In support of server mergers: pop counts

[BigErkyKid]

Dead horse or not, here it goes.

Ever since my return to the game population levels have been bugging me. It is hard to get groups going, in part because there aren't that many people on to cover decently the gigantic level and difficulty spread.
Server mergers, or free server transfers into a consolidated server (I really don't care), seem the obvious way to go. I want to play relatively new content (not some forgotten old pack!) and, besides bugging old friends, I have no options since it just simply doesn't show up (or fill) in the LFM /pug scene. At the moment, this is one of the top impediments for me to enjoy the game.

So, here it goes. From now on, every time I log in I will post the population counts from the WHO panel in my server. I encourage you to do the same to hopefully motivate SSG to take some action to address this.

DAY 1 -- 8/7/2019 - UTC 14:00 - Argonessen: around 120 players.

DAY 2 -- 9/7/2019 - UTC 12:00 - Thelanis: around 70 players
DAY 2 -- 9/7/2019 - UTC 3:45 - Argonessen: around 100 players.

DAY 3 -- 10/7/2019 - UTC 9:00 - Thelanis: around 79 players
DAY 3 -- 10/7/2019 - UTC 13:27 - Argonessen: around 108 players
DAY 3 -- 10/7/2019 - UTC 23:15 - Khyber: around 160 players.
DAY 3 -- 10/7/2019 - UTC 23:15 - Sarlona: around 260 players.

DAY 4 -- 11/7/2019 - UTC 15:43 - Argonessen: around 120 players

DAY 5 -- 12/7/2019 - UTC 12:49 - Argonessen: around 108 players

DAY 6 -- 13/7/2019 - UTC 17:45 - Cannith: around 330 players


DAY 7 -- 14/7/2019 - UTC 04:45 - Cannith: around 317 players
DAY 7 -- 14/7/2019 - UTC 06:42 - Cannith: around 164 players
DAY 7 -- 14/7/2019 - UTC 06:42 - Argonessen: around 110 players
DAY 7 -- 14/7/2019 - UTC 09:42 - Argonessen: around 102 players
DAY 7 -- 14/7/2019 - UTC 06:42 - Thelanis: around 142 players
DAY 7 -- 14/7/2019 - UTC 06:42 - Sarlona: around 140 players
DAY 7 -- 14/7/2019 - UTC 06:42 - Ghallanda: around 128 players
DAY 7 -- 14/7/2019 - UTC 06:42 - Orien: around 98 players
DAY 7 -- 14/7/2019 - UTC 06:42 - Khyber: around 118 players

DAY 8 -- 15/7/2019 - UTC 14:02 - Argonessen: around 101 players

DAY 9 -- 16/7/2019 - UTC 00:40 - Sarlona: around 275 players
DAY 9 -- 16/7/2019 - UTC 11:31 - Sarlona: around 122 players
DAY 9 -- 16/7/2019 - UTC 11:35 - Argonessen: around 73 players

DAY 10 -- 17/7/2019 - UTC 19:14 - Argonessen: around 140 players

DAY 11 -- 18/7/2019 - UTC 13:04 - Argonessen: around 108 players

[erethizon]

I know some people say server mergers are a no-go, but I'll second the strong desire to have them. I will gladly give up the name of all my characters if it means I can go to a sever with the highest population.

[Mindos]

I know some people say server mergers are a no-go, but I'll second the strong desire to have them. I will gladly give up the name of all my characters if it means I can go to a sever with the highest population.

I got two theories on what to do:

1. Add more levels and power creep. Max level is now level 60, you get Legendary Enhancement points and trees, slower going then reaper points, should take 10 years (yes 10) to max out AND to reach level 60.

2. Devs make a brand NEW server, name it COMBO. Before it opens to the public, the devs make a copy (not a forced transer, just a copy) of every toon on every server on every account. **** the consequences because it's a brand new server anyway. When it opens, you play whatever you what to play, if you even want to play there. Player's choice. Literally.

[apocaladle]

2 things:

1. I have already done a bunch of tests on server population about 6 minths ago. At that time orien had highest pop and cannith was the default server so it was fastest rising, so by now cannith is likely highest pop. Jump there if you want more groups.

2. Server merges are a huge mess, not saying it would not be good for the health of the game but there are ither things to consiter. For example as a gaming company they exist to make money and that has to be a consiteration for every large expendeture like this. Its not as simple as copy and paste everyone over, lots of shet can go pear shaped. Like if everyone got moved but TR caches all got deleted that could drive most of the players away and kill the game as the TR cache is a friggen mess of legacy code they don't like but are worried aboit breaking it. They also need a server engineer to make sure the merge goes well as last time they just moved the servers the game was buggered for 3 days. I imagine a merge would drop it as long or longer which would also kill there net income for those days. They would also need to buff their customer service for all the people complaining about having "Name-1" or "Guildname-1" when they feel slighted. Also once it was done but before it was up Cocomojobo's qa team would need to be on a bunch of overtime to make sure it is all good to avoid too much broken stuff or server rollbacks.

So bottom line it would help the game and players would love it if done with minimal problems but they need to be able to justify that huge risky expense and the resources to do it when all that money and time could go to other things that are higher profit and lower risk like content packs. I am aware it takes a different skill set and different people to do those things but for the money spent they could hire more people to make an expansion or something as ddo is a small game company not some triple a company backed by a publisher with limitless money.

Also the devs know about all of this there is just nothing they can really say anything on the forums that would help the situation.

[SpartanKiller13]

Do I also get like 80 character slots on the server, and are all first time favor rewards multiplied by 10 (given that's the most common new player advice), and shared bank/shared plat multiplied by 10 to deal with how much more I have to share? What about shared crafting storage, should it get multiplied as well? If I'm in a maxed guild on each server, does the airship investment get returned to who spent it, or what? Does guild max size bump x10? What about guild renown, especially for people who are in small guilds who've ground out millions of renown, do they lose that? And if my renown invested is converted to some sort of token (token of 1,038,632 guild renown) and I move to a maxed guild, is that wasted?

What about inactive players? If one comes back from a 5-year hiatus and their home server is gone, do they know where to go? What if there was a technical issue during the transfer, and they're missing some stuff; will the dev team 5 years from now be able to fix it?

What about if I have the same character name on every server? Do they go name-1 to name-x and I just have to figure out which is which?

Frankly I'd be pretty ok with server merges, more players = more fun. That said, there's a TON of technical issues, so I'd be a lot more in favor of server transfers in a certain direction being made much cheaper. Like if devs decide to encourage a server to die, make all transfers off of said server cost 100 DDO points. Or from X server to Y server only cost like 100 points, so friend groups could move cheaply etc. After a few months they could consider a forced server merge, and hopefully have less people to deal with.

[ChadB123]

I play on Orien and typically have no problem getting a group. I'm not saying population isn't low (subjective), but my experience is different than yours.

[LurkingVeteran]

Population doesn't have to be either low or fine, it can be both, depending on server and time zone. At the very least they should have a different recommended server based on time zone, and put the recommended time zone code in the server name.

It's pretty uniformly terrible on Euro times though, and they are going to have to figure out how to concentrate the population at some point. Perhaps the first transfer should be free. They might earn more in the long run from player retention.

[boredGamer]

Population doesn't have to be either low or fine, it can be both, depending on server and time zone. At the very least they should have a different recommended server based on time zone, and put the recommended time zone code in the server name.

It's pretty uniformly terrible on Euro times though, and they are going to have to figure out how to concentrate the population at some point. Perhaps the first transfer should be free. They might earn more in the long run from player retention.

Cannith seems *best* during euro evening (us morning/lunch) - and worst us west coast evenings - so I don't totally agree with your statement about that. If I want easy grouping / power players I normally need to jump on cannith during the us day.

Having a chart of timezone / population would be great though - or as I've suggested before - an API to the LFM panel so we could write third party tools that do this for us, and could know lfm's without being logged into <x> server.

[ComicRelief]

"Dormammu, I've come to bargain."
;)

[shores11]

I log in almost daily and see an abundance of LFMs up. Raids are ran very frequently. No to server merges.

[HungarianRhapsody]

I very much want to be able to play with the other people on the other servers, but I also recognize that a server merge might not be possible for a variety of reasons.

Something to increase the population that we can play with would be a big help. Maybe something that would let us put up global LFMs instead of having the LFM restricted to our own server?

That's a lot of work, but it might be more viable than a server merge.

[axel15810]

Yeah a merge is just not gonna happen from what I can tell...way too many technical hurdles and other player issues.

Giving every player a free character transfer or transfers though could be something much more realistic that they could do at some point. Then players could get together and decide on a server or servers to merge to. Dunno if they're willing to give that out for free though.

[BigErkyKid]

I know some people say server mergers are a no-go, but I'll second the strong desire to have them. I will gladly give up the name of all my characters if it means I can go to a sever with the highest population.



2. Server merges are a huge mess, not saying it would not be good for the health of the game but there are ither things to consiter.
.


That said, there's a TON of technical issues, so I'd be a lot more in favor of server transfers in a certain direction being made much cheaper. Like if devs decide to encourage a server to die, make all transfers off of said server cost 100 DDO points. Or from X server to Y server only cost like 100 points, so friend groups could move cheaply etc. After a few months they could consider a forced server merge, and hopefully have less people to deal with.


I very much want to be able to play with the other people on the other servers, but I also recognize that a server merge might not be possible for a variety of reasons.e.


Yeah a merge is just not gonna happen from what I can tell...way too many technical hurdles and other player issues.

Giving every player a free character transfer or transfers though could be something much more realistic that they could do at some point. Then players could get together and decide on a server or servers to merge to. Dunno if they're willing to give that out for free though.

Honestly, I don't care how they do it, but I really want more people to play with; cycling through default servers does not seem sustainable to me.

Free transfers and rename token to a designated migration server? I'll take it. But leaving people in semi-ghost towns seems like a bad strategy to me.

[Mindos]

Honestly, I don't care how they do it, but I really want more people to play with; cycling through default servers does not seem sustainable to me.

Free transfers and rename token to a designated migration server? I'll take it. But leaving people in semi-ghost towns seems like a bad strategy to me.

Ok Ok Ok I got it! We make DDO 2.0 !! It'll be exactly like it is now, except its one server, 64 bit client, better graphics, etc. Maybe a few minor features hyped up into major features. There, problem solved. Players can either keep playing like they are now, are we can all start over on the one DDO 2.

[Tyrande]

In support of server mergers: pop counts

Dead horse or not, here it goes.

Ever since my return to the game population levels have been bugging me. It is hard to get groups going, in part because [...]

Ok Ok Ok I got it! We make DDO 2.0 !! It'll be exactly like it is now, except its one server, 64 bit client, better graphics, etc. Maybe a few minor features hyped up into major features. There, problem solved. Players can either keep playing like they are now, are we can all start over on the one DDO 2.

This is only a short term solution, is it not? What happens when everyone has migrated to 2.0 with 64 bit client(s)?

The long term solution IMHO would be the ability to join LFMs cross servers does not matter where your character is...

[Kaboom2112]

Lower the cost of a character move to $1

[SpartanKiller13]

This is only a short term solution, is it not? What happens when everyone has migrated to 2.0 with 64 bit client(s)?

The long term solution IMHO would be the ability to join LFMs cross servers does not matter where your character is...

Hello fellow person from another server with the same name as me. I hope that we don't pull any named items that one or the other of us wants! Or say anything in chat. Hmm.

[Ghwyn]

If so many think its that important, then move on your own. Don't wait, and do pay the expense. They fact that you can move now but don't shows that its not that important to you.

[boredGamer]

The long term solution IMHO would be the ability to join LFMs cross servers does not matter where your character is...

People keep suggesting this but does anyone know if this is even remotely viable?

Depending on implementation - this could be:

- nigh on completely impossible even with all of the effort in the world (server instances have no possible way to communicate necessary information (raid timers, lfm info, character info from other db, etc), your client can't connect to two instances anyway, and even if they did, have no possible way to get characters in quests together)
- completely trivial
- somewhere in between

It keeps getting tossed around like it's in the realm of possibility - and it seems pretty likely to me it wouldn't be possible without being incredibly cost prohibitive. Is there a reference or link that indicates it is possible?

[HungarianRhapsody]

People keep suggesting this but does anyone know if this is even remotely viable?

Depending on implementation - this could be:

- nigh on completely impossible even with all of the effort in the world (server instances have no possible way to communicate necessary information (raid timers, lfm info, character info from other db, etc), your client can't connect to two instances anyway, and even if they did, have no possible way to get characters in quests together)
- completely trivial
- somewhere in between

It keeps getting tossed around like it's in the realm of possibility - and it seems pretty likely to me it wouldn't be possible without being incredibly cost prohibitive. Is there a reference or link that indicates it is possible?


Its at least not a 100% guaranteed “no” like server merges are. It might never happen, but we know for sure that the server merges won’t happen. That’s already confirmed.

[Chai]

Its at least not a 100% guaranteed “no” like server merges are. It might never happen, but we know for sure that the server merges won’t happen. That’s already confirmed.

Confirmed where?

[Chai]

People keep suggesting this but does anyone know if this is even remotely viable?

Depending on implementation - this could be:

- nigh on completely impossible even with all of the effort in the world (server instances have no possible way to communicate necessary information (raid timers, lfm info, character info from other db, etc), your client can't connect to two instances anyway, and even if they did, have no possible way to get characters in quests together)
- completely trivial
- somewhere in between

It keeps getting tossed around like it's in the realm of possibility - and it seems pretty likely to me it wouldn't be possible without being incredibly cost prohibitive. Is there a reference or link that indicates it is possible?

In this situation its typically more costly to decide to keep as many servers up for very low population. The devs you would be paying to merge the servers are already on staff so its not like the company saves money by not having them do the work.

When a game does finally decide to do this after being out this long the remaining player base often interprets it as a last hurrah, but this has been proven false by older games, one of which is owned by SSG.

