That was an example and a rhetorical question about JC as I know everyone who does Master Mode/NiM Ops on the server. As for EH, Shadow Council is dead (Rip Narsh PogChamp) and the only one remaining Eon moved on to Harb a while ago.

 

 

It's bad having nothing to offer returning raiders except things far beneath their skill.

 

For those of you interested in the raiding community on JC, take a look at this thread. Maybe not up to Harbinger standard but certainly appears active.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=920634

 

There is also someone recruiting a 16 man HM DP for tonite if you are looking for that content to complete

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=923736

They don't even need that. Just have some guy on-call who reviews the chat logs when someone is reported. He can read a text file on his cell phone...generate an email report that he can review. It could not be simpler.

 

How many "some guy"s would they need to handle the load?

They don't even need that. Just have some guy on-call who reviews the chat logs when someone is reported. He can read a text file on his cell phone...generate an email report that he can review. It could not be simpler.

 

Yes, but a moderator would be a more immediate impact. Through the report system it could take an hour or more and that person could have gone on that whole time ruining many more people's experience. A moderator could cut it off after a minute or two. Dealing with it in "real-time" would be more effective I think.

Eric, Keith and team,

 

If you go ahead with mergers I would ask you to consider regional players, that means people outside of the US and EU, such as the APAC region.

 

Lag is a major issue for us already because we lost our APAC servers and now have to play with 180-300ms lag on the west coast. It's even higher if we play on the east coast and the EU is a nightmare.

 

So my request is that you "at least" have one server located on the west coast or the APAC players will pretty much have to stop playing any lag sensitive parts of the game like pvp. For me that means stopping altogether.

 

If this merge goes ahead, please don't make one massive mega server for the US. At least have a server located on both coasts.

 

I hope you read this because the decision to close the APAC servers made a majority of them stop playing because they didn't want to go from 20ms to 200ms. I pray that you don't do something as silly as that and make one mega server for the US.

 

Cheers, and I hope you understand,

 

I play from NZ and east/west coast is perfect the 150-220ms all content can be completed with no problems of upto 450ms you only notice horrible issues once you hit the 500+ mark.

 

and Icy don't you just do lowbie PvP ?

Yes, but a moderator would be a more immediate impact. Through the report system it could take an hour or more and that person could have gone on that whole time ruining many more people's experience. A moderator could cut it off after a minute or two. Dealing with it in "real-time" would be more effective I think.

Paying an employee to sit there and mindlessly read chat isn't going to happen. Paying someone to respond to reports in semi-real time (mere minutes, not hours), could. They could pay the person per incident, not hourly.

They don't even need that. Just have some guy on-call who reviews the chat logs when someone is reported. He can read a text file on his cell phone...generate an email report that he can review. It could not be simpler.

 

"A guy" - how many reports do you think will flood on once people cotton on to the fact something actually happens about them?

I play from NZ and east/west coast is perfect the 150-220ms all content can be completed with no problems of upto 450ms you only notice horrible issues once you hit the 500+ mark.

 

and Icy don't you just do lowbie PvP ?

 

Agreed for the most part - I found that ping usable for PVP, might hinder me if I ever wanted to become a highly ranked ranked player perhaps but for the most part it works fine for everything in game (except poor mechanics like the way underlurker worked at release).

 

GSF though seemed very ping dependent when I tried it. Which is a shame because it seems really cool but the ping issue combined with the annoying gear grind they tack onto everything was enough to make me avoid GSF ever since it launched.

Paying an employee to sit there and mindlessly read chat isn't going to happen. Paying someone to respond to reports in semi-real time (mere minutes, not hours), could. They could pay the person per incident, not hourly.

 

They could also task some of the cs agents with this duty, as the reports ebb and flow.

It has to be done carefully.

 

You have to be able to support a "mega server" or a merged server and have it be functional.

Don't rush into this if you can technologically support it. The last thing we want is constant crashes.

 

Other problems include:

Guild Names

Character Names

I am in favor of Legacy wide, one time transfers to any server you wish. This would let people go where they want. Also, update server status to reflect the population of a server more accurately for transfers going to or leaving a server. This will also help if anyone new comes to the game they can be informed on what server size they want to be on.

Bring on the server merge

Just follow the approach that Blizzard took with world consolidation in WoW - bigger communities and none of the nonsense such as character & guild name contentions. Any other approach is just idiotic.

If anything the RP-PVP servers should be merged into Ebon Hawk with the remaining PVP servers merged into the servers of their choice.

 

I would also support the merger of Shadowlands and Jedi Covenant if the destination server was Shadowlands.

Just follow the approach that Blizzard took with world consolidation in WoW - bigger communities and none of the nonsense such as character & guild name contentions. Any other approach is just idiotic.

 

What about the assets guilds have. Guild ships alone without the other room unlocks and their decorations are 50m. Guild strongholds cost 3 times the amount of personal strongholds and the decorations on top of that. Then you have the guild banks.

