Fans of Star Wars: The Old Republic have been discussing the possibilities of a Server Merge. SWTOR players are currently debating whether there is a relationship between a server merge with upcoming movie releases, and the advantages of what the merging could bring to the community.

Over on the SWTOR forums, user MakArdross kicked off the discussion As I compare the fleet’s population on serval servers, both imp and pub, the trend is imps have more activity and pubs are reaching barely over half of the total amount of the imp’s population majority of the time. A server merge will help the current active players.”

After MakArdross invited others to share their thoughts, members of the SWTOR community began to voice their opinions. User Savej shared the same request, expecting further news after the new movie: “The BW team has said a couple times they will consider a merge after 5.0 and the new movie population bumps have settled.” JabbaWabba feels that the prospect of a server merge is something that won’t be happening anytime soon: “doubt it happens any time soon. they make money off the people who are paying for a transfer right now”.

An interesting part of the debate is the correlation between the number of players and the release of movies in the Star Wars series. MaximumOwnage isn’t expecting an influx of new players once the next movie releases: “when Force Awakens came out, the game took a nose dive and was slower, not more active at the entire time the movie was out.” Whilst the user Rolodome believes there isn’t much in common between movie-goers and those who play the games: “Doesn’t surprise me, as most SW movie-goers probably don’t even play games, much less know what an MMO is or have the time to play one.” If you’d like to check out the entire discussion, click here.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is an MMORPG developed by BioWare Austin, releasing back in 2008. Based on estimates, SWTOR is one of the most expensive games ever made, and boasted over one million subscribers within 72 hours of its launch. This made it the fastest-growing MMO ever, and eventually switched to the familiar free-to-play business model, with a subscription option still available to players.