is it time for one US Megaserver ?

[Nee-Elder]

1 hour ago, casirabit said:

.  I was on SWG when they started doing that,

So was i , Pre-cu JTL launch thru CU era thru SOE betrayal NGE thru half-decent NGE-2 and all the way to the bitter end w/ atmospheric flight.  ( SWG still = BEST game ever imo )

Then i came over here to SWTOR  and somehow, sadly, i'm still here.

1 hour ago, casirabit said:

 and then they closed the game.  

eh, i'm not so sure that same thing will also happen to SWTOR so fast though.

First, because i don't see (and haven't heard) of any SWG-2 or other new SW based MMO yet.  ( Ubisoft version is just single-player unfortunately )

Second, why bother with these new forums and 64-bit , if  EA just gonna shut things down in 2023 ?

Edited December 24, 2022 by Nee-Elder

[OlBuzzard]

It sounds more like:

** PvP ... enjoys having more people to finally populate enough matches.
** PvE ...  sees potential overcrowding (particularly where open areas have problems with needed respawns) ...  and  (regardless of personal preferences) some mob rule can mess things up.  About the only group that might see this differently MIGHT be raid groups (depends on how their numbers are doing these days).
** PvE RP... Regardless of what some think ..  I have personally seen too many folks receive outright ridicule from others outside of their RP group.  IT can and WILL mess things up for RP players.  Unless ...  hmm ...  Can one of these mega-servers be partitioned off to take care of RP groups.   Sorry for the total lack of tech savvy ..  Just asking.  (BTW..  no I'm not a part of a guild or RP group.  I simply respect how they approach playing the game.  

 

Edit:  UGH !!  The whole matter ...  proving that we've lost so much that we are now down to one mega server (if you want to call it that) ...  and even though 64 bit is being discussed ... it's actually time to:
"Turn out the lights ... the party's over"  .. ????

[/facepalm]

Edited December 24, 2022 by OlBuzzard

[casirabit]

4 minutes ago, OlBuzzard said:

It sounds more like:

** PvP ... enjoys having more people to finally populate enough matches.
** PvE ...  sees potential overcrowding (particularly where open areas have problems with needed respawns) ...  and  (regardless of personal preferences) some mob rule can mess things up.  About the only group that might see this differently MIGHT be raid groups (depends on how their numbers are doing these days).
** PvE RP... Regardless of what some think ..  I have personally seen too many folks receive outright ridicule from others outside of their RP group.  IT can and WILL mess things up for RP players.  Unless ...  hmm ...  Can one of these mega-servers be partitioned off to take care of RP groups.   Sorry for the total lack of tech savvy ..  Just asking.  (BTW..  no I'm not a part of a guild or RP group.  I simply respect how they approach playing the game.  

Thanks, and unlike a particular poster, not all groups of RP players are ERP role-players.   Some groups that do regular RP have been ridiculed for doing RP on the fleet even though they are not using general chat.  They are in one location doing their RP in "say" and using some emotes from time to time, and that is when they get ridiculed and told to leave.

 

I doubt they would partition off a section in a mega-server for role-players, so I see it messing it up and having role-players leave the game.   While it may not be necessary to others, it could be essential to those who like RP, and not finding people of like minds could cause them to leave.   

[SteveTheCynic]

18 minutes ago, casirabit said:

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.  

And yet GW2 has been on AWS since September 2017 (they released the Path of Fire expansion at the same time as they moved to AWS, no less...), so "putting things in the cloud" is not an indication of much of anything.

[SteveTheCynic]

5 minutes ago, casirabit said:

They are in one location doing their RP in "say" and using some emotes from time to time, and that is when they get ridiculed and told to leave.

Fleet is small enough that /say covers an unusually large fraction of the map compared to even small planets.

[illgot]

15 hours ago, DWho said:

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.

