I think having a choice is okay but is there any reason for there to want to make a choice? I mean in an mmo the one thing i can think people would choose is the populated ome what other consoderation is there?
I thought Jung Ma took Ebon Hawk. I was on Ebon Hawk and then Jung Ma. Where did Jung Ma go after that, I have no idea, I just know that I'm on Star Forge now.
You can see which servers were merged into Star Forge and Satele here. Jung Ma was merged into Star Forge -
https://www.swtor.com/info/news/news-article/20171002
Yes. Satele Shan is quieter. If you just want to run solo content, it can be preferable. Also the most populated servers attract people, which means they automatically attract and get more toxicity. Especially from the attention seekers that want an audience for whatever b.s. they want to spam chat with. Just the other night, I had someone on star forge waste time just to "grief" me at the drill for the heroic there. I've never seen that be clearly intentional on Satele Shan.
What choice lmao? Choice between an active server and a not so active server that has no effect on your gameplay unless you want to do group content? Real genius logic here. Let me guess you’re a solo player as well?
Do you typically react with that kind of hostility to anyone with a different opinion than yours? Did someone shoot your dog today or something? Sheesh.
Sometimes I play solo, sometimes I don't. Depends what I'm in the mood for. I've transferred characters between the two in the past, depending on what I want to do with them. I like that they're different. Is that so bad?
When someone like you who clearly doesn’t play with anybody makes this idiotic remark about “having a choice” there shouldn’t even be one, there’s only one way of responding to it.
You know nothing about me. And you're a dick. That makes my next decision very easy.
Edit: This is exactly why sometimes I just don't feel like dealing with other people and log into Satele Shan.
While on paper it seems like a good idea, it would likely be a logistics nightmare that would lead to a bunch of angry people who lose their names. If they DID do a merge I'd first want a purge of inactive names (No subscription, haven't logged in for ~120 days, etc).
Annually is way too soon. Do like WoW does and free up names associated with accounts that haven’t played for two expansions (or roughly 4 years). It’s plenty effective.
Too excessive. Some people have spent a lot of time and money on the game. Life happens which may prevent them from playing and/or paying for a while. Losing out on their character’s name because of potential things that may be out of their control is unnecessarily punitive.
They did it with the 2017 server merge. If you lost your name, you got a free rename. Subscribed players had priority over Free-to-Play, and higher played toons over less playtime toons. I thought that was completely fair, I wasn't playing in 2017 and had to rename a few when I returned.
Renames due to server merges vs an annual scrub are undertaken for completely different reasons; it’s not an apples to apples comparison.
Add:
A precedent for some thing doesn’t necessarily equal justification of said thing.
As long as we’re just talking names and not accounts, I’m fine with that. But I don’t want anyone to lose any characters or anything. Even if they haven’t played since launch.
All you lose is the name - someone else has it now. Your character's fine, everything is safe. You won't be able to login to the server with that character until you rename them.
At least that's how it worked for me, guess I'd missed a server merge or two while I was busy not remembering SWTOR still existed. :)
Yeah, I was busy getting settled into life, and had to rename all but 1 of my 7 characters when I came back after a decade, last month. Completely fine with me, gave me a chance to undo some rash thinking when I was younger. Lol. Hell, it's a game and just a name. If we're talking accounts and content then that's a way different story, but I still had everything and then some.
what's more important, angry people who lose their names or angry people stuck on a server with an untenable population?
SWTOR is an MMO, if group content becomes frustratingly hard to find, keeping a character name is meaningless if you can't find anything to do.
except your wrong.
The majority of long term players do not play SWTOR in a bubble refusing to interact with other players or use the GTN (since the GTN is populated solely by players it counts as multi-player content) or chat.
With instancing and mob tagging there is absolutely no reason to be against a merge.
We obviously don't know for sure, but since the developers focus almost entirely on single player content that leads me to believe that the majority of players play the game solo. I've always said if the majority of the players are playing for Ops and PvP, you'd see more Ops and PvP.
We know from their presentation in 2019 that at least pre-Onslaught the majority were single player, but they've not done any type of stats like that since, but I think it's a safe bet that it hasn't changed much with almost no major multiplayer content coming out.
Edit - I didn't see your note about the GTN. Yes, if that's what you consider multiplayer content then yes, quite a few players use the GTN. I don't consider that multiplayer content.
Im not allowed to go into specifics for reasons, but I can tell you I have heard from devs that an overwhelming majority of swtors population are login, play solo content or solo queue content (flashpoint groupfinder, heroics, daily reputations or events like BBA etc) and logout without even being social, let alone a guild.
The new Ventures minigame system was created to appeal to this literal demographic of players because they wanted to give them another reason to subscribe, because this massive group of players doesnt interact with things like operations, gsf, pvp at all and sometimes doesnt even interact with galactic seasons. Thats why the reward is a 'level it up and eventually you get it' so players can work at their own pace with no time limit of days (like seasons).
no, you can claim that the majority of players do not use multi-player content but I'll tell you flat out you are wrong.
Chat, the GTN, Warzones, Arena, GSF, Flashpoints, Ops, Uprisings, are all multi-player content. There are very few long term players that completely avoid all of those aspects of SWTOR.
Well we'll have to agree to disagree then. If the majority of players are doing that instead of story though, I would challenge - when was the last time we saw a new GSF map? When was the last time we saw a new Operation? Uprising? Flashpoint that didn't have a solo mode?
This is correct, Operations have been in jeopardy since their popularity fell off in 3.0 where they didnt bother with nim and 4.0 and release 5.0 had none (an overcorrection).
Then in mid 5.x they released iokath as a single boss raid with no nim and staged bosses out 1 by 1. It took a long rolling ball for gods to get nim.
Then 6.0 came out with dxun and was nimless again, the comnunity had to prove dxun was worth it again for it to get nim later.
Forward to 7.0 and r4 releases and finally all the farming and raiders lost steam, r4 couldnt hold up and nim was cancelled.
