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On server merges and the inevitiable...

As we know the game is losing people. So much so that the servers obviously need merging. And according to their own boards there, for example this thread forums.station.sony.com/swg/posts/list.m , a good amount of people do not want a server merge or transfer to another server because they don't want to change their name, lose the current community they already have, lose their things, lose their 4-year achievements (sound familiar?) and many more valid reasons.

Now what really kicks me (and youll have to forgive my sick yet deserved pleasure in all this) is the inevitability of it all.... whats going to happen. Eventually they will either be forced to move, their server gets shut down, or they leave it up... all of which are all bad either way you have it. People will leave.

Where am I going with this.... well.... im going to make a prediction... SoE will shut down the "low" servers due to not enough players being on it (aka waste of money), and if people that are on it wont transfer, tough.... and I see more subs dropping. A considerable drop mind you... not one like the NGE, obviously... but considerable...

Point? Just goes to show... careful what you do to your customers... you might dig yourself a hole you cant get out of.. 

 

 

"Do not fret! Your captain is about to enter Valhalla!" - General Beatrix of Alexandria

"The acquisition of knowledge is of use to the intellect, for nothing can be loved or hated without first being known." - Leo da Vinci

Comments

  • KazaraKazara Member UncommonPosts: 1,086

    I believe $OE will let this situation fester for as long as possible. To merge servers and/or provide free, complete (not the half-assed ones they do now) and the resulting subscription loss will cost more than just doing nothing, while collecting transfer money from those who are willing to fork over the money. I do agree that there will be a time when there are so few subscribed players left on the ghost servers that $OE will just go ahead ands shut them down - - running the servers will cost more than the return gained by the few left playing on them.

    When the time comes for the selected servers to be shut down, I predict $OE will do forced mergers where the characters will suffer the half-assed transfer penalties. I wonder how many players are considered expendable to $OE these days. If the current players honestly believe that $OE will do 'right' by them, they will be woefully disappointed.

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  • akevvakevv Member Posts: 208

    I don't think they will shut any servers down. I think they will continue to happily take the $50 it takes to get to a higher population server. IF they shut down a server, it will be so that they can cannibalize parts to keep the others running. It will have nothing to do with anything the players want.

    Akevv Ostone
    No Longer SWG Free :(

  • forthelulzforthelulz Member Posts: 215

    they have made it hard to buy the game. next step is quietly stop server transfers. they will then shut down 3-4 of the empty servers..just like the japanese ones.

  • KazaraKazara Member UncommonPosts: 1,086
    Originally posted by forthelulz


    they have made it hard to buy the game. next step is quietly stop server transfers. they will then shut down 3-4 of the empty servers..just like the japanese ones.



    We saw how well that went...how many of the players from the Japanese servers transferred and stayed? The players that do not want to transfer or merge will more than likely cancel, but I am sure that will be figured into the decision and expected. I don't expect $OE to make the merger/character transfers as  painless as possible. Players' toons will have many of their rewards, items, and resources - the things that represent time and effort  - removed.  This will not be unlike how the NGE negated years worth of character and community development. Expendable...that is how the playerbase has always been treated.

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  • dethgardethgar Member Posts: 293

    I don't understand their reasoning behind not merging their servers. Seems if a server is low population then its likely not worth the upkeep. Unless of course, they pay very little for upkeep, which would be consistent with the quality of lag and unique server bugs throughout SWG's tenure. Honestly, if they're reporting to SCEI now they'll either end up doing a new graphic revamp for PS3 and use the low pop servers for that, or they're going to close up shop on most of them and put resources into a new station MMO intended for console release. Hell, if they were even smarter(they're not), they turn one or two of those low pop servers into a classic pre-CU one. It'd generate a profit at least.

  • There really are only three options open to them at this point with respect to SWG, three paths to the end.

    1. The slow burn.  This is what they are currently doing, leaving the servers alone, hoping people move on their own (and make the money from), and continuing to put trivial things into the game.  Like a candle in a room who's oxygen is gradually being consumed, the flame burns lower and lower until the point it goes out.  The shutdown is one of apathy.

    This is the most cynical of all ends to the game, and the one that actually makes SOE the most money, so is it any surprise that this is what is happening?

