APAC Shae Vizla Server will kill Satele Shan Server

[DWho]

5 minutes ago, Char_Ell said:

The point was you stating that SWTOR had APAC servers since launch was incorrect.  SWTOR didn't have APAC servers at launch.  SWTOR had just started the Great Subscriber Exodus of 2012, a.k.a. post-launch player drop off when APAC servers were added to the game.

And my point was that the poster I quoted said the APAC players had been waiting for an APAC server since launch, which was not true

[TrixxieTriss]

3 hours ago, Char_Ell said:

The point was you stating that SWTOR had APAC servers since launch was incorrect.  SWTOR didn't have APAC servers at launch.  SWTOR had just started the Great Subscriber Exodus of 2012, a.k.a. post-launch player drop off when APAC servers were added to the game.

From our perspective in APAC, the game didn’t launch until February. So 3 months after it did in the US. And we didn’t see this mass exodus because we weren’t there. 

The mistake BioWare made originally at launch with APAC was adding 3 seperate servers.
RP, PVE/PvP, PvP.

Both the seperate RP & the PvP servers never had an initial population surge to support them. But the PvE-PvP server was very healthy & had way more people than StarForge currently does. 

The issue was the RP people started a loud campaign to merge with the US because they needed more RPers & they didn’t care about ping & BW weren’t offering transfers. And stupid BW listened to them above everyone else’s needs because it was financially expedient for them to do so. 

The PvPers had just moved over to the other APAC server because ping was the important thing & let they the PvP server die. We then had a very healthy PVE-PvP server & population on that one server & it should never have been closed down. BW lost the majority of APAC players when they merged us with America. 

Edited November 20, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[Char_Ell]

6 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

From our perspective in APAC, the game didn’t launch until February. So 3 months after it did in the US. And we didn’t see this mass exodus because we weren’t there. 

"From our perspective in APAC."  LOL.  OK.  Surely you're not suggesting that SWTOR's APAC launch in 2012 is when SWTOR really launched...

According to you Dalborra never had any low population issues so you never would have experienced any low population servers until sometime after APAC servers closed in 2013, never mind that a bunch of APAC players started complaining about low population on the other two servers within 6 months of SWTOR's APAC launch.  And yes, I know you think BioWare was mistaken to open 3 servers for APAC in the first place.  It's so much water under the bridge now.

In all honesty and seriousness though I'm glad APAC players got their server.  Who knew it would be a fresh start server too?  I mean I know Eric Musco said they were evaluating both options but I didn't expect APAC server would be fresh start too.  Bold move by the devs.  We will have to wait and see how it goes.  If Satele Shan's already low population takes a further hit as a result then that would be unfortunate but that's the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.  Devs can do something about it or not but I think it's too soon to say either way.

[TrixxieTriss]

1 hour ago, Char_Ell said:

Surely you're not suggesting that SWTOR's APAC launch in 2012 is when SWTOR really launched...

That’s not what I insinuated. I meant from our perspective, we didn’t see the massive exodus in APAC because those 2 other servers never had a big surge of new players to start with. They never filled up enough to experience a big decline. Where as Dalbora filled up & stayed stable. 

My concern at the moment is Broadswords total lack of marketing the new APAC server to the “actual” APAC region. It’s like they don’t even care if it succeeds or not. They’ve only alerted the current player base who was playing on the US servers & no one else. Even their Social Media influencers are mostly US people playing in US primetime & not when APAC players are available. These SM people wouldn’t even be known to APAC gamers because they weren’t doing it back in 2013-14. Even swtorista, who is from APAC herself, is only broadcasting & promoting at 3am-6am. Seriously who wants to get up at 3am before work or school to play till 6am? 
It will be a total failure of any marketing that will cause this to fail if they don’t start doing something. 

As far as I know, they’ve not done any email outs to the old APAC player base (at least, none of my friends have received them & neither has my own old APAC accounts).
They’ve not promoted the new server in APAC gaming media or gaming news sites. It’s not even being promoted on STEAM (I did notice that added a news link to Keith’s website message yesterday. It wasnt there when the server went live). But that’s it no other promo or anything on STEAM. 

