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Free Character Transfers Now Available On Select Servers


CourtneyWoods

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Take them all in? whats to take other than them saying hey we want to announce we gonna SCREW OVER about 20% of you guys but hey its ok we get the weekend off .

 

If having to wait a few more days is getting screwed over I'm feeling oddly unscrewed as a Darth Bandon player. Still loads of quests to do. Loads of RL stuff to do. It'll be sorted soon enough.

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I still do not get why the remaining two US PVP servers are not being allowed to transfer or why the remaining Euro PVE servers are not getting a destination.

 

In case of the Euro servers it is pretty obvious that there need to be a second german destination and a second english destination. Both original destinations are already on heavy load and i highly doubt you will add 10/8 servers to those.

So why not pick a destination out of those remaining servers and let the others transfer there.

Edited by Thyferra
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I have most of it memorized. I didn't post the original. But you don't need the web to find it. Just buy the book. You know, paper, cover...that kind of thing.

 

Yes, I am aware of books. And own all the Dune ones. But its alot easier to type "Litany Against Fear" into Google than to thumb through 500 pages of dense text looking for it.

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This is not the case. We understand that having to wait can be a source of frustration, but we definitely did not come into this with no plan. The metrics we had prior to transfers opening helped us prepare for the process, but we knew that the start of character transfer would affect populations. Our plan is to monitor populations and work to ensure that character transfer results in a good experience for players. We're constantly evaluating data and will continue to make decisions based off of it.

 

And your plan looks to be a bad one, the presence of queues already shows that your plan was to try and fill 1 or 2 servers 1st then consider nominating new ones. That is inherently a very bad plan for 3 reasons.

 

1. If population rises above your estimate you end up with servers that are too full.

2. You risk filling your 1-2 servers and then you end up with some servers that you cannot fit onto the original destinations so they get a new destination that is lower population, thus recreating the uneven balance issue all over again (though to a less serious degree).

3. You will leave no room for people who resub because low pops was the reason then left and for people who resub when 1.3 arrives.

 

If you thought that sever X (e.g. The Red Eclipse) could have about 10 servers moved to it then the one thing you don't do is move 9 in the first 3 days, you move 6 and then evaluate it over the weekend. Then you will see how many are transferring and how its likely to get at the real peak times.

 

You plan should have been to ensure everyone got a well populated server and they were all about equally full (i.e. getting into Very Heavy at peak time) rather than filling one after another until they start to overflow.

 

Lets face it, if we are seeing 5-600 in fleet we will still be happy and consider the transfers a huge success (even if people unsub it will remain high enough to easily do group content). We don't need 750 if that risks there being another server with only about 300.

 

From where the players are sitting it looks like you have chosen to go from too many servers to not enough servers (again).

Edited by Arlbo_Nabbins
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Its like each update we all get excited and ready to wait the for the update to enjoy it. Only to be have a minor or major let-down. Though I support them getting the job done and continue to work on it. Because after all, this is Star Wars. I want to wait for the goods because it is Star Wars. Being able to play a game like this has been a dream for many.

 

Bioware you promised us all something and keep coming up short with something every patch. I think its time you live up to your rep for making great games and get this done. (You've had setbacks with others I won't mention.)

 

With that said, everyone please remember its Father's Day this weekend. Let them spend time with their respective families outside of Bioware studios.

 

With all said, I'm still waiting for our realm to come up too. Just get it done.

 

*DOn't know how it posted twice.

Edited by Astlopho
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What is going to happen with these two servers? They're both PVE servers. The player base is very lacking in the "amount" of players. 10 to 35 on the fleet at any given time. PVP queues are taking forever, and nobody to run heroics with as most have probably either quit playing or re-rolled on a higher population server.
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Good god BW, you have employees posting now?

 

I'm sorry, screwing 20% of your fanbase is just not good business. A lot of us have been very VERY patient with you all these months, and you just let us down time and time again. Was it really that difficult to just transfer everyone then open up paid transfers next week? I mean how hard would this be? So on a nice weekend, 20% of us get to sit in fleet LFGing for hours. Thanks for nothing.

 

I can assure you as someone who's out of work, I'd love it if I were a Bioware employee, but sadly I am not.