I am currently in instance 3 of DK with no one around. More than a few times on SF I find myself seeing 2-3 instances of planets I am on and never have issues with over crowding unless I am stuck on a planet with one instance. Yes, I occasionally see a couple of other people but I am playing an MMO, I should never expect to see zero people in the open world.

Edited December 25, 2022 by illgot

[JediQuaker]

I don't recall any great change in the speed or ease of grouping etc, with the last server merger. I don't necessarily see how another merger would 'really' change things. 🤔

[illgot]

53 minutes ago, JediQuaker said:

I don't recall any great change in the speed or ease of grouping etc, with the last server merger. I don't necessarily see how another merger would 'really' change things. 🤔

Satele Shan population at 1pm on a Sunday: Empire 83, Republic 74. Almost two hours of waiting and no Arena or Warzone for my sub level 45 character.

Star Forge population at 1pm on Sunday: Empire 207, Republic 147. I queued up for Arena and Warzone just to see what would happen and a game popped up in less than a minute. This was also on a sub level 45 character.

A greater population means greater chances for group content. Try to find groups on Leviathan at various times of the day then compare that to Star Forge...

Edited December 25, 2022 by illgot

[Nee-Elder]

38 minutes ago, illgot said:

Star Forge population at 1pm on Sunday: Empire 207, Republic 147. I queued up for Arena and Warzone just to see what would happen and a game popped up in less than a minute.

Keep in mind,  Fleet has multiple 'instances' ...and... Not everyone  queue's for  WZ's from just the Fleet.

Many players, like me, queue from our personal-ship  because the reload & requeue  time is miniscule as compared to crowded Fleet.

[illgot]

7 minutes ago, Nee-Elder said:

Keep in mind,  Fleet has multiple 'instances' ...and... Not everyone  queue's for  WZ's from just the Fleet.

Many players, like me, queue from our personal-ship  because the reload & requeue  time is miniscule as compared to crowded Fleet.

SS had one instance of fleet for Empire and one instance of fleet for Republic.

SF had three instances for Empire and two for Republic. 

I dropped down to each instance and got a count before I totaled them up.

[OlBuzzard]

Hmmm  .. this is starting to sound more like a debate over PvP vs PvE (with the addition of RP: PvE) style of approach to SWTOR.

The issue with enough to form up even PvE Ops and raids has even been a topic of discussion from time to time.

I'm not so sure that the server(s) will necessarily settle these issues.

[casirabit]

31 minutes ago, OlBuzzard said:

Hmmm  .. this is starting to sound more like a debate over PvP vs PvE (with the addition of RP: PvE) style of approach to SWTOR.

The issue with enough to form up even PvE Ops and raids has even been a topic of discussion from time to time.

I'm not so sure that the server(s) will necessarily settle these issues.

Normally it comes down to that.

[DWho]

3 hours ago, illgot said:

Satele Shan population at 1pm on a Sunday: Empire 83, Republic 74. Almost two hours of waiting and no Arena or Warzone for my sub level 45 character.

Star Forge population at 1pm on Sunday: Empire 207, Republic 147. I queued up for Arena and Warzone just to see what would happen and a game popped up in less than a minute. This was also on a sub level 45 character.

A greater population means greater chances for group content. Try to find groups on Leviathan at various times of the day then compare that to Star Forge...

So move your characters to Star Forge, simple as that. As I said before combining SF and SS will result in increased crowding across the board. A new instance does not open until you hit the threshold. If the threshold is 100 and you have 50 on SF and 49 on SS, combined you would have 1 instance of 99. Not to mention that merging servers will result in having to rename characters and will also all but eliminate the ability of old time players to create new characters without deleting dozens of old characters.

Greater population means more renames for characters and less playable characters,

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

Well, here's my thoughts on this.

Right from the get go let me just say straight out I am against any server mergers with Star Forge. Period.

I play on Star Forge since the last server mergers. Simply put, Star Forge does not need a merger for anything. Our quece times for all content are fine. There are OPs forming on fleet literally 24/7. 3 am, 4 am, 5 am, it never ends.

