The sky has not fallen (yet)

[Sky]

I understand why it was done. But it was done in a horrible way. Quite literally, Sky has fallen.

edit: I know I'm being a bit dramatic and whatnot, but I'm pretty pissed about this. And ambivalent at the same time. Pissbivalent.

[Ingmar]

Yeah no worries, totally understandable. I'm just trying to think of a way they could have done it that would work better and not really coming up with much. If they had whatever tech Champions had that lets people have the same name, I guess, but that seems like something that might involve ripping out a lot of stuff at a fairly low level to make it work after the fact.

EDIT: Trolled around the forums a bit, everyone sounds pretty happy about the transfers... EXCEPT the RP server people, who are pretty steamed about names. Which I guess is as expected.

EDIT 2: I guess it might have helped if they stole names back from canceled accounts like CoH/X did at once point (if I'm remembering right?)

[Sjofn]

If I could transfer some of my people to Jedi Covenant, I would be less annoyed, basically.

[Trippy]

EDIT 2: I guess it might have helped if they stole names back from canceled accounts like CoH/X did at once point (if I'm remembering right?)

They did but only from lower level characters.

[Fordel]

I got my Legacy name, but Fordel and Sturmvogel were taken as character names.


Now I am Fordell and Sturmvogell 

[Minvaren]

I somehow kept both my legacy name and all 7 of my characters' names...

(flees)

(edited to add : remember to reset UI template and cooldown types per character moved)

[Phred]

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.  

Ya because pvp has saved what games? Don't answer eve either as 90% of the playerbase never leaves hisec.

My pet theory is eve got a lot of swg ng refuges to grow it after it's poor launch.

[Sky]

Ok, are you shitting me? YOU HAVE BEEN PLACED IN A QUEUE.

Fuck off, BWA.

[Amaron]

This is going to blow up if people resubscribe.   

You think this could potentially present a problem?  Really?

SOME people will resubscribe.   I think you misunderstood me though.   Fatman was already "full".   It was the server people went to in order to be on a full server.   Now they're allowing like 4 or 5 different servers to transfer to that server.

If even a miniscule portion of the people on those servers resub it will be a nightmare.   These are servers that were dead too so you can guarantee some people only cancelled due to low pops.    It's actually pretty clear the resubs are already happening too.   I've seen a lot of people from my original server online when before you could only see like 2 or 3.

[Sky]

Down to 130 from 200.  

Finally in just as two of the pvp servers went Full.

[proudft]

11 minutes for me to get on Ebon Hawk with a 150-person queue, not tooooo bad.  I'm hopeful they did their math right for populating and this is just because everyone who still had a subscription has logged in to move and seize their character names.

[Sjofn]

I suspect it's a character name gold rush, yeah.

[Sky]

So in the rush for claims, I got Komoto and Caviglia. No Sky, Bart, Haruspex. And out of my alts from another server I used for saving names and looks, I got one: Calc'avigli'ar (I was pretty sure that'd be safe). No Cicatrix or Zebulon. Naming total was 5 out of 15, and most of those were cheesy alts like Winth. So really 2 decent names and Sky and Haruspex were two of my favorites.

I was already scraping the bottom of the barrel for names, I can't imagine how tough it will be trying to rename Sky, Bart and Haruspex. Those guys are totally those guys and not 'Mkahhehua' or whatever the hell is going to be left.

[Evildrider]

We have over 500 on both the republic and imp fleets..  there were something like 15 pvp wz's going on at level 50 range.  This is good stuff for me.

[Amaron]

As far as names go they plan to do super servers.   I imagine at that time they'll be forced to use a system that allows people to use the same name.

[Sjofn]

Just so you guys don't worry, the SUPERBUFF doesn't quite work right when you transfer your first character over. After you create your legacy again (and of ALL the names that WEREN'T taken on the server, SUNSTRIKE was not taken as a legacy name, color me surprised), you have to relog for it to remember what your buff should be.

[Jherad]

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.

Do you have any characters on Shadowlands at the moment? That's wear I'm mostly playing now (Republic side) - its a reasonable population, at least during peak hours.

[UnSub]

I suspect it's a character name gold rush, yeah.

This is why unique character names are stupid in MMOs. Have a unique account name (and that account name is unirque across all servers), but let characters be named whatever someone chooses. Because servers will merge and then you end up with this.

Cryptic did that bit right, at least.

[Ingmar]

So, f13 people who play with us, we are pondering taking this opportunity to change the guild name, since we're pretty well removed from the original inside joke that caused the name and we have lots of people who weren't even really around for it. Because we are silly people we are pondering one of these:

Droid Rage
Human-Cyborg Relations (currently winning!)
keeping Slap in the Force

Vote!

