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Server Merge Discussion Thread


EricMusco

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Your infallible group of pals won't last forever and when it does you'll probably either go with them to another game or become a pug yourself. I'm just looking out for your future self, wink wink.

 

GSF is huge on Harbinger and TRE.

 

I seriously didn't know about GSF... I played it for about a day during early access, and didn't go back. As to "looking out for me", thx mate, I appreciate it, really, but I'll be fine. The people that came with me from Aion a few years back were gone within 30 days, and I built a new circle of friends. When/if the time comes, I can do it again. I already bailed once about 3-4 months ago, but it's going to be "How balance happens" that drives me off, not "I can't do this Op for the 4,000th time".

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As for people implying that I posted my original comment because I only "want to hear what I want to hear" or some crap: I don't look on these forums regularly and only recently re-subbed. I haven't been keeping tabs on everything Bioware has said, and I figured them having a megathread implied that this debate was still actively ongoing otherwise what is the point of such a thread? And no, I haven't read every page. I jumped to the last most recent and took a summary from there mixed with my own experiences.

 

Looking at the last few pages of this thread you missed out on all the discussion of the issues that needed to resolved and the fairly useful discussion that occurred early on. Instead what you saw was the complianing by people who didn't get what they wanted by from Bioware (ie. and immediate server merge) and the counter complaints about "forcing people to move". The constructive discussion portion of this thread ended a long time ago and it has now devolved into an "I'm right and You're wrong" thread coming from both sides of the issue.

 

For a bit of perspective, I also play on JC and do not have issues with WZ pops (rarely if ever have I had to wait more than 5 minutes) but I play during server prime time. What this means is that my feeling about the health of the server is significantly different from yours. Are there dead times on JC, absolutely just like there are dead times on all the servers. I have even been on Harbinger when I thought the populations would be good and found only 20 people on the fleet (and only a single instance). Obviously that is not indicative of the number of people playing on that server but neither is a single snapshot anywhere. My experience in prime time is that the population on JC seems to be trending up slightly based on the population of planets like Tatooine (outside the Rakghoul event which swells its population well above normal), Alderaan, and Balmorra. A few months ago, these planets were in the low to mid 20s during primetime. Lately they have moved into the low and mid 30s when I have been on.

 

JC is not a big server nor is it a dead server. My opinion of server merges, if they ever came to pass, would be to have 3 servers in each region (east coast/west coast) with one being a low pop server, one being a mid pop server like JC, and one being a high pop server like Ebon Hawk. It is entirely possible that the populations would shift around to change those but it initially gives people the level of population they want. A mid sized server also gives those people who want to roleplay an oasis that is not crowded but not empty either (it is my feeling that perhaps the increase in server population on EH is having a negative effect on the roleplay community there). In this day and age maintaining 2 or 6 servers really has little incremental cost (it certainly doesn't cost 3 times as much to maintain 6 servers as it does 3) , particularly since all of the servers in a region are probably on the same server stack to begin with.

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selfish, selfish selfish. players like you are the selfish ones, not us that want server merges. This was suppose to be an MMO, end of story. If you are going to quit over server merges sorry I don't buy it. Especially if you love star wars and the story content so much. seeing as how playing on a high pop server does not stop you from doing story content in the least. I don't care what you say. It doesn't effect your single-player content. turn off chat, don't do group content, your issues are solved. Before you mention character and legacy names, I DONT CARE! Your character names mean nothing when it comes to solo content which is all you care about. NONE of the npc's ever speak your name or reference it. The actual MMO players should feel like they are playing an MMO, period.

 

People like you are selfish as all hell. You say you are not a founder because held off on playing cause this was an MMO. But you want the rest of us not to be able to enjoy actual MMO content all because you wanted a single-player Star wars game. well GET OVER IT! It's an MMO! I also find it funny that you mention PVP in your forum signature. Why? I thought you didn't want to play an MMO and that you are just about the story. PVP is mmo content.