It’s like this was an afterthought once they took the PTS down & repurposed it. Because they only told us about it going live 24 hours ahead of time. They didn’t even promote it during the recent live stream. So my concern is they are setting it up to fail. But will use the “clean start server” as test to see if their economy changes are correct. I hope I’m wrong, but I’ve got a bad feeling that I’m right. 

Edited November 20, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[kimiko_tomiyama]

My general take on an APAC server is too late.  Being located in East Asia I'd prefer it.  My lag rates are horrible.  But I have so much invested into Shan that there's no practical way to move everything.  Sure I could move individual characters, but a 12+ character legacy... um no.  Sadly I expect I'm not alone.  So basically it will be a few night owls and the old veterans left.

Makes me wonder why I continue to subscribe.

[Darkestmonty]

17 minutes ago, kimiko_tomiyama said:

My general take on an APAC server is too late.  Being located in East Asia I'd prefer it.  My lag rates are horrible.  But I have so much invested into Shan that there's no practical way to move everything.  Sure I could move individual characters, but a 12+ character legacy... um no.  Sadly I expect I'm not alone.  So basically it will be a few night owls and the old veterans left.

Makes me wonder why I continue to subscribe.

I hope APAC succeeds but what is going to convince APAC players to spend hundreds of dollars to move their characters back to an APAC server? Most APAC players might transfer one character to copy their legacy, but they have spent 10 years on the NA servers. Unless a player loves starting over from scratch and spending CC and Credits on things they already bought, it just seems a bit insane right now.

[TrixxieTriss]

3 hours ago, kimiko_tomiyama said:

My general take on an APAC server is too late.  Being located in East Asia I'd prefer it.  My lag rates are horrible.  But I have so much invested into Shan that there's no practical way to move everything.  Sure I could move individual characters, but a 12+ character legacy... um no.  Sadly I expect I'm not alone.  So basically it will be a few night owls and the old veterans left.

Makes me wonder why I continue to subscribe.

I’m hoping they will allow free transfers soon for players geographically located in APAC region. 

Edited November 21, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[Shaori]

On 11/19/2023 at 7:03 PM, Screaming_Ziva said:

Until they enable character transfers onto Shae (and if they do), I doubt it's going to have much effect on any of the existing servers.  I would think that most people don't want to start from zero on a new server.

I couldn’t do it. I’m completely spoiled and need my legacy. I’ll wait for transfers. 

[xordevoreaux]

1 hour ago, Shaori said:

I couldn’t do it. I’m completely spoiled and need my legacy. I’ll wait for transfers. 

Same here. I have 5 accounts and got 4 of them to legacy 50 on SF.  I'm done with that hamster wheel. I set up some namesakes on SV, but I'll wait until transfers to invest any more effort.

Edited November 21, 2023 by xordevoreaux

[Char_Ell]

6 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

I’m hoping they will allow free transfers soon for players geographically located in APAC region. 

Why do you want to discriminate?  If someone wants to take advantage of free transfers to Shae Vizla for whatever reason why shouldn't they be able to transfer even if they're not in APAC region?  And how would the devs even restrict transfers like that when they haven't done it before?  I think the devs would have to add some programming to limit transfers based on logged IP addresses for the account being an "APAC" IP address (not sure how that would be defined).  I don't think the devs have time to mess around with trying to restrict transfers like that.  If the devs offer free character transfers to Shae Vizla then they may as well offer them to the entire player base, not just some subset of players that qualify based on some definition of APAC that will undoubtedly result in controversy and angst for those that want to transfer a character for free but can't because they didn't meet some nebulous criteria for not being an "APAC" player.

