Semantics strawman on your part. Lots of companies do not actually own their sever farms (regardless of size) because they lease them from companies that specialize in providing server virtualization for to other companies.

 

The relative cost to a company on a cash flow basis is about the same, but they benefit in the long run (due to tax law and financial compliance and reporting) because they do not need to capitalize the servers and depreciate them.

The cost difference in this case is larger initial layout and a lower on going cost vs higher ongoing cost and savings on tax.

If they physically do not have the capital invested here and its leased, wouldn't it make more sense to pull out now before they incur additional cost with a renew of the lease?

If they physically do not have the capital invested here and its leased, wouldn't it make more sense to pull out now before they incur additional cost with a renew of the lease?

The contract is probably on the verge of needing renewal so they are taking this opportunity to pack up shop.

Sign the petition to save APAC!

 

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/keep-apac-servers-for-swtor-available-and-merge-them-into-1.html

PETITION NOW AT 715 signatures

KEEP THE FAITH... VOTE TO MERGE INTO 1 APAC SERVER

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/...em-into-1.html

PETITION NOW AT 715 signatures

 

KEEP THE FAITH... VOTE TO MERGE INTO 1 APAC SERVER

 

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/...em-into-1.html

Why?? The decision has already been made and what your petition is asking for won't fix the problems.. Merging all three servers into 1 will not fix the population issues.. So the APAC server are being merged with North American servers.. Which will fix the population issues..

Just saying..

Hey everyone,

 

I have an update for you on our long term plans for the APAC servers. Before I do that though I want to let you know up front that we still have quite a bit of work to do to make this happen so I cannot provide any timeframes for you today.

 

We know that when we asked you, the community, for your opinions on what we should do, we received quite a variety of suggested solutions. Some people wanted to be able to transfer to higher populated North American servers, some suggested merging the three existing APAC servers into one large APAC server, and then there were a host of other ideas as well. However, the one common theme from the suggestions, which we heard clearly, is that everyone wants the opportunity to play on higher populated servers. With this in mind, we have evaluated all of the options and determined that the best solution, that will offer the best long term play experience, is to merge the APAC servers with higher populated North American servers.

 

Getting to the point of being able to merge the servers is going to be a multistep process. First off we need to update our Free Character Transfer System to include the game changes that we have made recently along with the upcoming changes in Game Update 2.0 and the Digital Expansion: Rise of the Hutt Cartel. We will then offer Free Character Transfers to anyone currently playing on an APAC server to a North American server of the same gameplay type, specifically:

• Mastar Dar’Nala (PvP) will transfer to The Bastion (PvP)
  
• Gav Daragon (RP-PvE) will transfer to Begeren Colony (RP-PvE)
  
• Dalborra (PvE) will transfer to The Harbinger (PvE)
  

We will also need to update our server merge technology at which point we will ultimately merge each of the APAC servers into the corresponding North American servers as indicated above. We are moving as quickly as we can to make this happen, but we want to make sure this is a smooth transition, so it will take some time.

 

Why did we decide not to merge the three APAC servers into one large APAC server? We decided this for two main reasons. 1. The issue in doing this is that two play-styles (PvE, PvE-RP, or PvP) would need to sacrifice their desired play-style in order to have one server with a higher population. We feel that it is important that each player is allowed to continue to play SWTOR in their preferred play-style. Therefore, accommodating all the existing play-styles was a primary goal. By allowing you to move to a NA West server, you will be able to keep your play-style. 2. The move to North American servers better delivers on our ultimate goal of providing the best play experience, with the most possible players, long term.

 

I will continue to provide updates as soon as I have them. I know the next big question will be “when” and as soon as I have that information to release, I will do so. Thank you for your continued patience on this. I know it took longer than you would have liked but I intend to continue to give you information as soon as I can!

 

-eric

sup thought id come help ease the transition , this software: http://www.battleping.com/setup.php godsend, reduces your ping to US servers check out the trial, if you dont believe me

Did nothing for me, 175ms ping with and without, thx though

Anyway, having never played WoW I'm thinking of checking Fantasy SWTOR (get it, contrapositive of Space WoW). I was already looking at taking a break until ROTHC before this announcement was made and this kinda clinched it.

You should have done that 3-4 years ago when that game was still worth playing. Used to be awesome but these days it sucks.

