is it time for one US Megaserver ?

[Toraak]

10 minutes ago, illgot said:

There is a 50% discount on server transfers so I think we can almost guarantee Bioware has set up plans for a server merge. I wasn't around for every server merge but the ones I experienced had server transfer discounts preceding a merger.

I just find it odd that people would vote against a change that would obviously improve the game by giving all players increased group content in an MMO.

 

Not everyone likes massively populated servers. I can easily understand it both ways. Mega server would be better for group oriented players, but for those that do mainly solo activities like dailies or heroics it may not be to that type of players liking.

I know when I'm doing dailies, I don't like the higher population servers. It takes me much longer to get through them if more people are around. 

 

For myself it's a mixed bag. More people in queu for GSF queu's, but also more people to deal with for other activities like dailies (which I wouldn't like.

 

Edit: Also I wouldn't want another merger anyway for a different reason. I have 60 characters on SF, and 70 on SS. I wouldn't like to have to delete characters due to a merger if I ever wanted to make any new characters for any other reason. The character cap of 100 would be a problem for me.

Edited December 23, 2022 by Toraak

[illgot]

Just now, Toraak said:

Not everyone likes massively populated servers. I can easily understand it both ways. Mega server would be better for group oriented players, but for those that do mainly solo activities like dailies or heroics it may not be to that type of players liking.

I know when I'm doing dailies, I don't like the higher population servers. It takes me much longer to get through them if more people are around. 

 

For myself it's a mixed bag. More people in queu for GSF queu's, but also more people to deal with for other activities like dailies (which I wouldn't like0.

 

except for the starter worlds which usually only have one or two instances and no PvP option, you can easily drop down to a less population instance of the game or the PvP instance which has almost no one in it. Even on Star Forge when I am in a PvP instance I rarely run into people on planets.

Wanting to play alone or not seeing people can and will easily be accomplished if you change out of a busy instance.

I can only think of a handful of times I met people in a pvp instance while doing dailies and even less times that person was an opposing faction because very few dailies cross locations. We always left each other alone and with the tagging system we have now, even if it is crowded you can tag a mob for the mission loot or kill count you need.

[Toraak]

Just now, illgot said:

except for the starter worlds which usually only have one or two instances and no PvP option, you can easily drop down to a less population instance of the game or the PvP instance which has almost no one in it. Even on Star Forge when I am in a PvP instance I rarely run into people on planets.

Wanting to play alone or not seeing people can and will easily be accomplished if you change out of a busy instance.

I can only think of a handful of times I met people in a pvp instance while doing dailies and even less times that person was an opposing faction because very few dailies cross locations. We always left each other alone and with the tagging system we have now, even if it is crowded you can tag a mob for the mission loot or kill count you need.

Funny I run into people in the PvP instances at least 2-3 times a week when doing dailies. Especially if it's one of the planets that is for a Galactic Season Objective.

[illgot]

17 minutes ago, Toraak said:

Funny I run into people in the PvP instances at least 2-3 times a week when doing dailies. Especially if it's one of the planets that is for a Galactic Season Objective.

Galactic Season objectives can be group oriented and are shared across faction. It is not uncommon to run across more players when trying to kill a World Boss or take out guards at the other factions base.

Heroics and other dailies are usually faction oriented and rarely cross over locations.

so you run across people 2-3 times a week? In an MMO?

Edited December 23, 2022 by illgot

[denavin]

One over crowed server is NOT what is good for the game.....

[ThanderSnB]

If they are switching to cloud servers (it's being tested on PTS), it would be very easy to merge servers. Well, they'd have to write scripts to combine all the data from both servers, but they wouldn't have to mess with any hardware. Cloud servers can scale up resources as needed. There won't be much of a technical reason for not doing it, so it would only be a question of how bad things are on the low population servers. I think the metric would be if there's no operations or endgame PvP going on due to lack of players even during prime time, it's time to merge servers. On the other hand, if there are still enough players to form endgame groups, it's not really needed.