 

Mergers affect everyone. Stop making it a black and white issue when it isn't in the slightest. Bioware hasn't touched this because its complex.

 

A name is a critical component of developing a character. A lot of people have attachments, just like you do to the queue. Just because it doesn't matter to you doesn't mean that it doesn't matter to someone else. The RP community here has attachments to this. I'm not even an RPer and I feel attached to names! People don't want to lose the stuff that has become central to THEIR gameplay, or they'll leave. And when people leave, you'll have less people to queue up with, and then the server merges were really noneffective anyway :eek:

 

No wonder you don't get pops on harb, you're probably on half of the server's blacklist. You really need to stop acting like a petulant child. You're that kid in PreK who thinks nobody else should play with the toys because you might want them next. Fix your attitude, and realize the viewpoint you have has not been blessed by some divine being.

Edited by MissilyMilcasia
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Looking at the last few pages of this thread you missed out on all the discussion of the issues that needed to resolved and the fairly useful discussion that occurred early on. Instead what you saw was the complianing by people who didn't get what they wanted by from Bioware (ie. and immediate server merge) and the counter complaints about "forcing people to move". The constructive discussion portion of this thread ended a long time ago and it has now devolved into an "I'm right and You're wrong" thread coming from both sides of the issue.

 

For a bit of perspective, I also play on JC and do not have issues with WZ pops (rarely if ever have I had to wait more than 5 minutes) but I play during server prime time. What this means is that my feeling about the health of the server is significantly different from yours. Are there dead times on JC, absolutely just like there are dead times on all the servers. I have even been on Harbinger when I thought the populations would be good and found only 20 people on the fleet (and only a single instance). Obviously that is not indicative of the number of people playing on that server but neither is a single snapshot anywhere. My experience in prime time is that the population on JC seems to be trending up slightly based on the population of planets like Tatooine (outside the Rakghoul event which swells its population well above normal), Alderaan, and Balmorra. A few months ago, these planets were in the low to mid 20s during primetime. Lately they have moved into the low and mid 30s when I have been on.

 

JC is not a big server nor is it a dead server. My opinion of server merges, if they ever came to pass, would be to have 3 servers in each region (east coast/west coast) with one being a low pop server, one being a mid pop server like JC, and one being a high pop server like Ebon Hawk. It is entirely possible that the populations would shift around to change those but it initially gives people the level of population they want. A mid sized server also gives those people who want to roleplay an oasis that is not crowded but not empty either (it is my feeling that perhaps the increase in server population on EH is having a negative effect on the roleplay community there). In this day and age maintaining 2 or 6 servers really has little incremental cost (it certainly doesn't cost 3 times as much to maintain 6 servers as it does 3) , particularly since all of the servers in a region are probably on the same server stack to begin with.

 

there is no reason to keep servers like JC, Shadowlands around once they sort out the assets issues 1 Pve 1 RP is the best i'll offer and that would include Jung Ma, BC, all being merged into TEH and the rest being merged into a mega PvE server. Bioware are delusional if they think they can keep all the old servers up that's not going to solve anything but cause confusion like it already can for a new player.

 

All of the previous decisions Bioware have made for this game have been anti and caused mass sub drops and players leaving the game they are now trying to turn this around even though I think it's to little to late and I think Keith has a great vision and the passion as a player to twist arms and make things happen but he still has to answer to big brother and they don't like changing how things are done.

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Here is a prime example of why it's important not to have empty servers and how detrimental it is to the game.

 

Hello, I am a new player and recently started subbing as I find the game quite fun. But it seems empty, when im around the world and in the fleet I never usually see anyone. I come from WoW as an MMO-player and there was always places to hang out, Ironforge(back in the day), Orgrimmar as horde and Stormwind as alliance, wether it was duelling outside the city or afk-ing/trading inside, point is there was always places you did not feel alone in the game and you would bump into people every now and then questing(alot of people in the end game areas). How is this in comparrison to swtor? Is there somewhere to hang out? Duel? Meet other players? Or is it just that the game is dying and everyone is leaving?

