Bad News, Predictable Disaster, Recovery Impossible

[MadCuzBad]

I will let the screen shots speak for themselves. These were taken at 3/31/2024 3:30 PM EST. I hope bioware will consider giving us free transfers off of this server when they admit it has failed.

 

 

Edited March 31 by MadCuzBad

[Saeten]

What's also bad is the noticeable monopoly of the starter guilds that swallowed up everyone. I agree that the server is wholly inactive and the management of establishing it for the region seems to have killed interest in actively playing on it.

 

[TrixxieTriss]

They don’t need to offer transfers off the server. They need to do some actual marketing to the region & engage with the APAC community. 

[SteveTheCynic]

4 hours ago, MadCuzBad said:

I hope bioware will consider giving us free transfers off of this server

BioWare has exactly **NO** influence on that, ever since the game was transferred to Broadsword.

[MadCuzBad]

35 minutes ago, SteveTheCynic said:

BioWare has exactly **NO** influence on that, ever since the game was transferred to Broadsword.

That is fine with me. I hope Broadsword gives us free transfers off when they realize Shae Vizla is a dead horse. I have 25 toons on an absolutely empty server. It is absolutly impossible to even try to progress on the PVP season. Just do a simple /who and view 10-79 and you will not see even one instance of PVP. I queue for hours while I quest with zero pops. /who 80 yields same exact results.

[TrixxieTriss]

45 minutes ago, MadCuzBad said:

That is fine with me. I hope Broadsword gives us free transfers off when they realize Shae Vizla is a dead horse. I have 25 toons on an absolutely empty server. It is absolutly impossible to even try to progress on the PVP season. Just do a simple /who and view 10-79 and you will not see even one instance of PVP. I queue for hours while I quest with zero pops. /who 80 yields same exact results.

Wouldn’t it be better if they marketed to the region to get new players. And to actually engage the APAC community who they’ve alienated with their bungled opening & subsequent handling of transfers to the server? That way the server would grow & you wouldn’t need transfers off. 

[TahliahCOH]

I had just started new toons on the new server since I'd read about all the horror stories regarding transfers. But given all the recent changes that are devastatingly expensive to "new" players (in this case an old player on a new server without access to creds, SHs, legacy unlocks, etc.), it's not worth the bother. This transfer nightmare needs to be fixed for everyone who is going to continue subbing/playing swtor, but they are totally focused on nerfs that are destroying their subscription base, not on fixing actual problems, so don't hold your breath. 

[Hrafnhildur]

I transfered one character to Shae Vizla, but i regretted it instantly. The server is empty, GS progress almost impossible ( Capital Punishment, Sparks of War, Freedom droid). People don't communicate at all,don't do stuff together, in my opinion that server is set to fail. 

[FrontLineFodder]

3 minutes ago, Hrafnhildur said:

I transfered one character to Shae Vizla, but i regretted it instantly. The server is empty, GS progress almost impossible ( Capital Punishment, Sparks of War, Freedom droid). People don't communicate at all,don't do stuff together, in my opinion that server is set to fail. 

I'm looking to do a group tonight:

Galactic Seasons Cleanup crew
Missed a World Boss, Need to get some FR3-DOM, Want to get the Sparks Of War
Starting on Imp, finishing on Pub.
Monday, April 1, 2024 10:00 PM SGT
 

If you have done it but are available, please join in to help those who have not.

I am considering on making this a weekly event, if I can get the players together.

[AFadedMemory]

1 hour ago, Hrafnhildur said:

I transfered one character to Shae Vizla, but i regretted it instantly. The server is empty, GS progress almost impossible ( Capital Punishment, Sparks of War, Freedom droid). People don't communicate at all,don't do stuff together, in my opinion that server is set to fail. 

Yeah, if you don’t start on Tuesday or Wednesday it’s hard to complete. 

[eabevella]

It's a vicious cycle of can't get anything done because no one wants to be on SV and no one wants to be on SV because can't get anything done (in reasonable time compared to SF/SS/Malgus).

 

[AFadedMemory]

7 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Wouldn’t it be better if they marketed to the region to get new players. And to actually engage the APAC community who they’ve alienated with their bungled opening & subsequent handling of transfers to the server? That way the server would grow & you wouldn’t need transfers off. 

