I understand this is still planned for release next Tuesday. I suppose some of this will be answered then, but I would like to understand Bioware's direction and intent a little better. There really hasn't been much said from the Devs regarding this new system, despite it being one of the most requested features since launch. Bioware had said something about considering what's best for subscribers, or something along those lines, after a fair bit of QQ on the forums after 2.1 was released. Unless I'm mistaken it sounds like we have to wait a couple months to see what sort of new content will be released, outside of nightmare updates to existing ops. In the mean time, to fill those 2 months, we have server transfers. Let's take this opportunity to talk about the direction of the game and how this system is going to fit within Bioware's goals, and where subscribers fit in those goals.

 

We've already seen double exp weekends, Gree events, and S&V. Spending Dev time or Community Manager time rehashing those is not all that useful. Server transfer are new. Lots of us care. Many of us aren't going to be able to make it to the community cantina in Chicago, or any of the other planned events. This forum is the only place we can get information on what you're planning. It doesn't help you to have players feel scorn or spurned, or to have them think you're trying to sabotage them (the tin foil hat sorts) Eric, maybe Bruce, or someone else, please set aside some time today to address these outstanding issues:

 

1. The legacy system and achievement system requires all of an account's characters to be on the same server to function properly. As I understand it, your transfer will be by character rather than by legacy. Is that right? If so, wouldn't this either break the the intent of the legacy and achievement systems, in that new unlocks or rewards gained after the transfer will not apply to the characters that were unable to transfer? Did I misunderstand your intent with the legacy and achievement systems? Or is it your expectations that players will pay increasing costs based on how many characters they have? Could you please elaborate on what consideration you gave to these systems while formulating your character transfer system? If you're abandoning these systems or don't feel they should be addressed at all, please let us know that.

 

2. There were a number of people who started over on new servers shortly after launch because their original servers died. I'm pretty sure you're aware of that, and there are still a few people that would prefer their characters on a single server. The dead server problem was effectively addressed with server merges, but split accounts were not. This is not a new concern, but there is a new urgency because you are now releasing a system where this can easily be fixed. I don't think there has been any statement from Bioware that addresses this. Can you clarify if this is something Bioware recognizes as a problem? Do you think charging fees that scale up based on how many characters an account has is a sufficient solution, and thus this was an issue but will now be resolved on Tuesday? Waiting a year and half for Bioware to say whether they see this as a problem or not, and whether there will or will not be a fix, is long enough.

 

3. There hasn't been any additional communication regarding EU <--> NA transfers, so it should be safe to assume there will not be a system to allow this. You have stated this is not a technical issue. A lot of people have posted very reasonable situations where this could be a good and healthy feature. Can you elaborate on Bioware's goal with not allowing EU <-> NA transfers? It's really hard to give you guys the benefit of the doubt on this one.

 

4. Does this update include a solution for achievements that were messed up with APAC transfers? I don't actually know anything about this problem, but it's all part of the same thing.

 

to the players reading this, speculation and white-knighting is cute, but only people at bioware know what their goals are, what their priorities with this system are, and why they came to the decisions they came to. please don't claim to represent them if you don't represent them. if i'm a self-entitled spoiled brat, well that's my choice and it's not going to help if some right wing tea party nut feels the need to tell the world about it. thanks.

why not talk to us? eric, are you not allowed to speak of server transfers publicly? are they going to implement a system that you can't put positive spin on? are you guys just abandoning the legacy and achievement systems? what's going on with these transfers?

 

there were a few people who said i should have expected transfers to cost money because that's what WoW did. i didn't play wow, so i didn't have the history you guys have to form that expectation. so, if bioware can't speak on transfers, legacies, or regions, i'll ask you guys. what should we expect?

 

i think we can all agree that if characters are transferred individually, then it will either cost more to transfer alts or it will break up your legacy. pretty black and white and simple. will this be the last time bioware releases a system that makes players choose between scaled fees and breaking up their legacies? is this just a thing that game companies do now to increase their revenue? seriously, if i roll another alt, is that going to somehow put me at a disadvantage again in the future? i've already learned my expectations are different from a lot of you. when i rolled on a new server, i figured bioware knew why and if it was convenient they would go ahead and fix it. when i rolled alts, i figured i would be able to play them whenever and however i wanted. if this game has to be a WoW clone, then maybe some of you can help me temper my expectations and get a better understanding of this game's direction and what's coming up in the future.

