I voted Yes like most of the people.

I think that Bioware doesn't have the technologie to do those merges, also they don't have the technologie to make a LFG tool, multi-server is even more of a nightmare to implement.

They are hurting their game and they know it, they try do all they can to keep players from leaving untill they have develloped it.

They say LFG tool will be server only, once they have the technologie to be multi-server has well it will be, has soon has they have it.

They will say something like after carefull thinking, we think multi-server LFG is the future.

If they have server merge ready before summer, they'll say :" well, we give in, players ask for server merge and we give it"

If it's not yet ready untill summer: "We have to stand on our point, we will wait for the summer, etc..." OH YEA? NOT YET READY, THAT IS FOR SURE.

I'm a big SWTOR supporter but this is what I have to say about this....

Bioware talks a big game when they talk about listening to the player base but what has been the overwhelming concensus? We need servers to be merged. I play on the Daragon's Trail PvP server on the Republic side. I have never seen any planet have more than 20 people on a planet at a time and even that many is not common at all. Clearly there is definitely a need to merge servers, especially very low population servers. There is nothing fun about playing on a server where you can't even find other people to group with.

Originally posted by Bushi13

I voted Yes like most of the people.

 

I think that Bioware doesn't have the technologie to do those merges, also they don't have the technologie to make a LFG tool, multi-server is even more of a nightmare to implement.

They are hurting their game and they know it, they try do all they can to keep players from leaving untill they have develloped it.

They say LFG tool will be server only, once they have the technologie to be multi-server has well it will be, has soon has they have it.

They will say something like after carefull thinking, we think multi-server LFG is the future.

If they have server merge ready before summer, they'll say :" well, we give in, players ask for server merge and we give it"

If it's not yet ready untill summer: "We have to stand on our point, we will wait for the summer, etc..." OH YEA? NOT YET READY, THAT IS FOR SURE.

Even a LFG tool that worked on the same server would be a huge step forward, SW;TOR is a game that is in desperate need of increased social interraction,  maybe the flexibility of the WoW system has players spoiled, but its exactly that kind of thing that will add to the 'niggles' that players have with the game.

People say what ever how it would help but then when they do oooooooo the game is dead they have to merge servers its all over this site makes me sick sometimes dont know why I bother.

Most definitely. The game should have launched with less servers and much higher population caps. BioWare does a very poor job when it comes to communicating with their user base. I beta tested the game since 2010 and they continuously ignored and dismissed the warnings and constructive criticism they received throughout that testing period. I blame EA for that, though. Their arrogance and out of touch mentality has rubbed off on every development studio that they managed to get their greedy claws around. DICE, the developers of the Battlefield franchise, has been exhibiting the same kind of arrogant behavior as BioWare is now. Publishers like EA and Activision are a cancer to this industry.

Originally posted by Corehaven

Well....Good Lord it sure doesnt help matters.  And Swtor needs all the help it can get. 

 

Swtor isnt awful.  But in my opinion it sure wasnt all that great either.  But a developer has to do what they have to in order to please their customers in order to keep them.  If merging servers is a must, get it done, and pronto.  There's probably good ideas as to why they haven't yet, and Id imagine the legacy system is likely a problem. 

 

Yet I still get the feeling that just as with the free month offer, they aren't merging servers because thats an admission the game isnt soaring to great heights.  And by golly they're going to keep that illusion going for as long as they possibly can.  The minute they merge servers that illusion cracks a bit.  Cant have that. 

 

When they are really ready to admit they are hemoraging players, then you'll get your server merges.  I promise you.  But they aren't going to do that as long as they are claiming the game is meeting all great expectations and doing well. 

That's what I don't get. The game is clearly bleeding subs on a daily basis. They say they knew there would be a dropoff in people playing, but yet they had nothing in place to alleviate the problem (server merges/transfers). Are they really so arrogant and proud of themselves they cannot admit the game is doing horribly? We all know it, one only has to log in to see how bad it is.

They were lazy and sloppy with SWTOR, and it shows everywhere in the game. Corners were cut everywhere you turn. About every problem with the game was brought up in general beta by testers, and they were ignored, or put on the wall of crazy (which only means, "crap we'll give them later as a patch when it should have been ingame at release"). I think they honestly thought the name Bioware attached to it, and it's star wars, would carry it through. One only has to look at SWG to see how well it went counting on just the star wars name alone. When you see them speak of server population or the optimization problems they seem all defensive and pretend it's not a problem. I wonder how many of them actually have played their game. I believe it's very low. If they had played their game they could see its flaws, just as a cook must taste everything they cook to see what more or less is needed.

I see some of the same mistakes Mythic had with Warhammer with SWTOR. It's almost painful to watch, because you just know they low people on the totem pole, that were just doing what they were told will get canned. While those higher up making the poor decisions with the game keep their jobs.

Originally posted by Sylvarii

Why would you care Teala,you don't like the game anyway or are you using your copy that you claim someone bought you to secreatly play swtor.

 

Originally posted by BLeeDzACiD

People say what ever how it would help but then when they do oooooooo the game is dead they have to merge servers its all over this site makes me sick sometimes dont know why I bother.

I have to agree with the OP in regards to Bioware doing more harm then good with SWTOR.  I think they have a priority problem, or a complete misguided understanding of where players want the game to go.

A few examples: 

Legacy system: completely underwhelming, adds fluff to game but little in terms of real, solid content, yet it was the key piece of 1.2 and continues to be the focus of the ToR developers.  Instead of adding real solid end game content which the game completely lacks they continue to spend time and resources tweaking, adjusting and adding to the legacy system.

Ilum - broken, unused, and very, very little mention of fixing it anytime soon from ToR developers, yet, this area could add some great end-game fun if it was revamped and made more complex.

Warzones/pvp gear - the grind to get this crap simply isn't fun yet we continue to see more warzones added.  On my server the population is dead, I don't need more warzones I need more players to play with.

Lots and lots of problems with priority and focus from the ToR team and their chance is sliping away.  Everyone except the most die-hard fanboys will admit their has been a sharp drop in population within the game and loss of intrests in it - with a few big named mmos on the horizon its very, very hard to see this game flourishing.

Launching without a working server transfer system is a sin on it's own, but hey
lighten up they are now PLANNING ONE!. :)

It is definitely a problem now, as long as the developers continue to push frther away merger dates the game will suffer, perhaps they are waiting for some miracle event (summer holidays?) when they think players will come back in droves?

From my point of view, 1.2 was the last chance to keep a somewhat healthy playerbase, promising ranked WZs and some sort of pvp mechanics engineering that would balance things out. Sadly they blew it and they will have a very hard time recovering from that.

And so, I voted YES, because that is what the game needs now. But is not what the game needed at the beginning. I understand that developers, gauging players reactions when mergers happen, do not want to consider this option at the early stages of a game's lifetime. Forum haters will always point out that as a symptom of a game dying, even if it was the game with the most subscriptors in history, which can have a bad influence on players trying to decide whether or not to buy the game. But surely there must be a developer that thinks something like this:

"Ok, at the beginning we will have tons of players so we will need many servers, but retention rate is never 100 % (despite what EA wants us to believe) so servers will empty somehow. Let's not do server mergers but let's have in place free migrations for players who are subscribing (i.e. play beyond the free month included on the package) for the game to achieve some stability.

This should be allowed from the very beginning."

I am sure that dev, if he/she ever had the cajones to express that sentiment, was demoted and now is serving coffee and fetching newspapers for an EA suit.

Yes they are doing harm by not either merging servers or allowing free transfers. Players should not have to reroll characters just to play on a popular server, and most won't.