 

This person is hanging around, but you can see the impression new people get of the game when they log into a dead server. Can youimagine how many people trying the game for the first time see this and just leave?

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Here is a prime example of why it's important not to have empty servers and how detrimental it is to the game.

 

 

 

This person is hanging around, but you can see the impression new people get of the game when they log into a dead server. Can youimagine how many people trying the game for the first time see this and just leave?

 

Assuming he is on one of the old PVP servers, which seems likely since he seems interested in PVP, it is something that could have been easily solved by not allowing brand new players (those that have no characters created in the game) to create characters on those servers. Heck if you even wanted to prevent new players from creating characters on any server but Harbinger, I'd be fine with that (though I suspect a large number of them would move off at some point). Why does every problem that comes up mean there has to be a Server Merger, there are a lot of things that are easier technically than merging servers that can be done.

 

The thing that has irritated me most about the posts in this thread is the number of people sitting on dead servers complaining that they can't get any group content to pop but refuse to do anything about it. Even if Bioware offered free server transfers and the ability to take all their assets along, I doubt they would move as they seem fixated on their names and don't want to lose them (some have even gone so far as to actually say it). They would rather say anyone who is playing on a less populated server is playing the game wrong and should just leave if they don't like being packed together with lots of other people ("after all that's what MMOs are about" or so they keep saying).

 

At some point you have to take some responsibility for your own happiness.

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if a server merge was the direction, then we need to make sure we understand the reasons why players don't want to move.

 

Hello Keith. I think i might have some answers for you guys.

 

I am guild master of a guild on a "deserted" french server (not the worst, but still), Battle Meditation. We are a medium sized guild (35~40 accounts currently) and we are on Battle Meditation since the beginning of the game.

 

Earlier this year, i had a big discussion with the members of my guild to ask them if they were ok to transfer on Red Eclipse so we could enjoy having people to play with at any time of the day/night. On Battle Meditation it is very hard to run flashpoints or warzones with group finder during the day if we are not enough in the guild. Even between 21:00 and 0:00 there is only one warzone running at a time...

 

Most guild members didnt want to transfer for several reasons :

-they didnt want to lose the nicknames they have since 2011 on their favorite toons (and no, adding accents on names is not a good solution for most of us)

-we didnt want to lose our guild flagship (we worked very hard to complete it) and our guild stronghold

-we didnt want to have to decorate our strongholds all over again

-we didnt want to leave all our members who left the game behind, because they can still come back (it happened many times) and i dont want them to find an empty guild when they return

 

Hope this will help you understand why, and that you can find a good solution to our problems.

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Assuming he is on one of the old PVP servers, which seems likely since he seems interested in PVP, it is something that could have been easily solved by not allowing brand new players (those that have no characters created in the game) to create characters on those servers. Heck if you even wanted to prevent new players from creating characters on any server but Harbinger, I'd be fine with that (though I suspect a large number of them would move off at some point). Why does every problem that comes up mean there has to be a Server Merger, there are a lot of things that are easier technically than merging servers that can be done.

 

Correct. This was a veteran MMO player, in EU, who rolled on ToFN. And even though he asked after the fact, a number of players give him good feedback on state of the game, state of the servers, and how he can quickly find the server that best meets his needs/wants.

 

As a veteran MMO player...he really should have known that when approaching a 5 year old MMO... it pays to spend a few minutes on the internet to find out which servers are more populated, which ones are more populated with PvP players, etc. etc. If he had done so.. he would have known to roll on TRE for his particular needs/wants. That said... given he has a stack of CCs from his first month sub, there was no real pain in him finding out after the fact and pulling the trigger on a 90cc expenditure to move his first character to TRE... even though it would probably be simpler and faster to just reroll on TRE since he has no significant investment of effort yet in SWTOR.

