Server overcrowding and long queues

[Lytas]

It’s great that Bioware is allowing server transfers and allowing the community to come together. It’s going to allow everyone to do all sorts of stuff. I am a bit concerned that last night 4 or 5 of the NA America sever had queues and wait times of 15 to 20 minutes. I’m not sure they were not monitoring how many people they were allowing to be transferred to a destination server and made a big mistake. We went from having no one able to play together way to many people on a server. Bioware had spoke about mega servers be rolled out. I hope they do it sooner than later because people will stop playing due to overcrowding and wait times just as easy as under crowding and vacant servers. What does every one think?

[agent_malina]

I think the servers won't be overcrowding, at this moment there is a massive transfer taking place and everyone will start doing his transfers and login to check. See this is like a new patch or upgrade is rolled out. Same always happend with WoW when an expansion is released... Burning crusade/Wrath of the Lich King anyone? Massive queues on all servers and a lot of server downtime.
A huge amount of transfer are taking place and i think BW does exactly know what they are doing and are already monitoring for a longer time to see how many people are online during certain hours. Let the transfer rush pass by and see what happens in a few weeks when the "merges" are over and things have settled down.

[Izod]

I'd rather wait 5 minutes to log in than wait 2+ hours for a group... /thread

Bioware's biggest mistake was launching way too many servers at release because they were worried about queues and the players whined about waiting 10 whole minutes to play. People are far less likely to quit from overcrowding than from dead servers. It's a good move and it'll settle down. Personally I think their reaction time was far too slow - MMO history shows after release you lose a good 15-25% of the population in the first 3 months; then they sat on their hands claiming everything was fine rather than doing something about it. The amount of subscriptions they lost in the fallout was far higher than it should have been if they had acted with some sense of urgency.

I just wish they had done full on mergers, the transfer idea is outright stupid. You're going to end up with shells over servers that are completely barren - and even if you merge all of those servers, they're most likely to be the least active players (one's who didn't know about xfers, etc).

[Surfacing]

MMOs lose subscriptions in the beginning as a fact. It's not just BioWare, and it has nothing to do with servers. People get their characters to max level, see the end-game and move on to the next game which they will quit soon as well. They think they've seen it all. Some just aren't that fascinated with the end-game and don't want to level another character. Some just haven't found a good place to stay (i.e. guild) in the game and don't have RL friends playing it.

But, back on topic, I think overcrowded servers are awesome. Yesterday I logged in (Tomb of Freedon Nadd EU) and had an almost 400 people in queue, 5 minutes later I was in game already. At least now it's easy to find groups for everything, now that my guild is hibernating. Heroics on planets, warzones, flashpoints, ops - there are now enough people to group with. Although the server was the most populated in EU before the transfers, sometimes it was still hard to find groups, now it's amazing. Dead servers piss off most of the population (except the ones who aren't playing on dead servers). Overcrowded servers piss off a handful. And I don't think that people will stop playing because of that.

[Sasir]

Not trying to complain about the crowded servers...Its not a bit harder to find groups for lower lvl FPs like Cademimu and whatnot.

[dodgerfn]

Logged on last night and was put in a Q...10 min wait. Reminded me of launch day for sure. I have mixed feelings about this. I certainly don't like waiting to play, but I also am enjoying being able to run some flashpoints that I missed with other toons because I was on a dead server and couldn't find a group. So I guess I will just be patient and wait it out, see what happens in a few weeks to the servers. But I do fear that BIO may have allowed to many people merge to some servers, wish they could find a 'happy medium'.
Having said that, I still feel like BW knows what they are doing and will get it sorted out.

[Remi]

I'm a huge fan of the server transfer. I love actually having more than 10 people in the black hole and being able to actually run FPs. Great job by BW (should have happened in February though). I had to wait 15 minutes to log in and that is perfectly acceptable to me.

[vessjames]

My first MMO. Waiting 15 min to login is not acceptable to me. Waiting to do missions while the mobs respawn because there are 10 others ahead of you running the same mission isn't any fun for me. Finally getting to run your mission and having some juvenille run in and steal your loot is not fun for me. Lag is not fun for me, matter of fact it makes me log off and say the heck with it. I like to play PVP more than anything, but the lag and login time will make me go away. I realize patience is needed to let the dust settle from this, but a couple things in my list will have to go away for me to keep playing, and I really like the game.

