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

Let me preface this by saying I've been a loyal paying customer since beta and have NEVER let my subscription lapse. If you review my posting history, you'll see that I have been accused of being a "blind fanboy" for defending this company over and over again through ALL of the hard times this game launch has had. I truly love this game, but like any MMO, the work that has been put into it is ALWAYS an issue when determining if the subscription fee is worth it to me. I, like many others on here, have been BEYOND patient waiting to be able to enjoy the game in the manner it is "SUPPOSED" to be enjoyed, and by that I am referring to your excellent idea of "Legacy". So once again, I am asking (even BEGGING) you to answer us with a definitive answer other than asking us to "be patient"...

How much longer is it going to take to allow us to transfer characters from different servers in order to "merge legacies"?

It's been asked OVER and OVER until we're blue in the face and we keep getting the "we're working on it, but we can't tell you how far along we are or how soon it will be available." rubber stamp answer if you bother to answer at all...

I'm trying SO hard to stay with the game with the "belief" that paid transfers are "just around the corner". But I'm starting to feel like a fool for believing it. My patience has just about run out and I'm now researching other games to go try out.

It's heartbreaking, because I WANT to love this game and to a point I really do, but the "customer service" issue has been absolutely awful. I don't care about "pets" and "new companions" and "new space combat missions" nearly as much as the incredible idea of "legacy" in this game. But because of the previous server population problem, many of us had to re-roll on DIFFERENT populated servers in order to continue paying your "subscription fee" and make it worth it to us. Now we have people to play with and many of us have made new friends on other servers that we want to continue to play with and the characters we put work into are trapped elsewhere.

Now that the initial transfers are done and your paying customers have populated servers to play on, WHY are you so much more focused in transferring the REMAINING characters nobody is playing (except for the few who refused to leave under the understanding that they WOULDN'T be forced to move) off of a dead origin server no one is playing on?

Why can't that take a back seat to allowing the paying customers to merge our legacies? Why do we have to BEG you to ALLOW us to PAY you to do this?

I'm through defending Bioware on this issue. I'm tired of paying my regular subscription fee to keep convincing myself that the game is GOING to be what I believed it was going to be if we just give the developers "a little more time".

I have just officially cancelled my subscription and there is 23 days left on it. If we can get a timetable for paid transfers within 23 days, i will consider re-subscribing. But I've finally determined that it isn't worth it to me to pay an measley $0.50 a day to be frustrated and inconvenienced.

It's absurd...

And before someone posts that same tired response of "Can I have your stuff?", the answer is NO. Once Bioware makes these transfers available (paid or unpaid), I will CONSIDER coming back, unless I find a game I enjoy more. I really like the game, but like any MMO, I want the work I put into it to MEAN something and if I have put enough time and work into characters on another game, there's no point in coming back...

If you transferred to a qualifying server, which i assume you did, you'll get the rewards.

Ok, I'm going to toss in my opinion on this thread since I have been told to contribute to the discussion from my request to NOT be forced to transfer servers.

I tried to read through this thread a few times, and I can see the point of both sides of the discussion. I have the same issues that many do about losing my names, I have transferred 4 of my 7 toons currently and am at only 50% of keeping my names and lost my legacy name. The last 3 characters I will lose their names too, but that's not the main reason I have left them on the dying/closing server.

I left them on their original server because I still have family on that server that play on occassion and we don't care about getting into the big events/flashpoints. We have limited time to play the game and if that time is spent playing the game on a dead server or waiting in a queue, I'm going to play the game. My time if valuable to me and if I have to spend it waiting in a queue then I'll spend it playing a different game.

I know that the queue times have gone down, but there hasn't been any content updates in a while. I'm just posting this to have my opinion heard on another venue, since in game request was made and a phone call was made. However, I am going to request this again:
I do NOT want my characters forced to move from their servers.

Is it fair to folks who had 9 plus characters that had to arrive on one destination server?

Many of us have characters we still play that can not transfer due to the design of the transfer system. I would transfer if I could but I can't!

