I've been very much against the idea of server mergers on this thread (at least until the time EAWare can 100% absolutely no exceptions guarantee the intact transfer of character and guild assets), and even I agree that something needs to be done about the old PvP servers. I never played on Jung Ma, for example, but I've talked to a lot of RP refugees from Jung Ma, and I've heard how dead that server is--to the extent that entire RP guilds voluntarily gave up everything they had to move wholesale to a server (Ebon Hawk, in this case) with a bigger and better RP community. I hate that they felt they had to do that, and I definitely think they deserve help and recompense as a result.

 

At the very least, EAWare needs to mark those servers as Very Low population so any new players don't roll on there, think the whole game is completely dead, and walk away. I think it would be better if new accounts were simply barred from rolling toons on those servers period, simply because of how poor an experience they may receive if they pick the wrong server to start off on. I'd also like to see any remaining players and guilds still on Jung Ma and other old PvP servers get personal CS attention and assistance in moving over guilds and guild assets... given the number of players on those servers are so low compared to all the rest of the active servers, I'd think this would be a more manageable task by far than trying to merge more populated servers together.

One other thing they could do is completely remove the PVP designation from the old PVP servers (they are still listed as such on the website) so that new players don't create toons on them thinking it will be open world PVP Nirvana because they are designated as PVP servers.

Cleaning up chat also has to be a priority before I could fully support mergers since the amount of toxic chat is absolutely tied to population. One on one support of guild moves by CS would also lessen the opposition to mergers as would limiting the number of people in each planetary map instance to a smaller number than current (which appears to be somewhere around 150).

If they merge by coast, 66% of people lose their names.

Some of those people will quit.

So why would they go to all this expense to LOSE SUBS?

Whereas XServer queues might even bring people back.

I could see lag as a potential issue.

 

It might be alright for regional cross-server (East Coast, West Coast, Europe) depending on where the servers are physically in relation to each other. It might even work with the US servers but my concern would be if the european servers were put in the mix, what would the lag be like (to get 24/7 pops you would probably need them as well as even Harb gets light in the middle of the night west coast time).

 

From the midwest I get 50ms to east coast servers and 80 ms to west coast servers. Anyone on the west coast play on the european servers. If so what kind of lag are you seeing. I think people in Australia have said they are getting 200-250 ms with some spikes to the west coast server. Them playing on a european server could be very problematic if their home server was on the west coast. Chat could also be complicated if you mixed french and german players with the english speaking ones, though that is probably not an issue for PVP (I could see it being an issue for OPs).

 

A lot depends on the physical server architecture.

Ah, finally one legit concern over a cross server queue system. And you are correct. The other game I've been playing does NOT include European server in the US que. They are two different queues. I know this because I have a friend in England, and we could not group together until he rolled a toon on one of the US servers.

As far a lag goes, I watch my frame rates and ping rates when I play, on both games, and have not seen an unacceptable ping or frame rate loss while in the group content in the other game. No spike large enough to impact game play, and that was in 25 man raids.

Also, that is the beauty of this solution, when Harbinger's population starts getting light, there are many east coast morning time player starting to get online.

Just because BW couldn't manage cross server qroup queues before doesn't mean they can't do it now. It will likely take some investment of capital to get it done, but I imagine it would take less than buying two mega servers.

Or, even better, fix the game's other problems *cough* gear grind *cough* stuff to do aka content *cough* and all this becomes less of an issue.

This really part of the problem. If I wanted to gear up another toon just through pvp to play on another server, it would take me months to gear up that toon. Pvp gearing is totally broken in the current state.

That would be true if this game was a full fledged MMO. From the start its focus was on the RPG part of MMORPG. Still the majority of the game is RPG. There are MMO elements that a lot of people play but it is still at its core an online RPG (otherwise why would they have spent all that money on voice acting and cinematics).

Go read the roadmap again. How much story stuff do you see in there? I think they realized their mistake.

Yes, the focus during vanilla was the RPG element, and they lost more than half their subscribers in the first three months.

