An update on the development of SWTOR

[black_pyros]

1 hour ago, TrixxieTriss said:

It’s the chicken & the egg situation. The reason there aren’t that many is because of the ping difference to the US. Most APAC players abandon the game when it was merged to the US west coast & most of the rest as soon as they moved the west coast to the east coast. Give us our APAC server back & it won’t just be the current APAC players still hanging around, it will be a bunch of old & new swtor players who come back.

Maybe it will be just fine for few weeks or even months. The novelty of a new server may bring players even outside the APAC region to try. After all, it will be first new server added since shortly after game release, when they added some servers to the 208 originals to have a total of like 214 or 215, and first new APAC server ever. But what about the returning players that soon realize game didn't add that much content since they left? Are they going to stay? Are they going to stay with the continued mismanagement of the game? Or is the game under Broadsword going to be managed better? Those are all big unknowns.

The worst thing that can happen is players will pay lots of money to transfer the characters to the new server, only to have to pay again to transfer back when the situation there is not going to develop well.

Edited June 26, 2023 by black_pyros

[black_pyros]

23 minutes ago, Toraak said:

My second point is that the way the servers have been (especially recently) with SF consistently going offline for whatever reason it is important for the US players to be able to go to SS when SF is down.

This shouldn't be a problem anymore after move to the cloud.

[ceryxp]

13 minutes ago, black_pyros said:

This shouldn't be a problem anymore after move to the cloud.

Well, save for when AWS is down.  Which it was earlier this month.

[DIVAvonFarstar]

23 minutes ago, ceryxp said:

Well, save for when AWS is down.  Which it was earlier this month.

Every server can fail from time to time, no one is immune to this, such a failure can usually only be compensated via redundant structures.

[sharpenedstick]

9 minutes ago, DIVAvonFarstar said:

Every server can fail from time to time, no one is immune to this, such a failure can usually only be compensated via redundant structures.

I'll never understand why there's a certain segment of MMO customers who are happy to defend failure.

If you go to the store and buy a can of Coke, only to discover on opening the can that it is empty, nobody would defend Coke by saying "well, most cans have Coke in them."

The reality may be that no company can guarantee 100% up-time. That doesn't relieve them of the responsibility to maintain server up-times for their customers.

[OlBuzzard]

4 hours ago, eabevella said:

Both of you are correct and incorrect.

APAC is a huge region and the most populated.

However, people in China don't play SWTOR because:

1) SW is not big in China.

2) the language barrier.

3) if they can even access the game (never bother to check, but very likely they can't lol)

I have a lot of SW fans/friends who are super interested in KOTOR/SWTOR but don't play them simply because it's in English. It's difficult to learn and master a language that uses a completely foreign grammar system. Most people just aren't good in English enough to play a full English MMORPG game and they don't want to play a story-heavy game when they can't understand the story.

2) is also why you don't see a lot of players from Japan (the biggest SW fan county in north-east Asia) or Korea. This exclude a huge population who LOVES Western MMORPG games (WoW and Overwatch are super popular in those countries).

 

All good points ..

IMO it's all about demographics / investment / returns.  Even though we might see the $$$$ potential someone inside of company XYZ might see it differently as a matter of their intended audience based on the afore mentioned formula (with a strong possibility of other considerations as well).

 

[ceryxp]

17 minutes ago, DIVAvonFarstar said:

Every server can fail from time to time, no one is immune to this, such a failure can usually only be compensated via redundant structures.

You miss the point.  There was a comment about merging Star Forge and Satele Shan, to which it was replied that it would be preferable to keep them separate due to SF's recent instability, from which came the reply that that would not matter following the move to the cloud.

When AWS went down earlier this month it had far reaching consequences including taking down the Boston Globe and New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/13/tech/amazon-web-services-outage/index.html

An AWS outage would mean the entire game is down.

[eabevella]

18 minutes ago, ceryxp said:

You miss the point.  There was a comment about merging Star Forge and Satele Shan, to which it was replied that it would be preferable to keep them separate due to SF's recent instability, from which came the reply that that would not matter following the move to the cloud.

