[2021] Changing servers from NA to EU

Contacting Customer Support and explaining the situation is your best option.

I'm not sure on the policy regarding transfers, but they should have information to give you!

The reason for the Time Window is to assist in the creation of Random Battle matches. During off-hours, the players available don't always fully populate queues which can lead to long waits and strange games. Softened matchmaker can change the number of shipclasses in a match, or simply short players on a match with a "Queue Dump".

It's an unfortunate necessity :(

One of our CCs has a few friends over in Asia that play on the NA server. He's advocated for the change/abolition of the Time Gating for months. Unfortunately, it's just not something that we're able to do at this time.

I realize the idea of just waiting a few more minutes may feel small, but when it's thousands of people queue'ing every hour the resulting difference is massive. The addition of 15-30 seconds can be the difference between queue'ing up for one more game or not. If folks leave the queue, it gets longer. It's a self-defeating issue.

The addition of another queue in the form of Ranked has benefits and drawbacks. The benefit is allowing players to find a version of the game they want to play at that time. The drawback is the dilution of any other available queue are players as spread out further. The work-around solution that we are using is the time gate, which allows access to more play-types as the server population is at a higher, more sustainable level to handle them all.

So, I've looked into this. We don't currently have the technology built to allow us to automate server transfers. It'd be cool, but it doesn't exist for us :(

The previous server migration would have been done by hand, copy and pasting and collaborating with engineers to make sure X or Y stuff didn't break as a result of such a brute force method. While the previous server transfer option happened before my time, it's not a thing that we're looking to have to repeat without any kind of automated tool assistance.

TLDR: It'd be a great thing to have, but it's not a feature we've got active to offer right now :(

We are always trying to build our playerbase. As a free-to-play game, however, it is quite hard. That being said, we've remained very stable for many years, which is an eternity in a free-to-play competitive market.

As for removing modes, that's ultimately a thing to be determined by the Devs that monitor the game's play patterns and health. Currently, there are no indications of changes to modes or time-limiting.

You are correct. If someone only wants to play Ranked, and Ranked is not available, then they may decide not to play. That is also true for players which have Ranked Out during the current split.

That being said, there are much more casual players which are interested in a variety of options at any given time. If Ranked is not available but they want to play, they can and do opt to play Random Battles, Co-Op, or Operations instead. So while it does not save the situation of the person wanting one experience, it does still keep others players engaged in the primary queue-type while the playerbase is not at peak levels.

Queue times are very important. While there are some very dedicated people that are willing to wait for a long duration to find a match that suits them, the majority are more interested in simply being able to play the game.