 

They brought some focus back to group content and the game stayed relatively healthy through RotHC and SoR, despite several slips and misses along the way.

 

They tried to focus on story with KotFE. They temporarily hit their highest sub numbers since 3 years before, their numbers finally matched the point where they had dropped to at the 3 months after launch point. Then the numbers promptly dropped within a couple of months, between chapter delays, bad sub rewards, and literally nothing through the entirety of KotFE and KotET could salvage them.

 

It's pretty clear at this point that salvaging the game by catering to story and solo players is not a profitable strategy. Every attempt they've made at that causes them to lose more and more players. Pray they don't make any more attempts, and start focusing on the MMO part alongside the story part.

From what you said above, it sounds like the story players almost saved the game except for a series of mistakes that were made. It seems like people wanted to come back to play story hence the big boost in numbers. I don't disagree that the MMO content is needed but I think saying that it is the saving grace of the game is not the answer either (as some would imply). Your approach of balancing the two is probably warranted but server mergers are directed solely at the MMO side and higher populations actually make it harder for the story players especially on the first few planets where they are most likely to get frustrated and leave.

The people playing the end game content are the most fickle and disgruntled in the whole game (not to mention a lot of gaming the system - unsubbing and then resubbing after all KoTFE chapters were out and then complaining they didn't get the rewards that people who stayed subbed got - the HK-55 bonus chapter is still argued about).

They will quit for just about no reason at all. There has been a massive drop in population as a result of something as simple as end game gearing not to mention imbalance in PVP classes. Right now I think gearing is where it needs to be: story players that don't need the high end stuff still have a chance to get it, people who play all 3 aspects of the game (PVE, PVP, and OPs) are having no problem gearing, PVP has a way to upgrade the gear they get and one of the faster CXP gain systems in the game, and OPs people have guaranteed drops, about the only adjustment that needs to be made is some legacy benefit to reaching rank 300 (maybe just a CXP boost that applies to all characters in the Legacy). It seems like this system was designed to encourage people to play all of the content and not just one piece.

My opposition to server mergers is mainly based on the negative aspects larger population brings. If things like chat toxicity and excessive resource/objective competition could be overcome (along with less painful transfers for those forced to move servers) I would be supportive of getting the group play crowd all that they are wanting in the way of population.

Go read the roadmap again. How much story stuff do you see in there? I think they realized their mistake.

The roadmap caters more to the MMO crowd for two reasons. They have been largely neglected for a long time and their content is generally cheaper to produce (fewer cinematic and voiceovers). More bang for your buck so to speak. We will see how long that lasts as as soon as the MMO crowd have played the new content once or twice, will they threaten to quit again or will they let the other side get some time in the sun.

Go read the roadmap again. How much story stuff do you see in there? I think they realized their mistake.

No, they did not realize their mistake. The mistake was not adding story content, the mistake was they keep going nuts and obsessing on one thing.

Probably the reason for that is they no longer have enough staff to do some of everything in one release.

That all being said, I STILL believe cross-server queues are the far better long-term solution for our woes. Helping ease the transition for the players on the truly dead servers (not just 'all servers not named Harbinger') and marking those servers as very low population would be the immediate short-term solution that could be implemented without overcoming the technical hurdles that allegedly exist when it comes to this engine and cross-server queuing.

Bioware has said cross-server isn't happening too many times to count. It would be the better option, but it hasn't happened in the 5 years of discussing it. I think its safe to assume it won't happen. They have not said server mergers are off of the table, which is why people are having this discussion.

The roadmap caters more to the MMO crowd for two reasons. They have been largely neglected for a long time and their content is generally cheaper to produce (fewer cinematic and voiceovers). More bang for your buck so to speak. We will see how long that lasts as as soon as the MMO crowd have played the new content once or twice, will they threaten to quit again or will they let the other side get some time in the sun.

Um... the solo story player side had over two years of time in the sun. Raiders literally waited two and a half years for a single new ops boss. I think it's about time the endgame content players got their turn in the sun, not the other way around as you stated.

