Hey everyone,

 

To clarify a bit more about this decision. We did previously ask what folks on the forums would like to do as an APAC solution and some, but not all, offered up the solution of merging all APAC into one. The other option on the table was to merge APAC into the NA servers. When we discussed the options internally we looked to address everyone’s primary issues with APAC, low populations were creating a less than optimal game experience.

 

We went and looked at what current server populations looked like across all of APAC and to put it simply, even merging all of APAC together into one server would not solve the population problems. Even with that solution you would still see long queue times for things like Warzones and Group Finder. It was because of this that we decided that moving APAC into the NA servers was the best option.

 

One thing to note is that there is no catchall solution here. If we move APAC to NA some folks will see increased latency, but they will have healthy server populations and can remain on their chosen server types. If we merge everyone into one APAC server, latency will remain in place but the current population issues will exist and players will lose their preferred server type. Leaving things as they are leaves all of the current issues in place without a solution at all. This is one of the reasons getting the plan out to you folks took so long, we had to think long and hard about all of the implications of our decision.

 

-eric

When people are complaining about have a sore foot do you cut their whole leg off? Your solution to this problem is destroying the only part of the game that I and my 15 mates are playing for; low PVP ping times and awesome camaraderie of an tight nit community. The single AP server amalgamation was a viable suggestion and the ONLY solution that was acceptable for PVP players. Now i don't know what your costs are to host a single oceanic server, but I promise if you think this xfer to US server gamble will pay off you will be bitterly disappointed. Aussie people do not appreciate disloyalty and you will see how we respond to this halfbaked plan by xfer back to WoW rather than continue with a company that wont listen to reason. This game has been fun to play, but it has been continuously mismanaged and this is the last straw.

Bring on Elder Scrolls Online!!

I have been playing the game sine Early Access, with the exception of a 3-4 month break in mid 2012. I have played almost exclusively on NA West Coast servers; originally Ajunta Pall and now Begeren Colony. My main play style is Warzone PVP and a little questing. My ping usually sits at the high 180s to low 240s on a bad day. I have no problem doing well in PVP in this climate. I don't often have long waits for queue pops, except for very late at night and even then usually less than 10 mins. On weekends it's very quick to pop.

 

I lost some character names during the original server merge process, which I admit was upsetting, but I have moved on and still love my characters. I tried playing on the APAC servers at launch and while I noticed that the ping made a difference in PVP, it was not such that I felt crippled going back to the NA server. Ultimately I left the APAC servers after a while due to the higher population on Begeren Colony making the game much more enjoyable.

 

I really hope that you guys stick with the game. I understand a lot of the frustration - I went through some similar issues when Ajunta Pall closed down and felt rather betrayed and angry. But it all worked out, I'm happy in the game and with my server.

 

I'm certainly not here to tell you that you're wrong to be upset, just to share my experience.

 

Cheers.

Most of APAC players play this game for low ping. SWTOR is already full of GCD bug, stutering, abilities not triggering etc.. If i have to play a game at around 200 ms, i'll go back to WOW, at least it works perfectly fine.

We went and looked at what current server populations looked like across all of APAC and to put it simply, even merging all of APAC together into one server would not solve the population problems. Even with that solution you would still see long queue times for things like Warzones and Group Finder. It was because of this that we decided that moving APAC into the NA servers was the best option.

-eric

APAC's 3 servers are less than 1 NA server because of how long it took to get around to making a change. If this had been done 153 days ago you could have just merged 1 server and then had 2 instead of 3. Now there's 0.

Well .. to say I am disappointing is an understatement.

I feel like we have been strung along to believe that it was possible we would get a server merger, all the while paying our monthly subs.

I suppose we can't get a refund on ROTHC either.

Such bad business ethics from EAware. Shame on you.

Consider me Unsubbed.

Will miss you guys on MDN and Strike Team

Incoming lag... Sigh...

While I'm keen to see higher population servers I'm disappointed that other options have not been explored. Soon elder scrolls online will be available, with it comes the advent of 'virtual' servers. Was this technology explored? I understand Australia has a lower population than the US and therefore lower population player base but with pvp and pve the difference of 200ms latency(which can typically rise much higher) can adversely affect playability to the point when those at a disadvantage find the experience untenable. Then the result is an even smaller Australian server population.

Bioware you have addressed population issues, albeit in the most economical(and least desirable) way you could, but with the new expansion you could have reinvested some of the money that the cartel market has yielded to address some of the ongoing shortfalls within the game. Here we are looking at the first expansion release and yet still some minor tweaks have not been made to 'add' to the game experience. Still no 'readycheck', still no in game damage meter, deathcount, still no ability to swap gear sets instantly, or even swapping specs instantly, no stop casting macro. These are not ground breaking, they have been around for years and do much to enhance game play. You have made a stand against third party add ons, fair enough it's your game, but it's way past time to implement these basics.

