Character Transfer, Server Populations and You

Gold post on Transfers This will help a lot of players and will fix the PVP on lots of servers.


06.06.2012
Character Transfer, Server Populations and You


In a previous Community Q&A we talked about character transfers, and announced that they were coming in early summer. Character transfers are a complex process, but we're almost ready to go. Starting next week on June 12th, 2012, we’re allowing character transfers to occur between selected servers in order to provide a better gameplay experience for our players by ensuring population balance across the service.


Game Update 1.3 is focused around group content, with the Group Finder designed to help you enjoy Flashpoints, Operations and Heroic Missions in groups. However, we know that a Group Finder can only work when there is a large pool of players to draw from on a server. That's why the new Character Transfer Service is important: it will improve the overall player experience by facilitating maximized server populations across the service.

How will it work?
Initially we considered allowing players to transfer to any server they wished, or to a variety of different servers. However, on a massive scale, this free-for-all approach causes potential problems. Players who are anxious to ensure they end up on a heavily populated server will naturally flock to what is perceived as the 'biggest' server, potentially over-populating that server. This eventually leads to the exact situation we're trying to move away from. Our aim is to maximize server population across the entire service and to enhance the gameplay experience for our players.



Therefore, we made the decision to strictly limit the initial phase of the Character Transfer Service to only allow transfers from selected groups of origin servers (where you're moving a character from) to selected individual destination servers (where you choose to move a character to) based on the player populations of the origin and destination servers. In some cases, a large number of origin servers will be eligible to move to a single destination server. In others, very few origin servers will be transferring to existing high population destination servers. Remember, the goal here is to push almost every destination server to an active population that's higher.






This process will be gradual and staged over time. Despite huge improvements being made to the Character Transfer Service by our server team, there are millions of characters to be moved and there is a limit to how many can be moved daily. We want your character to be transferred as quickly as possible, but we will need you to be patient as the process completes. Once your transfer starts we estimate it will complete in a few hours, but with the potential volume of transfers occurring, you may find your character is queued for transfer for a while as we deal with the high volume.


We're sure many of you are interested to learn which servers are eligible for outgoing transfers and which servers are eligible to receive transfers. However, because the process will be gradual, we cannot provide that information in advance. Depending on the number of characters transferred, the destination and origin servers eligible for transfer may be altered during the process. We don't want to promise a destination in case it may change. Listings will become available as servers become eligible for transfer. We can tell you that all server types and languages will be respected. You will not find your PvE characters transferred to a PvP server, or vice versa!

There are also some restrictions to this character transfer process , which will be more fully detailed in a forthcoming FAQ. For those who have unlocked Legacy abilities, your Legacy will be transferred to your new server and your unlocks will be available there too. If you have already unlocked your Legacy on your destination server, the higher level Legacy will take precedence. For guild members and masters, you will not be able to transfer your guild as a whole to your new server; instead you will need to reform it. If you have a guild bank, it will be re-granted to your new guild on your destination server by Customer Service. This is not an automatic process and you will have to contact Customer Service directly. If your transferred character’s name conflicts with an existing name on a destination server, you will be asked to rename your character. In the case of Legacy names, unless you have unlocked your Legacy on your destination server, you will need to rename your Legacy upon transfer (although you may pick the same Legacy name as on your origin server, if available).


The next step
We believe that by carefully allowing character transfer between select origin and destination servers, players will have a healthier gameplay experience. With the Group Finder available in Game Update 1.3, we intend for players to be able to easily assemble full groups for all sorts of content.




We understand that some of you may be looking to consolidate characters from a variety of origin servers onto one server, and others may be anxious to move to a specific server to be with friends. With the restrictions of this initial service, that may not be possible. We still believe that you will enjoy playing on a higher population server and hope you'll take advantage of the service, but you won't be forced to transfer. Future versions of the Character Transfer Service may allow more options in your choice of destination servers and may require a transfer fee. While we do not have a scheduled time frame for the launch of such a service, we are committed to making improvements to the Character Transfer Service over time to provide players with a great gameplay experience. Stay tuned to www.StarWarsTheOldRepublic.com for more details!


Summary
We've been working as fast as we can to create a viable Character Transfer Service and we appreciate your patience as we've worked to create it. The good news is that the wait is almost over. We're in the final stretch of testing the service, and our release is now June 12th, 2012. Game Update 1.3 will be along not too long afterwards. We hope that the character transfer and the Group Finder will help everyone experience the full array of content available in Star Wars™: The Old Republic™.


The Star Wars: The Old Republic Community Team

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Legacy Perks. Get ready to get ripped off in patch 1.3

Bioware have just released a promo video for patch 1.3. The video tells us nothing really new but does provide some extra details about the new features. The video has received many dislikes and as I go over the details, you mind understand why. The changes are:

Legacy perks
Group Finder
Character transfer
Scaling social gear

First, have a quick watch of the video (bottom of this post). As you will see the Legacy perks are specific to each individual character, and they don't come cheap.