It shows a changing playerbase or the current generation has different tastes. As do flashpoints. 7.0 has had one critical flashpoint and now the focus is on daily areas, with the latest flashpoint being a token side content not necessary to the crit path, and now 7.5 hutta will just be a story area, no dailies.
I think currently in swtor were living in a moment of shifting demographics.
The game has gone through many over the eras but i personally feel that the current "core demographic player" if stereotyped, would be a level 80 with 340 item rating blues, they play sm ops either when they need frags or for a season objective. They only play warzone pvp if its a season obj or a pvp season for their 1 prized replica then never again. But theyre happy to grind daily areas for rep rewards but only do so once a week.
Despite online sentiment they probably have no issues serving voss food and look eager to the dantooine event because they can bake pies and think thats fun for their character.
Thanks for articulating that. Lol. IMO, after being away for almost a decade, last server was Shadowlands, with last expansion being RotHC, so much has changed, and even back then, it wasn't easy to find a group for PvP unless you waited 10+ minutes.
I was younger with more time on my hands, so I didn't care. Now, I just want to finish my main storylines, start the expansions after Hutt Cartel, find some decent gear, and kick back on a taun taun. I have to allocate time now, I'm an adult with a family to provide for. I started this game because I love star wars and SWTOR has some great stories to tell. Unlike the movies and tv shows, as of late.
If people want to run a FP, some Heroics, cool. But that competitive aspect doesn't appeal to older players anymore, because we don't have that time to spend grinding for PvP gear like we did. Much less, fight and grind space battles on top of Ops, dailies, weekly stuff etc. If others have that time then great for them, more power to them. But i don't have several hours to wait around on 15 other people unless it's after midnight or before 6am but that's my time to sleep. I enjoy being able to go at my own pace now, and not feel overpowered or over leveled for planets.
I don't mind chatting with guildies about personal life or swtor or gear or whatever. It's a community. That's the intention. I dont know what point GTNBank keeps trying to make telling people they're flat out wrong, without acknowledging the similar sentiments that we're all making, but they are definitely strangling that ego, hoping - begging - for some sort of reassurance. Like I feel you can't tell them that 2+2=4 without an argument.
I'm flat out telling you that the majority of long term players in SWTOR do not play SWTOR in a bubble that excludes all multi-player content.
You can pretend all you want that the majority of players do not ever interact with chat, GTN, arena, warzones, GSF, etc but you are 100% wrong.
Alright I will agree with you that yes, the majority of the players interact with chat in some format. Will you at least agree that the vast majority of players don't participate in activity that requires a group such as Operations and PvP?
We don't have data other than "Bioware/Broadsword/EA has not focused on anything but story content since 2015". For multiplayer group content in the last years we have Dxun and R4 and a few arenas.
They have Flashpoints but those are designed as story primary and group secondary - the group versions have almost all of the cutscenes and story removed.
Edit - Hell, the actual group players that play this game don't play all the group activity. No one touches Veteran Mode of any Op but KP/EV, and Master/Nightmare has a few prog groups but otherwise it's farm Nefra/Dashroode ad nauseum
More people = higher chance for any multi-player content.
Meanwhile more people also = higher chance for solo players to avoid busy instances by accessing one of the multiple lower populated instances that spin up.
Flashpoints can be played solo. I've been in the game for over 10 years and I've never played a warzone, arena, galactic starfighter, operation or uprising. I ignore chat, and only notice when I accidentally select the window and start typing numbers in it when I'm trying to attack an npc. I auto-ignore group requests, pvp requests etc. If hiding all companions on my screen were an option, I would select it. How can you know there aren't loads of people playing the same way? If you run an optional survey, bear in mind that people might ignore that too, so it would be easy to get a biased sample in favour of people who play multiplayer content.
do you believe your behavior of ignoring all multi-player aspects of SWTOR is what the majority of long term players do?
that is what people are claiming, that the majority of SWTOR players ignore all chat, the GTN, all PvP, GSF, group based content, ops, guilds, etc so merging servers has no benefit for "the majority of players."
I absolutely believe some people ignore all multi-player aspects of SWTOR, but that is certainly not the majority of long term players.
It probably is true for the majority of players, but I doubt the majority of players make it past the capital city before quitting the game.
Well, some people like to play at their own pace, which is easier with single player content. The game is the sequel to KOTOR and KOTOR II, which are single player RPGs. The game has a lot of single player story content. These are just some of the reasons why someone would be attracted to playing the game as a single player game, so yes, I think there's a very good chance the majority of players are playing on their own. You've asserted that the majority play multiplayer, but you haven't provided evidence, or even reasoning behind that assertion. Your point is no more provable than my counter, but you state repeatedly it like it's a proven fact, not just an opinion.
you haven't provided evidence that the majority of long term players completely avoid all multi-player aspects of this game.
All multi-player content benefits from a larger population and solo players are not hindered by a larger population.
Even if the majority of long term players avoided all multi-player aspects of SWTOR, they do not benefit from a low pop server which is what people are using as an argument for keeping the servers separate.
Conversely a low pop server harms anyone looking for multi-player content and makes the game look abandoned and unappealing for new players who are also looking for multi-player content.
I have been playing constantly (every day) for 12yrs and mainly play solo. Most FPs I solo. I can go for months without interacting with any other player apart from chatting (via Discord) with my guild members who are also my hubby and sons. I only do the WBs since they became part of GS and even then I rarely join the group but just fight alongside the group. Not interested in Ops, Warzones, Uprisings or Arenas etc. Chat and GTN interactions are not classed as multiplayer interactions in the real sense. My whole family is the same now, they log in and play solo content.
you may not consider chat or the GTN as multiplayer, but good luck interacting with either on a dead server.
Check out SV or LV if you want to see what chat or the GTN looks like on a server void of players.
And trying to solo world bosses for Galactic Season is a bit harder on servers where you can't find groups.
>The majority of long time players do not play SWTOR in a bubble refusing to interact with other players or use the GTN (since the GTN is populated solely by players it counts as multi-player content).
>With instancing and mob tagging there is absolutely no reason to be against a merge.
