The Republic 96: Less Servers Than RIFT -- The SWTOR Show

Written by: Ryan Verniere (@Shaddoe) | June 19, 2012 3:55 pm

122 Comments

It’s done, folks. If you have an active account of Star Wars: The Old Republic, you are most likely eligible to transfer your character to one of the 23 destination servers.

Surprisingly, all the panelist for The Republic owned main characters on origin servers. Everyone of them transferred, even though both Ed and Larry played on relatively large servers. However, it’s safe to say that everyone enjoys playing on a massive server. Justin and Larry report numbers upwards of 600 (two instances of about 300 each) players on the fleet, the activity hub for SWTOR. Our panel also describes the actual transfer process as being extremely smooth and fast. Justin says it is the fastest transfer he’s ever experienced — literally done in seconds — faster than World of Warcraft. Looks like SWTOR‘s better than WoW at something.

Unfortunately, the server consolidation was not without hiccups and fallout. Our panel of experts — Justin Lowe of Darth Hater, Larry Everett of Massively, and Ed Park of Taugrim — gathered by the Gary Gannon explain the good, bad, and ugly of the recent server transfers in the number one Star Wars: The Old Republic show on the internet, The Republic!

The Republic 96: Less Servers Than RIFT -- The SWTOR Show

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16 comments
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24 comments
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MMO News

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28 comments

http://twitter.com/ItsatrapLOL itsatrapLOL

Good hair for a good cause. Good on ya, Larry..
kentheprogrammer

“Fewer Servers Than RIFT” <– FTFY
http://twitter.com/Luke_Malcolm Luke Malcolm

Rift only has 16 servers each for both US & EU, but majority of them are always low Pop while some are just medium pop. In the US four servers actually hit High Pop but thats sometimes and don’t stay there for very long. I see the same thing happening with SWTOR where a couple servers will be High, Medium is the average range where they will always be and the Low population will be trailing behind them both.
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  Really hoping the best for Rift. The last chart I’ve seen has Rift at about 240k subs. I really hope the expansion bring them back up.
  - http://twitter.com/Luke_Malcolm Luke Malcolm
    
    Dularr i seen that to it was on MMO-Charts right ?
H S

1.2.7b Patch Notes

6/19/2012

General

In order to improve overall performance, the maximum number of
simultaneous players on the Imperial and Republic Fleets has been
decreased.

So not only downsizing servers but also downsizing server capacity, so much for mega servers.
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1209653272 Robin Gort
  
  You’re clueless. They are just lowering the amount of people per instance, spreading the people over more instances to reduce lag.
  - H S
    
    go away fandrone, that’s the latest patch notes
    - rob weik
      
      you also clearly dont understand what was being said. they made the instance cap lower.
      - H S
        
        I know what was said, it’s just an obvious admission that their plans to increase caps may come at costs to overall performance. It’s just hilarious.
        
        Nowhere has BW claimed to increase server capacity, and a full server still appears to hit at around the same number it did last month. Just because the majority are level 50′s now doesnt mean they have more ppl playing, since 4 months ago all servers were full with ppl spead out among the planets leveling up, now they all just stand around on fleet. Making them have to shard more.
    - jaymon1579
      
      Actually Robin is correct, simultaneous players refers to how many are instanced together per shard not per server. Server tech allows them to handle more people & linking servers together helps in that way so you could have 4-5 shards or more depending how they see fit. So this should really help lag issues when you have too many people loading into the same shard.
      
      I may rejoin the game if they make a better LFG tool, doesn’t have to be cross realm & doesn’t need to warp you to the instance. One in game from start was so not worth using that I never bothered with it.
  - http://twitter.com/Luke_Malcolm Luke Malcolm
    
    What Robin said
  - http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
    
    Any word on the number of fleet instances on the merged servers?
http://www.facebook.com/davidallmighty David Cohen

