When will there be a SERVER MERGE?

Alot of you guys are impatient...they said it was coming during summer

So quit QQing on the forums

We need both server merges and character transfers.

I started on a "normal population" server when I first joined, which was day one of official lunch). Reading all the horror stories here about hours of waiting to get logged into a given server, it seemed prudent to target a normal population server. I figured "normal" meant that there would be plenty of players. Alas, I was wrong.

Being so engrossed in the game and the story, I didn't mind that I was 1 of 4 or 1 of 6 on most planets as my trooper schlepped across Tatooine..little did I know.

Now this server is a ghost town...in fact I stayed in that ghost town for quite a while before re-rolling a new character on a high pop server. But enough is enough..after doing all the planet stories, the class stories, the bonus storylines and the 400 repetitions of the dailies, you NEED other players to enjoy the rest of the content.

So I made a conscious choice to roll on a more densely populated server and haven't looked back since. But I'd still like to grab my trooper and have him come over to the new server. I don't care if 15 low population servers are merging - I'm not going back to it, since my "community" is with my new server.

What is most surprising is this: every single MMO - no matter what they are about - follow a trajectory or a lifecycle of you will and at SOME point they ALL encounter this particular issue. Some realms/servers will fall below critical mass and unless you want to chase the remaining subscriber off deliberately, you HAVE to address it - before the subscribers lose patience. More than ANY other aspect of MMOs, this particular dynamic is completely pervasive and predictable - the ONLY variance is WHEN it happens.

I must say that I am quite disappointed in how woefully unprepared BioWare and/or EA are. It's tantamount to basically throwing away subscriptions and the maintenance cost of keeping servers/realms alive when they should have been terminated, is not good business practice.

Today i stumbled onto page that tracks same way as many other mmo's and quite accurately population trends. I have seen same with rift and other mmo's. When trends go into wrong dirrection, then action has been taken - that is merging or closing down empty servers. At least Rift didnt let low trend go that high.

I was shocked seeing what is happening with TOR servers overall. Picture tells more than thousand words.
Data has been recordered sicne 1st february so went dont know how much would be difference since launch.

US server trend http://oi48.tinypic.com/1z6qovp.jpg
EU server trend http://oi50.tinypic.com/349dhzc.jpg

What you see on slight sudden change on 15 april is world event. On EU trend it is not visible as much on US servers when that event was introduced.

If it took 3 months to go from 40% low poulation to 80% now average then things are more bad than i expected in worst case screnario. If this continues then by end of May we may hit 90% low cap average. That means one thing - most servers will be pretty much empty.

Very short sighted of you , they actually did this within the first 2 weeks of the games release. Do you remember the huge ques on a lot of servers , well guess what they added blades to some servers funnily enough. Hence why we now have phases and the ques went down magically over night err.

Anyways as long as I don't have to change any of my names of my characters I don't mind moving , merging , if I have to . One point though and its crucial to pve'ers we dont want 200 people in the same area at the same time on a planet , imagine the hell trying to get that last champion kill for your yellow mission item , omg noooo.

Cheers,

Badorb.

I just re-started my account after not playing for a short while, and came back to a ghost land of a server. I really like my character, and have put a lot of time into it, I REFUSE to re-roll. Not having anyone to do flashpoints with or anything at all that makes an MMO an MMO really sucks. I feel like I'm paying $15 a month to play some ****** offline RPG. I understand there is no instant fix, but I feel 2 months should be plenty of time. If this issue isn't fixed by the time my time card is up, I wont be renewing, ever.

EDIT: I really love the game but its very lonely right now, hence the angry post, this could have been accounted for ahead of time.

Stop QQing?

Many of these guys are paying money to play on dead servers, with no pop at all.

The hell u talking about?

What server do you play on ?

Are you paying to have 1 people at the fleet at 19:00 ?

Just shut you mouth and respect the other ppl point of view.

need to fix soon or this will be the server list:

http://s1204.photobucket.com/albums/...or_servers.jpg

I have to agree with OP.

I really enjoy the game and have had lots of great times thus far but having seen what has occurred in other MMO's i find it strange that BW didn't either have a working server transfer tool/server merge facility from the get go.

In any game like this the subs will have an early peak as people try it out, followed by a dip till the game stabilises with content etc. To not have foreseen this and have a means to counter it is odd..

I still want to enjoy this game but when i log onto my server on friday and saturday peak time to find 12-16 people on the fleet it makes me /cry.

I hate to repeat what many before me have said but these server transfers the devs are talking about for summer can not come soon enough.

bump for a merge ASAP in May (not Summer) before everyone who is left leaves!
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=438399