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Star Wars: The Old Republic |OT2| In a F2Play galaxy far, far away

Honestly, I wish Bioware's pr was ten times better (wish Stephen Reid was back), their stone wall of silence on handling the transfers is just fanning the flames right now.

I'm sorry but their communication has increased 10 fold since Reid left. Reid never would say anything other than "coming soon" and he wouldn't spend any time in the forum. Reid was nice guy, but the BW communication was complete garbage. The new team is so much more informative and actually taking part in discussions, asking questions, and posting in various places

They have been constantly posting in the past two weeks and especially since they started the transfers. No idea what wall of silence your talking about.
 

Zafir

Member
I'm sorry but their communication has increased 10 fold since Reid left. Reid never would say anything other than "coming soon" and he wouldn't spend any time in the forum. Reid was nice guy, but the BW communication was complete garbage. The new team is so much more informative and actually taking part in discussions, asking questions, and posting in various places

They have been constantly posting in the past two weeks and especially since they started the transfers. No idea what wall of silence your talking about.
All I've seen is them updating on new servers being available. Other that that they haven't said much. We didn't even know they were doing mega servers till they moved 10 servers into 1!
 

Zafir

Member
If you know that you can end on only two servers, just go ahead and try to reserve your names. I reserved mine this morning on JC and Ordo, I'm only loosing 2 names, in which I will replace the "o" by an "ø" , so not a big deal. And if they open another superserver, I'll just reserve my names there as well.

But I definitely agree that they should have reworked the name system. Heck they should be tied to a specific account name; I've never ever seen anyone who uses *any* of my 8 toon's names, not on the GTN, not in PvP, not in party or jus plain walking by me. Anyways, that's how it was handled in Ultima Online in 1997, and the universe didnt shatter from the fact, hehe.



True to some extent. This game is Auction house Heavy (ie: GTN) before the level 50 dailies.
Not all MMO's where/are as dependent to Player economy to make basic money for crafting as SWTOR is.
In some online games I played, being on a light server was not as stupid as it might seem.
I can't. I'm not at home till next Wednesday. Ive contacted a guildie to try and reserve me something but whether he'll manage it I dunno.
 

Draxal

Member
I'm sorry but their communication has increased 10 fold since Reid left. Reid never would say anything other than "coming soon" and he wouldn't spend any time in the forum. Reid was nice guy, but the BW communication was complete garbage. The new team is so much more informative and actually taking part in discussions, asking questions, and posting in various places

They have been constantly posting in the past two weeks and especially since they started the transfers. No idea what wall of silence your talking about.

Reid never posted in the boards but he was very active on twitter and the other sources of information such as Reddit, and was actually pretty affable. Joveth was the cm who posted on the boards back then and now, and the frequency of the posts is around the same.

And I am sorry but you are blind. When you are handling a delicate matter like transfers, communication has to be incredibly strong, and look at how the dev tracker, all they have posted where the servers that have transfered, and a small post that they finally did after four days of nonstop complaining about the euro rp/pvp servers.

They did nothing to control the expectations of these transfers, and it is biting them in the ass.
 

HBroward

Member
I just feel really sorry for those not transferred yet, they said some won't be done by the weekend, and possibly not even next week! It would be frustrating seeing yourself stuck on a dead server with 80% of the people successfully moved.

Edit: Here is my source on that.
 
All I've seen is them updating on new servers being available. Other that that they haven't said much. We didn't even know they were doing mega servers till they moved 10 servers into 1!

They never said anything about mega servers, that was created by the community. They said weeks ago in a PC gamer aritcle that they simply were targeting to create servers with higher capacity. Fans immediatly started making up all kinds of stuff up about giant mega servers that would be connected and instanced, when nothing like that was ever said. So many people jumped to conclusions that had nothing to do with anything that was said.

Just looking at the dev tracker in the past 2 weeks, and activity and participation within the community has increased greatly compared to what it was when Reid and co were on duty. Allison especially has been posting along and directly answering folks. The amount of blog articles, twitter, FB, and info articles has increased explaining their reasoning on stuff.

Reid never posted in the boards but he was very active on twitter and the other sources of information such as Reddit, and was actually pretty affable.

