them.

Things like server farms, data centres and locations are completely out of their hands and except for suggestions at the time of it happening, they are wasting their own time trying to push it up the food chain.

Keith can see the players leaving, he must know that some of that isnthe forced relocation. I’m sure he’s even said to them, “I told you so”. But it would have been brushed off because of the contracts signed and money spent on the data centre. EA just don’t care. It’s been proven over and over. They don’t even care about their own studios and staff when they can make some extra profit from closing them down. What makes you think they care what Kieth says.

[BadHoneyBadger]

And demand the following:

1. 1 West Coast Server

2. If this is not possible, an clear and honest answer, why not?

- Do livestream it, and mainly Keith should do this.

- Also tell what options are on the table and how much you think you can reduce the ping for these people.

 

1) Demand all you want because this is not going to happen. Its like asking a company on the edge of bankrupting for a raise. They are one more bad game away from closing the door as a whole. They are running SWTOR on the east coast because demographically it is cheaper (smart move). The servers or rather the facilities that were used to run the game are either prepped or are being prepped for another game.

 

2) Why would you demand that Keith do this he is not even involved with any decision making but rather him and the other forum devs catch the blunt end of being verbally assaulted. At one time one of them was even receiving threatening phone calls at his personal house from players. They have said man times in their stream that they do not have answers because the company completely lacks transparency even with their employees.

 

3) Whiny Children-

- why can't we have same sex romances

- it's not fair 1 class can beat another in pvp

- I'm mad this part of the story didn't end this way

- threads like this one

- ect aka 90% of the general forums

Like kids not getting their way. They made improvements to the game 10% whined and they listened, then 20%, 30%, and so on. And people wonder why they don't communicate more with the player base?