You quece for an FP, even 2am, if you have to wait 2 minutes, its a lot.

Simply put, Star Forge doesn't have any issues to speak of regarding group content. If you are not using the 'allies' channel, which for those that may not know is a channel you can join that is specifically for group content, you are missing out on a lot of possibilities for all types of group content, from OPS to FPS to Heroics. Not really for PVP much tho, but you even see people asking for PVP grouping there on occasion as well. The great thing about allies channel is it doesn't matter where you are, you can use it and see it from anywhere.

If anyone wants screen shots to back up any of this, just ask.

The major reason I am against any merger, and this isn't open to discussion is the second you have only one server for the most populated continent per square mile on the face of the earth, you are signing the death warrant of the game for real. It's also the home country of the game creators and where their home officers are and the home of the creator of the Star Wars franchise, George Lucas.  People aren't going to join a game or go back to a game, that has only one server for the United States. I certainly wouldn't. So I see it is a very bad thing for the game as a whole. It would expedite its end.

There is also the issue of when you have a problem with the server, than that means lights out for everyone in the United States.

I don't play on SS, so I'm not going to speak for the true state of things there. But I find it very suspicious that there are some people there who are saying that things aren't as bad there as some people are making it out to be.

Even if things are as some people say they are, I'm sorry, but, that's an SS problem, not an SF problem. And people on SF shouldn't have to suffer for it. Given that transfers are always an option, there is no reason to have a merger. Just transfer. You don't want to pay for it? I don't think a server merger is warranted because people don't want to pay for transfers.

If the roles were reversed, while I too might feel bad about it, I certainly wouldn't expect people on the other server to be willing to suffer for it. I would just transfer.

Harbingerites have been lying about things about the server since the merger. When they come on here and starting telling people "Star Forge is the RP server and SS is the PVP/Raider server" which was horseshyt because they didn't like the fact they were no longer the biggest server in the game. So I am very suspicious about some of the claims being made when I see some people saying SS isn't as bad as some people are making it out.

Is it less populated? Of course it is, all the other servers are, all the other servers were formed by combining 3 old servers, whereas Star Forge was created combining 5 old servers.

Just because they have longer quece times on SS than Star Forge isn't a reason for a merger. Simple math explains that.

If there is a merger because of that, than it should be the people on SS that have to change their character names, not people on SF.

That's not an issue for me, I only play one character, and no one else would use that name.

I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound insensitive here, if the claims being made are true, yeah, that kinda sucks, but, I care about Star Forge's and the players on it's well being first and the longevity of the game as a whole.

One server for the United States is signing the death warrant of the game.

To say nothing of the many technical problems that could and would arise from a population of that size on one server. As that would be one server than in effect is a combination of 8 old servers. We don't know the numbers of players who have left the game and players that have joined the game since than.

You have issues with SS, transfer to Star Forge. A person's individual issues shoudn't trump the negative affects to the whole.

This string is just about people's opinions on this matter, and expressing what there vote would be with regard to a server merger. - This is my opinion, and my vote is against a server merger between SS and SF.

I don't have any issue with anyone who is of a different opinion than me, people are entitled to their opinions.

 

 

 

Edited December 25, 2022 by WayOfTheWarriorx

[illgot]

3 hours ago, OlBuzzard said:

Hmmm  .. this is starting to sound more like a debate over PvP vs PvE (with the addition of RP: PvE) style of approach to SWTOR.

The issue with enough to form up even PvE Ops and raids has even been a topic of discussion from time to time.

I'm not so sure that the server(s) will necessarily settle these issues.

not really.

PvE and PvP gain advantages when the servers merge.

The chances of finding group content, killing world bosses, invading enemy bases, completing flashpoints, PvP queues, GSF queues, all increase when the two servers merge because the available population will increase for both servers.