 

The problem with your argument is that if any of the scenarios I mentioned had arisen, people would be complaining even more than they are now. Imagine how much of an uproar there would be had transfers opened up and people ended up being transferred to dead servers all over again, or to new servers that were so full they could never log in.

 

Imagine if YOU, who want so badly to find a group and enjoy the game - something I completely understand - had gotten the exciting news of a transfer, went through the process, and logged in to find only 15 people on your fleet and no groups in sight. How would you have felt when a week later they told you you could now transfer to a new server for a small fee? I quite imagine you'd be pissed as all heck and call it insulting, among other things.

 

The problem with paid transfers is of course that it gives BW virtually no control over who goes where, so its simply not feasible prior to having stable server populations up and running. After these free transfers, it will take some time for things to stabilize before paid transfers could realistically be an option without running a huge risk of creating over or underpopulated servers all over again.

 

I understand the disappointment and frustration. I re-rolled with my guild on the Fatman a few months ago, and then when transfers opened up we missed having our old toons transferred to the Fatman by a day and instead were given transfers to Prophecy of Five. It kind of stinks, but we understand why and are not going to be so unreasonable as to complain about it as though this was done in some outstandingly bad way, because it wasn't.

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And your plan looks to be a bad one, the presence of queues already shows that your plan was to try and fill 1 or 2 servers 1st then consider nominating new ones. That is inherently a very bad plan for 3 reasons.

 

1. If population rises above your estimate you end up with servers that are too full.

2. You risk filling your 1-2 servers and then you end up with some servers that you cannot fit onto the original destinations so they get a new destination that is lower population, thus recreating the uneven balance issue all over again (though to a less serious degree).

3. You will leave no room for people who resub because low pops was the reason then left and for people who resub when 1.3 arrives.

 

If you thought that sever X (e.g. The Red Eclipse) could have about 10 servers moved to it then the one thing you don't do is move 9 in the first 3 days, you move 6 and then evaluate it over the weekend. Then you will see how many are transferring and how its likely to get at the real peak times.

 

You plan should have been to ensure everyone got a well populated server and they were all about equally full (i.e. getting into Very Heavy at peak time) rather than filling one after another until they start to overflow.

 

Lets face it, if we are seeing 5-600 in fleet we will still be happy and consider the transfers a huge success (even if people unsub it will remain high enough to easily do group content). We don't need 750 if that risks there being another server with only about 300.

 

From where the players are sitting it looks like you have chosen to go from too many servers to not enough servers (again).

 

I completely disagree with you. The potential problems you suggest are ones which could ONLY BE AVOIDED by doing it precisely as they are: monitoring things in real time and adjusting accordingly.

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Remember that I am only speculating, as are we all...

 

I am trying, just not understanding. You, and it seems Bioware as well, are planning on some kind of mass return to the game because server transfers have happened. We will never reach the levels we were after 1.2 launched (First few weeks) no matter how many people return.

 

Not a mass return, but however, I think the "Star War" IP does carry a certain level of loyalty that other fledgling MMO's do not. Under the right circumstances, and with enough hard work, I believe it's possible to recover a sizeable amount of the subscriptions lost, but I do agree it's going to be a long difficult road for them. They are going to have to get really creative and not give up, despite the abuse being heaped on them.

 

I'm just coming up with possibilities as to what they are "monitoring" by waiting until the weekend to continue any further transfers to selected servers. As I don't have access to the data or the meetings they have, and since they are not sharing any of it with us, I start with the following presumptions:

 

  1. They AREN'T doing it just to irritate us
  2. They AREN'T lazy
  3. Bioware is a successful game company (however currently unpopular with recent game releases) so I find it unlikely they are just "winging it"
  4. They have some kind of genuine concern at the END of the transfers that they didn't at the beginning.
  5. They have the information necessary to make this kind of decision, knowing FULL WELL how unpopular it was going to be

 

Clearly, I can be wrong on any or all of these. I'm just trying to work out what is likely with the information I have without making leaps in logic. The problem with most of these forums is that the posts are usually so wrought with hyperbole that serious discussion can't take place.

 

There's also the anger factor, and when someone is in "rage mode" (not you), it's unlikely you are going to reason with them if you don't agree.