The roadmap caters more to the MMO crowd for two reasons. They have been largely neglected for a long time and their content is generally cheaper to produce (fewer cinematic and voiceovers). More bang for your buck so to speak. We will see how long that lasts as as soon as the MMO crowd have played the new content once or twice, will they threaten to quit again or will they let the other side get some time in the sun.

Historically it's the story crowd that's quit in droves after every story expansion though. Endgame content keeps people grinding and playing. Story has little replay value. Consider that both vanilla swtor and KotFE/ET had worse sub retention than RotHC and SoR, and the primary difference was that the former two are almost entirely story-focused, while the latter two did a good mix of story for novelty plus endgame for longevity.

Bioware has said cross-server isn't happening too many times to count. It would be the better option, but it hasn't happened in the 5 years of discussing it. I think its safe to assume it won't happen. They have not said server mergers are off of the table, which is why people are having this discussion.

They've said in the past they had problems when they tested cross-server queuing, yes. But technical issues CAN be overcome with time, effort, expertise, and money. I'd rather see EAWare make that investment to knock down whatever technical walls were in the way of cross-server queuing in the past, over destroying everything I and so many other players have built up over 5 years just because that's the quick and dirty 'solution'. Especially since said 'solution' would make me and a LOT of other people quit... after all, if EAWare doesn't value our investment in their product to the extent that they will take away everything we've invested in without recompense, why should we continue investing MORE of our time and money into said product?

Um... the solo story player side had over two years of time in the sun. Raiders literally waited two and a half years for a single new ops boss. I think it's about time the endgame content players got their turn in the sun, not the other way around as you stated.

Actually I did say that the MMO crowd deserved attention because they had been neglected for a long time. My statement was regarding what happens after the items on the roadmap are implemented. Reworking of the KOTFE and KOTET storylines to have more variation would be greatly welcomed but would take extensive effort.

Um... the solo story player side had over two years of time in the sun. Raiders literally waited two and a half years for a single new ops boss. I think it's about time the endgame content players got their turn in the sun, not the other way around as you stated.

This is what makes me fear for the things I love about <subject> when the devs here post about a "focus on <subject>."

As a story player, their focus on story resulted in content I haven't been able to stomach taking more than single digit percentages of my characters through, when all content prior was at least started by all alts within the first few days of release.

It has, sadly, made anything they mention as <subject> an item of dread instead of hope.

Historically it's the story crowd that's quit in droves after every story expansion though. Endgame content keeps people grinding and playing. Story has little replay value. Consider that both vanilla swtor and KotFE/ET had worse sub retention than RotHC and SoR, and the primary difference was that the former two are almost entirely story-focused, while the latter two did a good mix of story for novelty plus endgame for longevity.

^^^ This. Story content is great, don't get me wrong... it was the variety of the original vanilla class stories that got me to try out this game in the first place. But if all you have is story, then the game's longevity is severely limited. Think about your favorite single player RPGs... you might play the hell out of them for a while, trying different classes and backgrounds to see the different dialogues and endings... but do you keep playing the same game week after week for years? No, because eventually you've seen all the story there is to see... so you move on to another story. You might come back and replay the game now and then after some time has passed, but that kind of 'come back to for a few weeks every few years' pattern is NOT a playstayle that can sustain a 24/7 MMO.

What you need to keep an MMO populated and funded is replayable content and challenges to overcome, group activities that make every run of the same content at least a little different every time--and even a good portion of the hated grind, to an extent, because if you give everyone what they want immediately people will lose interest. Story is a great component of an MMO, especially as a 'hook' to draw people in to trying a game genre they normally wouldn't touch. But it can't be all or even most of what your MMO is, because then it's not an MMO, and people who want to play an MMO will not stay and keep pumping money into your game long after the story players have moved on.

They've said in the past they had problems when they tested cross-server queuing, yes. But technical issues CAN be overcome with time, effort, expertise, and money. I'd rather see EAWare make that investment to knock down whatever technical walls were in the way of cross-server queuing in the past, over destroying everything me and so many other players have built up over 5 years just because that's the quick and dirty 'solution'. Especially since said 'solution' would make me and a LOT of other people quit... after all, if EAWare doesn't value our investment in their product to the extent that they will take away everything we've invested in without recompense, why should we continue investing MORE of our time and money into said product?