[Anuulified]

You can server merge anytime you like at your own cost, it is built in. This game has server merged before and there is no compelling reason to do so now except your personal preference. Come to Khyber I would be glad to group with you for whatever.

[Whitehairguy]

If so many think its that important, then move on your own. Don't wait, and do pay the expense. They fact that you can move now but don't shows that its not that important to you.

Oh you stop it now with your facts and sense.

[apocaladle]

If so many think its that important, then move on your own. Don't wait, and do pay the expense. They fact that you can move now but don't shows that its not that important to you.

I did, I moved from thelanis to orien when it was default and started a guild and bought the biggest ship and right after they moved the default to cannith. I was super salty for a while but orien is still better than thelanis.

It is less bad but would be nice to combine the player base rather than just jumping in one of the bigger pools.

[BoBoDaClown]

People keep suggesting this but does anyone know if this is even remotely viable?

?

In this game? I have never heard the devs comment on it. I'd love to hear that it has come up on their radar, and they have dismissed it, or it is an option that they haven't figured out how to do.

From a player's perspective, it seems the most elegant option.


As an idea, yes, games do cross-server LFMS/grouping. They do it in World of Warcraft.

[BigErkyKid]

Oh you stop it now with your facts and sense.


I did, I moved from thelanis to orien when it was default and started a guild and bought the biggest ship and right after they moved the default to cannith. I was super salty for a while but orien is still better than thelanis.

It is less bad but would be nice to combine the player base rather than just jumping in one of the bigger pools.

This. Back in the day Argo had default server, and then apparently kept some of that boom for a while. However, over time servers seem to go back to a natural low pop equilibrium.

I am willing to eat some of the cost of moving (character names, the hassle, not knowing the people there), but I am not sure it would solve the issue when in reality the issue seems to Be simply too many servers. I pay to move some of my characters for what, 20% more players? 20% of 120-140 is a handful of layers and unlikely to make a huge difference. Not to speak of the fact that I would need to monitor, for weeks, the concurrency levels of all servers to try to make a good choice.

All in all, it just seems to me that combining the player base somewhere is the way to go. If mergers are hard, free transfer tokens, some cross server tech, whatever. In over a week of playing I have seen the low pop effects in all their glory. Playing this game with only 120-140 players is not delivering a consistent mmo experience.

I understand that ddo is a smaller niche game, but if the very same company merged servers in lotro, why can’t they offer SOMETHING for ddo players?

[BoBoDaClown]

Thelanis: 73

[SirValentine]

If so many think its that important, then move on your own. Don't wait, and do pay the expense. They fact that you can move now but don't shows that its not that important to you.

Oh? How does he do that? How is he, right now, able to group with all players across all servers?

If you're just talking about the ability to pay to transfer from one segment of the splintered population to another, you're missing the point.

[BigErkyKid]

Thelanis: 73

Thanks a ton, I'll edit the OP with all these. Would it be possible to include the UTC of the sample in the report, and the date? Helps a lot to keep track.



If you're just talking about the ability to pay to transfer from one segment of the splintered population to another, you're missing the point.

Bingo. Let me go from my 120 player server, to a 73 players Thelanis, or some other server with a somehow bigger yet small population? Do I need to pay to play the game (VIP, packs, expansions), then pay to be able to play with people? Should there be an extension to VIP which is VIP "explorer" and allows you to switch servers to follow the default server rush? By the way, the last one is not a serious proposal.


The point is, I want to play with people. Paid server transfers are not a solution, for several reasons:

i) it seems wrong to monetize their own lack of care for providing a fun environment to play in a MMO (read: enough other players)
ii) they don't publish data on populations, which means I would be, at best making a gamble on the new server; and that's after a long time of monitoring the populations by personally logging in at my play times.
iii) server populations, with some exceptions, don't seem to vary that much. What is the point of moving to a server that has marginally more players?
iv) server populations aren't stable (time since last default, etc.), and they seem to convergence to a low pop equilibrium. I can't be expected to switch servers so frequently.

To me, the conclusion seems obvious: there are far too many servers for a player base that is spread thin across settings and levels. Some form of consolidation is needed; free transfers to some "merger server", server mergers, cross server groups. WHATEVER! But something needs to be done, much like they freaking did with LOTRO.

[vms4ever]

I understand that ddo is a smaller niche game, but if the very same company merged servers in lotro, why can’t they offer SOMETHING for ddo players?

Yes, they merged LOTRO servers. I was there, I got moved. It wasn't pretty. Multiple pauses due to transfers gone wrong. Much gnashing of teeth, more weeping in the darkness. I would like to have LOTRO's mail, titles, festivals, housing and player music in DDO. I don't want a server merge. It doesn't seem like SSG does either. There have been a superfluous redundancy of server merge threads over the last several years and no servers have merged. There are at least two active threads calling for a server merge right now. The horse analogue is dead, beating it won't make it move.

I believe that SSG spending their resources on growing DDO (adding quests, expansions, quality of life enhancements) will do more to address the population deficit than collapsing the player base onto a smaller number of servers.

[BigErkyKid]

I believe that SSG spending their resources on growing DDO (adding quests, expansions, quality of life enhancements) will do more to address the population deficit than collapsing the player base onto a smaller number of servers.

Self defeating. I came back to play cool new packs (Ravenloft, Sharn). The expansions are alright, but I have a lot of trouble finding people to experience them. And this is a former veteran, with a still existing, if somehwat diminished, network of pals in the server. I can imagine that a newer player, being drawn in by a new and improved DDO, would find it extremely hard to consistently find groups. And that's without addressing other issues they have with player retention. So how will QoL solve this?

The very basic thing a MMO should offer is other people in the server.

[BoBoDaClown]

Thanks a ton, I'll edit the OP with all these. Would it be possible to include the UTC of the sample in the report, and the date? Helps a lot to keep track.
.

Posted while looking at the who tab

[HungarianRhapsody]

Confirmed where?

On the forums. I honestly don't remember how long ago it was (more than 6 months, less than 3 years?). Honestly don't remember which SSG person said it too, so that will make searching that much harder.

I wish they would talk about what the hurdles are so that we could have a discussion about what could actually work to help with the decreasing population problem, but I totally understand that it's a can of worms that they don't even want to approach, much less open.

[Maldorin]

Dunno if they're willing to give that out for free though.

Yep. How to monetize a dying population?

Charge for transfers and withhold the server numbers... Let the players pay to chase the largest server. :confused:

[Maldorin]

Should there be an extension to VIP which is VIP "explorer" and allows you to switch servers to follow the default server rush? By the way, the last one is not a serious proposal.


The point is, I want to play with people. Paid server transfers are not a solution, for several reasons:
.

I have seriously suggested in the past and still think VIP should get a free server transfer per month. Also the cost should be reduced.

It used to be much more difficult on their end to do. It is automated and very fast now. The cost should decrease.

[Maldorin]

On the forums. I honestly don't remember how long ago it was (more than 6 months, less than 3 years?). Honestly don't remember which SSG person said it too, so that will make searching that much harder.

I wish they would talk about what the hurdles are so that we could have a discussion about what could actually work to help with the decreasing population problem, but I totally understand that it's a can of worms that they don't even want to approach, much less open.

Last I recall the word from the devs was it's not in the immediate future but possible in the long term. It was on the forums. I'm not going to search for it.

As far as I know definitely not confirmed as never and keep in mind they did merge LOTRO severs.

However it'll probably happen when there's like, 10 players left. They'll reduce to 2 servers and put 5 on each one. That way they can still charge for server transfers.

[Saekee]

welcome back!

[BigErkyKid]

welcome back!

Hey hey! Thanks :)


Yep. How to monetize a dying population?

Charge for transfers and withhold the server numbers... Let the players pay to chase the largest server. :confused:

Pretty much; not being able to find groups is one of the worst feelings in a MMO. I honestly don't know why they haven't put more effort into consolidating the playerbase.

[Chai]

If so many think its that important, then move on your own. Don't wait, and do pay the expense. They fact that you can move now but don't shows that its not that important to you.

False equivalency.

Theres a rather large difference between having fewer servers with more players on each server, and having the same number of servers with the ability to move between them.

The former addresses the issue, while the latter does not.

[Chai]

On the forums. I honestly don't remember how long ago it was (more than 6 months, less than 3 years?). Honestly don't remember which SSG person said it too, so that will make searching that much harder.

I wish they would talk about what the hurdles are so that we could have a discussion about what could actually work to help with the decreasing population problem, but I totally understand that it's a can of worms that they don't even want to approach, much less open.

The opened that can of worms in their other game, which merged servers. Whats keeping them from opening it in this game?

[erethizon]

If so many think its that important, then move on your own. Don't wait, and do pay the expense. They fact that you can move now but don't shows that its not that important to you.

Actually is has more to do with the fact that there is no place to move. I play on Orien (one of the most populated servers according to some), but it doesn't change the fact that I just logged on and there were 5 LFM's all between levels 3 and 14. My newly epic character has no LFM's to choose from. This doesn't ruin my play because I prefer to lead anyway so almost always post my own groups, but that doesn't mean there is anyone on that will join (sometimes there is, sometimes not). I don't move servers because there isn't any single server that has enough people. We need a single location where everyone (or almost everyone) is located.

[erethizon]

Oh you stop it now with your facts and sense.

It would appear some of you don't understand what a server merge means. It is not a server transfer. Going from one server with a low population to another server with a low population doesn't solve any problems. Combining multiple low populations so that you have a high population server does solve problems. You can be anti server merge all you want, but don't pretend that a single person transferring from one server to another is going to solve anything. All of the servers have low populations (at least at certain times of day) and this can be solved by greatly increasing the total number of players on each server (i.e. merging servers).

[HungarianRhapsody]

The opened that can of worms in their other game, which merged servers. Whats keeping them from opening it in this game?

TR Cache, Guilds, TR Cache, general "make sure everything moves over correctly" issues, TR Cache, account bank, and also TR Cache.

[Chai]

TR Cache, Guilds, TR Cache, general "make sure everything moves over correctly" issues, TR Cache, account bank, and also TR Cache.

Yeah they dug a hole with those, but have also had enough time to figure those out. People been asking for merges for years.

[LurkingVeteran]

People keep suggesting this but does anyone know if this is even remotely viable?

Depending on implementation - this could be:

- nigh on completely impossible even with all of the effort in the world (server instances have no possible way to communicate necessary information (raid timers, lfm info, character info from other db, etc), your client can't connect to two instances anyway, and even if they did, have no possible way to get characters in quests together)
- completely trivial
- somewhere in between

It keeps getting tossed around like it's in the realm of possibility - and it seems pretty likely to me it wouldn't be possible without being incredibly cost prohibitive. Is there a reference or link that indicates it is possible?

WoW did it with the "Dungeon Finder", and I'm sure several other MMO's have followed suit. It makes a lot of sense when you have a shrinking population, and seems like the ideal solution disregarding cost. Of course it's possible, but nobody but SSG has any idea of what is feasible or not, and they have been very sparse with information on the server merge topic.

Some other suggestions here may at least mitigate the population+level/difficulty-spread problem. They could also open up the viable level ranges for grouping a bit more, and/or level-scale lower level players MRR/PRR/MP/SP.

[Maldorin]

TR Cache, Guilds, TR Cache, general "make sure everything moves over correctly" issues, TR Cache, account bank, and also TR Cache.

I don't see TR cache as an issue. I empty it every time I TR. However it's possible that is because I play only two characters on 1 server and people with tons of alts that have TR'd might have an issue.

I really am more and more ok with the idea of creating a new server (to be fair) and giving free transfers to said server. The old servers can die out on their own and people that solo or like low population don't care anyway.

[LucidLTS]

Honestly, I don't care how they do it, but I really want more people to play with; cycling through default servers does not seem sustainable to me.

Free transfers and rename token to a designated migration server? I'll take it. But leaving people in semi-ghost towns seems like a bad strategy to me.
Server merge? NO!

Free transfer to a PUG server? Sure, great idea.

You say leaving people in semi-ghost towns is a bad strategy, but *forcing* them to merge is even worse. There are substantial risks and disadvantages to a merge, and saying SSG should impose that on people against their will is a terrible idea.

Phrase it as free transfers, though, and I'm with you 100%. People can choose how to have fun their own way. SSG should designate different servers as different "flavors", with one flavor being "PUG friendly", and offer free transfers to AND FROM those servers.

[LucidLTS]

The opened that can of worms in their other game, which merged servers. Whats keeping them from opening it in this game?

The result.

Go read how well the players responded to that cluster * and you'll see why they'd be crazy to do it again.

It didn't go well for them and it wouldn't go well for us. And we'd be even more angry because at least with LOTRO they could credibly claim naive optimism, now we know they know it doesn't work so doing it anyway is just arrogant disregard for players.

[Tyrande]

Hello fellow person from another server with the same name as me. I hope that we don't pull any named items that one or the other of us wants! Or say anything in chat. Hmm.

tyrande@serverA !== tyrande@cannith

The chat from tyrande@cannith will be labeled as such, and the samething with loot drops, named items.

[Tyrande]

People keep suggesting this but does anyone know if this is even remotely viable?

Depending on implementation - this could be:

- nigh on completely impossible even with all of the effort in the world (server instances have no possible way to communicate necessary information (raid timers, lfm info, character info from other db, etc),


Have one central time NTP server, every server environment should follow the same time.



your client can't connect to two instances anyway, and even if they did, have no possible way to get characters in quests together)


Once quest starts, all party members are connected to the same quest virtual server. The same quest server acts as a switch to communicate with everyone in the party and outside the party if necessary.




- completely trivial
- somewhere in between

It keeps getting tossed around like it's in the realm of possibility - and it seems pretty likely to me it wouldn't be possible without being incredibly cost prohibitive. Is there a reference or link that indicates it is possible?

like you said, it could be trivial or extremely difficult, it needs to be carefully thought out/design prior to implementation, may be even create multiple PoCs.

