I would like to adress an issue that I have noticed over the passed few months, namely that the European servers are dying a slow death, or at least, a majority of them. It started when I noticed my sales on the GTN on the Progenitor suddenly kept becoming less and less while I did each time put up 50 items for sale. Now one reason could of course be the fact that the economy in this game is bad, but that is an entirely different subject. Soon thereafter however I kept noticing that the Warzone popped less and less frequently with each week that passed. Around January/February this year I had no problems with this at all, I even didn't understand some people's claims that they never had a warzone popping while for me they did almost anytime I queued up. This changed drastically however, on the Progenitor, up until the point that I could queue up an entire day (or several) and not have a single warzone pop or if I was lucky 1 or 2 that quickly ended however due to a lack of players ending in an automatic win or defeat. The fact that at European prime time there were only 60 - 80 people on the Imperial or Republic fleet only confirmed my concerns, namely, that the Progenitor was slowly dying. What was my solution? Likely the same that many others from the Progenitor picked as well, namely moving to the Red Eclipse which is the most active of the English servers.

 

But the solution I picked is likely the reason why the Progenitor and servers like that one are dying. It wouldn't surprise me if the German and French servers are facing a similar problem, namely that one server is the most active and slowly leeching the "life" from the other two servers. IOn the Progenitor server the decline of players is actually killing the RP community there as there are less and less new players, existing ones are leaving to more populated servers and the RP scene is drying up. Of course some of you will say "just go RP on the Red Eclipse then", while that might be a great solution for new guilds, guilds that have existed for years and have fully unlocked flagships and strongholds will not want to leave that all behind and start anew as they pumped credits, time, effort and sometimes even real-life money into their communities through the things that I just mentioned.

 

So what would be a solution to this problem? In my opinion server merges, reduce the number of nine European servers to three, one English, one German, one French. Old guilds could keep their flagships and strongholds, new ones would find new players to join up with and the recruitment pool for both would increase significantly. The RP scene would light up again and it can't be denied that it is a part of this game, maybe not the biggest, but definitely not one without impact. Because it's the RP'ers who will most likely be spending their money on the Cartel Market to upgrade their character's looks and appearance or the setting they RP in through perks and items for strongholds and flagships.

While I did focus in my elaboration on the RP community, it is not difficult to imagine that things like sales on the GTN or Warzones would be largely solved through this as well. A larger group of players would be eligible for the queue's as well as looking through the GTN buying stuff. Activity would increase and the quality of activity as well, because new players wouldn't be stumbling around like "to which server do I go to?".

 

But I really want to know if others had the same issue and what they think of this problem. Do you see the same developments as I do? And do you think the solution I purposed is a good one or would you like to see another one yourself? Let us start this discussion and keep it going in the hopes of Bioware noticing it and helping us players

I would like to adress an issue that I have noticed over the passed few months, namely that the European servers are dying a slow death, or at least, a majority of them.

 

Everyone else has noticed it too and it;s already being discussed and debated at length.

 

I think the hour or so it took you writing that would have been better used skimming the forums.

Everyone else has noticed it too and it;s already being discussed and debated at length.

 

I think the hour or so it took you writing that would have been better used skimming the forums.

 

Why do you do this? The player is a subscriber and has a right to post a new thread. Ignore it if it bothers you. You pop up as the second poster in many threads to tell people their thread is "being discussed elsewhere." You get pleasure out of that?

*snip*

 

I'm sorry but you;re on ignore for that bigoted remark you made towards me a few months back and a quick scan of your posting history shows that I didn;t missing anything.

To the OP this is a well written post with very valid points and you have every reason to make a thread. Please ignore the forum police that is just an opinion and one at least I do not share.

 

On topic:

 

All servers are losing players at variable rates and some are relocating to the Highest population servers while others are just straight leaving the game. My opinion on the matter is that this will continue until the "Road Map" is released and depending on the content of the "road map" it may/may not continue.

 

SWToR is an older game with a development team that has been in question for a very long time not to mention apparent budget constraints. Both the development direction and apparent lack of sufficient budget have seemingly lead to minimal content development with questionable quality assurance.

 

This alone will inevitably result in population loss. Honestly many have said it... Without the Star Wars IP this game would have likely already closed.

I'm sorry but you;re on ignore for that bigoted remark you made towards me a few months back and a quick scan of your posting history shows that I didn;t missing anything.

 

Whatever. Doesn't change what I typed. Bigoted? Doubtful. Care to elaborate? Doubtful.

 

EDIT: HA found it. I said you weren't fun at parties! Bigoted? Awesome! You're ignore list must be huge!!!!!