Not even 1,000 signatures on the petition yet. Just give it up.

 

I levelled a Shadow over the double xp weekend and was lucky to see five people on the later planets like Quesh and Voss and this was on Dalborra. Other levelling planets from about Alderaan were lucky to have 30 people.

 

So if Dalborra had 5 on the later planets then the other two servers would have less thus a merge wouldn't do anything.

 

Looking forward to moving to play with our US friends.

 

I hope they move us before 2.0. The only reason I say this is because I'd like a bit of contingency time to be considered if something stuffs up with the move and my RotHC experience is hindered/delayed in someway because of a miss-transferred character.

 

So maintenance this Tuesday would be nice. Thanks!

I don't agree with your attitude of giving up, though I've tried the American servers I'm still against losing our own, but your idea of on Tuesday doesn't seem plausible given the announcement time and the fact a server merge will take a little more forethought. Already Eric Musco said they're 'working on the tech.' In other words, they don't have it.

EULA Terms have been posted; things are imposed 30 days after announcement or later. Bioware could argue they haven't even announced it yet if they don't meet the deadline, given they're only announcement is in a forum. Not hugely official yet. Knowing Bioware's track record, though, it could be tomorrow, or, more likely, within a month or a few months.

Did nothing for me, 175ms ping with and without, thx though

Same thing here, it did nothing for me.

I don't agree with your attitude of giving up, though I've tried the American servers I'm still against losing our own, but your idea of on Tuesday doesn't seem plausible given the announcement time and the fact a server merge will take a little more forethought. Already Eric Musco said they're 'working on the tech.' In other words, they don't have it.

 

EULA Terms have been posted; things are imposed 30 days after announcement or later. Bioware could argue they haven't even announced it yet if they don't meet the deadline, given they're only announcement is in a forum. Not hugely official yet. Knowing Bioware's track record, though, it could be tomorrow, or, more likely, within a month or a few months.

The 30 days only applies to force transfers. BW can allow voluntary transfers at any time.

Did nothing for me, 175ms ping with and without, thx though

From memory, the jump across the Pacific from the east coast of Australia to the US is around 150ms, so if you've got 175ms that's really good in Australia. From WA (where I am) there's another approx 50ms to get from the west coast to east coast. I'm not sure what it is for NZ to the US, but I'd guess it would be around 100ms. That's before we add in the jumps between ISPs on either side.

Not much we can do about that Pacific ocean bit, since there's only one route, other than build our own high speed gaming link through the centre of the Earth. At that point it would probably be cheaper to buy EA and make them keep the APAC servers.

Is there any updated info on name collisions? I see the person on Harbinger with my name is only L22, while I am L50 with 40 days of game time. It would be insane if I have to lose my name to that person.

Well I went and made a dummy character with my name seriously who in the harbinger can have a name such as safasafin ow wait they cant't because I made a character with that name Id advise everybody to do the same if you still can.

sup thought id come help ease the transition , this software: http://www.battleping.com/setup.php godsend, reduces your ping to US servers check out the trial, if you dont believe me

Stop using windows vista and buy windows 7!

Alt codes are your friends people

I don't like using alt codes, for one they can confuse, and for two if you cant get a name without using them why steal someone elses...

They beat you to it, be more creative, and yes I stand to loose some of mine

Just IMO!

I don't like using alt codes, for one they can confuse, and for two if you cant get a name without using them why steal someone elses...

 

They beat you to it, be more creative, and yes I stand to loose some of mine

 

Just IMO!

Well,

1) if you've been playing with the name since launch, or since the launch of APAC servers, maybe they didn't actually beat you to the name. And if you've been playing under that name for so long, maybe you're attached to it, your guildies all know you by it, and so on.

2) Why can't the galaxy have two people named John? Even if one of them, for silly software reasons, has to be spelled Jöhn?

3) I f you don't like alt-codes, by all means avoid and eschew them. But they are a good solution for people who want to keep a name that they may have put a bit of thought into, and want to preserve, even as we are all sent to the Colonies (well, those of us who roleplay are being sent to a Colony, anyhow ... )

EULA Terms have been posted; things are imposed 30 days after announcement or later. Bioware could argue they haven't even announced it yet if they don't meet the deadline, given they're only announcement is in a forum. Not hugely official yet. Knowing Bioware's track record, though, it could be tomorrow, or, more likely, within a month or a few months.

