Originally posted by Trol1

From the quote, yes, I think CS will access the bank guild, "take stock of it", and then just transfer it all over to the new guild.

But obviously the safest way - if you don't trust SWTOR CS to do things right, is to have every guild member take their stuff out of the bank and then gather again on the new server with the new guild and a new guild bank to fill. ;-)

Sadly, it seems I was right to be cynical, from: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=4569652#edit4569652

2. Yes, you will have to:

• Remove all items & credits from the Guild Bank.
• Disband the Guild.
• Transfer to the new server and reform the Guild.
• Contact Customer Service to re-establish the Guild Bank and Guild Bank tabs.

Originally posted by Ryukan

Why do I get the feeling that Origin servers=getting closed down the road.

Yeah the approach they have taken is confusing. Why are they trying to empty out existing servers even more? Stop being lazy and just merge them.

With the way instancing works in SWTOR I see no reason to have more than one server per ruleset, location and language combination.

Is this the new mega server technology?

Originally posted by Fennris

 they're keeping low pop ones running, even after these transfer waves hit them... it's gotta cost them $ to do that, especially since their active player count is going to be very very low... 

That depends.  If they have 1 physical server per game server yes it would, but that would be such an out of date way to do things.  If they were smart they have used virtualization to create virtual servers on a hardware cluster.  In that case it doesn't matter if they have a empty vitual game server out there, it won't be taking up many resources and only resides on the cluster so they can add and remove hardware as they see fit to cover the load.

Originally posted by Hopscotch73

Originally posted by Trol1

From the quote, yes, I think CS will access the bank guild, "take stock of it", and then just transfer it all over to the new guild.

But obviously the safest way - if you don't trust SWTOR CS to do things right, is to have every guild member take their stuff out of the bank and then gather again on the new server with the new guild and a new guild bank to fill. ;-)

Sadly, it seems I was right to be cynical, from: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=4569652#edit4569652

2. Yes, you will have to:

• Remove all items & credits from the Guild Bank.
• Disband the Guild.
• Transfer to the new server and reform the Guild.
• Contact Customer Service to re-establish the Guild Bank and Guild Bank tabs.

 

So, yeah, not ideal. 

•  

Well, they say it's the "most efficient method" which I agree is probably true because it takes any guild transfer almost completely out of the picture, just simple character transfers and then a "re-asignment of investment made" or something like that ;-)

But I doubt it'll be the only way.

Originally posted by Trol1

Originally posted by Fennris

Yes, this won't be a vehicle for merging characters/legacies on two separate servers unless you get hit by blind luck.

To me it is funny how they aren't admitting that they are "merging servers" - they're keeping low pop ones running, even after these transfer waves hit them... it's gotta cost them $ to do that, especially since their active player count is going to be very very low...  And it's gotta be a bad situation to have new players picking one of the dead servers because they like the names. 

Well, I don't quite agree with the "blind luck" bit I'm sure they are - at least over time - spreading the origin-destination range.

Which makes perfect sense as doing this without the right consideration will easily lead to high Imp pop servers which will then of course just start the next crying wave.

Anyways, if your multiple origin servers don't share the same destination server, well, give it a bit of time! It might change... and more importantly - obviously - in the first few days everybody and their grandma will rush to transfer, which, as was said, will take time.

Now, new players selecting low pop servers... am I wrong or did you just call gamers (in general) dumb?

"Tehe, look, this server, like, has such a cute name, like, you know, and I'm sure Justin Bieber would, like, totally love that name, tehe, so, yeah, like, we should totally join that one... though, I don't really understand what that "light population" means... like there are no coloured people on there? Tehe"

I mean I'm sorry but I assume that ANY gamer is mentally capable enough to make the decision whether he wants to play on a "healthy" server or on a "dying" server.

