Bad News, Predictable Disaster, Recovery Impossible

[TrixxieTriss]

5 minutes ago, xordevoreaux said:

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.

We’ll never know because they catered to everyone else besides the APAC community. Who isn’t niche by the way. It includes all SE Asian countries along with Australia & NZ. Something people outside our region forget. 

[xordevoreaux]

6 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

We’ll never know because they catered to everyone else besides the APAC community. Who isn’t niche by the way. It includes all SE Asian countries along with Australia & NZ. Something people outside our region forget. 

They should have catered to China.  At the bottom of this Steam hardware survey, scroll all the way down.  The majority of respondents, over 30%, said their language was Simplified Chinese.

 

[TrixxieTriss]

28 minutes ago, xordevoreaux said:

They should have catered to China.  At the bottom of this Steam hardware survey, scroll all the way down.  The majority of respondents, over 30%, said their language was Simplified Chinese.

 

If you have ever followed the gaming news coming from China, you’d realise how much of a mine field it is for foreign companies to navigate. As well as the newish laws they now enforce on screen time for Chinese located gamers. So no, focusing on China as a country would be a big mistake for any foreign gaming company. 

As for the Chinese language, yes that could be productive because half of SE Asia has some Chinese speaking population. But those same countries also have similar English language skills. And considering how much language actors cost swtor, adding another language this late wouldn’t be economical. 

Asia with Australia & NZ added, is actual the largest gaming population on the planet. It actually dwarfs the NA & EU population combined. But that includes China, Japan, STH Korea & India. So I don’t like to include the whole of Asia, I just say SE Asia & Australia + NZ. Which by themselves is at least as large as the NA or EU gaming markets. 

As you can see. APAC dwarfs EU & NA markets. 

But China, Japan & STH Korea aren’t the  most saturated gaming countries in Asia. That top spot goes to Indonesia. A lot of them speak English well, go to university in Australia & many end up living here too. 

 

So we actually have 6 of the top 13 gaming countries (by saturation) in our region. Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, India, Taiwan & Malaysia. All of them are countries that have reasonable amount of English speaking skills. 

If BS were smart, they would promote swtor across the APAC region. We aren’t a niche gaming region, we are actually the largest in the world. 

 

Edited April 1 by TrixxieTriss

[DHTarez]

3 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

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.

100% this. 

And APAC players should first access to the server for at least a week before anyone else.  There was no need to mix both a fresh start server and region server into one.  If they wanted a fresh start server to use a test bed as they were trying to use SV, they should have spun one up specifically with that indication and all the restrictions and left SV as a regional server no different than any other region server. 

They really dropped the ball on this whole deal in so many ways but then again seems to be par for the course over the years that they don't learn from a bad decisions and keep the cone of silence going.  (the rep token nerf as yet another recent example). 

[AFadedMemory]

8 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Buys you absolutely diddly squat

Just because you are not capable of making the chain of purchases you want at the rate you want does not mean 15 million is insufficient for the average player on a new server. (New Players will start out with less than 15 million are they insignificant)

it’s important to note wolf in sheep clothing won’t be using the credits for the purposes you state. Why else would you have asked for transfers off sv to be postponed for 12 months?

8 hours ago, xordevoreaux said:

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.

Echoing this. SV only passed the 90 day review period because many groups believe their expectations would be met. When BS failed to hit two big expectations many people left. The people who remain valued/value something else. The server would have only been successful if bs focused on one of the big expectations and in cooperated the group of people who are currently using the server or made a significant compromise with the two opposing groups. 

Edited April 2 by AFadedMemory

[TrixxieTriss]

1 hour ago, AFadedMemory said:

Just because you are not capable of making the chain of purchases

I’ve more credits on SF than I could ever use. I purchased anything I needed in that regard before I left. 

So I didnt want to make a chain of purchases. I just want to open up all my current strongholds & guilds/banks/ships & other things I had on SF. 

You go through 240 million credits really fast trying to open all that stuff. Like I said, 15 million credits buys you diddly squat.

 

Edited April 2 by TrixxieTriss

[AFadedMemory]

15 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

I’ve more credits on SF than I could ever use. I purchased anything I needed in that regard before I left. 

So I didnt want to make a chain of purchases. I just want to open up all my current strongholds & guilds/banks/ships & other things I had on SF. 

You go through 240 million credits really fast trying to open all that stuff. Like I said, 15 million credits buys you diddly squat.

 

It is impossible (because of how things are currently coded) to make a purchase that unlocks everything you described in a single transaction, hence chain of purchases. Most transactions in that process cost less than 15 million. 15 million does buy stuff.
 

Now you should know I’m not stating APAC region is incapable of having a successful server that also allows transfers with no credit limit. I am saying that the server BS launched was not realistically capable of being that server. This is because the necessary steps that needed to be taken before launch were not take, and the steps that were take lead to a population with conflicting expectations. The server became a salvage operation on day one.