The confusion may be because there appears to be a title card that I had never seen before making a character to test the lag issue on Beregin Colony. After logging out of the character, it poped up a near full screen blue notice detailing the right to force mergers with minimal notice from low pop servers to high pop servers and how if this happens they should be redirected from thier normal server to the characters new location and what the x beside a name means (rename your toon).

As I said this was something I had never seen on the APAC servers and could be cause for confusion to players used to it arguing over terms and conditions.

Tragically while I still disagree with the manner and way they are demolishing the servers, dispersing the community, and screwing us over, I did find the US server to be slightly better in play experiance to doing the same material (smoke effects, and the halls of the jedi temple especially) compared to Dalbora making a character for next sunday or even what I had issues with in my original experiances with US servers a year ago.

That said, my PVP experiance with the lag was noticably inhibited.

Semantics strawman on your part. Lots of companies do not actually own their sever farms (regardless of size) because they lease them from companies that specialize in providing server virtualization for to other companies.

 

The relative cost to a company on a cash flow basis is about the same, but they benefit in the long run (due to tax law and financial compliance and reporting) because they do not need to capitalize the servers and depreciate them.

I'd argue that the straw man was on my part bringing it up at all. Really even if the server is EA owned, privately leased, or leased as part of some larger deal between the owner and EA directly, that wouldn't nessicate the cost being cheap.

It is just as likely in any case of it being cheaper if EA owned the APAC server hardware, that the company actually charged the lease more than normal to gouge back gross profits before splitting net profits with Lucas Arts.

We can never know so that is a useless arguement.

I should have tried to explain my observations of how EA is mishandling this by using a more basic descriptions.

The game was released to Australia late and never sold to the desired numbers (low advertising didn't help) so they cut all advertising and signed off on not renewing the servers after a year. In NA and EU they instead kept advertising, made super servers, bringing in free play (level 15) and then free 2 play and advertising those features. Those made the desired profits that EA got to name SWTOR as a big earner to thier investors.

But they kept the same policy going for APAC, the same no advertising and close us down intent that has been in play for 10 months now.

To me this is akin to pulling in part of your sail to save on work load when the wind was not blowing, and now it is blowing, leaving it unfurled as dead weight.

The game is made, and profit comes from player base, and EA has gone out of thier way to choke off the player base of this region. An astounding mishandling of one of historys biggest IPs, especially with the marketing juggernaut of Disney about to push that IP back into cinemas.

Why?? The decision has already been made and what your petition is asking for won't fix the problems.. Merging all three servers into 1 will not fix the population issues.. So the APAC server are being merged with North American servers.. Which will fix the population issues..

 

Just saying..

Never go down without fighting... Would you just give up and die if you had a disease or would you fight to stay alive... if you give up without trying you deserve to lose... if you fight and lose, at least you gave it a go.... a bit like playing a remade PVP team... you probably won't win... but there is "still" the possibility that you could... I choose to be optimistic and I know other are too...

KEEP THE FAITH... VOTE TO MERGE INTO 1 APAC SERVER

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/keep-apac-servers-for-swtor-available-and-merge-them-into-1.html

Please listen to your subscribers and merge the APAC servers into one server. I am happy playing PVP , PVE or RP as long as the latency stays low. Moving to a US based server will see me, my family and my friends all abandon this game and go over to your competition.

PLEASE LISTEN TO ALL THESE POSTS SAYING DON'T MERGE APAC WITH THE US SERVERS!

Never go down without fighting... Would you just give up and die if you had a disease or would you fight to stay alive... if you give up without trying you deserve to lose... if you fight and lose, at least you gave it a go.... a bit like playing a remade PVP team... you probably won't win... but there is "still" the possibility that you could... I choose to be optimistic and I know other are too...

 

KEEP THE FAITH... VOTE TO MERGE INTO 1 APAC SERVER

 

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/keep-apac-servers-for-swtor-available-and-merge-them-into-1.html

I have the impression that you are taking things far to seriously here,a man fight for his social or political rights,but not for a videogame,guys come on this is a video game we are talking about! Not the civil war in Siria

some of you guys are crossing the line between reality and a wolrd of imagination.

about the APAC issue,i was happier if they allowed to give us the option to transfer to a US or EU server,but this won't happen.