When AWS went down earlier this month it had far reaching consequences including taking down the Boston Globe and New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/13/tech/amazon-web-services-outage/index.html

An AWS outage would mean the entire game is down.

Wow, I have no idea how "cloud" server works, so stupid question here:

Don't "cloud" server still have hard wares (like rooms with actual servers?) somewhere to store/run the data?

Can SWTOR ask AWS to have the game "servers" run on different parts of the "cloud" so that if one goes down, others won't?

[Traceguy]

21 minutes ago, eabevella said:

Wow, I have no idea how "cloud" server works, so stupid question here:

Don't "cloud" server still have hard wares (like rooms with actual servers?) somewhere to store/run the data?

Can SWTOR ask AWS to have the game "servers" run on different parts of the "cloud" so that if one goes down, others won't?

I would guess AWS has some kind of redundancy where the game is being served simultaneously on multiple servers at the same time. So if server #1 was to fail, server #2 would still be serving the game. Even if not running simultaneously, the game servers could be instantly instantiated on a second AWS server so downtime would be a few minutes. 

While AWS can fail completely as mentioned above, the chance of it happening is so small, that it shouldn't be something to fret or complain about (for SWTOR). Star Forge seems to fail every other day. AWS will not do such thing.

Edited June 26, 2023 by Traceguy

[xxSHOONYxx]

4 hours ago, eabevella said:

SW isn't big in China because the original trilogy was not released in China back in the 70's, people there didn't grow up with the franchise, thus no attachment to the franchise (unlike The Transformers. The G1 cartoon was released in China in the 80's and was a huge part of a lot of people's childhood, hence why the TF movies are a big hit there no matter how bad they are).

Pretty sure for the game to be available to the general Chinese population it needs a partnership with a Chinese company, reason why wow had to shut down their servers in china when the partnership between blizzard and netease broke down. Whether EA tried or not to enter that Chinese market i have no idea though.

Maybe they can still access it with a vpn, but not sure given how china bans like everything from the west unless they have a hand in regulating it.

[eabevella]

28 minutes ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

Pretty sure for the game to be available to the general Chinese population it needs a partnership with a Chinese company, reason why wow had to shut down their servers in china when the partnership between blizzard and netease broke down. Whether EA tried or not to enter that Chinese market i have no idea though.

Maybe they can still access it with a vpn, but not sure given how china bans like everything from the west unless they have a hand in regulating it.

Yeah, it's hilarious that they can't "officially" play Diablo 4 because of the reason lmao

1 hour ago, Traceguy said:

I would guess AWS has some kind of redundancy where the game is being served simultaneously on multiple servers at the same time. So if server #1 was to fail, server #2 would still be serving the game. Even if not running simultaneously, the game servers could be instantly instantiated on a second AWS server so downtime would be a few minutes. 

While AWS can fail completely as mentioned above, the chance of it happening is so small, that it shouldn't be something to fret or complain about (for SWTOR). Star Forge seems to fail every other day. AWS will not do such thing.

Interesting. Sounds like AWS should be more stable. I guess we'll see.

Edited June 26, 2023 by eabevella

[robwettengel]

Foreign companies operating in China require a Chinese partner that would then have full access to the foreign firm's IP. 

AWS--provided their will be sufficient redundancy provided for SWTOR--will likely be a boon for the game. Given that the test server was for APAC, I think we can assume that Amazon has a server farm in Australia or New Zealand. This could provide the game with a greater global reach. Being a military historian, I have no idea of the technical side of things, but the logistics of keeping some of these data facilities stocked with hard drives, servers, networking equipment, etc. must be impressive.

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

14 hours ago, black_pyros said:

The difference is a busy server like SF has at least a functional player economy that even the APAC players can participate in no matter what time they play. And what does a better play-ability mean if you are not a solo only player and are intertested in MMO parts of a MMO game and have to wait hours in queue? Nothing.

 

Have you seen Steam Charts recently? I know there are non-steam players, too but how many of the 5k average monthly steam players do you think are from APAC region? Certainly not 10k.

