You may not have been aware of this, and I would tend to accept this a fact because you usually do not conflate things, but the way you presented it was as though it was fact that they never offered post consolidation discounts for a short period of time. And I did not personally attack you, I called out your "statement of fact" as inaccurate. Opinion There is a difference. You do not often mis-state facts, and you do not really appear to be a defensive personality, so I am surprised by your hostile response. Trust me, my comments were to set the record straight so as to not allow other players to be misinformed and further propagate inaccuracies. And it's nice to know we have you to keep us informed, correctly. Nothing more. If my comments offended you, I apologize.

 

2) The original reasons and needs are now gone, and as such.. the studio appears to see no need for another round of transfer discounts at this time, but players being players... give them something one time and they feel entitled to have it whenever they feel the personal want/need. Speculation and condescension... again.

3) We as players got a chance to observe first hand what players would do with low cost transfers which was not part of the studio intention when they offered them Speculation ---> server hopping to game some part of the features and functions of the game. Moving legacys on the cheap Keith did this, server hopping just to exploit ranked PvP play How does it exploit? It doesn't, server hopping just to exploit differences in prices on GTNs Exploit? Do you know what that word means? There was no exploit. from one server to another (though in fairness.. I see little evidence of real material differences in GTN prices on average, post consolidation for the two US servers).

 

Personally I do not care one way or the other about if the studio offers transfer discounts. But I did join the discussion because a good number of players appear to be oblivious Condescending, again as to the context of why we got them in the first place, and what changed that resulted in them being removed from offer. If we are going to discuss something like this.. I think context is important in the discussion.

Are you done ranting and jumping the shark? Happy face!

and yes, seriously, and yes LMAO.

Actually, you can’t just “go live” somewhere else. There are things such as imagration laws and the ability to work in other countries.

 

I know it’s different in the EU, but I can’t just go get a job in the US or the UK. The same as they can’t just come to Australia and get a permant job and residence. The US, UK and Australia have pretty strict rules about that

 

And honestly, I wouldn’t live in either country. Australia has its problems, but no where near as many as the US or UK. Plus, I live right next to beach and I can surf when ever I want

C'mon Trix! You can have dual citizenship (hint, hint, I want year round, no time limit access to an Australian beach, surrounded by hot guys in banana hammocks).

We can develop an elaborate ruse and say we fell in love and decided to get married after we met at a 'Pray the Gay Away' retreat!

Dasty

P.S. With respect to the topic as originally posed, I see no harm in doing it. Frankly, I'm surprised they didn't create one mega-NA server. As long as the planet limitations are right, who cares? Prior, there was a legit argument that servers had identities, that argument carries much less weight now.

Haha yeah, we had a Marketing Proffesor from Sydney, Australia on my MBA and the first thing he said: Yes, I am from Australia and yes, I can surf

I live on the south coast, not in Sydney. Right next to one of the best surf beaches in NSW

If you know about women’s Surfing, I sometimes get to share the break with Sally Fitzgibbons (she grew up not far from me)

C'mon Trix! You can have dual citizenship (hint, hint, I want year round, no time limit access to an Australian beach, surrounded by hot guys in banana hammocks).

 

We can develop an elaborate ruse and say we fell in love and decided to get married after we met at a 'Pray the Gay Away' retreat!

 

 

Dasty

 

Sorry babe, already married

Yes, they did offer the cheaper transfers for a short time after the server merges, but there were a HOST of issues that made them tricky and borderline impossible for some. Namely because of character limits, and the fact that to transfer to some of these servers with even a single character required the deletion of dozens. I personally had to delete 87 characters from my list after the merger to even create one more. It took some time to sort through the list and determine which ones could be part of that long list (87 is a lot of characters to delete!). I also did so carefully to ensure I didn't delete a character who had my leveling gear, or an important bound item, etc.

So it was NOT as easy as all that, either. For many it was not an option until we cleaned house after a merge made our character list too long to manage any new characters or transfers. Mind you, I'm glad they didn't just decide to delete extra characters FOR ME... but it wasn't as neat and tidy and easy as it has been presented to use the cheaper transfers right after the mergers, and there were also bugs and other issues that I felt should have made them extend that window of opportunity.

