APAC Shae Vizla Server will kill Satele Shan Server

[Samcuu]

16 hours ago, Saeten said:

First and foremost, there is no need to merger SS and SF.  Many people play on SS because SF is the worst server for toxicity and general F**kery.

I'm mostly on the side of keeping the servers seperate even tho the logic is flimsy considering there is no actual 'west coast' server. I'm a west coast NA player and my ping is the same on both SF and SS, so it comes down to what a players personal preference is. Do you want a more populated server, or do you want to play with ppl in your time zone? I transfered years ago because warzones pop more often and more ppl play in general on SF. 

In the absolute best case scenario you keep the servers seperate and u find out a way to do cross server queueing. I know ppl complain that lowbie warzones hardly ever pop on SS and many ppl also have issues finding groups for fps in the group finder. 

Worst case scenario you allow the apac server to become it's own entity and then u just merge the two NA servers. I don't think daily areas would suffer as long as more instances populate when the server population grows. In theory it should be fine. 

[Traceguy]

 

18 hours ago, Saeten said:

 SF is the worst server for toxicity.

I have a couple toons on SF, and I can honestly say this is true. It's the second biggest thing I've picked up on while playing on SF. The first being a larger population of course.

 

2 hours ago, Samcuu said:

considering there is no actual 'west coast' server

What is the region of the 2  servers currently? Now that they've moved to AWS, I would imagine they have the freedom to plant each of their servers on a region of their choosing. My ping is as low as 40ms, so I can't complain, but how is it it for others in NA further away?

 

[TrixxieTriss]

19 minutes ago, Traceguy said:

What is the region of the 2  servers currently? Now that they've moved to AWS, I would imagine they have the freedom to plant each of their servers on a region of their choosing. My ping is as low as 40ms, so I can't complain, but how is it it for others in NA further away?

They are literally up the road from the old server farm. Both are still on the east coast. 

[emperorruby]

1 hour ago, Traceguy said:

 

I have a couple toons on SF, and I can honestly say this is true. It's the second biggest thing I've picked up on while playing on SF. The first being a larger population of course.

 

What is the region of the 2  servers currently? Now that they've moved to AWS, I would imagine they have the freedom to plant each of their servers on a region of their choosing. My ping is as low as 40ms, so I can't complain, but how is it it for others in NA further away?

 

Satele Shan should be a west coast server

[TrixxieTriss]

2 hours ago, emperorruby said:

Satele Shan should be a west coast server

Should be. But it’s not. The 2 NA servers are currently located in the same data centre on the east coast of the USA

In saying that, there is nothing stopping BS from moving SS to a west coast located AWS data centre. I believe the costs are the same.

I’m honestly not sure why BS haven’t already done it or why NA west coast players havent been more vocal about getting BS to move it. 

Edited February 21 by TrixxieTriss

[Suzsi]

6 hours ago, emperorruby said:

Satele Shan should be a west coast server

Should be but never was. Australian players always had a better ping to west than east, after the merges even pvp became unplayable for most Aussies. Many left then, but some stuck it out. Personally I 100% dropped all pvp because it was ridiculous to even try it, where as previously on beregin colony prior to the merge it was at least somewhat manageable often enough to not be too bothered. But the lag after the merge was insane, rubber banding, skills not firing off, characters suddenly appearing beside me and being dead before I even knew they were there etc, just wasn't worth the effort.

[Drew_Braxton]

On 2/19/2024 at 10:16 PM, TrixxieTriss said:

But here’s the thing. Most of the APAC players haven’t even moved over to SV yet & they aren’t playing there. 

The reason player numbers are down right now across the whole game is because GS & PvP seasons have finished.

Also there is a lot of APAC player resentment at how the whole server transfer thing is being handled. If you go to other APAC specific social media regarding swtor, you can see how upset a big portion of the community actually is. Most can’t or won’t post here on the forums because “reasons”. But if you are part of the community, you’ll hear many current subscribers are letting their subs expire & won’t renew. Even preferred players are staying away.

The problem is BS are only partially listening to the feedback from APAC community & trying to balance their responses around fresh start players from other regions. So the mood in the APAC community is dejected & feels like BS don’t care if APAC players stay or go.

And to be fair, these aren’t my own words. I’m repeating what I’m reading on social media. Even certain influencers aren’t happy with how things are going for APAC players & they don’t even live in the region. Some influencers are now actively advocating for free transfers for APAC preferred/FTP players too. 

Im just hopping BS haven’t caused lasting harm in the APAC community & can throw them (us) more of a bone on transfers to SV. 

Sadly, this may affect SS population at times when APAC players would be more active on SS. But considering there is such a big time difference between our peak times & the US, it should only affect those US players outside of primetime. 

