In order to provide a better overall gameplay experience we’re getting ready to introduce new high population server tech that will allow us to significantly increase current server populations. Once we introduce new high population server tech, any characters remaining on an origin server will be moved to a high population destination server.

The first step in this process is opening up a new, temporary Public Test Server for testing. In order for us to successfully test this new tech, we need your help. To facilitate your participation we have copied all characters from our East Coast servers to this temporary Public Test Server. If you have any characters on an East Coast server, you can now log in to this special Public Test Server, find your copied characters, and begin testing this important feature today, September 13th.

http://www.swtor.com/info/news/%5Bnews-category%5D/20120913

I was testing this server and all my 18 characters were transferd (3 pages of characters). It seems that there will be limit of 12 characters per server, but I could log to all 18, so the ability to have more than that is there. I guess we will be able to buy character slots in cash shop :)

So far I do not see much difference. Had steady 60 FPS on all planets and fleet. But there are not many players there.

I would encourage everybody who plays SWTOR to check it out.

isn't this just a strange way to spin the phrase "we're closing down some servers."

or am i wrong?  i would have thought their population would be growing with the free to play stuff.

Server population won't solve the problems in this game.  Maybe getting rid of the majority of the current BioWare staff may help.

They are moving all the closed origin servers to one HPS. And they will copy all destination servers to new HPS.

So there is nothing out of ordinary here. You could not create new characters on origin servers anyway, they were locked. Unless you have characters there.

Also the new limit of characters on HPS is 12 and all character transferred from origin servers to HPS will be playable even if you have 20 or more. I have 18 and I could play every one of them.

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

Merging the origin servers yes, but they were already subject of transfers.

Pretty good move imho.

They are preparing for F2P. Simple and easy.

Edit. They were talking about High Polulation Trasfers long time ago.

I'm highly skeptical of this "new server tech".

For one, if this is such a ground breaking advance in technology, why is there absolutely no documentation or explanation of its implementation?

The cynic in me believes this is just a ploy to disguise population loss.

Currently there are 2 standard North American sefvers, and 10 light. 11 light European servers; and 1 light Asia-Pacific server and 2 dead servers.

http://www.torstatus.net/

The population hasn't shown much in the way of stabilization, and this is pre-MoP.

Not to mention the fact that they already have pre-exsisting infrastructure to accomadate 3-5 million additional players already in place. (The origin servers) Why abandon something already invested in to pour money into additional (and untried) technology?

Remember, one always has to remember that SWTOR is an EA title which they want to shift investor focus away from.

By going Free to Play, they no longer have to report subscriptions.

By introducing "New Mega Super Ultra High Population Servers", any type of negative quantification of server population can be explained away with the "limitless cap super servers"; which I am sure will be backed up by "anecdotal" evidence by die-hard (possible shills) on the SWTOR forums. This has already been evidenced by quickly deleted threads on SWTOR's forums in regard to the Asia-Pacific servers. Some post that they want mergers since fleet population is down to 40-70, only to be drowned out by several posters claiming the population is fine and 200+.

http://www.torstatus.net/shards/apac/trends

Call me a cynic, but I believe this is a brazen attempt to further disguise SWTOR's current and future population numbers as EA attempts to draw focus away from the game's performance. In essence, like sand people walking single file to disguise their numbers if you would like a Star Wars reference.

I believe the Mega-Server moniker is creative, but just spin to hide the fact that EA isn't really excited about the boundless oppurtunities of Freemium, but putting SWTOR into swan song maintenance mode.

Of course I could be happily surprised by being wrong, but I wouldn't expect the new Super-sized uber server to have a total  logged in poopulation count displayed a la Eve-Online.

***edited Asia-Pacific server bit to reflect that there are now 2 dead servers, not 1***

"Give me a meh!" "Meh!"

"Give me a meh!" "Meh!"

"Give me a meh!" "Meh!"

"What's that spell?"

"Meh!"

So copying all dead accounts from origin servers to destination servers is now called "High population server".

Irony is - they dont need high population servers unless they  merge all existing serevrs to 1 of each type for each region ;P

Masquerade server merges + force people to buy more character slots once F2pay happens, because now there are more characters per server.

EAWare: ka-ching!

There was an interview by one of the lead designers that they don't have more 'companion story' in the near future.

Which shutdowns on any hope further story progression.

That's just sad. :(

Originally posted by FrodoFragins
Even Trion had to play PR games with their server merges.  There's an unavoidable stigma attached to them and so you can't really blame them for trying to spin it less negatively.

To people who think for themselves PR means nothing.

Hmmm, how come PR got such an success and escalation lately?

I really doubt the majority of people quit this game because of population issues or because of it's subscription fee. There are many other problems this game had since launch that caused the massive leak of the initial playerbase the game had in the 1st & 2nd month of its release. So far I havn't read anything that Bioware has stated to address these fundamental problems with the game. Therefore, I can only presume that like me, most people won't even play this game when it goes free. Or most likely, the population will spike for afew weeks when it goes F2P only to die back down once people have seen that nothing has changed except now they have to pay the cash shop for alot of features.

-Conan/Warhammer/StarTrek/StarWars/D&D/LOTR- All massive I.P's the deserve to have huge MMO playerbases but have been totally misshandled by developers for many different & many similar reasons. It really is a sad state of affairs that this is the reality of the situation.

Originally posted by Sentime
I wonder if they'll be using Guild Wars 2's crappy "tech" of manking people invisible in crowded areas?

What are you talking about ? If area in GW2 is overcrowded, people go to overflow server. Nothing is invisible. 

Originally posted by Ramanadjinn

isn't this just a strange way to spin the phrase "we're closing down some servers."

or am i wrong?  i would have thought their population would be growing with the free to play stuff.

It is still the right way to go. TOR needs to feel less like a singleplayer game and larger servers is a step in the right decision.

Sure, EA might be behind it in a way to save money by closing more servers but that dosnt matter since this is a good thing for the players no matter why they do it.

Originally posted by dariuszp

Originally posted by Sentime
I wonder if they'll be using Guild Wars 2's crappy "tech" of manking people invisible in crowded areas?

What are you talking about ? If area in GW2 is overcrowded, people go to overflow server. Nothing is invisible. 

Gw2 can sometimes close off effects and stuff far away if the server is totally full. This is really just a WvWvW problem there though so it have nothing to do with TOR.

Originally posted by FrodoFragins
Even Trion had to play PR games with their server merges.  There's an unavoidable stigma attached to them and so you can't really blame them for trying to spin it less negatively.

Yeah, it is Blizzards fault who cintinues talked about it being a sign of a dying game. Now they themselves fiddle with stuff like cross server dungeons and shared zones to not do what they need to do themselves.

It is rather bad, MMOs should easily and without stigma be able to close and open servers to maximize fun gameplay. Low pop servers just suck in any game.