Would it cause another imbalance in the servers? Potentially, but there are so few servers left that it isn't as big an issue as it used to be when there were 200 servers to choose from, and that kind of thing has a way of leveling itself off. Besides, there were plenty of people who enjoyed having lesser populated and more "quiet" servers. If one of the US servers became "THE" server and the other that more quiet place to play, I don't really see any harm in that.

It would be nice for them to offer it for a couple of weeks over the summer after they do the PvP changes. Do they need to do this? Nope. But would it be a nice thing to offer the players so that they can relocate after the PvP changes hopefully shake up PvP queues? Yes. Definitely.

And I'm all for advocating that Bioware do something nice for their players once in awhile. Especially since the promises of "more regularly occurring subscriber rewards" have seemingly become a forgotten idea.

.

I personally had to delete 87 characters

:eek::eek:

I mean, I don't think that even the no lifers playing this game have so many characters

:eek::eek:

 

I mean, I don't think that even the no lifers playing this game have so many characters

I had over 100

Now down to 73

I had over 100

 

Now down to 73

I think I never made it passed 38, but I also wanted to gear all my characters so that made it unmanageable. It was ok in 4.0 to gear a lot of toons but when 5.0 hit that killed it for me. I had to settle for 3-5 characters to gear up. They did make it a lot easier since then but also more uninteresting sadly.

I think I never made it passed 38, but I also wanted to gear all my characters so that made it unmanageable. It was ok in 4.0 to gear a lot of toons but when 5.0 hit that killed it for me. I had to settle for 3-5 characters to gear up. They did make it a lot easier since then but also more uninteresting sadly.

Yes, it made it completely Alt unfriendly. But I’ve tried to persevere, it’s probably why I only have 1 Alt at tier 4

Yes, it made it completely Alt unfriendly. But I’ve tried to persevere, it’s probably why I only have 1 Alt at tier 4

I remember when the Dark versus Light "event" happened and people were encouraged to make many more alts and then 5.0 was announced. I already then started culling cause I knew it was going to be problematic so I went from 38 to 26 characters or something like that. It was tough to delete all those toons but I stress myself out if I have more characters than I can technically manage, so I did that. Then 5.0 hit and it was just impossible so I reduced my characters down to 16 and hoped to gear about 5 properly if possible.

To me that made it manageable but I wasn't happy to delete all those toons. It always hurts a little when you do, at least for me. I mean you did invest time and all that into them.

Of course when you have that many characters, it becomes extremely expensive to transfer. Just out of curiosity. If they would allow you to do a legacy transfer, meaning all your toons, to another server at one fixed price, let's say 5500 CC, would that solve the issue for you? I mean 73 x 90 CC is more than that and it could be an idea that allows people to move at a more fair price while still preventing mass exodi because it does cost something.

Dunno, would that be a suggestion worth putting forth to BioWare?

Yes, it made it completely Alt unfriendly. But I’ve tried to persevere, it’s probably why I only have 1 Alt at tier 4

You seem to be an expert at leveling toons, but not at gearing.

If we wait long enough, instead of us sending toons to other servers...

...the servers will come to us

You seem to be an expert at leveling toons, but not at gearing.

I get bored playing the same Alt-class-faction all the time. The grind is a killer and it drives me bonkers.

The reason I had 87 characters to delete was because I had a ton of characters on other servers that I only made/played when my home server (Harbinger) was down. If you know anything about Harbinger, it was down a lot more than all the other servers combined. If a server went down for any reason, had rollbacks, etc. it was almost always Harbinger.

I also transferred my legacy around to all servers (or at least most of them), so I had lots of characters join the 50 or so I had on Harbinger (I think 52 was max pre-merger? I had pretty close to that number with one or two "name holder" toons). I was maxed out and couldn't buy any more character slots on Harbinger, and tons from the other servers that got merged with it as well (even if I didn't play them much at all).