Edited May 7, 2017 by Zerileth

I think the hour or so it took you writing that would have been better used skimming the forums.

 

As a matter of fact I wrote the post in less than ten minutes. I'm a quick writer, comes with being a veteran Roleplayer and I would kindly request to stay on topic, any personal issues can be resolved privately, hopefully

 

To the OP this is a well written post with very valid points and you have every reason to make a thread. Please ignore the forum police that is just an opinion and one at least I do not share.

 

Thank you for that reaction! I appreciate it a lot you made very valid points in your own post as well. The roadmap should be nearing publication in my opinion as people are slowly getting impatient. Like I understand Keith and Bioware want to present something solid to us but with a past of silences and bad communication people are just concerned if not afraid when nothing seems to be coming. There is just a lot of issues and threads that remain unanswered, which is a great pity.

Edited May 7, 2017 by Ylliarus

Server merges should have been a priority years ago, before even Bruce MacLean was "tricked" into hyping the infamous "better than x-server" technology back in 2014 that BW had supposedly been working on and was about to implement. At this point it may even be too late because most servers are hurting badly, players are still mad at the CXP thing, BW isn't about to release any game-changing content or tech, no movies are imminent and my impression is that they've only just started working on the new pieces needed to give us merges.

and my impression is that they've only just started working on the new pieces needed to give us merges.

 

I definitely agree that server merges should have been implemented years ago, but I mainly think that you have a very valid point here. It only has been recently (the last 2 years) that Bioware improved the performance of the game drastically. The cutscenes got better, warzones play smoother and can handle more people. Yes, it is still far from good, but it can't be denied that improvements have been made. Yet it wouldn't surprise me that they kept the topic of "server merges" at bay to give themselves enough time to move the game into that point where it could handle it. The activity level has reached a critical point, so now would really be the perfect time to implement server merges as indeed, as you put it, the servers are hurting badly.

Why do you do this? The player is a subscriber and has a right to post a new thread. Ignore it if it bothers you. You pop up as the second poster in many threads to tell people their thread is "being discussed elsewhere." You get pleasure out of that?

 

So the OP has the right to spam the forums, but no other sub can complain about the spam? That's rich.

 

It is spam because this is what the 30+ thread on mergers? With the same players for and against posting in everyone.

 

BW/EA are never going to merge servers unless it becomes financially untenable to continue with the amount of servers they have now. It will not happen because a few players are asking for it. If they did then BW/EA are telling every customer that they have handed over there accounts to other players who whine and complain on the forums. opening the door for every other customer to do the same. Complain enough with multiple threads and you get your way. This will affect all of there games and not just this one. As everyone/customer will understand there accounts are not safe and subject to the whims of every other player.

 

Yes it is just a few players compared to the overall numbers playing this game. There are more players online at this very instance than there are players asking for mergers. That is within a 5 minuet window. Go ahead and count all the posts in all the merge threads. then count the number of individual accounts. Not that many is there? That's not even taking into account players posting under m,ore than one account name.

 

 

As for those of you saying BW are ignoring the issue. Not true, they have addressed the issue you just chose to ignore it.

 

You can ask BW to move my account when you start paying for it. You have the right to ask BW to change/alter/move your account only. No one else's.

Edited May 7, 2017 by DreadtechSavant

So the OP has the right to spam the forums, but no other sub can complain about the spam? That's rich.

 

It is spam because this is what the 30+ thread on mergers? With the same players for and against posting in everyone.

 

BW/EA are never going to merge servers unless it becomes financially untenable to continue with the amount of servers they have now. It will not happen because a few players are asking for it. If they did then BW/EA are telling every customer that they have handed over there accounts to other players who whine and complain on the forums. opening the door for every other customer to do the same. Complain enough with multiple threads and you get your way. This will affect all of there games and not just this one. As everyone/customer will understand there accounts are not safe and subject to the whims of every other player.

 

Yes it is just a few players compared to the overall numbers playing this game. There are more players online at this very instance than there are players asking for mergers. That is within a 5 minuet window. Go ahead and count all the posts in all the merge threads. then count the number of individual accounts. Not that many is there? That's not even taking into account players posting under m,ore than one account name.

 

 

As for those of you saying BW are ignoring the issue. Not true, they have addressed the issue you just chose to ignore it.

 

You can ask BW to move my account when you start paying for it. You have the right to ask BW to change/alter/move your account only. No one else's.

 

First of all, I do not whine nor complain, I simply point at an issue that I see with SWTOR and give my own perspective on it in the hopes of starting a discussion.