This is really a core issue. People who have been in this game for a long time have invested lots of time money and effort into the game and if mergers were implemented the same way they were the last time, a lot of that would be wiped away. Some people would say that is OK for the good of the game. Is the short term loss (or even theoretical lack of gain) of a few people worth losing a large number of long time subs by rushing to do mergers and getting them wrong? How many new players would we really lose if we took a couple months to get the process right?

I'd have to say that I too would leave the game over a bad transfer experience taking my game experience with me. Right now experience is a huge problem in forming OPS groups, what happens if there is a major exodus of skilled players leaving no one able to or willing to teach the up and coming players (watching a you-tube video of a raid is not the same as having someone help you through it in real time). I am even to the point that if I were forced to move to Shadowlands in a merge and lost the Jedi Covenant server name I might leave. Having played there 5 years I am very attached to it. I am sure there are people on Shadowlands that would feel the same way if the situation were reversed.

^^^ This. Story content is great, don't get me wrong... it was the variety of the original vanilla class stories that got me to try out this game in the first place. But if all you have is story, then the game's longevity is severely limited. Think about your favorite single player RPGs... you might play the hell out of them for a while, trying different classes and backgrounds to see the different dialogues and endings... but do you keep playing the same game week after week for years? No, because eventually you've seen all the story there is to see... so you move on to another story. You might come back and replay the game now and then after some time has passed, but that kind of 'come back to for a few weeks every few years' pattern is NOT a playstayle that can sustain a 24/7 MMO.

 

What you need to keep an MMO populated and funded is replayable content and challenges to overcome, group activities that make every run of the same content at least a little different every time--and even a good portion of the hated grind, to an extent, because if you give everyone what they want immediately people will lose interest. Story is a great component of an MMO, especially as a 'hook' to draw people in to trying a game genre they normally wouldn't touch. But it can't be all or even most of what your MMO is, because then it's not an MMO, and people who want to play an MMO will not stay and keep pumping money into your game long after the story players have moved on.

I guess that is where we are different and there is nothing wrong with that. I enjoy replaying the stories multiple times with different variations of characters trying out different disciplines and styles. For me the story content was more than enough to keep me content for 5 years. I wish as much attention had been paid to the KoTFE and KoTET storylines as was to the originals. I would love to replay them over and over if each class story was slightly different. Maybe because I like the story so much I am more sensitive to the needs/desires of story players. I do however, wholeheartedly respect group players desires to have the content they want as well. I just don't like there having to be a choice made on which to support.

People would not have to lose names if the game took into account Legacy names too. Unless someone is very unfortunate enough to have the same First AND Legacy name!?

The problem with this is there is absolutely no linkage in game at this point for firstname+lastname.

Nor is it needed since they modified naming conventions and now allow a space in your name. Over the last year, I have renamed all my older character with Name[space]Legacy_name on my account, and turned off showing legacy name. Any server merge (or transfer) that triggers a rename allows the player to immediately change the name to -----> prior-name[space]Legacy-name free of charge.

Sorry, your analogy is wrong. If I am going to restaurant I will choose the one with the less people. (1) Faster service (2) Better service as they are not jumping all over the place

I wouldn't go out for dinner with you that is such a bad way to look at things in the food industry if a place is dead and isn't showing life signs of good business that means either the food is bad and the quality also might be below par if a place is busy it's busy for a reason the quality and service is there for all to enjoy.

I wouldn't go out for dinner with you that is such a bad way to look at things in the food industry if a place is dead and isn't showing life signs of good business that means either the food is bad and the quality also might be below par if a place is busy it's busy for a reason the quality and service is there for all to enjoy.

There could be other reasons that particular restaurant is slow. I been in some slow restaurants where the service is awesome and the food is awesome and busy restaurant where the service is horrible and the food is horrible so being slow may not be due to the service or quality. Could also be the time of day.