Solo content opens up more. The more world instances there are, the more chances a player has to find an empty zone. If there is only one world instance, you have no chance to drop to another instance. There have been many times on SS where we only had one instance but I had to wait in line behind a few people because we were all crowd in that single instance. Just bad luck to have 4-5 people working the same missions. On SF I can usually find another PvE instance available for the lower worlds because it is busy enough to have 2-3 instances open. Once the worlds become PvP flagged I can usually enter the PvP instance of any world and solo as much as I want rarely seeing anyone.

Trading becomes easier. The GTN is stocked with everything from both SS and SF. At the moment the GTN on SS is empty and expensive. Once the servers combine everyone on that server will have access to more items.

Stronghold decorators should be excited. Strongholds and decorations will be combined from both servers. Unlike transfers which only copy the highest number of decorations, server merges combines what you have on both servers. Transfer one character now so you can double your decorations and plan your strongholds so you can have at least one of each stronghold.

Outside of prime time Satele Shan server is pretty dead. I have 45 characters there and basically abandoned Satele Shan and primary on Star Forge. On Star Forge I can now find groups almost 24/7 where as on Satele Shan even during prime time I am waiting 10-20 minutes for a single PvP group to pop. Outside of 4-8 pm EST and I may as well not bother queuing up on Satele Shan.

The only real negative to server merges is the least active players will lose their names. Players with over 100 characters total may get locked out of making new characters until they fall under the 100 character limit. My only suggestion is plan for the future, make as many characters as you can on each server with a lot of different looks so when the servers combine you can pick 1 of 200 premade characters to level.

Edited December 26, 2022 by illgot

[DWho]

On one of the slowest days of the year (Sunday is Christmas Day and 1:00 in the US and is right when people are getting ready to spend Christmas with their families) you were still getting pops of less than a minute on Star Forge. How could merging servers possibly make this better, instead of 45 seconds, it takes 30 seconds. There will not be more instances open, there will guaranteed be less (or at best the same number) because of the way instances are opened, so your "improving solo play" argument is just flat out wrong. I'm starting to agree with the people saying what is really being pushed for is free Server Transfers and honestly, that is a better solution than a server merge for everyone.

Any player that is at the cap for their account (which is not necessarily 100 alts since you have to purchase additional slots to go past 24 as a sub) will have to delete characters to make new ones. So a player with as few as 25 characters could have to delete characters to make a new one since the "base" slots do not add, only the purchased slots on the two servers do. For example, I am currently at my character cap on both Star Forge (47 characters) and Satele Shan (27 characters). Merged, my cap would be 50, not 74, so I would have to delete 24 characters to get back under the "cap" or buy 25 additional character slots. I already deleted over a dozen characters after the last server merge just so I could try a Nautolan, which I hadn't tried before.

[illgot]

1 hour ago, DWho said:

On one of the slowest days of the year (Sunday is Christmas Day and 1:00 in the US and is right when people are getting ready to spend Christmas with their families) you were still getting pops of less than a minute on Star Forge. How could merging servers possibly make this better, instead of 45 seconds, it takes 30 seconds.

The increased group activity is for the people on Satele Shan not Star Forge... oh you don't care that players on Satele Shan can't find PvP or have a hard time completing group activities... sure.

1 hour ago, DWho said:

There will not be more instances open, there will guaranteed be less (or at best the same number) because of the way instances are opened, so your "improving solo play" argument is just flat out wrong. I'm starting to agree with the people saying what is really being pushed for is free Server Transfers and honestly, that is a better solution than a server merge for everyone.

Increasing the server population means less world instances? How does that work because yeah, I'm totally lost here. Since I now play mainly on Star Forge, if the population is increased 30-40%... then we'll have less instances per world open... in fact we will have world instances shutting down because of the population increase?

1 hour ago, DWho said:

Any player that is at the cap for their account (which is not necessarily 100 alts since you have to purchase additional slots to go past 24 as a sub) will have to delete characters to make new ones. So a player with as few as 25 characters could have to delete characters to make a new one since the "base" slots do not add, only the purchased slots on the two servers do. For example, I am currently at my character cap on both Star Forge (47 characters) and Satele Shan (27 characters). Merged, my cap would be 50, not 74, so I would have to delete 24 characters to get back under the "cap" or buy 25 additional character slots. I already deleted over a dozen characters after the last server merge just so I could try a Nautolan, which I hadn't tried before.