 

since bioware won't speak of transfers, i have a good idea of what they're going to do now for tuesday. i don't think it's in the best interest of the players, but that's water under the bridge now. help me not raise unrealistic expectations in the future and let me know what else they're going to do that makes the game less enjoyable. should i just quit leveling alts, because they're going to continue gimping them?

1.) Legacy system doesn't require account's characters to be on the same server to function properly. Legacies are meant to be server-wide. This way, if you (for some strange reason) want multiple legacies, you can have them. Transfers in every game are meant to have prohibitive costs involved -- so people don't transfer on a whim and cause problems with populations, communities, etc.

 

2.) Split accounts won't be fixed by BW. Especially with how long its been without word on the matter. We can hope they will implement a legacy-wide transfer, or discounted options for multiple toons, or maybe a very cheap price for consolidating your characters on one server -- but as of right now, this is not an option.

 

3.) Yes, they've said this won't be in at launch of it. I highly doubt they will tell you why, but I'm sure there is a reason for it. NUMEROUS other threads have spoken on the matter and not received a response.

 

4.) If you read the dev tracker, you'd see that the problems are still being solved manually, but they also said transfers were pushed back because of these issues. I highly doubt they will release transfers on Tuesday if the problems still exist.

 

There was NO reason for you to make ANOTHER thread on this. There is already a Transfer thread where many people have asked these questions, and many others -- and Eric has responded a few times. You should've just continued to post in that thread.

there are (4) issues that should be addressed that i've seen, and the other threads tend to only focus on one or two. i thought it would simplify things to point out the four things that haven't been addressed (the apac thing was addressed, but the reasoning was not, maybe point 4 has been resolved and i missed it). they could just tell us what they're doing and why, and a lot of these threads will go away. if what they're doing and why works for the interest of most players, even the QQ that follows will be fairly limited. sometimes threads get too long and off-topic and i doubt the devs really look through them at that point. this is still an issue they should respond to, and i just wanted to remind them of that. my second post was an introspective look that it could be a problem with me, and if so, help me on what i should be expecting because what i expect with regards to transfers is off from what they're delivering.

 

'for some strange reason' should have been addressed. for me, it was because servers died. for people who want to transfer tuesday, they will have to choose between a cost that scales with number alts or a split legacy. i don't think anyone wants to have multiple legacies, i think they will be forced to choose between that and what could become unaffordable charges. a cost for transfers to prevent people from server hopping is one thing, a cost that scales based on how many alts you have is another. scaling the cost discourages rolling alts, which i believe to be counter-productive to the intent of of the legacy system and achievement system that encourages rolling alts. unless i'm mistaken, which is possible, there hasn't been any indication from bioware as to how transfers and legacies will work together. i don't think it's asking a lot for them to touch on this issue.

 

edited to add: bioware should not ignore this. they shouldn't be pretending this is something their player base doesn't care about. if point 2 is now 'resolved' or whatever the equivalent of closed ticket is, they never told me and i kind of think they should have.

 

you even said: "We can hope they will implement a legacy-wide transfer, or discounted options for multiple toons, or maybe a very cheap price for consolidating your characters on one server" -- if this is true, it would help to know this before tuesday because that's relevant to the decision of spending real-life money in addition to the subscription we're already paying. less speculation and more information would be better.

 

so, the goal of creating another post is for bioware to stop ignoring the problem, or stop pretending it isn't a concern. lots of posts in other threads adds legitimacy, in my opinion, to suggest it's still a concern for people other than just me.

Edited June 20, 2013 by curtkram

They've pointed out exactly what happens to legacies when you transfer.

 

Every question you posed is present in the current long-standing server transfers thread.

According to what I've read from the Devs about server transfers and Legacy these are my thoughts on how you can get all your Legacies to the same level.

 

You have multiple characters on two different servers. I my case, a West Coast PvE server and an East Coast Pve Server. I started on a West Coast server because that's where Bioware put the Guild I was pre-signed up with at launch even though the Guild stated they were on the East Coast. After leveling to 50 I decided to re-roll new characters on an East Coast server so I could play during my prime time hours and not lose sleep since I work during the day. So now I have eight (8) level 55 characters on an East Coast server and my original, now level 53, character on a West Coast server. For me I just have to transfer one character to get them all on the same server. For those of you that do have multiple level 55 characters on different servers it will cost you more to get them together.