#7. There would be no distribution of servers/communities. All servers are in the cross server queue, east coast, west coast, RP, PVP, PVE, and so on. Yet when you leave the OPS, PVP, GS, World boss, Uprising, etc.. you go right back to the lovely community you've grown to love and cherish.

This would quite obviously help with quece times for people who presently are having long queces. The only problem I can see that might be an issue is this wouldn't allow you to form groups to quece together [premades] because you wouldn't be able to communicate between servers in order to coordinate because you can't tell who's online on a different server. U could still quece with people from your own server of course. Thing is though if some people are on servers with low populations [from which one can presume if there were enough people to make premades on your own server, you probably wouldn't be having long queces.

Lastly, while this wouldn't be a reason to not contend the idea of cross server queces, I could easily see PVP turning into server wars. Along similar lines, I could also see those server's with larger populations would have an easier time of making premades from their own servers while low population servers would likely not be able to counter them with their own premades a great amount of the time.

Just something to consider in trying run with the idea realistically as perhaps steps could be taken to mitigate such imbalances between servers.

Even still, server wars would be inevitable [ which could in some ways maybe be fun actually heh if the toxicity wasn't there.].

Historically it's the story crowd that's quit in droves after every story expansion though. Endgame content keeps people grinding and playing. Story has little replay value. Consider that both vanilla swtor and KotFE/ET had worse sub retention than RotHC and SoR, and the primary difference was that the former two are almost entirely story-focused, while the latter two did a good mix of story for novelty plus endgame for longevity.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on that. The story is what keeps people around. I love the story and have endured because of it. I don't raid or pvp, I'm here strictly for story and strongholds. I'm a proud alt-holic and there are many like me, with tons of toons they've made just to enjoy the story and play dress up with them.

Endgame obviously doesn't keep people, because once they've achieved their gear for all their toons, they get bored and move on. Story people are the ones that stick with it and play on through thick and thin.

If this game was all about raids and pvp only, I would have nothing to do.

There could be other reasons that particular restaurant is slow. I been in some slow restaurants where the service is awesome and the food is awesome and busy restaurant where the service is horrible and the food is horrible so being slow may not be due to the service or quality. Could also be the time of day.

I agree and another reason is that people are fickle...if there is a new place everyone flocks to that and it's over run for the first while, while perfectly amazing restaurants are quieter because everyone is trying the FOtM. I hate being kept waiting, I hate being shuttled to the bar to 'wait' for a table. When I enter a restaurant I expect to be seated within a few minutes and my orders taken moments after that.

Endgame obviously doesn't keep people, because once they've achieved their gear for all their toons, they get bored and move on. Story people are the ones that stick with it and play on through thick and thin.

 

If this game was all about raids and pvp only, I would have nothing to do.

I was about to point this very thing out. The raider and pvp community is the most vocal but they are not the population of the game that keeps the lights on. It is the casuals that keep the lights on and if they do not want to move servers they should not be forced to move. Mega servers and server merges only help raiders and pvpers nobody else is helped with it. If those groups want to move so bad there is nothing stopping them from doing it now. 90 cc per toon is not that much. I have not seen any arguments for why there needs to be server merges beyond the crying from raiders and pvpers. Somebody please give me a good reason why I as a casual alt aholic should want a mega server or any server mergers? Yes I group for flashpoints, do pvp from time to time (usually only long enough to get the daily done and when the weekly is done I am done), and occasionally help in a raid when my guild asks. I do not see any reason for somebody like me to want a server merge or a mega server. If you want high populations nothing from stopping you from going to the Harbinger and enjoying their constant server issues.

Endgame obviously doesn't keep people, because once they've achieved their gear for all their toons, they get bored and move on. Story people are the ones that stick with it and play on through thick and thin.

Gear itself is not the primary goal of PVE and PVP.

The reason population is down is because they spent 2 years catering to story only players, and producing content with almost no replay value. Most players here just for story left after finishing the chapters. The people that play the story on repeat are just as much a minority as nightmare raiders and ranked pvpers.