Character Transfers Part 2

[Koalachan]

Kinda my point, if you are going to give people the option to move at first, then force moves, why not let people move from any origin server to any destination server. Then if you had chars on 2 different origin servers you could at least move them both to the same destination server.

In my case, all my chars were on Rakata Mind Prison, the only option I had was The Bastion. If I have to move all my chars there anyway, and the desire result from Bioware was to get all chars on Rakata Mind Prison to The Bastion, just merge the damn servers, not this you can move if you want now, but were gonna move you later anyway, you have no choice other than when that move takes place.

@Roxx

If they wanted to stagger it, they could have done it internally. Or they could have left the bigger servers alone at first. Merge the small servers, then do transfers. Something that isn't as stupid as, move now, move next week or we'll force you to move in a month.

They probably weren't fully convinced that they would do full mergers at that time. They had said that they were considering several possibilities, and that the transfers were just the first step. I said before that they might of just been considering shutting down the origin servers, but there might of been too many people too stubborn to move.

[Lathais]

They probably weren't fully convinced that they would do full mergers at that time. They had said that they were considering several possibilities, and that the transfers were just the first step. I said before that they might of just been considering shutting down the origin servers, but there might of been too many people too stubborn to move.

and they also should have known, that once they opened up some transfers, there wouldn't be enough people left to sustain a server. They decided to let people transfer [I]off[I] low pop servers. If even a few went, that does more harm then good and you are going to have to do something. If instead, they had offered free transfers from the higher pop to the lower pop, then I could understand what they are doing, but once you start letting people tranfer off a lower pop server, that's the beginning of the end for that server. No other solutions really, it's gonna get merged or closed at some point.

In the end, it was pretty obvious they had too many servers and were gonna have to close some. What other possibilities are there? Too many servers, not enough players = some servers gotta close. The only other possibility would have been to offer free transfers off the full/high servers to distribute those players to the lower pop servers. However, I do not think most people on the higher pop servers would want to move.

Yes, I agree, there will be people to stubborn to move, that's the major reason I think going voluntary first, then forcing was a dumb move. They should have just merged and been done instead of dragging it out.

[Canderous1]

and they also should have known, that once they opened up some transfers, there wouldn't be enough people left to sustain a server

if i was a betting man, id bet that they did know, and were hoping everyone else would realize that and move on their own.

[Koalachan]

and they also should have known, that once they opened up some transfers, there wouldn't be enough people left to sustain a server. They decided to let people transfer [I]off[I] low pop servers. If even a few went, that does more harm then good and you are going to have to do something. If instead, they had offered free transfers from the higher pop to the lower pop, then I could understand what they are doing, but once you start letting people tranfer off a lower pop server, that's the beginning of the end for that server. No other solutions really, it's gonna get merged or closed at some point.

In the end, it was pretty obvious they had too many servers and were gonna have to close some. What other possibilities are there? Too many servers, not enough players = some servers gotta close. The only other possibility would have been to offer free transfers off the full/high servers to distribute those players to the lower pop servers. However, I do not think most people on the higher pop servers would want to move.

Yes, I agree, there will be people to stubborn to move, that's the major reason I think going voluntary first, then forcing was a dumb move. They should have just merged and been done instead of dragging it out.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. What I meant was there were more people NOT transferring than they planned, meaning they thought pretty much everyone would take the chance to play with more people, then they could just shut down the dead servers being nobody played on them anymore.

---------- Post added 2012-07-12 at 12:08 PM ----------

if i was a betting man, id bet that they did know, and were hoping everyone else would realize that and move on their own.

This guy got what I was saying.

[Clattuc]

Cool, come back and tell us how much you care about the server you spent all of 35 levels on.

Hey now I was just testing that sig maker thingy from the other thread with a random character. I think I'm going to make my own instead.

Kinda my point, if you are going to give people the option to move at first, then force moves, why not let people move from any origin server to any destination server. Then if you had chars on 2 different origin servers you could at least move them both to the same destination server.

That's exactly what they should have done, but I don't think they had the tech to do it. All their initial character copies were done by hand, and my guess is that someone wrote a hack that could be compiled for each origin server, with the destination hard coded, and then launched on demand per character from the web. The full UI and flexible code to select your destination will wait for paid transfers, if they ever see the light of day.

