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

The bad news is that people who enjoy light to moderate MMO environments will never be able to compete with the squeaky wheel of people who DEMAND crowded servers, think that's the only valid way to play - and insist that you play that way, too, or you can just quit the game.

The good news is that if you have a little patience, you'll have your light to moderate servers back in a few months. Of course, you'll have to put up with the unheeded drumbeat of "MERGE AGAIN!!" in these Forums, but the game's more fun than the Forums anyway.

Currently, as an example, there are only two servers that can freely transfer to Jung Ma. Really? When there's like 30 US servers in total? I can understand some of this has to do with (and I'm being generous) server population control but holy hell that's a little absurd from an out-lookers point of view. Will this list be widened in the future possibly?

For some odd reason, you will NEVER get an answer to this simple question.

And NO, I have no idea why.

Welcome to the world of customers as mushrooms.

Just my 2 cents comments into this character transfer deal. I don't want to waste my time stating a new toon over again if there's actually going to be an option to transfer my other toons so a clear answer would be nice not just "maybe in the future."

1. My first lvl 50 is sitting not being used because my guild is no longer active which just happens to be a destination server. If they never allow transferring and don't intend to then I wasted my time and subscription $$.

2. I'm not saying you should just allow transfers at random but a 1 time courtesy transfer per toon would be nice since I am paying to play this game. I would understand more if this was a F2P MMO but again I am paying for this so why can't I use what I'm paying for.

3. My new guild is on a destination server already so I'm just requesting a transfer from one server to the other.

4. I love this game and love playing with people but if I have to keep starting toons over I'm not going to enjoy it anymore. Yes I can find random people to play with but not being able to chat with them via voice always hinders the playing experience and frankly there are some noobs out there that don't know how to strategize when entering a FP or Heroic.

ok did some digging.. and i myself will be calling these people directly.. call them. let them know personally that you don't want to be moved off your server.. were the customers. customers are always supposed to be right.. or they lose customers.. aparently they don't give a rats *** to what anyone says in in forums.. so best way to make sure they hear you.. call them.. you might have to be put on hold.. but hell.. its better to know for sure what is going to happen then to wait




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This doesn't help. I've called their line before and they only accepted to talk to you about certain issues and for the rest they refer you to the internet again or the in game support.

I really just wanna know what will happen to my characters on other servers that have to merge to the same destination server I already am on with 8 toons. Can't get myself to read 47 pages to see if the devs said anything about that, but that's the main concern Ihave.

Sorry, it's really hard to care about this. Use a slight variation of the name, put in a ' or something, and it's almost good as new.
Bioware is not --- nor should they --- delete people's characters just becasue someone else is upset over a name. Just not gonna happen.

Same advice for you that I had to deal with also when dealing with forced server changes and having to play on overcrowded servers; we both have only one option: Deal with it or don't play.
I'm choosing to stay and play anyways, even though i have to bypass a lot of missions becasue the overcrowding and kill stealing makes many missions (esp. bonus ones) unplayable.

I didn't want to transfer my chars at first, but now... I SURE WON'T TRANSFER THEM!!! I'm a RP gamer, so I don't like all that grinding-pvp crap. It bugs me that there are only 3 RP english servers (Europe) and very few on the US. Finally when I decided to try transfer my chars, they only let me move them to THE PROGENITOR... Who would in his sane mind play in a server with such a pathetic, stupid, poorly named server? They could've come with Kryat Dragon Pearl, or The Maw or something else... but nooooo, THE PROGENITOR...

Then I come to this forum, a thing I have not done since the game release, to find out char transfer does not let you transfer all your chars to the same server, so you have to pay later to do that... nasty. If I have to pay to move my chars to the same server I'll wait

Just because you don't place importance on character names doesn't mean that anyone who does is wrong. People paid $65 for the game at launch, and one of the benefits of this was having the privilage of taking their character names without filling them up with symbols or double-letters. Now, because EAware vastly overestimated the game's numbers, we have all these server shutdowns and countless people being forced to change their character and legacy names. Now, people who bought the game for $20, or, more likely, individuals who took advantage of the free trials or free-to-level-15 offer and never logged in again have taken the names of people who have paid for and actively supported this game for half a year.

To address your second point: several other MMOs have implemented a system where if someone never logs into their game at all for some amount of time (6 months, a year), their character names will be put into limbo, and other people who are actually going to play the game are free to take them. If no one does and they return, they get to keep their names - if not, they get a free rename. No deletion would ever occur. The system works, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Why should people who are never going to log in again get to sit on character names? If names really don't matter, why is there so much emphasis on them, both in-game and in the naming restrictions and rules?

Finally, your suggestion of "deal with it or don't play" might be true in this situation, but only if EAware has no intention of listening to customer complaints or responding to feedback. People have successfully enacted change countless times throughout gaming history, let alone human history, and if everyone had the attitude of "suck it up or leave", the world would be a grim place.

Or most likely, your names were taken by someone who also had early access. If your names had anything to do with, for example, night, wolves, or characters from popular games or anime, they were most likely taken on all servers on day one of early access.

The thing is, even if the system you suggested were implemented at launch, at the time the transfers opened up, nobody had been away from this game for 6 months to a year, so there would have been no names to be freed up. I agree that when BioWare allows paid name changes, they should allow people to do this, but they shouldn't implement it before automatic transfers as it wasn't an option that the majority of players could have taken advantage of when they transferred.

I think most people would agree that BioWare could have handled things better namewise, but they can't change that now. All we can suggest is what they can do for the future.