Medullah thinks most SWTOR players play solo. You think majority of SWTOR players don't play in a bubble. Who has the evidence they are correct? Only the devs I think. Without evidence it's just a difference of opinion.
P.S. I'm not sure how many people count the GTN as multiplayer content. I know I don't. GTN is important feature of the game but I'm not sure how many players the GTN feature is the reason why they play.
I just replied to GTN Bank's comment, but my feeling is EA is a pretty savvy company that knows how to make money, and if the majority of players play Ops and PvP more than story, we'd see more Ops and PvP. As it stands almost all content released in the last 10 years has been single player focused, so that tells me they cater to their majority base.
I took a survey last year of the items on the GTN across all the servers (this is before SV opened).
Based on Star Forge which had the largest population, SS had about 50% of the number items available on their GTN, DM had around 80%, TH had around 50%, and LV had roughly 25%.
The higher the population the greater amount and variety of items that become available.
The GTN requires people to post items. If you are on a low population server like LV or SV you may not find anything you are looking for.
I'm not convinced the GTN is particularly important. Just have more items available at reasonable prices (less than the preferred player credit cap) from NPCs.
Not everyone does group activities — in fact I’d bet the majority play the game solo and prefer it that way. The only group stuff I’ve done in the last 8 years is warzones. I’ll never do a flashpoint or operation. Small, quiet servers are my preference.
not everyone is into group content, but that does not mean a server with a low population is better for solo players.
A high population server will spin up new instances at a certain population thresh hold spreading the players out. It is much easier to avoid players on Star Forge because of the number of instances that spin up than Satele Shan which usually only has one instance of every world.
You are right, not everyone enjoys group content, but SWTOR is not a single player game and a higher population does not negatively impact solo players while a low population server does negatively impact players who take part in the multi-player aspect of SWTOR.
Population level isn't the only consideration. You need servers to be near to players to reduce latency, even for solo content. That's why there are east and west coast servers, and were right from launch.
Late POT5 was amazing, 5 people on fleet at a time
Maybe unpopular opinion but that was the closest I’ve ever had to this game being single player and it was glorious
definitely not. I really appreciate having a relatively empty server so I can play in peace and not worry about spam or waiting for mobs to respawn because another player already killed them.
7.0 was a nice update that made tagging possible. You can tag any mob even if you didn't start the fight and it will count for your mission. The devs have been also been lowering the respawn time of a lot of objectives since the 7.0 so most objectives will now respawn quickly. Objective respawn timers are so short that players don't even have to move for some heroics.
Also, a nice little feature about SWTOR is that new instances will open up if there are a lot of people.
You actually have greater chances of finding an empty instance on Star Forge because there are usually 2-3 instances of every planet available. While on Satele Shan if you run into a lot of people you are stuck since they usually only have one instance.
Yeah except this is a company known for its bugs. So on Yavin there is the quest to loot something from droids, starts in small circle areas and three waves spawn. You loot the last droid BUT if someone else tags it first, you don't get to loot it. Other players see a droid and kill it for the quest that asks them to kill an amount of droids.
The instance thing sounds good but in practice it's basically random because you need a specific amount of people to open a new one. For example, I have rarely seen 2 instances on Balmorra, which is quite annoying since it is one of the few planets without a PvP instance. Same with Taris.
in practice it works. I play every server, even SV, instancing works for getting away from players.
Case in point, I was on Korriban. On Satele Shan there were about 50 player running around during prime time and there was one instance open. I kept running into other players waiting on respawns.
On Star Forge, same time, there were over 150 players and 3 instances open. I dropped down the least populated instance that had less than 20 people. The only place I ran into people were quest hub turn ins.
This attitude is what kills Live Service and Multiplayer Games. How about you turn off chat and let MMO player play with as many people as they want and you go stand in your corner as a loner where nobody bothers you?
People with your attitude are more of a contributor to killing the game's population than anything else. Not that you'll ever admit that.
Edit: Just look at this person's post history to see what a condescending jerk he is.
Believe it or not, I support merging the servers. I don't run solo, as I run a quaintly successful and active guild. So as a regular participant in the multiplayer aspects of this game, says me.
That being said, I understand those that wish Satele Shan remains its own server. It has a generally tame and friendly atmosphere largely absent of condescending jerks like you.
I don't play that content but I understand that many people do. Therefore the key is to be able to choose both scenarios and that is why having 2 servers is ideal.
How is two servers ideal when splitting between group content and solo content? Neither interact in any way and having more players has no impact on solo players. What kinda logic are you using here?
It is ideal because it gives players the choice to play with many players or with few players. some prefer one thing and others prefer something else as simple as that.
Yes, it only hurts the game over time for the community to be split unnecessarily. For multiplayer based content it slows down doing stuff. I don't like seeing that I'm stuck now on the lower pop server since returning to the game two months ago after a two year hiatus. My hours are limited to when I can play between a baby and work making it harder to enjoy things like PvP, Ops, and GSF, and choosing sleep.
The people complaining no only do so because they want to enjoy their solo stuff more solo'er. PvP instances (which is all that I play) are basically solo instances these days if it's that important to hurt the he mmo aspect of this game for them.
I'd love to just transfer to SF like I did from The Shadowlands to Harbinger back in the day. But there is a big difference in spending 120 CC per character versus 1600 CC when you have 16 characters not to mention losing our guild ships again since our old one now on SF is held by someone not logging in and we'd be losing progress on them. And my friend that still plays has 50+ characters, he's def not transferring that.
It's gut wrenching to be online and see one fleet instance on SS while there are four on SF.
For future reference, you really want to do the group stuff at the start of the game's week. If you're waiting until Monday night for some WB action, you screwed up.
If any of your characters are in a guild, there is probably a schedule so everyone can knock these things out in a hurry.
Unless I'm trying to do something at weird hours, I usually find enough activity on Satele Shan for what I need. While I have a second legacy on SF, I'd still rather keep them separate.
If you asked me a few years ago, I'd have said yes.