Looking at the warzone perks, the first one costs 20k and gives you a 2% XP perk to leveling in warzones. Another 30k will add an extra 2%, to the total of 4%. Each level seems to go up by 10k and add an extra 2%. So you'll be able to achieve a maximum of 10% bonus XP after spending approximately 200k. If you want to level another alt in PvP you'll have to spend another 200k. Please keep in mind that this is a guestimate as they only show us the costing of the first two.


Now is it just me or does that seem a little steep for such a pathetic return? 10% is not going to make much difference. I have three characters past act 2 and several others well on their way and I, like a lot of other players, am finding it really hard to have to re-do the standard missions found on most worlds. As it is at this stage, just to complete your class quests you have to level PvP for hours or re-do missions you've done 3 or 4 times already. I've been alternating characters to get the most out of rested XP, but it's still at the painful stage of going through this stuff for the 4th and 5th time for me. Don't get me wrong, I love the class missions and I am thoroughly enjoying every second of the story lines but I'm finding the leveling to be way more time consuming than it was originally in Beta.

Group Finder seriously should have been in the game from the start so although I'm pleased to see it being added, it's an "about time" feature, not a "wow" feature.

Character transfers are definitely going to help the lower populated servers and I hope that Bioware do the right thing and give everybody who has been gimped for months on dead servers the opportunity to move for free.

As for scaling social gear, since my main character is a Jedi Consular I can tell you now, this is broken before it's released. Currently all social gear is light armor but yet my Jedi Conuslar is still stuck in his fuggly rakata gear. As none of the promised armor bonuses transfer to other gear Bioware made a big deal about the customization abilities in patch 1.2. Apart from war hero and black hole gear, no other items in the game mods transfer. So if you're thinking of decking out yourself as a Sandperson, be prepared to loose your bonuses if you're not in the absolute state of the art gear.

I may seem a little bit annoyed about this last point, but it's one of the many options that Beta testers disputed. The change to lock-down epics was made about a month prior to the game being released. I had to do multiple videos to demonstrate the changes on mods as they were released in Beta. The community tried to advise Bioware but they did not listen and five months later we're still paying the price by having Jedis look like punces with wings on our sleeves in order to have our earned set bonuses. Unless the change is made to retro-fit older mods, this will plague the ability for players to customize themselves properly for some time.

GOOD-MORNING Balmorra! Live! ... WHAT?

"Good morning and welcome to another episode of SWTORFace. This morning we're going to be talking to one of our dependable comandos out in the Balmorra section, fighting to gain some awesome military technology for the Republic. We've John Sunrider on the line right now. Good morning John, how are you?"

"I'M GOOD SWTORFACE HOW ARE YOU?"

"We're all fine here thanks John. Things sound kind of loud there."

"YEAH, THAT'S CAUSE I'M BLOWING UP SOME IMPS!"

"You told us that you wanted to talk to us about something today John. What can we help you with?"

"WELL SINCE PATCH 1.2 I'VE BEEN HAVING A LOT OF TROUBLE HEARING MY COMPANIONS. I KNOW ARIC IS SAYING SOMETHING CONSTANTLY BEHIND MY BACK BUT IT'S ALL MUFFLED AND I'VE GOT NO IDEA WHAT HE'S ACTUALLY SAYING. I THINK USING ALL THESE EXPLOSIVES HAS WRECKED MY HEARING!"

"Well John, you might remember that the powers that be implemented a fix that prevented your ship droid from being so annoying. So rather than hearing your droid tell you that he's adjusted the food dispensers because he thinks you're all getting fat, it will now be muffled out whenever you turn your back to him."

"IS THIS THE REASON WHY I CAN'T HEAR MY OTHER COMPANIONS AS WELL, NOT TO MENTION MY SPEEDER FROM TIME TO TIME? EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE MY COMMANDER IS EVEN TRYING TO GIVE ME ORDERS AND I CAN SEE HER LIPS MOVING BUT I CAN'T HEAR HER."

"Yes John. The "fix" for the droid sounds might be the cause of your problems. Unfortunately we've been unable to find any official comments about this issue. It's got so bad that even some of our raiders are having problems during specific boss fights as the bosses aren't talking to us, we're having to read their mind to work out what they're doing. We've found that sometimes restarting your PC can fix this issue, but it seems to be completely random."

"WELL THAT SUCKS! LET'S HOPE THEY FIX IT SOON! I'M GLAD IT'S NOT THESE EXPLOSIONS THAT ARE MAKING ME HARD OF HEARING THOUGH!"

Have you been experiencing audio issues? Have you found a fix that might help others? please let us know in the comments below.