 

The last couple of months of aggregate populations, accounting for types of servers, locations, populations on specific days (aka weekends), populations at different times of the days (Peek time to off time) should be a fairly accurate representation for population planning.

 

Agreed, but once again, we have no idea what the actual numbers are or what the issues are they are having as they aren't about to share any kind of technical or procedural failings with us. I completely concede that they may be doing something wrong, I just have no reason to START with that presumption, myself.

 

I'm completely aware that "crap happens" sometimes and depending on the possible outcome, a corporation is going to keep it under wraps as best they can. It may be just a simple mistake that had catastrophic consequences that some will use as "proof" of incompetence but others would just view as a mistake, nothing more.

 

I'll also concede that you may be completely right about the data they could use. I honestly don't presume to be a statistical expert. I just don't understand what the previous populations on specific days, servers etc are going to tell you about a situation where transfers are given to the public as an option, rather than a requirement - it puts an extremely random factor into the equation.

 

Most people would want to transfer to a populated server. But as I've seen from many of these posts, many don't want to, some WANT to be on a "medium population" server rather than a full one, some want to transfer to a different server once those transfers become available. All these factors - to me - seem like reasonable considerations before allowing transfer to a server that may already be full (if the active populations of those servers ALL decide to transfer over)

 

IGN is now reporting another 400,000 subscription loss. So the possibility that they aren't cut out to run an MMO is completely possible. There's no doubt that the subscribers were fed up with waiting for results. the damage MAY be irreversible.

 

You seem to have a head on your shoulders so I don't need to explain to you how IT can pull this type of info quickly and painlessly, and regularly need to do this for resource and expansion needs as well as server consolidation and virtualization. They are not re-inventing the wheel here. We are probably talking about a 1-2% skew in population - or + to account for returning players, net new, and people unsubscribing from those aggregate numbers. If I could not plan a resource action for my systems based on those types of figures, they would outsource me and find someone who could.

 

So honestly, what is your evaluation. Do you believe that they are just incapable of running an MMO? Are they deliberately ignoring this information that you say is so easy to collect and use? What would you guess would be their reasoning behind taking this particular path to repair the populations?

 

Maybe I'm overly optimistic, I can admit that. I have a little more faith in them as industry professionals. Personally I make the assumption that they have a really good reason, if they are willing to put up with the levels of negativity and hostility being spewed at them and their reputation as a company. But who knows...

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I can assure you as someone who's out of work, I'd love it if I were a Bioware employee, but sadly I am not.

 

The problem with your argument is that if any of the scenarios I mentioned had arisen, people would be complaining even more than they are now. Imagine how much of an uproar there would be had transfers opened up and people ended up being transferred to dead servers all over again, or to new servers that were so full they could never log in.

 

Imagine if YOU, who want so badly to find a group and enjoy the game - something I completely understand - had gotten the exciting news of a transfer, went through the process, and logged in to find only 15 people on your fleet and no groups in sight. How would you have felt when a week later they told you you could now transfer to a new server for a small fee? I quite imagine you'd be pissed as all heck and call it insulting, among other things.

 

The problem with paid transfers is of course that it gives BW virtually no control over who goes where, so its simply not feasible prior to having stable server populations up and running. After these free transfers, it will take some time for things to stabilize before paid transfers could realistically be an option without running a huge risk of creating over or underpopulated servers all over again.

 

I understand the disappointment and frustration. I re-rolled with my guild on the Fatman a few months ago, and then when transfers opened up we missed having our old toons transferred to the Fatman by a day and instead were given transfers to Prophecy of Five. It kind of stinks, but we understand why and are not going to be so unreasonable as to complain about it as though this was done in some outstandingly bad way, because it wasn't.

 

As it stands right now, the problem is not that these destination servers are empty, but infact, may be too full. I would LOVE to have the problem of a full server. After months of watching everyone unsub and the rest just AFKing around the GTN, *anything* would be better. So my argument still stands, grats to the 80%. The remaining 20% is left high and dry with no "multiplayer" game to play.

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I completely disagree with you. The potential problems you suggest are ones which could ONLY BE AVOIDED by doing it precisely as they are: monitoring things in real time and adjusting accordingly.