 

But of course it was certain that someone would quote his first post.. and not provide a link to the actual discussion thread to see all of the discussion.... because of course the motive is to make a point about how the studio somehow failed a veteran MMO player on a server selection. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=9374858#post9374858

 

I'm not against the studio putting in a popup on the server select screen that indicates the general activity level of a selected server before the players commits to rolling a character. However, that really would not solve much as there is no way to know in advance what a player is looking for in a server as many players are not just concerned about server population... but actual types of activities, nature of the community, etc.

 

As for some players insisting that old empty PvP servers should simply be locked from new character rolling... that goes against incumbent players still active on those servers, and it actually goes against allowing those servers to repopulate at some point (which would likely require incentives from the studio to do so). It also goes against the general theme of the studio in giving players choices rather then forced limitations.

Edited by Andryah
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Thanks for the /slap! Yep, we haven't been communicating anything about our server plans, but I have dropped a number of hints. Even in the interview I did, I said we are considering virtually everything in this thread, plus a ton of other technical details.

 

I know you all know this, but I'll remind you anyway, if a server merge was the direction, then we need to make sure we understand the reasons why players don't want to move. We have hardware/software, connectivity, and database considerations. We also have a ton of in-game 'things' to consider like Legacy Cargo Hold slots across multiple-servers, decorations and Strongholds, currency caps, merging of Legacies, number of characters on a server, keeping guilds and guild assets intact, and more. You also have Conquests and the domination of large guilds over everyone else, area respawn rates, and so on.

 

Lastly, as we've done with our East Coast servers, we need to upgrade the environment to ensure it's a great experience for everyone. I am very hopeful I can layout the game plan for you in the upcoming Roadmap. I'm not committing to that, yet, as there are a number of questions I need answered before I can give you any further insight.

 

Have a great weekend,

 

Keith---

 

I, myself, am especially concerned about keeping character names, being able to fit as many characters as I have on a server (I hope 104 would be able to fit on a US server, I don't care if I cannot make more there). Guild ships and memberships ofc, and the big one, outfit designs on characters being preserved. Every single one of my characters has at least one appearance slot filled. These are typically lost with character transfers (the last transfer I made was some time ago, but even so), I feel afraid they'd be lost in a server merge.

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Assuming he is on one of the old PVP servers, which seems likely since he seems interested in PVP, it is something that could have been easily solved by not allowing brand new players (those that have no characters created in the game) to create characters on those servers. Heck if you even wanted to prevent new players from creating characters on any server but Harbinger, I'd be fine with that (though I suspect a large number of them would move off at some point). Why does every problem that comes up mean there has to be a Server Merger, there are a lot of things that are easier technically than merging servers that can be done.

.

 

I think you may have misunderstood my point. I'm not actually saying to merge, I'm saying that it's bad for the game when new players get the impression the game is empty.

 

I do agree that they could take steps to fix that by not allowing new players to roll on those servers. It's something that most games do when there are too many people on a server when it's full, there is no reason they couldn't do the reverse for dead servers. It's also something they could do immediately and not affect the current players.

 

Giving new players the impression the game is dead is the absolute worst thing they can do and they should do something straight away to address it while they are working out their plan to address low population problems.

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There was a lot of reason at the time to believe a Star Wars MMO-RPG would be immensely popular.

 

There's even more now with new movies coming out every year.

 

My former guildmates who left the game for other MMOs are still saying they'd rather play SWTOR, if the game provided more content more frequently and wasn't as far behind in terms of general gameplay, QOL stuff and player population. The last one obviously being a consequence of the former stuff.

 

Star Wars is the strongest franchise in pop culture. That's the game's biggest chance, yet maybe also its worst enemy: The longer I played the game, the more I got the impression execs relied solely on that and didn't invest enough resources into a property that's generelly associated with high class entertainment on the highest professional level. Looking at almost any other MMO, especially the most successful one, SWTOR doesn't hold up the way a Star Wars movie does against any other SciFi/Action movie.

