The sky has not fallen (yet)

[Sky]

EDIT: It does give us the opportunity to rename the guild, theoretically, since we're like 3 steps removed from the original inside joke at this point and I think well more than half the guild wasn't around for the start of it.

How about Fledermausland?   FML is pretty awesome!

Agreed on the source/destination thing: if we're a source, it's time to move.

[Evildrider]

The fact that the move is optional is just so they can say it isn't server mergers.   Anyone who doesn't transfer is going to be left on a dead server.

What's odd is the amount of people that don't want to transfer cuz they like being on low pop servers.   

[Sky]

If you don't pvp and you don't play the GTN and you don't pug....

So far GW2 is the first game since Planetside where I'd want to be on a high pop server. I would only be moving BC because everyone else would want to. It's not like I was getting a ton of groups when things were booming.

[Sjofn]

"Using the GTN at all" isn't really "playing the GTN." But yes, if you don't ever (and I mean ever!) use the GTN or plan to group or PvP or whatever, a low pop server is perfectly fine. I like having a functional GTN though and while Shien's actually isn't too bad right now (at least for me, for the stuff I buy and very occassionally sell), I imagine post-transfers it would be terrible.

If we got punted to Lord Adraas I'd have to pick a smuggler to keep. And it's not looking good for Kalah. 


Honestly I kinda wish they'd say "OK, these are the destination servers, pick any one you want to transfer to." We have friends on Jedi Covenant, and it would be nice to punt at least one of my people onto that server for legacy purposes, and they feel similarly, I am sure. I definitely don't care about my legacy name at all, so that's not an issue for me. :P

[koro]

Looks like you Shien folks are going to Ebon Hawk.

[Evildrider]

Well considering they dumped even more people to Fatman they really must have buffed server pops.

[Sky]

Looks like you Shien folks are going to Ebon Hawk.

What a giant pain in the balls. I've been pretty casual about everything with this game and team, but I'm really not happy having to dick around manually recreating BC and dicking around with character name stuff. If we had been a destination server, thing might have been different. As is it, this might be the thing to turn me off of TOR.

Manual = lazy. They really should have developed a tool to migrate guilds.

Also, I have 6 or 7 alts on Ebon Hawk. Might get lucky on a few names, I guess.

[Minvaren]

Bat Country is dead.  Long live Bat Country.   

Anyone for Slap in the Darkside on Ebon Hawk?

[Simond]

So what's this rumour abour Vogel getting shitcanned, then?

E: Oh hey, Jeff Hickman is supposed to be his replacement. That bodes well. 

[Ingmar]

Looks like you Shien folks are going to Ebon Hawk.

What a giant pain in the balls. I've been pretty casual about everything with this game and team, but I'm really not happy having to dick around manually recreating BC and dicking around with character name stuff. If we had been a destination server, thing might have been different. As is it, this might be the thing to turn me off of TOR.

Manual = lazy. They really should have developed a tool to migrate guilds.

Also, I have 6 or 7 alts on Ebon Hawk. Might get lucky on a few names, I guess.

Yeah manual process is annoying. They probably couldn't do a tool to migrate a guild and all the members en masse, since that gets into player consent issues etc., but letting us move an empty guild with the GM character would have been nice.

EDIT: We were really hoping for Lord Adraas rather than Ebon Hawk; Fordel and Sjofn are going to lose a bunch of their names on Ebon Hawk.

[koro]

My server (Giradda) still hasn't been put up on the block yet, but it's coming. I'm hoping they'll add Shadowlands (PvE East) as a third East PvE destination, as it's a fairly populated server and both my girlfriend and guildmates' names are all available on it.

[proudft]

EDIT: We were really hoping for Lord Adraas rather than Ebon Hawk; Fordel and Sjofn are going to lose a bunch of their names on Ebon Hawk.

Speak for yourself!  I had three names taken on Adraas and only one on Ebon Hawk.   

[Amaron]

They are absolutely crazy transferring so many servers to Fatman.   This is going to blow up if people resubscribe.   

[Ingmar]

Presumably that is where their new 'super server' tech that they've talked about comes into play. We'll see I guess!