What is Guild Wars 2? What is IBM Gaming Servers?

[Arianrhod]

I think a server merge would be a huge headache, and not really solve the issues people are facing. If the problem is lack of people to fill lfms, merging the servers won't change the number of people who already don't join LFMs - soloers, people who only play in static groups or guild groups, or anyone else who only plays with people they know. What i would recommend instead is to give everyone who wants one a free transfer to a specific server. Publicize it well in advance, allow the community to give input for a specified period of time as to where the "destination" server should be (presumably one with popular high level raiding guilds already established), then allow free transfers for all who want them for a month or so to the designated destination server. That would use systems which are already in place, instead of creating additional coding issues for a system already stressed quite enough.

[BigErkyKid]

Server merge? NO!

Free transfer to a PUG server? Sure, great idea.

You say leaving people in semi-ghost towns is a bad strategy, but *forcing* them to merge is even worse. There are substantial risks and disadvantages to a merge, and saying SSG should impose that on people against their will is a terrible idea.

Phrase it as free transfers, though, and I'm with you 100%. People can choose how to have fun their own way. SSG should designate different servers as different "flavors", with one flavor being "PUG friendly", and offer free transfers to AND FROM those servers.

I don’t think I understand very well the reticence of people to mergers. That said, my main point is that there needs to be a player consolidation. A server with under 100 people is not a viable server for a MMO, and even less for DDO give it’s huge level and difficulty spread.


I think a server merge would be a huge headache, and not really solve the issues people are facing. If the problem is lack of people to fill lfms, merging the servers won't change the number of people who already don't join LFMs - soloers, people who only play in static groups or guild groups, or anyone else who only plays with people they know. What i would recommend instead is to give everyone who wants one a free transfer to a specific server. Publicize it well in advance, allow the community to give input for a specified period of time as to where the "destination" server should be (presumably one with popular high level raiding guilds already established), then allow free transfers for all who want them for a month or so to the designated destination server. That would use systems which are already in place, instead of creating additional coding issues for a system already stressed quite enough.

Pop levels are a large part of why people can’t find groups. The narrow window of grouping given level and difficulty spreads is another. But I think that simply pooling players is quite clearly going to improve the situation.

Of course, to be fair there would need to be more than free transfers. It seems unfair to guild owners that paid good money for guild stuff otherwise. It is a 100% on SSG to provide servers with a decent population, given that there are enough players in the game anyway. My estimate is that across servers at any given time there are around 1000 players. Pooling Them would provide a vastly superior grouping environment than 8 servers with pops ranging from under 100 to 200 players.

[BoBoDaClown]

Thelanis - 79 - now

[Chai]

The result.

Go read how well the players responded to that cluster * and you'll see why they'd be crazy to do it again.

It didn't go well for them and it wouldn't go well for us. And we'd be even more angry because at least with LOTRO they could credibly claim naive optimism, now we know they know it doesn't work so doing it anyway is just arrogant disregard for players.

Who exactly?

The vocal minority on their forums, or the rest of the majority who play the game.

What we aggregated from that merge was the same people who complain about most everything else on their forums also complained about the merges, while everyone else who plays the game continued to play the game.

[LucidLTS]

Who exactly?

The vocal minority on their forums, or the rest of the majority who play the game.

What we aggregated from that merge was the same people who complain about most everything else on their forums also complained about the merges, while everyone else who plays the game continued to play the game.

The vocal minority on the forum should be ignored? Sounds like perfect advice for dealing with the vocal minority on the forums who clamor for a server merge.

[HungarianRhapsody]

I don't see TR cache as an issue. I empty it every time I TR. However it's possible that is because I play only two characters on 1 server and people with tons of alts that have TR'd might have an issue.

I really am more and more ok with the idea of creating a new server (to be fair) and giving free transfers to said server. The old servers can die out on their own and people that solo or like low population don't care anyway.

TR Cache isn't an issue FOR YOU. That's awesome for you. It is going to be an issue for other people.

Oh, you were still level 5 and had all of your epic gear in your TR Cache during a break from DDO when the server merge happened? So sorry...

(Edit - And I'm even saying this as someone who REALLY wants server merges.)

[shores11]

Server merge? NO!

Free transfer to a PUG server? Sure, great idea.

You say leaving people in semi-ghost towns is a bad strategy, but *forcing* them to merge is even worse. There are substantial risks and disadvantages to a merge, and saying SSG should impose that on people against their will is a terrible idea.

Phrase it as free transfers, though, and I'm with you 100%. People can choose how to have fun their own way. SSG should designate different servers as different "flavors", with one flavor being "PUG friendly", and offer free transfers to AND FROM those servers.

I 100% agree. If you want to move to another server for any reason(s) at all DDO has that as an option for you to take and enjoy. STOP trying to force your very small percentage WANT on the rest or majority of the DDO population.

I play on Khyber and have no problems ever of getting into a group or filling a group when I post an LFM. The game has also evolved to more solo players and also groups of players that setup a team chat and quest within themselves only. Some guilds will only post an LFM if they can't fill a group from within the guild as well. This is a manufactured issue by a small percentage of people.

Play the Game!

[BigErkyKid]

Play the Game!

Are you telling this to the person posting here that Thelanis has around 70 players on at the time he plays? 70 players spread over 30 levels and how many difficulty settings?
Maybe he should PAY to transfer to my server, which has over 1.7 times his population, or perhaps to one that may have twice as many players! Only that since pops are so low, this means well under 200 players at any time.

It seems that at some point, you have to consider the possibility that player scarcity is a real issue.

[BigErkyKid]

DAY 3 -- 10/7/2019 - UTC 13:27 - Argonessen: around 108 players

[SpartanKiller13]

Actually is has more to do with the fact that there is no place to move. I play on Orien (one of the most populated servers according to some), but it doesn't change the fact that I just logged on and there were 5 LFM's all between levels 3 and 14. My newly epic character has no LFM's to choose from. This doesn't ruin my play because I prefer to lead anyway so almost always post my own groups, but that doesn't mean there is anyone on that will join (sometimes there is, sometimes not). I don't move servers because there isn't any single server that has enough people. We need a single location where everyone (or almost everyone) is located.

And my login last night on my level 30 toon had 7 available LFM's. Not saying you're wrong, just that different times and different servers = different results.


tyrande@serverA !== tyrande@cannith

The chat from tyrande@cannith will be labeled as such, and the same thing with loot drops, named items.

That could work. A little inconvenient if I want to /tell someone etc, but doable.

[LucidLTS]

I don’t think I understand very well the reticence of people to mergers. That said, my main point is that there needs to be a player consolidation. A server with under 100 people is not a viable server for a MMO, and even less for DDO give it’s huge level and difficulty spread.

Yeah, it's complicated, under ideal conditions I'd support a merge too, but we're so far from those conditions that I strongly oppose it at this time or the foreseeable future. Because it's not the merge itself or the larger population that I object to, the first *should* be neutral and the second definitely positive.

This has been covered in other threads, but a recap of the ones most important to me and the people I game with (and I definitely do group, I solo by choice probably less than 1/3 of the time)

Lag - The lag is worse in crowded servers, it's painful enough that when one server is bad I switch servers (I have characters I regularly play on 4).
Character slots & Shared bank - I bought extra slots and I have used them. I have 20 slots and have filled or nearly filled them on 5 servers, I don't want any of them lost and I don't want to have to pay again for what I already bought.
Customer support when things go wrong - because they will. They have neither the instrumentation nor the customer support to handle in a timely fashion the trickle of problems from TR, they are utterly unprepared to handle the flood of problems from a merge. Show me a year when we don't see a thread about my TR went south and I've waited weeks for a resolution and I *might* consider them ready to try a merge, but we're nowhere near that level of preparedness yet.





Pop levels are a large part of why people can’t find groups. The narrow window of grouping given level and difficulty spreads is another. But I think that simply pooling players is quite clearly going to improve the situation.

Yeah, pooling *could* improve the situation, but only slightly, and at the cost of other issues like lag which take back a lot of those gains. To really address the problem you need to address the other issues you alluded to, like the narrow level window, power gap, etc. And fixing those issues wouldn't have the huge downside that a merge does, so SSG should address those first. So again, not no merge ever, but absolutely no merge any time soon.


Of course, to be fair there would need to be more than free transfers. It seems unfair to guild owners that paid good money for guild stuff otherwise.
Sure, it's no more (nor less!) fair to ask guilds to re-buy guild amenities than it is to ask players to re-buy character slots that would be lost in a merge. But please don't argue that it's OK to force players to re-buy slots to keep guilds from re-buying amenities, that would be the height of hypocrisy.

It is a 100% on SSG to provide servers with a decent population, given that there are enough players in the game anyway.
Sort of, but it's also 100% on them to provide a lag free, bug free, item loss free environment, and decent population absolutely does not take precedence over the others. Different players will assign different priorities to them, but SSG has to take all players into account.

My estimate is that across servers at any given time there are around 1000 players. Pooling Them would provide a vastly superior grouping environment than 8 servers with pops ranging from under 100 to 200 players.
Unless lag gets worse from the merge, in which case that 1000 player number will crash rapidly, bringing us back into equilibrium of 100-200 players on, but now it's the entire revenue pool SSG has to work with.

So in summary, there are far better ways to address grouping than a server merge. Free transfers or even better cross server grouping would help without the huge unnecessary risk a server merge entails.

And BTW, I have absolutely no trouble grouping, I have alts at various levels and various group roles on numerous servers, I can pretty much always find a group when I want one. I'd like to help you solve your grouping problem, but only if it doesn't come at the expense of my play style. Fight for one of the safer paths like free transfers or cross server grouping and I'll fight side by side with you, insist that only a merge will solve your problem and I fight against you - so how cooperative are you?

[Chai]

The vocal minority on the forum should be ignored? Sounds like perfect advice for dealing with the vocal minority on the forums who clamor for a server merge.

Or you can address something I actually said.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Unless lag gets worse from the merge, in which case that 1000 player number will crash rapidly, bringing us back into equilibrium of 100-200 players on, but now it's the entire revenue pool SSG has to work with.

If only DDO were an instanced game so that... hey, waitaminute!



So in summary, there are far better ways to address grouping than a server merge. Free transfers or even better cross server grouping would help without the huge unnecessary risk a server merge entails.

And if enough people did take advantage of the free transfers to help bring populations on an individual server back closer to where they used to be in the glory days of "a new Shroud run every 15 minutes 24 hours a day" population levels, then your boogeyman of lag will be back anyway, so we might as well server merge.

SSG has done a lot of things to combat lag and computers are 5 years more powerful than they were 5 years ago, so if having 2014 populations on the servers will crash the servers or create massive lag, then that's an SSG problem to fix, not a "Oh no, we might as well just enjoy the steady population decline because lag" problem for players to work around.

[LucidLTS]

If only DDO were an instanced game so that... hey, waitaminute!

And yet, more populus servers have more lag, go figure



And if enough people did take advantage of the free transfers to help bring populations on an individual server back closer to where they used to be in the glory days of "a new Shroud run every 15 minutes 24 hours a day" population levels, then your boogeyman of lag will be back anyway, so we might as well server merge.

SSG has done a lot of things to combat lag and computers are 5 years more powerful than they were 5 years ago, so if having 2014 populations on the servers will crash the servers or create massive lag, then that's an SSG problem to fix, not a "Oh no, we might as well just enjoy the steady population decline because lag" problem for players to work around.
Sure, but I'll be able to transfer to a less populated server and be fine. The point is to concentrate the people who really want to pug and feel they can't. Because you don't need *all* players on your super server, just the ones who are most likely to join your groups.

And BTW, I'm actually arguing that they address lag as the first step. First, that will bring players back, and second, it will pave the way to making a merge possible. I did say that I'd be open to a server merge once they had the lag under control, have a reasonable solution for people who have more characters than fit on one server, and have item tracking and customer service to the point where it can handle the flood of problems.

I'm just asking that they get the parachute before they jump out of the plane, hoping to find one on the way down is insane.

[Arianrhod]

I don’t think I understand very well the reticence of people to mergers. That said, my main point is that there needs to be a player consolidation. A server with under 100 people is not a viable server for a MMO, and even less for DDO give it’s huge level and difficulty spread.



Pop levels are a large part of why people can’t find groups. The narrow window of grouping given level and difficulty spreads is another. But I think that simply pooling players is quite clearly going to improve the situation.

Of course, to be fair there would need to be more than free transfers. It seems unfair to guild owners that paid good money for guild stuff otherwise. It is a 100% on SSG to provide servers with a decent population, given that there are enough players in the game anyway. My estimate is that across servers at any given time there are around 1000 players. Pooling Them would provide a vastly superior grouping environment than 8 servers with pops ranging from under 100 to 200 players.

Re: The reticence of people to merge servers - can't speak for others, but let me give you a bit of background on my experience the last time DDO did a server merge. I was there, i remember when Mabar & Riedra & Lhazar were DDO servers. I remember friends with names like "Dorin-Riedra" on Khyber. It was a mess, even back then, when there were far fewer details to keep track of. There were no past lives then, no guild ships and guild levels, no guild chests or reincarnation caches. And there were still problems, and lots of complaints from irate customers who didn't get what they were expecting when the merge happened. As a casual player with many alts across many servers, my main issue was having to decide which characters to delete, since the available number of characters per server didn't go up and the merge, while allowing people to keep all their characters, even if over the limit, wouldn't allow for creation of any new characters until below the limit. So if you had 23 characters on a server and only 10 slots, you'd have to delete 14 of them before you could create another (remember, no past lives back then, so creating a new character was the only way to try out a new build). Try to imagine that in the current game where even casual players have dozens of mules. Try to imagine the inability to put anything in the shared bank that now has stuff from 3 or 4 servers in it until enough stuff is removed to get below the limit. It was a headache the first time, it would be much worse now.