    2. The flame out.  They throw resources into server merges (which will take time with virtually no new trinkets added to the game, and given who is doing it, you know will be buggy as hell), compressing the servers down into the 4-5 they actually need from the 25 they have with all the nightmares this causes.  This will halve their subscribers again and they know it.  They are praying that they somehow either get more subscribers some how, or 90% of the populations of the dead servers move on their own so they don't HAVE to do this.  In the end server merges will likely kill the game faster than the slow burn, MUCH quicker.  I think they might eventually try to do this as a last gasp, but only once the "slow burn" gets even dimmer.  Once they decide to do this they are committed to it, since their very limited Dev resources won't allow them to do multiple things at the same time.

    3. The mercy killing.  SOE decides to just kill it, without stringing out the "slow burn" or attempting to reverse the situation (the "flame out").  This is what I think is the most likely scenario, probably when the new Star Wars MMO gets closer to alpha/beta, or when the new SOE MMO's get closer to release.  SWG has a small, cheap staff of entry level personnel, but it still has a staff.  Why waste that personnel on a corpse when they could be used on new games with potential to make more money in a month than SWG will make in a year?  Another factor in this is LEC... 

    How much longer will they want to endure the embarrassment of the slow death of the MMO with the worst and most negative reputation in the industry?

    Both SOE and LEC now have new leadership, with Ward's resignation and with SOE being moved to Sony's gaming division, effectively removing Smed as the top boss, even if he's still there.  One of the first things new management does when entering a situation is to evaluate everything from top to bottom, analyzing performance.  Is there any argument at this point that SWG's performance is atrocious and well past the point of no return?

     

     

  • ThunderousThunderous Member Posts: 1,152

    You'll never see a server merge, and quite frankly I think SOE would be wasting time and money in trying to merge them.

    Tecmo Bowl.

  • Originally posted by Thunderous


    You'll never see a server merge, and quite frankly I think SOE would be wasting time and money in trying to merge them.

    That's why I think they will, if they do them, will wait as long as possible.

    There isn't any way they can merge SWG servers without pissing a lot of their remaining players off.  There also isn't any way they can do it without spending a LOT of time and $$$ on developing it.  This sad lot would take half a year of doing nothing else to be able to figure out a method.  Bringing in some competent developers would cost bigtime $$$ and drain resources SOE is better off spening on their new games or in trying to turn EQ2 around.

    Furthermore, more densley packed servers would themselves present a huge technical problem...  Anyone who ever pvp'ed on the servers with decent populations (Bloodfin for one) knows that get 20 people in a fight and you are in a slideshow.  The catch 22 of all this is that even HAD the NGE game brought in a bunch of players and achieved sub levels similar to Pre-NGE the game would have been completely unplayable.  The only thing that allows even the illusion that the fundamentally flawed NGE combat engine works is the low populations.

    The bottom line:  They can't merge servers without a nearly impossible (for their talent level) technical achievement.  They can't handle higher population servers without re-doing the combat engine, which is also nearly impossible for the talent level of the current team.  They'd have to do both at once and need to have both done literally 6 months ago.  This can't happen.

    Not saying they won't throw something together and TRY it (with the predictable disasterous results) but that they literally can't do it.

     

     

  • ArcheusCrossArcheusCross Member Posts: 793

    And here I thought this I was going to get flamed by a few fanbois.... but i come back and find a logical discussion... hmmm perhaps the fanbois know i'm right? Hmmm..... interesting.

    It doesn't benefit me either way... the game is dying... and nothing will bring back pre-cu ..

    unless they get that desperate... but i dont see that happening... and even so.. its too little too late for many vets..

    "Do not fret! Your captain is about to enter Valhalla!" - General Beatrix of Alexandria

    "The acquisition of knowledge is of use to the intellect, for nothing can be loved or hated without first being known." - Leo da Vinci

  • KazaraKazara Member UncommonPosts: 1,086

    Originally posted by ArcheusCross


    And here I thought this I was going to get flamed by a few fanbois.... but i come back and find a logical discussion... hmmm perhaps the fanbois know i'm right? Hmmm..... interesting.
    It doesn't benefit me either way... the game is dying... and nothing will bring back pre-cu ..
    unless they get that desperate... but i dont see that happening... and even so.. its too little too late for many vets..

    Hehe, some of the shills, er, I mean fanbois & bots are off the clock during weekends.  

    As much as I would love to see Pre-CU game play return, there is just too much water under the bridge. Teh Smedster's new boss will not want to resurrect SWG Pre-CU game (although it is vastly superior to the current version) and will instead focus on new, more profitable endeavors.