Originally posted by Trol1

Originally posted by Rocketeer

Originally posted by ktanner3

Originally posted by Hopscotch73

Originally posted by knighthammer

" For guild members and masters, you will not be able to transfer your guild as a whole to your new server; instead you will need to reform it. If you have a guild bank, it will be re-granted to your new guild on your destination server by Customer Service

and others may be anxious to move to a specific server to be with friends. With the restrictions of this initial service, that may not be possible. We still believe that you will enjoy playing on a higher population server and hope you'll take advantage of the service"

From the sound of it, if you are in a guild it will be split up in the move and you dont have a decent chance of getting on the same server as your guild mates who you may have spent playing with since day 1, well that seems to suck badly

It does suck that they're not offering guild transfers, but if you're all on the same server anyway, wouldn't you all have the option to move to one server only? That would make it a bit easier....but still far from ideal. I really wouldn't want to be a guild leader trying to organise a guild move, strikes me as being about as easy as herding cats. 

I hope that's something they'll address further down the line. 

If the guild leaders have any organizational skills they will pick a server and send a mass mail message to the members stating where the guild is moving to. Our guild has an actual website and our leader constantly updates it along with messages waiting for us on a pop up screen the moment we log in.  I think it's better this way because not everyone will agree of where to move and they should have the freedom to go where they want to go.

The question is how long the transfer window will stay open, and wether you can transfer chars on a inactive account. There should be plenty of people with an inactive account waiting for content/patches, would be asked a bit much to reactivate your account just to transfer your chars.

Lets face it, this is going to rip guilds apart and destroy whatever local community there was on the servers. They shoud have just created new servers and transferred people to it, shutting down the old.

Rocket, I seriously don't know where you are getting your logic from...

What BW does is giving p[eople on a server a voluntary choice to transfer. Now, whether that will be limited to 1 destination server or more, that remains to be seen...

The thing is that if people care to stay together, all they need to do is talk and select to transfer to the same server, no matter if they are guildies or "civilians".

So yes, the old community, the old guild will in that sense be destroyed, as the origin server will probably not exist much longer in the first place.

But the same community, the same guild can "bloom" on the new server as the "seeds" were obviously brought over from the origin.

Now, in what way is walking in Gestapo-like and corralling off the population of a server to another server not going to destroy guilds and the local  community, especially if BW was to play a numbers game: "Well, we have 200 slots to fill on server X. There are 275 here. Pick the first 200, the rest will go on server Y" - rip goes a guild, rip goes the community!

Sometimes, people are just strange...

Look, im inactive, i liked my guild. So if i decide to come back with patch 1.4, cause i like the features or whatever, i will be on the old server while those in my guild currently active will be on the new server. Now imagine this is in about 2 months time after the transfers, what happened? Exactly what you feared with the gestapo commen, the destination server from back then has become full and there is a new one, no way around that i can see ...

Do you understand now?

Obviously with the method i mentioned you would just leave the 200 slots open instead of transferring 3/4 of a guild, how blasted difficult is that to comprehend? If people choose to stay inactive no harm done, they are not wasting any more resources on the new server then they did on the old.

The way the do it now means people that take a break from the game(you know that happens with MMOs occassionally, not everyone stays on a subscription for the entire life of an MMO) will miss transfer windows, that happened in WHO, and i see no mechanic preventing it here.

But you know what? Its not my problem, if i can follow my guild to the new destination later fine, if i can't i won't resubscribe. I mean people are on the fence in regards to this game as it is, we really need to piss them off right?

Also yes i think people are often disorganized, and since when do you need to run a forum and a massmail server just to keep your guild together. That some kind of brilliant design if i ever saw one. Yes lets go totally darwins law on casual not as well organized guilds, this game can afford it for sure.

Shit the way people talk you'd think the game was braking sub records right, left and center. Same damn arrogance that was rampant in WHO forums, who cares if someone has a problem with the way they run the show, just tell em to piss off if they don't like it. You know what? People pissed off.

