Legacy Chapter 3

My trooper, newly renamed from "Aldebaran" to "Aldabaran" due to the server transfers, hit another milestone this afternoon while I was babysitting the dog and some house painters.  I powered through the Corellia class quests in one sitting,  completing the third and final Chapter of the Trooper class story.  I started the afternoon as a freshly dinged level 47, and ended with a 95% full exp bar... toward level 48.  This means that I "need" to scrape together just over two more levels' worth of exp using the non-story quests I skipped, possibly the Hoth Bonus series, and the abridged storyline on Ilum. 

I airquote need because I don't actually feel any especially pressing need to hit the level cap.  I already have all five companion legacy unlocks (3 are maxed for extra crafting bonuses and the other two are close).  With the class story complete, I have my legacy ability unlocked.  I hit legacy level 5 and paid for the human racial legacy bonus because it is a decent bonus to solo play but I'd rather give up half a million credits than wait out 50 levels as a human to obtain it.  The one bonus I would obtain for getting this character to 50 is the racial unlock for Cyborgs, which opens up the race for all classes.  However, I don't really plan on doing another Cyborg in the near future. 

As a solo player, the biggest argument I have for sticking it out on this character is probably that it's easier to earn credits at higher level, which can be used to pay for gifts for companions on my new alts.  Somehow, this seems less pressing than experiencing a whole new story - or seven. 

Explaining SWTOR Server Merges

My post from yesterday on SWTOR's "character transfer" program has gotten a fair amount of attention, including blockquotes at Tobold's and the MMO Melting Pot, who asks whether the game has shrunk by 90%.  To be clear, I don't think the population numbers are that low - at least not yet. 

We already knew that the game was down over a quarter of its population.  Due to the game's pre-launch guild deployment program, those losses were very likely to cluster on the newly added servers in the launch rush, as launch guilds stayed put on the pre-launch servers they were placed on.  As a result, losing 25% of players could leave more than 25% of servers with undesirably low populations.  If players were disproportionately leaving servers that never filled up to begin with, and new players (like myself) were disproportionately choosing the most popular servers that remained, it is easy to see how a lot of servers wound up in trouble. 

There are also some reasons beyond avoiding the M-word for PR reasons why transfers were used over mergers.  With transfers, it's up to the player choosing to transfer to make sure that any characters they already have on the destination server do not push them over the cap.  With a voluntary transfer in place of an involuntary merge, responsibility for loss of a name can also be pushed on the player who "asked".  In principle, some of the servers that were flagged as origin servers could still be saved down the line, though I think it is more likely that the stragglers will end up merged on a server that has room for them once they're down to manageable numbers. 

That said, the sheer numbers of servers in play, combined with the previous population trend and the abrupt talk of free to play do not bode well.  We already knew that the game was going to an unlimited free trial model through level 15 - currently seen in WoW and Rift - and that in principle means they are laying the groundwork for non-subscription access to the servers. 

Alternate Payment Model
One final thought - when I heard the news from E3, I immediately assumed paid mini-expansion based on some past rumors regarding a survey that EA circulated on this topic.  It sounds like they denied this rumor in press interviews, and perhaps for good reason.  This idea has been tried before and never goes over well in a subscription game, especially within its first year of release.  However, perhaps there is a way to make mini-expansions more like DLC - as an alternative to the subscription rather than an add-on. 

DLC has far greater acceptance amongst players in general and Bioware fans in particular.  What if, by "free to play", we mean that regular paid mini-expansions come with enough game time - at a discount that offsets the cost of the content for subscribers - to allow most players to beat the content?  If for some reason you aren't done and don't wish to subscribe in the interim, you'd be free to revisit the stuff when the next DLC arrives with more included game time.  It would still be a subscription game and you would still need to offer value for that option, but there may be some middle ground/hybrid model that hasn't been done before and that might work with the kind of content Bioware is producing.  Time will tell, I suppose. 

Surveying SWTOR Servers

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.

• 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.