Joveth, what is the plan for RP servers ?

 

Will we be allowed transfers from RP-PvP to PvP servers ?

The big question is if people will able to get chars OFF of fatman. It's a refugee server but how many refugees would actually leave? ESPECIALLY INITIALLY when there are no stats or clues on where to go. Basically is there a way to do this without permanently killing the server? I've seen all the Poopskywalkers and trolls that I can stand.

 

Odds are you won't be able to leave Fatman because they don't want the population to dwindle from their top population server.

Right now, we're just talking about the free character transfers - like it mentions in the blog, more options may become available in the future, but that's all we've said as of now.

 

I believe your company already stated paid transfers to the server of your choice is coming. They didn't say "may become available in the future". Your statement here is a bit worrisome. Almost sounds like paid transfers may not come at all, or take a very long time.

 

Dallas Dickinson (Senior Producer, Live Services): We will be rolling out our Character Transfer Service in early summer. First we’ll have some targeted free transfers from/to specific servers, but that will be followed with a broader system where you can either take advantage of free promotional transfers to specific servers or paid transfers to the server of your choice. We know everyone has more questions about character transfer, and we’ll reveal more details closer to the launch date.

Edited June 7, 2012 by Kourage

Let me get this straight, Bioware.

 

1.) You're proposing a server transfer to ONE destination server, for all characters on the origin server. Transfer-on-rails. Limiting options for your users is always going to get some people POed.

 

2.) You won't transfer entire guilds on your end: we're left to our own means for recreating it, contacting customer service, etc. For a developer who had pre-built guilds auto transferred to servers at launch, that's not only odd, it's insulting.

 

3.) You have no system in place to allow for duplicate legacy/character naming. Blizzard does this by RealID, BattlTag, account name, etc. so anyone can name their characters whatever they like. And some developers allow duplicates by distinguish them with a secondary unique ID. TOR doesn't have anything in place. And since people are creating many alts to cover positions for group content on low population servers, we're left with a lot of names that could potentially clash.

 

4.) 1.3 still doesn't have a cross-server LFG tool. We're still limited to the server we're on for instanced content we want to PUG.

 

5.) Server transfers won't even begin to bring server populations closer to number of active players at launch. 3% of the players that were here at launch are still trying to make the best of a sinking ship (source: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=449144). The math for active players is the concurrent numbers in this thread (25k total) plus the dead servers of a guessed 5 more thousand for an even 30k, which is roughly 3% of a million players, of which we had far more at launch. The numbers are all estimates on the conservative side.

 

6.) Even with merges, that's still a possible 10% of the players around any destination server when compared to server pops at launch.

 

Mark my words, this won't solve our LFG woes. It might only make it less painful for a while.

 

To truly solve this issue we need A.) free character transfers to any server, just like Rift has, and B.) a reason to keep playing (ie: content). My sub was already canceled for auto-renewal weeks ago, so I have until August. I don't foresee myself re-subbing to play a Titanic where only 3% of the people are still here, with fewer denying that it's sinking at all. History repeats itself.

 

Bioware, please tell me why you're shooting yourself in the foot again, while treating your customers like dirt? If you really wanted to halve your number of customers, there are much more efficient directions you can take.

Edited June 7, 2012 by cipher_nemo

Odds are you won't be able to leave Fatman because they don't want the population to dwindle from their top population server.

 

A lot of people who rerolled on The Fatman aren't 50 yet. Those players are highly likely to transfer their other character and play that instead of The Fatman. The Fatman will see a loss of activity.

Question about the Guild Banks. When we recreate our guild on the new server and petition Customer Service to give us the bank we had on the previous server, will we get the items in that bank as well, or just the tabs we purchased?

 

Basically, I want to know if we should be moving everything from the guild bank we want to keep into Officer banks to ensure it gets transferred or if it's fine to leave it where it is.

 

I would just have the items transferred to the officers banks for safety unless bioware specifically state your items will be replaced on your new server. Better safety than taking a chance without sometthing specific from bioware on this issue.

Hopefully this page moves a little slower today so my request doesn't get buried:

 

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE use the pre-launch guild system to set up our guilds on the TO servers PRIOR to our moving. The mechanics are there, the tweaking can't be that difficult.

