The sky has not fallen (yet)

[DraconianOne]

If guilds didn't transfer, couldn't anyone start it up?  Do we really need him to create it then transfer leadership?

No you don't need him. I recreated one of our guilds with a character that wasn't the previous GL, assumed control, transferred the guild bank, disbanded the senate and destroyed Alderaan without any problems at all.* The guy who was GL hasn't transferred over yet.


*Apart from trying to transfer the guild bank before there were 12 characters in the guild.

[PalmTrees]

Bioware really, really, really, really, really wants you off the old servers.

Earn Rewards for Free Character Transfers

The response to the Free Character Transfer Service so far has been fantastic. Hundreds of thousands of players have already taken advantage of this free service to move their characters to new servers where it’s easier to find groups and play with friends. This initial service is still available and allows qualifying characters to be transferred at no charge from selected origin servers to selected destination servers.

In appreciation for the community’s support of the Free Character Transfer service, we are giving all characters on qualifying servers (including all destination servers) an in-game pet, the Gannifari, and 25 Black Hole Commendations to help purchase high level gear. Visit www.swtor.com/transfer for a list of qualifying servers.

If you haven’t moved your characters yet, it’s not too late. Transfer now to receive these in-game rewards!

http://www.swtor.com/info/news/news-article/20120705

Hehehe, still not leaving Adraas. I think I might be the only one playing republic side late night eastern times. Nar Shadaa, Tatooine, fleet, never any other players. It's odd sometimes, like being the only customer in a restaurant. Staying partly because I play it single player anyway, and partly just to be contrary. Also now I'm just amused by the fact they're keeping the lights on for the five or so people left on the server because they're too afraid to lose face by doing a merger.  Ugly pet and a token amount of some currency won't cut it Bioware.

[Lantyssa]

They'll kick you out eventually.  Service contracts probably hold more sway than the five people waiting for the end of the galaxy to come.

[Zetor]

If they move to a trial model in the future, they may just pull a Rift - keep all the deserted shards as 'trial' shards.

[Amaron]

All those servers are virtualizations running on a single blade at this point.   There's no real pressure to shut them down.   It's costing them pennies to keep them up and the bad PR would be far more expensive.

[Lantyssa]

Looks like the sky fell... all servers are offline after a cascade failure.

[Minvaren]

(edit - explanation here, but pretty tacky not to notify anyone in-game...)

(edit2 - 60+ minutes offline isn't just a reboot, looks like they're hotfixing something...)

[Amaron]

Georg Zoeller has left/been fired.   This is the moron who in beta kept saying that the animation differences weren't a problem.   Also the moron who kept saying class damage is balanced.  Maybe we'll get someone better.

Also the origin servers are now locked for people who don't have characters on them.

[koro]

Looks like the handful of people still stubbornly living in Centralia on the old servers are officially on borrowed time, since all but the populated servers are now locked to new character creation.

Edit: Also apparently former subscribers can come back free til the 17th.

[Lucas]

Server merges coming later in the summer:

http://www.swtor.com/transfer (bottom of the page)

The Free Character Transfer Service is just the initial phase of our overall plan to enhance player gameplay experience. As of today, July 10, 2012, we will begin locking character creation on selected origin servers. Later this summer, we will initiate a server merge at which point we will merge selected origin servers into a set of designated servers. At that time, any characters remaining on an origin server will be moved to a designated destination server. The result will be larger, more populated servers delivering a better overall gameplay experience. This is our overall goal with this entire process. See the latest community blog for more information.

Link to "latest community blog" is dead as I write this.

[Fordel]

Georg Zoeller has left/been fired.   This is the moron who in beta kept saying that the animation differences weren't a problem.   Also the moron who kept saying class damage is balanced.  Maybe we'll get someone better.

Also the origin servers are now locked for people who don't have characters on them.

Wasn't he like the lead designer or something?

[Simond]

[Ingmar]

Georg Zoeller has left/been fired.   This is the moron who in beta kept saying that the animation differences weren't a problem.   Also the moron who kept saying class damage is balanced.  Maybe we'll get someone better.

Also the origin servers are now locked for people who don't have characters on them.

Wasn't he like the lead designer or something?

Lead Combat Designer. So no, not like the overall lead designer of the whole thing. More like a Ghostcrawler or Kalgan type job.

EDIT: Also signs point to left, not fired, he's apparently off to Singapore to do something or other there, which makes it sound like he had something lined up already.

[Nevermore]

Georg Zoeller has left/been fired.   This is the moron who in beta kept saying that the animation differences weren't a problem.   Also the moron who kept saying class damage is balanced.  Maybe we'll get someone better.

