Consolidated Post: APAC/Oceanic Server Concerns

I changed my mind about quitting the game and the first thing I get is this news. This is not a good sign for the game in general..even Free to Play has not stopped an entire region from being shut down.

Okay. This has been tossed up before -- and before we get too into it understand this -- I play all aspects of the game -- I kid you not, PvP, PvE and RP. And yes I really mean RP in the same sense that the RPers who've been getting vocal about being against merges. I'm going to say this -- the RP population? An extreme minority within a minority. The RP community isn't all that large. Furthermore, majority of the RPers? Don't actually quite care. After conversing with each one -- even the ones who aren't vocal on the forums, some are even FOR merged servers.

The main reason why people want RP servers: maturity and retarded names.
The thing is? Even then, we STILL don't get those -- and the names? We're lucky if they get enforced. We still get "Snakesurprise Inyourpants" or "**** the <insertgenitalshere>puncher". Maturity? Well we call our server "Gav Dramagon" for a reason. I'm going to assume you can draw the conclusions.

But let's do the hard numbers. My nightly Teamspeak numbers from 7-15 people. Out of the 15, 5 RP. All of us PvP and at least 12 of us PvE. Out of the 5 RPers, 4 were for mergers -- the last was indifferent because for him, he was member of several progression groups so he had what he needed. After hearing the news, I login to TS and already I'm hearing the raging. This is at 11 AM in the morning for us -- on a Tuesday. Normally, this amount of people (8) don't login until late afternoon but the news spreads fast and here we are.

Now something else to understand -- I've always been for merge/transfers -- that is, one or the other. I understand the frustrations that the RPers would feel (but personally, I've always felt it was naysaying because our server is still actually quite bad in terms of enforcing the darn ruleset). But trying to be a better person, I say to support transfers instead because I know that the majority of people aren't gonna' stick around to make a couple of RPers (some of whom are even) happy and you know -- fair enough. Why force people to stick around when they really don't want to?

What the hell am I getting at?

Well, merging us to US servers? Probably one of the worse moves you can make. One of the major selling points that keeps us APAC players here is... APAC servers. Low ping. It's why we've had the gall to suffer having a low population for this long. Why we've done everything we can to stick it out -- why we as a server we came together (gav-daragon.enjin.com). Out of the people who're currently online, majority have already declared their intention to leave. The hard numbers you're looking at? Chances are you ticked off more people by doing this than simply merging us. The RPers? Minority within the minority -- I said it before. Had merges happened over this, you would have had a healthy community and worst case scenario -- you lose all the RPers. The truth is, many of the RPers would come around.

The best move, in my opinion and I'm sure quite a few here might agree is that you merged our servers and when transfers became available, offer it for free (or paid, seriously I doubt it makes too much of a difference at this juncture). The truth about RPing? You don't need to be subscribed. You are not making use of whatever functions you get by being subscribed so if you're an avid, hardcore RPer? You're actually cheating yourself. But from the money point of view? I'm going to assume that 2+2 is still equal to 4.

We're on Gav Daragon (if I didn't make that clear).

should have picked it up, patch times no longer come with australian times and haven't since the last downtime. thanks for wasting our time guys, it doesnt take that long to look at 3 server populations and decide "no thats not sustainable" and then wait another 4 months to tell us ur closing the servers.

also, totally the wrong solution because what u didnt count on is that people would come back from american servers if they APAC ONE server was good. you would have actually had an expanding population rather then what u have now. play style doesnt mean anything to people on MDN (PVP) and RPers can RP anywhere, they will find a way and good on them. Your explanation is false. Admit its about money and you might retain some shred of credibility. but I still expect my money back for the expansion.

Ok Eric, let's start here.

You asked for a solution. The overwhelming consensus on this forum, one of the most viewed forums in your game, was for a Server Merge. The OPTION for FREE TRANSFERS to NA was brought up sparingly for a few reasons. Primarily for players that had re-rolled out of APAC and wanted their toons to join them on a different server. (With the exception of Allie who wanted to not play with some people due to conflicting personalities, and non-oceanic based players.)

Eric: You know this to be spin and more accurately, to be completely false.