Edited April 2 by AFadedMemory

[TrixxieTriss]

4 minutes ago, AFadedMemory said:

Most transactions in that process cost less than 15 million. 15 million does buy stuff

Actually only the first few cost less. Once you get past the first few, they start doubling in price. So I can tell you from experience, that 15 million doesn’t buy you much. 

[AFadedMemory]

11 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Actually only the first few cost less. Once you get past the first few, they start doubling in price. So I can tell you from experience, that 15 million doesn’t buy you much. 

I acknowledge that unlocking guilds and strongholds coast a lot. I Unlocked my guild ship on SS by purchasing Frameworks (or what ever the 50 plans were traded for) at around 7 million a piece. 

However. I value the the new Server for a different reason then fresh start or returning home (I’m pretty sure harbinger was the server I first played swtor on.) which is why I’m still using it. I sincerely believe the server would be healthy populated if BS put a credit limit in place and gave discounted transfer with several free transfers per person that were not conditional.

[xordevoreaux]

2 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Actually only the first few cost less. Once you get past the first few, they start doubling in price. So I can tell you from experience, that 15 million doesn’t buy you much. 

You're right, it doesn't.

15 million

I have the legacy purchase of the Umbara stronghold, but every time I want to unlock that legacy stronghold on another server, I first must pay over 3 million credits to get to the kiosk where it's locked behind a door on Odessen. 

Now I'm down to 11.x million and all I've done is unlock 1 stronghold that I already own.

 

Edited April 2 by xordevoreaux

[lingburger]

18 hours ago, DawnAskham said:

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.

This point has been outlined by many others, including myself in other posts.

We are here as their TEST subjects - we are players that had our environment taken away from us year ago -  and now had to PAY to get back to where we started off in the first place.

Clearly some non-gaming exec had made a request to monetise this project as much as possible...

[TrixxieTriss]

4 hours ago, AFadedMemory said:

I sincerely believe the server would be healthy populated if BS put a credit limit in place and gave discounted transfer with several free transfers per person

But they’ve basically already done that and it’s back fired terribly. Because sadly, you’re not the Largest or the majority of the demographic they’ve driven away from the game with this debacle of an experiment. If you were the demographic, then their current plan would have worked. But it’s failed miserably because they didn’t listen to the actual APAC player demographic. 

Edited April 2 by TrixxieTriss

[TrixxieTriss]

3 hours ago, lingburger said:

Clearly some non-gaming exec had made a request to monetise this project as much as possible..

And in the process actually chased more paying customers away from the game. 

[eabevella]

15 hours ago, xordevoreaux said:

They should have catered to China.  At the bottom of this Steam hardware survey, scroll all the way down.  The majority of respondents, over 30%, said their language was Simplified Chinese.

No. BS simply isn't equipped enough to deal with Chinese censorship from game contents to payment to internet connection and an industry of running MMO games with bots.

Forget about catering to China. Catering to the other APAC countries with healthier overall environment as a whole.

Japan, Korea both have robust gaming culture and industry. A lot of MMO games set up their North Asian servers in Korea. Japan also has the strongest SW "culture" in North Asia (SWC will be held in Japan in 2025 for a reason) where SW is simply not a thing in China. If anything, BS should make a Japanese translation to get into a well established SW market.

You don't even have to worry about language for countries like Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Singapore.

5 hours ago, AFadedMemory said:

I acknowledge that unlocking guilds and strongholds coast a lot. I Unlocked my guild ship on SS by purchasing Frameworks (or what ever the 50 plans were traded for) at around 7 million a piece. 

However. I value the the new Server for a different reason then fresh start or returning home (I’m pretty sure harbinger was the server I first played swtor on.) which is why I’m still using it. I sincerely believe the server would be healthy populated if BS put a credit limit in place and gave discounted transfer with several free transfers per person that were not conditional.

The in game ticket ppl said my am not eligible for free transfer. My credit card company declined the auto payment at 3AM by mistake. I didn't log in that day, but resubscribed the day after around noon time because there was a raiding that night. It's just a bit over 24hr and nope, I have to pay for the transfer.

I made 1 transfer because I promised my guild ppl who were moving over to get 1 toon there. But no way I'm paying for more.

I don't even get a significantly faster ping, only about 50ms faster and it's still around 150ms, so I don't feel like moving my toons there at all.

[AFadedMemory]

1 hour ago, TrixxieTriss said:

But they’ve basically already done that and it’s back fired terribly. Because sadly, you’re not the Largest or the majority of the demographic they’ve driven away from the game with this debacle of an experiment. If you were the demographic, then their current plan would have worked. But it’s failed miserably because they didn’t listen to the actual APAC player demographic. 

They didn't though. Only a small portion of the game population got free transfers. the limit to the credits that can be moved is how many cc coins a person want to spend.  (it is also possible for a person to get more than 16 free transfer if they have more than one account.) 

 I got what I wanted that's why on on the server still. I wasn't expecting a fresh start server or free transfers. I supported those ideas though.