Can we get free transfers off dead servers please?

[Darkestmonty]

12 minutes ago, Shayddow said:

That is not true. It is the same as transferring a character. You only get the larger amount.

In other words, if you have 5 SITHY-DreadMaster Heads of Doom on 1 server, and 7 SITHY-DreadMaster Heads of Doom on the other, you will now have a total of 7.

it is true. server merges pushed many of my decorations limits past what they should be. Because of this I have 20/10 or 30/10 of certain decorations because I had already maxed them out prior to a server merge.

If you dig through posts on this very forum you can find people complaining that "it isn't fair that some people get more decorations because of server merges".

Edited July 13, 2023 by Darkestmonty

[StrikePrice]

They should just allow free migrations for a week so people can choose where they want to be.

[TrixxieTriss]

5 hours ago, Char_Ell said:

haven't seen SWTOR dev comments addressing the possibility of cross server group queues for years.

No, they haven’t announced anything. But the way AWS works like a virtual server would mean SS & SF will essentially be virtual instances on the same physical hardware. That should theoretically allow BioWare to treat each server as instances & should allow for easier implementation of cross server.

5 hours ago, Char_Ell said:

If this is indicative of overall player activity (unclear if it is) then, in my view, this points to the events of June having a cumulative negative impact on SWTOR player base

You may have missed the part where I said the PvP seasons hadn’t started yet. If PvP seasons hadn’t been introduced, we’d still have more players than we did last before the last season started & more before 7.2 was implemented. The real test will be once PvP seasons starts on the 18th July. 

5 hours ago, Char_Ell said:

So it looks like negative had greater impact than positive in June.  So should SWTOR devs just b-i-t-e the bullet and go with single server for NA and single server for EU when they transition the game's servers to AWS

There is probably just as much coding work to merge servers as it would be to add cross server on AWS. Also there are problems with merging that often cause some people to leave. So if the purpose is to limit how many people are leaving the game, then the best option is to not merge the servers.

[TrixxieTriss]

5 hours ago, Darkestmonty said:

Every planet that has a PvP instance is usually empty even on SF during prime time. I may see 1-2 other people in the PvP zones after hours of play

It’s been like that since they implemented the PvP instances. I know because that’s the only instances I use. 

[TrixxieTriss]

1 hour ago, StrikePrice said:

They should just allow free migrations for a week so people can choose where they want to be.

They should leave it as free migration until they set up the game on AWS. One week would not be long enough.

[Char_Ell]

4 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

You may have missed the part where I said the PvP seasons hadn’t started yet. If PvP seasons hadn’t been introduced, we’d still have more players than we did last before the last season started & more before 7.2 was implemented. The real test will be once PvP seasons starts on the 18th July.

OK.  We'll see what happens come second half of July.

 

5 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

There is probably just as much coding work to merge servers as it would be to add cross server on AWS. Also there are problems with merging that often cause some people to leave. So if the purpose is to limit how many people are leaving the game, then the best option is to not merge the servers.

You seem to assume that cross server is a realistic possibility.  While I don't discount that cross server gameplay is possible I'm much more pessimistic that it is a realistic possibility given SWTOR devs many years ago said they looked into cross server functionality and it wasn't viable and SWTOR devs haven't even hinted that cross server is a feature possibility with the transition to AWS, unlike APAC server and fresh start server.  Also, while I agree with the problems you identified with merging servers I'm not sure why you seem to think coding work for merging servers versus adding cross server functionality would be similar effort unless you have experience writing code for SWTOR.

In any event, if SWTOR devs offer free server transfers from Satele Shan to Star Forge I would interpret such action to mean that a server merge between the two servers would be guaranteed at some point in the not-too-distant future.  I mentioned in a different thread that if APAC server gets added to the game then Satele Shan population would be negatively impacted, likely more so than Star Forge.  To reiterate, I think SWTOR devs have some challenging decisions to make with server provisioning and the transition to AWS.  It may behoove the dev team to allow some time to pass so they can get a good sense of how player activity levels on the various servers have changed after the momentous changes in June.  This may give them more confidence to predict future player activity levels which should then inform their decisions with how to design the AWS implementation.

[TrixxieTriss]

4 hours ago, Char_Ell said:

I mentioned in a different thread that if APAC server gets added to the game then Satele Shan population would be negatively impacted, likely more so than Star Forge.  To reiterate, I think SWTOR devs have some challenging decisions to make with server provisioning and the transition to AWS

I don’t think it will negatively affect SS for 2 specific reasons. 

