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

I want an answer to what they are going to do when faced with many many accounts having destination servers full, and origin servers with remaining characters?

When I asked them about it, they told me to delete characters on the destination server... personally this is unacceptable, asking me to delete characters that I've spent time leveling prior to them "moving" server pops' just to make room for characters I have on another server that they decided to "move".

Why should I have to delete any character on any server that I've spent time leveling and playing?

It's BS and you people all know it. I know I'm not the only person that has characters on both destination servers and origin servers and are facing the all slots full issue, now am I?

That's why I want a real person not some drone that only knows how to copy and paste to respond to this massively growing thread that not a single Dev has posted in yet, and answer mine and many others question...

What are you going to do when you force move all those characters left on the Origin Servers to the Destination servers will all slots full???? Whatcha gonna do??? Delete characters on the Destination servers at random? or kill the lowest level ones first? WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO? We as your collective customers pay your salaries with our combined subscriptions and we have a right to know exactly what is going to happen when you start auto-moving characters.

I can tell you that I'm not the only person that wants to know, and I'm not the only one in this situation either, and I can tell you that if you randomly delete characters from peoples accounts just so you can move others, then you will loose accounts, you will loose money, noone that plays this game will tolerate anyone deleting their characters for any reason, period.

Simple solution is 1. give us more slots per server, or 2 open up more than 1 destination server from the origin servers to compensate for full slots.

It's not rocket science but the drones that only know how to copy and paste there in your CS Dept. believe that it is.

We want answers!

I'd agree, except that there's a difference between those who chose to transfer and those who chose not to. The one's who transferred and lost their names valued the experience of grouping with a larger pool of players (and/or the items offered prior to July 30th) more than the name(s) they chose at character creation. Those that are currently holding out on the Origin servers value their current names and/or a less crowed playing environment than the items offered and the opportunity to more easily group with other players.

So, I would say the special snowflake descriptor would be better substituted with differing colors of gelatinous blobs that can be grouped into one of two categories. We'll make things simpler by focusing on the ones that cared about names and either held on to them by staying behind or decided to forgo them in exchange for one or more of the perks for transferring.
So, what we have are two groups of blobs with two distinct colors; it doesn't mater what those colors actually are, only that they are noticeably different from each other. One color represents those that cared less about their names than the transfer perks and the other represents those that care more about their names than the transfer perks.

Time for the conclusion: the ones that lost their names after the transfer are less likely to quit if these new servers are made available because they've already shown that they were willing to sacrifice their names for the transfer perks. Everyone made a choice about what they valued more; why shouldn't the players who can clearly be seen as those who cared more about their names get to keep them if it wouldn't cost more than the combined revenue they'ed put out by keeping 20 servers, other than the current destination servers, open?
I'm not all knowing when it comes to questions of ethics (much less anything else), so please, let me know if I've overlooked something in my counter-argument.

The whole "your name was unoriginal" is seriously the most lame argument ever. As if the name "I pea" is the pinnacle of all names. Now in my case I'm a writer and I had given my characters names of characters I had written into Star Wars fan fiction for years and I chose a legacy that matched my first character's surname. I was excited at the chance of seeing these characters come to life in SWTOR and many of my adventures in the game became inspiration for my stories.

No, I didn't steal plot lines directly from Bioware but I did link certain events that happened in the game to characters I was writing about three thousand years in the future. Now that I'm being forced to move, however, I've lost all those names and I even lost my legacy. The feeling that I had before is gone and I now look at my account and see a bunch of strangers. If ever again I feel inspired to write it's not going to be the same as it was.

Name is an important part of a character's identity and without the character you have no story. I should think if anyone that Bioware would understand that. Am I going to cancel my account over it, though? No, probably not. It's still a fun game and I like it but this nevertheless feels like a betrayal and complaining about it makes me feel better.

Not one day goes by that Bioware doesn't use to screw over players and further ensure everyone knows how much distain they have for the customer.

Some people care only about PvP, some people care only about PvE.
Some people care only about combat, some people care only about names and character looks.
Some people care only about crafting, some people care only about quests.
Some people care about everything and others don't care at all..
etc..etc.. ad nauseum..

The point is that everyone has different desires in a game (and life.. blah.. blah)
And the game that does the best to cover all of those bases will be successful.
So don't dis another player because they have other preferences than you do, variety is the spice of life.

Besides, all these players are asking.. is for the devs to do a better job than those in the last game they played..
..and left.

This appeared in another thread:

Hi folks,

Just wanted to hop on here to let you all know that at no point will we be deleting your characters later this summer when we automatically move any remaining characters from origin servers onto designated destination servers. More details about how this will work out will be forthcoming, but I can assure you that automatic character deletion is not going to happen for this upcoming move.

Thanks everyone!

Joveth Gonzalez | Online Community Manager
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So, tell me why we should believe you. You also stated that transfers would be optional, and we all now know that was a lie.

Probably because deleting characters makes no sense for any party involved.

Nobody wanted to change their character names, and the majority of us who pre-ordered (which is probably also the majority of current players) did it so we could get the names we wanted - and many of us were apprehensive about losing our names in the transfer. The main difference isn't that the vast majority of players value a certain playstyle or a vanity pet over their character names. The main difference is that a minority of players just can't handle having to change their character names for any reason and are trying to pass it off as some rare positive quality deserving special consideration.

If the remaining population on the 32 East Coast PVE servers are merged into one server, what do you think the chances are of keeping all your character names? Let's say there are 50 players on each server who have not transferred yet, and each has 8 characters. That's over 12,000 character names. If I were a betting man, I wouldn't put the odds in your favor.

And you would hate it because you'd be surrounded by everyone else who just can't get over the fact that they lost their character names - and then you'd randomly group with the person who has your main's original name. Dante Alighieri would have to come back from the dead to add "Circle X: Fleet".

I'm not moving my 1 character on LoL until they let me move it to the rest of my characters on Progenitor. Partly because it's bloody pointless (haven't actually played the character in about 3 months) and secondly because its name is taken on ToFN but not on Progenitor.

The MM in MMO means that a large number of people can play on the same server at the same time. Doesnt mean I have to be on the most crowded ones. I have tried the destination servers, not by transferring a character, but by making one. I did notice considerably longer times to finsish some quests and a higher difficulty finding nodes, since they were being taken by others. I didnt run into any KS'ing or node stealing.

If they would keep enough servers up so we could have at least a couple low-mid population servers I would be ok with it. But it looks like they want to shoe horn everyone into the high pop playing style. Its their game, so they can do what they wish, I however do not have to continue supporting it by spending my money on it each month.

In about 5 weeks my sub will be up, and once all of us who like our names, or low pop servers, or whatever other issues are up here are gone then all of you who prefer high pop play styles will by here without us and wont have to argue anymore...... although I get the feeling you (generic you here, not speaking about a specific person) will find some other reason to argue and insult people. At least thats the impression I get from many of the posts here.