I definitely would prefer SV not get deleted. Unfortunately it would be extremely difficult to increase the population now that BS literally did what the fresh start peeps and the APAC peeps literally asked them not to. I.e allow too much credits (fresh peeps) and forced peeps who deserved free transfer to pay from them (APAC peeps)

16 free transfers with 15 million credit each, but only if you’ve been subscribed for awhile. Bad idea.

1- fresh staters played on the server because of low inflation. Why did you listen to the fat cats who literally had and could transfer over everything they were sayin they needed the credits for.

2- low ping was your biggest selling point for apac. Guess what activities their high pings were impacting? Modes that required a subscription. Why pay for services you can’t reliably use. Answer you shouldn’t. Are you really surprised that there where apac player who were not subscribed?

3 - 16 free transfer is way to much. You should have made it 1-6 for everyone then the rest at a discount.

SV needs a healthy population before new people will trust it enough to join now that the 90 days are up. What does SV have now that the other server don’t? New names? Not really. Low inflation? Not anymore. Full legacy and guild from before merge. No, but that can change. And it will take that level of change to make this server work now.

[TrixxieTriss]

3 hours ago, AFadedMemory said:

16 free transfers with 15 million credit each, but only if you’ve been subscribed for awhile. Bad idea.

I’ve transferred my 16 across & after paying to open up my guild banks & strong holds again, I’ve no credits left. Literally a few million credits & I still need to buy 2 guild ships. 

15 million was never enough for long term players who had lots of stuff to bring & wanting to set up everything like they had it on their old server. 

And because there aren’t enough people to buy stuff off the GTN at the moment, I can’t even recoup some of those costs selling items I brought with me. Prices are incredibly low because there is no one to buy anything. I’m literally giving stuff away that I bought 10-100x more several years ago before inflation was even an issue. All because there aren’t enough people with credits to buy stuff. 

The server should never have had special circumstances applied to it. It should have been free transfers for ALL APAC subscribers from day one with no credit limits. And then offered a few free transfers for preferred or F2P who had accounts started before the server opened. Then run discounted transfers to the server for the next 12 months.

One of their mistakes was also allowing people to transfer off the server. They should have said from day one that transfers off wouldn’t be allowed for 12 months. 

If they had done all of that & offered promotional discounts to new & returning players from day 1, the server would be healthy. 

What’s sad is this was all predictable & spelled out to them repeatedly and as usual ignored by them. Because *** forbid players from the actual APAC region might actually know what they are talking about.

Edited April 1 by TrixxieTriss

[Traceguy]

And some of those guilds (the ones under 5,000,000CQP) are probably operating with just a single player

28 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

One of their mistakes was also allowing people to transfer off the server. They should have said from day one that transfers off wouldn’t be allowed for 12 months. 

It wouldn't stop players from spending more time on SF/SS as they could still return to their original legacy. And knowing such a requirement up front, most would have likely just moved spare toons to begin with, which could make the problem even worse than it is now.

[AFadedMemory]

33 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

The server should never have had special circumstances applied to it.

 

34 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

It should have been free transfers for ALL APAC subscribers from day one with no credit limits.

34 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

offered a few free transfers for preferred or F2P who had accounts started before the server opened.

37 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Then run discounted transfers to the server for the next 12 months.

37 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

They should have said from day one that transfers off wouldn’t be allowed for 12 months.

The bolded items are all special circumstances that would have had to be applied to the server.

I agree that  BS's launch of SV was not optimal or efficient.  I also believe that it needed special circumstances, and still does. I have stated a few times what I thought the optimal circumstance where shortly after launch. Now those don't matter. The environment for those circumstance to be optimal no longer exist on SV and can not be replicated on SV without pissing people off (I'm not saying that environment was the best/optimal). If I'm going to be blunt the only realistic way I can think of to speedily regain a healthy population on SV now is to take it from other servers.  The effort required to do this without greatly upsetting the moved population is unrealistic (definitely possible but requires micro mergers of accounts and guilds from multiple servers.)