Have had my name for 15 years, through three or four long term games. I'm here with a guild that goes back about 4 years in wow. We all have our names.

 

Have you considered such possibilities as just tagging a name so that the player can keep it. I've suggested middle initials ("A" and "I" type not withstanding) as a means of allowing players to maintain names while distinguishing them for chat, mail, invitation purposes.

 

Consider this please. I know its a game breaker for me and I can already see the storm clouds brewing on the horizon over this issue.

Let me get this straight, Bioware.

3.) 1.3 still doesn't have a cross-server LFG tool. We're still limited to the server we're on for instanced content we want to PUG.

.

 

BioWare never said they where never doing Cross Server, though I hope they never do. Their hope is that, with the transfers and LFGs that ques will pop, once the populations settle, since the transfers are gonna screw things around for a couple weeks. After that, they even said they would monitor LFG results and, if ques aren't popping like intended, then they would reconsider Cross Server. They even came right out and said that they don't want cross server because it removes the prohibitions that players have about being "jerks" to each other since there is almost no possibility that they will ever be grouped together again.

I re-rolled on fatman in March, ive then since lvl'd 3 toons and established myself with the community, prior to release there were 2 groups of people i knew from a previous game, 1 group of us were placed on Wots and the other Fatman, upon WOTS dying i decided to join the rest of my friends on fatman.

 

Here's what im saying, by moving my old toons to fatman where i am actively playing (and with more than one guild ) will not increase the population anymore than it already is, forcing me to move my toons to another server is not the answer to balance the population on fatman, because i would rather stay there than go elsewhere.

 

I understand your dilemna. Understand Bioware's #1 priority is fixing server populations globally. By allowing "open season" transfers for players who have characters on any other server, they introduce other variables that can and likely would prevent then from accomplishing their goal.

 

They don't want just (let's say 30) servers with 20 healthy and 10 not. They want 30 healthy servers with equal distribution.

 

I'm only surprised they arent fully merging, but then again, they probably don't know HOW. So no point irritating the 10% of population who simply don't care about population they just want to stay where they are.

Edited June 7, 2012 by islander

So do I get this right, for like 70% of all people (including myself) who did the following:

 

lvl a char to 50, realize the server you are on is dead ...

go to a higher population server and again grid to 50... (then maybe again watch the server die and grid a 3rd time on a top population server)

 

There will be nearly zero chance that we can finally have all our chars on 1 good populated server. Cause all 2/3 servers I have chars on will most likely have different destination servers.

Let me get this straight, Bioware.

 

4.) Server transfers won't even begin to bring server populations closer to number of active players at launch. 3% of the players that were here at launch are still trying to make the best of a sinking ship (source: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=449144). The math for active players is the concurrent numbers in this thread (25k total) plus the dead servers of a guessed 5 more thousand for an even 30k, which is roughly 3% of a million players, of which we had far more at launch. The numbers are all estimates on the conservative side.

 

5.) Even with merges, that's still a possible 10% of the players around any destination server when compared to server pops at launch.

 

Mark my words, this won't solve our LFG woes. It might only make it less painful for a while.

 

"People can come up with statistics to prove anything. Forfty percent of all people know that."

I don't even know where to begin with where you went wrong, you just pull unrelated numbers out of thin air and try to prove your point with them. At the end of first quarter 2012 there were 1.3 million subcribers. That's the only number we know for certain. I bet you all my Star Wars guys (except Boba Fett) that you are off by no less than a factor of 10 (and that's truly an estimate on the conservative side).

I have 2 legacies. One on a dead server with multiple level 50 characters with a bunch of expensive legacy unlocks and perks. The other is on a highly populated server with just a single character that is still going through the class story and has no legacy perks or unlocks at all. Guess which one I spend all my time playing. Guess how much time I will spend playing the other legacy no matter where you make it's destination system for transfers. Guess how happy I am about re-earning all those legacy perks and unlocks I earned on the dead server on the server that actually has a decent population. Now guess the likelihood that I will be renewing my subscription when it expires in 40 days.