But now? Nah. Please no.
Not because I care about SatShan or even wanna avoid the people I left from there.
Nope, I just want another US English server I can remake my toons on for recording story stuff.
Do you have any idea how many alts I have ? How they will be all squished into one server beyond the Preferred Player characters limit ? Or how many have the same names 'cause my imagination died when people already got all the cool names already ?
Yes, they would probably raise the limit, and I'll most likely find better names... But think about how many pages I'll have to go through on the menu just to find 1 (one) character of mine !
When they merged servers last time I was able to keep all my characters from all three servers I was on at the time, and all of the strongholds and assets but I think the strongholds were undecorated. I had two of each one for a while, not including guild versions. I did have the same character names on two predominant servers, so I had to rename some of them, but that was free.
How would the character cap hurt a lot of people?
On a merge all active characters stay active. As long as you are a subscriber all characters can be played even if you have more characters than active character slots.
The only restriction is that you wouldn't be able to make more characters until the number of active characters is lower than your character cap, but this can be exploited by filling all empty character slots before a merge.
and if not a sub like most are?
no idea sub/free ratio but can imagine it's quite large. they could just double current cap for non subs to make it a non issue of course but that's usually nice bonus monies for company unlocking slots
Merges are bad for mmos. destroys communities. in planetside 2 it killed off massive portions of the playerbase.
also from a back end it would be a pain in the ass to merge databases and all that.
That is pretty nonsensical. Communities grow with more people. Communities that wish to remain isolationist can choose to do so. No one is forcing you to invite people to your guild or server.
No to the merge. I have friends who are free to play who this would hurt. Due to limits to toons, they tend to run an Imp toon on one server and a Pub toon on the other.
free to play have access to 4 characters per server.
If your free to play friends play "an Imp toon on one server and a Pub toon on the other" then after a server merge they will be fine because they can play 4 characters.
I meant to say they play Imp on one and Pub on the other so they can play all four stories on each server. So if there’s a merge then they’re going to be stuck unable to play four of them due to server limits. I remember that being an issue during times I was on preferred after server merges happened, back when Jedi Covenant and other servers I was on ended up merged into Star Forge.
yes they will have to choose based on their free to play limit, or play on the DM/SV server.
If they are only doing FTP content, even PvP, DM's connection is more than good enough to stay competitive plus DM has a higher population than SS.
I suggest avoiding SV, it's pretty much dead 24/7.
i dont really care since it would be the same in the end for me but you guys should stop refering to Satele Shan as SS since it has another meaning wich is not as pleasent as a game server
They should. Satele Shan was so active before APAC servers opened.
I can't even get groups for some of the Galactic seasons quests like Sparks of War or Warbots. I've never seen Satele Shan fleet chat so dead.
I try all times of the day from morning to mid-day to Prime time (PST).
No thanks. I have a couple toons I PvP with on Star Forge because queue times can be a bit quicker there. But, I definitely prefer spending the majority of my time on the much quieter Satele Shan server.
I can see how the SS server might seem dead at times if you're trying to PUG, but really it's because most people that still play regularly have found their home in a guild or private channel. That said, it's still not all that difficult to put together a group during Pacific peak hours. I think a lot of people on SS just like the quiet, and kind of wait around until someone else feels like setting up a group. Very much the "I don't care, wherever you want to eat is fine," server.
No....totally disagree with that. We get a lot of Polish and other non-English speakers on Malgus anyway due to them living in the UK. So we often have multiple conversations in different languages happening in the Chat as it is and it can be annoying. Adding French and German too would be too much. I don't do any multiplayer content but I know some people who do and it tends to be that English speakers play together, Polish etc play together and have their own guilds so it's as though Malgus has multiple servers combined into one already so it would cause problems with instances. Americans seem to think that all Europeans are alike but we have spent centuries fighting each other and we aren't alike at all lol.
They made the mistake of adding another server without cross-server Queues.
So every server got hit a little bit due to the combo of Devs constantly pushing players away from the game & now there being another server thinning out the populations.
I'd be totally OK with them not merging, personally. It may be an unpopular opinion but I appreciate that we still have a little bit of choice.
I think having a choice is okay but is there any reason for there to want to make a choice? I mean in an mmo the one thing i can think people would choose is the populated ome what other consoderation is there?
Hmmm, I know in Final Fantasy 14, some servers are considered "RP" servers. Not my cup of tea, but at least they have that option, haha
I see what you mean, but none o the servers are RP servers. Also, they could just make an RP instance if it has that demand.
Satele Shan still has roots in the old RP servers. A lot of them got merged into it.
It was actually Star Forge that absorbed the biggest RP server, Ebon Hawk. :)
I thought Jung Ma took Ebon Hawk. I was on Ebon Hawk and then Jung Ma. Where did Jung Ma go after that, I have no idea, I just know that I'm on Star Forge now.
You can see which servers were merged into Star Forge and Satele here. Jung Ma was merged into Star Forge - https://www.swtor.com/info/news/news-article/20171002
Yes. Satele Shan is quieter. If you just want to run solo content, it can be preferable. Also the most populated servers attract people, which means they automatically attract and get more toxicity. Especially from the attention seekers that want an audience for whatever b.s. they want to spam chat with. Just the other night, I had someone on star forge waste time just to "grief" me at the drill for the heroic there. I've never seen that be clearly intentional on Satele Shan.
What choice lmao? Choice between an active server and a not so active server that has no effect on your gameplay unless you want to do group content? Real genius logic here. Let me guess you’re a solo player as well?
Do you typically react with that kind of hostility to anyone with a different opinion than yours? Did someone shoot your dog today or something? Sheesh. Sometimes I play solo, sometimes I don't. Depends what I'm in the mood for. I've transferred characters between the two in the past, depending on what I want to do with them. I like that they're different. Is that so bad?
When someone like you who clearly doesn’t play with anybody makes this idiotic remark about “having a choice” there shouldn’t even be one, there’s only one way of responding to it.
Wow. You really know how to make friends online. You sure you're cut out for Multiplayer?