[Chai]

Unless lag gets worse from the merge, in which case that 1000 player number will crash rapidly, bringing us back into equilibrium of 100-200 players on, but now it's the entire revenue pool SSG has to work with.

So in summary, there are far better ways to address grouping than a server merge. Free transfers or even better cross server grouping would help without the huge unnecessary risk a server merge entails.



We see the myth about more people on fewer servers equating to more lag posted far too often.

In an instanced game, it doesnt matter how many "servers" there are if you have the same number of groups in the same number of instances.

I think those who are staunchly against server merges need to provide some actual logical reasoning behind why. Their game doesnt change one iota. Soloer still gonna solo. Static groups will still play with the same folks. PUG groups will have a larger pool of players to group with. Theres really no loss here.

[Chai]

Re: The reticence of people to merge servers - can't speak for others, but let me give you a bit of background on my experience the last time DDO did a server merge. I was there, i remember when Mabar & Riedra & Lhazar were DDO servers. I remember friends with names like "Dorin-Riedra" on Khyber. It was a mess, even back then, when there were far fewer details to keep track of. There were no past lives then, no guild ships and guild levels, no guild chests or reincarnation caches. And there were still problems, and lots of complaints from irate customers who didn't get what they were expecting when the merge happened. As a casual player with many alts across many servers, my main issue was having to decide which characters to delete, since the available number of characters per server didn't go up and the merge, while allowing people to keep all their characters, even if over the limit, wouldn't allow for creation of any new characters until below the limit. So if you had 23 characters on a server and only 10 slots, you'd have to delete 14 of them before you could create another (remember, no past lives back then, so creating a new character was the only way to try out a new build). Try to imagine that in the current game where even casual players have dozens of mules. Try to imagine the inability to put anything in the shared bank that now has stuff from 3 or 4 servers in it until enough stuff is removed to get below the limit. It was a headache the first time, it would be much worse now.

While I agree those are issues that need to be solved....

...and that they kind of dug their own hole on this topic...but...

They have had years to figure this out. Its not like we are in year one day one of asking for server merges. How much longer do they need before all of this is hammered out? Until 50 people are logged in per server? 25? 10?

Edit: Its also not even the same team from those days working on the game. Most of the positions top to bottom have turned over since then, some multiple times.

[boredGamer]

We see the myth about more people on fewer servers equating to more lag posted far too often.

In an instanced game, it doesnt matter how many "servers" there are if you have the same number of groups in the same number of instances.

I think those who are staunchly against server merges need to provide some actual logical reasoning behind why. Their game doesnt change one iota. Soloer still gonna solo. Static groups will still play with the same folks. PUG groups will have a larger pool of players to group with. Theres really no loss here.

Are we that sure about what you are saying here? I don't know the architecture of this back end game engine well enough to know what you are saying is true.

What I think you're saying:
*set of resources* is some set of cpu/mem/cache/network whether physical, virtual, docker, whatever

100 groups, in 100 instances, on 1 logical server, on 1 *set of resources* is the same as
100 groups, in 100 instances, on 5 logical server, on 1 *set of resources*

What I don't know is if 100 groups, in 100 instances on X logical servers can be split on any number of Y *set of resources* for any division of those as required - as it would require a specific implementation - which makes me question the premise that 1 logical server would be the same performance as more than 1 logical server.

The data I have only from playing the game would suggest this game doesn't horizontally scale nearly as seamlessly as "instance means instances and can run anywhere". From what I've seen things lag globally as well as per instance - for simplicities sake let's just say each instance is 200MB RAM and lags when we have 100 people trying for an event party - and things lag globally when total instance memory is 1GB (clearly made up numbers, and the chokepoint might be network, IO, not RAM, whatever, it's an example)

You didn't address my last post at all so I'll assume you won't address this either, but I don't have the facts to know if what you said is correct. Would always love to know more though.

[BigErkyKid]

Re: The reticence of people to merge servers - can't speak for others, but let me give you a bit of background on my experience the last time DDO did a server merge. I was there, i remember when Mabar & Riedra & Lhazar were DDO servers. I remember friends with names like "Dorin-Riedra" on Khyber. It was a mess, even back then, when there were far fewer details to keep track of. There were no past lives then, no guild ships and guild levels, no guild chests or reincarnation caches. And there were still problems, and lots of complaints from irate customers who didn't get what they were expecting when the merge happened. As a casual player with many alts across many servers, my main issue was having to decide which characters to delete, since the available number of characters per server didn't go up and the merge, while allowing people to keep all their characters, even if over the limit, wouldn't allow for creation of any new characters until below the limit. So if you had 23 characters on a server and only 10 slots, you'd have to delete 14 of them before you could create another (remember, no past lives back then, so creating a new character was the only way to try out a new build). Try to imagine that in the current game where even casual players have dozens of mules. Try to imagine the inability to put anything in the shared bank that now has stuff from 3 or 4 servers in it until enough stuff is removed to get below the limit. It was a headache the first time, it would be much worse now.

I appreciate the explanation.

For me, though, the need to keep healthier populations in the servers would outweight the risks associated with most solutions; let them be mergers or transfers plus.

It doesn't really matter when I log, Argonessen goes from under 100 to 140, and I am told there are worse servers (aside from Wayfinder), such as Thelanis (clocking 70 public players consistently).

That is really not a lot of players for an MMO, I think we will agree on that. I know that a large fraction of the people still playing figure it out (soloers, static groups, what not), but then, not a lot of people left in the servers, so is this really a solution?

I think that consolidating the playerbase is a reasonable course of action; and I am convinced it would allow us to play . How many people own Ravenloft in my server? How many play it? I always stalk on the WHO tab to see if anyone is doing it, and trust me, hardly ever I see groups for it.

I am going to keep reporting the pop counts, and I hope more people join me. Both because I am curious and because I think this is something SSG should address.

[Chai]

Are we that sure about what you are saying here? I don't know the architecture of this back end game engine well enough to know what you are saying is true.

What I think you're saying:
*set of resources* is some set of cpu/mem/cache/network whether physical, virtual, docker, whatever

100 groups, in 100 instances, on 1 logical server, on 1 *set of resources* is the same as
100 groups, in 100 instances, on 5 logical server, on 1 *set of resources*

The DBs look slightly different but these consume similar resources. Not literally exact, but similar to the point where merging to fewer "servers" is not going to cause lag that didnt already exist previously.


What I don't know is if 100 groups, in 100 instances on X logical servers can be split on any number of Y *set of resources* for any division of those as required - as it would require a specific implementation - which makes me question the premise that 1 logical server would be the same performance as more than 1 logical server.

The data I have only from playing the game would suggest this game doesn't horizontally scale nearly as seamlessly as "instance means instances and can run anywhere". From what I've seen things lag globally as well as per instance - for simplicities sake let's just say each instance is 200MB RAM and lags when we have 100 people trying for an event party - and things lag globally when total instance memory is 1GB (clearly made up numbers, and the chokepoint might be network, IO, not RAM, whatever, it's an example)

You didn't address my last post at all so I'll assume you won't address this either, but I don't have the facts to know if what you said is correct. Would always love to know more though.

In order for this to be different than what I reported, youd have to go back AT LEAST as far as the blade server era ~20 years or so ago, give or take.

Even in that era, we were still opening single instances and placing characters from multiple servers into the same instance.

[LucidLTS]

We see the myth about more people on fewer servers equating to more lag posted far too often.

In an instanced game, it doesnt matter how many "servers" there are if you have the same number of groups in the same number of instances.

I think those who are staunchly against server merges need to provide some actual logical reasoning behind why. Their game doesnt change one iota. Soloer still gonna solo. Static groups will still play with the same folks. PUG groups will have a larger pool of players to group with. Theres really no loss here.

Sorry, I see past your logical sleight of hand and I'm exposing it. You say "In an instanced game" and expect us to believe DDO is truly instanced, but it's only "somewhat instanced". There are server wide resources that are not dedicated to a game "instance", and it is in this detail that the devil lies.

Example? Database lookup. Databases are per server, regardless of how you "instance" things. Stuff like Mail and Who List, too. And SSG told us how mail already was causing lag, that's why they limited us to 50 messages.

Furthermore, it's empirically observable - if your assertion were true then a player couldn't switch to a different server when one had lag and find less lag, yet that's exactly the case. Furthermore, if I'm on a server where somebody else's "instance" lags (think Spectral Dragon) then my "instance" lags too, also in direct contradiction to your assertion.

I have no doubt you'll continue to ignore this inconvenient truth, but the degree of instancing in DDO is insufficient to shield it from the lag observed on overfull servers.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Sorry, I see past your logical sleight of hand and I'm exposing it. You say "In an instanced game" and expect us to believe DDO is truly instanced, but it's only "somewhat instanced". There are server wide resources that are not dedicated to a game "instance", and it is in this detail that the devil lies.

Example? Database lookup. Databases are per server, regardless of how you "instance" things. Stuff like Mail and Who List, too. And SSG told us how mail already was causing lag, that's why they limited us to 50 messages.

Furthermore, it's empirically observable - if your assertion were true then a player couldn't switch to a different server when one had lag and find less lag, yet that's exactly the case. Furthermore, if I'm on a server where somebody else's "instance" lags (think Spectral Dragon) then my "instance" lags too, also in direct contradiction to your assertion.

I have no doubt you'll continue to ignore this inconvenient truth, but the degree of instancing in DDO is insufficient to shield it from the lag observed on overfull servers.

When virtual machines exist, even "partially instanced" servers can act as if they were fully instanced if that were implemented. Heck, you could collapse everything down to just one server and still use more than one machine for it. It's pretty clear from what SSG has said that they *don't* do this, but the definitely could. This is not black magic. There are best practices that can be implemented if there were a will to do so any a decision to dedicate the resources for that.

The question isn't whether a smaller number of servers would magically lag things more - it's whether there's a desire and the resources available to fix that.

...that said, it's pretty clear that SSG has told us through words and actions that there isn't a desire or the resources available to fix that or to do a server merge.

[Chai]

Sorry, I see past your logical sleight of hand and I'm exposing it. You say "In an instanced game" and expect us to believe DDO is truly instanced, but it's only "somewhat instanced". There are server wide resources that are not dedicated to a game "instance", and it is in this detail that the devil lies.

Example? Database lookup. Databases are per server, regardless of how you "instance" things. Stuff like Mail and Who List, too. And SSG told us how mail already was causing lag, that's why they limited us to 50 messages.

Furthermore, it's empirically observable - if your assertion were true then a player couldn't switch to a different server when one had lag and find less lag, yet that's exactly the case. Furthermore, if I'm on a server where somebody else's "instance" lags (think Spectral Dragon) then my "instance" lags too, also in direct contradiction to your assertion.

I have no doubt you'll continue to ignore this inconvenient truth, but the degree of instancing in DDO is insufficient to shield it from the lag observed on overfull servers.

There are several contradictions in the quoted post that I do not have the time or crayons to explain any more simply that I already have.

I have however, highlighted the most obvious one.

Congratulations, you just played yourself. /dj khaled.jpg

I'll even leave you off with a hint here. The second highlighted object doesnt contradict my assertion, it supports it completely. (this doesnt only happen when on same instance + same server, it also happens when on same instance + different server)

I am not theory crafting here. Ive done this work and set these systems up.

If your assertion were correct, there would be less lag now than ever before as we have aggregated several merge request threads in eras when there were 400+ people logged in at peak hours per server (remember folks, there is hard data to back this up as DDO used to have an API that showed the numbers, and archive.org is our friend), where nowdays there are less than 200 people logged in most of the time on a per server basis, and some reports of just over 100 logged in.

If headcount per server had a direct relation to lag as this poster claims, no one should be complaining about lag nowdays as the observable concurrency declines, and has declined below half than that of previous eras where server merge requests also occurred. If this direct relationship existed, and the servers once had double their concurrency, the game would not have been playable in those eras.

[Chai]

When virtual machines exist, even "partially instanced" servers can act as if they were fully instanced if that were implemented. Heck, you could collapse everything down to just one server and still use more than one machine for it. It's pretty clear from what SSG has said that they *don't* do this, but the definitely could. This is not black magic. There are best practices that can be implemented if there were a will to do so any a decision to dedicate the resources for that.

The question isn't whether a smaller number of servers would magically lag things more - it's whether there's a desire and the resources available to fix that.

...that said, it's pretty clear that SSG has told us through words and actions that there isn't a desire or the resources available to fix that or to do a server merge.

Yeah pretty much this.

There are a mess of issues that need to be dealt with but those are game feature consolidation issues for the most part, most pointed out earlier in this thread, and in others.

[boredGamer]

The DBs look slightly different but these consume similar resources. Not literally exact, but similar to the point where merging to fewer "servers" is not going to cause lag that didnt already exist previously.

In order for this to be different than what I reported, youd have to go back AT LEAST as far as the blade server era ~20 years or so ago, give or take.

Even in that era, we were still opening single instances and placing characters from multiple servers into the same instance.

Why are blade servers relevant to this conversation ? There are still blade servers now, underpinning what I presume you are comparing this to.

And then you're talking about "even in that era" - are you talking about a different game, with a different architecture? Do we know that is possible here? This is the root of my question - as all evidence I've seen points to this not being the case in DDO.



I am not theory crafting here. Ive done this work and set these systems up.

If your assertion were correct, there would be less lag now than ever before as we have aggregated several merge request threads in eras when there were 400+ people logged in at peak hours per server (remember folks, there is hard data to back this up as DDO used to have an API that showed the numbers, and archive.org is our friend), where nowdays there are less than 200 people logged in most of the time on a per server basis, and some reports of just over 100 logged in.

If headcount per server had a direct relation to lag as this poster claims, no one should be complaining about lag nowdays as the observable concurrency declines, and has declined below half than that of previous eras where server merge requests also occurred. If this direct relationship existed, and the servers once had double their concurrency, the game would not have been playable in those eras.