And I am sorry but you are blind. When you are handling a delicate matter like transfers, communication has to be incredibly strong, and look at how the dev tracker, all they have posted where the servers that have transfered, and a small post that they finally did after four days of nonstop complaining about the euro rp/pvp servers.

They did nothing to control the expectations of these transfers, and it is biting them in the ass.

Biting them in the ass? Wtf are you talking about? Reid was active on Twitter alright, with pages of nothing but "in the works", "coming soon", "can't say anything at the moment".

Your making blanket complaints when you obviously have some kind of issue that they aren't addressing?
 

Draxal

Member
They never said anything about mega servers, that was created by the community. They said weeks ago in a PC gamer aritcle that they simply were targeting to create servers with higher capacity. Fans immediatly started making up all kinds of stuff up about giant mega servers that would be connected and instanced, when nothing like that was ever said. So many people jumped to conclusions that had nothing to do with anything that was said.

Isn't what you just stated a perfect example of poor communciation, make a vague hint about mega servers, and they end up being true? Instead of I dunno, just saying outright that we'll have megaservers in the future?

Biting them in the ass? Wtf are you talking about? Reid was active on Twitter alright, with pages of nothing but "in the works", "coming soon", "can't say anything at the moment".

Your making blanket complaints when you obviously have some kind of issue that they aren't addressing?

I'm not blaming the CM's, as they're rather powerless in this situation, but a friendly one actually does a good job of managing the backlash and that is where I miss Stephen Reid.

There are not blanket complaints. They failed to control the expactations of the server transfers from the get go, leaving a lot people in the dark. They did nothing to work on the various name/legacy issues especially with the mad scramble for names (or at least they have not communicated so on the forums). They did not say sorry to the fans for these issues. It's just poor customer service. If they stated what they were going to do in the beginning a more forthright matter, alot more people are going to be more tolerant of this.

And I'll reiterate what HBroward stated, alot of people are going to be very angry if they have not been transferred by this weekend (and it looked like the pace of the servers transferred were pretty high, so to be just blindsided like this at the end by that post). If they were more upfront, the backlash wouldn't be nearly so high. It definetely would still be bad.
 
Anything they say will be taken as a negative at this point. Even if they give hearfelt reason why, do you truly think the community as a whole is going to care? With how immature everyone has been and the way the forums are going in every direction, there is nothing they could do. You have people up in arms about being in queues now *rolls eyes*. Maybe make you and me feel better but it's not going to reduce the anger or hurt if someone has to wait till next week possibly to transfer.

After last night it's obvious they need to see how the population settles, they mentioned it this morning when the talked of the slow down of the transfers. As they have said before if they say anything and then they can't meet it, people are up in arms. They were clear on how the transfers were going to be handled ahead of time, they just haven't been clear on duration.

The naming thing I agree with, they should have attempted a work around instead of just tossing people onto a server and hoping to get lucky.
 

HBroward

Member
I would assume this delay is at least partly related to their revelation that some server transfers would be cross coast. Perhaps the feedback, which was obviously resoundingly negative, has led them to reevaluate their plans for the remaining servers, and try to find a way to avoid having to force timezone changes. Of course, if that was the reason, they should have just said so, as I think many would be happy to wait if it avoided a potential east coast -> west coast transfer.
 

Alur

Member
Those who haven't transferred yet have a clear right to bitch.

Anyone else, sans people bugged in the process...I don't know WTF they have to complain about. The only minor complaint is those who got sent to servers AFTER...ala KV going first and then 9 more came later so maybe they have less naming choices. But still, the population has been awesome.
 

HBroward

Member
Yeah, JC has been awesome so far, once you turn off general chat at least. PvP queues pop so fast that I almost miss having some extra time between matches. Since it was full last night, I can't wait to see the potential load this weekend, they may have to tweak the cap up a bit more. Anyway, here are the newest transfers:

UPDATE 1:45PM CDT June 14th, 2012

Origin Server --> Destination Server

NA Server
Saber of Exar Kun --> Prophecy of the Five
The Twin Spears --> Prophecy of the Five
Iron Citadel --> Prophecy of the Five
Death Wind Corridor --> Prophecy of the Five
Sword of Ajunta Pall --> Prophecy of the Five
Terentatek --> Prophecy of the Five
 

Francois424

Neo Member
Those who haven't transferred yet have a clear right to bitch.