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  • MikeMBMikeMB Member Posts: 272

    As someone that moved from one server to another (Kauri to Starsider) about a month ago I can say this much, the system in place right now just doesn't work.

    Now I kinda got lucky, almost everything in my Datapad did move with me. All of my packed up houses, all of my speeders and mounts, the only thing I did lose for about 3 weeks was 3 of my ships. A Heavy X-Wing, B-Wing and Firespray. However a GM was able to get those 3 ships along with all the parts they had on them back for me.

    Still I've heard story's about people losing everything or having everything move with them. Still that right there lays in the main fault with the system 'as is' right now. A GM still needs to do it, you do still lose anything in crate form or resources. And losing Resources right there would piss a TON of people off. Sadly it's SOE's own damn fault for that. If they had gone the Ultima Online way with in game resources, namely a stack of metal is the same as every other stack of metal. Well we can go on about that...

    Now the over all fault is people are coming back, be it the Vet Trials, they miss the game or whatever.... The big fault is those Players are coming back to servers that are dead. This happen on Ultima Online too back in 2004. The known bigger servers still had people running around, the smaller ones died out due to people leaving the game. Those coming back on those smaller servers can't find people to do things with, thus they leave again.

    This is also why you won't see MMO's opening 15+ Servers when the game comes out anymore. In the long term it's not a good move. Rather you have to open new ones 'as' people come into the game, infact your seeing this with some of the new MMO's coming out that don't have the words "World" and "Warcraft" in the titles. Well not only that but we're not in the days of servers only being able to hold so many people, and half of those people are on dial up.

    Really SOE should have known to start looking into this at the end of 2004 when WoW came out. Kauri took a big hit to the server Pop then, I have heard a few others did as well.

  • BushMonkeyBushMonkey Member Posts: 1,406

     Kind of makes you wonder about the server crashes, perhaps a gentle prodding to the remaining players on said server's to move? I can see it now " my server is down" community response "Move to bria we never crash" Sneaky and underhanded? Well i wouldn't put it pass SOE. 

     After watching for years ive noticed another constant SOE theme called divide and conquer,We the players fight amongst ourselves over SOE desicions way to much, a divided community is much easier to manage than a unified one. I see this as another method of causing player division. Keep them fighting amongst themselves,and milk some more money for transfers. Business as usual.

  • forthelulzforthelulz Member Posts: 215
    Originally posted by BushMonkey


     Kind of makes you wonder about the server crashes, perhaps a gentle prodding to the remaining players on said server's to move? I can see it now " my server is down" community response "Move to bria we never crash" Sneaky and underhanded? Well i wouldn't put it pass SOE. 

     After watching for years ive noticed another constant SOE theme called divide and conquer,We the players fight amongst ourselves over SOE desicions way to much, a divided community is much easier to manage than a unified one. I see this as another method of causing player division. Keep them fighting amongst themselves,and milk some more money for transfers. Business as usual.

    bingo. think bushmonkey hit the nail on the head with that.

  • SioBabbleSioBabble Member Posts: 2,803

     

    Originally posted by salvaje


     
     
    Furthermore, more densley packed servers would themselves present a huge technical problem...  Anyone who ever pvp'ed on the servers with decent populations (Bloodfin for one) knows that get 20 people in a fight and you are in a slideshow.  The catch 22 of all this is that even HAD the NGE game brought in a bunch of players and achieved sub levels similar to Pre-NGE the game would have been completely unplayable.  The only thing that allows even the illusion that the fundamentally flawed NGE combat engine works is the low populations.
     

     

    Unfortunately, Salvaje is quite right about this.

    Any large number of players, 20 or more, and you've got incredible, gameplay destroying lag.

    This was true even prior to the NGE...on Ahazi we had a "last stand" battle between Bestine and Anchorhead the weekend before the NGE went live, and the lag beween command and execution was at least five seconds, and more often 10.

    The SWG engine wasn't this terrible in beta, because I can remember mass events that were not nearly as laggy then.

    CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.