First - lag / logged in user does not have to remain constant over time. This is a weird assumption.

Second, similar point - without really knowing the choke points of the architecture or gameplay, you really have no idea what causes <x> type of lag (or at least, I don't). If you do - I'd love to know - but you seem to just say "i know best" - and not actually answer any of this. This could change per release, easily, depending on what new "feature" is introduced. The concurrency could easily be <x> types of <y> action - not necessarily number of logged in players <persay>.

If you *do* know the underlying architecture, the sources of lag, and the scaling of the lag based on x metric, and how the game distributes instance and load, and scales horizontally or not - I would love to know, as it's very interesting.

[entropyspinner]

I'm not agreeing nor disagreeing with server merge proposals. However, from this thread, other similar threads and my own server population discussions, I come away with this one realization.

A significant portion of the server population is disillusioned with the availability of a significant portion of the server population.

[GoldyGopher]

We see the myth about more people on fewer servers equating to more lag posted far too often.

In an instanced game, it doesnt matter how many "servers" there are if you have the same number of groups in the same number of instances.

I think those who are staunchly against server merges need to provide some actual logical reasoning behind why. Their game doesnt change one iota. Soloer still gonna solo. Static groups will still play with the same folks. PUG groups will have a larger pool of players to group with. Theres really no loss here.

I am going to bite. Server Consolidation is generally not a good thing for games. Rarely do games come out of a server merge stronger and more resilient than before they happen. It can be easily argued that server merges are an attempt to vastly decrease the ongoing monthly operating costs and in general are initiated more along the lines of server lease schedules than player populations.

In the fall of 2017 EA announced that they were going to consolidate their servers for SW:TOR. This consolidation would result in the 17 servers they were operating at the time to be reduced to 5. This explanation that EA provide concerning the consolidation followed much the same rhetoric that Turbine provided when they consolidated the 14(or was it 15) DDO servers into 5 servers way back in 2007. Much of the public explanation revolved on improving game play for the players by in essence putting more players on the same servers.


Our primary focus this year for
Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ has been to build and release multiplayer gameplay experiences that you can play with your friends. We’ve seen thousands of players jump in to join these battles across the galaxy. Your overwhelming response to playing these new experiences has motivated us to continue to pursue more enhancements to making multiplayer the best it can be for you, our players.

For EA if you want to know how the server merge went, you should review their forums and look closely at the posts starting in the evening of the November 8, 2017 the day that the Merges started.

I won't go through all the steps, but the consolidation was halted, rolled back, servers patched, servers patched again, EU servers were attempted to consolidate, EU servers rolled back, servers patched ... servers consolidated on roughly Nov 22nd (give or take a day). It literally took around two weeks after they first attempt to complete. I will gloss over the staffing and the changes that occured but know that there were staffing changes shortly afterwards, draw your own conclusion.

However after all the technical work had been resolved and players finally started logging into the game, a surprising thing happened for many of those players who were fairly vocal that a server consolidation was going to be great for them, it simply wasn't. Those people looking to PUG with grand hopes that the merge was going to create a much larger pool of pugging characters that they were going to group with were beyond dismayed when those pools not only failed to get any bigger, but actually got smaller.


EDIT For the record I have played SW:TOR but I do not pug ever in the game. I never really saw a need to with my play style and expectations of what I wanted to accomplish. So I can only go with what other have told me of the situation and what I have read on their forums.

There are many reasons but one that really came to the fore is players in small guilds (let say under 10 active players) quickly jumped ship and joined larger more active guilds. To be clear it wasn't everyone, but many did. These players that jumped ship and moved to larger guilds had less reason to pug missions. The game has never recovered. Today you find a decent game population in the starter areas but the game population thins out to a great extent as you get the higher level instances. The highest levels are ghost towns. Things have gotten so bad with SW:TOR that EA has publicly acknowledged that they comprehensive discussions on winding down development on the game internally.
EA is currently developing an expansion for SW:TOR called Onslaught, publicly players on both the SW:TOR forums and fan-sites are concerned that it is a last gasp attempt to save the game from entering maintenance mode and shutting down altogether.

What happened when DDO consolidated servers in 2007, much of the exact same thing.
It should be point out at the time DDO basically required a Rogue and Cleric in each party, there were no hirelings, self healing was virtually not existent beyond pots and the occasional wand slinger. While players in general decried getting groups together was hard, the hard part was getting those two classes to join your party. It was not uncommon for Clerics to log in anonymously during that era because they were inundated with LFG requests, sometimes before they had even completely logged into the game world.
There were many technical problems but from the players perspective, at least those that stayed, Clerics and to some extent Rogues joined bigger guilds that appreciated them and even fewer clerics were available to pug. The pugging scene all but died by between August and December 2007. The game hemorrhaged players during this period. My guild of 48 lost nearly half its number. One of the few bright spots of the period, Module 6 (The 13th Eclipse - AKA The Shroud) was released at the end of January 2008 and it was so good that players continued to play through launch of Eberron Unlimited in Sept 2009.

[LucidLTS]

If headcount per server had a direct relation to lag as this poster claims, no one should be complaining about lag nowdays as the observable concurrency declines, and has declined below half than that of previous eras where server merge requests also occurred. If this direct relationship existed, and the servers once had double their concurrency, the game would not have been playable in those eras.

Invalid assumption - the underlying components are not the same, they have been burdened with additional systems and "features", so you cannot predict how the current system would respond to the prior system's load.

[LucidLTS]

First - lag / logged in user does not have to remain constant over time. This is a weird assumption.

Second, similar point - without really knowing the choke points of the architecture or gameplay, you really have no idea what causes <x> type of lag (or at least, I don't). If you do - I'd love to know - but you seem to just say "i know best" - and not actually answer any of this. This could change per release, easily, depending on what new "feature" is introduced. The concurrency could easily be <x> types of <y> action - not necessarily number of logged in players <persay>.

If you *do* know the underlying architecture, the sources of lag, and the scaling of the lag based on x metric, and how the game distributes instance and load, and scales horizontally or not - I would love to know, as it's very interesting.

^This. I'm willing to change my mind when presented with compelling evidence, or even a sound argument, but the "because I know this" repeated often and confidently doesn't meet that standard. Even throwing in some jargon doesn't help appreciably.

And you're also spang on about the "<x> types of <y> action". But direct causation, indirect causation, or even just correlation is enough to make me strongly prefer a more cautious path.

Well said, thank you

[Chai]

Invalid assumption - the underlying components are not the same, they have been burdened with additional systems and "features", so you cannot predict how the current system would respond to the prior system's load.

You just contradicted yourself once again.

If what you state is true here, your attempts to predict how the merged system would react to the previous system load, are invalid.

[LucidLTS]

I am going to bite. Server Consolidation is generally not a good thing for games. Rarely do games come out of a server merge stronger and more resilient than before they happen. It can be easily argued that server merges are an attempt to vastly decrease the ongoing monthly operating costs and in general are initiated more along the lines of server lease schedules than player populations.

In the fall of 2017 EA announced that they were going to consolidate their servers for SW:TOR. This consolidation would result in the 17 servers they were operating at the time to be reduced to 5. This explanation that EA provide concerning the consolidation followed much the same rhetoric that Turbine provided when they consolidated the 14(or was it 15) DDO servers into 5 servers way back in 2007. Much of the public explanation revolved on improving game play for the players by in essence putting more players on the same servers.



For EA if you want to know how the server merge went, you should review their forums and look closely at the posts starting in the evening of the November 8, 2017 the day that the Merges started.

I won't go through all the steps, but the consolidation was halted, rolled back, servers patched, servers patched again, EU servers were attempted to consolidate, EU servers rolled back, servers patched ... servers consolidated on roughly Nov 22nd (give or take a day). It literally took around two weeks after they first attempt to complete. I will gloss over the staffing and the changes that occured but know that there were staffing changes shortly afterwards, draw your own conclusion.

However after all the technical work had been resolved and players finally started logging into the game, a surprising thing happened for many of those players who were fairly vocal that a server consolidation was going to be great for them, it simply wasn't. Those people looking to PUG with grand hopes that the merge was going to create a much larger pool of pugging characters that they were going to group with were beyond dismayed when those pools not only failed to get any bigger, but actually got smaller.


EDIT For the record I have played SW:TOR but I do not pug ever in the game. I never really saw a need to with my play style and expectations of what I wanted to accomplish. So I can only go with what other have told me of the situation and what I have read on their forums.

There are many reasons but one that really came to the fore is players in small guilds (let say under 10 active players) quickly jumped ship and joined larger more active guilds. To be clear it wasn't everyone, but many did. These players that jumped ship and moved to larger guilds had less reason to pug missions. The game has never recovered. Today you find a decent game population in the starter areas but the game population thins out to a great extent as you get the higher level instances. The highest levels are ghost towns. Things have gotten so bad with SW:TOR that EA has publicly acknowledged that they comprehensive discussions on winding down development on the game internally.
EA is currently developing an expansion for SW:TOR called Onslaught, publicly players on both the SW:TOR forums and fan-sites are concerned that it is a last gasp attempt to save the game from entering maintenance mode and shutting down altogether.

What happened when DDO consolidated servers in 2007, much of the exact same thing.
It should be point out at the time DDO basically required a Rogue and Cleric in each party, there were no hirelings, self healing was virtually not existent beyond pots and the occasional wand slinger. While players in general decried getting groups together was hard, the hard part was getting those two classes to join your party. It was not uncommon for Clerics to log in anonymously during that era because they were inundated with LFG requests, sometimes before they had even completely logged into the game world.
There were many technical problems but from the players perspective, at least those that stayed, Clerics and to some extent Rogues joined bigger guilds that appreciated them and even fewer clerics were available to pug. The pugging scene all but died by between August and December 2007. The game hemorrhaged players during this period. My guild of 48 lost nearly half its number. One of the few bright spots of the period, Module 6 (The 13th Eclipse - AKA The Shroud) was released at the end of January 2008 and it was so good that players continued to play through launch of Eberron Unlimited in Sept 2009.
Wow, I didn't play SW:TOR, and somehow I missed that situation. Let's hope we learn from their experience, thank you

[Chai]

^This. I'm willing to change my mind when presented with compelling evidence, or even a sound argument, but the "because I know this" repeated often and confidently doesn't meet that standard. Even throwing in some jargon doesn't help appreciably.

And you're also spang on about the "<x> types of <y> action". But direct causation, indirect causation, or even just correlation is enough to make me strongly prefer a more cautious path.

Well said, thank you

Another contradiction. If you are going to agree with the guy who says "you really dont have any idea what causes the lag" then you also dont get to predict that higher headcount per "server" causes more lag.

[Chai]

What happened when DDO consolidated servers in 2007, much of the exact same thing.
It should be point out at the time DDO basically required a Rogue and Cleric in each party, there were no hirelings, self healing was virtually not existent beyond pots and the occasional wand slinger. While players in general decried getting groups together was hard, the hard part was getting those two classes to join your party. It was not uncommon for Clerics to log in anonymously during that era because they were inundated with LFG requests, sometimes before they had even completely logged into the game world.
There were many technical problems but from the players perspective, at least those that stayed, Clerics and to some extent Rogues joined bigger guilds that appreciated them and even fewer clerics were available to pug. The pugging scene all but died by between August and December 2007. The game hemorrhaged players during this period. My guild of 48 lost nearly half its number. One of the few bright spots of the period, Module 6 (The 13th Eclipse - AKA The Shroud) was released at the end of January 2008 and it was so good that players continued to play through launch of Eberron Unlimited in Sept 2009.

There were more people logged in per server between those dates, than there are now.

If we are so against server merges here, perhaps someone can elaborate on how this issue will get resolved.

[GoldyGopher]

There were more people logged in per server between those dates, than there are now.

As a player who routinely has watched the who list, I am going to disagree with that statement to an extent.

On Monday evening at approximately 10 PM Eastern there were approximately 600 characters listed on the Who list on Khyber. I haven't seen numbers like that since shortly after launch.

The characters listed in the who list on Khyber in "off peak" hours is typically smaller than they once were. I used to be logged in until 3 AM and see 250 plus characters in the who list. Now if I am up that late (or early) I rarely see anything over 125. I consider 6 PM to 12 AM Eastern the peak times on Khyber. There have been days where there are 350 characters on the who list at 11:50 PM and 20 minutes later at 12:10 that number drops to 150. It is a pretty significant change and for people who play in the off hours I am fairly certain grouping is a lot more difficult than those that play during the peak hours.


If we are so against server merges here, perhaps someone can elaborate on how this issue will get resolved.

There have been numerous solutions proposed however my point is until SSG decide, figure out how to resolve the issue with the real money players have put into guilds (Lots of top end Airships out there for guilds level 40 - 90) not much will change. It is the very large angry elephant in the room, and there is really no good solution.

[Anuulified]

This thread confuses me. You can "merge" anytime you feel like with a server transfer.

[BigErkyKid]

On Monday evening at approximately 10 PM Eastern there were approximately 600 characters listed on the Who list on Khyber. I haven't seen numbers like that since shortly after launch.

The characters listed in the who list on Khyber in "off peak" hours is typically smaller than they once were. I used to be logged in until 3 AM and see 250 plus characters in the who list. Now if I am up that late (or early) I rarely see anything over 125. I consider 6 PM to 12 AM Eastern the peak times on Khyber. There have been days where there are 350 characters on the who list at 11:50 PM and 20 minutes later at 12:10 that number drops to 150. It is a pretty significant change and for people who play in the off hours I am fairly certain grouping is a lot more difficult than those that play during the peak hours.


I will take a look, but that's a large deviation from the other servers. I have never seen 600 people in Argo; and certainly not since I came back. You have to understand that there are players reporting 70 souls online when they play. Let that sink, 70 players. There are around 160 players in Khyber right now (10:16 UTC).



Server Consolidation is generally not a good thing for games.

When a MMO drops to under 100 players in a server, I do not think this observation applies.