I get the impression that all this was initially done so that an imagined minority of players whining about empty servers could STFU. Their early reference to "balancing the servers" is telling. What they may not have realized is what some of us have seen before: that the moment you open a transfer hole, the air is sucked out of the airlock. And also that, MMO players being the savages we are, you can never shut up the complainers. Of course it's not enough to make it so that *I* can play on a server that's as busy as I like. You also have to shut down the servers I left! There's always something new to hate.

What happens from here on out is: Players continue to bleed away as we head towards that 300-350k range. The small farm of final servers will be Light to Standard most of the time except Heavy at peak times, with one or two Very Heavy. People will start asking for merges again, but won't get them. Paid transfers will hopefully appear and help with that. Devs will continue to turn over, fresh blood will produce nice new content, and the numbers will stabilize. They may try F2P and it will make a difference, but not a huge difference. The game will stay alive (and fun!) until LEC license renewal, at which point if there's another game ready to go it will be shuttered, otherwise renewed.

Now look at this red light... ((FLASH))

[Lathais]

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. What I meant was there were more people NOT transferring than they planned, meaning they thought pretty much everyone would take the chance to play with more people, then they could just shut down the dead servers being nobody played on them anymore.

---------- Post added 2012-07-12 at 12:08 PM ----------



This guy got what I was saying.

I got what you were saying too, however, why do they continue to assume they know what players will do? Even if they were right, and wanted all the players to move themselves, and then shut down the servers, why make it harder on the player? Why make the the player go out of his/her way to log onto the website and transfer themselves? Why not just do it and be done with it all at once?

[Clattuc]

I got what you were saying too, however, why do they continue to assume they know what players will do? Even if they were right, and wanted all the players to move themselves, and then shut down the servers, why make it harder on the player? Why make the the player go out of his/her way to log onto the website and transfer themselves? Why not just do it and be done with it all at once?

They don't really know these things because it's their first MMO. They think they know these things because they're BioWare. That's about it.

[Forsedar]

I got what you were saying too, however, why do they continue to assume they know what players will do? Even if they were right, and wanted all the players to move themselves, and then shut down the servers, why make it harder on the player? Why make the the player go out of his/her way to log onto the website and transfer themselves? Why not just do it and be done with it all at once?

To my knowledge, all of the transfers were handled manually. I do not believe they had a system set up that would transfer everyone at once. If you wanted to leave- you had the option. Of course this is purely speculative, but I do remember something being said about that.

In their favor, it took only a minute to get on the site and transfer your character. Just keep in mind that PR played a big part in this. If they [Bioware] started transferring everyone around while shutting down servers, people would start screaming the sky is falling. Hearing 'server shutdowns' after the subscriber loss wouldn't have been pretty.

[Lathais]

To my knowledge, all of the transfers were handled manually. I do not believe they had a system set up that would transfer everyone at once. If you wanted to leave- you had the option. Of course this is purely speculative, but I do remember something being said about that.

In their favor, it took only a minute to get on the site and transfer your character. Just keep in mind that PR played a big part in this. If they [Bioware] started transferring everyone around while shutting down servers, people would start screaming the sky is falling. Hearing 'server shutdowns' after the subscriber loss wouldn't have been pretty.

The only manual transfers were when they first put up the PTR and they manually transferred to guilds that applied. After that they finished working on their tool that allowed the Oceanic Transfers and it was an automated process via the website from there. So no, it is not a manual transfer. It is an automated system. Really, how much harder would it have been to write a short script that applied the transfer process to one char after another until all were transferred and do it during an extended maintenance.

The whole point though, that people seem to be missing, is in the end, they want to close the origin servers. The Origin servers are now locked and they have said they are going to move the last over themselves anyway. Why not just do that in the first place instead of dragging it out? Why make any amount of the players do anything if you are just going to do it all in the end anyway?

[Clattuc]

The whole point though, that people seem to be missing, is in the end, they want to close the origin servers. The Origin servers are now locked and they have said they are going to move the last over themselves anyway. Why not just do that in the first place instead of dragging it out? Why make any amount of the players do anything if you are just going to do it all in the end anyway?