Anyone else, sans people bugged in the process...I don't know WTF they have to complain about. The only minor complaint is those who got sent to servers AFTER...ala KV going first and then 9 more came later so maybe they have less naming choices. But still, the population has been awesome.

I'm not happy that my server hasn't transferred yet, but Moaning about it on the forums isn't going to do squat.
I just keep it inside and butchering ppl in PvP to release my anger muahaha.
 

Draxal

Member
Anything they say will be taken as a negative at this point. Even if they give hearfelt reason why, do you truly think the community as a whole is going to care? With how immature everyone has been and the way the forums are going in every direction, there is nothing they could do. You have people up in arms about being in queues now *rolls eyes*. Maybe make you and me feel better but it's not going to reduce the anger or hurt if someone has to wait till next week possibly to transfer.

After last night it's obvious they need to see how the population settles, they mentioned it this morning when the talked of the slow down of the transfers. As they have said before if they say anything and then they can't meet it, people are up in arms. They were clear on how the transfers were going to be handled ahead of time, they just haven't been clear on duration.

The naming thing I agree with, they should have attempted a work around instead of just tossing people onto a server and hoping to get lucky.

I'll be frank with you, as I have worked with/as customer service, people do appreciate it when you make an extra effort to help in general. Of course this is all anecdotal, so your experience may be different. If you read the stickied thread, there's definetely three types of people, people who just hate anything they do, people who love anything they do, and people who are skeptical. The skeptical people in that threat were mirroring what I said, understanding of the fact that they might be last, but they didn't want to be in the dark.

Anyway, Allison did make some posts in the thread, and now I just don't feel like the customer issues with transferring are totally being ignored.

edit - She keeps on posting in the thread and while there's definetely people still upset, it is doing alot to contain the negativity (they are also pruning the posts which i don't mind, mindless qq is poor form).
 

vilmer_

Member
My old server, Naddist Rebels, has Prophecy of the Five as our destination server. As of right now there are two instances of 300 Imps on the fleet and 250+ on the Pub fleet. The place is going nuts :lol
 

CzarTim

Member
They never said anything about mega servers, that was created by the community. They said weeks ago in a PC gamer aritcle that they simply were targeting to create servers with higher capacity. Fans immediatly started making up all kinds of stuff up about giant mega servers that would be connected and instanced, when nothing like that was ever said. So many people jumped to conclusions that had nothing to do with anything that was said.
Not only did they not take the time to deny "Super Server" rumors, during a Weekly Forum Thread Round-Up they used the term.
 
Well Shadowlands does seems like where I'll end up, but damn I'm going to be last :p

Not only did they not take the time to deny "Super Server" rumors, during a Weekly Forum Thread Round-Up they used the term.

Not denying it just meant it was coming, and they basically acknowledged the PC gamer article mention at the convention appearance they did a Q&A at soon after it. But it never was anything more than servers with higher capacity. People jumped the gun and expected something like EVE and many other MMOs which are basically multiple servers all tied into one game with tons of instancing to handle it all.
 

CzarTim

Member
Not denying it just meant it was coming, and they basically acknowledged the PC gamer article mention at the convention appearance they did a Q&A at soon after it. But it never was anything more than servers with higher capacity. People jumped the gun and expected something like EVE and many other MMOs which are basically multiple servers all tied into one game with tons of instancing to handle it all.

I don't disagree, but it's the perfect example of a time Bioware SHOULD have stepped in with a blog post to explain what they meant. Instead they stayed quiet and people's expectations were skewed.
 
Nah, all it means is they increased the server and instance caps for the servers. They still have yet to create any true server merges, which they need to do eventually.

Feeding 6+ servers into one destination server is a soft server merge. Everything else is just euphemisms.

It's not like those 6 servers are going to be anything more than dried up husks.
 

Anoregon

The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
Transferred a few chars off Anchorhead. My main's name and Legacy weren't taken. Booyah.
 

