When the announcement came out last week that TOR was going to be doing server mergers, I was actually pretty happy. After taking a look at some of the relevant stats and research, I figured that in the pool of six East Coast RP-PVE servers, we would be moving to two or three, depending on how crowded BW wanted the servers to be, and how many actual players were left on each of the servers. And when what was arguably the number five or six server got merged with the most active one when transfers opened on Tuesday, this only server to bolster my conclusions.
But boy was I wrong.
Not three, not two, but one. Six servers squished onto one. You think people get mad about losing their name when two servers get squished together, think about jamming six of them together. Its a wonder any of our names were not taken by the time we got in. And in lovely EA/BW fashion, the process was not based on any sort of fairness about time invested or anything like that – it was purely first come, first serve. When I heard it, the first thing I posted on our guild forums was a question of how long it would be before we had to queue up to get into the game. My guess was by the end of the week, but it turns out, it was by the end of the night…
We’re still surveying the damage done. Personally, because of the poor optimization of the client, it takes me an upwards of 7-8 minutes to log into a character. I didn’t have that kind of time for 11 characters across 3 servers, so I lost any and all mail on my characters. Including bonus credits for missions, and in several cases, Legacy and Collector’s Edition items for some of my alts. I will have to rename all but one of my characters. I haven’t heard how the rest of my leveling group did, but initial reports were not good their either. The same can be said for my Republic characters. You know, all the ones that I created and leveled before the Legacy announcements were made? That I can’t transfer onto my server because these are one-way, limited mergers? That BW couldn’t figure out the logistics of a full transfer system is mind-boggling. Also mind-boggling is the realization that Legacy names, like character names, are unique. Some people woke up this morning, on an RP server, with completely different characters than they went to bed with last night.
I’m not sure why there wasn’t a move to consolidate to two instead of one. And I’m sure as hell not happy about having my legacy become something other than. Quite honestly, it deflated what little energy I have left to play what has been, to my experienced MMO eye, a mediocre game.
I guess the only question left is: where do they go from here?
Harbinger Zero 
Ouch. I will be interested to hear if the server queues stick or if they were caused by the merge activity and will settle down once everybody is in their new home with their new identity. It is like being in the Imperial Witness Protection Program or something.
The general consensus seems to be that it is a result of the merger traffic rather than general population, but…consensus is sometimes wrong. My hunch is that the server is overpopulated, but that BW did this move with the numbers in hand on how many of the six month subs, which are up for renewal next month, have already been cancelled, and that the drop from that will bring the server within a heavy, but not queue happy, level.
The queues were there last night simply because there was a rush of people to check out the new server. Those should die down fairly quickly. I understand that there were pain points (hell I had to rename a guy and lost my guild name that I’ve had since the guild service started … you know, 1.5 years before the game launched), but when you take a step back and look at the game from a distance, this absolutely needed to happen. It was the right move, and although they could have started the communication process a little better, they still did a pretty good job of keeping us informed.
I’m halfway there with you Targeter. On the one hand, yes, the mergers were absolutely needed. On the other hand, if BW wasn’t using developer tools from the dark ages of MMO design, none of the grief involved in moving guilds, guild banks, legacy names, and character names would have happened. As one guildmate of mine noted, they spent too much time on their precious story, and not nearly enough on making a functional 3rd (or even 2nd) generation MMO.
And, as I said, I am not convinced that the queue won’t remain in place for the next couple of weeks, until the six monthers drop out…which, at this point, may include me.
I guess I got lucky, I only had to change 2 names in the move of 7 characters from Sanctum of the Exalted to Ebon Hawk, and only 1 of 8 characters moved from Juyo to Canderous Ordo.
Alt-itis? Who me?
I haven’t been able to afford alt-itis in the game. It takes too damn long to level when you play with a group, which is how I tend to play!