If BS see a population drop on SS after the APAC transfers & they don’t want to merge the servers, they could offer free transfers to SS players. But I can’t see them doing that until after the APAC transfers actually happen in March sometime. 

If you have spent any time on SV then you know it is dead.  Influencers have done a horrible job representing players in this game over the years and whatever you read on social media almost certainly only represents a tiny and vocal perspective and no where near representative sampling of players. That is the very nature of social media now - people with minority views screaming from the top of their lonely mountain trying to get other people to change their thinking.  SS has seen ever decreasing populations since they moved the servers.  How could anything done to a dead server kill off a server already in bad shape?  

Personally, I see opening up the server possibly seeing a few more players online which might help build some momentum in getting the things going that will encourage any new players to want to stick around.  No one sticks around in MMOs that are missing the first M.  

[Traceguy]

1 hour ago, Drew_Braxton said:

If you have spent any time on SV then you know it is dead.

Maybe this is because BS failed to implement a way to properly merge accounts over. The toon transfer thing is a logistical nightmare. I might have said this before, but even if transfers were discounted, I would never move all 30+ toons over to another server because there is so much left behind that doesn't transfer. I transferred a toon already and I am completely dissatisfied which the process.

The other thing is population. Look at all the complaints for Satele Shan. You open a new server, the player population is going to start at 1, and slowly grow up little by little. After several months, the population of SV will probably be a small fraction of what Satele Shan has. It may take several years for SV to get a steady population. Why would anyone want to transfer to a dead server.

 

Maybe it's time to end server locking.

Many other MMOs let you pick a server/shard of your choosing when logging in, provided it's not at max population.

Yes, the economies are merged at this point, but it doesn't matter. The economy in the game will forever consists of 2 player types. #1. Those who know how to make credits. #2. Those who don't

Edited February 21 by Traceguy

[TrixxieTriss]

10 hours ago, Traceguy said:

Why would anyone want to transfer.

Simple answer is performance. APAC players have 200-500ms ping playing on the NA & EU servers. Which is fine for playing story & casual play. But try doing any harder content, like PvP, operations or even HM chapters & everything becomes exponentially harder. 

I think once transfers open & “if” BS are still listening to feed back & make some more concessions for APAC players, you’ll see a large portion of the APAC community transfer over to SV. But they won’t all be coming from SS. There are more APAC players on SF now & you have Australians from WA, NT, SA & people from Indonesia, Singapore, India & Pakistan playing on EU servers. 

But because SS already has a low population, I think they will feel it more than the other English speaking servers. 

SV won’t be dead “if” BS keep listening to the actual APAC community ahead of the “fresh start” economy tourists from NA & EU.
They still need to make the free transfer eligibility more fair than they’ve announced & they need to increase the credit transfer limit some more or get rid of the limit entirely.
“If” they do those things, the majority of APAC players will transfer & bring in more non playing APAC people. But if BS decides their already announced half measures is all they are willing to do for the region, the server won’t be as inviting for existing APAC players or returning ones & it may fail. 

[TrixxieTriss]

12 hours ago, Drew_Braxton said:

If you have spent any time on SV then you know it is dead

It’s dead because of how BS have handled the opening & transfer issue. If they can make more changes, it won’t be dead for long. 

[saikar]

On 2/22/2024 at 9:14 AM, TrixxieTriss said:

 

SV won’t be dead “if” BS keep listening to the actual APAC community ahead of the “fresh start” economy tourists from NA & EU.
 

This. 100% this. So - denying full/proper transfers has been stated for "economy reasons". Ok, so let's break that down. Who are the players who would be impacted? 2 groups really. 1) The above "fresh start economy tourists" and 2) the very tiny percentage of genuinely new APAC players. Group 2) probably wouldn't care about GTN prices for quite some time, and if it means a populated vibrant server - likely wouldn't care at all. Which leaves group 1), who BS are obviously catering to. Well, pardon the french, but f*ck that group honestly. If it is truly meant as a server for APAC players, that group shouldn't even be thought about as a factor. Yeah I get the commercial angle, but why then not just roll out another NA server? Possibly even a west coast one? You get that particular benefit / appeal to that particular crowd - and you don't rile up the APAC user base. Pretty simple really.

[Dyfnwal]

I used to play on our old APAC server (Dalborra) years ago and literally have not played this game for years until I heard they created another APAC server. Please don't shut us down now that I have subscribed again.

[DWho]

3 hours ago, Dyfnwal said:

I used to play on our old APAC server (Dalborra) years ago and literally have not played this game for years until I heard they created another APAC server. Please don't shut us down now that I have subscribed again.

