Hey folks,

 

By the term "Megaservers" I presume you think we are collapsing multiple servers together into "megaservers." Especially with many of the quality of life features you highlighted. These changes were only designed to allow friends to play together, regardless of their personal playstyle. Now someone who wants to play on a PvP server can play on the same server as their friends who don't want to.

 

Hope that clears up any confusion.

 

-eric

 

Well, that puts that to rest...

 

.... unless/until they jump out from behind a rock and actually contradict themselves by their actions.

Edited February 25, 2016 by Andryah

Hey folks,

 

Hope that clears up any confusion.

 

-eric

Yes it does, thank you Eric. That's how I assumed they would work.

Yes, I remember the CRZs in WoW. Nagrand was a particularly annoying one. *coughHalaacough* They also added the *Servername after your name so that you knew that you were dealing with CRZ folks.

 

And also the battlegroups, which shifted from time to time adding or reducing based on server populations to keep them balanced for queuing purposes. And if I recall correctly, not every server was PVP or PVE in the battlegroup, but a mix.

 

Yeah, the battlegroups in WoW ended up being large consolidated masses, basically anything that was in the same datacenter was in the same battlegroup. And you're right, the ability to plug and play servers allowed them the ability to balance if they wanted.

 

Ultimately, even battle group has become an essentially meaningless distinction, since with the battle.net backend system (RealID and battletags), players can be invited cross realm regardless of battle group.

 

In the case of SWTOR though, I suspect this is far less challenging, simply because they don't have as many servers. An East/West/Euro split makes the most sense, though if they're willing to install high speed/low latency links on the backend between East/West, even that would become meaningless, as East would be able to talk to West without significant ping time increases.

 

The potential real casualties are the RP servers, as if they get thrown in with the others, gonna be alot of complaining about PEOPLE NOT BEING RP, or they'd stay isolated.

Hey folks,

 

By the term "Megaservers" I presume you think we are collapsing multiple servers together into "megaservers." Especially with many of the quality of life features you highlighted. These changes were only designed to allow friends to play together, regardless of their personal playstyle. Now someone who wants to play on a PvP server can play on the same server as their friends who don't want to.

 

Hope that clears up any confusion.

 

-eric

 

Eric, are we still going to be able to pvp flag in the PVE instances or will that be restricted to PVP instances only now? That's how I'm interpreting this and I'm not in a place to go test it on the PTS.

Hey folks,

 

By the term "Megaservers" I presume you think we are collapsing multiple servers together into "megaservers." Especially with many of the quality of life features you highlighted. These changes were only designed to allow friends to play together, regardless of their personal playstyle. Now someone who wants to play on a PvP server can play on the same server as their friends who don't want to.

 

Hope that clears up any confusion.

 

-eric

 

Sadly Nope. This just makes it more confusing to me Eric. Are we losing servers or not? That's the bottom line for me. If we're losing servers I'm going to lose a lot of characters plus my 4 guilds that I run. If that happens, SWTOR will lose me.

Hey folks,

 

By the term "Megaservers" I presume you think we are collapsing multiple servers together into "megaservers." Especially with many of the quality of life features you highlighted. These changes were only designed to allow friends to play together, regardless of their personal playstyle. Now someone who wants to play on a PvP server can play on the same server as their friends who don't want to.

 

Hope that clears up any confusion.

 

-eric

 

I believe everyone has the feeling that those servers like POT5 that rarely see standard will be merged into one of the PvE servers to improve queue times etc. and have less servers that don't really get used. This is because of the fact that POT5 won't be a 'pvp server' so it would be no different than say Jedi Covenant or Shadowlands.

Yes it does, thank you Eric. That's how I assumed they would work.

 

Umm...can you explain what it means exactly....will it help ques?

Sadly Nope. This just makes it more confusing to me Eric. Are we losing servers or not? That's the bottom line for me. If we're losing servers I'm going to lose a lot of characters plus my 4 guilds that I run. If that happens, SWTOR will lose me.

 

No. They aren't closing any. You just have no excuse not to leave your dead ones now.

And then the 'connected realms' where they finally basically overlaid two servers together to deal with waning populations so that you ended up with members of the same guild on two different servers. Or more specifically, members from two servers could join the same guild. Those were WoW's versions of server merges.

 

Edit to add info about Connected Realms.