PS - Please feel free to report population numbers at whatever time you log in to play.

[psykopeta]

I would like to point the irony that... OP was ine of those saying "no to merging, my server is the default one and works for my playstyle"

It took a bit but he noticed that his playstyle wasn't the only one, in fact his playstyle changed

When all these nay sayers notice it... Well, we will have no more DDO

I don't pug, but i can understand ppl not staying in DDO cause it's a single player game with a chat room.. But the chat is dead

So for me, all these "that game happened that, what will happen with my cache, and my name, guild and my 300 mails in 5 years from now (see? Ppl lost lots of useful stuff with the mail change and the game survived and really, someone who logs once in 5 years isn'ta a meaning vote) are only examples of poor excuses, the same you would expect from a 70 year old fart who only cares about his yard and not about the world development

Merge servers, make migrated caches and shared banks only retrievable, give rename guild/toon, and save the game before the greedy bastards sink it

[BigErkyKid]

I would like to point the irony that... OP was ine of those saying "no to merging, my server is the default one and works for my playstyle"

It took a bit but he noticed that his playstyle wasn't the only one, in fact his playstyle changed


[...]

Merge servers, make migrated caches and shared banks only retrievable, give rename guild/toon, and save the game before the greedy bastards sink it

I don't know what you are talking about, honestly. Feel free to go through my post list and link my opposition to server mergers. If there are such posts, and in the tone you say them, I'll be amused, surprised, and humbled.

[Zenako]

What happened when DDO consolidated servers in 2007, much of the exact same thing.
It should be point out at the time DDO basically required a Rogue and Cleric in each party, there were no hirelings, self healing was virtually not existent beyond pots and the occasional wand slinger. While players in general decried getting groups together was hard, the hard part was getting those two classes to join your party. It was not uncommon for Clerics to log in anonymously during that era because they were inundated with LFG requests, sometimes before they had even completely logged into the game world.
There were many technical problems but from the players perspective, at least those that stayed, Clerics and to some extent Rogues joined bigger guilds that appreciated them and even fewer clerics were available to pug. The pugging scene all but died by between August and December 2007. The game hemorrhaged players during this period. My guild of 48 lost nearly half its number. One of the few bright spots of the period, Module 6 (The 13th Eclipse - AKA The Shroud) was released at the end of January 2008 and it was so good that players continued to play through launch of Eberron Unlimited in Sept 2009.

As someone who played a number of clerics and rogues back in the beginning, I can vouch that my characters routinely got requests to join a new group, even when in the middle of raids. Eventually, the only solution was to go anonymous and cease even showing up on the Who list. I think many of my older characters are still anonymous since they seldom get random invites, while when playing one of the older toons, they avoid that. So one thing to take from that is that just using the who list is a suspect count for active population since many are likely still choosing to remain unseen. There ~250 names on the who list right now on Sarlona amd 16 LFMs active over a wide range of levels. One thing that was always an issue was that way to many folks asking for groups/LFMs would never actually post them themselves. Guilds were the safe haven since you avoiding the vagaries of the PUG world back then.

[Epicstorms]

Yes to any solution that brings the entire DDO playerbase together. That can be with a server merge, a new server with free transfers, cross-server grouping, etc.

[Chai]

As a player who routinely has watched the who list, I am going to disagree with that statement to an extent.

On Monday evening at approximately 10 PM Eastern there were approximately 600 characters listed on the Who list on Khyber. I haven't seen numbers like that since shortly after launch.

The characters listed in the who list on Khyber in "off peak" hours is typically smaller than they once were. I used to be logged in until 3 AM and see 250 plus characters in the who list. Now if I am up that late (or early) I rarely see anything over 125. I consider 6 PM to 12 AM Eastern the peak times on Khyber. There have been days where there are 350 characters on the who list at 11:50 PM and 20 minutes later at 12:10 that number drops to 150. It is a pretty significant change and for people who play in the off hours I am fairly certain grouping is a lot more difficult than those that play during the peak hours.

MMO Data has DDO at 45K active subs in 2007 at the low point of 2007. Anyone think concurrency is near that now?
http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-3.png

Keep in mind that is active accounts only. DDO required a subscription to play in that era.


There have been numerous solutions proposed however my point is until SSG decide, figure out how to resolve the issue with the real money players have put into guilds (Lots of top end Airships out there for guilds level 40 - 90) not much will change. It is the very large angry elephant in the room, and there is really no good solution.

Yeah, most of the issues are bought and paid for feature based, and not tech based. These merge threads are not new however, and years of time to figure this out have passed.

[Komradkillingmachine]

Need moar players ASAP!
I can't sit around for hours waiting for the only raid (on the LFM) to fill with semi-decent pugs and complete said raid.
There are, literally, not enough people to fill a 12 man group at cap for EU prime time evenings. This is just unacceptable.

I demand that Devs come up with a simple, yet elegant solution to fix population problem before it's too late.

[nokowi]

I demand that Devs come up with a simple, yet elegant solution to fix population problem before it's too late.

It is already too late.

You can't ignore player experience and focus solely on selling the next thing and nerfing the last thing.

You can't treat your paying customers as if they have little value.

You can't ignore the easiest to acquire player base (those willing to post here) and ever get a population increase.

At some point, customers simply loose faith in a brand.

Those still here can thank SSG for keeping the game alive this long, while those left at the curb can understand why the population is going to continue to decline.

We've seen what SSG has to offer and what you see is what you get.

[vms4ever]

Need moar players ASAP!
I can't sit around for hours waiting for the only raid (on the LFM) to fill with semi-decent pugs and complete said raid.
There are, literally, not enough people to fill a 12 man group at cap for EU prime time evenings. This is just unacceptable.

I demand that Devs come up with a simple, yet elegant solution to fix population problem before it's too late.


The simple, yet elegant solution would be for the EU to correct their clocks to Chicago time. This would correctly align EU prime time evenings to North America prime time evenings and resolve the issue.

[Chai]

How can I not commit to a position but also staunchly advocate a position ?

This was explained. Your bias here is not regarding the topic, but those discussing it.


Further - I have in no way said there should not be server merges. Feel free to use this posting history you refer to to let me know my position on it.

The history confirms this. We have had this conversation before.

[HungarianRhapsody]

This was explained. Your bias here is not regarding the topic, but those discussing it.


Be fair, Chai. You're awful to be in an argument with even when we agree with you.

[BigErkyKid]

What happened when DDO consolidated servers in 2007, much of the exact same thing.[INDENT] The game hemorrhaged players during this period. My guild of 48 lost nearly half its number. .

Has it occurred to you that there were server mergers BECAUSE the game was hemorrhaging players, not the other way around? And that if there hadnt been a consolidation, perhaps the game wouldn't have survived?
Companies consolidate servers because there aren't enough players; it is costly, complicated, sends a weird vibe, and players stand to face problems in the process.

Likely that is why, despite of the abysmal pops of some servers, DDO hasn't done it so far. However, it is getting to a fairly dramatic point in some servers. Server transfer tech has improved enormously; why not throw the players a bone?

[Chai]

Be fair, Chai. You're awful to be in an argument with even when we agree with you.

Yes, we are aware of the strong bias against the poster, rather than interest in the discussion topic, is what motivates some chronic-last-worders.

This is easily confirmed btw. All we have to do when someone is trying too hard to disagree, is go to one of the previous threads on the same topic, paste a point the same person agreed with when it came from someone else (usually someone within our camp), and when they vehemently disagree with the same word for word post, the bias is confirmed. No need to reply back to that poster any longer.

Its even more hilarious when their bias against a different poster caused them to defend the same post for multiple pages of a different discussion on the same topic, only to quote it when posted as Chai and begin their diatribe about how we couldnt possibly know what we are talking about.

Cant claim "terrible in an argument" on that one as the only thing different there is the name of the poster. Everything else is the same, word for word.

[Chai]

Has it occurred to you that there were server mergers BECAUSE the game was hemorrhaging players, not the other way around? And that if there hadnt been a consolidation, perhaps the game wouldn't have survived?
Companies consolidate servers because there aren't enough players; it is costly, complicated, sends a weird vibe, and players stand to face problems in the process.

Likely that is why, despite of the abysmal pops of some servers, DDO hasn't done it so far. However, it is getting to a fairly dramatic point in some servers. Server transfer tech has improved enormously; why not throw the players a bone?

Pretty much this.

Folks who believe the game lost players due to merged servers are getting the chicken and the egg backwards.

We see ALOT of feedback regarding closing the gap between new players and vets around these parts, but new players dont even hang around when they are logging into servers with ~100 people playing, 30 levels, a 4 level range to group in, across 5 different difficulty settings - one with 10 gradients.

[GoldyGopher]

Has it occurred to you that there were server mergers BECAUSE the game was hemorrhaging players, not the other way around? And that if there hadnt been a consolidation, perhaps the game wouldn't have survived?
Companies consolidate servers because there aren't enough players; it is costly, complicated, sends a weird vibe, and players stand to face problems in the process.

Likely that is why, despite of the abysmal pops of some servers, DDO hasn't done it so far. However, it is getting to a fairly dramatic point in some servers. Server transfer tech has improved enormously; why not throw the players a bone?


Companies do not consolidate hardware unless there is a financial incentive to do so. In the case of most server consolidations involving MMO's and similiar games, gaming companies have an incentive to do this because the company can return hardware to the leasing company and get out of the payments. If you lease a car it makes no difference to the leasing company whether you drive the vehicle or not, you still have to pay the bill. Same goes with Computer hardware. Most companies actually lease their hardware, especially server hardware, because there is a substantial savings involved. It is a little different from small low intensity computing games that are popular now using AWS, MS, Oracle and other cloud services like you mobile games, but that is a totally different model.
The Original release date for DDO: Stormreach was September 2005, before it was delayed multiple times and released on the February 28, 2006 that we all now celebrate. If you are going to return leased hardware to the leasing company than an August 2007 date becomes relevant assuming the hardware was delivered for the original lease date. The server merges for DDO were July 2007, enough time to dismantle and return the hardware to the leaser before a deadline somewhere in August/September.

At the time the server merges occurred, July 2007, the game was at a stable number of players. The game lost a large number of players post launch as the game jumpers who tried the game for 30 to 90 days left. The release of Modules 3 and 4 kept those players who were playing, playing and paying their monthly subscription. Even SirBruce's numbers will show that. After the server merge the number drop off, SirBruce's Numbers show a 25% loss of the playerbase. Those playing at the time probably feel like I do that the actual loss of Active Accounts was probably higher.

SirBruce is Bruce Woodcock who rose to fame for mmogchart.com and publication of the his projections of subscriptions numbers for games. He later acknowledged that for many games it was all guess work based upon press releases and a gut feeling. He stopped publishing numbers in 2008, I believe it was FunCom that finally called him out, maybe I will google it later.

As for DDO, as the dead horse will tell you, there are ample technological issues that make a Server merge or consolidation an expensive proposition, one that from where I sit I cannot see a large enough financial gain for SSG to move forward with it.

Again from where I sit, there is no reason to move forward with a server consolidation. I am not suddenly going to get double the number of available puggers or LFMs on the Social Panel. As it hasn't work that way. Historically Server Consolidation have not brought about the improved player experience that players who are clamoring for a server change want. As I wrote in my previous note neither DDO:Stormreach back in 2007 nor EA's SW:TOR in 2017 saw that, they actually saw the reverse of what players are clamoring for as the pool of available pugging characters got smaller.
IMHO Turbine learned a lot from the server merges of 2007 and actually tried to implement changes to improve the player experience, this includes quest design, a new healing classes (Favored Soul), other means of self healing, as well as bring other classes with those aspects to the game, Druids and Artificers.

It is my hope that SSG would develop plans to improve the new player experience, especially post "Salvation of Korthos" story arc in the Harbor and Marketplace to keep new players engaged longer and more willing to become premium and VIPs.

[BigErkyKid]

Companies do not consolidate hardware unless there is a financial incentive to do so. In the case of most server consolidations involving MMO's and similiar games, gaming companies have an incentive to do this because the company can return hardware to the leasing company and get out of the payments.

I think we can agree it would be the dream of any company to have to buy more hardware because they have "too many" players for their current capacity; downgrading capacity is not a sign of booming success. Server merges in MMOs have always been, from what I can tell, about consolidating the playerbase. The stories about the leasing of hardware being the primary drive seem off to me.


At the time the server merges occurred, July 2007, the game was at a stable number of players. The game lost a large number of players post launch as the game jumpers who tried the game for 30 to 90 days left. The release of Modules 3 and 4 kept those players who were playing, playing and paying their monthly subscription. Even SirBruce's numbers will show that. After the server merge the number drop off, SirBruce's Numbers show a 25% loss of the playerbase. Those playing at the time probably feel like I do that the actual loss of Active Accounts was probably higher.

Aside from the discredited source you bring to the table, it is clear that post launch the game did poorly (this is known and been confirmed by turbine employees). Launch was in 2006; does it sound far fecthed that they would consolidate the playerbase AFTER the drop that followed launch and initial subscriptions / players? It certainly seems more plausible than to think that the game had "stable number of players" and, to safe on the lease, they suddenly decided to merge a bunch of servers.


Again from where I sit, there is no reason to move forward with a server consolidation. I am not suddenly going to get double the number of available puggers or LFMs on the Social Panel. As it hasn't work that way. Historically Server Consolidation have not brought about the improved player experience that players who are clamoring for a server change want.

If you don't think a server with more players has better grouping opportunities than a 70 players Thelanis, I don't know what to tell you.


As I wrote in my previous note neither DDO:Stormreach back in 2007 nor EA's SW:TOR in 2017 saw that, they actually saw the reverse of what players are clamoring for as the pool of available pugging characters got smaller.
IMHO Turbine learned a lot from the server merges of 2007 and actually tried to implement changes to improve the player experience, this includes quest design, a new healing classes (Favored Soul), other means of self healing, as well as bring other classes with those aspects to the game, Druids and Artificers.