Not only do we not get any rewards, our servers for those characters are completely dead. When playing on those servers they put up a mesage to transfer that covers the entire screen for about 2 seconds - rubbing salt into the wound because you can't transfer and severely impacting you if in a fight (Fighting blind is so much fun).

I guess this is Biowares way of punishing those players who liked the game so much they wanted to experience all the character classes.

If my trapped characters can't get the reward why are those who were lucky and had their servers selected as destination servers getting the reward even though they didn't need to transfer? How is that fair?

p.s. - The icing on the cake is that the server I can't transfer off of is the one Bioware assigned me and my guild to in Pre-launch! It was one of the early servers being told to transfer off of. So much for the advertised benefits of buying early - way to stomp your most loyal early customers Bioware.

I guess I'm just unlucky and should take it in the shorts? BOHICA time! I had enough of this being treated like crap! Fix this situation Bioware!

To quote the Buddha: "In all things, moderation!" Take note EA/Bioware.
Everyone wanted the OPTION to move to a different or more populated server. But just that; the option!
Not a forced march to the nearest concentration camp server for everyone. No choice of server. Not even able to take all your toons (can't have more than 8) or even keep your name if someone on the destination server already has it logged.
You say Bioware can't win? Well I kinda think we (the players) can't win in this case - We take the 'hosing' and 'suck it up' or we unsubscribe! I don't wish to do either...So am I or players with my same viewpoint the bad guys here?
I don't think so...

Wow. Good one. Quote Buddha on moderation, and follow it up by over-the-top hyperbole comparing automatic transfers to being force-marched into concentration camps.

There seems to be plenty of player discussion on the issues; forced moves, too many characters to fit on the servers you are forced to move to, loss of names, loss of friends and most of all loss of fun while suffering through this process. I have a bunch of characters because this game was so much fun. Many of my friends group together and I have a character for each of my friend combinations on multiple RP servers. In the past few months we enjoyed chatting and grouping together. These days we fight about should we move, who to move, do we delete, do we hope, do we look for another game.

This whole drama feels like someone at BioWare WANTS this game to fail. Wants players to leave the game and cancel their subscriptions. There is enough drama in real life to deal with, when you pay for a fun game service you don't want weeks of worry, no one to call, no one who wants to help. Just folks you pay money to that seems to ignore the issues and let's players start to hate dealing with a game they have enjoyed so much.

I am writing this tonight because the group I play with tonight has fractured, some have moved out of fear and some have stayed hoping there would be a solution. I have started to search for other MMO games. My calls to support for information has been a waste of time. The tickets I opened are ignored. The best suggestion is to come here to read everyone else's frustration and I don't feel better for doing it, I learn more bad things about this process of BioWare punishing loyal players.

I will see what 'solutions' BioWare comes up with and I already have the number written down to cancel my subscription. I have enough stress during the work day, I do NOT need this frustration as part of my relaxation time!

No they didn't lie to you. They made it perfectly clear there would be multiple phases of transfers and that the first phase would be optional.

Again, they did not state there would never be forced transfers, they said that the initial phase would not be forced. They also did not say that they origin servers would remain open for ever.

Nothing they have said implies that the destination server combinations for the merges will definitely be the same as the current ones. They have stated that no characters will be deleted which implies that you could have characters ending up on another destination server than the one currently listed for each origin server.

The sad thing is that with a little thought, even with the current merger-scheme, they could have avoided some of the name-loss issues.

Once they decided on those fixed from/to servers - lock all names on target servers that currently exist on any source server. At least then noone brand new can grab a name you had all along.

With the state of certain source servers it's not like they had to lock a great amount of names anyway.

The best solution would still have been a straight up instant merge if that was the goal all along, but unlike character move code, the work put into that could not have been used later to earn money on bought transfers.

I still call this a lazy, rushed and botched effort at solving an admitted real problem.

I like to know as well. I have transferred toons from Kaiburr Crystal to The Harbinger. I like you have more toons then slots for transfer to the new server. I've heard they will be increasing slot numbers for servers and paid transfers. I'm hoping they increase they slots so I can transfer all my toons before this deadline.