Super Servers Coming to a Galaxy Near You
Recently PC Gamer sat down with Lead Game Designer Daniel Erickson for an interview about patch 1.3. They discuss the new legacy additions and the much asked for Group Finder tool.
As we know patch 1.3, named Allies will be content light compared to the enormous patch 1.2 was. However, that’s not to say that it isn’t noteworthy. There are some fantastic quality of life changes coming.
Obviously the biggest addition to Allies is the Group Finder tool. Usable for Normal/Hard Mode Flashpoints and Story Operations this endeavours to help you find a group of the galaxies finest to save or wreak destruction on the galaxy. As those longer supporters will know before the launch of TOR there was much discussion on whether a group finder should be introduced into the game. Many were supportive of it as it allowed them to quickly find a group and get into the action straight away. Others countered by saying it discouraged server communities and encouraged anti-social behaviour because you were grouping with people unknown to you and on another server. I’m sure we all have horror stories in World of Warcraft.
Bioware has decided to try and find a nice middle crowd. The Group Finder will be server based only.
‘But that’s no good for me.’ I hear many people cry. ’My server population is so low I have to use sock puppets to group up with.’
Well my friend put down those sock puppets. During the interview Daniel dropped a hint that they maybe introducing Super Servers shortly.
PCG: Will they be cross-server at launch? Is that planned for the future?
DE: They will not be cross-server as we are coming up on a huge move to servers with massively higher population caps than we have today.
There hasn’t been much details on what this actually means. But it strongly suggests server merges and a increase in the current cap on server populations. Again this is all speculation.
The small server populations have always been a problem for TOR. It had the biggest launch ever for an MMO and Bioware were forced to open a large amount of servers to cope with the influx. Now the dust has settled and people leave to new games and play less often the population was spread to thin over too many servers. Its like having a very large piece of toast and only having a single spread of butter. The butter is spread fair to thin over the toast. Yes I did just use a toast analogy.
After hearing this news much of the community is optimistic on TOR’s future. Bioware have learned some hard lessons with SWTOR and they are doing their best to correct them. But the question still remains did they leave it too late?
As always I’d like to thank PC Gamer for conducting the interview and Daniel Erickson to answering the questions. To read the entire interview you can find it at the link below.
Thanks for reading.
Link to the original article - http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/05/23/the-old-republics-daniel-erickson-talks-legacy-system-update-group-finder-and-adaptive-gear/