[Toraak]

24 minutes ago, Char_Ell said:

Why do you want to discriminate?  If someone wants to take advantage of free transfers to Shae Vizla for whatever reason why shouldn't they be able to transfer even if they're not in APAC region?  And how would the devs even restrict transfers like that when they haven't done it before?  I think the devs would have to add some programming to limit transfers based on logged IP addresses for the account being an "APAC" IP address (not sure how that would be defined).  I don't think the devs have time to mess around with trying to restrict transfers like that.  If the devs offer free character transfers to Shae Vizla then they may as well offer them to the entire player base, not just some subset of players that qualify based on some definition of APAC that will undoubtedly result in controversy and angst for those that want to transfer a character for free but can't because they didn't meet some nebulous criteria for not being an "APAC" player.

Somehow I doubt they'll do free transfers to the entire playerbase, because it will be abused for GTN purposes to all of the servers. They would almost have to restrict Free transfers to Shae Vizla exclusively if they even considered free transfers at all. Most likely they would just do a reduced cost for transfers.

[Char_Ell]

30 minutes ago, Toraak said:

Somehow I doubt they'll do free transfers to the entire playerbase, because it will be abused for GTN purposes to all of the servers. They would almost have to restrict Free transfers to Shae Vizla exclusively if they even considered free transfers at all. Most likely they would just do a reduced cost for transfers.

I think you misunderstood.  I believe TrixxieTriss is proposing that the devs allow free character transfers from any server to Shae Vizla server but only if the account is in APAC region (however that is defined).  It's my view that if the devs offer free character transfers to Shae Vizla then that should be offered to all player accounts, not just those accounts in the APAC region.  I am not saying that the devs should offer free character transfers from any server to any server.  I am strictly speaking about character transfers to Shae Vizla, not any other server.  Who knows what the devs will actually do though?

[Toraak]

5 minutes ago, Char_Ell said:

I think you misunderstood.  I believe TrixxieTriss is proposing that the devs allow free character transfers from any server to Shae Vizla server but only if the account is in APAC region (however that is defined).  It's my view that if the devs offer free character transfers to Shae Vizla then that should be offered to all player accounts, not just those accounts in the APAC region.  I am not saying that the devs should offer free character transfers from any server to any server.  I am strictly speaking about character transfers to Shae Vizla, not any other server.  Who knows what the devs will actually do though?

I understood that. But not everyone was saying exclusively from APAC players, but for all players. I'm not sure that Broadsword would do free transfers regardless. Possibly 90 cc transfers at best. They still need to make a profit after all.

[TrixxieTriss]

6 hours ago, Shaori said:

I couldn’t do it. I’m completely spoiled and need my legacy. I’ll wait for transfers. 

It’s not too bad. I’ve several characters up to lvl 20 already. And I’m over 150k in credits so far.

My only gripe is when you create a new class, it doesn’t seem to let you choose what combat spec you want. Ie, if you choose a Jugg, you are automatically made a Vengeance Jugg. I don’t know if this is a bug or not. I went to fleet to change it like you used to be able to. But found the respec trainer nolonger offers that. I had to use CC to open up the field respec feature in my legacy😞

[TrixxieTriss]

5 hours ago, Char_Ell said:

Why do you want to discriminate?  If someone wants to take advantage of free transfers to Shae Vizla for whatever reason why shouldn't they be able to transfer even if they're not in APAC region?  And how would the devs even restrict transfers like that when they haven't done it before?  I think the devs would have to add some programming to limit transfers based on logged IP addresses for the account being an "APAC" IP address (not sure how that would be defined).  I don't think the devs have time to mess around with trying to restrict transfers like that.  If the devs offer free character transfers to Shae Vizla then they may as well offer them to the entire player base, not just some subset of players that qualify based on some definition of APAC that will undoubtedly result in controversy and angst for those that want to transfer a character for free but can't because they didn't meet some nebulous criteria for not being an "APAC" player.

I shouldn’t need to answer this because it’s common sense 🤦‍♀️

[TrixxieTriss]

4 hours ago, Toraak said:

I understood that. But not everyone was saying exclusively from APAC players, but for all players. I'm not sure that Broadsword would do free transfers regardless. Possibly 90 cc transfers at best. They still need to make a profit after all.

You’re correct. Opening it up to all players would open it up for abuse. Which is why I said only for APAC located players to move their legacy back to APAC. 