1. Any APAC players that still play on SS, don’t usually play during NA or EU primetime. For that reason, many of those still playing have migrated to SF so they have people to play with outside of NA & EU primetimes. Those still on SS would be a very tiny percentage of the active players on the server.

2. Due to the increased lag of moving the west coast server to the east coast, the majority of remaining APAC players left the game. Which is a big reason why Satele Shan has consistently kept losing players since the merge & move.

That was BioWares biggest mistake in the last mergers. Moving the west coast server to the east coast meant SS was always going to lose more players than SF due to increased ping for APAC & west coast players.

Adding an APAC server will have minimal impact on SS or SF. The APAC population on those servers is already relatively low & those playing are outside of primetime. 

There is more benefit to adding an APAC server locally than not. It will actually increase the overall game’s population again as old & new APAC players come back. That will increase the revenue the team has to develop the game further. 

There is one more thing to consider with NA AWS. It might not necessarily be located on the east coast. They could locate them anywhere in the US. And depending on cost, that opens up different configurations on AWS. 

4 hours ago, Char_Ell said:

OK.  We'll see what happens come second half of July

That was the question I posed in the other thread. With PvP seasons starting again on the 18th July, we’ll get our first “like on like” look at player sentiment towards the changes & the move to Broadsword. But it will take more than a week & a half. Last season took 3 weeks to see significant increases & it wasn’t till the middle of the season that numbers peaked. Saying the end of July is too soon. More likely the second half of August.

4 hours ago, Char_Ell said:

You seem to assume that cross server is a realistic possibility.  While I don't discount that cross server gameplay is possible I'm much more pessimistic that it is a realistic possibility given SWTOR devs many years ago said they looked into cross server functionality and it wasn't viable and SWTOR devs haven't even hinted that cross server is a feature possibility with the transition to AWS

A NA regional cross server or regional EU cross server setup is one of those technical configuration options I mentioned that would be possible because they would be on the same physical hardware being run as instances. 

Where as the cross server idea before was difficult because each each server had its own seperate physical hardware. They would literally need to setup a seperate physical server between them to allow cross server instances. 

With AWS, the servers are virtual, just like extra instances are on the fleet or when you currently go into group content like FP’s or PvP. Adding a virtual cross server instance wouldn’t be much different. The queues would just look at both servers to make the groups & pull them into the PvP or FP instance on the same physical server. 

Now wether the dev team have considered this or not is another question altogether. It may or may not be on their radar. But I think if enough people talk about it on the forums & SM, then someone is bound to bring it up as an option instead of needing to merge servers. 

The other thing to consider is how they decide to setup on AWS. There are different ways to do it. As well as many AWS locations in the US & they may decide on a setup that uses multiple locations & allow the login location to determine the AWS instance location as it’s being populated.

Doing it that way may make cross server more difficult or make your expected ping unpredictable every time you play. I’m really hoping they don’t go down that route as I believe it would be detrimental to player retention.

Because of that reason, I think it more likely they’ll put both servers in predetermined locations (hopefully in the same one because that would make cross server more viable). But they could just as likely put one on the west coast & one on the east coast again. 

[Darkestmonty]

8 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

It’s been like that since they implemented the PvP instances. I know because that’s the only instances I use. 

It's amazing how empty the PvP instances are and after years of using them I have only been attacked once by a player and that was a few years ago during the Swoop Rally event.

[xordevoreaux]

10 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

They should leave it as free migration until they set up the game on AWS. One week would not be long enough.

Exactly, because on day 8, people will rush to the forums saying they missed the transfer window and beg to extend it.

[Char_Ell]

7 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

There is more benefit to adding an APAC server locally than not. It will actually increase the overall game’s population again as old & new APAC players come back. That will increase the revenue the team has to develop the game further. 

I think your predictions are subjectively biased due to your understandable desire to have an APAC server.  I predict a new APAC server would have an initial surge of interest but after 3 months or so will become a low pop server which is pretty much what happened when SWTOR deployed three APAC servers for the game in 2012.  But to be clear I'm not opposed to an APAC server being added to the game.  If SWTOR devs think having an APAC server would benefit the game then I hope they make it happen.  I'm fine with giving APAC players another chance to show they can make an APAC server viable.

 

7 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

A NA regional cross server or regional EU cross server setup is one of those technical configuration options I mentioned that would be possible because they would be on the same physical hardware being run as instances. 

How did you determine that current NA servers and EU servers that are clearly in the same (respective) data centers are not on the same physical hardware?  It's possible NA servers have been on the same server hardware since they were implemented.

