SWTOR players have been asking for server transfers basically since the game's first month, and they have finally arrived. The analysis that we're seeing on the forums is fascinating.
As expected, these appear to be thinly-veiled server mergers, with as many as sixteen sparsely populated "origin" servers invited to transfer to a single "destination" server. The thing that has surprised me is how aggressive Bioware-Mythic is being. By my count of US servers as of this evening, there are 10 servers that Bioware intends to save (destinations), 23 servers with unknown fates (neither origin nor destination as of yet), and a whopping 90 servers that Bioware appears to be writing off (origins).
On the one hand, I tip my hat to Bioware for ripping the bandaid off. On a day when I should have been celebrating - level 46, Legacy level 5, and 100 presence for purchasing the human racial legacy unlock - I was instead doing damage control. I lost about 15K credits in auction deposits (I knew I had to cancel auctions but did not realize that your deposit is only refunded if you wait until the sale expires) and had to rename my character - I may or may not end up regretting not changing his name more dramatically if I end up sending stuff to the guy who has my old name on my destination server. I've heard many stories of players losing multiple character names. The only thing worse than doing this once would be doing it repeatedly as servers close one by one over time.
That said, we're looking at closure of anywhere from 75-90% of US servers depending on how the undecideds break. Perhaps Bioware has been able to optimize or improve hardware to accommodate more players per server, especially with the launch rush redistributed (albeit primarily to a handful of endgame-relevant locations). Perhaps part of their decision to open so many servers at launch was motivated by a belief that populations would continue to expand, rather than contract, and they are now firmly in consolidation mode. Even so, Bioware-Mythic now appears to hold the dubious distinction of the top two slots on the list of "most servers closed by a MMO", so something clearly did not go right.
P.S. A tip for those of you who are re-locating: I would suggest creating or leaving a low level alt on the server/legacy you are departing. This may be moot if the origin servers close soon and the remaining characters are sent to the same destination as the current transfers. However, in the event that the last stragglers on your old server get sent somewhere else, they can potentially take a copy of your legacy (as it was when you departed) with them - if you have no characters left, presumably nothing will transfer. A minute in the character generator on a server you're leaving for good is probably worthwhile if it gets you more options to play on in the future.
Odds and Ends
A handful of tidbits from the last week and a half or so, none of which got written up because none was that exciting.
Meanwhile, my SWTOR server apparently just went eligible for "transferring everyone off but not calling it a merge" status, time to go take care of that. I'll hold my commentary until we get the final numbers, but the sheer number of servers with one-way transfers off is far greater than I was anticipating.
- I now own a level 3 character in EQ1. Yes, the original. SOE is running another promo in which all players will be rewarded with Station Cash if enough people spam enough of their friends to increase the follower count. ULLSXLQXU2 On the downside, someone in accounting finally realized that people were using promotional and deeply discounted Station Cash to buy subscription time and removed this option, but at least I can apply this towards the next EQ2 expansion.
- A riddle for your consideration: I have something that I was given in order to share it with a friend. I can't say what it is, I can't say why I have it, and people who don't need it can't say that they don't need it. Can you solve The Secret?
- Last week was Darkmoon Faire week in Azeroth, so I signed on to snag the monthly tickets from the monthly profession quests. This felt like a really small number of tickets, but I double checked and confirmed that no, the numbers have been that low since the thing got off the test server. If there is a nerf conspiracy coming, it hasn't arrived yet. EU2TMXWJX5
Meanwhile, my SWTOR server apparently just went eligible for "transferring everyone off but not calling it a merge" status, time to go take care of that. I'll hold my commentary until we get the final numbers, but the sheer number of servers with one-way transfers off is far greater than I was anticipating.
Fuzzy Legacy Math
Update (26 June): The patch is live, see this post for updated numbers. Bottom line: the first ranks are now worthwhile for most characters, but the higher end bonuses are still probably a bad deal.
SWTOR patch 1.3 has hit the test servers, bringing a new round of various legacy bonuses. The numbers may change in testing, but they did get me thinking about how some things that sound good on paper don't work out so well.
I did a fair amount of math, summarized below, trying to figure out if the companion gift affection bonus was ever worth purchasing. The answer is extremely borderline, because the bonus is per-character, there is a limited amount of affection you can earn on each character, and the only way to "cash in" the bonus is to consume a gift that has a cash value. In order to profit from a 5% affection bonus that costs 25K credits to unlock, you need to be spending over 100K credits per companion for each of your five companions. This is technically possible if you intend to powergrind each companion from 0-10,000 as quickly as possible using vendor gifts and paying whatever it costs on the trade network. Most people probably will not do this.
I got sufficiently into the analysis of this that I lost sight of the bigger picture. There are two additional ranks and these boost the costs even further - a total of 250K credits for the top rank. It's also worth noting that the two perks for conversation gains and gift gains are somewhat mutually diminishing in value - due to the cap, the more affection you gain from one of the two, the less remaining affection there is to gain from the other. (The conversation option has the advantage that players will do this anyway - you still have to earn more affection than you could buy with the credits for this to be worthwhile, but at least you don't have to be planning to spend an unreasonable total amount on gifts to profit from it.)