[xordevoreaux]

56 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

You’re correct. Opening it up to all players would open it up for abuse. Which is why I said only for APAC located players to move their legacy back to APAC. 

The pitchfork rebellion of non-apac players marching onto the forums demanding parity and fairness for all players would be enough for them to avoid such a decision.

Edited November 21, 2023 by xordevoreaux

[TrixxieTriss]

40 minutes ago, xordevoreaux said:

The pitchfork rebellion of non-apac players marching onto the forums demanding parity and fairness for all players would be enough for them to avoid such a decision.

If they aren’t going to offer free transfers for all our characters, then they should allow it for at least some or at a minimum, 1 character. So that old APAC players, both current & returning players, don’t have to build up all their legacy from scratch. Some of us have invested 11 years into those legacies. That includes real money too. 

What people need to remember, is the majority of original APAC players didn’t want to be merged with the US. We didn’t want to play there, but were forced to merge when our original servers were closed on us. All we are asking for is to come home at no expense. 

We aren’t asking for a free hand out for the sake of it. We’re asking to be fairly returned to our own region to continue playing as if we had never been forced to leave it on the first place. 

[xordevoreaux]

2 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

If they aren’t going to offer free transfers for all our characters, then they should allow it for at least some or at a minimum, 1 character. So that old APAC players, both current & returning players, don’t have to build up all their legacy from scratch. Some of us have invested 11 years into those legacies. That includes real money too. 

What people need to remember, is the majority of original APAC players didn’t want to be merged with the US. We didn’t want to play there, but were forced to merge when our original servers were closed on us. All we are asking for is to come home at no expense. 

We aren’t asking for a free hand out for the sake of it. We’re asking to be fairly returned to our own region to continue playing as if we had never been forced to leave it on the first place. 

All of which has zero to do with other people dropping their legacies on that server. None.

[septru]

2 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

What people need to remember, is the majority of original APAC players didn’t want to be merged with the US. We didn’t want to play there, but were forced to merge when our original servers were closed on us. All we are asking for is to come home at no expense. 

We can actually agree on something for once. They need to give 90CC transfers. Not only to be fair to the APAC players who were displaced years ago, but to the SS players whose population will be gutted when APAC players leave for SV.

[TrixxieTriss]

3 minutes ago, septru said:

We can actually agree on something for once. They need to give 90CC transfers. Not only to be fair to the APAC players who were displaced years ago, but to the SS players whose population will be gutted when APAC players leave for SV.

I sort of agree. 

They could just as easily merge SS with SF if population crashed 🤷🏻‍♀️.

I just don’t think there are as many geolocated APAC players still on SS. The ones I know all transferred to SF ages ago because pop times were better outside of primetime. But who knows right? 

Although 90cc would also be a good idea for non APAC players across the game. I’ve always felt that transfers were way too expensive. 

I am sort of hoping they have some plan in place to restrict how many credits can be transferred to the new server. Because currently it’s economy is unencumbered by previous credit exploits or hyper inflation. 

Even if people converted all their credits into CM items to transfer, there still wouldn’t be enough credits on the server to cause any real credit inflation. If anything, it would keep prices low because of excess goods.  

Regardless, we do agree that prices for transfers need to be addressed for APAC players & maybe SS players wanting to get off a potentially dying server. 

[septru]

7 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Regardless, we do agree that prices for transfers need to be addressed for APAC players & maybe SS players wanting to get off a potentially dying server. 

I don't think the loss of APAC will kill SS on a whole, but it will kill endgame communities that are already on life support. Endgame PvE on SS, like others have mentioned, is extremely dependent on APAC players. PvP too, to the extent that it isn't already dead. In my opinion, they should have offered 90 CC transfers long ago given the fact that these communities were already on life support. But that's a whole different conversation...

 

I also saw your post about the lack of promotion about the creation of SV:

On 11/18/2023 at 2:47 PM, TrixxieTriss said:

Can I please 🙏 implore you to do some media coverage in Aussie gaming mags or Aussie gaming news sites or straight up MMO gaming sites. Just reach out to them & let them know that we have an APAC server again 

It's worth noting that many of old APAC players may be coming back to accounts with characters on SS. Some may be interested in "fresh start" server. Many more, I presume, are not interested in replaying 10 year old content. Or else they wouldn't have left in the first place.

