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Consolidated Post: APAC/Oceanic Server Concerns


Cheezfriend

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Who would have thought Bioware could be more stubborn than Lance Armstrong?

Hey Bioware - merge the damn servers already, this is ******** ridiculous!

 

Stubborn? You mean just for them to get the same response after they changed something as simple as a few gear pieces recently because people on the forums cried for it? What will happen after they merge it? People coming here to cry how they oppose the merge? How BioWare ought to bring things back to the way it was?

 

BioWare should simply work on finalizing character transfer options, once that is up and running bug free APAC players, just like any other can transfer around all they want to whichever APAC or non-APAC server they desire.

 

 

Beyond that, go write complaints to your governments and ISP's to fix this:

http://www.submarinecablemap.com/

 

You guys have too few players within Australia and NZ to sustain healthy server populations for MMO's of modern day scale. However, the rest of the pacific region barely has any connection to your continental islands. They're much better off playing on West Coast servers. This disables a major portion of the pacific region from actually playing on APAC servers.

 

BioWare can take drastic actions in this matter as well though, by placing the APAC servers in SEA part of the APAC region. However, in that case even with an influx of players from the SEA region, you'd in turn be suffering from the same connectivity issues as you have to the US West Coast servers.

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Maybe we are doing this wrong? Perhaps we should be creating shiny brochures and trying to coerce US west coasters onto our servers....

 

Ha yes that's an interesting way to look at it all. Though we shouldn't have to do that, BioWare should do it.

 

Getting a ad on Australian TV, a dev interview in popular media or any other SWTOR advertising in Australia could make a massive difference. I may not be well versed in the art of marketing, but it seems a no-brainer to me.

 

Why not actually put a tiny bit of work into selling the game to Australians?

 

Well, not to get too ranty, but why stop there? Sell the game in the US too. This game is way under-marketed atm.

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Ha yes that's an interesting way to look at it all. Though we shouldn't have to do that, BioWare should do it.

 

Getting a ad on Australian TV, a dev interview in popular media or any other SWTOR advertising in Australia could make a massive difference. I may not be well versed in the art of marketing, but it seems a no-brainer to me.

 

Why not actually put a tiny bit of work into selling the game to Australians?

 

Well, not to get too ranty, but why stop there? Sell the game in the US too. This game is way under-marketed atm.

 

A lot, if not most, advertisement for MMO's comes out of player word of mouth. EA can get a developer all they want on Australia television, however the moment the average gamer googles the title up for a little more info and is faced with waves of negative comments on the internet, (s)he'll be quickly turned down.

 

In this regard I personally think the player's can be of much greater importance than EA. Just start by bringing positive messages surrounding the game to Australian gaming boards, metacritic, etc. Rather than trying to get more gaming sites to post on how dead those servers would be.

 

After all, if you were looking to play a game after you just saw an ad about it; which would you rather play?

 

1. The game of which many people complain servers are dead, gaming sites write on the subject as well, and there's little positive to be found.

2. You find many comments on the game of players which are really enjoying the questing, find a well sociable atmosphere and have fun playing.

 

I know I for one would avoid no.1 like the plague. A publisher can try and advertise all it wants, however if the community has taken over the shovels and started digging a grave so deep even the bottom can no longer be seen, I'll be going well around it.

Edited by Fornix
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Hi everyone,

 

I know it’s been a while since we’ve updated this thread, and I wanted to let you know that we haven’t forgotten about our Oceanic players. Now that we’re at a more stable point in time (post Free-to-Play transition and post holidays), we wanted to re-examine this issue. We’re going to be completely honest with you: there doesn’t seem to be an easy solution for anyone. We’ve seen many ideas from you folks such as merging all three servers into one, allowing for transfers to North America servers, and even not doing anything at all, but none of them seem to be an ideal solution for all. This is why we are now opening up this dialogue with you.