 

Secondly, I am quite frankly amazed by the fact you say it's only a few players asking for server merges. Whenever I was online on the Progenitor I saw people in General Chat talking about server merges and how they wished they were implemented as to create a larger playerbase. Also, you kind of contradict yourself by saying there are tons of threads like this one on the forums and then say that the amount of people asking for server merges is small. If people keep making threads on the forums and are talking constantly about it in-game then surely even you can see that there must be a problem somewhere? I get that perhaps you may disagree with server merges being implemented (as I read you see it as others having control over your account although that is not the point at all in the issue of server merges) but that doesn't mean there isn't a need for it.

 

Another example you can look at is the live chat in the SWTOR streams, people keep referring and asking about server merges. And it's not one account spamming one and the same line (because first of all SWTOR has spam filters on in their streams) but it's multiple unique accounts that ask for one and the same thing. And here is a part of this issue, because there are people, like you in this case, who deny the fact there is a need for server merges Bioware is not considering it as much as they should. Perhaps you sit comfortably at a highly populated server which is great and I am happy for you, but you know how sad I was I had to leave behind the RP community on the Progenitor because I simply couldn't play the game like I wanted to and enjoyed? I am a subscriber so logically I want my money's worth of playtime and enjoyment of the game, so I had to make the choice of leaving for a more populated server but sacrifice my frequent activity in roleplay. Yet I am not the only one, I keep hearing from friends and people I know how either they have decided to move to a more populated server or are considering doing such. If server merges were implemented then the issue would be resolved.

 

So no, it's not the whining and complaining of a small group of people as you say. It's an issue that has been left unanswered for too long and is now starting to bite back. Majority of the servers is hurting badly, the playerbase there becoming less and less. The fact that you may not see it on your server (I assume) doesn't mean the problem is not there. It's like saying "I don't see the climate changing so it isn't", while we all know that the issue is becoming more grave by the day to give an example. The same applies to the requests of server merges and the decline of activity on majority of the servers.

OP, you are completely right. You made some valid points and a reasonable thread. I guess you are on a british server (?).

 

What you described in your first post is what is happening to most european servers, especially those in France and Germany. In Germany there is only one server left that is "alive", in France it seems like every server is dead. This is a serious topic that has to get discussed as often as there is a solution, so thanks to the OP for this thread!

I guess this isnt about the server population but mainly the fact that guilds cannot move Guild ships and SHs. So you could say you are for making such options possible, its probably the only reason people stay at their servers.

 

Its sad to hear that Progenitor is doing bad, was my first server, eventhough I never knew what RP is Progenitor always had it all, PVP, ranked, GSF, NiM guilds etc, but people started moving to TRE long time ago and seems it continues till now. Many have moved to WoW that I know too.

I guess this isnt about the server population but mainly the fact that guilds cannot move Guild ships and SHs. So you could say you are for making such options possible, its probably the only reason people stay at their servers.

That is a factor...but to anyone not moving because of it...don't be silly. The ship, the stronghold, the decorations...it's ALL replaceable...the people of your guild are not. You owe it to them to give them the best experience you can.

That is a factor...but to anyone not moving because of it...don't be silly. The ship, the stronghold, the decorations...it's ALL replaceable...the people of your guild are not. You owe it to them to give them the best experience you can.

 

As a GL, I agree, I DO owe my years-long loyal members more than watching their guild crumble around them, so I trudged out into the desert leading my people to the promised land, a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of flame by night, and lo, 32 accounts followed me from SL to EH, where in 4 days we had created two new guilds imp and pub, bought 2 guild banks with 6 vaults each, and by the end of the first week had completely unlocked strongholds and had bought our flagships.

 

So Tux, you're right. It's the people that matter, not the stuff.

Edited May 9, 2017 by xordevoreaux

OP, you are completely right. You made some valid points and a reasonable thread. I guess you are on a british server (?).

 

What you described in your first post is what is happening to most european servers, especially those in France and Germany. In Germany there is only one server left that is "alive", in France it seems like every server is dead. This is a serious topic that has to get discussed as often as there is a solution, so thanks to the OP for this thread!

Indeed - most of the server threads relate seem to relate to the US servers, so it's interesting to read an opinion on the EU ones. I started moving characters to Progenitor a while back but since I am a solo player I haven't noticed any changes and I seem to have made quite a killing on the GTN on that server, but that might be that I list things "little and often" rather than list tonnes at a time so all my stuff sells. On Red Eclipse however the GTN market for crafted stuff is in steep decline (especially Cybertech and Artifice formerly my best sellers). I just talking about this with a friend over Skype a little while ago as she and I had noticed more and more of our sales were "not sold" which on Red Eclipse is almost unheard of for crafted stuff.