Good friend and awesome guildies, our top dps quit cause his name was taken. I know most will say awww QQ, but to be forced to move and name change after being a full beta tester and buying the collectors edition months before release is just not acceptable customer service in his mind. Oh and Trolls stole 3 guild names from guilds from our old server going to the new one…. again leaving people i know and even whole guilds who are some of the few who still raided thinking of just quitting.
- rob weik
  
  gotta say QQ, quit a game because your name was taken…btw what does it matter if he was a beta tester? or that he had enough cash to buy a collectors, these things dont make him more entitled than other players. Im not saying it doesnt suck and it really sucks he would leave his guildies high and dry.
  - http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
    
    It all add up. It’s usually not just one item that causes someone to leave a MMO they are dedicated to play. But, I could see where a forced name change could end up being the final straw.
http://twitter.com/Patrikules Patrick Hargan

if they can do server transfers this fast…. why is there still no ‘transfer to PTS’? … totally different code? or are they just not realizing they need it…
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1660476603 Rob Kellams

I love these merges. I resubscribed and having a great time!
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1209653272 Robin Gort
  
  Same here, apart from the fact that I didn’t even need to resubscribe.
  - http://twitter.com/Luke_Malcolm Luke Malcolm
    
    Im looking to playing again, I need a good side game along with WoW downtime & waiting for GW2 while Im playing EVE Yes I have alot of free time and money to throw around
http://twitter.com/OlivierPavade Arkanmizard

I find it interesting when EA claims to have 1.3 million active subs and then wants to make us believe that they can spread those around on only 23 servers. That would mean their servers could hold about 43478 players (I took out 300000 to account for guilds or peeps who don’t want to transfer) my guess is they now have much less than this in terms of subscriptions
- http://twitter.com/Luke_Malcolm Luke Malcolm
  
  Very True, but they prbly still have more than Rift
joe stallion

Is it me or the video loading are getting very very slow?
It is getting on my nerve.
Krzysztof Róg

Whoever at Bioware decided on the initial transfer policy is a VERY incopetent person.
http://twitter.com/EclipseSyndicat Opheron

The old servers will be rolled into the ‘mega server’ architecture. Won’t be playable at a certain point once they begin reassignment.
http://profile.yahoo.com/3JO75BNS43WDETCNCO7F7XS6Q4 jo

rofl. 300 on the fleet is good? there’s more than that in the main hubs in the first GW(which is an old game with a sequel on the way…).

now people will slowly remember why they disliked the game besides population…the fighting over quest objectives, the horrible people and the sharding.
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1209653272 Robin Gort
  
  “Justin and Larry report numbers upwards of 600 (two instances of about 300 each) players on the fleet, the activity hub for SWTOR.”Yeah… rofl only three hundred if you can’t read the article.
  - 7BitBrian
    
    They said the instance caps out at 300, they never said both instances were capped out. The numbers mentioned were 3-400.
http://www.facebook.com/davidallmighty David Cohen

If they launch an Xpac after just TWO tiers of content, the hardcore raiding will DIE ASAP…. that would be 100% not acceptable. 2 tiers per 60$ xpack is a joke and 1/2… hell FOUR BOSSES IN A TIER was a joke.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1209653272 Robin Gort

Pick doom-and-gloom title with weird comparison, check! Cover the title in the first 50ish minutes, uncheck. Way to bait people by screaming Murder.
InvaderMig

Didn’t you guys already establish in the after show discussion that Swtor actually had more servers, and the servers in swtor were packed to the brim while Rift’s were relatively low pop. I mean come on guys. I don’t even play this game, but I figured after Justin said 12 servers, and GG kept repeating 11 servers that something like this would happen. Kinda hear what he wants to I suppose. In any case this does not bode well at all for the game, but still, at least the players who are still playing are in super high pop servers that pretty much remain that way all day.
- 7BitBrian
  
  Rift has 16 US servers and 16 EU servers, so officially Rift has more servers than SWTOR right now. But yea, SWTOR’s servers are more packed than Rifts probably. For now.
  - http://twitter.com/Luke_Malcolm Luke Malcolm
    
    Most Likely, but anything can happen. SWTOR could do these server transfers/merges and the population could turn out to be better than everyone thought.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Dustin-Brookens/100003510262900 Dustin Brookens

I wish the guy in the lower right would put a different color thing on his mic tip. It always looks like he has a boil or something.
http://www.facebook.com/Dallon.Darkstorm Chris Halsted