 

In this thread, please let us know what you think the best solution will be for your servers. I know there have been many suggestions already, but I would like to collect the most current ideas for us to consider. After that, our team will review and discuss what is feasible and what makes the most sense to do. Please remember to follow all forum rules and be respectful of each other’s ideas, even if you disagree with it.

 

Thank you all, and we look forward to your ideas.

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Maybe we are doing this wrong? Perhaps we should be creating shiny brochures and trying to coerce US west coasters onto our servers....

 

There is already a quite few US players here. I know on Dalborra a couple of the biggest guilds are pretty much run by americians. Personally i think the game just needs an injection of life to attract alot of gamers here from other games. Most people here know about the game because we have servers here in our region.

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i would like the ability to play my existing legacy (lvl 49) on US west servers. Having played on Master Dar'nala for the better part of a year now, the population of a US West server such as Bastion or Harbinger is much more attractive.

 

I fear for some though Bioware its too little too late.

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Thank you for replying Joveth.

 

As you have stated there is no obvious answer but I know from talks during intra guild meetings on Gav Daragon that there are plenty of players who find it hard to justify committing to the game over the long wait times on GF and WZ queues, as well as difficulty finding groups to even try end game ops and world bosses. This of course impacts on sales for Cartel coins and subscriptions.

 

The population on each server individually does not allow playing of the game as intended or advertised. But there does seem to be enough across all combined for a single server akin to the super servers of other regions.

 

In no way would all players be satisfied by being merged, with good reason.

 

In no way would all players want to close down all three servers and move to the US servers as lag times would make our players less compedative for NiM ops and PVP across that distance.

 

I personally think a merger would be the way to go, sacrificing the smaller two servers to the stronger, but backed up by an option for players from those servers to get transfers as soon as available to other region servers if they would prefer thier server type over the latency issue.

 

No doubt you are resigned to getting flack for whichever way you finally decide to go, but please keep the forums informed of what you can as this progresses. The silence has been distressing.

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The options I see:

 

- Do nothing.

- Merge all 3 servers

- Open transfers to one APAC Server

- Open transfers to one American server of each type e.g the bastion, harbringer and a rp server.

- Both of the transfer ideas

 

The option I'm batting for, merge all 3 servers. This will Solve population issues at least until paid transfer service (Or whatever is planned later down the track) where people whom are asking for transfers to American servers can do so. (I'm obviously not 100% sure, but I feel like they would be the minority of people who want SOMETHING done.) I also think that merging the servers into a PVE server and people experiencing the larger population that all 3 would bring may reduce the number of people wanting transfer to American server (Obviously you'll never really satisfy everyone though.) I do think that keeping an APAC server open will entice future APAC players to join the game and I know many players who will leave the game if the APAC servers are closed.

 

Edit: I should also add I think opening up transfers to just anywhere before this issue is resolved will not fix the population issues but only serve to make the population issues even worse than they are.

Edited by Antiskeptic
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I'am from EU, but i can put my two cent.

 

Firt of all you can easy merge the RP and the PvE one, they are pretty the same. You can still do the RP in a PvE server.

 

Second you can also merge the PvP into the PvE. Why this?

 

I think if you play in a PvP server, and you like ganking around you can do it, just put your flag on, is not so difficult!

 

 

The other thing is to design a new type of "flag" for the game, but i think is not a good idea,

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First offer transferrs for the PVP server to a PVP US server. THEN merge all 3 servers with whoever is left.

 

Announce when the transfer period will end and when the merger will begin well in advance, so that people can make plans.

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We’ve seen many ideas from you folks such as merging all three servers into one, allowing for transfers to North America servers, and even not doing anything at all, but none of them seem to be an ideal solution for all.

 

As a low-level player on Gav Daragon, I think that the population is fine as it is. In time, the increasing number of new players should result in more players reaching max level and being available for end game content, such as it is. From a purely selfish point of view, I would argue against a merge that affects my server at this point in time. My personal concerns are two-fold: I do not want to risk losing my character names and I do not want my server to lose its RP-friendly designation. From a more neutral perspective, merging GD and Dalborra seems like an obvious choice but that does nothing for the PVPers.