For me personally, I use other servers for extra character slots to go through story. If they merged servers, I want all my character slots that I have now. In other words, if two servers are merged into one, they better double everyone's character slots on those servers. I have 50 slots on both servers right now, so for me after a merger, I would expect to have 100 character slots unlocked. For anyone with 100 (the current max), they should have 200 after the merger.

[Sundown]

Since as far as I remember the server locations are all the same (per continent) I have no real issue with merging them. But the downside is, that there are some people having disjoint legacies, and of course the character names will be an issue.

So unless really necessary from a population health point of view I'd rather keep the current servers.

Can't really confirm what was said about Tulak Hord - looks pretty ok to me, at least you can get most things done (maybe not at any given time).

[illgot]

1 hour ago, ThanderSnB said:

If they are switching to cloud servers (it's being tested on PTS), it would be very easy to merge servers. Well, they'd have to write scripts to combine all the data from both servers, but they wouldn't have to mess with any hardware. Cloud servers can scale up resources as needed. There won't be much of a technical reason for not doing it, so it would only be a question of how bad things are on the low population servers. I think the metric would be if there's no operations or endgame PvP going on due to lack of players even during prime time, it's time to merge servers. On the other hand, if there are still enough players to form endgame groups, it's not really needed.

For me personally, I use other servers for extra character slots to go through story. If they merged servers, I want all my character slots that I have now. In other words, if two servers are merged into one, they better double everyone's character slots on those servers. I have 50 slots on both servers right now, so for me after a merger, I would expect to have 100 character slots unlocked. For anyone with 100 (the current max), they should have 200 after the merger.

when they merged servers in the past all previous characters, strongholds, decorations, etc were merged together. So if you had the max of 100 characters per server and two servers merged, you would end up with 200 characters. I haven't read anything about deleting a character in a 200/200 scenario. You may just end up with 199/199 and be restricted from making a new character until you hit below 100.

Strongholds were the same, I had something like 20 strongholds, mostly copies of the same ones I just happen to have unlocked on all the servers.

Decorations stack and get added together. There are a few limited decorations which you should only have 10/10 of and I ended up with 30/10 after a few merges.

  

1 hour ago, Sundown said:

Since as far as I remember the server locations are all the same (per continent) I have no real issue with merging them. But the downside is, that there are some people having disjoint legacies, and of course the character names will be an issue.

So unless really necessary from a population health point of view I'd rather keep the current servers.

Can't really confirm what was said about Tulak Hord - looks pretty ok to me, at least you can get most things done (maybe not at any given time).

Legacy names are no longer unique.  Character names still are. I don't think I have kept a single character name I wanted through the years of merges. Every time I come back my played characters all have to be renamed. Hopefully Bioware moves from unique character names to unique account IDs

Edited December 23, 2022 by illgot

[Sundown]

56 minutes ago, illgot said:

Legacy names are no longer unique.  Character names still are. I don't think I have kept a single character name I wanted through the years of merges. Every time I come back my played characters all have to be renamed. Hopefully Bioware moves from unique character names to unique account IDs

Names are really an issue, that might lead to bad blood.

Regarding the legacies I meant really deliberately disjoint legacies with different names and individual progress. I did so when I got bored with my main one, just to feel "progress" again. But if they merge, I guess i will survive. 🤷‍♂️

[SteveTheCynic]

2 hours ago, Sundown said:

Since as far as I remember the server locations are all the same (per continent) I have no real issue with merging them

Before 2017, the US servers were in two locations, one on the east coast somewhere and one on the west coast somewhere.

 

[Toraak]

12 hours ago, illgot said:

Galactic Season objectives can be group oriented and are shared across faction. It is not uncommon to run across more players when trying to kill a World Boss or take out guards at the other factions base.

Heroics and other dailies are usually faction oriented and rarely cross over locations.

so you run across people 2-3 times a week? In an MMO?