 

Bioware, if you want to keep me around as a player then open up free transfers between any server that currently has a legacy on the account. Each account can only have one footprint and having a legacy on a highly populated server shows a serious commitment to making that place their home. Go ahead with your "mergers" and your future plans for paid transfers but don't forget about those of us who took matters into our own hands and rerolled to more populated servers. Let those of us who rerolled and spent time creating new legacies on other servers consolidate at no charge. If you don't you are going to end up losing my subscription and, from reading this entire thread, quite a few other people's as well.

So do I get this right, for like 70% of all people (including myself) who did the following:

 

lvl a char to 50, realize the server you are on is dead ...

go to a higher population server and again grid to 50... (then maybe again watch the server die and grid a 3rd time on a top population server)

 

There will be nearly zero chance that we can finally have all our chars on 1 good populated server. Cause all 2/3 servers I have chars on will most likely have different destination servers.

 

Yes, and no. You WILL get a chance to pay transfer whatever char you want to wherever. Just not for a while. The freebie 'merges' need to happen first.

 

Although I'd suggest 70% of people actually just quit - sub or not.

I think line item #8 (Guilds will not be transferred) is a bad decision on EA/BioWare's part...Guilds are the strongest part of the community, and they deserve to be transferred to higher population servers gratis. ESPECIALLY since many of them were placed on the origin server by EA/BioWare.

 

Failure to acknowledge the importance of guilds and the need to move them for free appears to be a little more than a cash grab decision from the customer/player-base point-of-view...Greed is not what is needed here, and cost deferment to offset the labor is not the solution to the current drought of players on 95% of SWTOR servers. The current players and their guilds are not the parties responsible for the state of the server populations.

 

In the current situation, OUTSTANDING customer service is needed above all things! This is even more true when dealing with loyal customers. I would suggest that guilds with more than 10 or more active players should be moved for free...yes, EA/BioWare misses out on a bunch of transfer fees, but they would certainly retain entire swathes of players for rendering good customer service.

 

The SWTOR team has sensibly acknowledged loyal customers before, it is time for them to do so again. Speak up for a sensible need for free guild transfers!

Edited June 7, 2012 by Aekbrea
Emphasis

Please Bioware open up the paid transfer option to any server we want in a couple more weeks after this free transfer stuff is done. I can't stand my dead pvp server any longer and want to bring my character over to the pve server I rerolled on. I am willing to pay I still like the game despite your best efforts to make me hate it. I am a bounty hunter arsenal spec on a pvp server with a dead population yet I am still here although I did cancel my renewal of subscription which expires in about 75 days.

"People can come up with statistics to prove anything. Forfty percent of all people know that."

I don't even know where to begin with where you went wrong, you just pull unrelated numbers out of thin air and try to prove your point with them. At the end of first quarter 2012 there were 1.3 million subcribers. That's the only number we know for certain. I bet you all my Star Wars guys (except Boba Fett) that you are off by no less than a factor of 10 (and that's truly an estimate on the conservative side).

 

I hope you enjoy the company of your fellow fanboy friends while your Titanic sinks. You must take comfort in knowing that you've so valiantly defeated the haters in the noble service of your liege, King Bioware. Oh wait, nevermind, the haters already abandoned the Titanic. Congratulations to the 3% who go down with the ship!

5.) Server transfers won't even begin to bring server populations closer to number of active players at launch. 3of the players that were here at launch are still trying to make the best of a sinking ship (source: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=449144). The math for active players is the concurrent numbers in this thread (25k total) plus the dead servers of a guessed 5 more thousand for an even 30k, which is roughly 3% of a million players, of which we had far more at launch. The numbers are all estimates on the conservative side.

 

Dude, please, you are really abusing those numbers. That thread says that I can estimate the average simultaneous concurrent number of users at about 60,000-70,000 as an average all hours over the last two weeks. That's not the number of subscribers, not the number of active players, and not the number of characters. Not everyone is logged in at once. In fact, if you guess that about 5% of the population is logged in simultaneously at one time you get about the 1.3M players that was announced.

 

For instance, if I know how many people are on at noon, that population might be people who are retired, taking a sick day, in college between classes, or stay at home parents. If I know how many people are on at midnight, that might be people from a different time zone, that work 3rd shift, or who are on-call IT guys. It might be the same exact NUMBER of people at noon and midnight, but it's entirely different sets of subscribers, see?