 

With regard to transfers, I am in favour although I absolutely would not choose to do this myself. However, if you open transfers for APAC players you will face increasing demand to allow transfers to players in all territories. You may not want to implement this at the present time.

 

One other possible option may be to allow a time-limited offer for APAC players on the PVP server to clone one or all of their existing characters onto another server of their choosing. This would be a copy-and-paste as opposed to the cut-and-paste of a transfer, but it would at least be a way for players to test the waters on another server without entirely abandoning their original server (if, for example, the latencies proved too high, or if the server population on their original APAC server improved significantly). If the majority of players chose to take that option and remained on their new server for a number of months, then the APAC PVP server could be shut down. There are obvious flaws with this solution too, but I'm just throwing it out there as another possibility.

 

TL;DR - leave Dalborra and Gav Daragon as they are for now. Review population in a couple of months. Allow MD'N players a window to create clones of their current characters on a new server. Review population in a couple of months and close down that server if pop is too low to be sustainable.

 

Edit: above all, please keep us in the loop.

Edited by craic_fox
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I would like to see all of the APAC servers merged into 1. 95% of people I have spoken to about the issue on MDN have seen this as the preferable solution, there are only a very small minority that seem satisfied with playing on US latency again. In not a merger then offer us transfers between the APAC servers. Merging the APAC servers would be a good move to stop us from bleeding subscribers, and perhaps those that wish to play on the US servers would be satisfied then, or wait for paid transfers to come. Edited by ausmisc
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Just an outside observation; I'd think that merging the PVE and RP server would be fairly painless (besides forced name changes), but I would assume those who enjoy being on a pvp server would be unhappy about being forced into a PVE server. If they all had access to server transfers, they could choose to move to a US PVP server, but deal with higher latency. Another idea would be to just merge the two PVE servers and leave MDN open, but that would make it far lighter than the other one, and opening up transfers would probably mean just more people transferring off the light server. So I guess the question is, how important is it to the APAC players to have their own PVP server?
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Hi everyone,

 

I know it’s been a while since we’ve updated this thread, and I wanted to let you know that we haven’t forgotten about our Oceanic players. Now that we’re at a more stable point in time (post Free-to-Play transition and post holidays), we wanted to re-examine this issue. We’re going to be completely honest with you: there doesn’t seem to be an easy solution for anyone. We’ve seen many ideas from you folks such as merging all three servers into one, allowing for transfers to North America servers, and even not doing anything at all, but none of them seem to be an ideal solution for all. This is why we are now opening up this dialogue with you.

 

In this thread, please let us know what you think the best solution will be for your servers. I know there have been many suggestions already, but I would like to collect the most current ideas for us to consider. After that, our team will review and discuss what is feasible and what makes the most sense to do. Please remember to follow all forum rules and be respectful of each other’s ideas, even if you disagree with it.

 

Thank you all, and we look forward to your ideas.

Firstly, thank you for posting in the thread... it has become pretty vile but that's what happens when frustration sets in.

 

There are a few options none of which will please everyone.

 

I think that the best option to retain current players and attract APAC players unsubbed and draw the APAC players currently playing on the Bastion and Harbinger is a merge.

 

- Merge all 3 servers to one APAC PVE super server, at the same time offer FREE transfers for APAC accounts BACK to this server so all the people who have re-rolled on US servers have the option to come back and combine their legacies, if they don't select this option to return then they have made their choice and will have to live with it.

 

- Roleplayers will have their own channel and PvP players will i'm sure be fine with the loss of the very occasional world PvP they rarely come accross..it's non existent anyway..ive found more real world PvP on Harbinger by finding flagged people.

 

Let things settle and by the time it has i would imagine actual paid transfers will be ready and if people still aren't happy they can then find their own solutions and pay for the service.