Don't get me wrong, some of the new legacy unlocks are legitimate luxury item credit sinks. These particular bonuses, though, especially for the top two ranks, are never worth the money for anyone. As with your real money, I suppose the lesson is "buyer beware".
The numbers
The chart below summarizes the cost of power-grinding the 80% of companions who have at least one gift they "love" for maximum favor using vendor gifts. You can get from 0-8000 affection for under 100K credits using gifts from the vendor - which means that the 5% bonus you paid 25K credits for saves you fewer than 5K credits per companion. If your crewskills and/or the auction house are more cost-effective than the vendor - or if you are less excessive in your use of gifts, you will save even less.
Total Rank 1 cost saved: 8 rank one green gifts (1600 credits) per companion, 8000 credits for five companions (assuming none who are picky)
Total Rank 2 cost saved: 5 rank two green gifts (3000 credits) per companion, 15000 credits for five companions (assuming none who are picky)
Total "saved": 23000 credits
Total Spent to earn these savings: 25,000 credits.
SWTOR patch 1.3 has hit the test servers, bringing a new round of various legacy bonuses. The numbers may change in testing, but they did get me thinking about how some things that sound good on paper don't work out so well.
I did a fair amount of math, summarized below, trying to figure out if the companion gift affection bonus was ever worth purchasing. The answer is extremely borderline, because the bonus is per-character, there is a limited amount of affection you can earn on each character, and the only way to "cash in" the bonus is to consume a gift that has a cash value. In order to profit from a 5% affection bonus that costs 25K credits to unlock, you need to be spending over 100K credits per companion for each of your five companions. This is technically possible if you intend to powergrind each companion from 0-10,000 as quickly as possible using vendor gifts and paying whatever it costs on the trade network. Most people probably will not do this.
I got sufficiently into the analysis of this that I lost sight of the bigger picture. There are two additional ranks and these boost the costs even further - a total of 250K credits for the top rank. It's also worth noting that the two perks for conversation gains and gift gains are somewhat mutually diminishing in value - due to the cap, the more affection you gain from one of the two, the less remaining affection there is to gain from the other. (The conversation option has the advantage that players will do this anyway - you still have to earn more affection than you could buy with the credits for this to be worthwhile, but at least you don't have to be planning to spend an unreasonable total amount on gifts to profit from it.)
Don't get me wrong, some of the new legacy unlocks are legitimate luxury item credit sinks. These particular bonuses, though, especially for the top two ranks, are never worth the money for anyone. As with your real money, I suppose the lesson is "buyer beware".
The numbers
The chart below summarizes the cost of power-grinding the 80% of companions who have at least one gift they "love" for maximum favor using vendor gifts. You can get from 0-8000 affection for under 100K credits using gifts from the vendor - which means that the 5% bonus you paid 25K credits for saves you fewer than 5K credits per companion. If your crewskills and/or the auction house are more cost-effective than the vendor - or if you are less excessive in your use of gifts, you will save even less.
| Affection Range | Affection/Gift | Total Gifts |
| 0-1999 (base) | 96 | 21 (to 2016) |
| 0-1999 (+5%) | 100.8 | 20 (to 2016) |
| 2000-3999 (base) | 48 | 42 (from 2016 to 4032) |
| 2000-3999 (+5%) | 50.4 | 40 (from 2016 to 4032) |
| 4000-5999 (base) | 19 | 104 (from 4032 to 6008) |
| 4000-5999 (+5%) | 19.95 | 99 (from 4032 to 6007.5) |
| 6000-7999 (base - rank 2 gifts) | 19 | 105 (from 6008 to 8003) |
| 6000-7999 (+5% - rank 2 gifts) | 19.95 | 100 (from 6008 to 8001.55) |
Total Rank 1 cost saved: 8 rank one green gifts (1600 credits) per companion, 8000 credits for five companions (assuming none who are picky)
Total Rank 2 cost saved: 5 rank two green gifts (3000 credits) per companion, 15000 credits for five companions (assuming none who are picky)
Total "saved": 23000 credits
Total Spent to earn these savings: 25,000 credits.
Legacy Chapter 2
My SWTOR trooper cleared out the finale of Chapter 2, hit level 40 (along with Legacy Level 3) early in the Chapter 3 content, and unlocked a bunch of goodies. All characters on my legacy now get:
Min-Maxing Affection
Part of the reason why I was able to top out two of my five companions immediately upon starting Chapter 3 (required to unlock all conversations) was through efforts to min-max companion affection using some web resources (note: links contain companions' names, if you still think that's a spoiler).
Dulfy's guide contains two crucial pieces of information - each companion's favorite gifts and how much total affection each companion needs to cap out. My strategy was to throw tier 1 gifts that each companion views as a "favorite" at them as soon as possible until each companion hits 6000 affection. (Psynister has some tips on how to deal with the handful of characters who do not have any "favorite" gifts.) I wasn't quite able to afford this much of a headstart on all of my companions because this was my first character, but this is a huge bonus for the ones that I was able to pursue - said companions only needed 2000-3500 to the maximum required affection, rather than 8000-9500 that companions starting from scratch require.
