Server Merges

[Niminae]

Yes it's that time again, because we got an update of sorts yesterday.

Cordovan said on yesterday's livestream that there were no plans at all to do any server merges, so don't expect any changes except for the worse for the low population servers as attrition continues to reduce their players. They have clearly been all but abandoned by SSG, and the poor MMORPG customer experience on those servers due to low population is obviously not of any concern at all to SSG. They are either incapable of performing server merges or they just don't care about their customers on the lower population servers. And the promise Executive Producer Rob “Severlin” Ciccolini made to look into server merges after the data center move, using language that made it seem like it was a forgone conclusion that they would do so, was apparently just another broken promise.

Here is his post, made close to two years ago on 11-10-2015:

We plan on revisiting the idea of server merges after we've moved to the new datacenter which is slated for in sometime in the new year.

We want to make sure we have lag under control before we concentrate the players. We recently made some fairly large changes to help combat lag, particularly in the Stormhorns and other places where monsters can use persistent AoE effects. We haven't heard any feedback that lag is reduced, but the nature of that beast is that we only hear about it when lag is bad.

There are some obstacles to overcome, like making sure shared storage and guild move over and players have good tools to deal with name collisions for both characters and guilds.

Sev~

Lag has improved across the past two years, and very poor game performance suffered by the entire player base for ~2 months immediately after the data center move has been recovered from. All that remains now is to do now is to do as Ciccolini said they were going to do, and "concentrate the players." And of course to overcome the few obstacles that he listed. But SSG is a company which has an entirely digital product. Moving data around is all they do so this should be trivial for them to accomplish.

And if SSG are incapable of performing server merges for whatever reasons, then they should offer up some alternatives such as free character transfers. Allow the players to decide for themselves if they are worried about losing their Astral Shards and Companion stables and all the other things that currently do not transfer with a character. But a company should not charge their customers for their own failures to perform a task or prioritize it correctly.


===


To give some comparisons of the difference in the play experience between a customer on a low population server and one on a higher population server:

1) The AH or ASAH on Sarlona will typically have more items posted in any single category than the entire list of what is posted on Wayfinder.

2) Sarlona will typically also have more level 30 characters online at any given time than Wayfinder has characters online in total.

3) Wayfinder rarely has more than a few dozen players online at any one time, and if there are 4+ LFMs up it's a special moment. Wayfinder having zero LFMs up at all is a very common state, and this is a supposed MMORPG. I've never seen a time on Sarlona when there were zero LFMs, and usually there are well over a dozen.

4) I play on both servers regularly, and I experience zero difference in lag between them. Sarlona could swallow up the entire population of Wayfinder without noticing it and with zero impact on lag.

[simo0208]

Yes it's that time again, because we got an update of sorts yesterday.

Cordovan said on yesterday's livestream that there were no plans at all to do any server merges, so don't expect any changes except for the worse for the low population servers as attrition continues to reduce their players. They have clearly been all but abandoned by SSG, and the poor MMORPG customer experience on those servers due to low population is obviously not of any concern at all to SSG. They are either incapable of performing server merges or they just don't care about their customers on the lower population servers. And the promise Executive Producer Rob “Severlin” Ciccolini made to look into server merges after the data center move, using language that made it seem like it was a forgone conclusion that they would do so, was apparently just another broken promise.

Here is his post, made close to two years ago on 11-10-2015:


Lag has improved across the past two years, and very poor game performance suffered by the entire player base for ~2 months immediately after the data center move has been recovered from. All that remains now is to do now is to do as Ciccolini said they were going to do, and "concentrate the players." And of course to overcome the few obstacles that he listed. But SSG is a company which has an entirely digital product. Moving data around is all they do so this should be trivial for them to accomplish.

And if SSG are incapable of performing server merges for whatever reasons, then they should offer up some alternatives such as free character transfers. Allow the players to decide for themselves if they are worried about losing their Astral Shards and Companion stables and all the other things that currently do not transfer with a character. But a company should not charge their customers for their own failures to perform a task or prioritize it correctly.


===


To give some comparisons of the difference in the play experience between a customer on a low population server and one on a higher population server:

1) The AH or ASAH on Sarlona will typically have more items posted in any single category than the entire list of what is posted on Wayfinder.

2) Sarlona will typically also have more level 30 characters online at any given time than Wayfinder has characters online in total.

3) Wayfinder rarely has more than a few dozen players online at any one time, and if there are 4+ LFMs up it's a special moment. Wayfinder having zero LFMs up at all is a very common state, and this is a supposed MMORPG. I've never seen a time on Sarlona when there were zero LFMs, and usually there are well over a dozen.

4) I play on both servers regularly, and I experience zero difference in lag between them. Sarlona could swallow up the entire population of Wayfinder without noticing it and with zero impact on lag.

Still beating the dead horse. PETA is not inpressed.

[SerPounce]

they just don't care about their customers on the lower population servers.

I would like to have more people to play with as much as anyone, but the decision to not merge isn't personal. It's not about whether they "care," they've just made a cost vs. benefit analysis and concluded that it's not worth it. I understand being disappointed with that, I am, but that's no reason to make it out as some kind of ill will.

[NXPlasmid]

I would like to have more people to play with as much as anyone, but the decision to not merge isn't personal. It's not about whether they "care," they've just made a cost vs. benefit analysis and concluded that it's not worth it. I understand being disappointed with that, I am, but that's no reason to make it out as some kind of ill will.

it's completely ridiculous for a game that is "instanced" for developers to claim they aren't able to merge servers. Their unwillingness to bite the bullet and do it will be the undoing of DDO.

[Renvar]

I'd rather they just lowered the cost on server transfers. Not free, necessarily, but cheaper. With a "ALL" bundle. So, maybe it is 500 DDO points per character and 2500 DDO points for all characters you have on a server. Such that you aren't spending a ton of money to move a bunch of mules.

That would allow the players to make their own choices.

[Scrapco]

I'd rather they just lowered the cost on server transfers. Not free, necessarily, but cheaper. With a "ALL" bundle. So, maybe it is 500 DDO points per character and 2500 DDO points for all characters you have on a server. Such that you aren't spending a ton of money to move a bunch of mules.

That would allow the players to make their own choices.

Yup. And have transfers [lowest-populated server]->[anywhere] for free.

[Chai]

1. Designate a specific deadline for when transfer needs to occur by - needs to be significant amount of time.
2. Designate which servers will remain post "merge" and which will not.
3. Offer X#(TBD) free of charge server transfer between the two dates, with a limitation that each character can only transfer once within that time.
4. Designate which servers will be merged with which servers if players choose not to move their characters beforehand.
5. After merge occurs, re-open regular character transfer feature at regular price.
6.. ???
7. Profit.

Example:
Player would be notified beforehand that their characters on Cannith will be merged to Thelanis on deadline date if they take no action.
Player is free to move Cannith characters to a server of their choosing, which is designated as a post merge server before deadline date.
After deadline date their remaining Cannith characters are now Thelanis characters. They can still transfer them using regular character transfer feature, just as they can currently.

[Miahoo]

They need somehow do global dungeons (like in B&S).
Where you make a global LFM - people across the servers join and run together.
Trades are disabled - can only pass loot in chests.
Once you recall you go back to your home server.

[Maldorin]

it's completely ridiculous for a game that is "instanced" for developers to claim they aren't able to merge servers. Their unwillingness to bite the bullet and do it will be the undoing of DDO.

I agree, and really it should be a priority. Like the number 1 priority. It doesn't gaurantee years more of life for the game but as it is now...

LOTRO is also a SSG product.

They merged. So.... Why?

Am I to believe it was a more desperate situation for that game than DDO?

So clearly for that game they determined server merges were needed and a good thing.

Welp why not for DDO?

All these so called "problems" seem so easy to take care of.

Guild ships ? Leader gets a certificate for one new shiny airship on the new server.
Shards? Shards on current server are deleted. Shards of same number are added on new server.
Names? Well... Sometimes you gotta take one for the team.
Character slots? Who plays alts? ( Kidding... JK)

Bank space, slots are all things that are sold. Which means they can be given for free.

Lag?

I think there's not enough players these days to cause lag and DDO could probably have even 1 server if they chose. Is there ever more than 1 instance needed anywhere these days?

Will it be taken by some that the game is in decline and possibly in trouble? Of course (doom)

But it kinda is really, isn't it?

[MasterKernel]

Yes it's that time again, because we got an update of sorts yesterday.

Cordovan said on yesterday's livestream that there were no plans at all to do any server merges

He says it every week. How come it's an update ? :-\


Lag has improved across the past two years, and very poor game performance suffered by the entire player base for ~2 months immediately after the data center move has been recovered from.
Are you sure ? 'cos no players came back to play the game after the lags went away. It's a very poor "recovery", IMO.


And if SSG are incapable of performing server merges for whatever reasons, then they should offer up some alternatives such as free character transfers.
Aha ! And now we finally can understand why this post was ever made : somebody needs a transfer but don't want to pay for it… All those pretty words mean nothing, you don't care about playerbase. All you want is a free transfer. >_>

[Memnir]

Meh.

[Tlorrd]

The notion that SSG should merge servers for free is totally ridiculous. There is a way for each and every person to instantly go to a single server. Just pony up and pay the points. Skip your pack of cigs, beer, or coffee for a week. Boom problem solved. We live in a market system. If you want something you go and pay for it.

The bonus is that the $ ssg makes will continue to serve your gaming fix.

[qwert-y]

They need somehow do global dungeons (like in B&S).
Where you make a global LFM - people across the servers join and run together.
Trades are disabled - can only pass loot in chests.
Once you recall you go back to your home server.

If they did a global instanced LFM like WOW this game would be done. It is one of the many things that ruined WOW and just a terrible idea. This game would not survive it and SSG knows it.

If you are on a low population server, such as Wayfinder, pony up the loot and pay to transfer.

Obviously migrating player accounts from one server to another happens, do not expect SSG to do it for free. People have been begging for a server merge since Turbine was in control. Literally since I joined... It is not happening. Ever.

[karatemack]

The "there's no issue here" crowd on other game topics come here to wonder why the servers are sparse. If only there were some clues somewhere on how to attract and retain new(er) players...

[Maldorin]

If they did a global instanced LFM like WOW this game would be done. It is one of the many things that ruined WOW and just a terrible idea. This game would not survive it and SSG knows it.

If you are on a low population server, such as Wayfinder, pony up the loot and pay to transfer.

Obviously migrating player accounts from one server to another happens, do not expect SSG to do it for free. People have been begging for a server merge since Turbine was in control. Literally since I joined... It is not happening. Ever.

And yet SSG merged LOTRO servers.

Not so sure about never.

[qwert-y]

And yet SSG merged LOTRO servers.

Not so sure about never.

They will never do it for free for this game. Never. Been asked for almost 10 years.....

Wish in one hand, take a dump in the other and tell me which one fills up first.

[Maldorin]

They will never do it for free for this game. Never.

I could accept not free. But they need to cost less and definitely for VIP.