[DawnAskham]

4 hours ago, AFadedMemory said:

I definitely would prefer SV not get deleted. Unfortunately it would be extremely difficult to increase the population now that BS literally did what the fresh start peeps and the APAC peeps literally asked them not to. I.e allow too much credits (fresh peeps) and forced peeps who deserved free transfer to pay from them (APAC peeps)

16 free transfers with 15 million credit each, but only if you’ve been subscribed for awhile. Bad idea.

1- fresh staters played on the server because of low inflation. Why did you listen to the fat cats who literally had and could transfer over everything they were sayin they needed the credits for.

2- low ping was your biggest selling point for apac. Guess what activities their high pings were impacting? Modes that required a subscription. Why pay for services you can’t reliably use. Answer you shouldn’t. Are you really surprised that there where apac player who were not subscribed?

3 - 16 free transfer is way to much. You should have made it 1-6 for everyone then the rest at a discount.

SV needs a healthy population before new people will trust it enough to join now that the 90 days are up. What does SV have now that the other server don’t? New names? Not really. Low inflation? Not anymore. Full legacy and guild from before merge. No, but that can change. And it will take that level of change to make this server work now.

15 million credits buys exactly nothing with the in-game costs on SV all pegged to the economies of servers where even new-ish players have billions.

It's posts where NA / EU players complained about 'too many credits' and other nonsense like some of the original thoughts about even not allowing transfers or not transferring legacies and achievements and such that helped Broadsword make such a mess of this server.

APAC needed a server that was just like every other server, with a limited amount of free transfers for anyone subscribing during a reasonable period of time (not back dated qualifications) with no restrictions on credits or items, marketing to APAC players and possibly some special offer for anyone previously forced off the old APAC server to transfer all their characters.

If there was really a huge market for a 'fresh start' restricted server, it was most likely from NA / EU players, and such a server should have been established there instead of mucking up the new APAC server.

Edited April 1 by DawnAskham

[Jett-Rinn]

I didn't see the logic in transferring when it was announced...it's baffling to me why anyone was gullible enough to think this would be a thriving server....like Starforge is, I had one guild member who left but he hates people and wanted to be alone so he got his wish.

But yeah....You had no way of seeing that train barreling down the track.... no way at all.....😒

[AFadedMemory]

1 hour ago, DawnAskham said:

15 million credits buys exactly nothing with the in-game costs on SV all pegged to the economies of servers where even new-ish players have billions.

It's posts where NA / EU players complained about 'too many credits' and other nonsense like some of the original thoughts about even not allowing transfers or not transferring legacies and achievements and such that helped Broadsword make such a mess of this server.

APAC needed a server that was just like every other server, with a limited amount of free transfers for anyone subscribing during a reasonable period of time (not back dated qualifications) with no restrictions on credits or items, marketing to APAC players and possibly some special offer for anyone previously forced off the old APAC server to transfer all their characters.

If there was really a huge market for a 'fresh start' restricted server, it was most likely from NA / EU players, and such a server should have been established there instead of mucking up the new APAC server.

15 million credits buys you a lot on a new server. Did it replicate everything you had on other servers? No. BS did not promise to relocate or replicate APAC Players and their legacy's. the only real promise they made in the announcement was that transfer would be unavailable at launch. The credit sinks were not game breaking. Did they slow the accumulation of credits. Yes. that's kind the point. Was it to much? If you jumped straight to end game with the intent to avoid other content you probably would think so.

Broadsword made a mess of the server before it even launched. Their failure to launch the server with the expressed and active purpose of being a fresh start or a Returning the People to APAC server is why there was a divide in the first place.  This mess was exacerbated by BS neglecting the main desires of both divides. Strong Credit limit, and quick free transfers.

APAC servers where closed for a reason. If there was an actual need for an apac server SV would not be dead/dying. 

I don't disagree that NA/EU peeps want fresh start. That market group leaving is also a reason SV is dead/dying

Now you should know I spend most of my game time on SV, and I don't want it to die. I currently have a maxed out guild on SS with 2 billion credits in it's bank, and around 50 to 60 million credits in my legacy bank and scattered million on the 14 toon there. I have not and do not plan on transferring to SV until I'm done with a character playthrough there. I probably wont use SS for anything but GS after I join the two legacy's. I play on SV for two main reasons. I snagged the names I wanted, and SV is a better character/name than SS (in my person opinion) the former being the most important. Without it I would not be playing there. The Fresh Legacy is fun, but I can have that on SF or the EU servers.