 

The only evaluation they could be making right now is, "do the remaining servers fit in the current destinations?" If the destinations are already so full that this is a question, then the answer is no, they don't fit, they need to go to a different destination. So why not take that action before the weekend?

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Wednesday was the last time a West Coast server was opened for transfers and there are only two East Coast PvP servers left.

 

And this shows exactly how poor their plan is, they have to transfer those 2 East coast PvP servers to Fatman or Prophecy now as there is no way they can just consolidate those 2 into 1 server and expect it not to be the poor relation of the other 2 with 25% the population.

 

I'm pretty sure after analyzing this weekend's data they will find that it's likely about 8,000 people on each each server, who have stopped playing due to the deadness of the server, will want to come back. Therefore, when they merge your 2 servers, it is quite likely that it will become full.

 

Which is going to be a disaster for the 2 current destination servers when 40,000 people come back for the same reason and hit transfer to get off their dead server.

Edited by Arlbo_Nabbins
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The only evaluation they could be making right now is, "do the remaining servers fit in the current destinations?" If the destinations are already so full that this is a question, then the answer is no, they don't fit, they need to go to a different destination. So why not take that action before the weekend?

 

More than likely the servers thats left holding the bag had the highest number of droped subs as of late . And so they tended to the others first . Wouldnt surprise me if the servers thats left had to w8 for paid transfers before they get to move if at all.

Edited by Nyteblades
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I want to preface this by saying I have never ONCE complained about anything BW has done or about anything revolving around the development of SWTOR. (I'm still pretty irritated they have thrown same-sex relationships with companions to the back of their to-do list, but I can live with that)

 

I am SO upset that you decided to transfer so many servers this week (aka merge), yet left a few of us to wait out the weekend. I haven't played in almost 2 weeks and decided to log in last night to find 20 people on the Republic Fleet. This game is currently unplayable on the Jekk'Jekk Tarr server, so sadly I won't be able to play during my weekend off. Will you be providing us who have to wait with complimentary subscription days? As far as I'm concerned, I've paid the same amount as people who are enjoying the game at this moment yet I can't play it -- Technically I could, but I recall buying this because it is an MMO, NOT a single player game.

 

I'm especially upset because I've defended BW's actions/decisions since they announced this game and they reward me with ambiguous answers as to when I'm actually going to be able to play this game again. I hate to complain, but this just put me over the top.

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The only evaluation they could be making right now is, "do the remaining servers fit in the current destinations?" If the destinations are already so full that this is a question, then the answer is no, they don't fit, they need to go to a different destination. So why not take that action before the weekend?

 

While I and, it seems you, play this game very regularly - that is, daily, there is an at least meaningfully large population that does not, but rather plays the game only every other day, or a few times a week, and some only on the weekends.

 

There are also those who have not played the game in some time and may be interested in checking things out now that they have received an email stating that transfers have been opened up. These players in particular - who currently spend their time doing other things - are more likely than others to take some time on the weekend to transfer and see what's going on with the new server.

 

This means that you have a whole bunch of people who have not yet transferred - either because they play on weekends or because they simply don't play daily and may take two or three days to do their transfers regardless of what day of the week it is. For this reason, waiting for the weekend is an absolute necessity for getting accurate data on server populations post-transfer.

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After a long wait Free transfers finally come. But they are so limited in destination. My Friends and Core guildies have all switched to Fatman. I have mad one alt on there also. My plan was to bring all ALTS to FATMAN. Instead I can only switch to P5 sever. Great that its a full sever But not where I want to play at. Can I expect a Free transfer in the near future, of my alts to the sever I currently and want to play on? (FATMAN)? I can handle waiting a week or two. But if i have to pay for this....that would be VERY frustrating. Seems how this whole Ordeal is already annoying.
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You can paint this pile of dung with all the strawberry jam you want. Its not going to change the fact underneath it all it still stinks to high heaven. And the 20% thats left got screwed because the monkeys doing this cant seem to think ahead.

 

It's precisely because they are thinking ahead that its working this way. I understand the frustration, but its important to - appropriately enough - think like a Jedi and not let emotions cloud your reasoning. Intellectually speaking, this all makes perfect sense and its easy to see why there aren't many other options. Emotionally, its easy to feel frustrated and upset about it.

