Why the game is losing players and how to fix it.

When the severs were condensed to 2 US servers the game slowly started to lose players because it was NOT done correctly.

Role Players are the ones who buy the micro transactions on the Cartel Market that keep this game afloat.
PvP and PvE players have little use for more than a few outfits.

PvPers actively troll RPers. Many of the PvPers are free to play and do not contribute as much money to the game as RPers. The game does not provide any way to effectively limit this trolling. Yes you can type /ignore and no longer hear them, but that does not remove the mount that is standing on top of the RPers. The developers could designate the RP areas of the game, primarily the cantinas as no mount zones, but they have not done so.

The servers should be split by Role Play and Non-Role Play, not by time zones. That will allow the RPer to Role Play in peace without annoying the PvE and PvP focused players, and vice versa.

This change could be easily accomplished by adding a description to the servers and allowing free server changes for a limited time followed by a permanent decrease for transfers from 1000 CC back down to 100 CC where it was for years before the server merge.

As someone who has actively played SWTOR since launch, I am concerned about the massive exit of players from the game over the years. It is barely surviving and most of that is from micro transactions from the RP community that is being actively harassed by free to play PvPers. It is simply poor business to ignore your paying customers.

I have detailed two possible fixes for this problem. 1) Separate the servers into RP and Non-RP with free server transfers for 6 months. 2) Remove the harassment features from RP areas: no mounts, no Rakgoul plague, no damage attack spam, etc.

If the developers continue to ignore their highest paying and most loyal customers, the RP community, then they have no one to blame but themselves when the game shuts down and they are all fired.

I've been a subscriber to this game for over 7 years, am a PvP/PvEer, and frequently buy stuff off the market, most recently the exiled padawan set. How many people would be on a RP only server?

And more importantly, what makes you more loyal than me?

How many players are RP only players?

I suspect an RP only server would become very quiet, very fast.

Here's a suggestion: avoid the fleet cantina, it's a high traffice area, with more than one major questline using it. There are a lot of empty areas on a lot of planets that could serve as great RP locations.

I don't harrass RP players, but I am also not going to go out of my way to rp-walk through an area if I'm there on a pve mission.

(also: what Kendra said. What makes you think pure RP players are more important or spend more money on the game than players who also, or primarily, do PVE or PVP?

Hello, OP. I am a PVE player. I run ops with my guild 2 to 3 times a week, I play class stories, and I loathe RP. Tried it once, found it's definitely not my thing.

So I'm here to expose the lack of veracity of your comment above.

As a PvE Player, I have:
60% of all armor sets, what you call outfits
77% of all weapons
87% of all crystals
62% of all mounts
30% of all tunings
72% of all CM companions
100% of all companion customizations
41% of all events

Equally false, as evidenced above. As a non-RP player, I burn through 5,000 to 8,000 cartel coins a month on various forms of swag as listed above. This month, with the collection unlocks, I've already shot past 14k.

The rest of your post is equally riddled with inane assumptions and at best half-truths.
So try again, this time with something substantially closer to reality.

There's a far better way of doing that, which would resolve your problem without inconvenience others, and would also resolve the other issues you cite - and a lot of crowded area/lag issues, without engendering server population problems.

If "ignore", in addition to blocking chat, duel, trade, guildspam etc, was silently account-wide (by which I mean you only see the character name you ignored in your list, but you don't see chat from any other character in that account), AND also equated to "de-render".

You're RPing a conversation on Tython, and some immature bobblehead decides to park a Vorantikus mount on top of you, a joint which is probably better educated than he is, while hurling abuse because although he's a PVPer, he's obviously not a good one. You ignore him. Effectively, with this proposal, he entirely disappears from your game client... permanently.

I'm in a few different guilds, none of them are RP guilds, yet, a lot of the plays have massive wardrobes, some of the guilds even do costume parties, etc, and some of them are big PvP players. Also, as I've noted before, the population is actually rising, maybe it's the lock down, or maybe it's because of the renewed interest in the game because of the new Star Wars stuff. But the population is rising, there were 5 instances on fleet, and it wasn't even peak time.

I don't RP at all and I spend money in the CM when I am subbed if there is something worth purchasing.

Best way to "fix" the game is to add more complex RPG character and story building (Includes RP, PVE and PVP).

One thing that will not help the game at all is trying to divide the community...

I take most of what the OP says with a pinch of salt, was probably written after a bad night with some trolls on fleet.
As we all know, the game is full of trolls, but we can't blame one segment, and say it's all them, it isn't. And it's not just one segment keeping the game going, it's all off us, people who sub or buy CM items, & especially those who do both.

I do like the idea of areas like cantina's being a no mount area though, not that I rp, but it would stop 'mount' abuse
Also like the idea of free server transfers, but i doubt we'd get that...lol


*I don't rp, but I do spend CC's, and have 2150 out of 2222 items unlocked on collections

This game had an abundance of dedicated PvE, PvP and RP servers for all 3 languages in the beginning. Look what that got us. The reason the game was losing lots of players has nothing to do with insufficient server distinction and trying to make that point just for your personal agenda is incredibly absurd (as is your claim that only RP players are buying items from the Cartel Market and paying the devs). Quite the contrary, the excessive amount of servers at the start was one of the contributing factors that the game got into deep waters and the devs scrambled to close down and merge a lot of them to ensure a minimal form of population stability.

An absolute no to more server segregation.