 

That's actually a good point, I'd forgotten about that. Especially since I did make use of that when my realm became connected to be able to get some names that had previously been unavailable. But also points something else out - simply appending the servername to a character is enough to make it a unique identifier, so in the case of a merge or a psuedo-merge, players can keep their name (I sure as hell wish they'd done that instead of forcing me to rename when Grand Master Zym merged into Shadowlands)

Umm...can you explain what it means exactly....will it help ques?

I can try.

 

No...it won't help queues. They aren't closing anything, they're simply making it easier for people who insist on being on a PvE or PvP server to move wherever the hell they want. All our current servers stay like they are. No other change besides PvP specific instances and PvE specific ones. Basically, they're removing server "types".

 

This is "better than cross server" I bet.

Edited February 25, 2016 by TUXs

MY major Worries in all this is my RL friends and some I have made in my Years playing wow do heavy RP and this last year there sever pop has taken a beating and they come to the higher pop severs or on the east cost some went to shadow lands or JC and now this well others take the fact RP is going to happen and under stand there now with the part of the PVE world?

Sadly Nope. This just makes it more confusing to me Eric. Are we losing servers or not? That's the bottom line for me. If we're losing servers I'm going to lose a lot of characters plus my 4 guilds that I run. If that happens, SWTOR will lose me.

 

I *think* it means:

 

• we keep servers
  
• we'll have at least one pvp and one pve instance for every zone on every server
  (much like the multiple instances we already have when a zone reaches population cap)
  

This would also imply no naming conflicts will occur.

Edited February 25, 2016 by KyaniteD

Hey folks,

 

By the term "Megaservers" I presume you think we are collapsing multiple servers together into "megaservers." Especially with many of the quality of life features you highlighted. These changes were only designed to allow friends to play together, regardless of their personal playstyle. Now someone who wants to play on a PvP server can play on the same server as their friends who don't want to.

 

Hope that clears up any confusion.

 

-eric

That's very good!

Edited February 25, 2016 by VanderII

Eric, are we still going to be able to pvp flag in the PVE instances or will that be restricted to PVP instances only now? That's how I'm interpreting this and I'm not in a place to go test it on the PTS.

 

I'll test it once I'm done patching, but my suspicion is that they just replaced the toggle pvp flag with toggle instance type.

 

I, however, am wondering the same thing as you, as it potentially has Conquest implications

I can try.

 

No...it won't help queues. They aren't closing anything, they're simply making it easier for people who insist on being on a PvE or PvP server to move wherever the hell they want. All our current servers stay like they are. No other change besides PvP specific instances and PvE specific ones. Basically, they're removing server "types".

 

This is "better than cross server" I bet.

 

I don't think this is their entire better than cross server initiative, as players have been clamoring for better queue pops for awhile, and the only real way to make that happen is to enable cross server play. This is probably part of it, as like Eric said, now there's no reason for a PVP'er to avoid a PVE server, they can still play on one and keep their playstyle.

Hey folks,

 

By the term "Megaservers" I presume you think we are collapsing multiple servers together into "megaservers." Especially with many of the quality of life features you highlighted. These changes were only designed to allow friends to play together, regardless of their personal playstyle. Now someone who wants to play on a PvP server can play on the same server as their friends who don't want to.

 

Hope that clears up any confusion.

 

-eric

Sadly Nope. This just makes it more confusing to me Eric. Are we losing servers or not? That's the bottom line for me. If we're losing servers I'm going to lose a lot of characters plus my 4 guilds that I run. If that happens, SWTOR will lose me.

How are you interpreting this from Eric's posts. He clearly (yet somewhat vaguely) said, servers are staying the same but you can change from PVE or PVP instance types (WITHIN your server) whenever you like.

 

Nothing is getting moved.

Edited February 25, 2016 by Falensawino

So... basically, they are subtly trying to get people to leave their dying servers in favor of the more populated ones. Then they can just kill them off as they linger.

 

This still doesn't answer my question about people who don't care about play style.

 

I enjoy PvP and PvE. I play both regularly. But splitting these into different instances is a stupid decision when it comes to someone like me.

 

I might be doing some PvE when I see some messages about PvP that make me want to switch gears. Or vis-versa. But if everything is nestled inside it's own instance, then I'm forced to have to pick one or the other. And, in doing so, cut myself off from the other choice.

 

Am I over thinking this? Because I don't see how this is "good."

Hey folks,

 

By the term "Megaservers" I presume you think we are collapsing multiple servers together into "megaservers." Especially with many of the quality of life features you highlighted. These changes were only designed to allow friends to play together, regardless of their personal playstyle. Now someone who wants to play on a PvP server can play on the same server as their friends who don't want to.

