Consolidated Post: APAC/Oceanic Server Concerns

I'm glad you say it behind a computer screen, instead of 300 annoyed people right now in mob to their faces.
But your point was that the petition needed to restricted to APAC players and I pointed out that a majority of that petition is from the APAC region, and as someone has already pointed forums are not the true indication of population and there could be many blissfully unaware players on the oceanic servers that they time is up.

But please go on more about my reading comprehension.

Or they are being stupid like most companies, not fully investing in things and half-assing it, going for a quick buck instead of a long term investment, hello FOX.

And I ask the question, again.

How is simultaneously true that APAC players have been complaining about population issues for months on end, Bioware and EA have internally concluded and publically stated total population numbers are not high enough, and yet there is a large enough population to warrant expensive localized servers?

APAC cannot be at once suffering from population issues and have a consistent and large-scale populaiton.

So explain this to me.

Why is APAC being shut down?

Yes, because the Revenue to Profit calculations of businesses really do work out that easily...

...what is the total over-head for APAC server support, including initial investment, and what is the ROI that these initial investments were predicated on, and how many subscribers must be reached to match those goals?

The real world economy is not Monopoly, there is more to a balance sheet than:

Subscriber $ - Server Fee $ = Profit

This would tend to be my argument; EA seriously mishandled the expansion into this marketplace, likely failed to achieve sustainable and significant enough ROI to rationalize continued investment in personnel, benefits, utilities, maintenance, et al, and are now retreating from the marketplace in an effort to cut their losses.

As harsh as reality as that is, I'd rather be told that then being told under the ******** premises that they are improving my gameplay with this abolishing of the APAC servers instead of just maintaining one, but then again they never tried different options, constant lies and misinformation and bad managing of situation. If this was anything other then a virtual game EA would be sued, but because its a virtual game EA can continue to treat customers this badly and get away with it.

How is any of this the APAC subscribers problem ?. Alot of us only bought the game and subbed for the APAC servers and low ping, this is all we have ever known. Despite what some think we didn't all start off on the NA servers.

We have been paying for a product for a year and concerns that we had were not addressed be it the fact we didn't get new server tech, we didn't get a merger, there is no advertising in APAC areas or whatever.

We paid for a product that failed due to eawares inability to 'organise a root in a brothel'. It aint our fault it failed nor is it our fault for speaking up and having a crack at these morons.

******* like you only compound the problem, who are you anyway ? another yank troll ?.

Give us what we paid for eaware, what every other NA and EU sub has, low ping and local server mergers.

/unsubbed

What a load of complete crap... we have a guild with 100+ members on Dalbora... that isn't including Alt's... I know that there are NO American's in our Guild
Most of the people I PVP with and on the Dalbora server aren't American... so I don't know where you get your information from... my guess is you are American yourself and are looking forward to the move so YOU get a better PING...

cant wait for the servers to be closed down so my level 50 bounty hunter can join the rest of my other characters on the Harbinger

I'm sure it has been said already, but am not going to go through over 380 pages of the thread to check.

I'm not sure how this helps Australian players. Our evenings do not coincide with US evenings, so the low population and the resulting long queue times will still occur, regardless of whether we're on an ASPAC server, or on a US server.

Transferring us over to US-based servers will merely transplant the problem. Sure, The Harbinger (using it as an example, as I play on Dalborra) will have a higher native population, but the expected improvement to queue times would be small, I would suspect.

At least, this was my experience from playing on Proudmoore for many years in World of Warcraft. As an Aus player on a US server, we ended up playing with other people in the same time zone, and some US night owls. There were "a few more" people around, but not enough to really make an impact on queue times.

Throwing all of us on to The Harbinger will likely mean actual queues to get on to the server during weekends for Australian players, as we'd be trying to connect during the US Friday and Saturday evenings.

I have to admit that I'm saddened by this decision. I play this game because I like Star Wars, and enjoy the low latency due to having a "local" server. Being able to play a game without a ~200ms time penalty was refreshing and fantastic.

This decision to decommission the ASPAC servers is not one that I can continue to support, unfortunately. If I want to play a game on a US server with heaps of people, I can always go back to my old WoW guild, right? I hear there's Pokemon now.

Brand image isn't a factor? Medium and long term profit projections in an MMO aren't a factor?

Btw, feel free to actually engage in a real discussion over here, where it currently looks like you left with your tail between your legs.

And to further examine some of your other arguments:

What is the opportunity cost of continuing to use some (read: required for said 'mega' server) of the infrastructure in place?
What is the alternative use of the infrastructure, given it is likely the property of EA Australia (and housed in their office/server space)?
What are the projections for this game overall in the next 6 months, given the paltry investment that has occurred in it since 12 months ago when it was deemed a failure by EA, 4 months after launch?
What were the population statistics for AU players 12 months ago? What were they 9 months ago and what were they 6 months ago?
Why do EA and BW feel people left the game?
What do EA and BW believe to be the long-term strategy for this game, with the F2P model in mind?

The last few questions are more or less rhetorical, given how much the proverbial pooch has been screwed. Get back to me when you have real answers that show not only an understanding of the basic (alleged) financials, but of solid business, planning and brand management skills. Until then, kindly **** off with your paltry analysis.