 

That's why I'd suggest you should pick up the pieces very fast now, invest all the resources you can and even acquire more, and use the Star Wars hype to bring the game to the professional level Star Wars is generally associated with.

 

"Picking up the pieces" would mean cross server queuing, as I explained above: It's by far the most effective way to boost group content experience for everyone and overcome the problems of declining server populations. If the reason for not doing this is officially "database layout" as stated in the bad feelings podcast quoted several times in this thread, I'm 8 times facepalm: one for every Star Wars movie.

Edited by Ardarell_Solo
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Star Wars is the strongest franchise in pop culture. That's the game's biggest chance, yet maybe also its worst enemy: The longer I played the game, the more I got the impression execs relied solely on that and didn't invest enough resources into a property that's generelly associated with high class entertainment on the highest professional level.

 

Agree 100%.

 

There are two games I have given more "second chances" to than any other.

 

SWtOR - because it is Star Wars

LOTRO - Because it is Lord Of The Rings.

 

In both cases the companies managing those title have - frankly - abused the goodwill of the players who are supporting those game in large part because of what they are.

 

At times they have, quite clearly, run with the ethos of "any old crap will do, we'll slap a Star Wars badge on it". Problem is it has been done too many times, and too many players have seen through it.

 

I think Bioware should re-task some of the money they do have.

How much do those nice cinematic trailers cost?

How much more content / bug fixes / QoL improvements could we have for that kind of money?

 

All The Best

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and surgical update to 64Bit for multiplatform to help restore server populations.

 

Multi-platform is NOT going to happen.

 

Go check how many skills most players have on their "must use" skill bars.

 

There isn't, to my knowledge, a console UI that will cope with that.

 

And the last thing this game needs is dumbing down to have just 6 skills on the skillbar.

 

All The Best

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Multi-platform is NOT going to happen. Go check how many skills most players have on their "must use" skill bars. There isn't, to my knowledge, a console UI that will cope with that. And the last thing this game needs is dumbing down to have just 6 skills on the skillbar. All The Best

 

EOL and stale XP/Vista instability was well proven last night with the 5.3a non patch, and modern 64BIT game consoles support USB or wifi key/mouse so if the SWTOR game client were to be surgically updated the populations would explode again and pay for itself over and over and over. A 64bit console may support 4K game graphics and look and play amazing.

Edited by IntegrationArch
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EOL and stale XP/Vista instability was well proven last night with the 5.3a non patch, and modern 64BIT game consoles support USB or wifi key/mouse so if the SWTOR game client were to be surgically updated the populations would explode again and pay for itself over and over and over. A 64bit console may support 4K game graphics and look and play amazing.

 

Good luck getting console players to use a keyboard and mouse. Most of them specifically choose console over PC for just that reason.

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Hello Keith. I think i might have some answers for you guys.

 

I am guild master of a guild on a "deserted" french server (not the worst, but still), Battle Meditation. We are a medium sized guild (35~40 accounts currently) and we are on Battle Meditation since the beginning of the game.

 

Earlier this year, i had a big discussion with the members of my guild to ask them if they were ok to transfer on Red Eclipse so we could enjoy having people to play with at any time of the day/night. On Battle Meditation it is very hard to run flashpoints or warzones with group finder during the day if we are not enough in the guild. Even between 21:00 and 0:00 there is only one warzone running at a time...

 

Most guild members didnt want to transfer for several reasons :

-they didnt want to lose the nicknames they have since 2011 on their favorite toons (and no, adding accents on names is not a good solution for most of us)

-we didnt want to lose our guild flagship (we worked very hard to complete it) and our guild stronghold

-we didnt want to have to decorate our strongholds all over again

-we didnt want to leave all our members who left the game behind, because they can still come back (it happened many times) and i dont want them to find an empty guild when they return

 

Hope this will help you understand why, and that you can find a good solution to our problems.