 

Hope that clears up any confusion.

 

-eric

 

It does, thank you...

 

May I suggest with such a feature, there will no longer be a reason to have so many servers.

 

One east coast, one west coast, and one Europe server... three of them, that would be a nice number.

 

Please pass that idea along, maybe it can't happen in 4.3, but a general merge would be nice.

Most likely this is the first step in a larger plan.

If this works, then they'll maintain the status quo.

If population continues to be a problem, they'll already have a solution in place to consolidate servers at a later date.

 

So no, no server merging right now but they're definitely laying the groundwork for doing it in the future.

It does, thank you...

 

May I suggest with such a feature, there will no longer be a reason to have so many servers.

 

One east coast, one west coast, and one Europe server... three of them, that would be a nice number.

 

Please pass that idea along, maybe it can't happen in 4.3, but a general merge would be nice.

 

A general merge is a horrible idea, unless they find a way to preserve player names.

 

Enabling inter-server communication (ie, cross realm), is a much better solution.

So... basically, they are subtly trying to get people to leave their dying servers in favor of the more populated ones. Then they can just kill them off as they linger.

I'm never leaving East Coast servers. We live in the real world with latency and technical limitations to online communications.

 

Here's a map showing the divide between East and West in the continental United States.

http://i.imgur.com/WMIFfay.jpg (see the map called "visualisation of internet connections" it's the second one)

 

I feel bad for Asia Pacific players who try to play on servers across the largest body of water on the planet.

 

One east coast, one west coast, and one Europe server... three of them, that would be a nice number.

You forgot roleplaying type.

 

You forgot European separatism. German, French, and English speakers in Europe don't really want to speak with each other.

 

Within the European servers, there is a break up of the different regions in Europe.

Dutch, Swedish, Danish are more likely to play on German servers.

Spanish, Latin-based languages are more likely to play on French servers.

Everybody else (like Slavic languages and Russian) usually crams themselves in the English servers.

 

I don't actually know how Euro players divide themselves among the Euro servers, but if you inspect their chat for a few days, you may notice patterns based on recruiting messages.

Edited February 25, 2016 by Falensawino

It does, thank you...

 

May I suggest with such a feature, there will no longer be a reason to have so many servers.

 

One east coast, one west coast, and one Europe server... three of them, that would be a nice number.

 

Please pass that idea along, maybe it can't happen in 4.3, but a general merge would be nice.

 

What you ask for is exactly the "megaserver" notion that people assumed from this news and which has just been shot down. People read it and thought "guess there will only be one server per region when they implement this". But Eric's post effectively says "no, there are no plans to merge servers / close smaller servers at this time".

Edited February 25, 2016 by Muljo_Stpho

Well that sucks. TOFN is dead and needs merging into TRE.

Hey folks,

 

By the term "Megaservers" I presume you think we are collapsing multiple servers together into "megaservers." Especially with many of the quality of life features you highlighted. These changes were only designed to allow friends to play together, regardless of their personal playstyle. Now someone who wants to play on a PvP server can play on the same server as their friends who don't want to.

 

Hope that clears up any confusion.

 

-eric

 

your message couldn't be more cryptic. it leaves room for a lot of speculation! also what i wanna know, what's about the laguage barriers?

Hope that clears up any confusion.

 

-eric

your message couldn't be more cryptic. it leaves room for a lot of speculation! also what i wanna know, what's about the laguage barriers?

It's not that cryptic.

 

The only way someone could be confused by what Eric said is you read it like this:

Hey folks,

 

By the term "Megaservers" I presume you think we are collapsing multiple servers together into "megaservers." Especially with many of the quality of life features you highlighted. These changes were only designed to allow friends to play together, regardless of their personal playstyle. Now someone who wants to play on a PvP server can play on the same server as their friends who don't want to.

 

Hope that clears up any confusion.

 

-eric

 

• My friend is in Harbinger (pve)
  
• I'm on Prophecy of the Five (pvp)
  

I can hop to the Harbinger and play PVE or PVP with him?

 

Now someone who wants to play on a PvP server can play on the same server as their friends who don't want to.

"Friends who don't want to," are the native population of a pve server.

"Someone who wants to play on a pvp server," is you wanting to switch to pvp type.

It all takes place on the same server.

 

That's my understanding, anyway.

Edited February 25, 2016 by Falensawino