Character Transfer, Server Populations, and You (Part II)

It is possible that merging the remaining servers into one light server could have been the plan all along. It would not be so much caving and rewarding holdouts as it would be making two different player types happy.

I transferd and was told that i would be getting a pet and some black hole commendations but haven't seen anything on the toons that i did transfer any idea on when they will be given?

Hello Star Wars: The Old Republic,
Let me start off with congratulating you on a great game! This game is a very enjoyable game to play, plenty of content, good story lines, excellent graphics, a really, really good game. Very few problems, except for the recent lag situation which you appear to have corrected. All in all, a most pleasant experience in game playing.
This is why the near future in SWTOR appears scary. The need to combine the existing “Light” realms into a few, already over-populated realms is cause for concern with some players. I play on the “Sedyn Kyne” realm along with my son. You wish us to move over to the “Jedi Covenant”, which as I type this, 11:30 PM on a Wednesday evening is still shown as being “HEAVY”! Still heavy at 11:30 at night? You do not think that is over-populated? You still want more of us to transfer to that realm?

You locked out 111 “light” realms in favor of only 12 realms which are either: heavy, very heavy or full!
My sons, my friends and I played WOW since the day it came out. We left not long ago because their game was no longer a “game” but a JOB! Casual, solo players were not “part of that game” any longer. It became a place primarily for the hard core raiders and PVPers.

SWTOR was a breath of fresh air after WOW! Here was a game which was just as enjoyable, content wise, as was WOW but without all the hassles of the large raids and their restrictions and rules. Here, a player could enjoy the game, without having the requirement to run large teams. The player’s story line did not require any heroics or raid just to complete it. The player was free to play as they wished, solo their story, team when they wanted to. Another thing, even the heroics are more user friendly with the maximum number required being 8 players, vice 25 or 40. With the companions out, most only required 2 actual players to complete. Much more user friendly! KUDOS
Although this game still lacks somewhat in the level 50 craftable gear, the ability to have modifiable gear and better mods from the dailies and Corellia mods vendor, almost equals it out. I have very good gear on my level 50 smuggler without having to do any heroics, enough where I can survive the dailies and still have plenty of fun doing t
them.

And to those who do enjoy the heroics, they get even better gear and have fun doing it! This is a game, not a job.
When we decided on what realm to start on, my son selected Sedyn Kyne because it was a light realm. We enjoy the freedom to play without having to fight against tons of other players for the same resources. If we wanted that over-population, we would have stayed in WOW. I cannot imagine how many players are trying to kill that same boss from the Area quest in The Black Hole to complete that quest. What are they doing, “Take a number and stand in line for your turn”? That isn’t my idea of fun, but then again no one asked me, did they?

I have spoken with a few of the remaining players on this realm and they do not wish to move either. They enjoy this realm for the same reasons as I have just said. Freedom to choose, solo or team. When I have needed a partner to team with, there was always someone on who would help. Teaming for a flash point or so isn’t impossible.
We are wondering what SWTOR intends to do on 30 July to those of us who prefer not to move into the crowed realms. Will we be forced to move? Will we be moved without our consent or knowledge? Will we just log on the next day and see our characters in a different realm with different names? SWTOR knows these answers, will you tell us the answers?

SWTOR, you have what I consider the best game of its type at this time. Leave the players in the light realms where they are. If they had wanted to move into those crowded realms by now, they would have done so already. The fact that we haven’t means we like your game just the way it is right now, simple, uncomplicated, but most of all FUN! STOP the forced mergers!

Thank you!

1) Whether a "forced transfer" (whether you call it a "merger" or whatever will take place and if so, when and will we get a warning before the transfer/merger?

2) The name issue, which is irritating to many players to be forced unto a server that someone already has a cool name you have used for years. How can BioWare address that? (one idea is to allow symbols, which will enable people to have their name with a small mod and end the "naming issue"). Will we be forced into a new server or a "destination server" where we will lose our existing game toon names??

3) If we will be forced to move anyway, then why not move now (do we get a warning to make the move b4 being tossed there)???

4) Will the "mergers"/forced transfer be into a completely new server or into one of the already crowded servers... like Drooga's Barge or Harbringer?

I think until we get some real answers (e-mails BW seems fruitless, as I got a generic response). So unless a kind person from BioWare comes to this forum and answers questions/concerns we have, I think people will continue to be nervous and they will continue to lose members.

I hope (someone) can answer the 4 questions above.

Thanks!
Chris

It is possible that merging the remaining servers into one light server could have been the plan all along. It would not be so much caving and rewarding holdouts as it would be making two different player types happy. The player base that wanted more populated servers were given an option to go to one place while the playerbase who stuck around were obviously happy with light population. Merging the remainder would keep them still on light and all would be happy. The problem is that they did not tell anyone if this was the plan and thus many people transferred thinking it was that or nothing.

Sure I would imagine that everyone would have rather kept thier names if given the choice but those who chose to move and lose them obviously found it to be less necessary than those who have not.

I transferd and was told that i would be getting a pet and some black hole commendations but haven't seen anything on the toons that i did transfer any idea on when they will be given?

I'm on Kath Hound (RP). I run a very active guild full of folks who for one reason or another preferred to stay in their destination server. Some of those reasons are:
> Our names were taken and we were unwilling to change them, as some members played early in order to take their desired name. To a casual player, this might seem "silly", but as an MMO RPer, a name is an extremely important piece of game play. An identity that transcends the in-game display.
> "The more people per server the better?" Wrong. We purposefully chose a low pop server to be able to enjoy the game without having to battle for objectives, and to feel as if our role in the storyline is richer. Some members who have created alts on our destination server felt that the merging of three servers into one creates too much of a competition for easy objectives and makes spawn time a nightmare.
> The community. To be honest, too many people all chatting it up can flood the chat, too many people means an increase in negative dis-inhibition, leading to more rude crass members being snarky in the general chats and less friendly jabber.
> We aren't interested in PVP, a few times we've gotten enough people on to trigger a guild warzone as an event, and that's enough for us. We're here for the storyline and friendship.

We've been paying members from the beginning, have had to band together in order to maintain our dying server from becoming useless. We have designated crafters for item making so the market is never dead, we have 15+ people in the chat at any point so Heroics and mission groups are easy to make, and we're all familiar with one another and never come across behavioral problems.

And we get nothing for putting up with you correcting your mistakes and sacrificing our server? We have inconvenienced ourselves just as much as people who in reality did nothing, they got lucky and were on a destination server and accepted new players to their server. We've felt the consequences of deciding that our identities we paid for were more important than dealing with the drawbacks of funneling servers together in order to "fix" things. Does that seem right?

On top of that now you're literally bribing people off their destination servers? You're dealing the final blow to these already fragile origin servers even more. Let us have the opportunity to switch to a server of our choosing, one where we saved a backup name, have connections to the community, doesn't have a 30 minute wait time every evening. Don't bribe and pick and drag our poor server through the mud, letting us tell our members we're okay as long as we stick together while you plot ways to harass us until we're decimated. (We really don't appreciate the hourly Server Admin announcements. I think every one knows by now without literal harassment popping up across our screens every. hour. Put an end to it.). Don't take what little of a community you left us with without giving us more options.

We've obviously felt the need to stay on our origin servers for a reason. Forcing us to move to a server you deem fit for us is horrible, I feel cheated and lied to.