http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/07/10/swtor-locks-servers-in-preparation-for-merges/

Do it now while you get something out of it. So much for wanting to stay on my server.

You have to take into account that this is a company currently paying to keep running more servers than they need to, servers that told 1000+ players with 20 people max on them. What else are they supposed to do?

Find more players to fill them?

I have unsubbed and this will only discourage me from resubbing. But...meh..does not matter now. I cannot see anything they have announced for the furture tempting me to consider resubbing.

I love the game, I'm just very very very frustrated about the hidden info. they could have just put it all out there to begin with.

I even asked in a ticket about this very thing and was told there is no information that is provided... then i see that posting on massively... really really crappy.

You have to take into account that this is a company currently paying to keep running more servers than they need to, servers that told 1000+ players with 20 people max on them. What else are they supposed to do?

What they could do is listen to the customers and give a little bit more leeway in the transfers. For example, create groupings of origin and destination servers to allow people to have multiple choices of where they can move their characters to, for example, remove the time zone qualifications, and just open up all PVE origin servers to transfer to any PVE destination server, or replace "PVE" with any other server category.

This would allow people with more than 8 characters on the current origin server group + the destination server they are attached to, to be able to keep all their characters by spreading them across multiple destinations.

This would also allow people who are attached to their character names to try different servers in an attempt of finding a destination server that would allow them to keep the names they have.

Along the same lines as the character names, this would also allow people to not be forced to combine legacies.

Working with the customer, and respecting the customer's wishes as best as possible, is "What else are they supposed to do."

Heck, I'm willing to pay, and was willing to forgo the special treats that they're offering to get us to transfer so that I could pay to transfer to the server of my choice, so I didn't have to combine legacies, so that my hubby didn't loose characters. (He's one of those with more than 8 total on the origin + destination servers.)

And now? Well, I don't know if I'm going to keep playing. I'll admit, I probably will, as long as he does, but I'm going to have to do some convoluted creation and transfers to work out my character names and such, since about half my characters are losing one legacy name and acquiring another, one that their current names don't fit. And on top of that, I'm going to be setting up name place holders on the server that I'd RATHER they have been transferred to, so that on the day paid transfers become available, I'll be able to separate the legacies again. ... you know, the same day they add the same sex relationships, and skimpy male clothing, and all those other things we ask for that they promise they're going to add but never do.

~ Cerilynn

They could have completely depopulated these servers if they had allowed people to transfer to ANY server that the players already have toons on.

It's still rather incomprehensible how they completely overlooked the fact that the smartest (and/or most impatient) of players on the "ghost servers" already rolled new toons on more populated servers in stead of waiting a virtual eternity until they came around to preparing for the inevitable.

This whole thing should have been prepared in advance of the release of the game, simply because merges/transfers is the ONE 100% predictable dynamic of ALL MMOs...

I really regret investing so much in this game. Not so much the money, but the time. So, I logged in after a bit of an absence. My server is a ghost town because everyone left. I decided to move too. Now, I have to rename all my character, and the new server is over-populated.

Really upsetting.

I really regret investing so much in this game. Not so much the money, but the time. So, I logged in after a bit of an absence. My server is a ghost town because everyone left. I decided to move too. Now, I have to rename all my character, and the new server is over-populated.

 

Really upsetting.

Luckily all I lost was my Legacy name but I was worried about the char names when I did it as well.

I'm sorry it went so badly.

I really regret investing so much in this game. Not so much the money, but the time. So, I logged in after a bit of an absence. My server is a ghost town because everyone left. I decided to move too. Now, I have to rename all my character, and the new server is over-populated.

 

Really upsetting.

I agree,this "you only get 1 server option" is lousy, first off i have over 8 toons they say can transfer so kiss the rest off? so i loose 9 charactors,because i have 17 that get the free server transfer and only 1 server to go too. at least give as a couple choices dang it.

You have to take into account that this is a company currently paying to keep running more servers than they need to, servers that told 1000+ players with 20 people max on them. What else are they supposed to do?

Not necessarily. Technology is different now. I seriously doubt that Bioware has a physical server for each game server. There is technology out now called VM Ware or even Hyper-V that is used to create virtual servers. You get a blade server or two, load it out with but load of memory per blade, a pair of decent high powered 6-8core server class CPU's per blade, good network backbone, block of public addresses and bandwidth and voila you have a gaming server farm. As they "close" servers all you do is release resources not physical hardware per say (although depending on per VM resource requirements might take multiple blade servers to host as many servers as they had since start). Figure 6 to 12 blades per blade server (there are even larger chassis as well), roughly 12 to 24 memory slots per blade holding 4G to128G sticks. Now costs for such servers can range from a low end of around 40k per to over 100k+ depending on how beastly your blade servers are not counting software costs (while Microsofts Hyper-V is licensed via 2008 servers, VM Ware is 20k-80k on their own depending on how many VM hosts and VMemory is used). Not cheap but gone are the days of warehouses of physical hardware for a single game

I really wish they wouldn't have catered to the whiners and just would have done a forced merge to begin with. The way that FFXIV merged is a perfect example. They merged two or three servers into one, and whoever rolled their toon first and had logged in within the past 60 days kept their name, others had to rename. And rather than letting people know origin and destination servers, the destination had a new server name.

Also, to solve their current name "problems", they should just get stricter about retiring names and say if you have been unsubbed for 90 or more days you may lose your name if someone else tries to roll with that name. A name change service would be nice too.

Also, I truely hope that they are not using VMWare servers or some cloud computing solution here. In my experience, the performance for high demand applications are terrible on those things to this very day.

Also, I truely hope that they are not using VMWare servers or some cloud computing solution here. In my experience, the performance for high demand applications are terrible on those things to this very day.

All depends on how you allocate the resources. If they are under allocating yea VM/Cloud can lag, but if you watch the health of your VM's and adjust resources to maximize performance they work great. It all comes down to how many resources you have to dedicate per host. We have viirtualized all our servers and 90 % of our desktops and have seen huge performance increases. Now our engineering and GIS departments still run workstations because AutoCad and ArcGIS are to big of monsters graphically to go thin client but VM Ware keeps insisting they are getting close to the magical VGraphic allocation issues.

All depends on how you allocate the resources. If they are under allocating yea VM/Cloud can lag, but if you watch the health of your VM's and adjust resources to maximize performance they work great. It all comes down to how many resources you have to dedicate per host. We have viirtualized all our servers and 90 % of our desktops and have seen huge performance increases. Now our engineering and GIS departments still run workstations because AutoCad and ArcGIS are to big of monsters graphically to go thin client but VM Ware keeps insisting they are getting close to the magical VGraphic allocation issues.

Getting myself way off topic here, but all I know is, even with the latest version of VMWare ESXi and an insane amount of tunning, we(my company) can not get the IO throughput out of it that we need. It is typically 15~20% less performing on writes for us than bare metal is. As an benchmark once not that long ago, we setup a dedicated host with only one VM, fully tuned, and it still didn't perform well enough.

Getting myself way off topic here, but all I know is, even with the latest version of VMWare ESXi and an insane amount of tunning, we(my company) can not get the IO throughput out of it that we need. It is typically 15~20% less performing on writes for us than bare metal is. As an benchmark once not that long ago, we setup a dedicated host with only one VM, fully tuned, and it still didn't perform well enough.

Hmm what blade servers are you using? HP, Dell, or IBM? Maybe more of an issue with the backplane or the fiber channel to your SAN's. Or do you have a large amount of VM's/users?

Ok sorry enough geek talk...back to the server transfer discussion