 

Furthermore a lot of us have at least 3-4 strongholds not to mention the outfits unlocked. I have 16 outfits unlocked and from all the information you have to redo the outfits and that includes the dyes and some people have black/black dyes and if you are lucky to get those for 2 million but most of the time they run higher than that.

 

So any approach that doesn't deal with the assets is idiotic.

Just follow the approach that Blizzard took with world consolidation in WoW - bigger communities and none of the nonsense such as character & guild name contentions. Any other approach is just idiotic.

 

Only if they could because of the limitations of the engine this is why we never saw cross server.

I really believe the answer to this issue is "Megaservers", as SWTOR Central relays in his latest video on Youtube. Just having 1 European server and perhaps 2 American (one westcoast and other east) would target the issue of player activity but merging all into one would also require a different approach that could potentially avoid duplicate name clashes, guild assets lost or legacies dissapearing. Yes, it would take time, but ultimately I believe it is the key to the game's future.

They don't even need that. Just have some guy on-call who reviews the chat logs when someone is reported. He can read a text file on his cell phone...generate an email report that he can review. It could not be simpler.

 

I believe Guild Wars 2 did this on launch. Huge numbers of people received temporary or permanent bans after chat logs were reviewed due to inappropriate behaviour. I remember they posted on Reddit some of the chat by those claiming they were wrongly banned, absolutely hilarious.

 

The final wash up is that GW2 has one of the most friendly troll free environments of any mmo, all that is required is for people to know whatever they type in chat has repercussions. Whether it's reported or not.

here what I think you should do.

is take all a characters from a dead server and put it in a populated server, and shutdown the dead server for example take the people from pot5 into harbinger. that way less people get effected by this, the only people who would be effected is the ones who got transferred. if any items or decos or whatever got lost would have to contact a CS person or PM a dev. loosing the name or guild name would only effect the people who get transferred but that cannot really be solve, they have choose a different name. it would take a lot time to get people stuff that may have got lost so I suggest doing one server at a time, then once everyone's stuff has recover, then you can another transfer of people from a dead server into another server.

 

this is just what I think is the best option.

Edited June 6, 2017 by commanderwar

If it comes down to a merger the best way to approach a server merge with a mega server, is not 1 mega server at all but a few mega servers.

 

It would be wise to have 5 mega servers by merging all servers that are in a particular section:

One mega Server for the East Coast NA

One Mega Server for the West Coast NA

One Mega Server for English Europe

One Mega Server for German Europe

One Mega Server for French Europe

 

This would solve the potential problem with a language barrier for group finders with the European servers. It would also make the key servers on the East and West Coast, Harbinger and Ebon Hawk which are already huge, to be have less stress compared to just 1 North American server because we all know what happens when the Harbinger is stressed out.

 

With this set up it would be best to also make guild roster limit be at 3000 people (because you are generally merging 3+ servers into one) to expand the guilds from dead servers also many guilds I'm in are needing auxiliary guilds for players alts because the guilds are in the 950+ members already (even is this doesn't happen make guilds have a 1500 player capacity it will help with alts).

 

Also on the lines of guilds and the fact 3+ servers would be merged Galactic Conquest may want to make its leader board a top 15 or 20 instead of 10 because of the sheer volume of guilds competing.

 

So if in the case of massive server merges this would be the best solution, in my knowledge and opinion, to make it successful.

So if in the case of massive server merges this would be the best solution, in my knowledge and opinion, to make it successful.

 

Not sure how you work stuff out but I have to disagree

3 Servers for North America

 

RP North America

I've followed this a long time. I don't think people understand that Ebon Hawk has a robust population with a really good GTN economy. People go there for what it uniquely offers. If all the servers are located in the same region now it would make sense to merge the smaller Bergeren Colony into TEH.

 

PVE East

Shadowlands and JC are redundant and are competing for the same crowd. It would be prudent to merge JC into Shadowlands while adding POT5 and Jung Ma. Many of the POT5's moved into Shadowlands ages ago. I know very little of Jung Ma but I can only surmise it probably has the smallest population of all.

 

PVE West

The Bastion would roll into Harbinger. Harbinger could certainly use a slight bump.

 

PVE West

 

North America

 

The Bastion Light PvP West------> Harbinger PVE West

Begeren Colony Light RP-PvE West---->TEH RP North America

Jung Ma LightRP PvP East------>Shadowlands PVE East

Prophecy of the Five Light PvP East------>Shadowlands PVE East

Jedi Covenant Light PVE East------->Shadowlands PVE East

 

This is the most significant change that could be made to liven up the North American servers while retaining unique identity. PVP will exist as an instance on all the servers. So essence all that is being done is eliminating the redundant servers...................

3 Servers for North America

 

RP North America

I've followed this a long time. I don't think people understand that Ebon Hawk has a robust population with a really good GTN economy. People go there for what it uniquely offers. If all the servers are located in the same region now it would make sense to merge the smaller Bergeren Colony into TEH.

