Regarding the alleged SW TOR low population issue

[SirRobin]

The servers are listed alphabetically- Vulkar Highway, being the last pvp server on the list- is definitely not at the HIGH end of the population. We also have a bad ratio of emp to rep.

True, that would cause you to probably get the short end of the stick with attracting new players.

[RoninaThorstone]

So after 14 pages I think we have a solution

Reroll on heavy/standard servers.

you can't wait for bioware to fix it.

you can't just wish they had done it better.

Just reroll.

[Gigikent]

So after 14 pages I think we have a solution

Reroll on heavy/standard servers.

you can't wait for bioware to fix it.

you can't just wish they had done it better.

Just reroll.

I am afraid it was the only option for me and my entire guild at this point. It was either this or leave the game. A few good players unfortunately left it, others rolled on ToFN, got ourselves to 50 there and we have basically restarted the game. It is a shitty compromise, I know, we accepted it and that was that. Ofc we wish BW would have done something different, and I will always blame them for it, but we do like the game enough still to do it. It might not be for everyone, this choice, and I totally understand that.

[Deleted]

I am afraid it was the only option for me and my entire guild at this point. It was either this or leave the game. A few good players unfortunately left it, others rolled on ToFN, got ourselves to 50 there and we have basically restarted the game. It is a shitty compromise, I know, we accepted it and that was that. Ofc we wish BW would have done something different, and I will always blame them for it, but we do like the game enough still to do it. It might not be for everyone, this choice, and I totally understand that.

Unfortunately so, they have to get this sorted after 1.2 as this is what may eventually kill it, its all well an good if you have 1.7 million subs but spreading them about on so many servers doesn't help much

[SirRobin]

Unfortunately so, they have to get this sorted after 1.2 as this is what may eventually kill it, its all well an good if you have 1.7 million subs but spreading them about on so many servers doesn't help much

Personally I don't think server population issues will "kill" this game. In my opinion of course, under populated servers are merely a symptom of much bigger problems. If John's comments are accurate, and TOR really did "plateau" before it was even two months old, it would seem that the market's patience for resolving perceived issues with a product can now be measured in weeks.

Is that a good thing? Probably not. Is that our problem? Nope. No one held a gun to BioWare's heads or kidnapped their kittens, forcing them to make another Star Wars massively multiplayer online pay-to-play game. Its a very competitive market and it became EA's biggest development project ever, according to their own CFO. So its hardly like they didn't have enough time, talent, and money involved.

BioWare gave it their best shot and, again in my opinion, the result is well worth the purchase price. However, due to design decisions they made during development, for me and apparently a significant number of others, it doesn't stay entertaining enough to keep paying to keep playing. I also don't recall any "patch" saving a game before and so I just don't see any reason to suspect 1.2 will change that record.

[Deleted]

BW don't want to merge servers because that would look terrible and result in massive subscriber losses.

It's a no-win situation for them...

[RoninaThorstone]

BW don't want to merge servers because that would look terrible and result in massive subscriber losses.

It's a no-win situation for them...

I'd rather they have a black eye then a dead game.

(I think they would too)

[Redblade]

BW don't want to merge servers because that would look terrible and result in massive subscriber losses.

It's a no-win situation for them...

You know this for a fact? Like massive subscriber loss due to making the game better for everyone involved, really?

Personally I'd guess it has more to do with the character transfer not being done yet.

[SirRobin]

You know this for a fact? Like massive subscriber loss due to making the game better for everyone involved, really?

Personally I'd guess it has more to do with the character transfer not being done yet.

Personally I think that the number of currently paying customers which are upset about being on a lightly populated server, and might cancel their subscription over it, is probably significantly less than than the number of people "on the fence" about whether or not to try TOR in the first place. So merging servers might send the wrong signal to those on the fence who do not know the context of the situation because they were not following TOR that closely to begin with.

Basically BioWare, at this time, could lose more money by merging servers than by not merging servers.

[Redblade]

Personally I think that the number of currently paying customers which are upset about being on a lightly populated server, and might cancel their subscription over it, is probably significantly less than than the number of people "on the fence" about whether or not to try TOR in the first place. So merging servers might send the wrong signal to those on the fence who do not know the context of the situation because they were not following TOR that closely to begin with.

Basically BioWare, at this time, could lose more money by merging servers than by not merging servers.

You are going by the assumption that everyone on the fence would read up on things like that where as the people on low pop servers are aware by default. Either way I doubt all the people on the fence would all be so shallow that server mergers would make them not try it, one could even assume that some of the people on the fence are that due to the low pop issue and as such would approve of such a change.