When 5.0 hit, I became a legacy gear user. I cleared out the legacy bank of crafting mats (all but current tier anyway) and used 3 or 4 tabs to house an entire set + main hand/offhand weapon for every single class/spec. Then I set about filling them up. I started really making progress when the Yavin/Section X/CZ-198/Ziost/etc dailies were bugged to such an amazing value (one that should have remained, IMHO as those areas saw more player activity than they had in YEARS). With all the legacy boost unlocks, CXP boosters, etc. I could activate, I went to town. I got 8 characters on each faction to rank 300. 3 tanks, 3 healers, then DPS sets for those 6, then a sniper/gunslinger set and a marauder/sentinel set. I earned the achievements for getting them all to 300, and at the same time built sets for each one (changing spec on my tanks/healers to fill out their "alt" DPS sets).

Much of this grind was alongside Conquest activities. I played this game a TON. That plus working on Stronghold prestige (I think I have either the highest in the entire game or second highest... definitely the highest on Satele Shan) was what I did here for the last few years. (Also running the most dominant and hated conquest guild on the server at the time, and that was no small task). I used to heavily progression raid before that, running an 8 man nightmare team and helping run a 16 man team for a guild called Psy-Ops. Once the raid thing was pretty clearly dying, that's when I moved into Conquest Casual mode, though the BBB period of my life was anything but casual really! Still did some raiding even there, and managed to have a good time doing so, earning some HM kills of the bosses in the "new raid" here and there. But that is definitely when the "alt explosion" happened for me. Conquest was so alt friendly that I had no end of stuff to do all day every day if I wanted, and I made the characters to do that with and loved it. I was a huge crafting nerd, and having 52 characters with max level crafting and 8 level 50 influence companions meant crafting weeks were BIG points for me. But there were reasons to have alts. Now there just aren't, really.

Then, I reached my CXP goal, got many of those sets to full 248/BiS (or near, I never invested in the new augments but instead sold all those mats and made big money for them). Then... they ruined Conquest. All these alts, all this gear, and absolutely NOTHING to do when I logged in with any of them. I would have loved to raid, but finding a raid group in this day and age among the "I refuse to group with anyone ever" population that dominates the game in this era is nearly impossible. Once they took away the activities that I enjoyed doing with my guild and the only reason I was still playing the game... that was it for me.

So there you have it. I played daily since launch, missing maybe a week's worth of play time in the entirety of almost 7 years, and typically played 4 hours a day minimum (many days much, much more than that). I sunk thousands and thousands of dollars into the cartel market over that time also. Now, I don't even log in except to finish selling the extra cartel items I have on the GTN from time to time. A lot of people on Harbinger know Babydoll... love or hate her, they have heard of her. I spent a lot of my life in the past 7 years in this game, and regret very little of it to be honest. It was a great ride... never dull!

Not even a server transfer will make this game worth it to me again now though, only actual CONTENT would do that (and I'm getting that in spades in WoW right now - new races, class updates and changes, new raids/dungeons/story line to play, etc.). But for those that WOULD keep playing here due to being able to server transfer more cheaply, I think we should do whatever we can to encourage that.

A "Legacy Transfer" system would be AMAZING! But I suspect it would be potentially problematic in how it handled names/renames, possible duplication of assets/credits, etc. I do think it is something they could consider and would be great, but I don't expect it.

Either way, I feel like there are decent enough reasons to at least ask for this to happen and hate to see people on the forums berate and bash those who request it just because they don't desire the same thing. But that seems to happen a ton around here. Not a single thread that doesn't devolve into people being rude to each other and fighting over the table scraps of this game because we're all starving stray dogs in an alley fending for ourselves.

Sad state of affairs!

.

I think I never made it passed 38, but I also wanted to gear all my characters so that made it unmanageable. It was ok in 4.0 to gear a lot of toons but when 5.0 hit that killed it for me. I had to settle for 3-5 characters to gear up. They did make it a lot easier since then but also more uninteresting sadly.