Originally posted by Fennris

Originally posted by Trol1

Originally posted by Fennris

Yes, this won't be a vehicle for merging characters/legacies on two separate servers unless you get hit by blind luck.

To me it is funny how they aren't admitting that they are "merging servers" - they're keeping low pop ones running, even after these transfer waves hit them... it's gotta cost them $ to do that, especially since their active player count is going to be very very low...  And it's gotta be a bad situation to have new players picking one of the dead servers because they like the names. 

Well, I don't quite agree with the "blind luck" bit I'm sure they are - at least over time - spreading the origin-destination range.

Which makes perfect sense as doing this without the right consideration will easily lead to high Imp pop servers which will then of course just start the next crying wave.

Anyways, if your multiple origin servers don't share the same destination server, well, give it a bit of time! It might change... and more importantly - obviously - in the first few days everybody and their grandma will rush to transfer, which, as was said, will take time.

Now, new players selecting low pop servers... am I wrong or did you just call gamers (in general) dumb?

"Tehe, look, this server, like, has such a cute name, like, you know, and I'm sure Justin Bieber would, like, totally love that name, tehe, so, yeah, like, we should totally join that one... though, I don't really understand what that "light population" means... like there are no coloured people on there? Tehe"

I mean I'm sorry but I assume that ANY gamer is mentally capable enough to make the decision whether he wants to play on a "healthy" server or on a "dying" server.

 

Eventually I'm sure that there will be a way to transfer chars wherever - but that system has not been described yet and I'm not going to assume anything at this point. But for the immediate and near future (several months +) they have not hinted that you will be able to do anything like that. If you have characters on two separate servers you will need blind luck to get them together under one legacy. If they are on different server types or regions then forget about it. As far as the dumb players go.... The main transfers thread on swtor has less than 60k views: most players (95%+) have not read it, nevermind most new players and nevermind many other threads about server choices and pops Other games have cross server grouping tools; this one does not. In some games low pop is nice because it removes competition for resources and spawns. The only way that a new player can know that "low pop" means "empty and almost unplayable" and that all rp-pvp servers (for ex) are about to be crap other than Jung Ma (which will be less pop'd than many others and therefore less fun) would be if the new player read a lot of boards like this first. If not reading boards like this first makes someone stupid then you're calling 95% of the players stupid but i'm not. If a player likes the name of a server and it's in his region and it's the right type, that should be all that new players need to get going.

I see you have very little faith in gamers... which I find understandable considering that you are even considering merging your characters from different server types... I mean you, as a player, make a choice: do I want to be same on my PvE server or take a risk on a PvP server. Why should you be allowed to change your mind? Because now suddenly you have this big kick-ass toon and you want to wipe every Imp/Rep that you meet in contested territories?

Please, be realistic...

and yes, I agree in the first steps uniting your characters from different (same server type) servers will require luck...

but the question is: why would you? I mean, again, you chose to create characters on different servers in the first place!

Yes, of course, the latter characters may have been created because your old server was dying... well, big deal!

potentially you haven't then played your old characters in a while as there was nobody there to play with... so, now you need to wait a bit longer before you can play with them... and ops, you now can transfer them to a low pop-raised-to-high pop server... which sadly isn't the server you created your new toon on... man, it will never be be perfect for everybody under all circumstances, unless maybe they start paid for transfers anywhere... live with it! You are one out of 1 Mio players!

And yes, I assume that unless you are a cave or vault dweller today seeing the light for the first time, ever, you will know about what is going on with SWTOR, thru friends, forums, news mags, blogs, videos, etc. So, what gave you the idea that you need to study SWTORia 101 on the forums to successfully pick the right server even as a new player... well, I don't know. ;-)

Am I misunderstanding that this is voluntary?

So a low-pop server has optional migration, and a character doesn't leave... they'll keep the server running for that character?

Sounds like free character migration rather than server mergers, which are normally forced (A+B+C+D merges into E).

Originally posted by XAPGames

Am I misunderstanding that this is voluntary?