I've spent about a hundred dollars in the game in the past 3 months for various hearts of wood and some bank space and my VIP.

I'd rather not have to shell out another like, what is it? Like 30 dollars to move 1 character to a server the population of which I do not know with zero certainty it doesn't get merged later.

And let's take note here I'm wanting to transfer to have a better MMORPG game experience that a more populated server offers. Healthy AH, LFM (I mean with all the players with social anxiety it takes 100 players to find 10 that will group with strangers ; ) organized raids...

So lower the price and publish an official highest populated server list and I'd be ok with that. They don't even have to give numbers. Just servers x, y and z have the most players.

Because now I say, I think Cannith is dead I want to transfer someone else tells me wait don't do that because Cannith is one of the more populated servers and I have no clue.

I am curious what makes you so certain though when like I said, this same company did merge servers, for free, on their other game.

[Maldorin]

They will never do it for free for this game. Never. Been asked for almost 10 years.....

Wish in one hand, take a dump in the other and tell me which one fills up first.

They can always just turn out the lights when the last player quits per server and leave the last one up in maintenance mode. Avoids the tricky server merge issue.

[Proton]

What if they made a reaper server and only those with reaper wings could get a server medallion that allows them to transport there or back to the server they came from (emblem on medallion)? Only choice for content on reaper server is R6 and up, making it a rough place for tough fights only, and helping players who want to take on harder content find lfms as they can then move to this server from anywhere.

It would then be a server-expansion-merge all at the same time. Would it be a good thing to do?

[knightgf]

Im all for free or heavily discounted character transfers. I don't think there has ever been a discount on character transfers, and free ones only apply to Lamannia (If it works, that is.)

Im also all for just merging all the servers into 1, solving a few problems AND causing a lot of problems at the same time in true DDO fashion. If you think being banished to the lowest, most inaccessible and hostile layer of the abyss was bad...muhahaha.

[qwert-y]

I could accept not free. But they need to cost less and definitely for VIP.

I've spent about a hundred dollars in the game in the past 3 months for various hearts of wood and some bank space and my VIP.

I'd rather not have to shell out another like, what is it? Like 30 dollars to move 1 character to a server the population of which I do not know with zero certainty it doesn't get merged later.

And let's take note here I'm wanting to transfer to have a better MMORPG game experience that a more populated server offers. Healthy AH, LFM (I mean with all the players with social anxiety it takes 100 players to find 10 that will group with strangers ; ) organized raids...

So lower the price and publish an official highest populated server list and I'd be ok with that. They don't even have to give numbers. Just servers x, y and z have the most players.

Because now I say, I think Cannith is dead I want to transfer someone else tells me wait don't do that because Cannith is one of the more populated servers and I have no clue.

I am curious what makes you so certain though when like I said, this same company did merge servers, for free, on their other game.

Every one of your suggestions is good.
All of your points are valid and reasonable.
It would not be hard for them to do it. Not labor intensive at all.

I am so certain because: It has been asked for almost a decade.....

But they will never do it. Pony up, come to Khyber. I did.

Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.

[zehnvhex]

If they did a global instanced LFM like WOW this game would be done. It is one of the many things that ruined WOW and just a terrible idea.

If by that you mean "Increased the number of people grouping each day by about 5000%" and "Is wildly credited as one of the many things that saved WoW from self-obsoleting" sure. Between RFG and cross-server grouping WoW kept themselves from stagnating and even declining in subs.

Now, if you want to bemoan their overall dungeon design, I'm with you on that. But their dungeon designed has sucked since TBC when they stopped being creative and just made everything the same. That has nothing to do with RFG and cross-server play.

But RFG, raid finder and cross-server play is just one of the great things about WoW. Saying otherwise is just blind ignorance.

[Nebless]

And yet SSG merged LOTRO servers.

Not so sure about never.

I'm pretty sure it was Turbine that merged the servers in 2015. SSG took over later so possibly a bigger team then.

[Zenako]

Cranking up the wayback machine to when the server merge did happen in DDO many many years ago (long live Adar. Xoriat, etc) and the hue and cry about the impact on some from that, I would not discount the anger some would express to find something simple like their characters now having to take a new name or just getting something appended to their name, such as Zenako-adar for example (I had created a character on each server so I could check all servers out back then.). Quite a few folks basically rage quit at the time. We now also have guilds with names, and all the shared guild features that would be an issue. Some folks have stables of characters on each server and would exceed the caps on that. Again, no easy solution without changing some core dynamics. I think it is very easy to discount how much many folks actually treasure the names of the characters they play as being a core part of their identity. Bust that and folks would likely consider leaving.

Their is not as much "culture" differences between servers these days compared to the old Thelanis vs Xoriat debates a decade ago. So while merging might help some things, it also might make other things worse.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

Their is not as much "culture" differences between servers these days compared to the old Thelanis vs Xoriat debates a decade ago. So while merging might help some things, it also might make other things worse.

Zenako wins the internet today, and 55 minutes before the next day begins! :)


Anyone who says it would be "easy" has no idea what they are talking about. Just because they are "all digital" or the game is "instanced" doesn't mean there would not be problems.

When the budget and staff were much larger, a merge was done and a good number of people were very upset for a myriad of reasons. That's when the budget and staff were at it's biggest.

After all these years of coding since those days, 10 years ago, short of the good Lord above, no one has any idea what would break out if a merge were tried again. If SSG feels the risks/cost/lost income would outway the benefits, then they are 100% right to not attempt the merge.

I have faith in SSG's decision on this one.

[Dark_Helmet]

Lag not fixed.
Server merge won't happen.

No film at eleven.

[Maldorin]

Zenako wins the internet today, and 55 minutes before the next day begins! :)


Anyone who says it would be "easy" has no idea what they are talking about. Just because they are "all digital" or the game is "instanced" doesn't mean there would not be problems.

When the budget and staff were much larger, a merge was done and a good number of people were very upset for a myriad of reasons. That's when the budget and staff were at it's biggest.

After all these years of coding since those days, 10 years ago, short of the good Lord above, no one has any idea what would break out if a merge were tried again. If SSG feels the risks/cost/lost income would outway the benefits, then they are 100% right to not attempt the merge.

I have faith in SSG's decision on this one.


I understand the reasons why those who oppose it, do.

It's that projecting ahead let's count the possibilities.

DDO will:

Grow
Stay the same
Lose players.

What has been happening overall?

Is it better to wait to when there is no choice but to merge. Is it possible that by proactively merging and not waiting until the last minute it could be better for the game.

After all isn't it the normal life cycle of an mmo to go through merges after the population declines? And it is done to keep an mmo mmo-ish rather than ghost townish?

At some point, it might not even make a difference.

Clearly it was on the devs radar at one point per the one quoted post.

But it is everyone's choice to support or vehemently oppose mergers

And we as players don't even have enough data to discuss the matter in an informed manner.

I guess we can just trust the devs have the game's best interest at heart and if they determine merges are necessary they'll do it.

Until then, what's the largest server again so I can pay to move?

[Maldorin]

After all these years of coding since those days, 10 years ago, short of the good Lord above, no one has any idea what would break out if a merge were tried again. If SSG feels the risks/cost/lost income would outway the benefits, then they are 100% right to not attempt the merge.

I have faith in SSG's decision on this one.

I'm not sure.

We can transfer characters. If I pay to move all my toons from Cannith to wherever I've done a mini merge. If everyone on Cannith tomorrow paid to move all their toons to say .. Sarlona they merged the two servers. The game mechanic to do it exists now. It's automated. I think character names and guild names are a sticking point (who wants a 1 behind their name, right?) and maybe some people like the quiet. Or I'm missing something.

[glennson]

As a player on Wayfinder, I do not wish to be merged, I Quite enjoy our little community. We have new players who also enjoy the small server.

I do not appreciate other people thinking that we all want to be merged either. Everyone in our guild is quite happy with the server population.

[hinton]

As a player on Wayfinder, I do not wish to be merged, I Quite enjoy our little community. We have new players who also enjoy the small server.

I do not appreciate other people thinking that we all want to be merged either. Everyone in our guild is quite happy with the server population.

I agree. Already to many people around. I like the quite. What would not be bad(maybe) would be.

Offer free transfers from the 4 lowest pop servers if.
1 the player had a free slot open on the one they were going to.
2 the player was willing to permanently lose a slot on the server he was leaving.
3. The low pop 4 servers after this were merged into 1 or 2 servers.
This would raise the population on the busy servers and retain the lower pop ones.

Maybe a guild transfer option of some kind. Guild leader signs up members have a certain time frame to agree.Guild moves non transferring members get kicked and guild looses xp from all non transferring members. Again refer to 1 and 2 above.

[MasterKernel]

But RFG, raid finder and cross-server play is just one of the great things about WoW. Saying otherwise is just blind ignorance.

It's nice, but it's also an answer to the dying playersbase and Blizzard's own dumb decisions aka "achievements". After achievements were introduced in WoW, pugs died in days. If you tried to find a group that day, you were asked "do you have some-super-hard-and-rare-achievement-only-3-players-ever-have ? No ? I don't take you in a group for 'go to that tree and pick 2 flowers', noob !!!!!111". People with a good guild, played within their guilds. Others stopped playing. Literally. Pretty much, like we've got it in DDO right now.

And there, Blizzard came up with the auto LFM. And they lured people into use it with the bonus XP and bonus loot for tanks/healers. And they also spend a year or so to polish their kick-from-the-lfm-group system, to prevent all abuses.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

I guess we can just trust the devs have the game's best interest at heart and if they determine merges are necessary they'll do it.

Until then, what's the largest server again so I can pay to move?

Turbine and SSG has a great story to tell. Its one of survival. One of the only companies to survive the "Atari Cash-Squeeze" marketing scandal that killed off or screwed many of a development house worldwide (get as much cash as you can from a game, and hit the devs and run...), devs working for peanuts during parts of the legal battles, then they survived the WB "Let's go mobile with everyone else" craze (in which WB did pretty much what Atari did in terms of not advertising/promoting the game), and finally negotiated with multiple companies to branch off onto their own to bravely go where few companies have gone - sole owners of DDO and LOTRO.

So I feel very comfortable trusting the SSG staff on this matter and on many others pertaining to the survivability of DDO.

As for what server is biggest... I dont have exact numbers, but I will say as far as a guild based server, Ghallanda is STRONG. There are many guilds and therefor members that have been around since 2005-09 and still are around today. Count Tyrs Paladium as one of those guilds. Check out the guild recruitment thread of Ghallanda, and read the other servers too. See how the guild leaders promote their guilds, and see which one fits your playstyle and goals the best!

Its not the size of the wand... it's the magic in the magician! :)~~~~

[Katalissa]

Turbine and SSG has a great story to tell. Its one of survival. One of the only companies to survive the "Atari Cash-Squeeze" marketing scandal that killed off or screwed many of a development house worldwide ... and finally negotiated with multiple companies to branch off onto their own to bravely go where few companies have gone - sole owners of DDO and LOTRO.