It will be interesting to see what the proposed roadmap says about servers (if anything). Server mergers may well be something BW will have to do to keep subs coming in.

OP you are wrong in your arguments, but correct that a server merge would benefit everyone.

 

First off, you are are playing on a RP server and expecting your stuff to sell after several years of the game being played, as well as queue times being shorter? Uhm.

People mostly RP/run story content on RP servers...., they don't mostly PvP or PvE. Also, most roleplayers suck at pvp/pve since nowadays they mostly sit on Nar Shaddaa pretending to be girls and writing erotic messages to each other regardless of irl gender or age.

 

They also, have grinded in soooo many millions or billions of credits, that they just buy whatever they want and probably already have whatever you are trying to sell.

 

But whatever, back at launch when I started playing on the progenitor the RP scene was very different, but the lack of chat bubbles, emotes and having to BUY emotes quickly ruined the immersion. Strongholds further killed it off, since people now RP in their strongholds, instead of in the open world where they could interact and create RP for those around them.

 

I haven't touched the RP scene since 2011, don't plan to either but I remain on the progenitor because it is STILL the most population european server. Have you even been to the others? They are ghosttowns. Granted, pvp queues are long if you play puppy jedi, but join the dark side and you will even find arenas during the late night.

 

I know raiders like repetition, but honestly, the problem isn't activity but the content. There just frikken isn't any. What, Iokath was a great comeback? What a joke. And where is the damn roadmap for 2017. Next month is june, which means we are already halfway into the year.

 

The PvP is the only thing keeping me in this game and even so, it's still frustrating because of the crap engine this game runs on. I mean, my PC can run Arma 3 better than it can SWTOR warzones. ***???

 

And holy FRAK, the camera speed bug, still there since launch... the frikken workarounds just to get decent mouse sensitivity in this game by editing ini files and whatnot, what a joke!

OP, you are completely right. You made some valid points and a reasonable thread. I guess you are on a british server (?).

 

What you described in your first post is what is happening to most european servers, especially those in France and Germany. In Germany there is only one server left that is "alive", in France it seems like every server is dead. This is a serious topic that has to get discussed as often as there is a solution, so thanks to the OP for this thread!

Cheap server transfers along with the addition of PVE/PVP instances onto every server accelerated the population issues terribly as with little-to-no server distinction left, tons of players simply started moving onto the biggest server. Exactly the same thing is happening on US servers.

 

I knew it was bad when I started noticing more and more French players moving to Red Eclipse in the past year or so.

 

"Better than cross-server" solution was clearly nonexistant and they never worked on it. It's been 3 years since that announcement/hint/tease. Doesn't change the fact that Bioware is actively adding to player/subscriber loss by refusing to act on the issue. For every player that transfers on their own, there's another that will stay on a smaller and smaller server eventually reaching the point where so few people are left playing it's impossible to group for any kind of content or even use GTN. That player will likely leave the game.

 

But honestly, dunno why I even make the same post as in past few years. The issue's been obvious for years, yet Bioware continues to ignore it and does it fully consciously and at this stage I don't even believe they will address it at all, I expect they will literally leave all but the few core servers to die until there's no one left to ask for server merges.

Edited May 9, 2017 by Pietrastor

As a GL, I agree, I DO owe my years-long loyal members more than watching their guild crumble around them, so I trudged out into the desert leading my people to the promised land, a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of flame by night, and lo, 32 accounts followed me from SL to EH, where in 4 days we had created two new guilds imp and pub, bought 2 guild banks with 6 vaults each, and by the end of the first week had completely unlocked strongholds and had bought our flagships.

 

So Tux, you're right. It's the people that matter, not the stuff.

 

Did you try selling the guild before you left. That can always give you some extra credits to start up again. Of course that's not an option with a merge.

I have been on The Progenitor from the beginning and I will stay there until the last day. I won't move unless they make a merge or force me otherwise. It's my Swtor home. If it goes down, I go down with it. *dramaticalmusicplaying* (I have chars on all other servers as well, but TP is my no. 1.)

 

I have seen all ups and downs. I did not get one SM uprising group finder pop for my medic since February. This is no joke. I suppose there is some bug going on though, because a healer not getting a group for months cannot be normal. My DPS warrior gets pops.

 

On what I disagree is the situation on the GTN. I have never sold more and better than during the last months. Players just buy different things. If you think you can get millions selling rare cartel items, you won't be lucky. The players interested in this are buying the stuff with real life money. Things that help you playing the game still sell.