I think the Turbine F2P model works better than micro transactions do.
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  What is the Turbine F2P model?
Avan Gore

The most annoying “feature” of any MMO for me was always the server selection when creating the first character.
Tim Miller

Fewer servers.
- Old Ben
  
  Wherever “fewer” is correct, so is “less”. The opposite isn’t true, though.
  - http://twitter.com/Luke_Malcolm Luke Malcolm
    
    To Douche
http://profile.yahoo.com/FJR5OIFQII4WKUPYIHXMODD44Y Monolyth Tha Great

Lmfao I can’t believe people are still playing this garbage. Population is just going to get worste with Rift 2.0 and GW2.
gl123

I got a chuckle from the intro
Krzysztof Róg

“How did your server transfer go ?”. GREAT! My server got EXCLUDED.
http://twitter.com/TheHamsterX John

Extremely happy with the transfer here. Personally, I love the game, and the one really bad thing it had was the low pops. We went from about 30-40 people on fleet during peak times to anywhere between 300-500, and that’s just the fleet… I’ve seen over 80 people on Quesh today… I mean, seriously, Quesh…

Now we just need the group finder so people spam less LFG messages in general chat.
- http://twitter.com/Luke_Malcolm Luke Malcolm
  
  Glad to see your enjoying the game still, Continue if you enjoy it and don’t listen to Rifters there game isn’t so great either and it went through the same thing SWTOR’s going through
Camzillasmom

Played since beta, quit in march, got my server transfer “invite” in my mailbox, feel a bit heartbroken, weird.

Nope, too late Bioware. It’s like saying “sorry”. If you’re late, it might be too late. Bye bye.

When is GW2 coming out? New server pride. – Like starting a new relationship, without the mandatory haircut. BTW… nice hair, Larry.
Camzillasmom

BTW just asked my husband. He got an ingame message that he could move but he’ll just ignore it. See if I hear him curse in a couple of weeks/months when they shut them down, if Gary is right.
nexxe

Where are all the fanbois that claim swtor has 1.3 million subs? If they had that many people, we wouldn’t be seeing these merges. (i refuse to call them transfers)
- http://twitter.com/Luke_Malcolm Luke Malcolm
  
  No Fanboism here, But they presumed (Dr Evil *Laser Finger Motion*) to have 1.3 that was back in May for Q.1 I bet it dropped even more by now and wont know until August when EA’s Q2 release is annouced.
QSatu

Aren’t 80% of Rift servers empty anyway?
- Azuri
  
  Wrong game, SWTOR is the one you’re talking about lolz.
  - http://twitter.com/Luke_Malcolm Luke Malcolm
    
    He’s right though, even though its SWTOR, Rift’s servers are 80% empty. From the last chart I seen Rift only had 240k subs and Dularr can agree with me there as he is one who sent me the link .
http://twitter.com/cipero Matt Cipriano

This game would’ve been good in 2004.

*Even their fanboys say so when they compare it to WoW from back then.
- Jay
  
  I’ve been saying that a week after I bought the game… Unsubbed 3 weeks later.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1339406775 Matthew Riddle

So ‘okay’ with people you know is better than ‘amazing’ with people you don’t know? The way I see it, you can always make new friends, which you SHOULD try to do in a MMO, but you can’t always get people to come back to the game to repopulate the server. ‘okay’ population has a much shorter shelf life than ‘amazing’ population does, often downgrading soon to ‘ehh’ and then ‘poor’, finally ‘nobody’.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Michael-Johnson/1353890372 Michael Johnson

Empty servers are a symptom, not a cause. This won’t fix the problems with the core game.
- http://twitter.com/MrSunrock Sunrock
  
  No need to fix the core game. The core game is really good. What they need to fix is the end game.
  - Jay
    
    I’d say both.
    - http://twitter.com/Sh1ngara Sh1ngara
      
      how much of the core problem is negative publicity and crappy articles every 10 seconds, ow look its going f2p, no its not its getting a trial, whats the title of this show, ow look shocking another negative show title.
      - http://www.facebook.com/people/Michael-Johnson/1353890372 Michael Johnson
        
        Are you drunk? EA basically confirmed, in a follow up, that it will eventually go F2P.
      - Jay
        
        How much? Not much at all tbh… There are plenty of WoW haters, and that doesn’t make people abandon the game after a few weeks. Let’s be real about this, Bioware put out their very first MMO, EA probably told them to just copy WoW’s mechanics, and add that Bioware story touch.
        