 

Paige

Seems like the idea by BW for character transfers will be slap to the face to anyone who decided to take initiative and reroll on full server instead of quiting the game and waiting on the dead server for months for BW to open transfers.

 

Again one of the more flawed decisions on their part which will not make players happy at all because a lot of them wanted to consolidate all their chars on one server.

 

How is this supposed to even remotely make sense?

 

If you're talking about people being "trapped" on formerly loaded servers, you should probably read the article again. From my reading, even high-population servers may become destination servers, as they'll be expanding the total user numbers.

I think line item #8 (Guilds will not be transferred) is a bad decision on EA/BioWare's part...Guilds are the strongest part of the community, and they deserve to be transferred to higher population servers gratis. ESPECIALLY since many of them were placed on the origin server by EA/BioWare.

 

Failure to acknowledge the importance of guilds and the need to move them for free appears to be a little more than a cash grab decision from the customer/player-base point-of-view...Greed is not what is needed here, and cost deferment to offset the labor is not the solution to the current drought of players on 95% of SWTOR servers. The current players and their guilds are not the parties responsible for the state of the server populations.

 

In the current situation, OUTSTANDING customer service is needed above all things! This is even more true when dealing with loyal customers. I would suggest that guilds with more than 10 or more active players should be moved for free...yes, EA/BioWare misses out on a bunch of transfer fees, but they would certainly retain entire swathes of players for rendering good customer service.

 

The SWTOR team has sensibly acknowledged loyal customers before, it is time for them to do so again. Speak up for a sensible need for free guild transfers!

 

If the Guilds are "the strongest part of the community", then they should have no problems coordinating a move to a new server. You had to notify the guild of the original server in Early Access and when the game launched. How is it any more complicated when they pair up one destination server with your current server?

 

Just change the Guild Message at login to "EVERYONE TRANSFER TO THE NEW SERVER, SEE YOU THERE!"

lol at all these people putting statistics up to make them selves sound smarter. 93% of all statistics are made up (like this one). So quit making up stuff. It really doesn't make you sound any smarter you just look like a fool because you couldn't possiblly know the answer.

 

Also to the few with all of your negitivity if you really hate the game so much quit. Bioware isn't forcing you to keep the game. If you truly hate it that much you would just quit instead of whinging on forums but; you like the game and your negativity and whining isn't helping anyone. If the game is going to fail its going to fail your complaints just to complain isn't going to change anything. It also screws up the relationship between gamers and developers. So bugger off.

 

I'm glad the majority of the people posting are having a positive atitude about this. I hope the transfers go smoothly it will be nice to get more then 4 or 5 wz's per day or find a group other then others from my raid to do stuff like lost island with.

Dude, please, you are really abusing those numbers.

 

Then post better numbers based on observation. At least the thread I linked to showed how they reached those estimates. Whatever number you get, it's doing to be a single percentage of what was concurrently here at launch. But feel free not to believe me and don't bother reading that thread I linked. Just plug your ears and cover your eyes and imagine none of this is happening.

 

Just ask the thousands of players stuck on a dead server that was once active. Dead vs. Active is mathematically a lot worse than 3%.

so next week when thousands of people take advantage of the server transfer system and some reactivate their accounts we can all laugh and point at the doomsayer right?

All I want from this is for bioware to open up the paid transfer to any server option in 2 weeks.

Then post better numbers based on observation. At least the thread I linked to showed how they reached those estimates. Whatever number you get, it's doing to be a single percentage of what was concurrently here at launch. But feel free not to believe me and don't bother reading that thread I linked. Just plug your ears and cover your eyes and imagine none of this is happening.

 

Heh, check the username I'm that person - that's my thread! :-D I wrote it, it's my analysis, I've been updating it for weeks...

 

Trust me when I say, as the author of the thread you're citing to disprove me, that I know what I meant when I wrote it...

 

Paige

I am one of those people who just want to bring all the level 50s toon under one server, if i have to paid for it just to keep them together i will cancel my sub for sure, I am ok with one time free transfer and i don't mind paying to transfer to different server in the future.