It's pretty much up to APAC players at this point. If they subscribe and play there it will survive. If not, it's future is uncertain. There is no economy to protect there anymore so Broadsword may as well let APAC players (or any other players) take all their credits there. Maybe if a lot more credits flow into SV, it will cool down things on the other servers by dilution.

[TrixxieTriss]

Pretty much been saying this for months. Glad to see you’ve finally caught on. 

9 hours ago, DWho said:

It's pretty much up to APAC players at this point. If they subscribe and play there it will survive. If not, it's future is uncertain. There is no economy to protect there anymore so Broadsword may as well let APAC players (or any other players) take all their credits there. Maybe if a lot more credits flow into SV, it will cool down things on the other servers by dilution.

 

[DWho]

1 hour ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Pretty much been saying this for months. Glad to see you’ve finally caught on. 

 

Not really a matter of catching on. It's seeing the impact. It shouldn't have happened but it did. There are some rumors floating around that transfers in excess of 15m/character did occur. It sounds to me like there may have been something broken in the transfer mechanism. Unfortunately it's all rumors at this point and I doubt anyone who benefited is going to volunteer a confirmation. Hopefully there is a Broadsword investigation under way, not that anything can undue the damage done.

[TrixxieTriss]

On 2/21/2024 at 11:09 PM, Drew_Braxton said:

If you have spent any time on SV then you know it is dead

But it wasn’t dead until BS totally messed up the post launch period. The server was very active till they released 7.4 only 2-3 weeks after the launch. That meant any players who wanted to play that new content, had to go back to their original servers. That was when the numbers started to drop.

We pleaded with the devs to open transfers, but they refused to understand the situation & it snowballed as predicted.

Soon many pvpers couldnt finish the season on SV because it wasn’t popping enough for their play times, so they too were forced back to old servers to try & complete PvP seasons.

Then BS announced transfers would happen, but no date & that subscribers had to have been subscribed for 90 days to get the free transfers & they were to be treated different to any other server transfer by not being able to bring all their credits.

BS then changed that again with another back date after the fact. Basically ruling out a large portion of paying players from getting free transfers. This pissed off the whole APAC community & caused a bunch more to unsubscribe in disgust. 

The only reason the server is in such bad shape is the total mismanagement of the launch & post launch period. The blame falls squarely on the decision makers in BS. None of this is the players fault at all. Their inability to have a proper launch plan & manage the community expectations through proper communication with the community has cause the most harm to the process. 

[DWho]

34 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

What BS could do is open up free transfers for subscribers. Especially those that missed out because of some stupid technicality or other broken billing process. Even if they said you need to sub for 60 days, it would be a start.

What they should do is prioritize things. There's a lot of things to fix with this update.

For SV:

1) They should look into the people who met the criteria and didn't get the transfers. Those people should be awarded the transfers they are owed.

2) They should give anyone who made an attempt to meet the criteria whether that was because they missed a day or two of continuous sub or re-subbed as soon as they found out the criteria 16 free transfers.

3) People who didn't make any attempt to meet the criteria should be treated differently. They should still get a few free transfers but they should have to maintain a continuous sub for 60 days to get the rest.

Give f2p player accounts that existed before the transfers became active 1 free transfer and preferred accounts 2 free transfers if they played at all in the last 2 months on any server. If they subsequently sub for 60 days, they get the rest of the 16.

Everybody gets 16 free transfers for 60 days of continuous subscription.

Everywhere Else:

The highest priority should be those people who still can't log into the game regardless of location.

From there they can go after the other issues (gear drops, CQ point, etc). It's going to take as long to undo this as it did the mistakes from 7.0 itself.

34 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

If it did happen, what can BS really do about it at this point? It’s not the players fault that the system may have let them to continue transferring characters for free. So BS can’t punish them for it because it can’t really be called an exploit as such.

It's unlikely they can figure it out anyway (if people were able to transfer more than 15m/character). The extra transfers they could probably figure out but it's too late to reverse them now anyway. The credits are all mixed together. My point was that it's a shame the economy got destroyed due to what looks like another QC failure at Broadsword (and there were a lot of them in 7.4.1).

Edited March 17 by DWho

[Darkestmonty]

or just let anyone who has a long history of playing from the APAC region have 16 free character transfers to SV.

as much as the devs may want to preserve SV's economy or make CC from transfer fees, SV has almost no economy because there are no players and may end up closing down if it remains that way.

Then what, they boot all the APAC players back to one of the US servers and call it a day?

Edited March 17 by Darkestmonty

[DWho]

11 minutes ago, Darkestmonty said:

or just let anyone who has a long history of playing from the APAC region have 16 free character transfers to SV.

OK, but how do you define "a long history of playing from the APAC region". Does it have to be in the last several years or can it go back to before the APAC server first closed? It's not an unreasonable request to give "long term" supporters of the game free transfers but how would you define that?