 

Now for the way you can get all of the characters on all of the different server to have the same Legacy level/perks.

 

Example:

Lets say you have four (4) character each on two different servers and you want all your characters to have the same Legacy Level/Perks. This will include Collections as well if I read this correctly. Before you transfer a character from one server to another make sure you have all the Collections you want shared to be available on the character(s) you are going to transfer. Then transfer that character(s) to the other server, one in each direction. By doing that, both of your Legacies on both servers will now be the same with the same perks and collections at the time of the transfers. Any additions to your collections and perks will be server independent unless it's stated to be account wide. Now any alts you decide to roll on these servers will benefit from the highest Legacy you've achieved since your Legacies have now been merged together.

 

And if you decided to roll a character on a completely new server and wanted the Legacy perks from your other server then you can just transfer a character to that server first and get that Legacy level. Or roll the new character on one of your existing servers and then transfer that character to a new server after it reaches level 10.

 

Good luck.

i just searched through the first 5 pages of the dev tracker and all i've seen is this:

Can you transfer across region, like EU to NA?

As of the current plan, no. However, I want to state that this is absolutely something we want to do and as you saw with APAC it isn't a tech limitation. There are some other restrictions we are working through and we hope to have the ability to transfer across region moving forward. I will give you updates on this as I have it.

 

for point 3, that's just not much to go on. all this says is that they want to do it but they won't, which is kind of contradictory. it's not a technical limitation, so that kind of implies it's something they can do. so they're saying they can do it, they want to do it, but they won't do it. that's confusing. for point 4, i did not see the post about apac achievements being fixed, but i will admit i make mistakes sometimes. they did say the original release for this was delayed to fix achievements for the rest of us, which i think is a good thing, both that they tried to fix it and that they were willing to communicate that.

 

the other threads have a lot of players speculation. not the same as the devs telling us what direction they want their game to go. i shouldn't be building expectations based on other people's speculation.

 

for point 1, i'm pretty sure i know how legacies worked in the first merger and have a vague idea of what happened with the recent apac transfer. if their goal is to ask players who want to use this system to choose between abandoning their characters or pay a charge that scales and is different for everyone, that's still relevant and could really use a bit of explanation. moving forward, since what they're doing here will likely be done again, was the goal to treat some players different by charging them more, was the goal to abandon the legacy system, or was there some other goal? if it was just to charge people, they could have charged per legacy which would be the same for everyone and it would not cause legacy to be broken up. this system introduces developer priorities that i don't understand.

 

regarding point 2, you essentially said this is something bioware has put behind them. so, it still stands that this has never been addressed, and it i still believe it should be.

 

in light of this perspective, i think you'll understand i'm either missing something (in which case you can help with actual links from devs, which i would honestly appreciate), or they could help us understand what to expect for the future of this game.

You can transfer legacy, it takes one character, to transfer the entire legacy. I'm not sure if this is what you were asking but I hope it helps.

My point is -- some of these have been touched on by devs -- but ALL OF THESE QUESTIONS have been asked already, in a much more active thread, and there was absolutely no reason to make yet another thread on the matter.

 

You should've just posted in that thread. The one that even has developer responses -- meaning, they are continuing to read it, and respond when they have information to share.

 

Entire point is that there was no reason to post a brand new thread on this.

You can transfer legacy, it takes one character, to transfer the entire legacy. I'm not sure if this is what you were asking but I hope it helps.

 

my hope was to be able to actually play all of the characters i've started, and have new legacy acheivements on those characters apply to all of my other characters. but more to the point is the overall direction of the game.

 

for the future, i would like my expectations to be a bit closer to what's really happening. when bioware says something like "we really want to allow na-eu transfers" i take that to mean they really want to allow NA-EU transfers. apparently that's not the case. if they would be a bit more sincere about what their priorities are, i think i would be let down a bit less, and then i would be a bit less upset when they do something i perceive to be screwing over the players.

 

for the transfer and legacy (the characters, not the number or perks), there is still a disconnect. they want players to choose between two bad options, which i think is clearly opposed to giving the players the best experience. they want to make money, which is fine, and i don't object to that at all as long as they're honest about it and don't lie or try to deceive us to do so. so they introduce a system where we have to pay extra or lose our legacy (i mean abandon characters). i don't think there is a precedent in the game where people have been asked to break up their legacy, except when servers were dieing and a million people quit. i don't consider that a precedent, i consider it a mistake which we can forgive and move on instead of repeat. i don't think there is a case where some people were asked to pay more for a service than others. i'm just saying, for me to understand what they intend for the future and base my expectation on that so i don't get let down and then pissed off, a bit of dialogue would be appropriate.