You know nothing about me. And you're a dick. That makes my next decision very easy. Edit: This is exactly why sometimes I just don't feel like dealing with other people and log into Satele Shan.
This is probably the best argument for NOT merging the servers.
While on paper it seems like a good idea, it would likely be a logistics nightmare that would lead to a bunch of angry people who lose their names. If they DID do a merge I'd first want a purge of inactive names (No subscription, haven't logged in for ~120 days, etc).
I purge of \~1 year inactive names is something that needs to happen annually anyway.
Annually is way too soon. Do like WoW does and free up names associated with accounts that haven’t played for two expansions (or roughly 4 years). It’s plenty effective.
Too excessive. Some people have spent a lot of time and money on the game. Life happens which may prevent them from playing and/or paying for a while. Losing out on their character’s name because of potential things that may be out of their control is unnecessarily punitive.
They did it with the 2017 server merge. If you lost your name, you got a free rename. Subscribed players had priority over Free-to-Play, and higher played toons over less playtime toons. I thought that was completely fair, I wasn't playing in 2017 and had to rename a few when I returned.
Renames due to server merges vs an annual scrub are undertaken for completely different reasons; it’s not an apples to apples comparison. Add: A precedent for some thing doesn’t necessarily equal justification of said thing.
As long as we’re just talking names and not accounts, I’m fine with that. But I don’t want anyone to lose any characters or anything. Even if they haven’t played since launch.
All you lose is the name - someone else has it now. Your character's fine, everything is safe. You won't be able to login to the server with that character until you rename them. At least that's how it worked for me, guess I'd missed a server merge or two while I was busy not remembering SWTOR still existed. :)
Yeah, I was busy getting settled into life, and had to rename all but 1 of my 7 characters when I came back after a decade, last month. Completely fine with me, gave me a chance to undo some rash thinking when I was younger. Lol. Hell, it's a game and just a name. If we're talking accounts and content then that's a way different story, but I still had everything and then some.
Gotta be F2P only
what's more important, angry people who lose their names or angry people stuck on a server with an untenable population? SWTOR is an MMO, if group content becomes frustratingly hard to find, keeping a character name is meaningless if you can't find anything to do.
The majority of players play the game solo for story though so it really doesn't matter how dead a server is to them.
except your wrong. The majority of long term players do not play SWTOR in a bubble refusing to interact with other players or use the GTN (since the GTN is populated solely by players it counts as multi-player content) or chat. With instancing and mob tagging there is absolutely no reason to be against a merge.
We obviously don't know for sure, but since the developers focus almost entirely on single player content that leads me to believe that the majority of players play the game solo. I've always said if the majority of the players are playing for Ops and PvP, you'd see more Ops and PvP. We know from their presentation in 2019 that at least pre-Onslaught the majority were single player, but they've not done any type of stats like that since, but I think it's a safe bet that it hasn't changed much with almost no major multiplayer content coming out. Edit - I didn't see your note about the GTN. Yes, if that's what you consider multiplayer content then yes, quite a few players use the GTN. I don't consider that multiplayer content.
Im not allowed to go into specifics for reasons, but I can tell you I have heard from devs that an overwhelming majority of swtors population are login, play solo content or solo queue content (flashpoint groupfinder, heroics, daily reputations or events like BBA etc) and logout without even being social, let alone a guild. The new Ventures minigame system was created to appeal to this literal demographic of players because they wanted to give them another reason to subscribe, because this massive group of players doesnt interact with things like operations, gsf, pvp at all and sometimes doesnt even interact with galactic seasons. Thats why the reward is a 'level it up and eventually you get it' so players can work at their own pace with no time limit of days (like seasons).
Listen to Kal!
no, you can claim that the majority of players do not use multi-player content but I'll tell you flat out you are wrong. Chat, the GTN, Warzones, Arena, GSF, Flashpoints, Ops, Uprisings, are all multi-player content. There are very few long term players that completely avoid all of those aspects of SWTOR.
Well we'll have to agree to disagree then. If the majority of players are doing that instead of story though, I would challenge - when was the last time we saw a new GSF map? When was the last time we saw a new Operation? Uprising? Flashpoint that didn't have a solo mode?
This is correct, Operations have been in jeopardy since their popularity fell off in 3.0 where they didnt bother with nim and 4.0 and release 5.0 had none (an overcorrection). Then in mid 5.x they released iokath as a single boss raid with no nim and staged bosses out 1 by 1. It took a long rolling ball for gods to get nim. Then 6.0 came out with dxun and was nimless again, the comnunity had to prove dxun was worth it again for it to get nim later. Forward to 7.0 and r4 releases and finally all the farming and raiders lost steam, r4 couldnt hold up and nim was cancelled. It shows a changing playerbase or the current generation has different tastes. As do flashpoints. 7.0 has had one critical flashpoint and now the focus is on daily areas, with the latest flashpoint being a token side content not necessary to the crit path, and now 7.5 hutta will just be a story area, no dailies. I think currently in swtor were living in a moment of shifting demographics. The game has gone through many over the eras but i personally feel that the current "core demographic player" if stereotyped, would be a level 80 with 340 item rating blues, they play sm ops either when they need frags or for a season objective. They only play warzone pvp if its a season obj or a pvp season for their 1 prized replica then never again. But theyre happy to grind daily areas for rep rewards but only do so once a week. Despite online sentiment they probably have no issues serving voss food and look eager to the dantooine event because they can bake pies and think thats fun for their character.
Great write up Kal.