Right, 100 is just the max character capacity per server atm.

Server mergers are going to happen. Server transfer discounts have always been a precursor to server merges to help players pick their server before the merge. There is no point in having a dead server like Satele Shan leaving existing players to think the game is dead and new players to think they wasted their time trying this game out.

Edited December 26, 2022 by illgot

[DWho]

16 minutes ago, illgot said:

I thought that if you have an excess of characters past your old servers character limit, you still have access to all the characters after the server merge.

Maybe https://forums.swtor.com/topic/852600-new-characters-after-merge/ is wrong and my memory is incorrect.

This is true (you don't actually lose access to the characters unless you have more than 100 total after the merge (the server max still applies), but you will not be able to create any new characters until you drop below the base free slots plus all of the purchased slots. If you are a sub you have 24 free slots, so if you purchased 12 more slots total across the merging servers you have a maximum of 36 unlocked slots on the new merged server. In that case if you have more than 36 characters on the merged server you have to drop down to 35 characters before you can create a new one (which is what that thread says)
 

30 minutes ago, illgot said:

Increasing the server population means less world instances? How does that work because yeah, I'm totally lost here. Since I now play mainly on Star Forge, if the population is increased 30-40%... then we'll have less instances open... in fact we will have world instances shutting down because of the population increase?

To explain the situation with instances more clearly, there are basically three possible combinations of server populations

High/High - which gives you the same number of instances with basically the same instance population (no improvement relative to either server)

High/Low - which gives you at best two instances which will likely be the same as what they were on the "unmerged" servers. Depending on your perspective, that could be either an improvement or a degradation (if your server was the low one, you see basically the same thing you saw before. If you were the high one, you see an improvement). Depending on how Low the Low server is, you could end up with only 1 more populated instance, instead of the "two" you would have had.

Low/Low - which most likely gives you a single instance with a larger population than either source server.

Effectively, it is no net gain overall relative to the servers as they currently exist.

High is 80% or more of the threshold while Low is 50% or less of the threshold.

From what I can see, the threshold for all planets is 90-100. Fleet is higher, though not really relevant to crowding issues since you are not really competing against anyone for anything there (unless you count people parking their mounts on top of vendors to grief people, but that is a different thread). On dual faction planets, it appears lower since players from both factions are counted toward opening a new instance. So as they say, your mileage may vary on these planets depending on how many of the opposing faction you are "paired" with in the instance you are in. You can never get more instances than you start with, that's just math (100% of threshold + 100% of threshold is still only two instances, it can never result in three)

40 minutes ago, illgot said:

The increased group activity is for the people on Satele Shan not Star Forge... oh you don't care that players on Satele Shan can't find PvP or have a hard time completing group activities... sure.

One could also look at it as you not caring about the increased difficulty for solo players completing their tasks on Star Forge where the populations would be increased.

That you can't get any pops on SS for group content really tells you how few players are actually interested in it on that server and adding that few players would not significantly improve any group activity on a merged server. Most of the group players already migrated to Star Forge and its higher population. What's left on Satele Shan is primarily "solo" players.

[illgot]

26 minutes ago, DWho said:

This is true (you don't actually lose access to the characters unless you have more than 100 total after the merge (the server max still applies), but you will not be able to create any new characters until you drop below the base free slots plus all of the purchased slots. If you are a sub you have 24 free slots, so if you purchased 12 more slots total across the merging servers you have a maximum of 36 unlocked slots on the new merged server. In that case if you have more than 36 characters on the merged server you have to drop down to 35 characters before you can create a new one (which is what that thread says)
 

To explain the situation with instances more clearly, there are basically three possible combinations of server populations

High/High - which gives you the same number of instances with basically the same instance population (no improvement relative to either server)

High/Low - which gives you at best two instances which will likely be the same as what they were on the "unmerged" servers. Depending on your perspective, that could be either an improvement or a degradation (if your server was the low one, you see basically the same thing you saw before. If you were the high one, you see an improvement). Depending on how Low the Low server is, you could end up with only 1 more populated instance, instead of the "two" you would have had.

