Big changes and additions are happening with SWTOR. In addition to the announcement of the new patch (1.3) coming soon, there was also a big exodus at the BioWare Austin studio. This was a huge disappointment to me because I went there, toured the studio with David Bass, saw employees hard and work and also saw how much all of the staff there seemed to care so much about their job. It really is a sad day to see so many people let go who really cared about the game and have put so many years of hard work into the game.

Of course it is the nature of the game that staff gets let go from a video game project once the game is launched and less work is needed for it but letting community manager Stephen Reid go was a real blow. Why would a successful game let their community manager go? And he didn’t seem to even know it was coming as he was working right up until the last minute on more features to the game.

With all that said, it seems that BioWare is doing what they can to help players enjoy the game and stick with it. Lead Game Designer Daniel Erickson has some things to say about the game and in an interview with Massively, he hints at the fact that we might have megaservers coming soon.

If any of you played DC Universe like me and my family did, you remember when they had to revert to megaservers but in my opinion, it actually helped the game. I enjoy playing and when we want to hop in a group, there is enough people around to join a group.

On my server in SWTOR right now, that is definitely not an option. So perhaps, megaservers in SWTOR are not so bad an option. In fact, I bet there are many SWTOR players who look forward to the option of megaservers.

Massively tells us:

When asked if the new group finder would be cross-server, Erickson replied that it would be single-server because “we are coming up on a huge move to servers with massively higher population caps than we have today.””

That pretty much hints to us that server merge is coming and a megaserver option could very well be the future of SWTOR. With many players and previous players complaining that there are not enough people to play with, this might be just what SWTOR needs. In the past, I wasn’t really a big fan of the megaserver concept. I like smaller, close-knit communities and I like to know who I am playing with. I like logging on and seeing familiar names in general chat. However, SWTOR is reaching a point where you feel grateful to see any chat at all going on. Some servers are becoming ghost towns and let’s face it, that’s just not fun in an MMO.

Some people say megaservers will destroy the game. I don’t really know how to feel. It seems like on some servers, the playerbase is dying and we desperately need server merges or transfers to keep the game playable. It seems BioWare might do more damage if they don’t remedy this problem- and quickly!

What do you think? Are megaservers a good idea?