[StrikePrice]

Unfortunately, I highly doubt there is any mechanism that would allow cross-server queues.  That sort of thing would take a long time to design, build and test. The juice would not be worth the squeeze at this point. (Seeing how getting the post-wz scoreboard working correctly is such a challenge, I'm gonna bet it never happens). Whereas server transfers exist, they are just prohibitively expensive to move a large legacy. 

Edited July 14, 2023 by StrikePrice

[TrixxieTriss]

11 hours ago, Char_Ell said:

server.  I predict a new APAC server would have an initial surge of interest but after 3 months or so will become a low pop server which is pretty much what happened when SWTOR deployed three APAC servers for the game in 2012

Being an APAC player from launch, I can tell you from first hand experience that it didn’t happen the way you’re stating. So let me explain what actually happened.

Yes, there were 3 servers. But just like in the US & EU, they deployed 3 different types of APAC servers & had similar results as they did in the other 2 regions not long after people realised there wasn’t enough end game. Players left across the whole game. Which had nothing to do with it being APAC. There was 1x Roleplay server 1x PvP server and 1x General server (sort of like we have now). The one and only reason BW closed ALL the APAC servers was to cut costs. 

And yes, 3 different types of servers was too many for the APAC region. We really only needed 1-2 general servers instead of 1 each of the specialised servers. The general server was full most of the time even though the other servers lost players after the initial surge (the same as every other region).

But our general server Dalbora still had wait times to get onto the server nearly every weekend until BioWare announced they were merging us with the USA. Then players left quickly because they didn’t want to play in the US with excessive lag. Some merged, but left not long after because their experience was ruined by US culture shock & excessive lag.

APAC players didn’t want to be merged with the US or play with US people. We wanted BW to merge our 3 servers into 1 super APAC server. Which if they had done that would have had the load capacity of the current servers & would have kept all the APAC people playing.

Not long before BW announced the merge to the US, I would estimate our general server Dalbora had more players than SF, SS & DM have combined at the moment. 

When you consider more than 3/4 of the APAC player base stopped playing after the US merge, there are a lot of ex-swtor APAC players who haven’t played the game since 2014. That is 9 years of game development that most haven’t seen or played. Add all the potential new APAC players who are also now massive SW fans & there are probably more people in APAC willing to pay to play swtor today than there are currently playing it in the US & EU/Brit.

Edited July 15, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[TrixxieTriss]

2 hours ago, Char_Ell said:

How did you determine that current NA servers and EU servers that are clearly in the same (respective) data centers are not on the same physical hardware?  It's possible NA servers have been on the same server hardware since they were implemented.

Because if they were virtual servers on the same hardware, both servers would go down at once when there is a hardware issue. But instead we see only one server go down 😉.

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

15 hours ago, Char_Ell said:

In any event, if SWTOR devs offer free server transfers from Satele Shan to Star Forge I would interpret such action to mean that a server merge between the two servers would be guaranteed at some point in the not-too-distant future. 

I kinda think if a server merge was in the plans, the last thing they would do is offer free transfers, for 2 reasons.

1 - Like you said, it would be a dead give away for an upcoming server merge which they know would meet with a lot of player discontent, and would lose them players.

2 - Because they'd know that a server merger would lose them some players they'd probably want to make as much money on server transfers as possible while they still could.

If they are merging SS with SF than for certain the EU servers would also need a merger because they have far less populations than the North American servers (S.F. in particular, but from what people say on the forums, that seems to also apply to SS, if to a lesser degree) so essentially what they would be facing would be a total lose of sales for server transfers from that point onward.

[TrixxieTriss]

1 hour ago, StrikePrice said:

Unfortunately, I highly doubt there is any mechanism that would allow cross-server queues.  That sort of thing would take a long time to design, build and test

Why do you think it would be that hard to do. They already run multiple instances on physical servers. This will be much easier to do on AWS.

When they move the current servers over to AWS, they will become virtual servers. Aka, seperate instances of the same game. The same way as we have seperate fleet instances. 

There is absolutely nothing technical from stopping them writing some code so the group queue systems look at both virtual servers to form groups. Then the system propagates another instance for that group. They could even allow us to cross communicate via chat, mail or GTN if they do choose. If you don’t know what I mean, look at how WoW does it now they use virtual servers. 

Yes, someone will need to design it & test it. The same as if they are going to migrate to AWS or to even merge the servers or make the game Dx12 or like they did for 64bit. They will already be working on the AWS migration, this could just as easily be part of that work. 