There won't be any mergers before the transfer system is done, at that point it won't matter as they will most likely give a window for free transfers to sort population anyway and as such mergers or no merger makes little to no difference to anyone.

[SirRobin]

You are going by the assumption that everyone on the fence would read up on things like that where as the people on low pop servers are aware by default. Either way I doubt all the people on the fence would all be so shallow that server mergers would make them not try it, one could even assume that some of the people on the fence are that due to the low pop issue and as such would approve of such a change.

There won't be any mergers before the transfer system is done, at that point it won't matter as they will most likely give a window for free transfers to sort population anyway and as such mergers or no merger makes little to no difference to anyone.

I'm pondering the relative numbers involved. The trials and free weekends are aimed at the folks who didn't care enough about this game to buy it in the first place. So, especially at twenty plus gigabytes, its not like deciding to download is a foregone conclusion by any means. Compare that to the number of current customers that are not only unhappy about being on a low population server. But also unhappy enough that they might cancel instead of reroll?

I just don't see the latter being anywhere close to the former, numbers wise. It would be risky for BioWare to do anything that might be interpreted as a "bad sign" among those, beyond its community, who might also decide to take part in the trial or one of the free weekends. If I recall there was mention that there were technical hurdles to overcome regarding server transfers but that claim just doesn't hold up to even a cursory examination.

Mythic, part of BioWare for a couple of years now, has plenty of experience with transfers, merging entire servers, and even cloning them. So its not like they don't have the know how. Seriously, they could assign guild rosters to particular servers before launch but can't move anyone afterwards? Please... This is the first time that I recall a developer trying to use "technical hurdles" as an excuse for not allowing server transfers.

Not merging servers nor making transfers available, and risk losing a relatively small percentage of their current customers, is a lot less riskier to BioWare's bottom line than doing anything that might discourage potential customers from trying, and hopefully then buying, The Old Republic to begin with.

[Chuwero]

None of us here know if it is a technical hurdle or a conspiracy to protect subscriber numbers behind the lack of transfer. I lean towards technical hurdles based on the legacy system - there is no precedent for server-based advancement in a Bioware, Mythic, or any other MMO that I'm aware of. The easy answer to a technical hurdle from the legacy system would be server transfers resulting in legacy reset if you don't have characters on the server or merging into the existing legacy if you do. Of course, who among us knows how easy stripping the legacy out of a character and merging it into an established legacy actually is? There's always the possibility that a straight copy-paste is easy, as evidenced by the guild transfers to the PTS, but the more precision transfers are not because different legacies don't combine well. If there is a technical hurdle in stripping a legacy from a character then adding it to another, would that be enough to delay all server transfers... even the ones which don't require legacy-combination? I think so. There is already enough non-constructive negative feedback about incomplete systems in SW:ToR. Releasing a character transfer system that was only available for some of the player base would only make it worse, sadly for those who would take 50% over 0%.

[Redblade]

Not merging servers nor making transfers available, and risk losing a relatively small percentage of their current customers, is a lot less riskier to BioWare's bottom line than doing anything that might discourage potential customers from trying, and hopefully then buying, The Old Republic to begin with.

That's assuming people care, I doubt many people besides the forum warriors much like your self give a rats ass if BW merge servers or not. If they are playing currently it will be a welcome change as it makes the game more enjoyable to be on a populated server, if you don't play it yet but are considering it and are the type of person to read enough about it to find out about server mergers then I doubt you would see it as a bad thing if you where to decide to play it, if you don't read up about it you wouldn't have a clue about it either way as such have no impact on the subject.

Besides that, it's good that you are a expert on the game, it's code and the inner workings of BW to be able to set us straight on the matter, now we know they are holding it back from us on the gamble that they might lose more customers by introducing such a feature, no really.

[RoninaThorstone]

Besides that, it's good that you are a expert on the game, it's code and the inner workings of BW to be able to set us straight on the matter, now we know they are holding it back from us on the gamble that they might lose more customers by introducing such a feature, no really.

I think that robin is half right.

There is a very negative stigma attached to merging servers. It would be a red flag to investors and fuel for blog wielding flamers.

That said, in terms of transfers I think you are absolutely right about it being a technical and design hurdle. While I assume a transfer service wouldn't be terribly difficult, the legacy system present a design question that no other MMO has faced yet. How and, more importantly, when bioware figures that out we will see transfer service advertised in an up coming patch.