Wallach

Member
Transferred a few chars off Anchorhead. My main's name and Legacy weren't taken. Booyah.

Someday these studios making MMOs will catch on that unique-per-server character names are a bad, antiquated idea. Until then we get to see just how many variations of "Vader" assholes can make up with ASCII characters.
 

Cystm

Member
According to Massively, the server transfers are a mess that needs to be sorted through.

I'm not going to link to it, because they do not deserve the hits for posting hit grabbing bullshit.

Sorting through the SWTOR server transfer mess said:
Yesterday, Star Wars: The Old Republic began its second wave of server transfers. The process started normally without too much issue: Small, nearly empty servers were given the opportunity to transfer to larger, more-populated servers.

Then about noon EDT, many well-populated servers were given the opportunity to move. Communities on PvP servers like The Swiftsure were asked to go to The Bastion. According to TORStatus.net, The Swiftsure's population out-ranked The Bastion's by several points. This was not the only case of the confusion in the population. Lord Adraas, arguably the largest roleplay community in the US, was asked to move to an equally populated server The Ebon Hawk.

Taking into account some of the comments on the official forums and on the roleplay fan site SWTOR-RP, many players are confused as to what BioWare's ultimate goal might be with these server transfers, and if the players on the origin servers don't take this opportunity to transfer now, will they have opportunity to do it again in the future? Because no communication has come from BioWare regarding fate of the origin servers, some like Vlayue on the official forum believe that the server transfers are meant to "even out server populations not just tip the entire server over and pour it into another." However, a large majority have voiced their opinions by transferring their characters and guilds to the new server because they see it as BioWare's way of killing off the origin server's population.

Unfortunately, because of the PR speak surrounding the situation, even BioWare appears to be uncertain of what's happening. On the blog addressing the transfers specifically, the team writes (emphasis ours): "This character transfer service will be available as long as is required to help maintain population balance across the service and create a better overall gameplay experience." However, a few weeks ago, Lead Designer Daniel Erickson suggested that the team was looking to make massive servers and not keep the current server landscape. "We are coming up on a huge move to servers with massively higher population caps than we have today," he told PC Gamer.

Which is it: balance across the servers or massive servers? Hopefully, BioWare will clear up this unanswered question soon so that people on origin servers are not holding on to false hope.

[We originally marked The Swiftsure as a PvE community; it is in fact a PvP server, and we have fixed the post to reflect that, with thanks to tipster Dengar.]

iR8tPdIX73RYn.gif
 

gatti-man

Member
Gaming journalism lol. Why does the whole internet want bioware and by extension a star wars mmo to fail? Who gives a shit if its EA.
 

Cystm

Member
EA + Bioware + Star Wars = Troll shitstorm.

Think about all of the good and the bad within those three brand names and throw them into a blender, then hop on the TORtanic meme bandwagon and trololol. This game has some serious issues, but a lot of awesome qualities too. The onus is on Bioware to create something mother fucking godlike or people are going to actively spin doom even out of the games successes and when the game falters? Feeding frenzy time!

News outlets looking to grab hits have got the easiest formula to achieve that with the three aforementioned brand names. They should be covering this game, but it's funny how they only choose to throw up anything negative about the game and leave anything positive out, or spin it and make it seem like a mess. You find that here as well. Virtually every thread on TOR here is just a quick copy paste about declining population, possibly moving to F2play, or photo shopped bans from some news source also trying to get hits. I tried to make a positive thread about the game and was instantly called a viral marketer. :lol

But, again, the onus is assuredly on Bioware to shut people the fuck up. So far, they haven't done much in the way of doing that, and as such as time goes on, people will increasingly be doom and gloom about the game.

I personally think the game is fun, and while certainly not flawless, still a pretty solid game.

TL;DR

Biodrone viral marketer lolololol.
 
I think the headline is misleading, he basically said they are looking at all pricing models (which of course they should), they twist it into "SWTOR seriously looking at going F2P"

BTW Shadowlands is looking very good right now. 250+ at the Rep fleet past midnight, saw 50+ on Belsavis and 40+ in the Black Hole.
 

