Darth Hater

Posted this in the suggestion box already, but people hardly read what´s in there. So here is what I suggest:

This is supposed to be less a sugggestion for the near or mid-term future and maybe tech-wise not even for swtor.

But as we are seeing several instances of the same planet already - why is the choice limited at all to just one server? the list could include all instances on all servers and nobody would care or even notice it - except when starting a group with friends. At this point there would be some reconnection-traffic between client and server.

Why do i suggest this?

I see the distribution of players across servers as a crucial problem for all mmos starting these days. The difference in server load between the first month and e.g. the third is so big, you just can not deal with it in the classic way.

The diminishing number of players on some servers is a setback for any developer both marketingwise as well as in terms of keeping people resubscribe when they face empty servers. Bioware for example will lose everyone who is not willing to reroll or wait for a (maybe costly) possibility of character moving.

The rescale of the maximum server load could have been done in the background without anybody noticing it. Does anybody care if there are 2 instances of Taris, 15 or 50?


I think it is technically possible, even to introduce this to a running game. Other MMO´s proved it by introducing cross-server-raiding( which imo is just a testing gorund for future server tech). The principle is the same, it just has to be implemented on a larger scale.
Another example is the server overflow system anounced by arenanet for guild wars 2.

Actually I don´t want to discuss the technical side rather than the consequences for gameplay.

I think the most challenging issue would be how to preserve the experience for RP-Players. PvP / PvE can be easily managed by marking instances as pvp. If you don´t want PvP you just choose a flagged instance.
But for RP you have no strict server-side rules, so I guess it depends on the playerbase if they respect it. As a last line of defense you could still make people choose to RP when creating a character and limit those to RP-instances.

Are there any other points I am missing on the gameplay side?