 

So a low-pop server has optional migration, and a character doesn't leave... they'll keep the server running for that character?

 

Sounds like free character migration rather than server mergers, which are normally forced (A+B+C+D merges into E).

As far as I can see the transfers are totally voluntary. Nobody at BW has said anything about what will happen AFTER the voluntary move period.

I find it very difficult to believe that they will keep 200+ servers active indefinitely, especially when a substantial number of them will have been stripped of characters by the voluntary moves.

Perhaps the depopulated servers will be "archived" or "mothballed" or "frozen" or some other creative term that avoids the dreaded "MERGE" word.

Or they could just keep the illusion going by keeping ALL the servers active, but not allowing any new character creation on the depopulated servers. 

<<  I see you have very little faith in gamers... which I find understandable considering that you are even considering merging your characters from different server types... I mean you, as a player, make a choice: do I want to be same on my PvE server or take a risk on a PvP server. Why should you be allowed to change your mind? Because now suddenly you have this big kick-ass toon and you want to wipe every Imp/Rep that you meet in contested territories? >>

 That's as far as I got.  I was originally answering someone else's question when you stomp in with your assumptions, accusations and weird ("Trol1" = trollish?) logic.  I personally am not considering merging characters from multiple servers.

For going to another server type, if you picked rp-pvp, you are out of luck with these merges because in many regions there is only -1- rp-pvp server (in ne usa there are 2) and, in spite of all of them being full at release, none are particularly populated now.  Since you can't switch types, that means those on rp-pvp servers are never going to be on a particularly busy server unless SWTOR gets more players.  Along those lines, most games allow moves from pvp to pve; it's the reverse that they don't.   It's fine if everything else is equal to say that players should stick to what they started with and committed to but everything else is not equal.

"I see you have very little faith in gamers..."  I don't know what the heck you're talking about but can't say that I care either...

Transfers are now live but so far they are a joke. Only 4 servers listed as available to transfer from on the US servers so far.

<< Transfers are now live but so far they are a joke. Only 4 servers listed as available to transfer from on the US servers so far.  >>

Wow...  I'm sure they're starting conservatively but that is a VERY conservative and underwhwelming list. 

Originally posted by Kabaal

Transfers are now live but so far they are a joke. Only 4 servers listed as available to transfer from on the US servers so far.

I counted nine in North American and nine in Europe.

Originally posted by ktanner3

Originally posted by Kabaal

Transfers are now live but so far they are a joke. Only 4 servers listed as available to transfer from on the US servers so far.

I counted nine in North American and nine in Europe.

When they first brought it online there were only 4 US ones and 5 EU ones, they added a few more later.

Originally posted by Kabaal

Originally posted by ktanner3

Originally posted by Kabaal

Transfers are now live but so far they are a joke. Only 4 servers listed as available to transfer from on the US servers so far.

I counted nine in North American and nine in Europe.

When they first brought it online there were only 4 US ones and 5 EU ones, they added a few more later.

Which is exactly what they said they would do.

Originally posted by Trol1

I mean I'm sorry but I assume that ANY gamer is mentally capable enough to make the decision whether he wants to play on a "healthy" server or on a "dying" server.

You must not get out much. I assume that most gamers have the mental acuity of a turnip.

Originally posted by Kabaal

Originally posted by ktanner3

Originally posted by Kabaal

Transfers are now live but so far they are a joke. Only 4 servers listed as available to transfer from on the US servers so far.

I counted nine in North American and nine in Europe.

When they first brought it online there were only 4 US ones and 5 EU ones, they added a few more later.

All one has to do is look at the way they are handling the transfers to realize they don't have a clue how to comunicate with their customers.

It has already been a disaster, they had to stop the transfers due to bugs.  One has to wonder what all servers are going to be origina and destination.

As usual they managed to find the most complicated, intransparent and aggravating way to try solving one problem by adding another on top of it!

Epic. >.<