So, ALL origin servers will be shut down, and EVERYONE will have to transfer to these new High Pop servers? EVERYONE will be subject to a possible name change?

I only have charcters on a locked origin server, as the destination server already has 8 characters, and no choice to transfer to another server. I would have thought they would have given more choice to transfer to other servers after the initial rush died off, but no, just stuck on a dead server this whole time. The whole transfer process has been dumb.

There could well be elements of what people have posted above in this development. However I suspect it is related to the forthcoming move to F2P.

EA are in a bind.

On the one hand they need to reduce servers in order to reduce costs and consolidate population in order to avoid the dead server feeling.

On the other hand they are going F2P and hope to have armies of people logging on and spending money in the cash shop. And that will need lots of server capacity. Lots and lots of server capacity.

With a subscription based game you can tell people sorry the server is down, or you are number 10,000 in a queue. With a F2P game - not only might the potential customer go elsewhere but if they are not logged on they can't spend any money! It is worse than that though:

• Assumption 1: a F2P customer will spend a maximum of $15/month in the cash shop.
• Assumption 2: Zynga's metric that most of their money from only c. 5% of their F2P customers holds - so EA will need c. 20 players to get the same revenue as 1 subscriber. These are the people who spend money month after month. Lots of people may spend a little bit in the first few weeks.
• EA's own assumption (stated in their last results) - that they will get the same amount of revenue from subscribers as from F2P folk proves to be true.

If they still need "500k subs" to break even today - and I am sure that costs have been cut - then the above assumptions would mean that EA have to cater for 250k subscribers and 5M F2P folk! Even if they have reduced their costs by 50% they still need to cater for 125k subs and 2.5M F2P folk.

I suspect that they have decided to ignore Zynga's data and assume that everyone spemd some money every month. Say they have assumed $5, then they would only need 125k subs and 375k F2P to get the equivalent (i.e. costs halved, same as 250k subs). 500k subs.

All of which says that EA need to have server technology that they can expand and reduce easily. In other words they are having to invest in the type of servers they should have had on day 1! (Several companies do BigWorld type tech but basically servers are allocated to areas and the size of the area adjusted based on the population in the area).

Or you know they might have got through the initial database bottlenecks that dictated the population that a server could take and have found a means to support 10000s to one server.

As they already use instances the only thing holding them back was the way the database would operate with such numbers.

It is more likely that they are just consolidating the jaded vets who would ruin a new users experience then pop new servers up for the F2P crowd.

IMO the the likely possibilities are in order....

So what are the specs of those high population game server?

3000 player ? 5000? 10.000? 50.000? 100.000?

Originally posted by CujoSWAoA
This is Electronic Arts' way of saying they're merging servers, yes.

Thats what i thought exactly

Why not call a spade a spade? I don't understand why the need to lie. Goes to show they don't think highly of their customers if they think the majority will fall for this marketing ploy.  Or am I thinking too highly of the majority of the people playing nowadays?

Why aren't the other major companies also employing these "super servers"? Without it causing lag for everyone logged in.

This is so funny.  They already done this once and it did not help.  What in the wold makes them think that doing more server merges is going to help this game.

All one has to do is look at torstatus net to realize that they are still dropping subs every day.  

To call these super servers is funny, we been there and done that once before.

It still don't fix the problem of the game sucking bad,  I said it the last lime just moving folks around and giving them ore folks to play with does not fix the problems with the game.

The folks at ea/bioware have no clue.

Obviously, no one is going to see this the way i see it, but here goes.

This is an excellent move and idea.

Here's how i see this whole thing at the end of the day:

2 styles of play: PVP and PVE

From there, you have 2 giant "servers"... When a char is created, you select your style of play and that's it.  No server selection screen.  Everyone plays together through cross-tech.

We know SWTOR can handles lots of players through instances (look at launch... several instances of fleet, Korriban, etc...).  I think they have the tech to handle 4 or 5 instances of each planets.

The whole idea of servers is dying...

I love fancy ways of saying server merges. Putting a few sticks of ram in from a server your shutting down and raising the player cap isn't really much of a 'tech upgrade'. 

---

Originally posted by CujoSWAoA
This is Electronic Arts' way of saying they're merging servers, yes.

---

It's a pretty creative spin on it, you have to admit.

I liked Blizzavision's "Crossrealm Zone" excuse as well.

Crossrealm is several times worse than merging server. All the possible drawbacks of a merge except for renaming issues, plus dozen of game design conflicts like WoW player currently are suffering every day starting with broken economies, but no benefits over a decently done merge, infact even much less benefits, other than the company can hide the fact about 80% of their servercapacities where unused due to huge population decline and equally declining influx of new player, like Blizzard does. There's reason why every 6-10th thread and thousand of play in the WoW forums complain about them, post big lists of gamebreaking issues caused by a "temporary server area merge system" (cross realm is nothing but halfassed server merge in disguise), describe them as broken or horrible and even demand it to be shut off or removed why only a handful of fanboys or ganker abusing the system to gank lowbies with impossibility of retribution or reputation loss, keep repetitively praising it for not reason.

But the question is still open. Everyone is quick to assume the high population is just a spin. Then how can you proof it? Tell us exactly what the capacities of a high pop server are, that made you certain you could brush them off as irrelevant spin. An plain number whether total or relative to the previous "normal" server. Not what you feel about the matter. Not what you would love to believe for no rational reason. Not why you hate EA and that makes your assumptions somehow true. Not stories how you are supposed to be some sort of "expert" of some sort of semi relevant field and therefore you assumptions or claims must be accurate. Just an objective statement about an objective reality that would be required to be known to grade it in first place.

The problem is EA considers tiger woods more important then swtor. EA wasnt voted the number 1 worse company  for nothing.

If they had spent the 100 mill plus on the actual game rather then spending millions on PR to promote things they dont have and "coming soon" 24/7 the game might have actually gone somewhere.

After playing gw2 the majority of people i know cant see justifying paying 15 bucks a month anymore for swtor. Even f2p not sure id bother anymore. Its really depressing i was in beta for months and live and they just screwd off with content and spent thier time promoting cutom ui and ridiculous features that are nice in all but there standard features in eevery other mmo but here its EXCITING NEW CUSTOM UI!! AND EXCITING NEW GROUP FINDER! /shakes head

Then you got james ohlen thinking he has the best pvp team lolz. The best pvp team is in gw2.

One thing about gw2 is it goes to show you how lazy and how incompetent other mmo devs have become.

Im looking fwd to swtors sunset.. i never thought id say it but i hope gabe ametegelo and james ohlen never get a job in the gaming industry again.

All this server merging is doing is once again sscrewing with what carebears are left and theyll soon be on the reality bandwagon.

Server(s).

;)

Originally posted by Sukiyaki

But the question is still open. Everyone is quick to assume the high population is just a spin.

This is what you get for type of communication EA puts out.

From their record, everything they say is a spin until proven otherwise. And they have only themselves to blame.