[Ingmar]

K never mind the voting, Human-Cyborg Relations was starting to run away with it after some more polling. Guild is made, my main dude is still Kayce so send me a tell for an invite whenever. (Also anyone can invite as long as I remembered to promote them from recruit).

[Kageru]

The guy who was running the population survey (based on a change in server state) has a spreadsheet of all the transfers and expected transfers. The end result being a compression down to about 10 servers in the US (thread).

[Zetor]

My SWTOR-playing guildie tells me that Lord Adraas is also being mass-transferred to Ebon Hawk. Which is kind of odd, I thought Adraas had a healthy population itself?

[Ingmar]

I was orignally thinking they'd cut the 6 East RP-PVE down to 2, with Ebon Hawk and Lord Adraas as the destinations, but I guess they decided to mush them all into 1. Probably the right decision long-term, really.

[Sjofn]

My SWTOR-playing guildie tells me that Lord Adraas is also being mass-transferred to Ebon Hawk. Which is kind of odd, I thought Adraas had a healthy population itself?

It is true, and the Adraas people are pissed because, as you say, they had a perfectly acceptable population. But I guess they want really packed servers for their LFD to work without having to do the cross server LFD shit.

[Kageru]

If the retention rate is still trending negative it's better to err on the side of the over-packing the servers. From a PR point of view they won't be wanting to do this again for quite a while.

[Der Helm]

Human-Cyborg Relations was starting to run away with it after some more polling.

Someone tell me if "Riders of Lohan" is still avaible. I might resub to snatch that one.

[Sjofn]

If the retention rate is still trending negative it's better to err on the side of the over-packing the servers. From a PR point of view they won't be wanting to do this again for quite a while.

Yeah, I'd rather wait in a queue than have to do this shit AGAIN in a few months.

[Falconeer]

I like the Guild Wars solution. No matter how soon I got in the beta, I found out my name was taken and I am pretty sure that's cross-server. On the other hand though, allowing players to create unique names with up to 20 characters and most importantly spaces gives so much freedom that it's not so hard to find a combination of first name/last name that works. That way, even with literally millions of unique names across all servers it's not too hard to come up with something original that isn't gibberish.

The Secret World on the other hand is going to face problems, as it has a cross-server system with unique names but no spaces or too many characters allowed. So good luck making sense. But that's why their "reserve your name" purchasable item is pretty valuable in this case: no chance of having that messed with due to a server merge.

[Sky]

I was orignally thinking they'd cut the 6 East RP-PVE down to 2, with Ebon Hawk and Lord Adraas as the destinations, but I guess they decided to mush them all into 1. Probably the right decision long-term, really.

Well, sure. When they can push away casual fans like me they won't need as much room. I haven't been playing much the last couple months, but for me mmo is generally an Oct-Apr thing. With this bullshit move, it's difficult to even transfer my characters over (I haven't yet). It was around 20 minutes just to log in and check my names. Now I'll have to log in and some point to delete them before I transfer over AND come up with new non-crap names for my guys....and that's really the biggest block for me. The very thought of it kills any ambition to log in and actually make the transfer...I'd rather actually play games than deal with their bullshit that will result with me losing out. Gee, thanks for that.

No, they've done something no other mmo has been able to do for me: give me a hard barrier to re-entry. Thanks for saving me the monthly fee, I'll just go play Planetside 2 and GW2.

I'll disband BC soon, and if I can log onto EH without a queue I'll set it up there and get the SLAP err H-CR folks in and officered up. Ingmar can run the show for BC if he wants to.

[PalmTrees]

Are they closing the origin servers? I'm on Adraas and don't really feel the need to move. Swtor's been a single player game, even when the pop was high, and my sub's up in August. Figure I'll finish up agent and at least one Republic and be done. I doubt I'll be renewing. Raid progression isn't my thing and the stories have been ok, but not enough to warrant renewing a subscription to see them all.

Also, even with the higher rates, I still really hate reverse engineering. Just putting that out there.

[Ingmar]

They're not closing, at least not soon, but I would expect them to eventually. I'd *guess* they won't close them until they have paid transfers available as well, so you get the choice to take your free transfer off to a specific place, or pay to go anywhere, but I don't really know.

[Falconeer]

The "consolidation" is even more serious in Europe, seems like everything has been compacted into 6 servers. Down from about 50.

[Ingmar]

Yeah it seems to be 1 per type per region. US has 2 regions, EU has one? Something like that.

[Ingmar]

I'll disband BC soon, and if I can log onto EH without a queue I'll set it up there and get the SLAP err H-CR folks in and officered up. Ingmar can run the show for BC if he wants to.

I don't really want to run both, pick someone else!

[Sky]

You already have been!