Well.. I have at most 33 characters on any given server (though a couple dozen of them are at level cap). But honestly.. I found gearing of alts to be better in 5.0 than 4.0. In 4.0 I HAD to go grind for crystals or push the alts through high end group content for gear. It required more time and effort to gear alts in 4.0 compared to 5.0. Why? In 5.0, I simply put them all in crafted gear, and later upgraded their crafted gear as new sets come into crafting, even though the best crafted gear is kind of a waste of power for an alt that is not in competitive end game content. If anything, crafting as the path to gearing is a bit too rich in 5.0 in terms of what you can do with some materials and a reasonable amount of credits to gear your alts.

If they had released 5.0 with crafting in the poor state it was in when they released 4.0 (which was terrible until we got the 4.x crafting update) ... then I would agree with your assessment.

Well.. I have at most 33 characters on any given server (though a couple dozen of them are at level cap). But honestly.. I found gearing of alts to be better in 5.0 than 4.0. In 4.0 I HAD to go grind for crystals or push the alts through high end group content for gear. It required more time and effort to gear alts in 4.0 compared to 5.0. Why? In 5.0, I simply put them all in crafted gear, and later upgraded their crafted gear as new sets come into crafting, even though the best crafted gear is kind of a waste of power for an alt that is not in competitive end game content. If anything, crafting as the path to gearing is a bit too rich in 5.0 in terms of what you can do with some materials and a reasonable amount of credits to gear your alts.

 

If they had released 5.0 with crafting in the poor state it was in when they released 4.0 (which was terrible until we got the 4.x crafting update) ... then I would agree with your assessment.

That’s the benefit of the old pvp gear. I could get my Alts fully geared within 1-2 weeks or less when they hit max lvl.

This new system is terrible for people trying to gear alts for pvp.

That’s the benefit of the old pvp gear. I could get my Alts fully geared within 1-2 weeks or less when they hit max lvl.

 

This new system is terrible for people trying to gear alts for pvp.

Trixxie,

I know we have disagreed on pretty much everything. And chalk this up to another case of that. You have blasted me for saying it is easy to gear alts because I have a lot of play time. Fair point since I went into semi-retirement and refused to work for a particular someone who currently resides in Washington, DC.

But...I find it difficult to take your criticisms of the current gearing system when you have 70 plus alts. I can understand or fathom 24 or so 'alts' -- as in you could have one of every class / subclass. Surely you understand, though, that some people would quit the moment they got BiS.

Not saying there is anything wrong with your playstyle, but I have a strong suspicion you are an outlier. FWIW, so am I. I have 48 characters (26 at level 70 including 4 who used datacrons, 16 at GC 300). Each faction with each subclass. My asking for all of them to easily gear up to BiS, though, is quixotically bizarre.

Dasty

That’s the benefit of the old pvp gear. I could get my Alts fully geared within 1-2 weeks or less when they hit max lvl.

 

This new system is terrible for people trying to gear alts for pvp.

This statement leads me to believe that you treat every alt as a main.. and want/need them geared in the best of the best to PvP. That is fine if that is your chosen approach, but it is by no means needed for alts in 5.0, not even for PvP. And for someone who basically only PvPs.. I really do not get your need for the best of the best gear to play PvP, because you come across as good at what you do, skilled at what you do, and hence can overcome almost any gear advantage the average PvPer would present you with. The difference between top tier crafted and top tier GC gear is not that significant really.. so I am surprised to see you not accept the challenge of good skills > some modest gear advantage.

They removed expertise and kept bolster pretty well standard (if we ignore some early bugs) so other then bleeding edge ranked play.... crafted gear really is fine for PvP as well as PvE... unless you insist on being min/maxed. Min/maxers do exist and they do enjoy doing what they do and I have no axe to grind toward them .... but I don't agree with the concept that gearing needs to be tuned around the min/maxers. Some players insist on whatever gear advantage they feel they can carve out... no matter how small.. and that is their choice to make.. but with it comes the associated gearing burden.