        That may have been fine in 2004, but WoW has been out far too long for people to fall in love with Star Wars paint. Even Star Wars itself is an old franchise, and sure it has plenty of fans, but how many of those fans actually play MMOs regularly?
        
        I agree it’s a combination of things, but GBTV is the least of SWTOR’s problems.
  - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1151407861 Trey Alsup
    
    If the end game is not the core game then you have a failed game.
- http://twitter.com/Luke_Malcolm Luke Malcolm
  
  very true Michael, if the game has a problem theres a reason for the servers being dropped and we have seen it with both games have server population issues.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Doyle-Hargrave/1182733324 Doyle Hargrave

until james ohlen and gabe are fired and the so called “best pvp team” this game will always be shit. All they had to do is add VO to swg and they would have been good. I still cant believe theres no server forums still 6 months in!! shakes head… lookin fwd to gw2 sadly now
- InvaderMig
  
  Well not making server forums before seems to make more sense than ever. Now that there are fewer servers, they could probably moderate them much easier. This game seems to be sinking though, but now with these mergers everyone has people to play with, so many they can spend time adding/fixing things and it can get back on track. I hope for their sakes as well as all the loyal players.
http://www.facebook.com/chaz.rpg Chaz Davis

This is like 2 minutes hate, like in 1984, but it lasts 60 minutes instead.
- http://twitter.com/Luke_Malcolm Luke Malcolm
  
  I was just thinking that lawl
http://twitter.com/Eshne448 Eshne

Just got back on game recently and Republic fleet had one person… me guess I will be moving lol
Old Ben

How exactly is the number of servers relevant? Eve Online has one server, does that mean it’s a failed game?
- http://twitter.com/Luke_Malcolm Luke Malcolm
  
  Hell No Eve is awesome, But it isn’t a Fantasy MMO either.
  - Old Ben
    
    So the number of servers depends on the theme of a game…?
    - http://twitter.com/Luke_Malcolm Luke Malcolm
      
      Its looks like it
      - Old Ben
        
        Appearances can be deceptive. And, BTW, both Eve and SWTOR are space-themed MMOs; Rift is the one with a fantasy setting.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Michael-Johnson/1353890372 Michael Johnson
  
  EvE online has thousands of areas, allowing people to spread out coupled with the fact that they have a unique grid server configuration.
  SWTOR has 1 main area.
  
  There is a difference
  - Old Ben
    
    There are lots of differences. But the number of servers is a completely irrelevant metric. If you want to measure how successful a game is, measure the number of players, not the number of shards.
    
    If game A had 100k players on a single persistent world while game B had 90k players spread across 10 unconnected shards, that wouldn’t make game B “better”.
    
    In fact, I’d say that a game designed to have more players per shard would generally provide a better experience even if it had less players overall (unless the game was so broken that 90% of people just sat in front of the auction house all the time waiting for the dungeon finder, while 99% of the game world remained empty… cough*WoW*cough).
    - InvaderMig
      
      Well this game isn’t even and Eve always had 1 server. Swtor had very many, and as a result of rapidly declining pops it went down. I think about 80 – 90% of the servers are merged now. So yes as far as talking about where the state of the game is it is a very relevant metric.
      - Old Ben
        
        No, it isn’t.
        
        For all you know, Rift shards start choking with more than 5k players, while SWTOR shards are fine with 10k. That means that (for the same total number of players), Rift would always have “more servers” (or, to be more correct, “more shards” – since the word “server” generally refers to the physical machines, which aren’t necessarily matched to the shards 1:1).
        
        The number of servers / shards is a result of the game’s internal architecture, population distribution, and performance standards.
        
        The reduction in the number of SWTOR shards is a result of the decline in the number of players. THAT is the real metric (how many players it lost, and how many players it has compared to the competition – if indeed Rift is “the competition”; I think the games appeal to pretty different crowds).
        