That's a pretty good point. It is a miracle it has not only gone this long, but still has such a dedicated player base, indeed a player base at all.

I think they have really scored getting both the "Dungeons & Dragons" and "Lord of the Rings" names. I mean, that's fantasy-world old-money royalty in terms of brand name recognition. I know WoW is the nouveau-riche upstart in the fantasy world, but, really, almost nothing else is even in the same league. Maybe Warhammer and Conan come in there somewhere. Even Gary Gygax himself was never able to topple D&D from it's place as king of fantasy RPGs, and he tried, oh, how he tried!

[Miahoo]

If they did a global instanced LFM like WOW this game would be done. It is one of the many things that ruined WOW and just a terrible idea.

why did it fail? what happened there?

[vms4ever]

And yet SSG merged LOTRO servers.

Not so sure about never.

I play LOTRO and lived through the great server massacre. I do NOT support a DDO server "merge".

Sometimes the answer is "No". That is still an answer. Let the dead horse rest in peace until next Mabar.

[Niminae]

I am curious what makes you so certain [that server merges will never happen in DDO] though when like I said, this same company did merge servers, for free, on their other game.

Indeed. The person you are responding to here who said it would never happen is forgetting that DDO has already merged servers more than once in the past. He seems to be unaware that server merges for DDO servers has happened before, and so that necessarily means that the impossibility of doing so again is not accurate.

And I believe that now the player base is much lower than it was then, making all issues of name collision lower as well.




Still beating the dead horse. PETA is not inpressed.


I don't post asking for shared past lives across all of my characters, or complaining about how my alts are not as powerful as my mains. So I need something else Quixotic to post about.

[Krell]

It would be nice if there was a cheaper "move all characters" option.

[Maldorin]

Indeed.

And I believe that now the player base is much lower than it was then, making all issues of name collision lower as well.



.

I imagine there are a lot of great names that were created in the first couple years by players who played a short time and never logged in again. I think it would be really really smart if in conjunction with a merge they wiped the names of characters that haven't been played in the last 8 or 10 years. Place a nice letter and a name change cert in that character's inventory and set free those names.

So on the one hand maybe you have a one by your name. On the other hand you have a free name change and there's like now 50,000 (? Have no idea) new names now available that were great names.

[aumerle]

Cranking up the wayback machine to when the server merge did happen in DDO many many years ago (long live Adar. Xoriat, etc) and the hue and cry about the impact on some from that, I would not discount the anger some would express to find something simple like their characters now having to take a new name or just getting something appended to their name, such as Zenako-adar for example (I had created a character on each server so I could check all servers out back then.). Quite a few folks basically rage quit at the time. We now also have guilds with names, and all the shared guild features that would be an issue. Some folks have stables of characters on each server and would exceed the caps on that. Again, no easy solution without changing some core dynamics. I think it is very easy to discount how much many folks actually treasure the names of the characters they play as being a core part of their identity. Bust that and folks would likely consider leaving.

Their is not as much "culture" differences between servers these days compared to the old Thelanis vs Xoriat debates a decade ago. So while merging might help some things, it also might make other things worse.

Exactly. There is not 100% upside to merging servers. Sure, I'd like more people to play with but I'm not sure I want every one of my characters to be named XXX-Thelanis when I'm moved to another server, like I'm some kind of second class citizen over there.

[qwert-y]

If by that you mean "Increased the number of people grouping each day by about 5000%" and "Is wildly credited as one of the many things that saved WoW from self-obsoleting" sure. Between RFG and cross-server grouping WoW kept themselves from stagnating and even declining in subs.

Now, if you want to bemoan their overall dungeon design, I'm with you on that. But their dungeon designed has sucked since TBC when they stopped being creative and just made everything the same. That has nothing to do with RFG and cross-server play.

But RFG, raid finder and cross-server play is just one of the great things about WoW. Saying otherwise is just blind ignorance.

For every uncited quote you try to throw at me from the depths of the internet saying I am wrong, I can find one saying you are wrong. Saying I am ignorant... that's just trolling.

You are however entitled to your opinion.

[Chai]

Turbine and SSG has a great story to tell. Its one of survival. One of the only companies to survive the "Atari Cash-Squeeze" marketing scandal that killed off or screwed many of a development house worldwide (get as much cash as you can from a game, and hit the devs and run...), devs working for peanuts during parts of the legal battles, then they survived the WB "Let's go mobile with everyone else" craze (in which WB did pretty much what Atari did in terms of not advertising/promoting the game), and finally negotiated with multiple companies to branch off onto their own to bravely go where few companies have gone - sole owners of DDO and LOTRO.

And teamed up with another company of folks who pretty much did the same thing, to publish the game.

[qwert-y]

Indeed. The person you are responding to here who said it would never happen is forgetting that DDO has already merged servers more than once in the past. He seems to be unaware that server merges for DDO servers has happened before, and so that necessarily means that the impossibility of doing so again is not accurate.

And I believe that now the player base is much lower than it was then, making all issues of name collision lower as well.






I don't post asking for shared past lives across all of my characters, or complaining about how my alts are not as powerful as my mains. So I need something else Quixotic to post about.

I did not forget anything. I have been playing this game for a long time. They will never merge the servers.The amount of servers a game has is one of those hook points they use when advertising. It promotes the idea that the game is growing and alive etc. Removing one is not going to happen.

[Maldorin]

I did not forget anything. I have been playing this game for a long time. They will never merge the servers.The amount of servers a game has is one of those hook points they use when advertising. It promotes the idea that the game is growing and alive etc. Removing one is not going to happen.

Yep. They're more likely to add servers. Then randomly assign our characters to the new servers to "grow the game" because "more servers is always better!" But in the DDO store offer a "compass of return" for 1995 points which allows you to return to your home server.

[lLockehart]

I did not forget anything. I have been playing this game for a long time. They will never merge the servers.The amount of servers a game has is one of those hook points they use when advertising. It promotes the idea that the game is growing and alive etc. Removing one is not going to happen.

Lmao.

Yeah, you're totally right. You're so right that I think we should expand on your premise. How about we add 5 ghost servers and fire off an advertising campaign? It's really clever! it will probably enhance our population by about 14,7% if my deft calculations are correct. In fact, I've just consulted a clairvoyance mage and paid the hefty price of 4 platinum and 10 gold pieces for their services and let me tell you, you're a genius qwert-y, our ghost server plan will fuel DDO with new life, re-igniting a flame bigger than what Amaunator's worshippers can dream of!

On the merging topic, I don't think there's been any confirmation on whatever side of the issue so people claiming to "being on SSG's side" is odd to me since we don't really know their stance on the issue and if there's other solutions that are being worked on.

Least I heard, this is the most recent comment by Sev on the whole thing:
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/467600-Server-Merge-Time-to-beat-the-dead-horse-again/page2?p=5721344#post5721344

Is there a more recent post clarifying SSG's stance on merging servers or solving the low playerbase problem?

I also don't think we have the manpower and resources to merge the servers, especially at a time where we severely lack polish on a lot of core game aspects that goes unattended in favour of rushing more content and more bugs along the way. I'd be happy if some cross-instance solution was in the works or something of the sort, even a small update to grouping UI would really lift my spirits.

In any case, I think dispelling the foggy mist over what can can and cannot be done would be an welcome response from the Dev team. If it can't be done, it can't be done but if it's left in the air as is... it's only natural that people will gravitate towards wanting a server merge because... It makes all the sense, it's an MMO (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massively_multiplayer_online_game) with emphasis on massively. Having servers with super low population coupled with ongoing grouping barriers is an evolving recipe for additional displeasure.

[MalkavianX]

I'd be all for a server merge, except for one small thing. Say I've got 15 characters/slots on server X and 15 characters/slots on server Y. Then they merge server X with server Y. Will I have access to all 30 characters? Or will I have to buy 15 more character slots?

[Memnir]

I'd be all for a server merge, except for one small thing. Say I've got 15 characters/slots on server X and 15 characters/slots on server Y. Then they merge server X with server Y. Will I have access to all 30 characters? Or will I have to buy 15 more character slots?If handled like the last merge, you would either need to buy 15 more character slots or delete 15 to get back down to your allotted number of character slots.


I really don't care too much about merges. I don't think they are needed, but I also don't have access to any numbers. My only fear in a merge would be loosing any of my stuff - guild/ship, names, the few TR banks I have, etc. And the problem mentioned above. I play on a number of servers, and really hated to go through the Maximum Character issue the first time around. I would hate to go through it again for the sake of some folks tilting at windmills.

[apoc1024]

If SSG can give every toon a "free server transfer ticket" as the 13th anniversary gift, this issue could probably solved without causing too much trouble.

Let players decide which server they should settle down (once and for free), this process is merely as same as "server merge" in some ways or another.

My two cents!

[karatemack]

If SSG can give every toon a "free server transfer ticket" as the 13th anniversary gift, this issue could probably solved without causing too much trouble.

Let players decide which server they should settle down (once and for free), this process is merely as same as "server merge" in some ways or another.

My two cents!

Dr. Seuss once wrote a book about Sneetches on Beaches which describes how I believe this would play out.

[slarden]

I don't post asking for shared past lives across all of my characters, or complaining about how my alts are not as powerful as my mains. So I need something else Quixotic to post about.

Do you really think a game revolving around single-character power acquisition will do anything other than slowly bleed the population? So you support that direction and complain on the forums about declining populations. Good grief Charlie Brown.

[Niminae]

Do you really think a game revolving around single-character power acquisition will do anything other than slowly bleed the population? So you support that direction and complain on the forums about declining populations. Good grief Charlie Brown.

The flaw in your proposition is that I do not see DDO as "a game revolving around single-character power acquisition." Therefore the remainder of your post is flawed since it uses that statement as its basis.

I am also not complaining about declining populations. Declining populations is simply a fact which I use to support the benefits of server merges.

[slarden]

The flaw in your proposition is that I do not see DDO as "a game revolving around single-character power acquisition." Therefore the remainder of your post is flawed since it uses that statement as its basis.

I am also not complaining about declining populations. Declining populations is simply a fact which I use to support the benefits of server merges.

You are complaining about SSG not merging servers even though it is obvious from this thread many disagree with that expensive proposition and disagree with you. Like restoring alt play to how it was pre-reaper/racial TR it's not going to happen because SSG isn't going to invest in DDO at this point beyond things with short-term payback like xpacs and consumables.

They should just offer free moves to select servers with the "highest" populations and let players solve the issue without a big investment. A server move won't happen for the same reason they won't correct the poor design of reaper and racial tr. Too much trouble and no clear payback.

[LucidLTS]

4) I play on both servers regularly, and I experience zero difference in lag between them. Sarlona could swallow up the entire population of Wayfinder without noticing it and with zero impact on lag.

While I'm happy for you that you don't notice a difference between Wayfinder and your main server, your perception is not universal. I run a small guild on Argo, and it has far more lag than Wayfinder, especially during peak play hours.