I've played with 400ms latency I can do it again, but if its frequently pushed to 600 or higher its unplayable. Though most pvp focused players will not be as forgiving, do you want our (Australian) money? Please consider another method of server population correction that does not clip our wings(and my dps).

This is a very poor solution.

I've been attempting to bring a strong sense of a roleplaying community back to Gav-Daragon, and while in some senses it's worked, and in more senses, it hasn't. Moving us to North American servers just won't work for what we try to do, I'd rather try to run a roleplaying guild on a single APAC PVE server.

Moving us into a NA server is only going to make things harder, North America runs on a completely different time zone, and I already have a couple of members which live in America, one works a job which allows him to play during our times, another doesn't, and he suffers immensely in how much he can get involved in.

So far I've enjoyed this game having come from WoW when I immigrated from the UK, and I'm also a subscriber.

As it stands, I currently try to cater for members in a time zone three hours behind me, and two hours in front, this is just adding another one of those time zones I need to try and cater for, whether through having an officer who can run bits and pieces of roleplay for them, but it will still exclude them for the most part, from our main roleplaying storylines.

While I appreciate you've tried to do something about the APAC situation, I feel merging into one RP-PVE server would be a better solution, since the PVPers are more than likely to go to the designated world PVP areas anyway, along with Warzones, the PVE'ers are likely to have no change, but changing to a PVE or PVP server leaves roleplayers completely uncatered for, and I'd like to think that other players would be willing to sacrifice full world PVP to have a single APAC server.

I'd really like a reply to this, these are very high concerns for me, and I'm sort of glad to say now, that I've not pre-ordered the expansion, and I won't be until this issue is solved.

-Aeorna - Guild Master of Shadows Reach.

Harbinger was the unofficial PvE server for APAC at launch and it worked fine. Lots of Aussies on during the non-peak hours to US and vice versa. The server was always busy and it made for great populations for US players who worked night shifts and played closer to Aussie hours. Many of us missed the Aussies when they moved to APAC local servers, and we are enjoying their returning population over the last 3-4 months.

 

I know this has probably not dawned on some of the posters here... but it would be pretty easy to track the unofficial migration of Aussie accounts to US servers by Bioware using their analytics suite over the last 3-6 months. Personally, I think they saw a trend and leaned into that trend rather then try to fight it with a 3-2-1 merger locally to APAC.

 

/2-cents

Always about whats good for you self-centered Americians

meh, im looking forward to this, probably the minority at this point

We're probably the only logical people in this thread, It's embarassing that these idiots will be seen as the APAC community by others

But im looking forward to ACTUALLY PLAYING IN A POPULATED SERVER

Useless solution. You waited too long and now you punish the rest of us that stuck it out. Expect allot of unsubs from the APAC community, most of my guild will be leaving if this goes ahead.

You could at least have made a tunneling option available for us to reduce the lag on the NA servers.

Stupid us for wanting something, gave you the chance to kill our servers for good.

I'll be waiting for ESO now.

how do you check names without actually creating a character?

you cant - i had to create characters and check availability

APAC's 3 servers are less than 1 NA server because of how long it took to get around to making a change. If this had been done 153 days ago you could have just merged 1 server and then had 2 instead of 3. Now there's 0.

Bingo!

We're probably the only logical people in this thread, It's embarassing that these idiots will be seen as the APAC community by others

 

But im looking forward to ACTUALLY PLAYING IN A POPULATED SERVER

Conceited much.

We're probably the only logical people in this thread, It's embarassing that these idiots will be seen as the APAC community by others

 

But im looking forward to ACTUALLY PLAYING IN A POPULATED SERVER

Yea screw you it's guys like you that screwed our community.

Well .. to say I am disappointing is an understatement.

 

I feel like we have been strung along to believe that it was possible we would get a server merger, all the while paying our monthly subs.

 

I suppose we can't get a refund on ROTHC either.

 

Such bad business ethics from EAware. Shame on you.

 

Consider me Unsubbed.

Will miss you guys on MDN and Strike Team

Miss you too buddy.

Useless solution. You waited too long and now you punish the rest of us that stuck it out. Expect allot of unsubs from the APAC community, most of my guild will be leaving if this goes ahead.

 

You could at least have made a tunneling option available for us to reduce the lag on the NA servers.

 

Stupid us for wanting something, gave you the chance to kill our servers for good.

 

I'll be waiting for ESO now.

Dont wait, At least if they see you do it now, they can determine how much they have lost and still have time to change their decision.

If you wait, and they do it, they wont go back on it.

We're probably the only logical people in this thread, It's embarassing that these idiots will be seen as the APAC community by others

 

But im looking forward to ACTUALLY PLAYING IN A POPULATED SERVER

Yeah it's shame that the APAC community will be remembered as the group that coordinated and got together and formed a solution that got shat on by Bioware after 8 months. But you 2 are the smartest in the room.

