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

For what it's worth, I wouldn't count on it. I think we will at least be waiting until 1.4 for more character slots. That is a guess I base on the very few things they've said about it lately (I forgot where I read it, but it was recent).

I do remember where I read the following, however. It is the response to the question about what will happen if your destination server already has 8 slots:

Personally, I'm hoping they open multiple destinations as the solution, but we shall see.

I hope the above helps to some degree. Remember, the community team won't release any information they haven't been authorized to release. In this economy, I'd want to keep my job too.

So there have been some good ideas to create a few more servers to accommodate the players that have been holding out due reasons of overpopulation and loss of character names and legacy names. But is it financially feasible to do this? This is not a rhetorical question, I don't know the answer and would love any input from people in-the-know or someone from the Bioware staff themselves. I've done a bit of number crunching, but I'm missing some key variables: how much does it cost per month to keep an individual server running for this game and exactly how many active subscribers are there that are still on the Origin servers?

This is what I've put together so far:

This is a list of all the currently locked server types Categorized by region and language (none of the Asian Pacific servers are listed because they're all still open).

111 North American Servers

22 West Coast PvE
13 West Coast PvP
2 West Coast RP
1 West Caost RP-PvP

42 East Coast PvE
25 East Coast PvP
5 East Coast RP
1 East Coast RP-PvP

80 European Servers

18 English PvE
13 German PvE
4 French PvE

20 English PvP
10 German PvP
7 French PvP

2 English RP
2 German RP
1 French RP

1 English RP-PvP
1 German RP-PvP
1 French RP-PvP

Grand total of 191 locked servers.

If you count each of the sub categories, that would make for a total of 20 new destination servers needed to accommodate everyone that's been holding out till now.

Now, let's talk money.
We, the players, don't know how many people are still holding out on all of the origin servers, but I've read estimates in this thread of an average of 30 players per server. Granted there are far fewer than that on some servers, but then there's also some that have far more than that (I would assume anyway); 30's as conservative a guess with what we know so far and will be used to help clarify a few things. If you multiply 191 servers times the 30 some people on each of them, then we have an estimate of 5730 player paying to stay on their Origin server. Assuming that most of them are not currently in a 6 month subscription on account of recent history with the game in the last few months and it's effect on their perception of SWTOR, we can probably assume that the majority are paying $15 a month. Together they all generate about $85,950 a month. Again, that number shouldn't be taken as anything more than an educated estimation, but it's probably not too far over the target mark. I say "over", because if it's well under, then there's more money to be gained by keeping these players around.

So, that other variable I was looking for was how much does it cost to keep a server running. I really don't know what kind of hardware they're using. I've been told that servers really only need to deal in raw code output, which means they don't need to worry about graphics and the strain that puts on a machine (graphics are handled by the players computer). If anyone has a decent idea of how much it would cost to run a server that might have at max 287 players on it at once (an estimate of 5730 players divided by 20 severs is 286.5), do please chime in, I would even accept a heckle. If that cost multiplied by 20 is something under the amount of revenue brought in by the current hold-outs on the origin servers, then it would be fiscally less risky to not make them transfer to overpopulated/near-overpopulated servers where they may not get to hold on to their names and may very well just unsubscribe.

TL;DR version:
if the cost of 20 more servers is less than the amount of money generated by the subscribed players that have chosen to not transfer yet, then it would probably be best to not risk them unsubscribing by forcing them to transfer to the current available Destination servers. The alternative to make 20 more Destination servers would be a definite financial boon.

What I'm frustrated about is how clogged the servers are. There are simply too many people on at a time. This causes some people serious lag and basically make me frustrated to the point of no longer playing. Does BW have any plans to address this issue? It has gotten much much worse since 1.3 was released. I wish I could go back to my old dead server...at least I could move around the fleet and didn't have lag spikes every twenty seconds.

Yes, they do. Daniel Erickson and James Ohlen talk about it in their respective interviews. With the remaining characters being transferred later this summer (could be as early as July 31th - since the transfer rewards end on July 30th) and the free trials have already begun, hopefully they'll implement solutions soon (and not soon™).

Devils advocate time: How many people would cancel that already transferred if BW caved to the holdouts and let them keep their names after everyone else had to lose names?

They aren't going to open a bunch of new servers for the special snowflakes that feel they are more entitled to keep their names than the tens/hundreds of thousands of people that already transferred. You aren't that important.

How many times does this have to be said before people accept reality? Good God...

Theres also something to be said for taking your money and going elsewhere when you discover that the game isn't going to allow you to play the way you want.

Maybe if you could stop insulting people they might care what you think.

LOL where did I suggest I should be obeyed? I also don't claim my opinion is more important, just that it's based on reality. Want to bet money I'm right?

Some delicate flower in prelaunch got offended that I laughed at the idea that people in prelaunch guilds would get priority in early access, when it was clearly stated that EA was based purely on preorder registration date. Sorry if you think trying to get people to live in the real world and realize they aren't more important than the rest of BW's customers is insulting.

I know you're right, but you can express that opinion without all the insults. Belittling people does not prove your point.

By all means quit then, but don't blame it on your "discovery". The game was meant to be played on highly populated servers - that's what the "MM" in "MMO" means. The overview of the game says:

Play Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ and be the hero of your own Star Wars™ saga in a story-driven massively-multiplayer online game from BioWare and LucasArts.

It doesn't say "play online with up to 20 of your friends". The fact that so many servers were at low population was an extremely bad thing and was never what BioWare was hoping for.

Honestly, though, Have you even tried one of the destination servers? Or are you going on what other people who have also not transferred have said? Granted, people's experiences may vary, but I've never had a kill or node stolen on The Shadowlands. People will generally invite you to their group if they see that you're on the same quest. Also, Fleet aside, people tend to be so spread out, it's not like everyone is on top of one another except maybe for level 50 dailies.

... unless you're talking about names, because I'm not sure if "must have the name I want" is a play style.