In fact, the only reason we play on Wayfinder at all is because even now sometimes Argo has too much lag to bear, our choice is to switch to Wayfinder or play a different game entirely (which happens fairly often). We've got a fully loaded Kraken on Argo, and a dumpy Sparrow on Wayfinder, but it's better to play there than suffer through the lag.

The lag is certainly better than it was right after the data center move, but it's still damaging game play, and it's most definitely affected by the number of concurrent users. Maybe Sarlona has a low enough population to absorb the Wayfinder population without pushing past the threshold of lag, but it would be a foolish gamble for SSG to take.

A quick look at the "Who" and "Grouping" panels show that only around 10% of the population is in PUGs, but 100% of the population suffers when lag hits. The math just doesn't support risking the experience of the many to please the few. Designate one server the "PUG" server and offer free transfers, but don't force the majority onto a more populous server just to please the minority. Like it or not, soloing or playing with a small group of friends plays a much larger role in DDO than it used to, that's just the modern gaming climate. Trying to force the modern population into the old PUG pattern just chafes.

So if the low population of Wayfinder bothers you, stick to Sarlona. Don't assume that we're stuck on Wayfinder and need to be moved "for our own good", many of us prefer it this way! Free voluntary transfers are fine, but not forced ones.

[Maldorin]

While I'm happy for you that you don't notice a difference between Wayfinder and your main server, your perception is not universal. I run a small guild on Argo, and it has far more lag than Wayfinder, especially during peak play hours.

In fact, the only reason we play on Wayfinder at all is because even now sometimes Argo has too much lag to bear, our choice is to switch to Wayfinder or play a different game entirely (which happens fairly often). We've got a fully loaded Kraken on Argo, and a dumpy Sparrow on Wayfinder, but it's better to play there than suffer through the lag.

The lag is certainly better than it was right after the data center move, but it's still damaging game play, and it's most definitely affected by the number of concurrent users. Maybe Sarlona has a low enough population to absorb the Wayfinder population without pushing past the threshold of lag, but it would be a foolish gamble for SSG to take.

A quick look at the "Who" and "Grouping" panels show that only around 10% of the population is in PUGs, but 100% of the population suffers when lag hits. The math just doesn't support risking the experience of the many to please the few. Designate one server the "PUG" server and offer free transfers, but don't force the majority onto a more populous server just to please the minority. Like it or not, soloing or playing with a small group of friends plays a much larger role in DDO than it used to, that's just the modern gaming climate. Trying to force the modern population into the old PUG pattern just chafes.

So if the low population of Wayfinder bothers you, stick to Sarlona. Don't assume that we're stuck on Wayfinder and need to be moved "for our own good", many of us prefer it this way! Free voluntary transfers are fine, but not forced ones.

So the solution to lag is to maintain a below a certain threshold server population (in which case no wonder they don't seem to care about out growth). In order for the game to be playable the game needs to have almost no one playing? Sigh. And I get it it's fine for players in guilds that consistently have a few friends to play with. But for the long term...

And I could totally believe it to be true, that lag is the reason we've not seen server mergers and maybe never will. It's possible the lag is unfixable.

Which is double doom. :(

But...

On the one hand I think the game is 1/10 the peak population. So we should be able to have at mergers / free transfers.

On the other hand there has been a lot more complexity added to the game requiring more code on top of spaghetti code and instant calculations.

Who knows.

[lLockehart]

On the other hand there has been a lot more complexity added to the game requiring more code on top of spaghetti code and instant calculations.

Who knows.

SSG knows and they should make a stance on server merging—an official one, not random stream comments by Cordo.

This is important because it's something that people will always gravitate towards, especially when it's still left in the air by Sev's most recent response.




A quick look at the "Who" and "Grouping" panels show that only around 10% of the population is in PUGs, but 100% of the population suffers when lag hits. The math just doesn't support risking the experience of the many to please the few. Designate one server the "PUG" server and offer free transfers, but don't force the majority onto a more populous server just to please the minority. Like it or not, soloing or playing with a small group of friends plays a much larger role in DDO than it used to, that's just the modern gaming climate. Trying to force the modern population into the old PUG pattern just chafes.

This is complete fallacy, that's no way to draw meaningful data. While playgroups are certainly the most common way of playing, a lot of them host pugs and overall, this is an MMO and a lot of mechanics pertains to playing in groups like the most recent content that's a raid. Also, lag isn't necessarily connected to a larger playerbase, especially in an instanced game and many core causes of lag have been historically found to be in coding and with the engine, the arrows being an example of this. Coupled with a dwindling population, it makes no sense to base lag on the # of people online or pugging.

Adding to this, to incentivize free tickets to jump ship is also a much more troubled solution than it seems. It's the best one for us, the people engaged with the community, the forums and who play the most - competitive or otherwise but for the average player, it will spell a desert overnight for no apparent reason, SSG would have to announce it in-game and then what? would everyone be forced to leave? it's... irresponsible and would just be met with a greater shout for merging servers.

This is why it's so important to make an hard stance on this whole issue. People want to play with other people, it's why they're playing this instead of whipping out their PS4 or playing a more DnD centric experience on PC, it's an MMO. If merging servers is too costly and ends up being a gamble with a plethora of hotfixes looming in the aftermath, SSG needs to make it clear for everyone that this will not be something that's planned for the future. And then everyone can stop dreaming the sweet dream and focus on what can be done to otherwise stifle or improve on the issue, along with SSG as well.

People complaining about these threads need to realize that the average player will not whip out four pages of Wikipedia to evaluate how costly a merger will be, that's not their job! If a Djinni would grant us a server merge without any backlash and free of costs, we'd do it in a snap, it's obviously the best solution and the game would benefit hugely from it, could even re-ignite a wave of returning and new players. For the average player, they don't know how small and limited our company is, they think there's absolutely no reason we shouldn't do a merge—and rightfully so. Even I am still on the limbo about it because ultimately, despite our limitations, the fact is - we don't know, we don't have the data, SSG knows and they should make their intentions clear and explain if it's in fact, something that's too costly and too much of a gamble to have a positive effect and that's okay, it's how things are but people need to know.

[axel15810]

I hope they merge. It's definitely time for it.

Though I get the impression it's not technically feasible. I'd also settle for cheaper transfer options. 500 points per character or 2500 for all seems about right. Then the playerbase could get together and decide on one or two servers, and SSG could make some money to boot. And those who like being on a small server like Wayfinder could still have the option to stay behind. Seems like a win/win. The tech is already there for this so it wouldn't be much of any additional work AFAIK.

The population on Thelanis has made it pretty frustrating to run raids and other endgame stuff regularly as compared to how easy it was years ago when there was constantly 1-2 raid LFMs up.

[Chai]

The flaw in your proposition is that I do not see DDO as "a game revolving around single-character power acquisition." Therefore the remainder of your post is flawed since it uses that statement as its basis.

I am also not complaining about declining populations. Declining populations is simply a fact which I use to support the benefits of server merges.

People not playing alts, which we have seen many claims of on the forums, sure does create the perception of declining population, whether its true or not. The way grouping is restricted to a 4 level range will ensure the majority of folks on at any given time will not be able to group with you, or any single one other person.

What you perceive as a population in decline may be nothing more than same number of players playing far fewer characters, each of which is not in range for you to group with. They may also be playing far less time, as they no longer have the option to log onto a different character and join an LFM in a different level range when there isnt one up for the range of the current character they are logged into. So instead they log off and do something else.

[Chai]

While I'm happy for you that you don't notice a difference between Wayfinder and your main server, your perception is not universal. I run a small guild on Argo, and it has far more lag than Wayfinder, especially during peak play hours.

In fact, the only reason we play on Wayfinder at all is because even now sometimes Argo has too much lag to bear, our choice is to switch to Wayfinder or play a different game entirely (which happens fairly often). We've got a fully loaded Kraken on Argo, and a dumpy Sparrow on Wayfinder, but it's better to play there than suffer through the lag.

The lag is certainly better than it was right after the data center move, but it's still damaging game play, and it's most definitely affected by the number of concurrent users. Maybe Sarlona has a low enough population to absorb the Wayfinder population without pushing past the threshold of lag, but it would be a foolish gamble for SSG to take.

A quick look at the "Who" and "Grouping" panels show that only around 10% of the population is in PUGs, but 100% of the population suffers when lag hits. The math just doesn't support risking the experience of the many to please the few. Designate one server the "PUG" server and offer free transfers, but don't force the majority onto a more populous server just to please the minority. Like it or not, soloing or playing with a small group of friends plays a much larger role in DDO than it used to, that's just the modern gaming climate. Trying to force the modern population into the old PUG pattern just chafes.

So if the low population of Wayfinder bothers you, stick to Sarlona. Don't assume that we're stuck on Wayfinder and need to be moved "for our own good", many of us prefer it this way! Free voluntary transfers are fine, but not forced ones.

This is assuming that lag is caused by more people being online on the same server.

Instancing solved that issue, quite some time ago.

The TL;DR on this is: Number of active entities in same instance has a correlation with lag. Number of accounts logged onto same "server" does not.

[Niminae]

People not playing alts, which we have seen many claims of on the forums, sure does create the perception of declining population, whether its true or not.


How's that? You can be logged in one one character at a time per account. Logged in on your main or logged in on an alt you're still just one person in the game world. You're not making much sense here, because 1 = 1.

[LucidLTS]

This is assuming that lag is caused by more people being online on the same server.

Instancing solved that issue, quite some time ago.

The TL;DR on this is: Number of active entities in same instance has a correlation with lag. Number of accounts logged onto same "server" does not.

OK, you're right that the number of people in the same instance has a bigger effect than the number of people on the server, but instances are resource intensive so spawning more instances is only possible to a point, and after that you have to stuff more people into each instance.

Also, total people on the server (as opposed to instance) might not affect computation complexity, but all instances share the same network and disk access, so they absolutely can affect performance.

But whatever the root causes of the lag, it's still a problem and it's worse on more populated servers, so a merge is a big risk.

[Niminae]

But whatever the root causes of the lag, it's still a problem and it's worse on more populated servers, so a merge is a big risk.

I challenge your assertion that lag is worse on the more populous servers. I play on both the ghost town which is Wayfinder and on Sarlona, which seems to be among the more populous servers. I don't see any difference in lag between the two at all.

Lag seems to be far more tied to specific activities in specific zones. Take a group of 12 into Thunderholm on Wayfinder when there are maybe 100 people on the server and you'll see the exact same bouts of intermittent crippling lag that you'll experience on Sarlona with maybe 500 people on the server. On either server, finish a phase in Legendary Shroud, see the same ~15 seconds of lag. Population size does not appear to have any correlation with lag.

[LucidLTS]

This is complete fallacy, that's no way to draw meaningful data. While playgroups are certainly the most common way of playing, a lot of them host pugs and overall, this is an MMO and a lot of mechanics pertains to playing in groups like the most recent content that's a raid. Also, lag isn't necessarily connected to a larger playerbase, especially in an instanced game and many core causes of lag have been historically found to be in coding and with the engine, the arrows being an example of this. Coupled with a dwindling population, it makes no sense to base lag on the # of people online or pugging.