Bioware and EA have not provided the community with numbers. But if you go to the community you will see that people have done the calculations, have spent countless hours calculating the number of active players on EACH of the three servers and determining that if they were merged, it would be a HEALTHY, SUSTAINABLE population.

What you have said here, is a LIE and you should be ashamed of yourself for even typing those words without PROVING with numbers that dispute what the COMMUNITY has gone out and gotten in the MONTHS you postured and ignored our concerns.

ALL will see increased latency of massively varying degrees.

And what about the masses of people who re-rolled on a DIFFERENT server type while you ignored us? For examble, how many people on Master Dar'Nala re-rolled on Harbinger? They are going to have characters split between two servers (Harbinger and Bastion) because you aren't even giving players the option to transfer to the server of their choice!

*sigh* DId you not even read these forums? Did you read the massive threads of PvE players WELCOMING the PvP players into their community? DId you see how no-one from PvP cares if they lose PvP?

You asked what the community wanted and the overwhelming majority responded. Merge the servers, provide limited time free transfers.

No-one asked you to leave things in place without a solution. Eric, I understand you are just the messenger, but this is NOT what the community asked for and wanted.

People are going to vote with their wallets. You are going to see a massive drop in subscriptions AND active players when this happens. You didn't think long and hard about this, what Bioware did was make the simplest, easiest decision it had available to them.

Close the APAC servers and merge with corresponding NA servers: THE CHEAPEST OPTION.

You've got time now to see the community outrage, to see if maybe there's a way you can salvage something out of this decision. Offer transfers to server of choice. Find a way to help APAC players keep their character names. Do whatever you can, because if you don't change your attitude here, your going to suffer financially in the very near future. Look at how many people, in just a few short hours, have already decided to cancel their subscription.

For those of you that think this is right for you. Good on ya, but let people voice their personal concern and just leave it at that. Just cause it suits your personal needs don't mean this is the best solution for everyone and to be quite frank, the people I've talked to are all unsubbing, which I did just minutes ago.

Now, you might say good riddance, but that just proves the point of what a short minded wet cloth you are.

Yup I'm just voicing my last words before my sub runs out and I'll never come back to this game aswell. Played since APAC launch and enjoyed the game a lot but this was the final straw for me. Sick to death of overseas MMOs treating us like garbage.

BW, can you at least give priority for transferring character names over inactive accounts and F2P?

There really needs to be a name releasing policy going forward.

It seems to me that the only people complaining about populations and pop times are the players from the RP/PVP servers... If you're on those servers and complaining about these things, move to a populated server! I play on dalborra and have only experienced slow pops from just before f2p hit, since then and before that period it was great! I never got asked for any feedback on this issue and would have suggested a server merge for those players to move to dalborra. Or the option to move to a west coast server of the same type if it meant that much to them. But closing them all down is just ridiculous! I understand that 3 servers might not be cost effective to keep but surely 1 is?

I have played on the US servers from day one (final open beta weekend + early access) and transferred to the oceanic servers the moment it was available and I don't intend on keeping a sub going if I have to go back - I already get average ping at best and considering my girlfriend and I do mainly pvp, thats just going to be god awful to do and more frustrating then it already can be. Plus, I have NO ISSUES with population on the Dalborra server.

i also feel ripped off at the fact Biowoare gave us the pre-order option to pay and take our money for ROTHC only to close our servers down before it hits. Very underhanded move and we should be entitled to a refund due to them not providing a product as it was intended to be used. "I intended to play this on oceanic servers and now I can't do this"

This game experience on US servers is not worth the subscription fee

dont believe their lies. merging all three servers will be viable. atleast 80 players on dalborra at peak, so its fair to assume if merge all three , there will be atleast 160players peak. thats viable. i would take dalborraas it is then being forced to 250ping. and i sya atleast cuase thats the worse it gets 80 players, on average its 100 on dalborra.

I would absolutely love to simply transfer to the APAC PvE server, and live happily ever after.

Is BioWare underestimating the APAC population? I can almost manage on Master Dar'Nala, so a merge of the 3 APAC servers would render a perfectly respectable population.