BioWare is terminating Star Wars: The Old Republic's Asia-Pacific servers, forcing Australian and Oceanic players to say goodbye to their low lag and hello to America, according to BioWare's Community Manager, Eric Musco.
This decision to merge the APAC servers into the American West Coast servers has come about due to frequent complaints about the declining player population. The APAC servers, located in Australia, will be rolled into the American servers on Tuesday, August 13th, according to information revealed on the SWTOR forums by Musco.
"We have evaluated all of the opinions and determined that the best solution ... is to merge the APAC servers with higher populated North American servers," Musco announced on May 25th of this year. "We will then offer Free Character Transfers to anyone currently playing on an APAC server."
The transfers were originally intended to be from APAC servers to specific West Coast servers, as per his announcement on the forum. Since then, due to player suggestions, the transfers have been opened up to any non-APAC server, regardless of server type. This means that anyone from a PvP server could merge to an RP-type server, for example.
"I tested the other servers out and found that the Begeren Colony best suited our needs," added Yuki in passing. "The community seemed the nicest, and the RP element of the server was really emphasised, which I think is really awesome."
The only other suggested server was Jung Ma, the East Coast server that is both RP and PvP. The general concensus was, however, that the Begeren Colony was best for the Guilds.
However, despite feeling confident about taking the extra time before moving the Guilds, the servers population dropped much faster than expected, causing Khryztofa to respond.
"So I moved the Guild on the 23rd of June instead," the esteemed Guild Master said as he answered recent questions. "It seems to have worked well - we already have new members from America."
Since the move, plenty of new members have been integrated into the Guild on both factions, including a number of Americans to balance out the timezones and keep the Guild active as often as possible.
This is a stressful time for everybody involved according to Khryztofa. He anticipated that many members would be lost when the transfer occurred. As expected, there are still remaining members who weren't registered with the Guilds' websites at the time and were unfortunately left behind.
"But we're moving on and growing strong with a new, solid member base," Yuki added. "It's time to be reborn."
Written by Yuki Matsuda
Photo: www.swtor.com
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