 

 

If transfers are offered as the actual solution right off the bat however...i'd imagine most would just leave their current server, Master Dar'Nala in particular would be a worse ghost town.

 

Also, if transfers are the solution please don't make it only PvP top PvP and PvE to PvE... alot of peope's legacy is now accross multiple types of servers.

 

 

And finally ....whatever the initial solution it must be free, it was free for the US and EU it must be free for us too. For me, i have my own account with 6x50s plus multiple lower levels plus my sons account with 1x50 and dozens of low levels... if i am forced to pay to combine these characters to one server it will break the bank and my unsub will be swift.

 

 

I think all in all the game is good and getting better, i'm looking forward to patch 1.7 alot and even more for Makeb. The difference though is when you play on a healthy server like Harbinger and do something simple like go to the GTN ... and there's 18 pages of Molecular Staiblizers or 150 pages of Orange Gear... it's hard to go back and even play on Master Dar'Nala ...i know a full merge of APAC won't give us Harbinger levels of population ..but it''ll be close and for me at least, that'll be good enough.

 

Thank you for asking for our input.

Edited by cuttothechase
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The option I'm batting for, merge all 3 servers. This will Solve population issues at least until paid transfer service (Or whatever is planned later down the track) where people whom are asking for transfers to American servers can do so. (I'm obviously not 100% sure, but I feel like they would be the minority of people who want SOMETHING done.) I also think that merging the servers into a PVE server and people experiencing the larger population that all 3 would bring may reduce the number of people wanting transfer to American server (Obviously you'll never really satisfy everyone though.) I do think that keeping an APAC server open will entice future APAC players to join the game and I know many players who will leave the game if the APAC servers are closed.

 

Agreed! - if the other 2 servers are ok with it then a server merge would be the best. I know ALOT of people who are playing this game and not other games because of the low ping on the APAC servers.

 

I am assuming that the paid transfers are also coming this year, so it kinda feels like a win-win(well the best we can do)

 

To help with the mix of servers I would suggest a new PvP flagging system where you toggle it on your character and it has a 1-3 day cooldown on it to save people trying to quickly switch in open world. The switch kinda feels like you have now transfer to a pvp server.

 

So I don't see why the merge wouldn't happen because you get to save by shutting down 2 servers. If that doesn't work out then you will have transfers for people to use.

 

I doubt you will share it with us but I would love to know what the PROs and CONs are on your end Joveth? This will help us understand the problems with having a merge ect.

 

P.S

 

Was so awesome to see that yellow writing in this thread! Thanks for reply

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If anything has to be done, i suggest a sever merge whilst maintaining the location for the server in Australia, whilst offering transfers to people on Asia/Pacific servers who may wish to relocate to a US based server. If i have to go back to playing with a latency 10 times worse than what i get now (which is what i would get on a US server) i will just quit. Wont even bother going to F2P level of access.

 

For me, i don't PvP nor use group finder so I'm perfectly OK with things how they are at the moment, but i can understand why people wouldn't be happy if they regularly had insane queue times for things they're trying to do.

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The best option that will grow on people over time is merging all 3 into a PvE-RP server, Merging the 2 populations into Dalborra will be the best thing for them and will be recognised over time, moving to a US server is just ridiculous you can imagine it now but once your competing in either ranked or PvE world firsts, the latency will become such a frequent problem.

 

Dalborra has had a strong population while the other two declined over time. Pops have been frequent at all times for both PvE and PvP. A community atmosphere has developed over time and we are now at a good point, everyone knows everyone and organized events have helped bring entertainment and community atmosphere to the server.

 

Problems you’re going to find with this merge is the things you like being RP and world PvP will simply not happen unless you make it happen. People on Dalborra will not be as accommodating as you might like while there are people who will go out of their way to share our home with you there are those who will find joy in dragging down what you enjoy, just prepare yourself for putting up with people whom have poor attitudes.

 

I hope you can come to enjoy Dalborra as much as we will enjoy it once you’re here.

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