For the specific Guild issues you’ve raised, we would need to ensure the entire Guild, their Flagship/decorations, Bank/Tabs/items, and Stronghold/decorations remain 100% intact. The goal would be for the Guild members to notice absolutely nothing different and this means any returning players would still be in your guild unless you specifically removed them. Bottom line for your Guild would be making sure we protect all your hard work.

 

The losing of character names is one of the key points we are still discussing. We know there’s a variety of issues to resolve including, but not limited to, name collisions, establishing a priority system, purging of old names beforehand, and players attempting to reserve names. We all have character names we want to preserve, so this is a key factor in the overall decision.

 

-Keith--

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For the specific Guild issues you’ve raised, we would need to ensure the entire Guild, their Flagship/decorations, Bank/Tabs/items, and Stronghold/decorations remain 100% intact. The goal would be for the Guild members to notice absolutely nothing different and this means any returning players would still be in your guild unless you specifically removed them. Bottom line for your Guild would be making sure we protect all your hard work.

 

The losing of character names is one of the key points we are still discussing. We know there’s a variety of issues to resolve including, but not limited to, name collisions, establishing a priority system, purging of old names beforehand, and players attempting to reserve names. We all have character names we want to preserve, so this is a key factor in the overall decision.

 

-Keith--

 

We would still like to know where you guys are at what parts of those key points you have success with as of now and what ones are the most annoying because I know even though you post great updates actions actually speak louder than words my friend and you could be posting this same thing for the next 12 months and as a veteran player I would like more of a window of time why not make free one way transfers for now to allow people to get to another server yes 90cc is cheap but some players are stuck on wastelands because of Biowares neglect towards certain players that pay for a sub and continue to do so.

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Hey all,

 

Someone indicated we haven't posted in this thread since we kicked it off. As we stated in the opening post, we are not ready to discuss anything, yet, The purpose of the thread was to consolidate all the various posts about the topic so it's all contained in one place. All of your comments will absolutely have an impact on how and what we decide with respect to server populations.

 

Keith---

 

Keith, just FYI, the only reasonable solution that would appease an original Space Slug member, is one US server where the name is "Astrolandia", and all toons created there must start with Astro, and the only guild allowed is Astrosquad.

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For the specific Guild issues you’ve raised, we would need to ensure the entire Guild, their Flagship/decorations, Bank/Tabs/items, and Stronghold/decorations remain 100% intact. The goal would be for the Guild members to notice absolutely nothing different and this means any returning players would still be in your guild unless you specifically removed them. Bottom line for your Guild would be making sure we protect all your hard work.

 

The losing of character names is one of the key points we are still discussing. We know there’s a variety of issues to resolve including, but not limited to, name collisions, establishing a priority system, purging of old names beforehand, and players attempting to reserve names. We all have character names we want to preserve, so this is a key factor in the overall decision.

 

-Keith--

 

So what this says you are actively looking at merging servers then? You just need to ensure you resolve the technical issues first?

 

I mean you wouldn't be wasting time discussing this sort of thing if merges were off the table of course.

 

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me and I'm 100% in support of merges once those are solved. . :)

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I read that as "BW is looking to see if merges are technically and economically feasible; and what the pain points will be." Once that's done, the "non-technical" discussion can be framed up and looked at.

 

I just finished doing a project very similar to "server merges" at work, only I was able to tell my "customers" they had no choice, move or die. (Because the servers I moved people off of were literally dying, as in hardware failures and lack of support). My part was the easy part. Having done that, it turns out I need to replace the servers again this year. I am moving, if not heaven and earth, a chunk of the sea and sky to ensure that everyone who just "moved" will never notice the change. (For a variety of reasons we couldn't take this approach in the last migration; several of the changes made during that were done to enable a transparent cutover if we ever had to do it in the future. So it goes). It's a bit of a "toy" system, but it served people I never knew used the silly thing until they wanted to know why it stopped working (despite my best efforts over the year previous to tell everyone what was coming).

 

System administration at the enterprise level (even with toys like I was working with) isn't like dusting crops, kid.

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