        The number of shards is mainly a technical detail. If the hardware could handle it (and if the game design didn’t funnel everyone into the same places), the developers would love to put everyone into the same persistent world. But different game engines have different limits (both physical and practical) on how many players can be in each shard, so a game with less players can have more shards, and vice-versa.
        
        Comparing the number of servers of different games is pointless; what matters is the number of players and how that number is changing over time.
      - Tom Hayward
        
        lol, butthurt much?
      - Old Ben
        
        No idea what that is even supposed to refer to.
      - InvaderMig
        
        You’re missing the point. The comparison between the games is irrelevant, but the sharp decline in the number of servers relative to what they had before, even with increased server caps is extremely relevant. That fact can not be disputed unless one wishes to argue for the sake of doing so.
      - Old Ben
        
        > You’re missing the point.
        
        Am I?
        
        > The comparison between the games is irrelevant
        
        Which was my point. So how am I “missing the point”, exactly?
      - InvaderMig
        
        Well it’s simple really. You brought up that completely irrelevant Eve comment and tried to make the point that Eve having only one server doesn’t mean that it’s doing poorly. The point is, that Swtor, not in comparison to any game, but just the game itself, by losing so many servers is a clear indication that the game is in a pretty significant decline. You tried with certain examples, the worst being the Eve one, to show that a less servers isn’t a reliable metric. It clearly isn’t going to give exact numbers, but even with server cap increases, consolidating that many servers is a very clear sign of what is happening.
      - Old Ben
        
        > You brought up that completely
        > irrelevant Eve comment
        
        It’s called reductio ad absurdum. I thought it was obvious enough, no?
        
        > and tried to make the point that Eve
        > having only one server doesn’t mean
        > that it’s doing poorly.
        
        And you didn’t understand that point? You think Eve _is_ doing poorly because it only has one server? If Eve had gone from 300k players on 10 servers to 300k players on a single server, would that mean it was declining?
        
        No? Then you do understand the point, right? I think everybody else here does.
        
        Putting the same number of players on a smaller number of servers would be an _improvement_ (even WoW is doing that, and supposedly their numbers are holding up).
        
        > The point is, that Swtor, not in
        > comparison to any game, but
        > just the game itself
        
        But that’s not what the title says, is it? It doesn’t say “SWTOR losing players”. It doesn’t even say “SWTOR now has less players than Rift”. It says “SWTOR now has less servers than Rift”. Which is completely meaningless. Some games are designed to have 30 people per server, some are designed to have 3000 people per server, some are designed to have 300 thousand people per server.
        
        If they changed their code and data center structure and managed to put everyone on a single server (without a reduction in the number of _players_) that would be a great achievement, not a decline.
        
        The problem with SWTOR is the number of players it has lost. The comparison between the total number of SWTOR servers and Rift servers is completely irrelevant. As irrelevant as the comparison to the number of Eve servers.
        
        Is that really so hard to understand? Everybody seems to have got it five days ago. Or do you just feel like typing?
    - http://twitter.com/Luke_Malcolm Luke Malcolm
      
      But said game isn’t broken
- http://www.facebook.com/chaz.rpg Chaz Davis
  
  It’s not relevant, the Title is just to troll…
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SGHUTXU3AZVZVA4TXL7234IW3A Edward
  
  Is not matter of servers but expectations. EVE was not sold as a WOW killer, didn’t cost +150m$ and of course wasn’t so hyped as SWTOR…(other difference is EVE is growing every year and SWTOR is shrinking). Of course is not players fault, is BW/EA for lie to everybody. (Also LA for close SWG before see how SWTOR runs)
  - Old Ben
    
    > Is not matter of servers but expectations.
    
    Exactly. And the number of servers is irrelevant for that. No one plays an MMO because “it has a lot of servers”. What people care about is the number of players, and specifically the number of players that they can actually play with (i.e., players per shard). For the same number of players, the less shards you have, the more populated the game will feel, so having less shards is actually an advantage (as Eve demonstrates).
    