    Once a denizen of Ahazi

  • firefly2003firefly2003 Member UncommonPosts: 2,527

    Everything that "The $med" and $OE have done wrong was more than likely on purpose just to play sick jokes on their customers the biggest joke of all was the "Noob Game Ehancements" NGE. The game's community atm is pretty sad and divided on everything from server mergers to collections and WOWeroics. There wont be server mergers ever. They will milk the $50 transfers, regardless people will leave the game, all of the ideas have been met with the same hostility and flaming there same responses" I dont want to lose my town or name BOO HOO!!" If populations are low enough on a server when most have left for greener pastures your going to lose you towns and names anyway whether you like it or not. You will be forced to move or just hit the cancel button and leave. $OE doesnt give a damn about your dead city or your name or resources or any other anal reason to not move on and play with some people.....


  • AntariousAntarious Member UncommonPosts: 2,846

    If you are going to see change not only with SWG.. but with SOE as a whole it will start this year.

    Putting SOE into SCEI servers two purposes...

    1) It gives SCEI directi access to the "online resources" they needed for the PS3.

    2) Its part of Howard Stringers restructuring plan for Sony Corp as a whole.

    They need to make profit.. and they have been doing away with every part of the company that isn't able to make money.

    As much as people here might think EQ1 was a big deal... The Play Station is a FAR bigger thing to Sony Corp than the MMO's ever were.  I say that.. not only as someone that doesn't like consoles.. but someone who would never buy a play station.

    Its just a "fact" as I see it.

    To be honest I believe if it was felt the MMO division wasn't making cash... it wouldn't be far fetched to see the entire thing go away.  Then use all the resources for the PS3 "online" and future play station/consoles.

    How much money did Sony Corp sink into the PS3.. and Blu Ray... that's what they are going to pursue.

    On the other hand if they aren't going to think about the MMO division going away.. they are going to return it to profit.  This is where I see a meeting with LEC.

    If LEC is the one that pushed the NGE (yes I know everyone thinks it was SOE or has debated it..) then Sony may drop the game.  If the Corporation believes they are being forced to run a product that will never make a profit.. in other words.  There is no way they are going to retain the product.

    If it was a choice by SOE and the powers that be.. see the game could make money (and would be a worthwhile investment) then you may see some change.

    So short version... my view is..

    SWG will either see a radical change (or classic servers) or be shut down.  I would believe it would happen or we would know by the end of the year.

    I don't believe this because of a "source".. I believe it because as a whole.. Sony Corp has been bleeding money.  Go look up the news for the last few share holder meetings.. and the restructure plans have been fairly public..

    /end very long boring ramble

     

  • Beatnik59Beatnik59 Member UncommonPosts: 2,413

    I don't think that SOE looks at its games as individual money-makers, but as parts of a comprehensive Station Access plan.  That's why I think SWG will continue, since Station Access is a lot more marketable with SWG, than without it.

    I mean, if you drop SWG, Station Access doesn't look as valuable.

    __________________________
    "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
    --Arcken

    "...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
    --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.

    "It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
    --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE

  • MikeMBMikeMB Member Posts: 272

    Originally posted by SioBabble


     
    Originally posted by salvaje


     
     
    Furthermore, more densley packed servers would themselves present a huge technical problem...  Anyone who ever pvp'ed on the servers with decent populations (Bloodfin for one) knows that get 20 people in a fight and you are in a slideshow.  The catch 22 of all this is that even HAD the NGE game brought in a bunch of players and achieved sub levels similar to Pre-NGE the game would have been completely unplayable.  The only thing that allows even the illusion that the fundamentally flawed NGE combat engine works is the low populations.
     

     

    Unfortunately, Salvaje is quite right about this.

    Any large number of players, 20 or more, and you've got incredible, gameplay destroying lag.

    This was true even prior to the NGE...on Ahazi we had a "last stand" battle between Bestine and Anchorhead the weekend before the NGE went live, and the lag beween command and execution was at least five seconds, and more often 10.

    The SWG engine wasn't this terrible in beta, because I can remember mass events that were not nearly as laggy then.

    Well your forgetting a few things about the servers and the game somewhat when it was in beta.

    At the time chances are SWG was running on shiny brand new servers. Now those servers are 4 years old if not older. Not only that but Beta did have less people on it then the game did when it did go live. If I recall at launch the game had very bad lag.

