The Old Republic Begins “High Population Server” Testing

Star Wars: The Old Republic will soon see “significantly increased” populations on its game servers.

In an effort to provide a “better overall gameplay experience” to players of Star Wars: The Old Republic, BioWare is looking to boost concurrent player populations with the introduction of new “high population server tech.” To begin the process, the studio has copied all characters from its East Coast servers to a newly-opened public test server, and is asking players to log into that server and give it the business.

Players using the test server are asked to inform BioWare about any bugs or issues they run into on the Public Test Server Forum. Standard customer support will not be provided for the test server, however, and efforts to file tickets will not be processed. Otherwise, all the usual policies are in place, and inappropriate or abusive behavior should be reported as usual.

A big part of the fun in MMOs comes from the experience being “massive,” and from that perspective this sounds like a really good idea – the more the merrier, and all that. But given the game’s well-publicized troubles, it also sounds rather suspiciously like a server merge, which is often necessary but rarely a good sign.

Full details on The Old Republic’s high population server test, including instructions on how to take part, are up at swtor.com.