    If Eve had people spread across 10 or 20 servers it wouldn’t be half as successful as it is.
http://www.facebook.com/bramborasean Sean Brambora

I believe they are smart with only doing SM OPS because they are right would be to hard for the casual player… but i would also like it for HM or NIM mode because for if my guild is missing one or two ppl we could get another player easly, but the raid lead would have to be able to control loot and if the player could get kicked so if you get an troll u can kick.. I think that should be the same in story mode too.
http://twitter.com/Sh1ngara Sh1ngara

where is the give up with the negative shit cos it gets old fast button below the screen, pokket is sure missed. Seriously not only false but come one, less servers then rift, 1st it aint shut down any servers yet, second its how many play it not how many servers there are.
Damir Miric

If they would fix performance, few very annoying bugs and balance classes I think game would be alright.
gl123

“Less Servers Than RIFT…” “I see your Schwartz is as big as mine…”
http://profile.yahoo.com/JBXJHGK6VWGPAHTJHJLAXDPXUU Irish

LMAO at the PIC….You guys are clowns. Another good episode fellas.
cliveklg

No fan of Taugrim, after he repeatedly tried to claim there is no difference in the cover system between shield cover and environment cover.
cliveklg

And Taugrim’s complaint on not being able to go to any server. They directed the transfers for only the free option. There will be more options to go anywhere later.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Caliolo/100003765889295 Robert Caliolo

Should have just Forced Merge servers like in the old days.
You don’t like it quit.
scottsummer

Headline is totally sensationalism…
- http://profile.yahoo.com/IJ72UJ7OKVEIGGXYAIN6NU7ZRM thomas
  
  not to mention grammatically retarded. ”Less servers than Rift” Who writes this stuff, a five year old?
  
  Fewer. Fewer is the word you’re looking for.
  
  typical.
  - D V
    
    I love how Gamebreaker totally fawns over GW2 every chance they get, and how they dump on SWTOR every chance they get. *&#@%
    - Jay
      
      The gave SWTOR a show… So at one point they gave it positive attention too. The truth is, the game isn’t what it should’ve been, and EA wasn’t truthful about the situation. A lot of misleading numbers and wording, we can’t blame GBTV for SWTOR’s problems.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Alex-Mac/777995513 Alex Mac
      
      At this point, even when there’s legitimate good things to talk about and upswings for the game, the articles and their lead ins can’t even approach it without borderline yellow journalism. It’s…amazing.
http://www.facebook.com/samuel.goulet.5 Samuel Goulet

i just transfered from ven zallow to jung ma and just like Justin I have been playing more than I have been in the past few weeks. At last some people to play with!
http://twitter.com/JoshfromRaleigh Josh

@27:00 min – they couldn’t do it fast enough because of Legacy crap. Legacy hurt the game.
Jay Nielson

Just returned last tuesday to see what things were like after the merge. I’ve had a blast and I’ve not played this much since the first month either. The problem is we were orig the largest guild on Po5 and nobody is left at all from that guild. I’ve had to look to find a new guild which is always a hoot because I can’t get any of the others to give it a chance. Oh well.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=862175353 Gavin Morgan

Let’s face it with the Rift > Swtor arguement, there isn’t one. Rift is a much better game and certainly was at the same time period Swtor is in now.

I will certainly be returning to Rift in 1.9
- http://twitter.com/MrSunrock Sunrock
  
  Well I don’t agree with you. Rift is quite sucky. I rather play any other MMORPG then Rift TBH.
  - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=862175353 Gavin Morgan
    
    You have a right to your opinion. It was a personal viewpoint and there are certainly other mmo’s that i prefer to Rift (WoW and Lotro), but i definetly find it better than Swtor.
http://www.facebook.com/benni.nord Benni Nord

I am worried about new games like gw 2 making the same mistake.. making too many servers at start cause people complain about too full servers during beta. A couple of weeks after release when server pop has balanced, some servers wind up with a really low pop and the general game population is too spread out. Swtor had the technology to spread people out so that u wouldn’t get too much server lagg.. (so does gw2) but at launch they added loads of servers and now they have to merge. (and gw2 doubled the amount of servers last beta weekend when it might not have been needed).
- Camzillasmom
  
  I’m not. These days every new MMO with a bit of “hipe”, or let’s say high rating on the mmorpg.com list is flooded with people. So every MMO is having the issues to merge and get rid of servers at some stage. This concept should be done and ready to go, waiting in a drawer before or at release latest.
  