 

PVE East

Shadowlands and JC are redundant and are competing for the same crowd. It would be prudent to merge JC into Shadowlands while adding POT5 and Jung Ma. Many of the POT5's moved into Shadowlands ages ago. I know very little of Jung Ma but I can only surmise it probably has the smallest population of all.

 

PVE West

The Bastion would roll into Harbinger. Harbinger could certainly use a slight bump.

 

PVE West

 

North America

 

The Bastion Light PvP West------> Harbinger PVE West

Begeren Colony Light RP-PvE West---->TEH RP North America

Jung Ma LightRP PvP East------>Shadowlands PVE East

Prophecy of the Five Light PvP East------>Shadowlands PVE East

Jedi Covenant Light PVE East------->Shadowlands PVE East

 

This is the most significant change that could be made to liven up the North American servers while retaining unique identity. PVP will exist as an instance on all the servers. So essence all that is being done is eliminating the redundant servers...................

 

all these posts make no sense they only need 1 server and I hope they do it soon without any issues.

What about the assets guilds have. Guild ships alone without the other room unlocks and their decorations are 50m. Guild strongholds cost 3 times the amount of personal strongholds and the decorations on top of that. Then you have the guild banks.

 

Furthermore a lot of us have at least 3-4 strongholds not to mention the outfits unlocked. I have 16 outfits unlocked and from all the information you have to redo the outfits and that includes the dyes and some people have black/black dyes and if you are lucky to get those for 2 million but most of the time they run higher than that.

 

So any approach that doesn't deal with the assets is idiotic.

 

I agree 100%

 

Oh Shadowlands the price of black/black is up to 20 million + (I have 43 toons, all in several specially dyed clothes) and extra clothing slots and banks.

Most of my outfits are dyed black/black or white/white. So just the dyes, are mortifying. Now I have a guild SH and a guild ship. As you say 50 mill just for a basic ship, mine has two more areas unlocked and it's furnished with stuff you can't even get anymore. Then there are names, bank and clothing slots.

 

It would be devastating to me to lose all that. I would leave, there is no recovering from that. What I find amazing is that there are people who refuse to give up their 90cc (that is pretty much = to free if monthly allotment is used) to transfer a character to wherever 'the happening scene' for their type of play is, but expect people who have sunk BILLLIONS in credits and hundreds of dollars in real life US dollars to just sacrifice that (so they can get a queue pop in under a min). They sure as hell wouldn't give it all up if the shoe was on the other foot.

 

There can be no merges until these issues are settled. Guilds and their assets and the other things have to stay intact.

Edited June 7, 2017 by Lunafox

There can be no merges until these issues are settled. Guilds and their assets and the other things have to stay intact.

 

Which is the essence of the issue for those who look at this objectively and see the very real hazards here for guilds as it currently stands.

 

Some players of course wave their hands and say... "oh BW can just do this or do that to fix issue xyz". Problem with that is .. players hand waving has absolutely no effect on the reality that unless/until the studio commits resources to address how to move guilds intact and without any loss of assets.... this remains a core problem.

 

Same goes for all this megaserver nonsense. Anyone with any sense of context about servers and configurations for use in multiplayer games knows full well this is not just a Band-Aid... but requires a purpose built server architecture hardware/software platform that actually scales and enables everyone to play on one server on demand any time 7/24. I know of NO MMO that has launched with a classic "shard" style server farm approach and then flipped a switch and converted to a mega-server. The key here is a scalable architecture, which is something a design team does early in design.. way before launch... NOT 5 years after the fact. The current servers do have some scalability to them (as we all learned back in the great population surge at the start of 4.0... where they went in and increased the sizing on some of the servers to handle the loads). But they also demonstrated a number of stability issues with the servers as they increased their capacity too... so clearly... not very scalable.

Edited June 7, 2017 by Andryah

I agree 100%

 

Oh Shadowlands the price of black/black is up to 20 million + (I have 43 toons, all in several specially dyed clothes) and extra clothing slots and banks.

Most of my outfits are dyed black/black or white/white. So just the dyes, are mortifying. Now I have a guild SH and a guild ship. As you say 50 mill just for a basic ship, mine has two more areas unlocked and it's furnished with stuff you can't even get anymore. Then there are names, bank and clothing slots.

 

It would be devastating to me to lose all that. I would leave, there is no recovering from that. What I find amazing is that there are people who refuse to give up their 90cc (that is pretty much = to free if monthly allotment is used) to transfer a character to wherever 'the happening scene' for their type of play is, but expect people who have sunk BILLLIONS in credits and hundreds of dollars in real life US dollars to just sacrifice that (so they can get a queue pop in under a min). They sure as hell wouldn't give it all up if the shoe was on the other foot.

 

There can be no merges until these issues are settled. Guilds and their assets and the other things have to stay intact.

 

Yea I know. I know I have an idea for those that are screaming and stomping their feet ignoring the problems we will let them pay for everything everyone loses and see how they like that.