In both cases, it's hard to know how many players you would get from the APAC region if you had a APAC server. It wouldn't only be those players presently in the game that are in the APAC region, but there is the potential for more players from the APAC region than are presently in the game.

As Trixxie has pointed out, alot of APAC players left the game when they got rid of APAC server due to game play issues. If there was a new APAC server added, the potential for a return of a lot of those players exists that would be added to the current population of players from the APAC region. Also the potential is there for brand new players from the APAC region.

And Steam doesn't speak for the whole game population. It only speaks for those players that connect/play the game through Steam.

I don't play through Steam, and chances are good most of the old guard population in this game don't play thru Steam because Steam didn't even exist when we started playing the game.

[TrixxieTriss]

12 hours ago, black_pyros said:

think that constant complaints of how there is not enough players during APAC primetime online is a clear indication of how few are they.

I already explained the reason. It’s called  excessive ping which ruins the experience. Which is so much worse if you don’t live close to Sydney or Auckland.

I personally have to pay an extra $30 AU a month on top a potential swtor subscription for WTFast so my wife & I can connect to swtor without horrendous ping spikes (300ms+) every 19-20 secs. And we live close to Sydney  and get a normal 220-230ms ping to swtor. 

If you live in SE Asia or Tasmania or Perth, you can add 100-200ms more ping than than someone living in Sydney or Auckland. That is why so many APAC players quit. 

But during the APAC PTS trial, many of them came back to test it and said they’d stay if it was permanent. And that was with just a few weeks worth of word of mouth & some players like me contacting old guildies through social media.

That’s why BioWare/Broadsword are even considering it because of the numbers that came to try it. If it had only been a handful of us, they wouldn’t even be considering it.

Edited June 27, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

12 hours ago, Toraak said:

I disagree with them merging both US servers. Yes SS has less population. There is no denying that, however it is far from a dead server. From my experience it is more of a Solo content oriented server then SF is. What I mean by this is that the population there seems to be more interested in Solo content then Group content in general.

 

My second point is that the way the servers have been (especially recently) with SF consistently going offline for whatever reason it is important for the US players to be able to go to SS when SF is down. For me as a GSF player whenever SF is down I swap to SS, so I can still play swtor. (I don't really like playing on the EU servers due to the lag I get on them). If you combine the servers that option is gone, and once the server goes down anyone playing on that US server is out of luck, or forced to play on horrible ping from the EU server.

I agree whole-heartedly with this, I'm also against a merging of both US servcersm and you made some extra valid points to why they shouldn't be combined that I had never even thought of.

I see no reason why SF and SS should be combined.

It also raises the issue of 'dead servers'. For every person I see say 'SS is dead', there is always another person who comes along who plays on SS and says it's not dead.

Like you said, less populated? Yes. But less populated doesn't mean dead.

I think a lot of the calls for the combining of the servers, especially by those claiming they should do it because 'SS is dead' is really more about them not wanting to pay to transfer servers (which is easy enough and costs less than eating at McDonalds) and some others not being on the most populated server.

I also suspect that the reason why SF goes down as much as it does may be due to the big population there.

Lastly, I don't even know if SF could support a population as big as the combination of SF with SS. I think maybe it's an assumption that the servers can support an unlimited amount of players.

[TrixxieTriss]

12 hours ago, Toraak said:

disagree with them merging both US servers

I believe they won’t need to merge with an AWS setup. Think of each server being an instance on a physical server. With a setup like that, there is no reason they can add cross server queues on SS & SF for group content like PvP, Flash points & operations.

12 hours ago, Toraak said:

My second point is that the way the servers have been (especially recently) with SF consistently going offline for whatever reason it is important for the US players to be able to go to SS when SF is down

When the servers get migrated to AWS, they will be virtual and on the same hardware. If the hardware goes down, both servers go down. So this redundancy idea will be a moot point by then.

[TrixxieTriss]

12 hours ago, black_pyros said:

But what about the returning players that soon realize game didn't add that much content since they left?

You mean the 9-10 years worth of development since they left? 

