New APAC Region Server Launching TODAY!

We've known for a while that the SWTOR team had been toying with the idea of opening a new Asia Pacific server, ever since they tested the concept while getting ready for the move to Amazon Web Services earlier in the year. What I didn't expect was to wake up to a news post this morning announcing that the new APAC server - called Shae Vizla like its earlier test incarnation - was in fact going to launch today. When I came home from work in the evening, it was already open. Talk about keeping mum until the last second!

Technically it's "early access" for subscribers today, but tomorrow it will already be fully open to everyone. It's exciting times for our friends from down under who've had to suffer from bad ping ever since the last set of APAC servers were shut down back in 2013. I'm sure content creators Kal and XamXam (both Aussies) are over the moon.

But honestly, it's an exciting day for the whole community. The last time SWTOR added a new server was back in 2012 - since then it's been nothing but consolidations. So this is basically the first time the community as a whole has been able to experience something akin to a "fresh start" server (aside from the original launch), and I think many players will be treating it that way. Even if the ping for those of us not in the APAC region won't be great, if you're not aiming to play high-end content it shouldn't really be an issue, and there isn't really any reason not to join the fun of launch week at least. For Galactic Seasons altoholics like me it also means one more server to complete the seasonal track on, even if there's only a limited amount of time left in Season 5.

To have everyone start on (mostly) even footing, character transfers are disabled for now, though store boosts are still available. It'll be interesting to see what the GTN on Shae Vizla will be like to begin with, without anyone sitting on billions of credits hoarded over the course of the last decade. Later down the line, transfers are supposed to get enabled though, which makes sense as I'm sure many APAC players will be keen to move their existing legacies over.

Anyway, I don't have much more to say other than that this is surprising and great. There's a whole event schedule with people streaming, holding giveaways etc. which you can check out here. Let's all enjoy basking in those good vibes for the moment!