You made me resub, damn you! There I was, enjoying the fact that I had slipped the surely bonds of SWTOR and you drag my happy *** back into the game. I demand satisfaction sir!

No, but in all seriousness I am extremely happy with this recent roadmap and the livestream so I figured I'd come on back and get back into the Star Wars goodness

On a related note to everyone else in the room, I've never been in a game around the time of a server merger (I was dying repeatedly in EVE the last time around) so I was wondering... is it normal for a server merge to get all new servers like this one, or could this possibly be a sign of a possible reinvestment into SWTOR? (And I'm not getting my hopes up, just genuinely curious)

Hmm sounds like cause for some mild optimism

Oh, did everyone enjoy my clickbaity title?

Well, Charles and Eric seemed in a better mood during the stream, but that could just be because Keith is a better boss.

These server upgrades are taking a noticeable chunk of their resources so I think it might be premature to consider reinvestment by EA, but if things pick up as a result, you never know.

I'm guessing the reason we got so little content this year was because this overhaul was coming up and they knew that they'd need to allocate a lot of resources to it. Hopefully it all goes well and next year we can look forward to more content being released. Hopefully the new hardware and software that they're getting will make life easier for everyone

Welcome back, btw

my concern is character names. in past merges I lost character names and had to rename them....

Will probally lose some again but hopefully not too many of them. I know I had lost a few in the last one as well

my concern is character names. in past merges I lost character names and had to rename them....

Go to the servers you are about to merge with, and try to add the character in question as a friend - remember to try both empire and republic sides. If the name is taken, then your only hope is to have more playtime and obviously to be a subscriber. If the names resides on a character below level 50, then there is a good chance that person never spend much time on that toon (i.e. never reached level cap even back when cap was 50). You now have plenty of time to get more playtime prior to November 8th - find a way to stay logged in. But if they are 50, 55, 60, 65 or 70 you can only hope for the best (that they are not a subscriber).

I first played on the oceanic servers and when they closed them and merged us with harbinger every single one of my toons required a name change. It left a very bitter taste in my mouth and I quit for a few months (plus I hated the lag, going form 60 ms to 260 ms was too much to handle).

But eventually I came back after the anger subsided and I either renamed or deleted my old toons. I suspect a lot of people will go through the same emotions this time around, although it looks like they are doing it a lot fairer this time.

You made me resub, damn you! There I was, enjoying the fact that I had slipped the surely bonds of SWTOR and you drag my happy *** back into the game. I demand satisfaction sir!

 

No, but in all seriousness I am extremely happy with this recent roadmap and the livestream so I figured I'd come on back and get back into the Star Wars goodness

 

On a related note to everyone else in the room, I've never been in a game around the time of a server merger (I was dying repeatedly in EVE the last time around) so I was wondering... is it normal for a server merge to get all new servers like this one, or could this possibly be a sign of a possible reinvestment into SWTOR? (And I'm not getting my hopes up, just genuinely curious)

Every merge before resulted in people being moved to pre-existing servers. For example the first round of mergers had all the RP-PVP servers merged into Jung Ma, all regional RP servers merged into the current RP server (TEH for east coast, whatever for west and EU), etc. And actually even those servers were a combination of server blades, you could tell because all servers actually have at least 2 servers showing on the conquest tallies. For example Jung Ma is Jung Ma and Myto's Arrow (actually a pre launch beta server name I believe), despite the fact that the previous servers were named Jung Ma, Ajunta Pall, Ven Zallow.

No it is not a sign of investment, for one there is probably no new hardware other than planned upgrades that would have been needed regardless because of server architecture aging and security reasons. All they are basically doing is rearranging the database structure so that everyone is on the same group of server blades per region (and language in EU), if anything it could help reduce the hardware requirement slightly since basically dead servers can now be fully utilized. If a server blade can support 500 concurrent players and only 50 max ever log in at once, that's 90% capacity that can't be utilized for a more active server.

It's a step in the right direction and hopefully enough people like you and me resubbing that they see it as a way of supporting that direction and they continue with it.

Every merge before resulted in people being moved to pre-existing servers. For example the first round of mergers had all the RP-PVP servers merged into Jung Ma, all regional RP servers merged into the current RP server (TEH for east coast, whatever for west and EU), etc. And actually even those servers were a combination of server blades, you could tell because all servers actually have at least 2 servers showing on the conquest tallies. For example Jung Ma is Jung Ma and Myto's Arrow (actually a pre launch beta server name I believe), despite the fact that the previous servers were named Jung Ma, Ajunta Pall, Ven Zallow.

 

No it is not a sign of investment, for one there is probably no new hardware other than planned upgrades that would have been needed regardless because of server architecture aging and security reasons. All they are basically doing is rearranging the database structure so that everyone is on the same group of server blades per region (and language in EU), if anything it could help reduce the hardware requirement slightly since basically dead servers can now be fully utilized. If a server blade can support 500 concurrent players and only 50 max ever log in at once, that's 90% capacity that can't be utilized for a more active server.

 

It's a step in the right direction and hopefully enough people like you and me resubbing that they see it as a way of supporting that direction and they continue with it.

Erm they say all new game servers.

October 24, 2017 – United Forces Formation – on this day, the game will be unavailable for an extended time as we’ll be setting up the formation of the campaign, replacing existing hardware and software with all the new Game Servers and supporting components. It will also include additional changes needed to support the deployment of the United Forces update.

I put the section that I found most interesting in bold for conveniences sake.

Erm they say all new game servers.

 

I put the section that I found most interesting in bold for conveniences sake.

I would never call a hardware upgrade as being an investment in SWTOR especially with the populations of the servers not exactly pushing the concurrency thresholds and forcing people into a login queue because that hardware can be used literally anywhere with some simply configuration changes. There no indication that's an investment in SWTOR, since that server hardware could be used for ANY future game EA decides to release.

Not to mention that all the new mega core CPU architectures getting released usually means datacenters will be getting upgrades to those new CPUs. I think this is the likely reason why they are getting upgrades, not because EA sees SWTOR as something they care about, but because that hardware can and will be used somewhere eventually even if SWTOR closes shop at the end of the year.

I would never call a hardware upgrade as being an investment in SWTOR especially with the populations of the servers not exactly pushing the concurrency thresholds and forcing people into a login queue because that hardware can be used literally anywhere with some simply configuration changes. There no indication that's an investment in SWTOR, since that server hardware could be used for ANY future game EA decides to release.

 

Not to mention that all the new mega core CPU architectures getting released usually means datacenters will be getting upgrades to those new CPUs. I think this is the likely reason why they are getting upgrades, not because EA sees SWTOR as something they care about, but because that hardware can and will be used somewhere eventually even if SWTOR closes shop at the end of the year.

Spoil sport.... haha I jest, thanks for the info