[Scripts]

Vess, something I did a lot when the game launched was invite people in the area I was to do the same quest with me (Like if you were waiting for 1 particular guy to spawn, or needed to kill a guy that spawned after clicking on an object). This tended to cut down on the "wait a bazillion years for the object to be active again".

Queue: I agree that it can be frustrating if you are used to not having a queue. I guess I evaluate the queue based on how long I have to play. If I only have a half hour to play, due to other constraints, and the queue is showing 10 minutes, I'll do other things (like check oldrepublic/read my email/play a single player game) and come back to TOR later. If I have 2 hours to play, and the queue is showing 10 minutes, I'll log in, use the bathroom, and get a snack and something to drink while the queue is processing. By the time I'm back in front of the monitor, I'm looking at my character selection screen.

The queue is also like the wait at a restaurant for a table. Sometimes they tell you 20 minutes, but you get a table in 5. The estimates are pretty accurate, but tend to favor a longer wait than it really will be (game showed a ~10 minute queue on the Pleasure Barge last night when I logged in around 10:30 US-CDT, and it was really only about 2 minutes.)

The real question will be what the servers look like after 1.3, or after the next couple of weeks, after everyone's toons are settled wherever they need to be, and everyone goes back to their normal play routines.

[vessjames]

Thanks for the encouragement Scripts.
I know there are ways to deal with certain issues in game, especially if that is what is fun for you. I'm kinda a lone wolf in my missions. That is fun to me.

The biggest killer for me will be lag. I like PVP and lag in PVP is not good. I ain't very good anyway and lag makes it impossible to play. You let your team down and it gets frustrating.

I'm being directed to Drooga's as well, but I think I will stay where I'm at for a while until I get some toons where I want them or until they make me leave. I will miss PVP, but I can get other things done. Maybe see you on The Barge later on :}

[dodgerfn]

Hey Vess, I have lag issues as well. But not in pvp....meaning when you go into a wz, it's only 16 people or so, not 300, so my lag goes away. My only lag issues have been on the fleet, and now bio has put in phases to help eliminate this as well. Yes, everyone says buy a faster computer, but I'm not ready to do that. The game runs just fine out questing, the fleet is the only issue so I will just work around that.
Hope this helps to know your not alone

[Scripts]

My lag issues, right now, seem to be video driven. I've got my "backup video card" in my main rig right now, and I've been too lazy to crank down the visual settings. That problem should go away tonight, since my replacement card should arrive today.

My cable provider is also doing some equipment upgrades, so that's probably screwing me up too. I also agree with dodger, the only place that's really bad is fleet, so I may invest in the mailbox for my ship as my next legacy purchase.

[Izod]

My first MMO. Waiting 15 min to login is not acceptable to me. Waiting to do missions while the mobs respawn because there are 10 others ahead of you running the same mission isn't any fun for me. Finally getting to run your mission and having some juvenille run in and steal your loot is not fun for me. Lag is not fun for me, matter of fact it makes me log off and say the heck with it. I like to play PVP more than anything, but the lag and login time will make me go away. I realize patience is needed to let the dust settle from this, but a couple things in my list will have to go away for me to keep playing, and I really like the game.

You need to play GW2 then. You won't have any of this... There is no stealing mobs, overcrowding is good, and the PvP is amazing.

[Izod]

MMOs lose subscriptions in the beginning as a fact. It's not just BioWare, and it has nothing to do with servers. People get their characters to max level, see the end-game and move on to the next game which they will quit soon as well. They think they've seen it all. Some just aren't that fascinated with the end-game and don't want to level another character. Some just haven't found a good place to stay (i.e. guild) in the game and don't have RL friends playing it.

I never said this didn't happen. In fact I said it did. Bioware for some reason failed to realize this happen despite 15 years of MMO history to look at. The point that they screwed up in opening too many servers stands.

But, back on topic, I think overcrowded servers are awesome.

/Agree.

[CarraigMohrr]

Being a longtime resident of Drooga's the quadruple power-transfer they did to the server has overwhelmed the queues and the daily areas. I'd like to hope this will be self-correcting but I can't see how more time will make less people do dailies. We used to have a very considerate populace but now kill-stealing and ninja looting ground spawn items is rampant. Most folks ignore my requests to group in the Black Hole. BW needs to makes the daily areas phased and limited to 10-20 people. This would still allow people to group for the 4H but would limit the douchebaggery the all the émigrés seem to have brought with them.