Your assuming I do dailies/heroics everyday. I don't. But when I do I commonly find people in the PvP instance trying to do them there simply because it does have less population. It's not as populated as the PvE instances for sure, but you still run into people there.

 

Edit: BW needs to look at the need for a server merge from all aspects. Just because this is an MMO doesn't mean that having 1 mega server would be good for every playstyle. It would definitely be good for the traditional MMO Group oriented players, however BW also know's how many Solo players this game has. They need to take into consideration how it would affect that style of gameplay as well, and from my experience when I happen to do Solo play, it may not be the best thing for that gameplay style. 

 

But as I said it would be great for GSF, and other Group players (which I also do). I play both group and solo, which is why I said I see how it could be good, and bad for the game.

Edited December 23, 2022 by Toraak

[DWho]

8 hours ago, illgot said:

when they merged servers in the past all previous characters, strongholds, decorations, etc were merged together. So if you had the max of 100 characters per server and two servers merged, you would end up with 200 characters. I haven't read anything about deleting a character in a 200/200 scenario. You may just end up with 199/199 and be restricted from making a new character until you hit below 100.

Strongholds were the same, I had something like 20 strongholds, mostly copies of the same ones I just happen to have unlocked on all the servers.

Decorations stack and get added together. There are a few limited decorations which you should only have 10/10 of and I ended up with 30/10 after a few merges.

  

Legacy names are no longer unique.  Character names still are. I don't think I have kept a single character name I wanted through the years of merges. Every time I come back my played characters all have to be renamed. Hopefully Bioware moves from unique character names to unique account IDs

The issue with characters isn't total characters but unlocked character slots. With the last merge a lot of long time players ended up with more characters than they had unlocked character slots. This means that you cannot create any new characters until you delete enough characters to get below the unlocked character slots.

[Toraak]

Just now, DWho said:

The issue with characters isn't total characters but unlocked character slots. With the last merge a lot of long time players ended up with more characters than they had unlocked character slots. This means that you cannot create any new characters until you delete enough characters to get below the unlocked character slots.

I would definitely run into this problem. Just from SF and SS alone I have over 130 characters, so I wouldn't be able to create anymore unless I deleted almost half of them. I have 72 available after unlocks

[OlBuzzard]

14 hours ago, DarthCasus said:

If it happens, it happens. Until then, I'll gladly make it known that I'm not for it. If Bioware deems it necessary, they'll do it. Considering the nature of the forums and that this isn't a feedback thread posted by BW themselves, it seems that this thread was created for us to toss in our input, not advise Bioware on what should or should not be done, so I think my thoughts are quite welcome here at the very least. 

Someone also mentioned changes with the 64 bit stuff too.  Frankly, I have no clue if they are or not.  IF (and only if) we can still have the freedom we do no without encroaching on those who prefer RP style ...  I'm OK with it either way.   As for a merger for the sake of a merger ..  no thanks!  Not right now!

[DWho]

Right now, you have a choice to play on a populous server or a not populous server. With a mega-server that choice is taken away. If they would go to a mega server, they would need some sort of accommodation for those players that want to play their story and other content in a less crowded environment. Currently, there are several planets where the instance counter is set way too high for opening another instance (75 or higher on some pretty small planets). This would need to be fixed in a mega-server. It is possible that a mega server could handle more instances per planet and thus the number of players per instance could be reduced. This would have no impact on "group" players but would provide those who don't want to deal with large crowds while leveling their characters a similar experience to what they can get now. I'd vote against a mega server unless those issues (along with those revolving around unlocked character slots) were resolved and even then I would be hesitant to have all players on one server. The current situation with 2 North American servers seems to be the best option by far.

[Jett-Rinn]

Not unless I would be guaranteed to keep all of my characters names...Bioware name sniped several characters of mine for lame reasons.

 

They need to think of their customers if they do and not pull the shenanigans they did when the other mergers happened. 

Edited December 23, 2022 by Jett-Rinn

[OlBuzzard]

@DWhoAND @Jett-Rinn BOTH are very valid points.  I agree with you both!  Especially the character names...  I have a couple of alts that I have already redone from a previous merger...  It was a royal pain in the tail feathers!!   NO THANK YOU ...  (Please, not again).