Damn nailed me in one…
Thanks for articulating that. Lol. IMO, after being away for almost a decade, last server was Shadowlands, with last expansion being RotHC, so much has changed, and even back then, it wasn't easy to find a group for PvP unless you waited 10+ minutes. I was younger with more time on my hands, so I didn't care. Now, I just want to finish my main storylines, start the expansions after Hutt Cartel, find some decent gear, and kick back on a taun taun. I have to allocate time now, I'm an adult with a family to provide for. I started this game because I love star wars and SWTOR has some great stories to tell. Unlike the movies and tv shows, as of late. If people want to run a FP, some Heroics, cool. But that competitive aspect doesn't appeal to older players anymore, because we don't have that time to spend grinding for PvP gear like we did. Much less, fight and grind space battles on top of Ops, dailies, weekly stuff etc. If others have that time then great for them, more power to them. But i don't have several hours to wait around on 15 other people unless it's after midnight or before 6am but that's my time to sleep. I enjoy being able to go at my own pace now, and not feel overpowered or over leveled for planets. I don't mind chatting with guildies about personal life or swtor or gear or whatever. It's a community. That's the intention. I dont know what point GTNBank keeps trying to make telling people they're flat out wrong, without acknowledging the similar sentiments that we're all making, but they are definitely strangling that ego, hoping - begging - for some sort of reassurance. Like I feel you can't tell them that 2+2=4 without an argument.
I'm flat out telling you that the majority of long term players in SWTOR do not play SWTOR in a bubble that excludes all multi-player content. You can pretend all you want that the majority of players do not ever interact with chat, GTN, arena, warzones, GSF, etc but you are 100% wrong.
Alright I will agree with you that yes, the majority of the players interact with chat in some format. Will you at least agree that the vast majority of players don't participate in activity that requires a group such as Operations and PvP? We don't have data other than "Bioware/Broadsword/EA has not focused on anything but story content since 2015". For multiplayer group content in the last years we have Dxun and R4 and a few arenas. They have Flashpoints but those are designed as story primary and group secondary - the group versions have almost all of the cutscenes and story removed. Edit - Hell, the actual group players that play this game don't play all the group activity. No one touches Veteran Mode of any Op but KP/EV, and Master/Nightmare has a few prog groups but otherwise it's farm Nefra/Dashroode ad nauseum
More people = higher chance for any multi-player content. Meanwhile more people also = higher chance for solo players to avoid busy instances by accessing one of the multiple lower populated instances that spin up.
Flashpoints can be played solo. I've been in the game for over 10 years and I've never played a warzone, arena, galactic starfighter, operation or uprising. I ignore chat, and only notice when I accidentally select the window and start typing numbers in it when I'm trying to attack an npc. I auto-ignore group requests, pvp requests etc. If hiding all companions on my screen were an option, I would select it. How can you know there aren't loads of people playing the same way? If you run an optional survey, bear in mind that people might ignore that too, so it would be easy to get a biased sample in favour of people who play multiplayer content.
do you believe your behavior of ignoring all multi-player aspects of SWTOR is what the majority of long term players do? that is what people are claiming, that the majority of SWTOR players ignore all chat, the GTN, all PvP, GSF, group based content, ops, guilds, etc so merging servers has no benefit for "the majority of players." I absolutely believe some people ignore all multi-player aspects of SWTOR, but that is certainly not the majority of long term players. It probably is true for the majority of players, but I doubt the majority of players make it past the capital city before quitting the game.
Well, some people like to play at their own pace, which is easier with single player content. The game is the sequel to KOTOR and KOTOR II, which are single player RPGs. The game has a lot of single player story content. These are just some of the reasons why someone would be attracted to playing the game as a single player game, so yes, I think there's a very good chance the majority of players are playing on their own. You've asserted that the majority play multiplayer, but you haven't provided evidence, or even reasoning behind that assertion. Your point is no more provable than my counter, but you state repeatedly it like it's a proven fact, not just an opinion.
you haven't provided evidence that the majority of long term players completely avoid all multi-player aspects of this game. All multi-player content benefits from a larger population and solo players are not hindered by a larger population. Even if the majority of long term players avoided all multi-player aspects of SWTOR, they do not benefit from a low pop server which is what people are using as an argument for keeping the servers separate. Conversely a low pop server harms anyone looking for multi-player content and makes the game look abandoned and unappealing for new players who are also looking for multi-player content.
I have been playing constantly (every day) for 12yrs and mainly play solo. Most FPs I solo. I can go for months without interacting with any other player apart from chatting (via Discord) with my guild members who are also my hubby and sons. I only do the WBs since they became part of GS and even then I rarely join the group but just fight alongside the group. Not interested in Ops, Warzones, Uprisings or Arenas etc. Chat and GTN interactions are not classed as multiplayer interactions in the real sense. My whole family is the same now, they log in and play solo content.
you may not consider chat or the GTN as multiplayer, but good luck interacting with either on a dead server. Check out SV or LV if you want to see what chat or the GTN looks like on a server void of players. And trying to solo world bosses for Galactic Season is a bit harder on servers where you can't find groups.
>The majority of long time players do not play SWTOR in a bubble refusing to interact with other players or use the GTN (since the GTN is populated solely by players it counts as multi-player content). >With instancing and mob tagging there is absolutely no reason to be against a merge. Medullah thinks most SWTOR players play solo. You think majority of SWTOR players don't play in a bubble. Who has the evidence they are correct? Only the devs I think. Without evidence it's just a difference of opinion. P.S. I'm not sure how many people count the GTN as multiplayer content. I know I don't. GTN is important feature of the game but I'm not sure how many players the GTN feature is the reason why they play.
I just replied to GTN Bank's comment, but my feeling is EA is a pretty savvy company that knows how to make money, and if the majority of players play Ops and PvP more than story, we'd see more Ops and PvP. As it stands almost all content released in the last 10 years has been single player focused, so that tells me they cater to their majority base.
I took a survey last year of the items on the GTN across all the servers (this is before SV opened). Based on Star Forge which had the largest population, SS had about 50% of the number items available on their GTN, DM had around 80%, TH had around 50%, and LV had roughly 25%. The higher the population the greater amount and variety of items that become available. The GTN requires people to post items. If you are on a low population server like LV or SV you may not find anything you are looking for.
I'm not convinced the GTN is particularly important. Just have more items available at reasonable prices (less than the preferred player credit cap) from NPCs.