 

I really hope that the recent backend maintenances they are doing have to do with testing out solutions for merges. I would definitely support a merge-down from 9 to 3 European servers. I don't want to decorate my strongholds anew though.

The Red Eclipse is fine Even more populated than ever. Learn english and abandon these german/french sinking ships. Edited May 9, 2017 by iankalo

 

I haven't touched the RP scene since 2011, don't plan to either but I remain on the progenitor because it is STILL the most population european server. Have you even been to the others? They are ghosttowns. Granted, pvp queues are long if you play puppy jedi, but join the dark side and you will even find arenas during the late night.

 

You are very mistaken here. The Red Eclipse is the most populated server at the moment, as I stated in my original post it is why I moved from the Progenitor to the Red Eclipse. On the Progenitor I barely had a warzone queue pop while on the Red Eclipse it's only a matter of minutes. It's the Progenitor that is slowly turning into a ghosttown, not the Red Eclipse. Even if you look at prime time at the Server Status of both Red Eclipse and the Progenitor you will see "Standard" at the Red Eclipse and "Light" at the Progenitor, I checked it multiple times over the course of weeks.

 

First off, you are are playing on a RP server and expecting your stuff to sell after several years of the game being played, as well as queue times being shorter? Uhm.

People mostly RP/run story content on RP servers...., they don't mostly PvP or PvE. Also, most roleplayers suck at pvp/pve since nowadays they mostly sit on Nar Shaddaa pretending to be girls and writing erotic messages to each other regardless of irl gender or age.

 

As to what you state here you are mistaken again. I have been on the Progenitor since I joined SWTOR five years ago and there has been a significant PVP and PVE community there. What you say about RP'ers not knowing how to PVP or PVE is very wrong, because I have had great runs in both on the Progenitor over the years that I played there. PVP Warzones used to be a lot of fun on the Progenitor and had very frequent pops, so I am baffled actually as to where your conclusion came from because I have had a VERY different experience. As I said in the original post, up until January/February I had no complaints about player activity on the Progenitor but since then it has gone downhill fast and I know how the activity on the Progenitor has looked like over the passed 5 years so my assumptions are not based on nothing.

 

Also, the RP scene you describe is present indeed and it is a great pity, but again, you are wrong as to the full assumption. I have been a member of the Progenitor RP community for 5 years because when I came to the game I immediately joined an RP guild. Not once did I have a bad RP experience, I was in great Jedi or Sith guilds with great storylines and large playerbases to interact with. But, that has been changing. More and more players and flowing to the Red Eclipse. At the moment guilds are having trouble recruiting new players, tremendous problems. All because the Red Eclipse is sucking everything up due to the ever growing playerbase there. Even RP'ers aren't rp'ing all day long when they log onto the game, they are just as skilled at PVP and PVE as veterans from the raiding and warzone community and I can assure you that from my own 5 year experience on SWTOR and in particular the Progenitor.

Edited May 9, 2017 by Ylliarus

Did you try selling the guild before you left. That can always give you some extra credits to start up again. Of course that's not an option with a merge.

 

I have a level 4 in charge of the old guild while I try to garner support for the people who do not want to leave to get a guild leader there (imp side). All of the go-get-em types followed me, and the guild's basically now filled with passive solo types not interested in leading.

 

The republic guild one of my officers took, which is a bit weird because he followed me over, so whatever he wants to do with it is fine, but there's 200+ qualifying accounts across both of them.

 

It would probably be an act of kindness to just type /gdisband and call it a day, but I haven't gotten myself to that point yet, and it's not like they don't know, even the guild MOTD says basically "see site for details of guild move to Ebon Hawk" and I've advertised directly in there for two weeks that we were moving.

 

 

I did sell my side-guild that I was using for my own personal bank, traded it for a server slot token.

Edited May 9, 2017 by xordevoreaux

Hey man, thanks for your response. Although our experience with RP may differ, one thing caught my attention.

 

For quite a long time, I have been under the belief that The Harbinger is the most populated EU server. Why do you say the Red Eclipse is higher? And yes, honestly, I am asking because if this is true, then I am moving there myself as soon as I figure out how :/

Hey man, thanks for your response. Although our experience with RP may differ, one thing caught my attention.

 

For quite a long time, I have been under the belief that The Harbinger is the most populated EU server. Why do you say the Red Eclipse is higher? And yes, honestly, I am asking because if this is true, then I am moving there myself as soon as I figure out how :/

 

The difference between TRE and Harb is marginal, and from week to week might actually swap positions as to which is higher pop, but it's generally accepted that both represent the highest-pop servers in the game, TRE for Europe and Harb for the US. Ebon Hawk does well for itself on the east coast US.