You have got to be %*&king kidding me. Most of us only rolled on Gav Daragon because Dalborra was full.

( I would rather stay were I am on Gav Daragon that move to Begeren Colony )

(( I would rather move to a PvP server than move to Begeren Colony ))

((( What the *&^k do this brackets mean anyway? )))

I'm seeing a lot of people here trying to speak on behalf of everyone else here. Firstly I'm seeing people from dalbora saying there's no population problems. Try playing on gav daragon if that's the case and see what it's like to be in group finder for hours at a time during peak times without a pop.

For the people complaining about ping times - Like many people I played on a US server for several months before apac servers even existed and I never remember having a big problem with ping. Only reason I moved to the APAC servers when that option presented itself was so I could play on a server with people in the same timezone. Perhaps ping an issue is if you're hardcore pvp but then again hardcore pvpers have a habit of forgetting that the game doesn't revolve around pvp. I had to laugh at the people saying they'd go back to wow because of ping. Wow as far as I'm aware has never had servers physically hosted in australia. Their apac servers are hosted overseas so the ping is no different from their US servers. And considering how much that game has sucked since cataclysm I'm not interested in going back there.

My only problem with this announcement is how long it's taken. Promises about action began in the middle of last year which is about how long ago the NA servers were merged to fix their population issues. Should have just done ours back then rather than the whole 'wait and see how FTP pans out'. I wish we had a choice of servers to go to. There's more than on RP server for instance and I'd rather go to the one that the people on my old server ended up on rather than just being shifted on to a particular one.

eh you'll be fine sunfire, oceanic players and non us layers have over come latency in past mmos, tbh though i think the ping from nz to east coast was around 120~160 ms last i checked which is acceptable in my books

meh, im getting between 150-200ms on a solo screen, i can imagine what it will be for ops and warzones 300+ NOT ON!!!

Even now the pop on RP and PVE is not bad, PVP is only suffering majorly.

Serious? On Gav Daragon I routinely quest for hours at a time during peak times with group finder on the whole time - and no pop. Especially at sub 50. And forget about doing any heroic quests since on any given planet the number of other players is usually in single digits. I'd say that's an indication of pretty big issues with PVE.

To be fair, he's just the messenger. He likely had no involvement in making the decision; ultimately some accountant/manager has decided we're not financially viable and now his job is to try and put enough spin on it that it sounds like a positive outcome while taking the brunt of the abuse.

 

My sympathies, Eric ... your job sucks

His name is on the bald faced lie of the reasoning for this after so long of dragging it out. I can't give any sympanities for the guy who gets paid to be this months company stooge, who will be moved on and replaced to make the next lie come from new lips once we are used to the **** stained ones Eric speaks with as Joveth did before him.

Screw the ping, I won't be paying for more lies...

I'll play on bastion to do Makeb since it is paid for, but I will have to rename my toons of course, maybe call them Convict-X (X being the current name), since that is how Australians are being treated again.

This was a finacial decision pure and simple.

Some months ago I predicted this outcome in this very thread, it was the most likely outcome by far.

Do I like it? Heck no!

Lets be clear its not about "solving" population issues..here's why

Taking MAster Dar'Nala as an example.

Master D has 27-50 people on rep fleet at prime time currrently, I checked The Bastion of late and it was about 60, add them together you get 110... is that a "solved" population???

Of course not!!

By contrast Dalborra has had of late about 120 on Rep Fleet during prime time and Gav Daragon had approx Master D numbers.

Lets add these all together

Master D 50

Dalborra 120

Gav 50

= 220

So 220 for a merged Rep fleet pop in APAC prime time

vs

110 Rep fleet in APAC prime time with Master D rolled into the Bastion!

So this not the best fix for APAC pop issues AT ALL .

In fact its a worse solution for APAC players in their prime time than an APAC merge, simple math proves it.

Its about the cost of maintaining APAC servers vs APAC population and thats it.

Oh and of course lets not forget that this was probably known since they first looked at this issue in August 2012..

The APAC server contracts have just come up for renewal..

The solution from a business sense has been obvious for months.

Likewise the best solution for the players has been obvious for months ( APAC server merge which 90% of players wanted).

Its a monetary decision pure and simple and anything else is pure unadulterated spin.

Frankly this may well be the end of my days playing MMO's..

On another note...the delay in dealing with this issue only made the population issue worse leading to this result becoming more and more likely. Like many others I feel like I have been strung along until they had to pay to renew the APAC servers...

Not happy at all!

PS. I feel most sorry for the Dalborra players, their server was the best of all and was functional, not great but you could get stuff done and now they have lost that..

yeah it's shame that the apac community will be remembered as the group that coordinated and got together and formed a solution that got shat on by bioware after 8 months. But you 2 are the smartest in the room.

bringo!