When will there be a "SERVER MERGE?"

How many of the 50 pages of replies have successfully invited friends to join swtor during the free weekends or free 7 days of play time?

Bioware will have server merges and character transfers as needed in the future--they have already confirmed this. But perhaps we could read between the lines a bit, maybe? Thinking caps on? They'd like to get everyone who wants to play into the game first, and all of their friends, too. In the game's infancy (it's 4 months old), a lot is still changing. The numbers of players actively logged in remains in flux (according to the very varied reports you guys claim) and there's major content releases coming several times this year.

So...calling sky is falling and merging everything up now would be a lot of time taken out of development and content, and the gain is pretty minimal. Bioware wants to grow the player base and give it more game to play, not to consolidate the player base and hang on to "what's left." Bring in some friends, and who cares what the server pop is--you'll be busy having fun. And server merges will come when the time is right from a dev standpoint, not from a player expectations point of view.

btw can anyone provide this kind of info:
sorcerer - 66
mercenary - 44
operative - 28
juggernaut - 27
marauder - 27
powertech - 26
assasin - 25
sniper - 16
about so called "heavily populated servers"
this one is Fatman reported as Heavy at that time and 259 lvl 50 imperial side?
pfffff
and this is heavy?
Loooooooooooo
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There are simply too many servers. The low pop servers have no real purpose anymore due to the fact that it is either difficult or impossible to group with other players to play the games group content.

This is a VERY LARGE problem for several reasons. The main problem is player retention of accounts who run on these ghost servers. Assuming the players don’t want to reroll (a lot of people don’t, I will never reroll myself) they are stuck on this server until they run out of patience and move on to another game. Poof! One less player in our community. Not cool.

The other main problem with these ghost servers is new players (as in new to PC gaming) who happen to make their accounts on these servers. What type of 1st impression are we giving these players? “welcome to Hutta, have fun with the other 3 people on planet!” Come on. This makes the game look very poor to the new player. Now a lot of people in this thread have suggested that people who do this are ”stupid” or don’t know any better, but guess what, not everyone is as smart as the A-listers that post on this forum. Most people are as stupid as I am.

All I'm asking for is for information from BW. Yes, we know AUS players are getting transfers this month, which is fantastic. Now, what about the next problem in the same family of issues, such as the North American and European ghost servers? Time frames? Ideas on implementation? I just want some new updates / blogs about the issue.

I'm not trying to be hostile, or an eThug. I have genuine questions that I think should be answered. I like this game, and I want it to live. I want my fellow gamer to also have fun, and to enjoy it with me. I get aggravated when I see players complain about a 100% legit problem, leave the game, have people trash them on the forums and BW not having an active dialogue.

Current Server - Ula Vii

Lvl 50 Assassin - Tank Spec. (cap reached mid January).
Currently levelling a Mercenary, so I have something to do.

Fleet Population (peak times) - 10 if your lucky.
(Game usually played between 19:00 and 22:30 GMT/BST Mon-Fri, longer at weekends)

Social Lvl - 1

No of HMs attempted/completed since hitting lvl cap - 0/0

Current Equipment:
Armor - lvl126 obtained through REing lvl49/50 Synthweaving gear to 3rd tier
Main Hand/Off Hand - lvl116 obtained through GTN

It really is very simple, I cannot progress any further when my server is dead. There are no groups, there is no multiplayer. Don't even think about doing the 4mans while levelling, if you are lucky there may be one other player on the same planet.

Server Transfers and Merges are needed NOW, not at some unspecified point in the future while the developers concentrate on pushing out new content in 1.2.

New content will be of no use to me, as I will be considered undergeared for it even if I could find a group to join... WHICH I CAN'T!!!

This really is not good enough...

I am very aware that this is a new MMORPG and, as such, we can expect a few issues that will take a bit of time to fix. These should be the priority, however, not pushing out new content that only players who lucked into a busy server will actually be able to enjoy.

Please don't take this as an attack, it's not.

I havn't because me and all my friends came here together... most of them quit and went to other MMOs/back to WoW when the populations started to tank and they couldn't get enough people to run Ops and had to wait an hour for Qs. We rolled on one of the servers that ended up dieing.

The 'varied' reports are because people are reporting from different servers. I 'wish' I had some of the numbers people are COMPLAINING about. I see people talking about 100+ people on the fleet at prime time and being upset... I'm not sure I've seen a number over 50 in the last month on my server. The numbers are going to jump up after 1.2 and people who blindly support BW are going to say "See, it fixed it!" then 2 months later when they take a nose dive again and we still havn't merged servers they will say "1.3 will fix it!" and we'll get into a bad cycle until they offer up transfers... if they don't offer bulk transfers many people won't take advantage of it and transfers 'off' a dieing server will kill the server and anyone who doesn't take the transfer is even more screwed and will most likely leave. As for wanting to get 'everyone who wants to play the game into the game first' it's a pretty hard sell when I have a friend pop on for a weekend pass, get to the fleet then realize there aren't enough people for him to even run the esseles flashpoint.