In my honest opinion, this explanation is stretching logic and is contradicted by current empirical observation. More players resulting in fewer groups? Are there fewer LFM/PUGs in the more populated servers? On the contrary.


It is my hope that SSG would develop plans to improve the new player experience, especially post "Salvation of Korthos" story arc in the Harbor and Marketplace to keep new players engaged longer and more willing to become premium and VIPs.

There is not much "new player experience" improvement margin in a 70 players server, because that's a ghost town.

[BigErkyKid]

Right now, 120 players in Argo.

[Arianrhod]

Has it occurred to you that there were server mergers BECAUSE the game was hemorrhaging players, not the other way around? And that if there hadnt been a consolidation, perhaps the game wouldn't have survived?
Companies consolidate servers because there aren't enough players; it is costly, complicated, sends a weird vibe, and players stand to face problems in the process.

Likely that is why, despite of the abysmal pops of some servers, DDO hasn't done it so far. However, it is getting to a fairly dramatic point in some servers. Server transfer tech has improved enormously; why not throw the players a bone?

The first server merge happened when there were 13 servers, and the company running the game felt 5 would be more appropriate. As has been noted, it went less than smoothly even then when there were far fewer factors involved. Later, 2 more servers were added, as population grew (Cannith & Orien), and another when the EU franchise went down (Wayfinder). While i would dread a server merge if one were to be announced, I wouldn't argue against it - if that's what SSG felt was best for the game I would adapt as best i could. Most of what i have said on the subject has had nothing whatsoever to do with attempting to influence SSG one way or another, but simply trying to point out to the players advocating for server merges that it seems very unlikely SSG will ever do it, and maybe they should look into other ways to accomplish their goals - take off the blinders that say "server merge or bust!" and try to come up with solutions that might actually happen. Say, for instance, getting together a discussion group of pro-merge players and deciding on a server that would work best for a free mass transfer, then lobbying SSG to do that once a solid proposal (and possibly also a formal petition) has been reached.

[Chai]

Companies do not consolidate hardware unless there is a financial incentive to do so. In the case of most server consolidations involving MMO's and similiar games, gaming companies have an incentive to do this because the company can return hardware to the leasing company and get out of the payments. If you lease a car it makes no difference to the leasing company whether you drive the vehicle or not, you still have to pay the bill. Same goes with Computer hardware. Most companies actually lease their hardware, especially server hardware, because there is a substantial savings involved. It is a little different from small low intensity computing games that are popular now using AWS, MS, Oracle and other cloud services like you mobile games, but that is a totally different model.
The Original release date for DDO: Stormreach was September 2005, before it was delayed multiple times and released on the February 28, 2006 that we all now celebrate. If you are going to return leased hardware to the leasing company than an August 2007 date becomes relevant assuming the hardware was delivered for the original lease date. The server merges for DDO were July 2007, enough time to dismantle and return the hardware to the leaser before a deadline somewhere in August/September.

At the time the server merges occurred, July 2007, the game was at a stable number of players. The game lost a large number of players post launch as the game jumpers who tried the game for 30 to 90 days left. The release of Modules 3 and 4 kept those players who were playing, playing and paying their monthly subscription. Even SirBruce's numbers will show that. After the server merge the number drop off, SirBruce's Numbers show a 25% loss of the playerbase. Those playing at the time probably feel like I do that the actual loss of Active Accounts was probably higher.

SirBruce is Bruce Woodcock who rose to fame for mmogchart.com and publication of the his projections of subscriptions numbers for games. He later acknowledged that for many games it was all guess work based upon press releases and a gut feeling. He stopped publishing numbers in 2008, I believe it was FunCom that finally called him out, maybe I will google it later.

As for DDO, as the dead horse will tell you, there are ample technological issues that make a Server merge or consolidation an expensive proposition, one that from where I sit I cannot see a large enough financial gain for SSG to move forward with it.

Again from where I sit, there is no reason to move forward with a server consolidation. I am not suddenly going to get double the number of available puggers or LFMs on the Social Panel. As it hasn't work that way. Historically Server Consolidation have not brought about the improved player experience that players who are clamoring for a server change want. As I wrote in my previous note neither DDO:Stormreach back in 2007 nor EA's SW:TOR in 2017 saw that, they actually saw the reverse of what players are clamoring for as the pool of available pugging characters got smaller.
IMHO Turbine learned a lot from the server merges of 2007 and actually tried to implement changes to improve the player experience, this includes quest design, a new healing classes (Favored Soul), other means of self healing, as well as bring other classes with those aspects to the game, Druids and Artificers.

"Servers" arent literally tethered to hardware and havent been so for 25 years, give or take. No hardware consolidation is required. The same population load can be distributed over the same hardware with half as many "server" divisions in the DB.


t is my hope that SSG would develop plans to improve the new player experience, especially post "Salvation of Korthos" story arc in the Harbor and Marketplace to keep new players engaged longer and more willing to become premium and VIPs.

We see alot of feedback regarding retention of new players on these boards. What retains new players more? Do new players like having a choice of 8 "servers" where the are very few people to group with on each, or would they be more compelled to stay if there were half as many "servers" with roughly double the number of people to group with each? One quarter as many "servers" with 4x the number of people to group with each?

"Server" merging and improving the new player experience are not mutually exclusive options. Server merging is part of the process of improving the new player experience.

[BigErkyKid]

The first server merge happened when there were 13 servers, and the company running the game felt 5 would be more appropriate. As has been noted, it went less than smoothly even then when there were far fewer factors involved. Later, 2 more servers were added, as population grew (Cannith & Orien), and another when the EU franchise went down (Wayfinder). While i would dread a server merge if one were to be announced, I wouldn't argue against it - if that's what SSG felt was best for the game I would adapt as best i could. Most of what i have said on the subject has had nothing whatsoever to do with attempting to influence SSG one way or another, but simply trying to point out to the players advocating for server merges that it seems very unlikely SSG will ever do it, and maybe they should look into other ways to accomplish their goals - take off the blinders that say "server merge or bust!" and try to come up with solutions that might actually happen. Say, for instance, getting together a discussion group of pro-merge players and deciding on a server that would work best for a free mass transfer, then lobbying SSG to do that once a solid proposal (and possibly also a formal petition) has been reached.

I think it has been said many times around here that most of us don't care if it is a transfer or whatever. But it cannot be a PAID transfers into a BLIND server with similar populations...

[GoldyGopher]

I think we can agree it would be the dream of any company to have to buy more hardware because they have "too many" players for their current capacity; downgrading capacity is not a sign of booming success. Server merges in MMOs have always been, from what I can tell, about consolidating the playerbase. The stories about the leasing of hardware being the primary drive seem off to me.

For companies it is all about money, how can they make more, because there is never enough.
The two biggest expenses game companies have are staffing and server operations. According FunCom and NcSoft and to some extent Blizzard, the cost of operating a single shard (cluster of servers that make up a game server) is $100 K a month. This includes Hardware Leases, Bandwidth, Power, Cooling, rental space in a Datacenter and other similar expenses. Second and subsequent shards cost less, but the decrease cost is a curve that levels off.
The only way to reduce that cost is to pull it out of data center and return it to the leasing company, if not unlike a leased car sitting in your driveway for six months you are still paying for it. This is why you can see clear correlations between server consolidation and what most likely are leasing dates of the hardware. It is after all all about the money, just ask Lord Business.

As Chai has stated Virtual Servers are no longer tethered to Physical servers, haven't been since the release of VMWARE ESXI back in 2011, but what company is going to spend a substantial amount of money to reorganize there Virtual and Physical server if there isn't a strong possibility to make more money then they currently are. Not here to talk about the various Hypervisor and Server Cluster technologies; most people will just tune it out.



Aside from the discredited source you bring to the table, it is clear that post launch the game did poorly (this is known and been confirmed by turbine employees). Launch was in 2006; does it sound far fecthed that they would consolidate the playerbase AFTER the drop that followed launch and initial subscriptions / players? It certainly seems more plausible than to think that the game had "stable number of players" and, to safe on the lease, they suddenly decided to merge a bunch of servers.
See above, even if Turbine was paying rock bottom prices for its hardware and data center expenses, going from 15 to 5 is going to save them substantial amounts of money. In a quarterly report EA credited the server consolidation of SW:TOR in helping it reduce its operations budget by 15 million dollars. It is the only thing EA cites, but EA acknowledged there were other cost cutting measures in play. I believe the total that EA saved in operations was 18 Million for 2018 vs. 2017.



If you don't think a server with more players has better grouping opportunities than a 70 players Thelanis, I don't know what to tell you.
Grouping opportunities include more than LFM posts. Grouping opportunities includes migration to new guilds, getting involved in different "grouping channels", new guild alliances, and so forth.



In my honest opinion, this explanation is stretching logic and is contradicted by current empirical observation. More players resulting in fewer groups? Are there fewer LFM/PUGs in the more populated servers? On the contrary.
As noted the number of LFMs in both DDO in 2007 and SW;TOR in 2017 over all went down. The best explanation that I can come up with are the ones that I have mentioned. Players moving to new guilds, new guild alliances, players joining various grouping channels. Using other means to find groups. Those players that didn't do that and relied on the social panels LFMs were the ones left out.



There is not much "new player experience" improvement margin in a 70 players server, because that's a ghost town.
From where I sit, my experience is principally on Khyber and Wayfinder, there is a decent number of new players (28 point builds below level 8) on both servers. By the time you reach level 12 on both servers there are practically no characters fitting that criteria. I have no idea what the retention rate is but it is not good, 5%, 1%, I just know it is not high enough. Increasing that retention rate even a couple of percentage points, to me. would greatly increase the number of players across all servers far more than a costly server merge which historically has been ineffective.

[BigErkyKid]

See above, even if Turbine was paying rock bottom prices for its hardware and data center expenses, going from 15 to 5 is going to save them substantial amounts of money. In a quarterly report EA credited the server consolidation of SW:TOR in helping it reduce its operations budget by 15 million dollars. It is the only thing EA cites, but EA acknowledged there were other cost cutting measures in play. I believe the total that EA saved in operations was 18 Million for 2018 vs. 2017.


Let's see if I follow: you say the primary motive for reducing the number of servers is to reduce server expenses. Is that correct?

If that is the case, why would they set up so many servers to begin with, if they were so expensive? Could the reason be that they expected a number of players, budgeted their server capacity around that, and since they had far fewer they decided to merge?

If that is not the correct explanation, aside of a description of how expensive servers are, could you please give me a reason why they would set up 15 servers originally, and then cut down to 5 in about a year?




Grouping opportunities include more than LFM posts. Grouping opportunities includes migration to new guilds, getting involved in different "grouping channels", new guild alliances, and so forth.
As noted the number of LFMs in both DDO in 2007 and SW;TOR in 2017 over all went down. The best explanation that I can come up with are the ones that I have mentioned. Players moving to new guilds, new guild alliances, players joining various grouping channels. Using other means to find groups. Those players that didn't do that and relied on the social panels LFMs were the ones left out.

As noted by CURRENT empirical evidence, this doesn't seem to be the case at all in 2019 DDO. Simply put, servers with more players have more groups, and you can see that for yourself logging across servers. And of course, servers with more players have more OPPORTUNITIES to group besides LFM/PUGS, simply because the possibility to coincide in interests is greater the more players there are.


From where I sit, my experience is principally on Khyber and Wayfinder, there is a decent number of new players (28 point builds below level 8) on both servers. By the time you reach level 12 on both servers there are practically no characters fitting that criteria. I have no idea what the retention rate is but it is not good, 5%, 1%, I just know it is not high enough. Increasing that retention rate even a couple of percentage points, to me. would greatly increase the number of players across all servers far more than a costly server merge which historically has been ineffective.

Go to other servers and live the around a 100 players experience in all its glory; there aren't many people within BB. Right now, there are about 10-20% of the players in a server fitting your criteria, make it 20%. In a server with 100 players, that's 20 players. Suppose currently the retention rate is 10% (so 2 players). Increasing that is NOT going to be equivalent or better than consolidation. Double retention rate? Great, now you have 2 extra players.

I think we have to be realistic: there aren't many new players coming, and hence retention rate changes are not going to populate the servers. Consolidation is the only realistic alternative. Not to speak of the fact that there is no better retention tool than servers with high population; people put up with a lot of **** to play popular games.

[ComicRelief]

"Servers" arent literally tethered to hardware and havent been so for 25 years, give or take.*snip*

Um...are you a time-traveler that forgot where he was? 25 years ago would have been 1994 and with all due respect, servers were very much tied to hardware back then...at least on this prime material plane. According to my (albeit admitted, limited) research, the first virtual machine platform was indeed introduced in 1997, but that's a long way from being in general use and also a long way from being a virtual "server". 2001 was the first created virtual server, but an actual available product wasn't available until 2006 is when VMWare first released a virtual server (yes, Microsoft did acquire an unreleased product called "virtual server" in 2003, but to reiterate, it was unreleased.)

Now, just because a product is released in 2006 does not mean it was readily implemented then. While a huge step forward, to be sure, these things tend to take some time to gain any traction, so a better estimate of when servers were severed from hardware is closer to 10-ish years. But even then, that does not mean that "everyone" jumped onto the virtual server bandwagon. Indeed, there are still holdouts today. Hyperbole notwithstanding, "25 years" is just a tad too hyperbolic for me.
;)

[Chai]

Um...are you a time-traveler that forgot where he was? 25 years ago would have been 1994 and with all due respect, servers were very much tied to hardware back then...at least on this prime material plane. According to my (albeit admitted, limited) research, the first virtual machine platform was indeed introduced in 1997, but that's a long way from being in general use and also a long way from being a virtual "server". 2001 was the first created virtual server, but an actual available product wasn't available until 2006 is when VMWare first released a virtual server (yes, Microsoft did acquire an unreleased product called "virtual server" in 2003, but to reiterate, it was unreleased.)