So are you suggesting they stop development & improvements to the game because some of the team might have to do some more work 🤷🏻‍♀️

Edited July 14, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[StrikePrice]

12 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Why do you think it would be that hard to do. They already run multiple instances on physical servers. This will be much easier to do on AWS.

When they move the current servers over to AWS, they will become virtual servers. Aka, seperate instances of the same game. The same way as we have seperate fleet instances. 

There is absolutely nothing technical from stopping them writing some code so the group queue systems look at both virtual servers to form groups. Then the system propagates another instance for that group. They could even allow us to cross communicate via chat, mail or GTN if they do choose. If you don’t know what I mean, look at how WoW does it now they use virtual servers. 

Yes, someone will need to design it & test it. The same as if they are going to migrate to AWS or to even merge the servers or make the game Dx12 or like they did for 64bit. They will already be working on the AWS migration, this could just as easily be part of that work. 

So are you suggesting they stop development & improvements to the game because some of the team might have to do some more work 🤷🏻‍♀️

Yes, you're right. It can be done. But, if it has not been conceived from the start then there will be things they will find difficult. And, since they already have the means to merge servers to mitigate the same problem, my guess is they will likely do that instead of investing all the effort into cross-server queues.

I'm with you, 100%. I believe the game is worth investing in and would love to see DX12, cross-server queues and a lot of other goodness. My perception is that they don't have a lot of developer horsepower available since obvious things that are easy to fix go months or years unaddressed. Further, as you know, the game struggles to keep population growing outside of new content launches. People seem to come, do the new content and leave. 

Maybe the new management will be better at marshalling the resources necessary to to large-scale systemic changes and keep content flowing at the same time. We can keep good hope.  

[TrixxieTriss]

6 minutes ago, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

I kinda think if a server merge was in the plans, the last thing they would do is offer free transfers,

Last merge they offered 90cc transfers for at least 6 months before hand. 

I think if the AWS migration isn’t too far off, then it won’t matter for another few months. But we saw what happened before the last server mergers & some players just quit because BW took so long & people couldn’t play any group content on certain servers for nearly 12-18 months. 

I don’t think they’ll merge. It’s my gut feeling that if they had planned to do that, it would have already happened before 7.0. But if they do plan to do it, the logical time would be when they migrate to AWS. As soon as we know the time frame for that, the better we’ll be able to guess which way they plan to go. 

[TrixxieTriss]

Just now, StrikePrice said:

And, since they already have the means to merge servers

You’re assuming that the same technical people who did the last merge have also moved over to BS. And that it was a smooth process at the time. Remember the game has now moved onto 64bit & they’ll be migrating from physical to virtual servers too. Which is a whole other skill set. 

[TrixxieTriss]

5 minutes ago, StrikePrice said:

Maybe the new management will be better at marshalling the resources necessary to to large-scale systemic changes and keep content flowing at the same time. We can keep good hope.  

Time will tell. We should start to feel any differences by the end of the year. But we’ll know for sure by this time next year 😉

[WayOfTheWarriorx]

9 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Last merge they offered 90cc transfers for at least 6 months before hand. 

 

Fair point, Trixxie-Baby.

The only reason I think it might still be different is because than they weren't making an entire continent only have one single server, and the second you make only one server for the North American content, which like I said, they would almost certainly than have to do with the EU servers, it kinda puts the writing on the wall. IMO, and that's all it is, just my opinion, I feel that would sign the death warrant of the game. Let's everyone know they're on a sinking ship, and that's when people start trying to get off that ship.

Another reason why I don't think that's in the works or even being considered is the consideration they are giving to adding a APAC server and the fact that they actually tested a new APAC server. Those would kinda be contradictory moves.

Plus with the move to Broadsword and that they are saying they have new content reaching into 2025 and new improvements being worked on and with 64 bit, moving to mega servers doesn't really seem likely to me. I could be wrong of course, that's just my take on it.

Edited July 15, 2023 by WayOfTheWarriorx
I can't spell for shyt.

[Char_Ell]

1 hour ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Bring an APAC player from launch, I can tell you from first hand experience that it didn’t happen the way you’re stating. So let me explain what actually happened.

Yes, there were 3 servers. But just like in the US & EU, they deployed 3 different types of APAC servers & had similar results as they did in the other 2 regions not long after people realised there wasn’t enough end game. Players left across the whole game. Which had nothing to do with it being APAC. There was 1x Roleplay server 1x PvP server and 1x General server (sort of like we have now). The one and only reason BW closed ALL the APAC servers was to cut costs. 