[Redblade]

There is a very negative stigma attached to merging servers. It would be a red flag to investors and fuel for blog wielding flamers.

That's fair enough on the investor part but if we go by how many players actually use forums versus people that simply don't and apply that to blogs and information like server mergers we can assume that a minor part of the people not playing the game but considering it will be aware of mergers and or transfer services, and out of the once that are aware I'm sure not all of them would see it as a bad thing, simply becuse a part of those people would be gamers that knows how MMO's work with launches and panic creation of servers.

[stuck4cash]

Original WoW leveling took so long that there were many of us who quit the game out of boredom before max level, though.

But there's a huge difference in reaction to WoW and SWToR. I remember the reaction to WoW, it wasn't massively hyped up beforehand but it got popular with word of mouth, people were running around telling people about the game like they were cult recruiters. SWToR has been totally opposite, it was hyped up by players and then a month or two in the word of mouth is mostly negative.

This is what has to happened to Age of Conan, Rift, Aion, Hellgate: London, Warhammer online and now SWToR. The development companies hype it up. They get their servers overloaded in the first month to the point of queues. Some start to get annoyed (SWToR handled that bit pretty well though).

Then the first month goes by, the realise the game is nothing new or simply just isn't WoW and is nothing special. They burn through the content and get bored and slowly disappear over that month. However, the company has got a lot of money from the $100 purchases but also have a lot of empty servers.

The empty servers then drive MORE people away because they can't find anyone to do the MMO part of the game. At this point the negativity starts as well, so they have negative feedback being passed around (even on decent games, SWToR was good for me but I struggled with support and the security and had to make an international phone call just to log in...thus I just cancelled my subscription instead). They start shedding all the ones that were interested but not loyal.

Once the shedding starts, it's impossible for them to go back (after all, there's nothing but negative feedback being passed around) and eventually they just start merging servers and you end up with half a dozen servers hosting only the most loyal of players.

The other model is to start small and build loyal players over time. This is what WoW did (albeit a very quick positive word of mouth campaign started in the first few months after beta launch. There is no limit, the shedding of players takes considerably longer. The height of the game comes much later and they make more money in the long run (a lot more if you look at the money made by WoW, Runescape, Guild Wars and Eve Online). The thing to note is, the chance of failure is a lot higher (if you get little to no good feedback then you don't have any loyal players and you disappear very very quickly) and it is impossible for games with large budgets to do this. If you spend $100 million on a game, then your publisher expects to get $200 million back within a year or so.

[RoninaThorstone]

That's fair enough on the investor part but if we go by how many players actually use forums versus people that simply don't and apply that to blogs and information like server mergers we can assume that a minor part of the people not playing the game but considering it will be aware of mergers and or transfer services, and out of the once that are aware I'm sure not all of them would see it as a bad thing, simply becuse a part of those people would be gamers that knows how MMO's work with launches and panic creation of servers.

Eh, even though a minority reads blogs / forums / reviews they regurgitate those view points onto /1 where ever they are in game.

You know the type. The kind that spout sub numbers in trade chat to make a point about how GW2 will decimate wow/swtor/rift?

They poison the general feel of a community with that kind of stuff and can result in a negative view of a games direction regardless of ones personal opinion. This is especially true if you aren't reading it closely due to fact it will most likely take the peripheral route of persuasion and people who think they represent facts or the opinion of a large group or authoritative figure tend to speak of their views well.

[cromzor]

My server went empty , had to reroll

[Leonard McCoy]

Eh, even though a minority reads blogs / forums / reviews they regurgitate those view points onto /1 where ever they are in game.

You know the type. The kind that spout sub numbers in trade chat to make a point about how GW2 will decimate wow/swtor/rift?

They poison the general feel of a community with that kind of stuff and can result in a negative view of a games direction regardless of ones personal opinion. This is especially true if you aren't reading it closely due to fact it will most likely take the peripheral route of persuasion and people who think they represent facts or the opinion of a large group or authoritative figure tend to speak of their views well.

It's a sad day that those people are given any attention at all. More over it's a sad day if that is genuinely a concern of EA/BW. I understand why it might be but at the same time what a pile of bs.

[Eugoogolizer]

I researched the only servers at standard or higher over several days during my normal play hours and came down to The Harbinger for my reroll. I also really didn't want to do yet another Imperial character from the start, so I switched to Republic. It's so refreshing to see a large number of people on whatever planet I'm currently on and actually being able to do group quests and warzones and flashpoints! I was able to get to 31 over the course of a few days. So much fun and easier when you know what you're doing lol