That said:  NO to the merger!  

[casirabit]

Agreed, no mergers, please.  I have been here long enough, and the last time it was a headache, and then you have idiots (if the shoe fits, sorry) that will tell you that roleplaying is stupid and to go away to your stronghold and roleplay there.   It is not happening.

I also do not need the aggravation on my weeklies that a merger can bring.  Yes, you can switch, but sometimes that doesn't help; it is still crowded, and getting what I need to do can be a nightmare.

For those that say, well, group up.  I will group up with those in my guild or my friends.  Grouping with strangers is not my cup of tea.

 

Edited December 23, 2022 by casirabit

[illgot]

7.0 tagging system eliminated most of the issues with crowding. You can tag a mob now and it shares loot and objective tracking excluding players of the opposing factions. The developers have also been lowering the spawn timers for both mobs spawns and objective spawns required to complete missions.

The more people on a planet the more instances of that planet open up which leads to less crowding. I know, it's the converse of what many here are arguing, that if more people were active on their server it will create crowding situations in mission areas.

What happens if there is one crowded instance. Where are you going to go to finish your mission? What happens when there are four times the amount of people but now you have 5 instances availble. Now you have 5 instances to pick from one of which is usually has very few people in it. You get to avoid crowds more when there are a larger amount of players on a planet keeping multiple instances open.

So many of you argue "I don't want to be too crowded", "I don't want to see people while I play an MMO", "I don't want people to make fun of my group while we erotic roleplay in gen chat on fleet"...

none of these complaints are valid reasons to stand against merging the two NA servers because none of those will be negatively impacted by having more instances open... except maybe if your group continues to erotic roleplay '50 Shades of Sith' in gen chat on fleet.

Edited December 24, 2022 by illgot

[SteveTheCynic]

8 hours ago, illgot said:

7.0 tagging system eliminated most of the issues with crowding. You can tag a mob now and it shares loot and objective tracking excluding players of the opposing factions.

Except for problems with moments where all the mobs that you need have been deaded by those impromptu non-groups, and they have an absurdly long respawn time.  The Face Merchants, I'm looking at you!

[TonyTricicolo]

It will only give the illusion that the game is not on maintenance mode. 10,000 people spread across 6 servers or across 1 is still 10,000 people. 

[DWho]

10 hours ago, illgot said:

The more people on a planet the more instances of that planet open up which leads to less crowding. I know, it's the converse of what many here are arguing, that if more people were active on their server it will create crowding situations in mission areas.

This isn't true. You will at best have 2 instances open (unless they significantly lower the threshold for opening a new instance) that are equivalent to what is currently existing on the two NA servers. You are more likely to have only one instance with more people on it since there are a number of planets that are below the instance threshold on both servers now.

[casirabit]

14 hours ago, illgot said:

none of these complaints are valid reasons to stand against merging the two NA servers because none of those will be negatively impacted by having more instances open

According to you, no reason for merging will suffice because you are for merging.   Any reason a person has against merging is just as valid as yours for wanting mergers, except they do not agree with you, and that is where the problem is.  You don't like the fact that not everyone agrees with you.  

[Nee-Elder]

3 minutes ago, casirabit said:

 You don't like the fact that not everyone agrees with you.  

Who ever does?

p.s.  Mergers are probably comin' regardless, due to the whole 64-bit  & cloud thing--> https://forums.swtor.com/topic/926693-testing-64-bit-on-the-pts/#comment-9734415

[casirabit]

2 minutes ago, Nee-Elder said:

Who ever does?

p.s.  Mergers are probably comin' regardless, due to the whole 64-bit  & cloud thing--> https://forums.swtor.com/topic/926693-testing-64-bit-on-the-pts/#comment-9734415

That will also mean the game is coming closer to being shut down.  I was on SWG when they started doing that, and then they closed the game.