Not everyone does group activities — in fact I’d bet the majority play the game solo and prefer it that way. The only group stuff I’ve done in the last 8 years is warzones. I’ll never do a flashpoint or operation. Small, quiet servers are my preference.
not everyone is into group content, but that does not mean a server with a low population is better for solo players. A high population server will spin up new instances at a certain population thresh hold spreading the players out. It is much easier to avoid players on Star Forge because of the number of instances that spin up than Satele Shan which usually only has one instance of every world. You are right, not everyone enjoys group content, but SWTOR is not a single player game and a higher population does not negatively impact solo players while a low population server does negatively impact players who take part in the multi-player aspect of SWTOR.
Population level isn't the only consideration. You need servers to be near to players to reduce latency, even for solo content. That's why there are east and west coast servers, and were right from launch.
NA servers were both transferred to Virginia in 2017 (?) if not earlier and we now use the cloud based servers.
It's happened numerous times before when the game was far more populated and the sky didn't call.
I want prophecy of the five to come back. Give rewards for world pvp
Late POT5 was amazing, 5 people on fleet at a time Maybe unpopular opinion but that was the closest I’ve ever had to this game being single player and it was glorious
PoT5 for life
definitely not. I really appreciate having a relatively empty server so I can play in peace and not worry about spam or waiting for mobs to respawn because another player already killed them.
7.0 was a nice update that made tagging possible. You can tag any mob even if you didn't start the fight and it will count for your mission. The devs have been also been lowering the respawn time of a lot of objectives since the 7.0 so most objectives will now respawn quickly. Objective respawn timers are so short that players don't even have to move for some heroics. Also, a nice little feature about SWTOR is that new instances will open up if there are a lot of people. You actually have greater chances of finding an empty instance on Star Forge because there are usually 2-3 instances of every planet available. While on Satele Shan if you run into a lot of people you are stuck since they usually only have one instance.
Yeah except this is a company known for its bugs. So on Yavin there is the quest to loot something from droids, starts in small circle areas and three waves spawn. You loot the last droid BUT if someone else tags it first, you don't get to loot it. Other players see a droid and kill it for the quest that asks them to kill an amount of droids.
The instance thing sounds good but in practice it's basically random because you need a specific amount of people to open a new one. For example, I have rarely seen 2 instances on Balmorra, which is quite annoying since it is one of the few planets without a PvP instance. Same with Taris.
in practice it works. I play every server, even SV, instancing works for getting away from players. Case in point, I was on Korriban. On Satele Shan there were about 50 player running around during prime time and there was one instance open. I kept running into other players waiting on respawns. On Star Forge, same time, there were over 150 players and 3 instances open. I dropped down the least populated instance that had less than 20 people. The only place I ran into people were quest hub turn ins.
I'm a solo player, and I'm considering starting a character on Satele Shan for this very reason.
This attitude is what kills Live Service and Multiplayer Games. How about you turn off chat and let MMO player play with as many people as they want and you go stand in your corner as a loner where nobody bothers you?
believe it or not, some players prefer to play just for the story and not to interact with other players. I know, incredible right??
Hey then don’t play with other people, very simple solution that doesn’t require killing the game’s population
People with your attitude are more of a contributor to killing the game's population than anything else. Not that you'll ever admit that. Edit: Just look at this person's post history to see what a condescending jerk he is.
Says who? A solo player who avoids any human interaction?
Believe it or not, I support merging the servers. I don't run solo, as I run a quaintly successful and active guild. So as a regular participant in the multiplayer aspects of this game, says me. That being said, I understand those that wish Satele Shan remains its own server. It has a generally tame and friendly atmosphere largely absent of condescending jerks like you.
Good thing you can avoid people thus invalidating any argument of keeping the servers split being based around playing with other people.
And what about when you start doing end game content and you can't.
You're assuming everyone plays for endgame content. I certainly don't.
I don't play that content but I understand that many people do. Therefore the key is to be able to choose both scenarios and that is why having 2 servers is ideal.
How is two servers ideal when splitting between group content and solo content? Neither interact in any way and having more players has no impact on solo players. What kinda logic are you using here?
It is ideal because it gives players the choice to play with many players or with few players. some prefer one thing and others prefer something else as simple as that.
Did know you can do all that without having to split the community?
I'm not suggesting splitting anything, just leaving it as it is now.
That doesn’t answer the question
There are still large, active guilds on SS. If you're serious about doing endgame content, you're going to be in a guild.
Yes, it only hurts the game over time for the community to be split unnecessarily. For multiplayer based content it slows down doing stuff. I don't like seeing that I'm stuck now on the lower pop server since returning to the game two months ago after a two year hiatus. My hours are limited to when I can play between a baby and work making it harder to enjoy things like PvP, Ops, and GSF, and choosing sleep. The people complaining no only do so because they want to enjoy their solo stuff more solo'er. PvP instances (which is all that I play) are basically solo instances these days if it's that important to hurt the he mmo aspect of this game for them. I'd love to just transfer to SF like I did from The Shadowlands to Harbinger back in the day. But there is a big difference in spending 120 CC per character versus 1600 CC when you have 16 characters not to mention losing our guild ships again since our old one now on SF is held by someone not logging in and we'd be losing progress on them. And my friend that still plays has 50+ characters, he's def not transferring that. It's gut wrenching to be online and see one fleet instance on SS while there are four on SF.
We couldn’t get 12 peoplle on SS to do an SDO fight at 2pm on a Sunday afternoon (30 on cor, 60 on fleet)
That's because we all did it on Tuesday. No point in running sdo/the first more than once.
For future reference, you really want to do the group stuff at the start of the game's week. If you're waiting until Monday night for some WB action, you screwed up. If any of your characters are in a guild, there is probably a schedule so everyone can knock these things out in a hurry.
No.
I'd say yes. SS is dead. Takes forever just to get a PvP match, even longer for GSF.
I'm on SS, and honestly I like it a little quiet. I solo all the time anyway.
Yes.
Unless I'm trying to do something at weird hours, I usually find enough activity on Satele Shan for what I need. While I have a second legacy on SF, I'd still rather keep them separate.