It's not perfect, but it's a pretty good proxy. A LFM is pretty much the definition of a PUG, and the WHO list is a good proxy of those on line. If anything it overestimates the people in PUGS, because people who go anonymous don't show up in WHO, but generally don't want to be social (or they wouldn't go anonymous). That doesn't count raid channels, but SSG has previously stated that only a small percentage of players raid at all.

But even if there are that much again in other groups not counted, that's still a small minority of the players. Modern MMOs are much more solo/small closed group oriented than they were 10 years ago, and research has identified a shift in player expectations and goals - 10 years ago people played online games "to meet people" as the top reason, and now it's "to play with friends they already have". PUGs are nice and I participate myself, but they aren't worth degrading performance in other areas that matter more to most modern players.

And it isn't population alone, of course, but a combination of population and new systems making the servers more sensitive to the population. When the populations were much higher we didn't have all the auras, AoEs, and multiple rules like Arrow Deflection that we have now. All those extras allow half as many players to generate twice as much lag, but that's still proportional to players. Yes, it comes from the coding and the engine, but the result is population dependent lag.

[nokowi]

I challenge your assertion that lag is worse on the more populous servers. I play on both the ghost town which is Wayfinder and on Sarlona, which seems to be among the more populous servers. I don't see any difference in lag between the two at all.

Lag seems to be far more tied to specific activities in specific zones. Take a group of 12 into Thunderholm on Wayfinder when there are maybe 100 people on the server and you'll see the exact same bouts of intermittent crippling lag that you'll experience on Sarlona with maybe 500 people on the server. On either server, finish a phase in Legendary Shroud, see the same ~15 seconds of lag. Population size does not appear to have any correlation with lag.


The DOJ raid had crippling lag with 12-person groups, and was much much better with less than 6. So there is at least one example that group size was important in the past, and at least for that raid more important than server population.


I support the idea of either free server transfer or server merges. Would be a great choice for the anniversary gift.

[LucidLTS]

I challenge your assertion that lag is worse on the more populous servers. I play on both the ghost town which is Wayfinder and on Sarlona, which seems to be among the more populous servers. I don't see any difference in lag between the two at all.

Lag seems to be far more tied to specific activities in specific zones. Take a group of 12 into Thunderholm on Wayfinder when there are maybe 100 people on the server and you'll see the exact same bouts of intermittent crippling lag that you'll experience on Sarlona with maybe 500 people on the server. On either server, finish a phase in Legendary Shroud, see the same ~15 seconds of lag. Population size does not appear to have any correlation with lag.
I challenge your assertion that it isn't. The fact that you don't notice it could just be your powers of observation, your play style, they time you're on, or numerous other reasons.

And I'm suspicious how much experience you really have on Wayfinder, if the low population bothers you and you aren't playing to escape lag, how could you be here often enough to have a basis for comparison? Sounds fishy to me. Please, just leave us alone, we like it here just like it is! We don't need a city slicker moving to the country and complaining about the smell of cows.

[Grandern_Marn]

Still beating the dead horse. PETA is not inpressed.

Kick kick kick.

Kick?

Kick

If server merges mean double the lag, no thank you. PLENTY of lfms to choose from and public areas sufficiently active.

[Maldorin]

Please, just leave us alone, we like it here just like it is! We don't need a city slicker moving to the country and complaining about the smell of cows.

How many players on Wayfinder are you speaking for?

[lillentle]

I challenge your assertion that it isn't. The fact that you don't notice it could just be your powers of observation, your play style, they time you're on, or numerous other reasons.

And I'm suspicious how much experience you really have on Wayfinder, if the low population bothers you and you aren't playing to escape lag, how could you be here often enough to have a basis for comparison? Sounds fishy to me. Please, just leave us alone, we like it here just like it is! We don't need a city slicker moving to the country and complaining about the smell of cows.

Because the servers are all on the same server, they literally DID merge the servers, so there is no reason for extra lag on different servers.

You would still be able to play by yourself on wayfinder, I can kinda see how being on your own server is good, they wouldn’t be able to close the servers anyway. They’d just offer free character transfers and account transfers to those who want it. You’d still be able to play by yourself, not to mention it’s pretty much all in your head, you could play on Cannith and still get away with not talking with everyone, sure you might be able to SEE them, but it’s selfish to try and counter a server merge because you like being alone?


Kick kick kick.

Kick?

Kick

If server merges mean double the lag, no thank you. PLENTY of lfms to choose from and public areas sufficiently active.

There’s nothing to sugguest a server merge would add lag, and there aren’t plenty of LFMs to choose from, that’s just a lie lol, and no the public areas aren’t sufficiently active; did you notice crystal cove this year? Not many people ran it at all.

People bringing up the dead horse **** are idiots, the idea that because a large group of the players want a server merge and have tried for years and years with promises from Sev that they would do it, then when we bring up they haven’t and that it’s still a huge problem for many of us you think saying “don’t beat a dead horse” adds anything at all?

It’s possible to merge the servers; the developers refuse to do it and have not said why. They must perceive it as not worth it, they think that it won’t add to the game. Players who want a server merge need to continuesly remind everyone how much we want this. So if you’re one of the players who DOESNT want a server merge instead of “hur hur dead horse” perhaps use actual debate points.

All I’m saying is having even 2x the population would be extremely beneficial to the game, I think it’s better than capes at least.

[slarden]

I am sure many people know this but for those that don't - think of the existing worlds as "virtual" servers. Virtual servers and physical servers are not the same thing. Only SSG knows how much hardware supports the worlds but combining worlds may not translate to any sort of infrastructure savings for SSG.

There is sure to be some people unhappy that leave because of server mergers and no real evidence it will save the game in the long run.


Lag seems to be far more tied to specific activities in specific zones. Take a group of 12 into Thunderholm on Wayfinder when there are maybe 100 people on the server and you'll see the exact same bouts of intermittent crippling lag that you'll experience on Sarlona with maybe 500 people on the server. On either server, finish a phase in Legendary Shroud, see the same ~15 seconds of lag. Population size does not appear to have any correlation with lag.

I agree with this- there wasn't any more lag when servers were significantly more populated. They seem to add lag with some effects (wrath of earth) and other changes to mechanics. At one time we heard they couldn't fix the old arcane archer capstone because it would cause lag and since then they went overboard with attack speed.

[Belzidar]

I play on Wayfinder daily and I'm happy with the way it is. A server merge is not something I would support. Free transfers would be ok if that's what some people would like to see. But for me, I'll stay in the ghost town and continue to enjoy the game.

[Chai]

How's that? You can be logged in one one character at a time per account. Logged in on your main or logged in on an alt you're still just one person in the game world. You're not making much sense here, because 1 = 1.

1 main = most likely cant group with you in the context of a game with a 4 level range restriction and 30 levels.
many alts = most likely can group with you in the same context per above.
perception of "my LFMs fill quickly" = "must be a healthy game with lots of players."
perception of "my LFMs dont fill" = "game population must be a ghost town."

Whether that perception = reality number wise is another conversation entirely, but the reason any company should want to incentivize alts, especially in a game with a 4 level range restriction for non penalized grouping, is to ensure the social experience of the MMO genre is alive and well. Regardless of the mythology you may or may not hear on the forums, this is precisely what separates an MMO from single player games.

[Chai]

OK, you're right that the number of people in the same instance has a bigger effect than the number of people on the server, but instances are resource intensive so spawning more instances is only possible to a point, and after that you have to stuff more people into each instance.

Also, total people on the server (as opposed to instance) might not affect computation complexity, but all instances share the same network and disk access, so they absolutely can affect performance.

But whatever the root causes of the lag, it's still a problem and it's worse on more populated servers, so a merge is a big risk.

Thats not how instancing works. Our crew helped resolve some of these issue in 2 different MMOs. But I want to hear how you think instancing works, so I'll play ball...

Hint: First year cove happened there were 38 instances of the slayer zone, and less lag than there is nowdays with one near empty instance of it.

[Azarak]

How bout a updated LFG tool with incentives to use it, random dungeon q and cross server grouping?

[qwert-y]

I am sure many people know this but for those that don't - think of the existing worlds as "virtual" servers. Virtual servers and physical servers are not the same thing. Only SSG knows how much hardware supports the worlds but combining worlds may not translate to any sort of infrastructure savings for SSG.

There is sure to be some people unhappy that leave because of server mergers and no real evidence it will save the game in the long run.



I agree with this- there wasn't any more lag when servers were significantly more populated. They seem to add lag with some effects (wrath of earth) and other changes to mechanics. At one time we heard they couldn't fix the old arcane archer capstone because it would cause lag and since then they went overboard with attack speed.

If they did eliminate a virtual they could then allocated the resources for that server to the others, such as RAM, CPU cores etc, however if they are running all of the VM's on one host then they are being cheapy, most likely they rent out space in a data center and have at least 2 physical servers running in tandem to host the various VM's so combining the servers probably will not save them any "real world currency" other than licensing for software that is leased on a per core basis like sql, which in turn is pretty cheap considering the amount of revenue they make.

Regardless, no server merge will happen, I have shaken my magic 8-ball and peered into the depths of my scrying crystal.

[LucidLTS]

Thats not how instancing works. Our crew helped resolve some of these issue in 2 different MMOs. But I want to hear how you think instancing works, so I'll play ball...

Hint: First year cove happened there were 38 instances of the slayer zone, and less lag than there is nowdays with one near empty instance of it.
So what part of my statement do you disagree with? That instances have overhead and 2 instances of 10 people each use more memory than 1 instance of 20 and less memory than 10 instances of 2? Or that computational complexity scales worse than linearly (I'd guess O(N^2) but optimizations might bring the exponent down by a fraction) with the number of entities that can interact? Or that all instances share the network and disk bandwidth of their host? What, precisely, do you disagree with, and what change would make it correct? I've got a good handle on the theory and decades of software development, but would gladly learn from your MMO experience, provided you give a reasonable explanation and don't simply make an unsupported assertion.

And by the way, your observation that cove with 38 instances years ago had less lag and more people than cove with 2 instances today is interesting (and I agree completely) but I don't see your point, with the additional auras and effects we have today it's not a straight comparison.

[LucidLTS]

Because the servers are all on the same server, they literally DID merge the servers, so there is no reason for extra lag on different servers.

No, you are wrong. A server merge is not the same thing as virtualizing servers and co-hosting them. They have some features in common but do have significant differences.

You would still be able to play by yourself on wayfinder, I can kinda see how being on your own server is good, they wouldn’t be able to close the servers anyway. They’d just offer free character transfers and account transfers to those who want it.
Doing it this way is exactly what I'm asking for - don't close the server, offer free transfers to those that want it. If we agree on this then you needn't read further into my reply, I'm with you!

You’d still be able to play by yourself, not to mention it’s pretty much all in your head, you could play on Cannith and still get away with not talking with everyone, sure you might be able to SEE them, but it’s selfish to try and counter a server merge because you like being alone?