Cystm

Member
Really stupid thing for him to say. If they had f2p plans, they should have kept them to themselves till they were ready for it instead of so openly talking about it. This is just going to hurt more than anything.

I actually appreciate the honesty, despite the troll boners had at this news.
 

gatti-man

Member
Yeah i saw that but i get tired of being type cast as a swtor soldier.


EA + Bioware + Star Wars = Troll shitstorm.

Think about all of the good and the bad within those three brand names and throw them into a blender, then hop on the TORtanic meme bandwagon and trololol. This game has some serious issues, but a lot of awesome qualities too. The onus is on Bioware to create something mother fucking godlike or people are going to actively spin doom even out of the games successes and when the game falters? Feeding frenzy time!

News outlets looking to grab hits have got the easiest formula to achieve that with the three aforementioned brand names. They should be covering this game, but it's funny how they only choose to throw up anything negative about the game and leave anything positive out, or spin it and make it seem like a mess. You find that here as well. Virtually every thread on TOR here is just a quick copy paste about declining population, possibly moving to F2play, or photo shopped bans from some news source also trying to get hits. I tried to make a positive thread about the game and was instantly called a viral marketer. :lol

But, again, the onus is assuredly on Bioware to shut people the fuck up. So far, they haven't done much in the way of doing that, and as such as time goes on, people will increasingly be doom and gloom about the game.

I personally think the game is fun, and while certainly not flawless, still a pretty solid game.

TL;DR

Biodrone viral marketer lolololol.
 

Kem0sabe

Member
You know what pisses me off? they didn´t make KotOR 3 so as to make this shit... and no... SWtOR is not KotOR 3+4+5+6, it´s nowhere close to the quality of a single player KotOR game.
 

Moaradin

Member
You know what pisses me off? they didn´t make KotOR 3 so as to make this shit... and no... SWtOR is not KotOR 3+4+5+6, it´s nowhere close to the quality of a single player KotOR game.

That entirely depends on the class. Imperial Agent has higher quality writing than KOTOR 1 does.

And you are like 2 years late on that bandwagon.
 

Kem0sabe

Member
That entirely depends on the class. Imperial Agent has higher quality writing than KOTOR 1 does.

And you are like 2 years late on that bandwagon.

No it doesn´t. None of the class stories are better than KotOR 1 because... they don´t have the slightest impact in the overall game world.

Hoe many npc´s acknowledge the Jedi Knight for what he accomplished along his story? especially at the end. Or what did your final choice as an IA get you? your still playing the same game everyone else is playing.

Through the beta and the final game i played most classes, the IA was in fact the most tolerable, if you wanted to play a direct ripoff of James Bond... but then there is the Sorcerer... the Trooper.

Even so, it´s beyond me why they aren´t developing the class stories in their post launch content, those were the big draw that kept people playing. Do we have to wait for an expansion to move them forward... will they ever move forward?
 

Yaska

Member
I doubt SWTOR will go F2P for a while. Way too many active subs, and server transfers certainly improved the playability of the game. Think F2P is more of a Plan B solution, if the subs fall too much.
 
According to Massively, the server transfers are a mess that needs to be sorted through.

I'm not going to link to it, because they do not deserve the hits for posting hit grabbing bullshit.

Well if you read behind their spin, if they are merging high population servers (excuse me transfers:p), then they must have a long term plan of greatly increasing server populations (with less active servers open period).
 

mainframe

Neo Member
So with this massive urge to Reroll .. I decided to head over to Jedi Covenant server..

So was thinking of Jedi Guardian.. but considering leveling as dps. Anyone have a good experience with it?


I will prob do this until 1.3 comes out with LFG- Switch to tank.. and if its like WOW - Insta Que's ?? =)
 

Tarazet

Member
In spite of the confusion, I'm really happy with what the mergers have done for the playability of the game. On Shien it was getting to the point where PvE progression was impossible without soloing dailies over and over, and if I didn't get my PvP in by midnight eastern time, I wasn't going to get any pops at all. On Ebon Hawk both of those problems are gone, I've been able to PvP at 4 am and run HM LI whenever I want to.
 
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