 

i do appreciate that you've read this and your replies. kilora, i hope this can expand upon why this topic is important, which is why i figured there should be thread to simplify what needs answered (even though i don't know how to post less than a book), which you can disagree with if you like. it's not just qq that i lost my sage.

Edited June 20, 2013 by curtkram

great answer from the devs regarding point 4.

I wanted to give an update on the broken titles and achievements issue. These should be fixed with Game Update 2.2.1 next week. Also, after that point if you transfer a character you should not experience these issues.

 

If you run into any problems with your titles or achievements after 2.2.1, please contact CS.

 

-eric

would be nice to continue this address pionts 1-3. or maybe if eric wanted to come in here and let me know they have no intention of discussing any or all of these, that would at least be something.

great answer from the devs regarding point 4.

 

would be nice to continue this address pionts 1-3. or maybe if eric wanted to come in here and let me know they have no intention of discussing any or all of these, that would at least be something.

 

All three of them have been answered by the devs, by other players in the other server transfers threads, and other players in this thread. Just stop.

My point is -- some of these have been touched on by devs -- but ALL OF THESE QUESTIONS have been asked already, in a much more active thread, and there was absolutely no reason to make yet another thread on the matter.

 

You should've just posted in that thread. The one that even has developer responses -- meaning, they are continuing to read it, and respond when they have information to share.

 

Entire point is that there was no reason to post a brand new thread on this.

 

I agree this thread was not necessary.

 

I will point out that i prepared for server transfers over a year ago by not making alts on a server that i knew i would eventually leave. Now i only have toon to move; my first 50.

All three of them have been answered by the devs, by other players in the other server transfers threads, and other players in this thread. Just stop.

 

there has been speculation by other players.

 

like i said, i looked through the dev tracker. i'm not perfect, and the dev's may have made statements i missed. if that's the case, instead of saying 'just stop,' please help out by posting a link. otherwise, i assume your claim that three questions have been answered is a deliberate falsehood and uncalled for.

 

obviously i've put a fair bit of thought into this, as i don't want my expectations to be as far off as they have been and i don't want to be upset when those expectations are not met. that's what causes a fairly significant amount of QQ in these forums, and to reduce the QQ, it would be best to give people realistic expectations. that's hard to do when the devs won't explain why they've decided not to implement NA-EU transfers even though they can and they want to.

 

so i guess the best i can tell, the reason they aren't actually talking about this, which they're not, despite the fact that a lot of players are talking about it in other threads, is that this is a way to introduce a new sliding scale for cartel charges. people with multiple characters are more vested in the game, and therefore willing to pay more. so a service can have a scalable price instead of a set price based on how vested the player is. this is what we should expect for future updates. in addition to the subscription, there will be some sort of scalable fee that gets higher the more vested you are. unless i'm mistaken, and my speculation is pretty much as valid as all of the other players.

 

other than that, i don't know what the development team wants the direction of this game to be. for now, i don't think they're focused on positive gameplay experience. when that's the case, it's hard for me to manage expectations. that appears to be the case with a lot of the people that complain on the forums. that's just an opinion, and it's just as valid as your opinion.

 

 

p.s.

i mean - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vested_interest - not a legal right. i am in no way suggesting there is any sort of legal or moral or any other implication to this suggestion. i know a lot of you like to make a big deal out of EULAs and such, so please understand i am in no way referring to anything legal at all, and this is not about semantics and picking apart ever word. that doesn't help. please try to understand the content and intent instead.

You type too much, curt. In four days (fingers crossed) we're going to find out exactly how transfers work anyways.

It's nice to get a confirmation that the transfers are still planned for the next update... but I'd much appreciate clarification on transfers between REGIONS, as last time it was stated they had issues to address on this before being able to bring it live... any progress, ETA?

It's nice to get a confirmation that the transfers are still planned for the next update... but I'd much appreciate clarification on transfers between REGIONS, as last time it was stated they had issues to address on this before being able to bring it live... any progress, ETA?

 

I agree. This will make or break the game for me, unless they put in cross server que's soon.

Edited June 20, 2013 by tonooo