When will there be a "SERVER MERGE?"

Check earlier in this thread, its been linked a few times.

Its open for interpretation though.

Agreed 100%. Transfers will only make light servers even worse, prompting even more people off that server until it's practically dead. The only people left will be those that play it like a single player game, and once they're alone at level 50 with their class story done, they'll be gone too. Medium servers will probably take a similar hit, from medium to light to dead. In the meantime a small number of popular servers will be overloaded and there'll be wait times again.

Merging is a much better answer to the problem.

I concur.

Wowza! I take a little forum break and there is an explosion of posts!

To my new friend Kubernetic, at least one very good thing has come from all of this. It seems that the pair of us have come to an understanding, even concerning the things we do not necessarily agree on. I'm delighted! With any luck, this sort of communication - one that starts heated and ends with mature discussion - can server as a model to some of our peers who do not quite grasp the concept of constructive criticism or thoughtful debate. This is where I am definitely in your corner.

I can absolutely agree with you that there are countless people on these forums who have not even bothered to research what information is presently available regarding this issue and are pouring negativity and over-the-top dramatics into an already combustible environment. Nothing good can come of that. I don't necessarily agree, however, that a number of solutions have been presented by Reid, Ohlen, or any of the other developers. They've told us they are working on it. I can appreciate that. As I said, there are a number of other game issues I would like to see changed or fixed but, to me, they're not game breaking and knowing that the developers are working on it is good enough for me.

I also appreciate what you're saying about how we, the player base, do not have all the facts the developers do. They do have information that we do not have. I only wish they knew how frustrating it is to be in the dark, how frustrating it is to have such little information that you cannot make an educated decision about how to proceed in the game. My game time is so valuable that I detest the idea of wasting it and my money either doing nothing or walking in the opposite direction.

What makes this so difficult is, yes, they have information that we do not have. If they shared it, it probably would help players like myself make more educated decisions about how to proceed but it would also cause a chemical shiza-storm for them in dealing with the other half of the coin, the players that think the sun rises and sets in their arse and that they are entitled to everything and anything they want.

I also agree that a superficial date would create more problems than it would solve. For those who would suggest otherwise, I recommend you head over to the "When is 1.2 Coming?" threads and read some of the responses there. While there are many people, like myself, who would prefer a polished product to a product that adheres strictly to a possible mistaken or mispoken statement by James Ohlen, there are many others who would use such statements as a catalyst for even more toxic negative spew.

Do I think that everything that Bioware has done to date in regards to SWTOR is golden? Of course not. I am realistic though. I know that launching a new MMO in such a cut-throat market is catastrophically difficult, at best. If you love the game, if you believe it has potential, if you want to see it and this community succeed ... support it. You do not have to agree with everything they say or do, but support the community. Support the creative process. Support the power of suggestion. Be constructive with your criticisms. If you need to take your money elsewhere to prove a point, do that, but do it gracefully. Do it with dignity. Do not make a joke of yourself. The people who cry cancelled subscription then hang around the forums talking trash are jokes. No one takes them seriously. No one cares what they have to say. They get their 15 minutes of fame, they make no impact, and the game is no better or worse for having lost them.

I do not wish to paint the entire community with the same brush. For an MMO community, I admit, this is one of the better ones. I have learned many things from many wonderful people I've been able to interact with here. I realize how very unrealistic a hope it is to see this community grow in such a way that we are not always having to wade through the bratty and destructive complaints of our more sophomoric members but, like you said Kubernetic, (when you were talking about re-rolls) if even a few people get the message and choose to make a better choice, well, it has an impact. It helps.

Anyway, back to this issue. The issue of low-population servers is very much game breaking for me. It makes it quite difficult to enjoy this wonderful game that I very much love. Like you, I do not want to see it fail. But these are things I have already addressed in my previous responses so I will not continue to repeat them. I will say that these things tie into my purpose for even being in this thread to begin with. It was my hope, in posting here, that I could stress the importance of this issue to the developers and come from a more mindful, considerate, and dignified place than some of the other posters here.

Frankly, I think you catch more bees with honey than vinegar. At the end of the day, well, this is basically a lose-lose situation. The fact that they are trying to come to some solution as quickly as possible is really the best I can hope for, but it does not become any less frustrating to play and enjoy the game just by knowing that.

I realize my last post was largely a plea to the community, so I will add, on the subject of transfers vs. mergers, that I believe mergers are better than transfers too. They make it more difficult for players to really re-roll now (because they have no idea where they'd be merged to), but it would solve nearly all of the problems that rise from the transfer idea.

However, I know there are people on heavy population servers (particularly Fatman) who are becoming frustrated by the fact that so many people are re-rolling to their servers and causing the queing to occur. I fear that the longer it takes for a solution to the server issues, the more of this we will see. Mergers do not seem to be a good idea for thinning out the population on those high-pop servers, but it has the probability of deterring even more people from re-rolling on that server out of desperation or transferring there as soon as they are able to.

/signed

Naddist Rebels has needed a server merge as of like 3 weeks ago. How is 40 people on fleet during peak times acceptable bioware? Please, merge some servers so we can get a sense of community back. No, re-rolling should not be the solution to this...YOU assigned my guild a server and then opened too many at the beginning of launch. It is your responsibility to consolidate them to better the game. Begging you Bioware, give us merges or watch more and more people leave.

Yet what I mostly see in this thread is misrepresentation, outright lies, and conspiracy. I guess those are more agreeable to you than a little speculation as to why this process for character transfers is not going to be ready tomorrow morning.

I'm not a BioWare employee. If I were, I'd be mum like the rest of them have seemingly been instructed to be while the system details are being finalized, with the few exceptions of statements by development and management leaders like Stephen Reid and James Ohlen.

I've never even played a BioWare game before. In fact, here's me over on the STO forums back in 2010 arguing that SWTOR wouldn't be able to compete with STO due to its lack of space content. I'm "Kuber", post #22 on page 3.

http://forums.startrekonline.com/sho...ar+Wars&page=3

And boy was I wrong, LOL. So whatever. You can question my credentials all you want. For all I know, half of the people posting in this thread are Blizzard employees or developers of Tera and Guild Wars 2 in a pre-emptive strike. We can play this "suspect each other" game all day long.

That said, I have every right to post here just as you do. And my only "speculation" in this thread is about trying to explain to people why things aren't just as easy as clicking a "Server Merge" button on a fancy control panel back at BioWare Data Center HQ.

But here, I'll let them speak for themselves again, as you requested:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showt...35#post3196835

Cheers!

Kuber I've been telling people the same thing for a long time. They are coming, stop wasting your time and anger posting etc etc etc.

No one listens and never will.

How about this new spiffy "single server technology" which comes to TSW?

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/06...-why-both-are/


Funcom strikes again! I start to love this company for their continuing effort to improve ways on how MMOs work. Now they got server-side PhysX and next it will be possible to play with every subscriber without server isolation!

That´s how it´s done Bioware! Please catch up, fast!

The basic problem is that BWs servers and the engine are second rate. The fact that a relatively small population causes long log in delays, and that 20 people in an area causes freezes, shows that this game is not and never will be a MMO. Can BW fix this critical deficiency? I have heard nothing about it. Frankly an [M]MO that cant handle more than five to ten players in the same area is not exactly cutting edge in 2012.