    And I do remember events in the Pre-CU being just as laggy if not more so then today. Part of me feels this is more do to what we had the game running on back then. Take the last two days with me, I just got a whole new high end system and now the game is running just fine for me. Getting into a little PvP tonight, I had two Commando's firing Heavy Weapons at me, and rather then my system lagging up like it's done in the past, I was moving faster then the guys firing at me. Granted I'm now running crossfired video cards and a very high end CPU. Before I was running a system that was high end in 2004, and the game still did lag on me... Drove me nuts too as other games (Half-Life 2) ran fine for me.

    Really I feel the Engine needs to go at this point. The SWG Engine just wasn't made with this type of game in mind. Even back in the day Dev's did talk about how the SWG Engine was a b###h to work on. And hell things in the game just have never looked 'right' if you will.... AT-AT's have never been used due to how they move in the Engine. Weapons look to hang off someones hand a tad... Hell do I even need to get into how bad items like Belts look in game?

    Granted it wouldn't be cheap and it would be a ton of work. However I feel it would pay off in the end.

  • ThunderousThunderous Member Posts: 1,152

    2 points I want to make here...

    1.)  Pre-CU was NOWHERE close to as laggy as NGE is.  The SWG Engine struggles to support the current combat system or even the basic dynamics of this game.  It is dirty code, rushed, unpolished, and game-breaking. 

    Imagine what would happen is 200 people crammed the inside of a cantina TODAY...  The game would freeze and 200 people would lose connections to the server.  The original engine was chosen for a DIFFERENT game.  MikeMB, I know you play the NGE and seem to enjoy it (for whatever reason) but to say the game lagged more in Pre-CU is just non-sense.

    2.)  You are right about the Engine needing to go.  It's dreadful.  However, this isn't going to happen.  The game is 5 years old and the development team is tiny and seems to lack the technical experience to accomplish much. 

    The money, time, and resources that SOE/LEC would have to place into replacing the engine would be absurd, especially considering that it is quite conceivable that less than 20,000 people actually subscribe and play the game today.

    There would be on reason, given the circumstances, that they wouldn't just make a NEW SWG, which resembles nothing of the old SWG or the current SWG...

    But why bother, it is even more likely that the next SWG MMO is being developed right now, by someone, be it LEC, Bioware, or someone else. 

    Tecmo Bowl.

  • The Pre-CU and CU engines capped actions at a maximum rate of 1 action per second, and THAT took a lot of time and effort getting the gear and skill tapes to achieve.  Most attacked at around 1 action every 1.5-2 seconds or even slower.  The NGE allows for at least 4 actions per second.

    So, right there you've increased by a factor of 4 the actions the server, client, and network are going to have to deal with, per person, per second.

    Which decreases by AT LEAST a factor of 4 the number of people it will support at any given time.

    This is the fundamental flaw the NGE system has, as well as ANY other MMO combat system that attempts to use any sort of FPS like design.

    BTW, most MMO's limit specials and attacks to a cap of one per second maximum.

    As I've said, the NGE combat engine looked great when running on a gigabit LAN.  But it breaks as soon as the internet is applied.  This is one of the fundamental breakdowns in the development process at SOE, had they consulted any systems or networks person with even a year's experience administering a wide area network they could have told them that their combat system design wouldn't work. 

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  • TeknoBugTeknoBug Member UncommonPosts: 2,156

    Planetside isn't an RPG, it's a straight up FPS with MMO capacity. Look at Tabula Rasa for more of a FPS/RPG combination, they did it better than SOE did with the NGE, the "sticky" target lock is a great feature. When the NGE first came out (and it still occurs today sometimes) was when you held the mouse button down to attack someone you'd get a text spam across your screen "sending trade request" over and over and over, it got VERY annoying, and you couldn't attack something through a crowd of friendlies nor specifically target 1 thing out of a mob. TR's "sticky" feature works past those.

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  • LaterisLateris Member UncommonPosts: 1,847

    Originally posted by akevv


    I don't think they will shut any servers down. I think they will continue to happily take the $50 it takes to get to a higher population server. IF they shut down a server, it will be so that they can cannibalize parts to keep the others running. It will have nothing to do with anything the players want.

    I completely agree. Even Jeff Freeman stated that the SOE execs did not care what the subscribers thought about the NGE. Neither did the managers at Lucas Arts.  They will not do a server merge. They will milk the server transfers until the lights go out. I really wish it would just come to an end and close it down or get it away from SOE. I just can't see how Lucas Arts really knows jack about games given their history once Jim Ward took over...wait Jim Ward is no longer there!!!!!!

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