[Nebu]

This is going to blow up if people resubscribe.   

You think this could potentially present a problem?  Really?

I think the only way that this game could get people back would be if they a) implemented an amazing open world pvp battleground and/or b) they added ship-based pvp with an upgrade grind. 

The pve is pretty solid minus some balancing to the raid content.  There just needs to be more of it.  A LOT more. 

[Reg]

Well I just transferred 7 of my Shien characters over to Ebon Hawk.  I just assumed that if a name was taken I'd get a warning before completing the transfer. Apparently not.  All but one of my characters names were turned to gibberish.

That was the last straw for me. I'll be back for the next expansion.

[Soln]

This is going to blow up if people resubscribe.   

You think this could potentially present a problem?  Really?

I think the only way that this game could get people back would be if they a) implemented an amazing open world pvp battleground and/or b) they added ship-based pvp with an upgrade grind. 

The pve is pretty solid minus some balancing to the raid content.  There just needs to be more of it.  A LOT more. 

I would also add:  they need to add LFD.  I don't want any chance of spending money to come back to an indeterminate waiting queue for PvE.  I want a high probability that if I select a FlashPoint, Heroic or Whatever, that I will have a very high chance of getting to play it within 30mins.  I resubbed to WoW as a tourist recently and I literally play a new dungeon every night that I never did before.   I want that for SWTOR.  I  would happily pay MORE than normal for that privilege.

[Sky]

Well I just transferred 7 of my Shien characters over to Ebon Hawk.  I just assumed that if a name was taken I'd get a warning before completing the transfer. Apparently not.  All but one of my characters names were turned to gibberish.

That was the last straw for me. I'll be back for the next expansion.

Ye gods. What are they thinking? Is there a mechanism to get a new name?

[Evildrider]

Well I just transferred 7 of my Shien characters over to Ebon Hawk.  I just assumed that if a name was taken I'd get a warning before completing the transfer. Apparently not.  All but one of my characters names were turned to gibberish.

That was the last straw for me. I'll be back for the next expansion.

When you log in with the character you get to rename.  It doesn't mean your name is taken, just that you have to rename when you log in.  

[Mattemeo]

Already seeing issues on the official forums about players who have one set of chars on a transfer eligible server and another set of chars on the destination server (ie: they rolled Republic on one and Empire on the other).
I have to wonder how Bioware propose to deal with these situations. I'd suggest doubling the character slots per server; which I'm sure most people would like anyway, but also makes up for the large ammount of potential character slots that will be lost as the emptying servers are finally removed. But I don't know how on the ball Bioware are going to be about all of this. My gut feeling is 'not very'.

[Ingmar]

That would be the best way to deal with it for sure.

[Reg]

When you log in with the character you get to rename.  It doesn't mean your name is taken, just that you have to rename when you log in. 

I just checked this out and I don't think it's true. Every single character that had its name turned to gibberish had its name already taken.

[Evildrider]

When I transferred one of mine his name wasn't taken but I still had to rename.

[Reg]

Weird. It doesn't really make sense. Why would they make you rename if the name wasn't already taken?  Why did one of my characters not have to be renamed unless it meant that the server knew the name was available?

[Merusk]

They are absolutely crazy transferring so many servers to Fatman.   This is going to blow up if people resubscribe.   

Hate to restate what Nebu did but, yeah, not happening.  You get one shot anymore.  Unless there's some AMAZING turn-around I don't think this is going to be a problem.

Hell, I think most people played it as a single player game then left, meaning there'd need to be a full-blown X-pack to bring them back.

For me, it would take a complete overhaul of the combat mechanics.  Feeling increasingly less-powerful as I leveled-up while also needing to juggle more buttons totally turned me off the game.

Weird. It doesn't really make sense. Why would they make you rename if the name wasn't already taken?  Why did one of my characters not have to be renamed unless it meant that the server knew the name was available?

WoW does the same thing on the test realm. I imagine it's just an automatic flag to rename.  Easier to handle than checking against the character database THEN flagging if a match was found.