You’re still here, I’m still here and so are thousands of other players who didn’t leave because content dried up. 

You keep missing the point of why those players left. It’s not because they didn’t like the game or that there wasn’t enough content. They specifically left because the lag & ping was a major issue when the servers got moved to the US. 

I don’t know how many more posts I have to make to explain this simple concept to you. THEY LEFT BECAUSE OF THE PING

[TrixxieTriss]

10 hours ago, eabevella said:

Wow, I have no idea how "cloud" server works, so stupid question here:

Don't "cloud" server still have hard wares (like rooms with actual servers?) somewhere to store/run the data?

Can SWTOR ask AWS to have the game "servers" run on different parts of the "cloud" so that if one goes down, others won't?

It would easier to discuss and explain if you first googled AWS cloud setup & AWS locations (data hubs / data centres). It’s too much to unpack otherwise because of the different ways AWS can be used.

Edited June 27, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[Char_Ell]

5 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

I believe they won’t need to merge with an AWS setup. Think of each server being an instance on a physical server. With a setup like that, there is no reason they can add cross server queues on SS & SF for group content like PvP, Flash points & operations.

When the servers get migrated to AWS, they will be virtual and on the same hardware. If the hardware goes down, both servers go down. So this redundancy idea will be a moot point by then.

So you're predicting cross server queues for NA and separately for EU servers when servers transition to AWS?  It would be cool but I'm not expecting it.  

[TrixxieTriss]

9 hours ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

Pretty sure for the game to be available to the general Chinese population it needs a partnership with a Chinese company, reason why wow had to shut down their servers in china when the partnership between blizzard and netease broke down. Whether EA tried or not to enter that Chinese market i have no idea though.

Maybe they can still access it with a vpn, but not sure given how china bans like everything from the west unless they have a hand in regulating it.

Yep, Swtor isn’t available in mainland china. They have extreme regulations on approved games & also their “internet Great Wall” system so they can control the flow of information on their internal internet. It’s why outside companies have to partner with Chinese ones if they want access to the market because the govt has to be able to control & monitor communications in & out of the country.

But Chinese is spoken in many other SEA countries like Taiwan & parts of the populations of Singapore, Malaysia & Indonesia. 

[TrixxieTriss]

8 minutes ago, Char_Ell said:

So you're predicting cross server queues for NA and separately for EU servers when servers transition to AWS?  It would be cool but I'm not expecting it.  

It’s definitely within AWS ability to offer cross server per regions. It would be an elegant & simple solution for the EU language servers & if a server lost too many players to get reasonable pops for proper group content. It’s why I think that will happen in the future at some point. But it may not happen straight away. 

[TrixxieTriss]

6 hours ago, robwettengel said:

Amazon has a server farm in Australia or New Zealand

It’s in Western Sydney. I tracked the IP when it was up & then confirmed the location with my IT contacts. 

[TrixxieTriss]

32 minutes ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

I see no reason why SF and SS should be combined.

It also raises the issue of 'dead servers'

This is why I think Broadsword will end up enabling cross server for group queues once the game is migrated to AWS.

[TrixxieTriss]

41 minutes ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

Lastly, I don't even know if SF could support a population as big as the combination of SF with SS. I think maybe it's an assumption that the servers can support an unlimited amount of players.

Just from a purely technical point of view, there is no technical reason that would prevent that when the game gets moved  to AWS. 

Edited June 27, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

3 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

This is why I think Broadsword will end up enabling cross server for group queues once the game is migrated to AWS.

That would be ideal and would solve a lot of issues people have with server population disparities.

I think it would make a lot of players happy.

From the limited information I do have about cloud servers (and I'm not an IT guy), it does seem to be a distinct possibility.

3 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Just from a purely technical point of view, there is no technical reason that would prevent that when the game gets moved  to AWS. 

Fair enough. Like I said, I'm really not an IT guy. I only really know practical things from general computer use. I don't have the breath of knowledge like you do, so it's good that we have peeps like you around to inform the rest of us on these kinds of things.

Edited June 27, 2023 by WayOfTheWarriorx