It's not all in my head, and to suggest that is insulting. If you don't want to be insulted, don't insult others. When we play and my guild mates in Europe are seeing the same lag I am, it's very much real. It's not in my head. It's not in my computer. It's not in my ISP. It's not even in my state. It's in DDO. And since it's on one DDO server and not another, the server is a good candidate.

And you're wrong about it being selfish, too. In fact, you've got it completely reversed. Advocating that people be allowed to choose for themselves is altruistic, advocating that people be forced to do what you want, like merge servers, is selfish. And I don't like being alone, when I hop to Wayfinder it's usually with 1 or 2 guild mates, and we often let strangers in with us. I actually like grouping usually and would love to have both grouping and less lag, but since that doesn't appear to be possible I prefer the less lag. I derive no pleasure from being in a group where heals don't land, hirelings go brain dead, bosses stick in walls, and kobolds teleport like orthons.



There’s nothing to sugguest a server merge would add lag,
Except the fact that more populated servers have more lag, but no, other than that there's nothing :rolleyes:


and there aren’t plenty of LFMs to choose from, that’s just a lie lol, and no the public areas aren’t sufficiently active; did you notice crystal cove this year? Not many people ran it at all.

I ran plenty of shared groups on Wayfinder this year, and grouped with some of those people repeatedly throughout the event. It didn't have as many LFMs as in years past, but it's an old event with outdated gear despite a slight freshening of some of it.



People bringing up the dead horse **** are idiots, the idea that because a large group of the players want a server merge and have tried for years and years with promises from Sev that they would do it, then when we bring up they haven’t and that it’s still a huge problem for many of us you think saying “don’t beat a dead horse” adds anything at all?

It adds just as much as, probably more than, implying lag isn't real ...


It’s possible to merge the servers; the developers refuse to do it and have not said why. They must perceive it as not worth it, they think that it won’t add to the game. Players who want a server merge need to continuesly remind everyone how much we want this. So if you’re one of the players who DOESNT want a server merge instead of “hur hur dead horse” perhaps use actual debate points.

All I’m saying is having even 2x the population would be extremely beneficial to the game, I think it’s better than capes at least.
Well, I definitely agree with you that there are issues more important than capes!

So at least some of what you've said here I agree with, and you've asked for actual debate, so I'll put this to you - instead of a forced server merge, which faces apathy and even significant outright opposition, designate one server as "PUG friendly" or "High population" and offer free transfers both to and from it. Those of you who prioritize higher population can go there, those of us who prioritize less lag can leave for less populated servers. Post a leaderboard of server population & some lag metric like mean latency, and let people sort it out by free choice. You'll get the benefit of all the people who really want to group without the burden of those who don't care about it as much.

So what do you say, is that a solution we could agree on?

[lillentle]

No, you are wrong. A server merge is not the same thing as virtualizing servers and co-hosting them. They have some features in common but do have significant differences.

Doing it this way is exactly what I'm asking for - don't close the server, offer free transfers to those that want it. If we agree on this then you needn't read further into my reply, I'm with you!

It's not all in my head, and to suggest that is insulting. If you don't want to be insulted, don't insult others. When we play and my guild mates in Europe are seeing the same lag I am, it's very much real. It's not in my head. It's not in my computer. It's not in my ISP. It's not even in my state. It's in DDO. And since it's on one DDO server and not another, the server is a good candidate.

And you're wrong about it being selfish, too. In fact, you've got it completely reversed. Advocating that people be allowed to choose for themselves is altruistic, advocating that people be forced to do what you want, like merge servers, is selfish. And I don't like being alone, when I hop to Wayfinder it's usually with 1 or 2 guild mates, and we often let strangers in with us. I actually like grouping usually and would love to have both grouping and less lag, but since that doesn't appear to be possible I prefer the less lag. I derive no pleasure from being in a group where heals don't land, hirelings go brain dead, bosses stick in walls, and kobolds teleport like orthons.


Except the fact that more populated servers have more lag, but no, other than that there's nothing :rolleyes:

I ran plenty of shared groups on Wayfinder this year, and grouped with some of those people repeatedly throughout the event. It didn't have as many LFMs as in years past, but it's an old event with outdated gear despite a slight freshening of some of it.


It adds just as much as, probably more than, implying lag isn't real ...

Well, I definitely agree with you that there are issues more important than capes!

So at least some of what you've said here I agree with, and you've asked for actual debate, so I'll put this to you - instead of a forced server merge, which faces apathy and even significant outright opposition, designate one server as "PUG friendly" or "High population" and offer free transfers both to and from it. Those of you who prioritize higher population can go there, those of us who prioritize less lag can leave for less populated servers. Post a leaderboard of server population & some lag metric like mean latency, and let people sort it out by free choice. You'll get the benefit of all the people who really want to group without the burden of those who don't care about it as much.

So what do you say, is that a solution we could agree on?

My reply’s template won’t be as nice to read as yours, but I’m glad we agree on most things, this isn’t my thread and I too don’t agree with compulsory server merges, especially with how everyone says it would be the most difficult thing since the moon landing, free guild/character/acc transfers are a nice option, even better is removing and giving the players the ability to swap servers at will.

I don’t mean to be insulting, just provocative. It’s very easy to leave your opinion and then never visit a thread again, I’m glad you replied. You say you lag more on these other servers but then you even mention that you’d also like date on the sever population, lag metric and mean latency, showing that you don’t know the facts either, neither do I, neither does anyone, extremely sketchy how they keep that information secret.

Anyway, the reason I say it’s all in your head is because I play on Khyber which is in the top 4 most popular servers, Khyber actually used to be the oceanic server, honestly I don’t think that meant anything different except they were trying to funnel oceanic players into that server. Anyway it wasn’t really the oceanic server because like all the servers it’s mainly American time zones, so when I hop on after a night shift on late at night 3am-10am(ish) it’s much more populated, almost twice the players and easy twice the LFMs(depends on the day of course). Anyway, I haven’t noticed any additional lag at all when there’s more people on, infact I would say it’s the opposite!

Do players=lag? They contribute, we know that much. I just don’t think it’s as much as people think.

Most of the time when I lag now it almost completely freezes until a certain player in the party dies or they log out, then everyone stops lagging.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

In a "Perfect World", one server would be fantastic. Each House filled to the gills again, running from town to town just like the old days. Even though air ships ended the "full town" feel in DDO, merging servers would make the houses more lively looking again.

But as we know the only "Perfect World" that exists is that company that produces Neverwinter. I rest my case... "not so good Al (https://youtu.be/kemivUKb4f4?t=216)" :)


https://youtu.be/kemivUKb4f4?t=216

The game just wasnt built with single server architecture in mind. I believe that keeping the game multi server, gives the devs some room... potentially giving them development options that might not be available if everyone and all tech was squeezed onto one server.

I just see problems accuring that would be devastating to our remaining playerbase if they were to happen. It makes no sense to risk it.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

I cannot support free server transfers at this point . Not only would SSG totally lose control over server population, but it would be a terrible burden on guilds who are ALREADY trying to survive with far fewer member than years ago. (A LOT of guilds are mere fractions of what they were, and this would spell the for many of these guilds as holding onto people has never been harder).

I think the game is on a very good footing now as population seems to be up, yet of course nowhere near the good old days.

The delemna of empty town squares I don't believe can be rectified with server merges. Airships forever changed the landscape, pun intended.

The delemna of too few PUG groups I think can be rectified.

1. I solved it by creating a guild and alliance that attracts players based on similar goals and built for low population guilds. I played the long game. Some only play in guild/alliance and others PUG regularly. So JOINING a guild and/or Alliance is the #1 way to ensure you've got something to do during your playtimes.

2. Re-Engineer the LFG system. I was NEVER for this as Ive long felt DDO had the greatest LFG feature in ALL MMOs. By far. Nothing random just GREAT CODING. However... it was built for a much bigger population. We need an LFG feature thats FUN to use... and can be TIED TO GUILDS AND ALLIANCES AND CHANNELS.

3. The game's gotten easier, that's another reason for less groups/LFGs. Yet difficulty settings are one of the reasons DDO is so dang replayable. Sagas are cool but I think re-engineering quests to the Free to Play player would be terrific. Many new players just don't know where to start.. and many quit before they care to figure it out. Guilds help but if they dont think to look for a guild, many just quit. The fix? Create a new tutorial that lays out all the free to play content. Let F2Pers find rare time limited "keys" in game to open content otherwise off limits. Ensure new players learn how to put up or join an LFM on day one. Point them to the DDO guild recruitment threads to read up on joining a guild. Give them a few keys the first time they join a guild.

4. The games Heroic vs Legendary gap. There's a BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG gap. But, its so DOABLE, so much more then games like Neverwinter and ESO where the gating is absurd. Again CLARITY.. FOCUS. Players need assistance. Maybe reorganizing and redesigning the Player Compendium to have bigger fonts and more user friendly would benefit the newer player and keep them around longer, all while teaching them ways to get to Epic levels and beyond to end game.

By BETTER cultivating new blood to the game... more will get to end game and join us in party. I think it's the best way forward.

[karatemack]

You can solve the need for server merges by fixing the alt-issue. This will attract more new players to stay and incentivize older players to return.

[Chai]

So what part of my statement do you disagree with? That instances have overhead and 2 instances of 10 people each use more memory than 1 instance of 20 and less memory than 10 instances of 2? Or that computational complexity scales worse than linearly (I'd guess O(N^2) but optimizations might bring the exponent down by a fraction) with the number of entities that can interact? Or that all instances share the network and disk bandwidth of their host? What, precisely, do you disagree with, and what change would make it correct? I've got a good handle on the theory and decades of software development, but would gladly learn from your MMO experience, provided you give a reasonable explanation and don't simply make an unsupported assertion.

And by the way, your observation that cove with 38 instances years ago had less lag and more people than cove with 2 instances today is interesting (and I agree completely) but I don't see your point, with the additional auras and effects we have today it's not a straight comparison.

Heres an oversimplified, but correct, layman's explanation of why headcount per server will not cause more resource usage. A "server" is not a single piece of hardware, so the common assumption that the processing power, throughput, and other resources of one hardware config needing to handle 200 player characters in instances all of a sudden needing to handle 1000 player characters in instances so therefore will cause more lag, is incorrect. With zero change in hardware, 1000 player characters total can be handled as easily with 5 "servers" of 200 people in instances each, or 1 "server" of 1000 people in instances. The number of instances has not changed. The head count has not changed. The total hardware resources have not changed.



And by the way, your observation that cove with 38 instances years ago had less lag and more people than cove with 2 instances today is interesting (and I agree completely) but I don't see your point, with the additional auras and effects we have today it's not a straight comparison.

Only you stated headcount, and did not say anything about auras.