And yes, 3 different types of servers was too many for the APAC region. We really only needed 1-2 general servers instead of 1 each of the specialised servers. The general server was full most of the time even though the other servers lost players after the initial surge (the same as every other region).

But our general server Dalbora still had wait times to get onto the server nearly every weekend until BioWare announced they were merging us with the USA. Then players left quickly because they didn’t want to play in the US with excessive lag. Some merged, but left not long after because their experience was ruined by US culture shock & excessive lag.

Your forum account has a join date of 2016 so it would seem you used a different SWTOR account back then.  APAC/Oceanic players had long been complaining of low populations on at least 2 of the 3 servers.  Dalborra was considered to have "OK but not large" population per the creator of the consolidated thread for CONSOLIDATED POST: APAC/OCEANIC SERVER CONCERNS, @Cheezfriend.  Then Executive Producer Jeff Hickman acknowledged Oceanic population concerns in his state of the game post in 2012 November.  SWTOR had four server types at the time: PvE, PvP, RP-PvE, RP-PvP.  BioWare only deployed three of these four types for APAC.  So while I won't dispute that cost was the major factor in closing all three APAC servers at the time (even though I don't know this is true), BioWare wasn't going to force transfer people who rolled on RP and PVP servers to PvE server.  As you know that didn't happen until 2017 merge when the server types went away.  You seem to be saying that having only one APAC server back then would have been sustainable but having three wasn't.  We shall see if SWTOR dev team thinks it's worth giving the game's APAC players a second chance at having a server more than 10 years after the original APAC servers were closed.

 

1 hour ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Because if they were virtual servers on the same hardware, both servers would go down at once when there is a hardware issue. But instead we see only one server go down 😉.

I see.  So when Star Forge goes down but not Satele Shan or vice versa you were able to determine the failure was caused by hardware instead of software.  I'm not sure how you were able to do that.

[TrixxieTriss]

6 hours ago, Char_Ell said:

Your forum account has a join date of 2016 so it would seem you used a different SWTOR account back then

I’ve had 3 accounts since launch & did not dropped the last 2 until they merged us with the east coast.  My original was from Beta.

Also since when do we take what BW said publicly as the truth to their motivations? I can categorically tell you from first hand experience that I was playing on Dalbora & there was nothing wrong with that servers population. That post you linked was another BW spin story to justify cutting costs. If that wasn’t the case, why are they thinking of adding another APAC server after all this time? It’s because it won’t cost them much through AWS. 

The only people who complained were the RP players & some pvp players who wanted cross server. Neither of their servers ever hit full status & dropped off fast. But Dalbora was full. I know this because I spent many a weekend waiting in line to login. 

BW should never have added a RP or PVP specificity servers to APAC in the first place. They could have easily made one general type server & it would have been more full than most US servers at the time.

Edited July 15, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[krackcommando]

10 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

When you consider more than 3/4 of the APAC player base stopped playing after the US merge, there are a lot of ex-swtor APAC players who haven’t played the game since 2014. That is 9 years of game development that most haven’t seen or played. Add all the potential new APAC players who are also now massive SW fans & there are probably more people in APAC willing to pay to play swtor today than there are currently playing it in the US & EU/Brit

I think it's unlikely that even half of them would return to the game. ppl generally do not "come back en masse" to old games. but 50% of those APAC former players would be a reasonable best case scenario. I'm not sure where that lands us in the "reality" of new APAC server or an APAC virtual server/instance. but whatever the number of players who left was, I don't think you can count or even gamble on more than that 50%. /2cents

the fact that you can sub for 1 month and get access to everything is another factor in the favor of returning though.

[Addictress]

I'm just flabbergasted.

 

My entire life in this game (2-3 years) has been on the Satele Shan server. I thought that was the main one. All this time.

 

I am indeed mostly a solo player, but I've never waited long for a flashpoint PUG.

 

I've only done 1 operation so far and I used a guild for that.

 

I have 1 character I don't use much on SF and the few times I've popped over there it actually seemed more barren on the fleet than what I'm used to on SS.

Edited July 15, 2023 by Addictress

[Traceguy]

On 7/13/2023 at 11:22 AM, WayOfTheWarriorx said:

If peeps over on SS are unhappy with their experience there, they always have the option to transfer to another server.

I have 35 toons. Transferring would not only be a nightmare in item transfer, but would cost 35,000cc