  I don’t know why the SWTOR guys from Bioware thought waiting rather reacting was a good idea.
  
  E.g. when my fridge starts to empty. Do I wait and look for new recipies till I starve or do I drive to the supermarket? Doooh!
- Mathew Edwards
  
  Guild wars 2 is more set up for server transfers though. Guild members can be on different servers so moving won’t break down a guild, names are unique across the entire game and not just on the server you chose and it already allows for server guesting so if you want to play with a friend on another server, you can guest on the server with an existing character. I think it’ll be a lot easier for Arenanet to do a server merge somewhere down the line than SW:tOR. I think you’re right though, it’ll have to happen at some point.
Semperf1delis

Couldnt agree more that the server transfers made a good game amazing! 1.3 will make it frigging amazing not to even mention the stuff coming up later on this year they mentioned at E3.

Obviously the amount of servers was a clear misscalculation which has hurt the game badly because people wrongly think its empty… Let`s face the facts, it got 1.3M subscribers, ok to shut some of you down lets put it down to 1M, and squeeze it a bit more to 800 000 active subscribers (note 1.3M is a fact and 800k is a fictional figure), it still is in TOP 4 Worlds largest MMO`s, and with that amount of players and with correct amount of servers, the game will again attract huge amount of new peeps as the word of mouth will now say “omg, theres so much players” instead of “omg, its dying”.

Good job Bioware turning the course of the ship!

Semper.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SGHUTXU3AZVZVA4TXL7234IW3A Edward

Rift during the first month sucked hard, but the game improved every month…sadly SWTOr is not the same , nerf bats, boring content and inmature comunity is destroying the few things could be saved from the game… But as a “monthly fee single player game” we must admit is unique.
- Jay
  
  I see what you did there…
http://twitter.com/overbyte overbyte

it’s time to shut the republic down – none of the hosts are into the game and the flamebaiting is just pissing people off while not adding anything to the conversation
http://twitter.com/Nathiest Nathiest

Sci-fi does not make for a good MMO. Period.
http://www.facebook.com/joseph.handibode Joseph Handibode

Final Fantasy XI had 500k people and have kept them. FFXI existed before WoW and stil is out and still subscription based.
nexxe

Gamebreaker should stop covering Swtor. Take everything related to this garbage off the site already.
Key Foster

Some people just want to not be in a guild, so they pug.
Key Foster

Some people just want to not be in a guild, so they pug.
http://twitter.com/lifensoul Steven Whiting

Exception to the rule. Has he forgotten SWG? That never went free to play. Last few months or was it month don’t count.
http://twitter.com/Patrikules Patrick Hargan

someone (mimzie) on my old server (ajunta pal) transferred maybe like 10 minutes before I did and stole my Legacy name (PooDoo) out of spite…. =( HATE!!! *qq’s in corner*
ako_mmo

I’ve said for years (including very vocally on pre launch swtor forums) that there will always be a place for niche, quality subscription based mmo’s because that is what the mmo industry once was and will eventually go back to once the massive player base that came with the growth of the mainstream gorilla moves onto things designed for them; casual, f2p and social media based online gaming.

That is why, for example, ultima online still works with a subscription based business model.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Justin-Renard/809580057 Justin Renard

Fewer, fewer, fewer, fewer, fewer, fewer, fewer. Seriously guys, you make this mistake on your shows all the freakin’ time. So here is a quick refresh of eighth grade grammar: when you can count something, like servers, use “many” and “few”; when you cannot count something, like suckass grammar ability, use “much” and “less”.

The Republic 96: Less Servers Than RIFT -- The SWTOR Show

After Dark Ep33:
“Xbox, Go Home”… You’re Drunk!

Patch 5.3: Blizzard’s First Ever Live Video Interview!

This Week in MMO Ep 144:
WildStar, Rift, Dust 514

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