If auras cause more lag than the overhead of adding 37 instances of players to the same zone, if all the mythology regarding headcount causing more lag were true, this would be a clear cut case for simply never using auras ever again in DDO game design, and removing the ones currently in game and replacing them with some other mechanic. Yet here they are talking about adding another aura mechanic with the bard song pass. XD

[LucidLTS]

My reply’s template won’t be as nice to read as yours, but I’m glad we agree on most things, this isn’t my thread and I too don’t agree with compulsory server merges, especially with how everyone says it would be the most difficult thing since the moon landing, free guild/character/acc transfers are a nice option, even better is removing and giving the players the ability to swap servers at will.

I don’t mean to be insulting, just provocative. It’s very easy to leave your opinion and then never visit a thread again, I’m glad you replied. You say you lag more on these other servers but then you even mention that you’d also like date on the sever population, lag metric and mean latency, showing that you don’t know the facts either, neither do I, neither does anyone, extremely sketchy how they keep that information secret.

Cool. I'm glad you replied too. Yeah, I don't have the full picture, and I too find it frustrating that they don't seem to trust us with information that directly affects our game experience. I find it hard to trust, or even to be sympathetic to, a company that doesn't trust me.


Anyway, the reason I say it’s all in your head is because I play on Khyber which is in the top 4 most popular servers, Khyber actually used to be the oceanic server, honestly I don’t think that meant anything different except they were trying to funnel oceanic players into that server. Anyway it wasn’t really the oceanic server because like all the servers it’s mainly American time zones, so when I hop on after a night shift on late at night 3am-10am(ish) it’s much more populated, almost twice the players and easy twice the LFMs(depends on the day of course). Anyway, I haven’t noticed any additional lag at all when there’s more people on, infact I would say it’s the opposite!

Do players=lag? They contribute, we know that much. I just don’t think it’s as much as people think.

Most of the time when I lag now it almost completely freezes until a certain player in the party dies or they log out, then everyone stops lagging.
I certainly don't know the exact relationship between players and lag, the only thing I know for certain is I'm considerably more likely to have an unpleasant lag experience when the WHO list is longer on my server, and the experience is often bad enough to cause me and whatever guild mate I'm playing with to log off.

It may not be caused specifically by the number of players, it may be as you observe that a particular player has gotten into some problem state and is bringing the whole instance or server to its knees. More players means more opportunities for this to happen, so it will happen more frequently. Maybe that's what's behind the problems I see. My party may even be causing some of it, my guild spans 9 time zones and maybe a party with traffic coming through 2 different load balancers confuses the server in a way that is uncommon, and maybe a smaller server population decreases the number of load balancers and increases the chances we'll be on the same one. And the relationship may not be the same for all servers, or for all players on a server. There are just so many variables that it's hard to predict what anyone else will experience, which is why demanding a server merge is so dangerous - it wrongly assumes all others will have an experience similar to yours.

I don't really care about the exact mechanism, that's SSG's problem not mine - I've got well over 100 games on steam alone, not to mention the console games I have, or stand alone games. If SSG keeps a server with less frequent problems they have a good chance of me going there when my main is laggy, but if they don't I do have other options.

I guess what I'm trying to do is make sure SSG understands the risks involved with a server merge. It's their game and if they drive me and others like me away that's their business, but it would be a shame to put in the work required only to be surprised if it crashes down on them.

[LucidLTS]

Heres an oversimplified, but correct, layman's explanation of why headcount per server will not cause more resource usage. A "server" is not a single piece of hardware, so the common assumption that the processing power, throughput, and other resources of one hardware config needing to handle 200 player characters in instances all of a sudden needing to handle 1000 player characters in instances so therefore will cause more lag, is incorrect. With zero change in hardware, 1000 player characters total can be handled as easily with 5 "servers" of 200 people in instances each, or 1 "server" of 1000 people in instances. The number of instances has not changed. The head count has not changed. The total hardware resources have not changed.

Yes, it is oversimplified - it neglects the very real overhead each instance requires. You can't break a packet into smaller packets without the overhead of headers. You can't break a subroutine into smaller subroutines without the overhead of the call stack. You can't partition a disk drive into smaller drives without the overhead of partition tables and file allocation tables. And you can't break a server population into instances without paying the overhead of the instance itself, which is repeated for each instance and comes out of the fixed resources which you correctly point out have not changed. And if you talk "servers" instead of "instances" that overhead is even worse, at least instances can share some static in-memory objects. Sorry, no free lunch.


Only you stated headcount, and did not say anything about auras.

If auras cause more lag than the overhead of adding 37 instances of players to the same zone, if all the mythology regarding headcount causing more lag were true, this would be a clear cut case for simply never using auras ever again in DDO game design, and removing the ones currently in game and replacing them with some other mechanic. Yet here they are talking about adding another aura mechanic with the bard song pass. XD

OK, they're talking about adding another aura, but neither of us really believes that the developers of DDO would forbear using a mechanic they like just because it was bad for the game, do we? Or did I just fail my detect irony roll? Hmmm, that one's just making my head hurt.

And I only brought up auras because you appeared to be making a comparison between past coves and the most recent one. There is absolutely no chance of them offering one server without auras while others have them, but leaving population differences is possible with their current model, so until your comparison there was no need for me to single out auras. They were simply part of the current entity interaction.

[Niminae]

The DOJ raid had crippling lag with 12-person groups, and was much much better with less than 6. So there is at least one example that group size was important in the past, and at least for that raid more important than server population.

While true, it is a non-sequitur as the post you responded to was about lag being related to server population, not to group size. But you're correct that group size is able to be tied to lag both accurately and repeatably. For example, you'll see the exact same intermittent bouts of crippling lag in a 12 person Thunderholm group on Wayfinder as you do on Sarlona. It isn't the server population causing this, it's the specific dungeon.



I support the idea of either free server transfer or server merges. Would be a great choice for the anniversary gift.

They could do this in a number of different ways, and most of them would be just fine. A server merge takes the work away from the players and places it with the devs where it belongs, but free server transfers would at least be a small step in the right direction.

[Niminae]

I challenge your assertion that it isn't. The fact that you don't notice it could just be your powers of observation, your play style, they time you're on, or numerous other reasons.

And I'm suspicious how much experience you really have on Wayfinder, if the low population bothers you and you aren't playing to escape lag, how could you be here often enough to have a basis for comparison? Sounds fishy to me. Please, just leave us alone, we like it here just like it is! We don't need a city slicker moving to the country and complaining about the smell of cows.


I always love the "I know you better than you know you" posts. They are so refreshingly arrogant. Play style doesn't impact lag, my powers of observation are just fine thank you, and you'd really need to list the "numerous other reasons" for them to matter at all. I don't owe you any explanations, but I'll share my experience with you because you've amused me:

I started playing DDO on Wayfinder in Dec 2014 and still play there even though I've moved my main character to Sarlona in Dec 2017. So that's how much experience I have playing on Wayfinder. I am retired so I play a lot more than I could were I a working stiff, and across a lot of different hours of the day. So I see and have seen both Wayfinder and Sarlona across all the hours of the day and all the days of the week. And now you've got me wondering how much you play on Wayfinder, since you refer to it as "here" it seems as though you're claiming that you play there. Given the small population size I know and I am known to all of the regular players, so you cannot be among that number.

I've played enough on Sarlona to make it quite clear that the lag on that server is no different from the lag on Wayfinder. And while of course I'm not logged on to both servers at the same time I'm also not claiming that both servers experience lag at exactly the same times (I wouln't be surprised if this were the case, however). The similarity in quest/raid caused lag is really easy to notice since it happens regularly at the same points in the quest/raid and regardless of server. Finish a phase in Shroud or Legendary Shroud on either server, and enjoy your ~15 seconds of lag. That's just one example, the Thunderholm one I gave above is another. But in general the random lag you'll see during a play session is pretty identical for both servers.

That doesn't mean that the lag across all of the servers is identical. It might be, but since I only play on Sarlona and Wayfinder those are my only two servers for comparison. But Sarlona is one of the highest population servers. If server population ipso facto caused greater lag, the difference between Sarlona and Wayfinder should be pronounced. Instead it is undetectable.

[slarden]

You can solve the need for server merges by fixing the alt-issue. This will attract more new players to stay and incentivize older players to return.

Agreed, at the highest point of success in this game there were activities to do daily and/or every 3 days that were engaging and rewarding to run with multiple characters. We all know that forced combination of servers will result in net attrition and so while it might help OP with his grouping problem, it seems the majority are against the proposal so why would SSG want to invest in something that will reduce the overall player base?

[Niminae]

You can solve the need for server merges by fixing the alt-issue. This will attract more new players to stay and incentivize older players to return.

The game lost players by the droves long before reaper and long before racial past lives. These appear to be the largest complaints about or arguments for an alt handout. "Fixing" that non-issue isn't going to bring those players back. Server merges is the the only realistic way for SSG to provide servers with a reasonable density of players. And it should be done for the lower population servers, because those players are far more likely to leave due to the dearth of grouping opportunities that should not be the case in a MMO.

[Lynnabel]

OK, they're talking about adding another aura, but neither of us really believes that the developers of DDO would forbear using a mechanic they like just because it was bad for the game, do we? Or did I just fail my detect irony roll? Hmmm, that one's just making my head hurt.


Interestingly enough, there is a fundamental technical difference between "old" and "new" auras. The Bardic Aria is noticeably more server performance friendly than the old Warchanter auras for a variety of reasons, not all of which are easily noticeable from a player perspective. One of the ways you can tell them apart is old Warchanter auras (what they have currently on live) continue to count players while in public spaces, whereas new auras do not (they will only ever count yourself in public spaces). Part of the impetus for doing the Bard Song revamp was cleaning up old, relatively client-straining mechanics from behind the scenes.

[Enerdhil]

This moment when you see "server merges" in dev tracker, hope instantly explode inside you, then you look inside the thread...

[Chai]

Yes, it is oversimplified - it neglects the very real overhead each instance requires. You can't break a packet into smaller packets without the overhead of headers. You can't break a subroutine into smaller subroutines without the overhead of the call stack. You can't partition a disk drive into smaller drives without the overhead of partition tables and file allocation tables. And you can't break a server population into instances without paying the overhead of the instance itself, which is repeated for each instance and comes out of the fixed resources which you correctly point out have not changed. And if you talk "servers" instead of "instances" that overhead is even worse, at least instances can share some static in-memory objects. Sorry, no free lunch.

This explanation lives in the 80s, when a "server" was a piece of hardware. This hasnt been the case for ~15 years or so (even longer for those who jumped on the bandwagon early). The fact still remains, the same amount of hardware exists, same headcount, same number of instances, same/similar amount of resources required. If you have 20 instances of the same quest open on one "server" you are consuming similar amounts of resources as if you have 2 instances open per "server" on 10 different "servers." 20 instances = 20 instances.


OK, they're talking about adding another aura, but neither of us really believes that the developers of DDO would forbear using a mechanic they like just because it was bad for the game, do we? Or did I just fail my detect irony roll? Hmmm, that one's just making my head hurt.

And I only brought up auras because you appeared to be making a comparison between past coves and the most recent one. There is absolutely no chance of them offering one server without auras while others have them, but leaving population differences is possible with their current model, so until your comparison there was no need for me to single out auras. They were simply part of the current entity interaction.