Beyond 6000 affection, gifts begin to become costly - the tier 2 vendor gifts cost three times as much and are only good for 19 affection once you're above 6000, while higher end gifts are more difficult to obtain (or costly on the exchange). Assuming that you don't have indefinite numbers of credits to throw at this problem, the solution is questing with a site such as TORhead open so that you can always determine which dialog choices will award the most affection. This approach does mean spoilers, but it can make a huge difference - picking the correct dialog with the correct companion out can be worth over a hundred points, where the incorrect companion gets absolutely nothing for the same amount of work.
I suppose such is the paradox of removing choices that irreversibly affect gameplay - when all that are left are "moral" choices that your companions will always forgive by spending credits on gifts, these reversible choices are what is left to min-max.
P.S. In principle, Human is the optimal race for a first character in SWTOR because it is the only race that has any non-cosmetic benefit - another 100 points to presence (which is almost exclusively a solo stat). However, I opted to go with more interesting races instead, as the human racial unlock is the cheapest to purchase. I'm already over halfway to the requisite 500K credits and at Legacy level 3 out of a required 5.
P.P.S. EA's press conference at E3 announced what sounds like a mini-expansion to SWTOR. Perhaps it's early yet, but I have not seen the word "free", which makes me think that they plan to be the latest MMO to suffer extreme backlash for attempting to charge for content within the first year of service. Dulfy reports that there was a survey that may have been attempting to determine pricing/features for this update. One intriguing item was the idea of including game time in the price of the mini-expansion. Depending on pricing, this could be a good thing (effectively free for subscribers, while console players who are more tolerant of non-subscription DLC get some time to use the content Bioware is potentially selling) or a bad thing (forced to buy game time along with the thing as a way to inflate the price).
- +2% Bonus to healing received
- +1% Bonus to surge (affects critical multiplier)
- +20 Presence (improves all Companion stats)
- Heroic Moment, normally a 20 minute cooldown that lasts 1 minute, now lasts 24 seconds longer and has a cooldown that is two minutes shorter. (This will be a more significant buff when I complete Chapter 3 on one or more classes for bonus abilities.)
- Trooper Class Buff: +5% endurance (grants HP) to any class that does not already have the trooper/bounty hunter buff from another source (e.g. party member, drive-by buff from a player, being a trooper/BH)
- Trooper emote
Min-Maxing Affection
Part of the reason why I was able to top out two of my five companions immediately upon starting Chapter 3 (required to unlock all conversations) was through efforts to min-max companion affection using some web resources (note: links contain companions' names, if you still think that's a spoiler).
Dulfy's guide contains two crucial pieces of information - each companion's favorite gifts and how much total affection each companion needs to cap out. My strategy was to throw tier 1 gifts that each companion views as a "favorite" at them as soon as possible until each companion hits 6000 affection. (Psynister has some tips on how to deal with the handful of characters who do not have any "favorite" gifts.) I wasn't quite able to afford this much of a headstart on all of my companions because this was my first character, but this is a huge bonus for the ones that I was able to pursue - said companions only needed 2000-3500 to the maximum required affection, rather than 8000-9500 that companions starting from scratch require.
Beyond 6000 affection, gifts begin to become costly - the tier 2 vendor gifts cost three times as much and are only good for 19 affection once you're above 6000, while higher end gifts are more difficult to obtain (or costly on the exchange). Assuming that you don't have indefinite numbers of credits to throw at this problem, the solution is questing with a site such as TORhead open so that you can always determine which dialog choices will award the most affection. This approach does mean spoilers, but it can make a huge difference - picking the correct dialog with the correct companion out can be worth over a hundred points, where the incorrect companion gets absolutely nothing for the same amount of work.
I suppose such is the paradox of removing choices that irreversibly affect gameplay - when all that are left are "moral" choices that your companions will always forgive by spending credits on gifts, these reversible choices are what is left to min-max.
P.S. In principle, Human is the optimal race for a first character in SWTOR because it is the only race that has any non-cosmetic benefit - another 100 points to presence (which is almost exclusively a solo stat). However, I opted to go with more interesting races instead, as the human racial unlock is the cheapest to purchase. I'm already over halfway to the requisite 500K credits and at Legacy level 3 out of a required 5.
P.P.S. EA's press conference at E3 announced what sounds like a mini-expansion to SWTOR. Perhaps it's early yet, but I have not seen the word "free", which makes me think that they plan to be the latest MMO to suffer extreme backlash for attempting to charge for content within the first year of service. Dulfy reports that there was a survey that may have been attempting to determine pricing/features for this update. One intriguing item was the idea of including game time in the price of the mini-expansion. Depending on pricing, this could be a good thing (effectively free for subscribers, while console players who are more tolerant of non-subscription DLC get some time to use the content Bioware is potentially selling) or a bad thing (forced to buy game time along with the thing as a way to inflate the price).
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