1. Developers don't manage the servers in general, I'm not 100% sure of BW's structure but I'm willing to bet the people who write code and develope content are not really responsible for merging databases, if they are... it's not a big deal to merge databases in like systems because, well, it's just copying fields. The biggest conflict is dealing with conflicting names across servers and even that is an easy fix so it wouldn't be "a lot of time taken out of developement"
2. Bioware can grow the content all they like, I can plant 40 acres of corn, my wife and I can't eat 40 acres of corn, nor can we tend it. If they build it, they will not come... they need to take care of what they've got before they lose it.
3. "bring in some friends and who cares what hte server pop is you'll be busy having fun" Yeah, if I bring in 15 friends and we structure our playtime together and pick appropriate classes that work together we can play this game regardless of the server populations. I'm not that popular or that well organized that I'm going to get 15 of my RL buddies to roll the appropriate classes and play at the same time all the time so we can all enjoy ourselves.


Merges are the 'right' answer and the time is NOW. You need vibrant communities to complain, praise, argue, and PLAY. You need buzz and right now the only buzz about the game is 'it's sort of a ghost town on most servers' which isn't exactly drawing in the crowds. Transfers don't fix the issue, paid transfers certainly dont. If my only option to play the game I'm paying for is to pay more so I can go to a server that actually has enough people to support 'playing the game' I will simply stop playing.


I wouldn't quit this game lightly... I havn't been this addicted to a game since early WoW. I love this game... The companion system is a stroke of brilliance, crafting is interesting, the story mode gameplay for single player is outright fantastic. I adore PVP as multiple classes and what little PVE content I've been able to do has been good, not the best I've had in a MMO but it's better than a lot of them. There are very few things I'd change about the 'game' as a whole but people are what make a game, not content.

I love the story... I'm good with low pop servers but only for so long before I'm "done"
I love the crafting but I have no one to sell too, no mats on the GTN and no one to buy from because my server is too low.
I love PVP but it takes forever to get in a Q because we can't muster 7 other people to Q up and when we do get a Q it dies early. On a good night, at prime time I'll get 5-6 games in a row if I'm lucky.
I wouldn't mind trying some of the Ops/flashpoints but I don't have the hour it takes to form a group because of the low populations, I can't just sit on fleet /lfging I want to 'play' the game.

Like I said, I love this game... I want it to succeed, I've played MMOs since early alpha/beta testing for the original Everquest. I've always been active in the communities and I'm working towards being a developer. MMOs are a big thing for me not just as a player but almost as a hobby and hopefully one day a career... I'm not just here complaining, I'm here to support what I see as the best option for making this game succesfull. If the community doesn't get more consolidated so people can actually 'enjoy' this game for what it is, it will go down in history as the best single player MMO ever and we'll never see it's first paid expansion pack.

I do believe someone said something on another thread along the line of "Wait until summer, people will have a bit more time and kids will start pouring in again" (Not exactly what he said) I, for one, agree. there is a lot more activity during Summer.

I'd rather have a few merges than cross server que'ing. Build up the community before you start throwing random people all around the galaxy. It just feels like such a no brainer to me for some reason. It's no at all a sign of defeat, it's a sign of holding a successful launch ! Now that the servers aren't being hammered to pieces, put some of us together!

If I may make a suggestion: Entertainers, or some class like it, from SWG. They brought the community together, and made the Cantina a socializing hub. It would give us players an opportunity to talk to other people, form groups, and then also give us something to do in our spare time.

I agree. I have yet to see a comment from BW that they plan to merge servers.
They will at some time in the future allow some type of transfer (details sketchy) on some servers.
This wont fix the problem.
The problem is too few people to allow for real MMO play.
Those who think the issue will be magically solved when the gimped "update" that is 1.2 comes live. Hold back the horde of new subscribers. Wooo, whole new worlds, an increase in the level cap, new capabilities in crafting, new characteristics we can develop. Woo....
Wait, that was a WoW update. Sorry.

No, some people will come back online to check it out and play a bit more for a couple of weeks, so instead of 4 people on Hoth (as there were last evening when I was playing on Naddist Rebels - pvp server East Coast that has next to zero population, no doubt the pve heros stay away from it) there might be 8. Woo, maybe I can get a 2 man together now.

Sorry, we need mergers. Forced mergers, automatic mergers, on a scale of ten to one. And we need it now. Not next year.

I take it your a WoW Fanatic... If so... Quit raining your doom forecast/rise of WoW predictions on us, would you >