[Darkestmonty]

Just now, DWho said:

OK, but how do you define "a long history of playing from the APAC region". Does it have to be in the last several years or can it go back to before the APAC server first closed? It's not an unreasonable request to give "long term" supporters of the game free transfers but how would you define that?

hopefully they have access to players IP's.

[DWho]

9 minutes ago, Darkestmonty said:

hopefully they have access to players IP's.

That establishes they are from the region (though it is very easy to spoof IPs these days, just about any VPN can do it) but it still doesn't answer the question of what is "a long history of playing from the APAC region". Again, restricting these extra free transfers to the APAC region is fine but what is the minimum amount of support for the game that is required. Is playing on a f2p account good enough, how much time should it be that they played? Is being on the APAC server when it closed enough (I'd say probably it is but what is your opinion)

Edited March 17 by DWho

[Darkestmonty]

30 minutes ago, DWho said:

That establishes they are from the region (though it is very easy to spoof ISPs these days, just about any VPN can do it) but it still doesn't answer the question of what is "a long history of playing from the APAC region". Again, restricting these extra free transfers to the APAC region is fine but what is the minimum amount of support for the game that is required. Is playing on a f2p account good enough, how much time should it be that they played?

up to the devs but I would say 75% of their game play from the last annual quarter to now.

If they want to get picky and go back further since their accounts were created and average the time up but that will take longer.

All I am interested in is getting APAC players back to a regional server that suits their ping better than the NA servers which they were forced to use after the original APAC servers were shut down.

Edited March 17 by Darkestmonty

[DWho]

8 minutes ago, Darkestmonty said:

up to the devs but I would say 75% of their game play from the last annual quarter from now.

If they want to get picky and go back further since their accounts were created and average the time up sure but that will take longer.

All I am interested in is getting APAC players back to a regional server that suits their ping better than the NA servers which they were forced to use after the original APAC servers were shut down.

Ok, I think I understand what you mean now. I don't see any issue with that approach. I do think it would take a lot more effort from the Dev team than the ideas I listed but it is a legitimate approach, though I do see fixing things with the people who met (or almost met) the original criteria as a higher priority than those who didn't (though I'm not against a second wave of transfers with the server economy already gone with the flood of credits).

[FrontLineFodder]

1 hour ago, DWho said:

3) People who didn't make any attempt to meet the criteria should be treated differently. They should still get a few free transfers but they should have to maintain a continuous sub for 60 days to get the rest.

I feel that you have a hatred towards people who "didn't make any attempt to meet the criteria"

Not just this post but many of your responses.

How do you define people who didn't make any attempt to meet the criteria ?

• Those who were subscribed but cancelled and did not renew before the Jan 20 announcement there would be a 90 day sub requirement (no specifics posted)
  • Why would they subscribe after the announcement if they would not be eligible for transfers ?

• Those who were waiting for Transfers to be announced but once the requirements were announced chose not to subscribe
  • Why would they subscribe after the announcement if they would not be eligible for transfers ?

• Those who were subscribed but cancelled and did not renew after they did not meet the initial requirements ?
  • Why would they subscribe after the announcement if they would not be eligible for transfers ?

• Those who were subscribed but cancelled and did not renew after they did not meet the updated requirements ?
  • Why would they subscribe after the announcement if they would not be eligible for transfers ?

What would you consider attempting to meet the requirements and how would that work when the requirements were backdated ?

Would you expect people to start giving you money after you announced a feature that you were offering would only be for those people who had been giving you money already for a month, and would need to keep giving you money until a future time when the feature can be used.

[DWho]

7 hours ago, FrontLineFodder said:

I feel that you have a hatred towards people who "didn't make any attempt to meet the criteria"

Hardly hatred, just fairness. While you feel the APAC server was closed down unfairly 10 years ago, isn't it unfair to the people who paid for their sub before the transfers to get theirs earlier (which is where we are at now if you fix 1) and 2) from my post). They got theirs for subbing, you should have to sub too to get yours. Besides, I was talking about going forward not looking back. It works out to everyone who subs for 2 months gets their 16 transfers whether that was before or after the transfers went live.

As far as "any attempt" goes. I'd go so far as to say anyone who was subbed at the time transfers went live could have 16 transfers right away in the next round (as a benefit to having been subbed), after the people who met the criteria and didn't get their transfers and the people who missed out by a couple of days get theirs. As far as not wanting to subscribe for the reasons you posted above, those are legitimate reasons for not being subscribed, but you shouldn't expect the same treatment as the people who did subscribe. Getting after the fact transfers takes care of your concerns. You still get them, you just have to wait a little longer to get all of them.