Low/Low - which most likely gives you a single instance with a larger population than either source server.

Effectively, it is no net gain overall relative to the servers as they currently exist.

High is 80% or more of the threshold while Low is 50% or less of the threshold.

From what I can see, the threshold for all planets is 90-100. Fleet is higher, though not really relevant to crowding issues since you are not really competing against anyone for anything there (unless you count people parking their mounts on top of vendors to grief people, but that is a different thread). On dual faction planets, it appears lower since players from both factions are counted toward opening a new instance. So as they say, your mileage may vary on these planets depending on how many of the opposing faction you are "paired" with in the instance you are in. You can never get more instances than you start with, that's just math (100% of threshold + 100% of threshold is still only two instances, it can never result in three)

One could also look at it as you not caring about the increased difficulty for solo players completing their tasks on Star Forge where the populations would be increased.

That you can't get any pops on SS for group content really tells you how few players are actually interested in it on that server and adding that few players would not significantly improve any group activity on a merged server. Most of the group players already migrated to Star Forge and its higher population. What's left on Satele Shan is primarily "solo" players.

The increase in instances would be the most benefit to Satele Shan players. Currently on Satele Shan it is not common to find more than 1 world instance open. If you run into a group of people farming the same area it can be a wait because there is no other instance open. The increase in world instances and increase in group content is always going to be benefit the people stuck on the smaller server more.

You really think "most" players who like group activites have abandoned Satele Shan and transferred to Star Forge so it is fine players may not see group content outside a few hours during East Coast prime time?

That no one Satele Shan or Star Forge will benefit from having a greater pool of players to access group activities with or buy and sell more items to?

Edited December 26, 2022 by illgot

[DWho]

14 minutes ago, illgot said:

The increase in instances would be the most benefit to Satele Shan players. Currently on Satele Shan it is not common to find more than 1 world instance open. If you run into a group of people farming the same area it can be a wait because there is no other instance open. The increase in world instances and increase in group content is always going to be benefit the people stuck on the smaller server more.

You really think "most" players who like group activites have abandoned Satele Shan and transferred to Star Forge so it is fine players may not see group content outside a few hours during East Coast prime time?

That no one Satele Shan or Star Forge will benefit from having a greater pool of players to access group activities with or buy and sell more items to?

To answer your three questions:

1) it may be a benefit to a player on one server but it is a detriment to the a player on the other so it is net, no improvement (and net is what is important). There is also the option to transfer servers if you want better group play.

2) yes I do think most group players have already transferred and once again, you have the option to transfer to a server with a population more to your liking.

3) The gain relative to Star Forge will be insignificant in relation to group play and generally detrimental to solo play

To be clear, if they reduced the number of players needed to open a new instance, made sure no one lost their character names, and made it so no one had to delete characters to make new ones, I'd be neutral to a merger. I still don't think it's a good idea, but the negatives would be mitigated.

[eabevella]

Star Forge has enough population that everything pops fast even at 3am US time.

Satele Shan is more introvert, probably due to lower pug population. People run stuffs within their guilds no problem. Endgame raid groups are still strong there. And if you are willing to start a group in gen chat, you'll get enough people to form one. I don't play PvP but I have no problem having GSF pops.

[illgot]

2 hours ago, DWho said:

To answer your three questions:

1) it may be a benefit to a player on one server but it is a detriment to the a player on the other so it is net, no improvement (and net is what is important). There is also the option to transfer servers if you want better group play.

2) yes I do think most group players have already transferred and once again, you have the option to transfer to a server with a population more to your liking.