 

My point is that any advertising and promotion about SV is wasted if BioSword doesn't offer 90 CCs at the same time. Returning APAC players likely do not want to start over at level 1. 

[Cayerala]

The main problem, that BS faces, which is if they open up server transfers, it could very well ruin the current fresh economy on APAC, and overwhelm returning/new players that have just started. There is a simple solution, which is cap the amount of credits each person is able to transfer to Shae Vizla. Overall, they should just do a mass merge of SS+SF (one big NA server), merge the remaining EU servers (one big EU server), and maintain APAC. They would obviously would reduce costs, they wouldn't have to pay voice actors for the French/German dialogues anymore. 

On another note, the fees that are currently implemented and the next upcoming fee changes in 7.4, will be incompatible with Shae Vizla, as earning credits from scratch with the current methods available is a joke (especially with the lack of toons you are able to spam heroics on etc), and many guild members cannot access a guild bank (due to the 30 day rule). 

 

 

[TrixxieTriss]

7 minutes ago, septru said:

In my opinion, they should have offered 90 CC transfers long ago given the fact that these communities were already on life support. But that's a whole different conversation...

On this we 100% agree on 👍

7 minutes ago, septru said:

It's worth noting that many of old APAC players may be coming back to accounts with characters on SS. Some may be interested in "fresh start" server. Many more, I presume, are not interested in replaying 10 year old content. Or else they wouldn't have left in the first place.

My point is that any advertising and promotion about SV is wasted if BioSword doesn't offer 90 CCs at the same time. Returning APAC players likely do not want to start over at level 1. 

Many APAC players quit shortly after the initial US merge & many more after the 2nd merge to the East Coast. So there are really 3 distinct groups of APAC players that don’t currently play for them to target. Plus the group that is still playing.

1. Ones that left the game in 2013 after the initial APAC closure. These players have essentially got 10 years worth of “new content” to catch up on. But many will want their old characters & legacies that are marooned on SS. These hold the most potential for BS to financially gain from. 

2. Ones that left the game after the east coast merge in 2017. These players have got 5+ years of content to catch up on. But would also feel marooned on SS. 2nd most potential for BS to get back.

3. Players that left between launch & now because they had completed the content available at the time & didn’t come back. I think these players will be the hardest for BS to get to come back at all. They will need an incentive to come back to play on an APAC server. So having their characters stuck on the US servers wont help matters. 

4. The last group. Those of us still currently playing. But have endured multiple server merges to geolocations that have made the game harder or less enjoyable to play due to a massive increase in latency. We would like to take our characters/legacies back home to APAC for the better performance. 

Regardless of group. I think it needs to be free for these 4 types of APAC player groups. Because trying to get these players back to the game, “but saying you gotta pay extra to have your old characters”, is going to be a massive turn off, even at 90cc.

Jackie did say they were going to do an email campaign to old players. So I would hope they at least offer “x” amount of free transfers back to APAC for those people as part of a promotion. But it would also be a great good will gesture to offer the same to any currently stranded APAC players in the US. Because we’ve mostly stuck around even after having to play the game at much less optimal ping for 10 years.

 

[TrixxieTriss]

14 minutes ago, Cayerala said:

There is a simple solution, which is cap the amount of credits each person is able to transfer to Shae Vizla

Yep, I’ve suggested this myself in the APAC thread. I’m not sure what the cap should be though. Wether it’s 1 million, 5 million, 10 million, 50 million or 100 million. 

One way they could do it, is put a cap on how many credits can be transferred per legacy. That way it doesn’t matter if someone has 100 characters or 1 character. This way the new server doesn’t get flooded with excess credits. 

Personally, I think 100 million is too much per legacy & 1 million is too little. Even 50 million might be too much & negatively affect the server economy. So maybe an amount between 10 million & 40 million per legacy would be acceptable 🤷🏻‍♀️.