Also the origin servers are now locked for people who don't have characters on them.

Wasn't he like the lead designer or something?

Zoeller was the combat lead.  James Ohlen is the lead designer iirc.

[koro]

This is the moron who in beta kept saying that the animation differences weren't a problem.

I missed this little bit in beta. What animations were/are a problem? Aside from the Project/Shock thing.

[Fordel]

Trooper/BH animations used to not line up at all. It took a Trooper an extra second to cast any of his channels, with the damage ticks being spread out differently.


They've fixed most (if not) all of that in regards to the Trooper though.

[Amaron]

I missed this little bit in beta. What animations were/are a problem? Aside from the Project/Shock thing.

There's actually tons of small ones still.  The really huge one though was trooper mortar vs bounty hunter death from above.  Trooper mortar took forever to do damage so people could just run out of the AoE.  He was really arrogant about these things not being a problem.

This is also the same guy who told healers to STFU when they commented on healing problems in 1.2.  Prime example of "I'm the dev so I know better than the players".

[Fordel]

While Mortar was the most obvious, The delay on on Full Auto was far worse, that would actually impact overall DPS, as it was a 15 second cooldown on a rotational ability.

[Phred]

That may be moot anyway since Sky transferred old BC to Furiously before he left, and the original guild has to be disbanded before they'll do a vault transfer. So unless Furiously is actually still subbed and can disband old BC, there's nothing we can do about the vault anyway.

I figured if Sky didn't organize something soon we'd just make a guild on the Imp side for Slap people and just keep it open for f13 anyway. (Probably using the #2 vote getter in our rename vote, Droid Rage.)

Should figure out who owns it and get them to log in this week seeing as it's free and all.

[PalmTrees]

Server merges coming later in the summer:

http://www.swtor.com/transfer (bottom of the page)

The Free Character Transfer Service is just the initial phase of our overall plan to enhance player gameplay experience. As of today, July 10, 2012, we will begin locking character creation on selected origin servers. Later this summer, we will initiate a server merge at which point we will merge selected origin servers into a set of designated servers. At that time, any characters remaining on an origin server will be moved to a designated destination server. The result will be larger, more populated servers delivering a better overall gameplay experience. This is our overall goal with this entire process. See the latest community blog for more information.

Link to "latest community blog" is dead as I write this.

Oh well, my private server is coming to an end. I knew it would sooner or later. Hopefully wherever I wind up won't be too crowded. Probably get dumped on Ebon Hawk though 

[ghost]

So is anyone willing to pronounce this thing officially dead yet?   

[Nevermore]

It's in the graveyard so it clearly must be.

[Margalis]

Even Sky is playing The Secret World now lol.

[Hutch]

It's officially dead when they shut down *all* the servers. 

[Rokal]

I convinced my SO to give it a shot so I'm playing again. It remains an MMO that is only worth playing in a dedicated group.

I will say that the game looks and plays noticeably better than it did at launch.

[Ingmar]

Still happily playing it as my main MMO. Nothing on the horizon that seems like it will make me change that.

[Sky]

I guess I could've booted everyone out of BC and disbanded on Shien, didn't think of it.

Not even sure if my account is active in TOR, the transfer and name changes kinda broke any momentum I had to play, then TSW happened.

[Minvaren]

Isn't everyone reactivated for this week free?

[Amaron]

So is anyone willing to pronounce this thing officially dead yet?   

Dead being some level of maintenance mode?  It's still #2 in the market by a large margin.  They aren't going to just decide to turn off the faucet on a large existing revenue stream.

[Tannhauser]

I'm back for the free week.  Glad to see the improvements, but it still fills me with an inescapable ennui.

[Soln]

run run run run


Seriously.  Give me more instant travel and get rid of some of these unnecessary environments (hangars).

[Simond]

So is anyone willing to pronounce this thing officially dead yet?   

Dead being some level of maintenance mode?  It's still #2 in the market by a large margin. 

Which market?

[Amaron]

Dead being some level of maintenance mode?  It's still #2 in the market by a large margin.

Which market?

English MMO market.   We'll know their new numbers soon but it's not going to be less than 500k subs.

[ghost]

Isn't everyone reactivated for this week free?

Couldn't be bothered.  The Tour de France is on.   

[Simond]

Dead being some level of maintenance mode?  It's still #2 in the market by a large margin.

Which market?

English MMO market.   We'll know their new numbers soon but it's not going to be less than 500k subs.

http://www.runescape.com/