3) The gain relative to Star Forge will be insignificant in relation to group play and generally detrimental to solo play

To be clear, if they reduced the number of players needed to open a new instance, made sure no one lost their character names, and made it so no one had to delete characters to make new ones, I'd be neutral to a merger. I still don't think it's a good idea, but the negatives would be mitigated.

so in your mind everyone that wants to access to group activities like PvP, killing world bosses, etc have already left Satele Shan and it's fine that Satele Shan remain a dead server because that's how everyone that plays there likes it... and anyone new that joins Satele Shan deserves less access to group content because we on the forums have unofficially deemed it the what... "soloers server"?

And that merging servers would be to the detriment to everyone on Star Forge because it would make Star Forge too busy... but not so busy to effect queues or increase the number of instances open in any world on Star Forge.

I think I got it.

I'm excited because a server merge will help everyone on Satele Shan while also benefiting everyone on Star Forge. You may not like the idea that our server will get a bit busier having more items on the GTN along with more players buying and selling, but I am. I'm also not worried about over crowding. We have the new 7.0 tagging system, the developers are lowering the timers on a lot of objectives and mobs and have been constantly updating them since 7.0. The only thing I am concerned with is losing character names. I haven't kept a single good name over the years so I'm not expecting to keep any after the upcoming merger.

Edited December 26, 2022 by illgot

[OlBuzzard]

So much to think about right now in order to really look at this objectively.

** PvP / and PvE areas that really do need higher numbers of players in order to properly populate said areas for group participation (as properly needed ...  not to just scrape by).
** A proper place for RP experience allowing players to be properly emersed in interactions with each other and the game.  I have personally seen what can happen to those that are just trying to enjoy SWTOR in that context (Doesn't always work well for them).
** Obviously the PTS is set up for 64 bit review.  I'm not 100% just how much if this is an indication of a new engine or not (seems like some has suggested that it is).  If that is the case IMO SWTOR is evidently investing some capitol in the game.  (More than I might have thought a few months ago).  This changes the company's outlook significantly. 
** "The cloud idea" ....  just exactly what does that mean? More than one server .. or perhaps one REALLY mega server... AND can that be partitioned.   By that I mean can the HD be set up to reflect the same game with different options? (PvP / RP / PvE).  
** How does this new overview affect the rest of the community.
** Merging things:  There are other concerns such as player names, availability of character slots, Alts that are used in crafting on a larger scale...  And I'm quite certain that there are additional matters to review that are just as important to others who log onto SWTOR every day.

It should be noted that while do not have the tech savvy to answer these questions as much as I would like to.  I do believe that as a group discussing all of it is probably a good thing.  

For now ...  I still think that one big mega server (in the context of everyone simply squeezed into one place) is probably not in everyone's best interest.  That said:  Perhaps if some of these other questions could be answered that might clear some things up a bit.

Yes ... I realize that there might some benefits short term.  But overall ...  We do need to consider how this could potentially affect the rest of the community.   I think we really do need more information (as we mentioned above).

Edited December 26, 2022 by OlBuzzard
clarification

[SteveTheCynic]

On 12/26/2022 at 6:13 AM, OlBuzzard said:

** Obviously the PTS is set up for 64 bit review.  I'm not 100% just how much if this is an indication of a new engine or not (seems like some has suggested that it is).

Anyone who thinks that "transition to 64-bit" means "transition to a new engine" is delusional.  All it means is that they are preparing to leave the world of 32-bit SWTOR behind.

If they were redoing the engine, they would have said so.

[OlBuzzard]

1 hour ago, SteveTheCynic said:

Anyone who thinks that "transition to 64-bit" means "transition to a new engine" is delusional.  All it means is that they are preparing to leave the world of 32-bit SWTOR behind.

If they were redoing the engine, they would have said so.

Ah !!  I thought you had mentioned something about this beforehand.  I deep appreciate you taking the time clear this up.  It's obvious that I know just about enough of this stuff to get into some real trouble !