[Falconeer]

I got transferred. Rage misplaced. Apologies to everyone for gaming related frustration built up over the last three months of waiting in Rep Fleet for a measly pvp game to start.

[proudft]

When you log in with the character you get to rename.  It doesn't mean your name is taken, just that you have to rename when you log in.  

I just checked this out and I don't think it's true. Every single character that had its name turned to gibberish had its name already taken.

I'm not sure what you are doing.  Here is what I just did as a test procedure on one of my low level losers on Shien:

1. Made a temporary character with the same name yesterday on Ebon Hawk.  I log in, delete him.
2. Log into my account on the website, select the transfer thingie, start the 'transfer process'.
3. I get an email a minute or so later saying it's done.  I log into Ebon Hawk character selection and there he is with his old name, no prompting.
4. Legacy button is flashing, so I push that, am prompted for a new legacy name as the old one is taken, so I think up one and enter it, and my legacy level 22 w/all stuff is back.

So if the name is available, there's no prompt.

[Reg]

I didn't log in and create a temporary character to see if the name was available because I foolishly thought that they'd check that as part of the transfer process. It doesn't matter. I now have 7 randomly named characters on Ebon Hawk just waiting for the next expansion where I'll play it as a singlle player game again. :)

[Sky]

2 of the 6 I actually give a damn about are available. Pretty much pissed me right off to fuck over the whole 'preorder login get my names for once' thing I had going. Really was nice to have Sky for the first time since UO.

I'm ambivalent to the point of wondering whether I should even fucking bother transferring or just cancel and forget the game. I hate coming up with new names, and I had the ones I wanted. Now I don't. I can't imagine my legacy name is around, either.

[Mattemeo]

It seems so trivial to many people but names are a really important part of a character to some players. They can inform gender, race, class, profession, even if they aren't explicit in their meaning; they just have an intrinsic value to their creator. When you're suddenly stripped of that name through no action of your own (ie: defying naming convention/rules) it can be very difficult to get back into a character. Several of my Shien names are gone on Ebon Hawk, including my main. I really don't know what I'm going to replace them with. I almost feel like this should come with some sort of means to adjust your character's race and features if you so need to completely rethink. On the RP-PvE origin servers, I can imagine this is a very wide issue.

[Ingmar]

I had that same thought, changing the appearance would help a lot with the renaming thing.

[Falconeer]

I agree that names are very, very important. That's why these days when I start playing a MMORPG I take the time to go on a bunch of servers other than the one I am playing on launch day and create a placeholder char with my name. It's a bit obsessive I know, and it doesn't always work (sometimes you end up merging or transferring to that one server where you didn't make the placeholder) but it saved me a few times. Like this one. All I had to do was to go on the server I was about to transfer to, delete my placeholder, and transfer with my main character. Gladly, it worked smoothly.

Not sure if it helps, but if you like me are the kind of person that cares I humbly suggest to try something like that in the future.

[Sjofn]

It seems so trivial to many people but names are a really important part of a character to some players. They can inform gender, race, class, profession, even if they aren't explicit in their meaning; they just have an intrinsic value to their creator. When you're suddenly stripped of that name through no action of your own (ie: defying naming convention/rules) it can be very difficult to get back into a character. Several of my Shien names are gone on Ebon Hawk, including my main. I really don't know what I'm going to replace them with. I almost feel like this should come with some sort of means to adjust your character's race and features if you so need to completely rethink. On the RP-PvE origin servers, I can imagine this is a very wide issue.

I am seriously considering just transferring one or two people to Ebon Hawk and just remaking a bunch of people for pretty much this reason (I am a special kind of broken, I know). I mean, I kinda expected to lose SOME of my character names, but not ALL of them except the one I let the random name generator make up for my BH that is all of level 12 and thus I am not really attached to at all. 

AND I have to decide between my Lord Adraas smuggler and my Shien smuggler (poor thing, she is THIS CLOSE to level 50).

[Sky]

The thing that really gets me, though...you set up the entire mmo to be about YOUR PERSONAL STORY...and then you rip the person out of it. It's possibly the worst thing they could have done.

[Ingmar]

Letting the servers dwindle to nobody would be worse, though.