Two reasons:

1. Dribbling it out over a period of weeks results in a much lighter average load on customer service.
2. Moving it gradually meant that they could suspend transfers if things were messing up or the destination servers were dying.

A third effect (probably not really a reason) is that active players win in origin/origin name collisions. If two origin servers have the name Ionella, one of who plays every day and the other hasn't logged in since February, it would be a shame to award the name to the dormant character.

PS As I have said before, NOW they are resigned to closing the origin servers. I don't think that was their original intention, not all of them anyway, despite the standard displays of server-hate from players in a shrinking game. But they're stuck with it now, and so are we. The "good" news is that the destination servers will continue to shrink, so there will still be breathing room.

[Lathais]

Two reasons:

1. Dribbling it out over a period of weeks results in a much lighter average load on customer service.
2. Moving it gradually meant that they could suspend transfers if things were messing up or the destination servers were dying.

A third effect (probably not really a reason) is that active players win in origin/origin name collisions. If two origin servers have the name Ionella, one of who plays every day and the other hasn't logged in since February, it would be a shame to award the name to the dormant character.

PS As I have said before, NOW they are resigned to closing the origin servers. I don't think that was their original intention, not all of them anyway, despite the standard displays of server-hate from players in a shrinking game. But they're stuck with it now, and so are we. The "good" news is that the destination servers will continue to shrink, so there will still be breathing room.

1. CS has nothing to do with it. You're char was transferred, it's done, unless you are a whiny brat you don't need to get CS involved at all. I didn't upon transferring my 8 toons to a new server. What does CS have to do with it at all?

2. Back-up the servers, transfer everyone. If something goes wrong, extend maintenance, fix the problem, go again.

3. Other games that do transfers or have done mergers handled this. Pretty easy, move the data, when the toon goes to log in, check to see if name is taken, if it isn't, you keep your name, if it is, force re-name from there. This way, the active player, whoever logs in first, gets the name.\

PS as I said before, it was a forgone conclusion as soon as they opened up transfers off lower pop servers. If it was not their original intention, they are stupider than I thought.

---------- Post added 2012-07-13 at 12:40 PM ----------

I just want to add, I am not totally unhappy with the fact that they are doing transfers. It's great, it needed to be done. I am just saying, IMO, it was handled poorly and could have been managed a lot better. Like a lot of things BW does with the game. It is just their inexperience showing. They take too long to make decisions and get things done. I still think the game, despite my friends being more upset at it than me, has a lot of potential. I defend the game with friends and people in other games a lot more than I bash it. The only thing I am disappointed with is that they show over and over again that they really have no idea what they are doing, they end up back-pedalling and getting it right eventually, but they could have just taken a little time to look at how other games are doing things and instead of trying to completely re-invent the wheel, go with what was already proven to work. It's not like the game is drastically different from the other options on the market. It has a couple added neat features(legacy) and a different theme. The game has a lot of potential, and once they get their shit together it will probably be great. Sadly, for the MMO gamers of today though, that may be too little too late. However, I still have enough interest to come back and check up on it once in a while, though every time I do, I see another situation that just could have been handled better, with less work on the player.

[Clattuc]

What I meant about Customer Service is this. There were many (many) thousands of players on the lower pop servers before transfers were opened. If they had just batch moved everyone overnight so that a sizable chunk of the player population woke up the next day on Server X with a possibly different name etc, chaos would have reigned supreme and EA/BW would have had a major black eye. The CS banks would have been swamped. As it is, people can transfer when they're ready.

When SOE merged Galaxies servers, they actually did it better because they had an in-game UI for the transfer (I begged BW to do the same thing but no dice). For months, you could choose your moment to transfer. Even after their origin servers were closed, you didn't actually move until you tried to log in later and received the transfer UI in the game client.

Something I've noticed about MMO players is that they're very keen on making changes for vast slabs of other players, like Cecil B. DeMille directing swarms of Biblical extras. Close all those servers - move all those people - make these vast adjustments, and anyone who makes a peep is a whiner. But those things are very hard on customer service. Sometimes the slower way is the better way.