 

This isn't to say it isn't an unpleasant situation for those who haven't had transfers yet. It is. However, its like anything that is bad - it is going to be potentially painful one way or the other to alleviate it. When a man has an injury, he needs to undergo surgery to fix it, and this can be momentarily more painful than even just the injury itself. Nevertheless, its the way to go about things and, after a short while, they're much better.

 

It sucks now, but wait a few days and, once you're on a new server, you'll honestly not even think much about what it was like beforehand.

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You can paint this pile of dung with all the strawberry jam you want. Its not going to change the fact underneath it all it still stinks to high heaven. And the 20% thats left got screwed because the monkeys doing this cant seem to think ahead.

 

Actually the fact that they ARE waiting to see how the transfers affected the destination servers show that they think critically and well. You want 20 min wait cues? I don't.

 

They have prime time play coming up (Satuday night), after they have some data from all the destinations at prime time they will know how many more they can move to them, if they need a 12th destination server, or both.

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So let me understand BW's backwards thinking. *IF* some of the current destination servers demonstrate space, BW will jsut dump the rest of us willy-nilly into them? How is this going to work with east vs west coast?? They going make some of the west coasters fill in with the east coasters? This is just a disaster waiting to happen. If there is already inkling that the current destinations are near max, then for GOD SAKES, just have the rest of us west coasters merge into the current largest non-chosen west coast server. Is it really THAT HARD????

 

Mixing and matching east/west servers will NOT end up well.

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So let me understand BW's backwards thinking. *IF* some of the current destination servers demonstrate space, BW will jsut dump the rest of us willy-nilly into them? How is this going to work with east vs west coast?? They going make some of the west coasters fill in with the east coasters? This is just a disaster waiting to happen. If there is already inkling that the current destinations are near max, then for GOD SAKES, just have the rest of us west coasters merge into the current largest non-chosen west coast server. Is it really THAT HARD????

 

Mixing and matching east/west servers will NOT end up well.

 

Why on earth do you assume they're going to mix east and west coast?

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This is not the case. We understand that having to wait can be a source of frustration, but we definitely did not come into this with no plan. The metrics we had prior to transfers opening helped us prepare for the process, but we knew that the start of character transfer would affect populations. Our plan is to monitor populations and work to ensure that character transfer results in a good experience for players. We're constantly evaluating data and will continue to make decisions based off of it.

 

/letsouthugegroan

 

Allison, I understand why you guys are doing this. And I understand you have to make the best decision. But oh man those of us on Corellian Run are dying to know the fate of our server. I guess I'll have to keep myself busy this weekend.

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Again the remaining euro servers are not going to merge with current destinations. If they would they would create two servers that would have massive ques all the time.

Because of that it is obvious that they will merge with two new destinations. That will create two new heavy servers in the euro zone. There is no need to wait and see what happens over the weekend. It is already known what will happen.

So why not do what has to be done anyway?

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I completely disagree with you. The potential problems you suggest are ones which could ONLY BE AVOIDED by doing it precisely as they are: monitoring things in real time and adjusting accordingly.

 

Rubbish, you can only monitor and adjust if you have capacity on the destinations to make those adjustments. Some of the destination servers were hitting full just 3 days into the transfer process. They overfilled servers by announcing transfers too quickly, now they can't adjust anything because those servers are full.

 

Monitoring and adjusting needs time, they should have announced some of the transfers (about 1/2 to 2/3 of the ones they announced) before the weekend and some after to give time for things to settle down and be evaluated.

 

If they had the courage to announce to us that they would release the first sets of server transfers this week and then use the weekend to evaluate the results before announcing the rest next week you would have a lot less players who are worried that they are going to end up on a sever that is overfull or one that is not as full as the other ones, situations that could easily be avoided if they had taken their time when announcing the transfers.

Edited by Arlbo_Nabbins
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Why on earth do you assume they're going to mix east and west coast?

 

Because it seems like only 2 east PVP and a bunch of west coast servers are left. Where else can they put us? There are enough west coast servers to fill a new destination server. It feels like they are just holding us back and usign us as random filler for whoever needs more people, whereever that may be.

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