If the designers designed mechanics into the game which compromise performance, then thats on them to fix, however - this still does not equate to worse performance due to instancing per above simply due to less server count. 20 instances of the same quest with 6 identical warlocks each with identical builds with same auras on one server would compromise performance in a similar fashion as 2 instances of the same quest open per "server" on 10 "servers" with 6 warlocks each. Spread across the same hardware you still have 20 instances, 6 warlocks, same #auras, etc. = same performance issues. Those issues arent solved because they are spread across 10 "servers" -vs- same one server, as youre still using 20 instances, regardless.

TL;DR You pay the same/similar overhead when #instances is the same, regardless of #servers.


And if you talk "servers" instead of "instances" that overhead is even worse, at least instances can share some static in-memory objects. Sorry, no free lunch.

Per this argument, merging would actually help with the lag, not create more lag.

[Zretch]

This explanation lives in the 80s, when a "server" was a piece of hardware. This hasnt been the case for ~15 years or so (even longer for those who jumped on the bandwagon early).

Exactly where the DDO code base lives. :)

[Drakos]

I for one am glad that they are not looking at server merges. I appreciate my characters being on low population servers and do not want them merged with a more populous server.

I don't understand why this come up so often. If you want you characters to be moved to a more populated server, then a service exists to allow you to do it. Why force your wish one everyone on these servers to move?

[SerPounce]

I for one am glad that they are not looking at server merges. I appreciate my characters being on low population servers and do not want them merged with a more populous server.

I don't understand why this come up so often. If you want you characters to be moved to a more populated server, then a service exists to allow you to do it. Why force your wish one everyone on these servers to move?

The big reason is because there's really not a "high population server." Some are worse than others, but they're all low population compared to what many people (myself included) would consider optimal.

There's other problems with individual transfers: (1) just because you'd like more people to play with doesn't mean you want to ditch all your current friends, (2) you lose all your astral shards and your guild, (3) it's cost prohibitive if you consider alts and mules, (4) it's a major headache moving all your mule and bank stuff around for an optimal transfer.

If we could somehow designate a single primary server and people could migrate then maybe transfers would be a decent solution (though you'd probably also have to reduce cost. I would pony up for a one time transfer to a real high population server, but I doubt enough people would be willing to in order for it to work). As is it's not a solution at all.

[scipiojedi]

For awhile I played on multiple servers even while calling Khyber my home. I recently started migrating my developed characters from other servers to Khyber though, since I was tired of server hopping and have started to join the raiding scene on Khyber. So far I have transferred 4 characters, but am hoping to move others over as well.

[LucidLTS]

This explanation lives in the 80s, when a "server" was a piece of hardware. This hasnt been the case for ~15 years or so (even longer for those who jumped on the bandwagon early). The fact still remains, the same amount of hardware exists, same headcount, same number of instances, same/similar amount of resources required. If you have 20 instances of the same quest open on one "server" you are consuming similar amounts of resources as if you have 2 instances open per "server" on 10 different "servers." 20 instances = 20 instances. <snip>
TL;DR You pay the same/similar overhead when #instances is the same, regardless of #servers.

I asserted that instances had overhead, and you dodged by changing the subject to say the overhead isn't dependent on where you locate a fixed number of instances. You are correct, but your assertion is irrelevant. But it doesn't matter, instances are a sidetrack anyway. The core issue is that the number of players per server does affect resource consumption quadratically despite instancing.

It's difficult to go into a theoretical explanation without a solid grounding in the computational complexity of algorithms, but we can dispense with theory and explore an example that most MMO players can relate to.

Let's examine chat messages. If you type something in General Chat, 1 "packet" travels up to the server, which then transmits a copy of that packet to each player on that server regardless of what instance they are in. Instances don't help at all.

So let's compare 2 servers, Wayfinder with 10 people on, and Sarlona with 100 people on. In each case every player posts just 1 message in General Chat.

On Wayfinder, 1 uploaded packet results in 10 downloaded packets, so the workload is 10 uploads * 10 downloads per upload for a total of 100 packets shipped off to clients.

On Sarlona, 1 uploaded packet results in 100 downloaded packets, so the workload is 100 uploads * 100 downloads per upload for a total of 10,000 packets shipped off to clients, 100 times as much work!

Similarly, if you forced a merge between Sarlona and Argonnessen, each with 100 players, your packets would be 200*200 = 40,000 packets. Twice the players generates 4 times the work!

And that's true regardless of how those servers are hosted, if Argo and Sarlona are VMs on the same host they still don't send chat messages across serves so they get the 40k workload merged but only 10K + 10K as distinct VMs.

[LucidLTS]

Interestingly enough, there is a fundamental technical difference between "old" and "new" auras. The Bardic Aria is noticeably more server performance friendly than the old Warchanter auras for a variety of reasons, not all of which are easily noticeable from a player perspective. One of the ways you can tell them apart is old Warchanter auras (what they have currently on live) continue to count players while in public spaces, whereas new auras do not (they will only ever count yourself in public spaces). Part of the impetus for doing the Bard Song revamp was cleaning up old, relatively client-straining mechanics from behind the scenes.

Thank you, Lynnabel, I appreciate the detailed explanation.

Also, the fact that you guys identified and acted on that is the most reassuring news I've herd from the dev team in over 2 years! That sounds like a very productive line of optimizations to follow, and should give you meaningful returns for years to come, I hope you get to follow through.

I do have a question on the new auras, though. When we get our next Crystal Cove, will the new Bardsongs fail to help your party because it's a public instance? Will Cove be switched to private instances like Night Revels to accommodate the new auras? I think the trend towards private instances is generally very positive, and I'd like to hear how the auras and Cove fit in.

I'd also like to thank you for your communication style, I've noticed your comments in other threads and while I haven't had anything to add to the conversations there, I've appreciated your contributions both to code and discourse. Keep up the good work!

[Niminae]

Interestingly enough, there is a fundamental technical difference between "old" and "new" auras. The Bardic Aria is noticeably more server performance friendly than the old Warchanter auras for a variety of reasons, not all of which are easily noticeable from a player perspective. One of the ways you can tell them apart is old Warchanter auras (what they have currently on live) continue to count players while in public spaces, whereas new auras do not (they will only ever count yourself in public spaces). Part of the impetus for doing the Bard Song revamp was cleaning up old, relatively client-straining mechanics from behind the scenes.

Great, good job, well done! So now you can merge the servers!

[Niminae]

(2) you lose all your astral shards and your guild,

And your companion stable, and anything in the shared bank, and anything in the bag storage, and all platinum in your platinum vault, and your Monster Manual server achievements, and probably a few things I've omitted due to just not thinking of it while I write this post.


The people who are against server merges don't seem to have any rational reasons for why they are against them. Seeing more LFMs isn't going to hurt you in any way even if you only like to solo, while seeing fewer LFMs does hurt players who like to play a MMO socially. Similarly, seeing a few more players running around in public areas is irrelevant if you're just going to ignore them and solo. Lag is no higher on a more populous server.

There is zero downside, so while anyone is welcome to "appreciate" being on a low population server there is nothing that a low population server does for them that they can't have in equal portions on a more populous server.

[Belzidar]

And your companion stable, and anything in the shared bank, and anything in the bag storage, and all platinum in your platinum vault, and your Monster Manual server achievements, and probably a few things I've omitted due to just not thinking of it while I write this post.


The people who are against server merges don't seem to have any rational reasons for why they are against them. Seeing more LFMs isn't going to hurt you in any way even if you only like to solo, while seeing fewer LFMs does hurt players who like to play a MMO socially. Similarly, seeing a few more players running around in public areas is irrelevant if you're just going to ignore them and solo. Lag is no higher on a more populous server.

There is zero downside, so while anyone is welcome to "appreciate" being on a low population server there is nothing that a low population server does for them that they can't have in equal portions on a more populous server.

My reason for not wanting a server merge is rather simple, I like Wayfinder just the way it is. Why would I want to change something I enjoy? I'm in a great guild, I have developed friendships with some really nice people. And I'm enjoying the game.

I started playing this game on Sarlona, so I know what the larger servers have to offer.

If you are so unhappy with the low population of wayfinder then transfer to another server....oh wait..you already did and yet here you are still complaining about wayfinder.

[Chai]

I asserted that instances had overhead, and you dodged by changing the subject to say the overhead isn't dependent on where you locate a fixed number of instances. You are correct, but your assertion is irrelevant. But it doesn't matter, instances are a sidetrack anyway. The core issue is that the number of players per server does affect resource consumption quadratically despite instancing.

It's difficult to go into a theoretical explanation without a solid grounding in the computational complexity of algorithms, but we can dispense with theory and explore an example that most MMO players can relate to.

Let's examine chat messages. If you type something in General Chat, 1 "packet" travels up to the server, which then transmits a copy of that packet to each player on that server regardless of what instance they are in. Instances don't help at all.

So let's compare 2 servers, Wayfinder with 10 people on, and Sarlona with 100 people on. In each case every player posts just 1 message in General Chat.

On Wayfinder, 1 uploaded packet results in 10 downloaded packets, so the workload is 10 uploads * 10 downloads per upload for a total of 100 packets shipped off to clients.

On Sarlona, 1 uploaded packet results in 100 downloaded packets, so the workload is 100 uploads * 100 downloads per upload for a total of 10,000 packets shipped off to clients, 100 times as much work!

Similarly, if you forced a merge between Sarlona and Argonnessen, each with 100 players, your packets would be 200*200 = 40,000 packets. Twice the players generates 4 times the work!

And that's true regardless of how those servers are hosted, if Argo and Sarlona are VMs on the same host they still don't send chat messages across serves so they get the 40k workload merged but only 10K + 10K as distinct VMs.

Theres no dodging here on my part whatsoever. You are changing (tailoring) the stats to favor an incorrect argument while glossing over addressing anything I posted.

What I did was keep everything else the same, and showed how the number of instances = same/similar overhead because distributed across the same amount of hardware, the same number of instances with the same number of lag causing entities (my example, warlock auras) will consume same/similar resource per time unit.

AKA when the ONLY thing that changes is the number of "servers" - because of the fact that "servers" are not a single piece of hardware nowdays, the distribution load can still be spread across the same hardware available.

The argument of more lag due to less servers is a myth, as it does not create a situation where more instances are active, per my previous post(s). Im not theorizing, Ive been through 4 of these.

Still disagree? Try glossing over this one. Why do you think most games run mega-servers nowdays? Keep in mind we are not talking super recently, but over the past 15 years.

Hint: We see less lag on those than we do on your model, which is similar but not exact to previous eras MMOs (before they upgraded to running as I outlined).

How do you suppose a game such as GW2, which runs one mega server where everyone can play together, and only uses the term "servers" to distinguish between mass PVP teams, sees less lag than DDO (or other previous era MMO who refuse to upgrade and consolidate)?
Hint: Its not due to more hardware resources.