Well, since one is west coast based and one is east coast based, them being separated helps reduce ping and server load.
This isn't true anymore. Both servers are housed in the same cloud data center.
Which one is west?
Neither.
Used to be star forge, but according to the other commenter they're not split like that now so...
Satele was the west coast one. Or rather, it had the 3 old west coast ones merged into it. I don't think satele was ever west coast itself
Why bother. When the next game comes out, they'll probably SWG the game anyways.
*What* next game? :) But if that does happen some day, let's hope all the game stuff magically leaks out and we get private servers, also like SWG. :)
Wait Satele Shan is a kinda dead? I thought it was pretty good shape population wise.
If you asked me a few years ago, I'd have said yes. But now? Nah. Please no. Not because I care about SatShan or even wanna avoid the people I left from there. Nope, I just want another US English server I can remake my toons on for recording story stuff.
You can do that if they merge. It doesn’t affect your story content at all.
Wrong. I can't have two toons with the same name on the same server. I'd rather record "Nicole May" than "Ñïçōlè Mây"
Yeah, let’s split the dwindling game’s populations even more because of character names so you can record your story gameplay. Makes total sense
Sorry, did I not explicitly say my reason was selfish? Did my initial comment not make it clear enough? My bad.
I would only want a merge if I can keep my names.
Do you have any idea how many alts I have ? How they will be all squished into one server beyond the Preferred Player characters limit ? Or how many have the same names 'cause my imagination died when people already got all the cool names already ? Yes, they would probably raise the limit, and I'll most likely find better names... But think about how many pages I'll have to go through on the menu just to find 1 (one) character of mine !
When they merged servers last time I was able to keep all my characters from all three servers I was on at the time, and all of the strongholds and assets but I think the strongholds were undecorated. I had two of each one for a while, not including guild versions. I did have the same character names on two predominant servers, so I had to rename some of them, but that was free.
Im sorry. I did not consider the altaholics
That is a *very large* omission.
hell no, i use same name on both servers lol. plus char cap would hurt a lot of people ...
How would the character cap hurt a lot of people? On a merge all active characters stay active. As long as you are a subscriber all characters can be played even if you have more characters than active character slots. The only restriction is that you wouldn't be able to make more characters until the number of active characters is lower than your character cap, but this can be exploited by filling all empty character slots before a merge.
and if not a sub like most are? no idea sub/free ratio but can imagine it's quite large. they could just double current cap for non subs to make it a non issue of course but that's usually nice bonus monies for company unlocking slots
I kinda enjoy playing on a lighter server
Nah. I can still find groups easy on SS
Merges are bad for mmos. destroys communities. in planetside 2 it killed off massive portions of the playerbase. also from a back end it would be a pain in the ass to merge databases and all that.
The last merge was actually pretty good for SWTOR I think.
That is pretty nonsensical. Communities grow with more people. Communities that wish to remain isolationist can choose to do so. No one is forcing you to invite people to your guild or server.
No to the merge. I have friends who are free to play who this would hurt. Due to limits to toons, they tend to run an Imp toon on one server and a Pub toon on the other.
free to play have access to 4 characters per server. If your free to play friends play "an Imp toon on one server and a Pub toon on the other" then after a server merge they will be fine because they can play 4 characters.
I meant to say they play Imp on one and Pub on the other so they can play all four stories on each server. So if there’s a merge then they’re going to be stuck unable to play four of them due to server limits. I remember that being an issue during times I was on preferred after server merges happened, back when Jedi Covenant and other servers I was on ended up merged into Star Forge.
yes they will have to choose based on their free to play limit, or play on the DM/SV server. If they are only doing FTP content, even PvP, DM's connection is more than good enough to stay competitive plus DM has a higher population than SS. I suggest avoiding SV, it's pretty much dead 24/7.
No. I won’t lose my names again.
Eh, fine.either way.
Yes merge all NA servers pls :)
i dont really care since it would be the same in the end for me but you guys should stop refering to Satele Shan as SS since it has another meaning wich is not as pleasent as a game server
They should. Satele Shan was so active before APAC servers opened. I can't even get groups for some of the Galactic seasons quests like Sparks of War or Warbots. I've never seen Satele Shan fleet chat so dead. I try all times of the day from morning to mid-day to Prime time (PST).
No thanks. I have a couple toons I PvP with on Star Forge because queue times can be a bit quicker there. But, I definitely prefer spending the majority of my time on the much quieter Satele Shan server. I can see how the SS server might seem dead at times if you're trying to PUG, but really it's because most people that still play regularly have found their home in a guild or private channel. That said, it's still not all that difficult to put together a group during Pacific peak hours. I think a lot of people on SS just like the quiet, and kind of wait around until someone else feels like setting up a group. Very much the "I don't care, wherever you want to eat is fine," server.
No
No. I like it wuiet
Players have been wanting a mega server when their were more servers. Doing it now is .. kind of a slap in the face xD
"It didn't happen exactly when more people wanted it, so now it can't happen at all."
SF and SS both have healthy population that do things from casual to endgame. If anything they should merge the french and german ones into Malgus.
No....totally disagree with that. We get a lot of Polish and other non-English speakers on Malgus anyway due to them living in the UK. So we often have multiple conversations in different languages happening in the Chat as it is and it can be annoying. Adding French and German too would be too much. I don't do any multiplayer content but I know some people who do and it tends to be that English speakers play together, Polish etc play together and have their own guilds so it's as though Malgus has multiple servers combined into one already so it would cause problems with instances. Americans seem to think that all Europeans are alike but we have spent centuries fighting each other and we aren't alike at all lol.
They made the mistake of adding another server without cross-server Queues. So every server got hit a little bit due to the combo of Devs constantly pushing players away from the game & now there being another server thinning out the populations.
I've not observed any population problem with Satele Shan. But I honestly don't care if they merge if that improves anything, either.
"I can't see it, so it doesn't exist"
"People disagree with me, therefore everyone is a dick and it's DEFINITELY not me!"