Edited April 1 by AFadedMemory

[VegaMist]

9 hours ago, AFadedMemory said:

I definitely would prefer SV not get deleted. Unfortunately it would be extremely difficult to increase the population now that BS literally did what the fresh start peeps and the APAC peeps literally asked them not to. I.e allow too much credits (fresh peeps) and forced peeps who deserved free transfer to pay from them (APAC peeps)

16 free transfers with 15 million credit each, but only if you’ve been subscribed for awhile. Bad idea.

1- fresh staters played on the server because of low inflation. Why did you listen to the fat cats who literally had and could transfer over everything they were sayin they needed the credits for.

2- low ping was your biggest selling point for apac. Guess what activities their high pings were impacting? Modes that required a subscription. Why pay for services you can’t reliably use. Answer you shouldn’t. Are you really surprised that there where apac player who were not subscribed?

3 - 16 free transfer is way to much. You should have made it 1-6 for everyone then the rest at a discount.

SV needs a healthy population before new people will trust it enough to join now that the 90 days are up. What does SV have now that the other server don’t? New names? Not really. Low inflation? Not anymore. Full legacy and guild from before merge. No, but that can change. And it will take that level of change to make this server work now.

There should not have been any "Fresh Start server" nonsense wrapped into it - period. If they wanted a Fresh Start Server, they should have set it up separately for anyone who wanted a said fresh start. By conflicting these two incompatible goals, they set SV on a path to a failure from the get-go.

Edited April 1 by VegaMist

[Traceguy]

The idea of a fresh start server is pretty much a "Grass is greener on the other side" dream by people with few credits.  If they gave NA/EU a fresh start server, it would never get off the ground. A small amount of players actually want one, and a smaller amount would remain there. Players would all rush back to their mains once they got bored. SS players have been begging for a merge for some years now. The last thing they want is another server with an even worse population.

Broadsword failed by even entertaining such an idea.

Edited April 1 by Traceguy

[Pirana]

This was predictable. Unfortunately this game isn't as busy as it once was. Opening a new server, as good of an idea as it seems on the surface, those net results were to be expected. This has been discussed for a few years now and some of us mentioned that it wouldn't be wise, but hey, at least the opportunity finally arrived. Take that for what it's worth.

[Darev]

11 hours ago, AFadedMemory said:

Yeah, if you don’t start on Tuesday or Wednesday it’s hard to complete. 

Yes.   and it's annoying.

[TrixxieTriss]

4 hours ago, AFadedMemory said:

15 million credits buys you a lot on a new server

Buys you absolutely diddly squat. 
Returning & existing APAC players just wanted to setup their characters, guilds & strong holds exactly like they had on the old servers. And even transferring 16x 15 million hasn’t been enough for me to do that. 

From day 1, it should NEVER have been set up as a fresh start server. That was their bigger mistake. It should have just been setup as a regional server & then allowed APAC players free transfers of their “whole” legacy of characters (like a merge) if they wanted them all. We could have brought over our guilds, strong holds & characters & credits. The server would have been no different to any other server. Any it would have been populated. 

I don’t know why you keep saying you wanted a fresh server. Are you located in APAC or in the US & EU? If you wanted a fresh server experience, there is no reason you still couldn’t have that outside of the GTN? 

[TrixxieTriss]

1 hour ago, Traceguy said:

Broadsword failed by even entertaining such an idea.

They failed because of bad planning & implementation. It should never have been a setup as a fresh server. It should have always been set up as a regional server & then marketed to the region.

[xordevoreaux]

7 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

They failed because of bad planning & implementation. It should never have been a setup as a fresh server. It should have always been set up as a regional server & then marketed to the region.

And the server would still be empty had Broadsword done that because there's no way in hell the APAC population even begins to balance out with players located throughout the United States and Europe, so putting blinders on and exclusively marketing to a niche audience, rather than the broader population, won't get you a full server, ever.