Now, just because a product is released in 2006 does not mean it was readily implemented then. While a huge step forward, to be sure, these things tend to take some time to gain any traction, so a better estimate of when servers were severed from hardware is closer to 10-ish years. But even then, that does not mean that "everyone" jumped onto the virtual server bandwagon. Indeed, there are still holdouts today. Hyperbole notwithstanding, "25 years" is just a tad too hyperbolic for me.
;)

What your research is pertaining to is likely consumer level VM-ware/player apps.

Converged systems go back as far as the mid 80s.

We began writing an MMO in '94 and the "servers" you could log into to play the game on in '99 were not one hardware box per "server" even then. While it can be implemented that way, that would be a poor decision in most if not all circumstances, and even if it was implemented that way, this does not create a situation where it must stay that way.

Edit:
TL;DR: Even with a strictly hardware implementation, you are still not limited to one "server" = one hardware "box." When you enter a quest on Sarlona the same hardware that is processing your game experience can (and likely is) processing someone else's game experience in another instance on Thelanis. These mythical limitations where Sarlona absolutely must be one HW "box" and Thelanis must absolutely be a different self contained HW "box" do not exist.

"box" ~= /tower/mainframe/blade/rack etc...

Why people continue to rail against this is beyond us. Everyone's in game QoL would be better with more players on less servers at this point, save for the few self imposed hermits who really should be playing single player games, whose experience would still not be negatively affected.

[Laymi]

Dead horse or not, here it goes.

Ever since my return to the game population levels have been bugging me. It is hard to get groups going, in part because there aren't that many people on to cover decently the gigantic level and difficulty spread.
Server mergers, or free server transfers into a consolidated server (I really don't care), seem the obvious way to go. I want to play relatively new content (not some forgotten old pack!) and, besides bugging old friends, I have no options since it just simply doesn't show up (or fill) in the LFM /pug scene. At the moment, this is one of the top impediments for me to enjoy the game.

So, here it goes. From now on, every time I log in I will post the population counts from the WHO panel in my server. I encourage you to do the same to hopefully motivate SSG to take some action to address this.

DAY 1 -- 8/7/2019 - UTC 14:00 - Argonessen: around 120 players.

DAY 2 -- 9/7/2019 - UTC 12:00 - Thelanis: around 70 players
DAY 2 -- 9/7/2019 - UTC 3:45 - Argonessen: around 100 players.

DAY 3 -- 10/7/2019 - UTC 9:00 - Thelanis: around 79 players
DAY 3 -- 10/7/2019 - UTC 13:27 - Argonessen: around 108 players
DAY 3 -- 10/7/2019 - UTC 23:15 - Khyber: around 160 players.
DAY 3 -- 10/7/2019 - UTC 23:15 - Sarlona: around 260 players.

DAY 4 -- 11/7/2019 - UTC 15:43 - Argonessen: around 120 players
You are going about this the wrong way. Not only do you cause issues with this continued spam of population issues, you also put a negative connotation on the game. First of all you want to be attracting players to come back or to try for the first time. The issues you are spamming are contrary to that endeavor. The only thing this will do is split the groups even further. Instead of posting, you should have inquired a personal log in page which could not be read by others. Next by voicing continually you become problematic instead of a voice of reason. Your top note "beating a dead horse" is negative and it shows that you are unwilling to hear the word "no". So far since I have begun playing and paying I have seen them add at least four characters, a number of new dlc's, rebuilt the alters, cleaned up several messes that was left from....... (I know who just unwilling to say negative things about a company who put many years in for my enjoyment.) Still if you are going to use population as your drive consider this, as a company they have to bring money back into their investors. There investors who read panels just like yours. If they get shaken up about the way it is working they may pull out and leave us with nothing. (Things to consider) Finally, I have found several companies who did like you are suggesting but instead of pulling people together, people left in droves. Some came back after the company started offering "special" incentives however the final outcome is typically the same. They fold up. Now you have probably seen some that are survivors but that number is small compared to the games that just gave up. I am 53 years old and have gamed since gaming was a thing. This is not speculation, it is experience. So stop please, I for one, well for four since I have others in my family who play the game are glad that they still have this game and are working hard to improve it. -

[Chai]

You are going about this the wrong way. Not only do you cause issues with this continued spam of population issues, you also put a negative connotation on the game. First of all you want to be attracting players to come back or to try for the first time. The issues you are spamming are contrary to that endeavor. The only thing this will do is split the groups even further. Instead of posting, you should have inquired a personal log in page which could not be read by others. Next by voicing continually you become problematic instead of a voice of reason. Your top note "beating a dead horse" is negative and it shows that you are unwilling to hear the word "no". So far since I have begun playing and paying I have seen them add at least four characters, a number of new dlc's, rebuilt the alters, cleaned up several messes that was left from....... (I know who just unwilling to say negative things about a company who put many years in for my enjoyment.) Still if you are going to use population as your drive consider this, as a company they have to bring money back into their investors. There investors who read panels just like yours. If they get shaken up about the way it is working they may pull out and leave us with nothing. (Things to consider) Finally, I have found several companies who did like you are suggesting but instead of pulling people together, people left in droves. Some came back after the company started offering "special" incentives however the final outcome is typically the same. They fold up. Now you have probably seen some that are survivors but that number is small compared to the games that just gave up. I am 53 years old and have gamed since gaming was a thing. This is not speculation, it is experience. So stop please, I for one, well for four since I have others in my family who play the game are glad that they still have this game and are working hard to improve it. -

Which companies were those, specifically?

[erethizon]

TR Cache isn't an issue FOR YOU. That's awesome for you. It is going to be an issue for other people.

Oh, you were still level 5 and had all of your epic gear in your TR Cache during a break from DDO when the server merge happened? So sorry...

(Edit - And I'm even saying this as someone who REALLY wants server merges.)

When you open your bank tab you see a small 20 box page and 5 tabs for a total of 100 spaces. They should duplicate this exact thing so that when you open your bank you see your TR cache, shared storage, and not one of these 100 space bank boxes but 2 or 3 of them. All of the stuff from your TR cache should be auto-transferred to these tabs so the TR cache is empty. Then all the stuff can transfer from to your new, larger bank with nothing in anyone's TR cache so the servers can merge. Whether these tabs are permanent (thus giving players much needed storage) or simply a one time thing (to enable the transfer) can be open to debate. They could also use these new bank tabs as the new TR cache (requiring them to be empty each time you TR because all your stuff will be put in them at the time of TRing). Ideally, if they go with the latter option, you could freely use this space for the life of your character (unlike the current TR cache that does not allow you to put anything in the TR cache once you have taken it out).

[BigErkyKid]

First of all you want to be attracting players to come back or to try for the first time.

It is not my job to advertise the game, and I will most certainly not lure players to dead servers such as Thelanis, and to a certain extent, mine. I'd happily recommend one of the more populated ones, which I getting to know through my monitoring, and not because SSG gives any hints whatsoever. As a new player, choosing a server is kind of gamble.

All this seeing the consolidation of the playerbase as an admission of defeat, which must be avoided at all costs, strikes me as self defeating. The population is what it is: in some servers, extremely low; in others, not so much.

The hush hush attitude towards the game is what, in my opinion, leaves us worse off. From praising subpar PrE, destinies, and class passes (helloooo henshin), to defending empty servers, all this does is drown legitimate criticism and frustrate improvements to the game.

Not all is good, not all is bad.

[GoldyGopher]

Let's see if I follow: you say the primary motive for reducing the number of servers is to reduce server expenses. Is that correct?

If that is the case, why would they set up so many servers to begin with, if they were so expensive? Could the reason be that they expected a number of players, budgeted their server capacity around that, and since they had far fewer they decided to merge?

If that is not the correct explanation, aside of a description of how expensive servers are, could you please give me a reason why they would set up 15 servers originally, and then cut down to 5 in about a year?

If we jump in the way back machine, I am sure Mr. Peabody won't mind, and go back to 2003/4 timeframe, before Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft launched everyone was trying to figure out what was going to be the next great game. At the time everyone knew it was going to be a Fantasy based Game as the Sci-Fi games took their best shot in the previous couple of years.

Everquest 2 launched and failed to reach its goal.
WoW launched less than month later and it too had a less than spectacular launch. In December 2004 the most popular of those two games was the Original Everquest (which was second to a game called Lineage). But this is where the two games, EQ2 and WoW, diverged. WoW's subscription numbers climbed and virtually everyone else's declined, EQ and EQ2 were hit hard. Companies that evaluated player subscriptions, both publically facing ones like mmogchart under SirBruce and those behind paywalls believed that people who were playing WoW were waiting for the something better. Better graphics, better game play, better storylines, well anything.

The most hyped game in early 2005 was a second game from a little company in MA, which recently re-branded itself as Turbine. The game was Dungeons & Dragons Online: Ebberon. DDO: Eberron had a lot of things going for it, first WoW wasn't the juggernaught it would become in a few short months, many existing games were showing their age, it had name recognition, and it had a plan to be a different kind of game.
This is where things fall apart for the story of DDO:E. The game was massively underfunded, over budget and behind schedule, the second two directly related to the first one. However launch was planned for September 2005 and hardware needed to be ordered. The hardware was, and iirc there was enough hardware to support 18 servers.
When the launch dates started to get pushed back cuts to the game were made and bugs that should have been dealt with were ignored. DDO:E was re-branded DDO: Stormreach and the slimmed down, bug ridden game was launched Feb 28, 2006. On the eve of launch the number of servers was cut from 18 to 15. The group that I belonged with had planned to play on Risia which was cut from the list.

The launch was too late for DDO:S to take advantage of what had been a great opportunity, WoW subscriptions exploded in the second half of 2005, going from between 1 and 1.2 million subscribers to 4 million, and doubling again in 2006 to 8 million. WoW won and DDO:S had failed to show up basically.

The Game launched with over 25,000 in the early access, and 150,000 + in the first weeks.
Players who had participated in open beta saw whole quest chains eliminated, the ladder bug was everywhere, and someone always fell through the bridges in waterworks. Archers ruled the game, and mob AI was awful. The servers didn't feel empty during this time frame. At the time there was no such thing as casual players, everyone was fairly hardcore, you just dropped $50 on the game you were going to get your moneys worth to determine if you were going to stay on board. People left, in scores in those first three months.

Between the first purge and server merge however the player population was fairly consistent. It wasn't high but it was a ghost town either. You will have to note the level cap was 12 and there were only 10 or so large public instances. It still didn't feel empty.



As noted by CURRENT empirical evidence, this doesn't seem to be the case at all in 2019 DDO. Simply put, servers with more players have more groups, and you can see that for yourself logging across servers. And of course, servers with more players have more OPPORTUNITIES to group besides LFM/PUGS, simply because the possibility to coincide in interests is greater the more players there are.
That is not historically the result of server consolidations from many games that have gown through it.


Go to other servers and live the around a 100 players experience in all its glory; there aren't many people within BB. Right now, there are about 10-20% of the players in a server fitting your criteria, make it 20%. In a server with 100 players, that's 20 players. Suppose currently the retention rate is 10% (so 2 players). Increasing that is NOT going to be equivalent or better than consolidation. Double retention rate? Great, now you have 2 extra players.

I think we have to be realistic: there aren't many new players coming, and hence retention rate changes are not going to populate the servers. Consolidation is the only realistic alternative. Not to speak of the fact that there is no better retention tool than servers with high population; people put up with a lot of **** to play popular games.

DDO actually attracts a fair amount of new players. Currently most of them are now on the current default server. There are many reasons why, but the retention rate is abysmal, the other day there was more than 100 unguilded characters on that server under level 8. By far and away the most characters under 10 of any four other servers combined. That to me screams new players. Those characters get to level 8 to 12 and generally disappear.

[erethizon]

This thread confuses me. You can "merge" anytime you feel like with a server transfer.

Sweet! Just let me know which server contains ALL the other players and I'll merge over to it right now!

[BigErkyKid]

The launch was too late for DDO:S to take advantage of what had been a great opportunity [...] People left, in scores in those first three months.

And hence it makes sense to think that is why the cut down on the number of servers? Because they envisioned originally DDO as a huge hit, and when it wasn't, they didn't need the much smaller population spread out between 18 servers? I mean, I like reading about this stuff, but are you making my point?



That is not historically the result of server consolidations from many games that have gown through it.


More populated servers have more LFM postings going on, in DDO 2019; that is a fact. Whether these other games did poorly after merging because of it, or rather, because the games were doing down anyway and merging was a last attempt, is beyond the point here. There aren't enough players in some servers, and just because yours has a sufficient number for you (arguably you are in one of the most populated), it doesn't mean that all is good. Transfer to Thelanis with BoBo for a few months and tell me how great that is.



DDO actually attracts a fair amount of new players. Currently most of them are now on the current default server. There are many reasons why, but the retention rate is abysmal, the other day there was more than 100 unguilded characters on that server under level 8. By far and away the most characters under 10 of any four other servers combined. That to me screams new players. Those characters get to level 8 to 12 and generally disappear.

100 players, that's great. Now suppose we manage to go from keeping 10% to (10)to 20%, surely a big success. Yet, that's 10 extra players. How does this solve the problem of Thelanis and Argonessen? The game brings in a relatively low number of other players (as it is natural for game its age), and keeps very few of them. Getting servers with enough players won't happen if we expect the new players to be the lion's share of the growth.

Let me put it this way: why would it bother you if they offered free passage and some help (guilds, etc.) to a new "consolidated" server?

[harmlesslarry]

I had thought that with Sharn, we would see a boost in pop like we did with ravenloft, but that hasn't happened. Im thinking people are holding out til its on sale for DDO pts to buy it (I know I am)

Ive noticed something else that is disturbing me. The LFMS are typically what they've been for the past few years except that there is only one member of the group usually, and they rarely fill anymore. When people join my group, come to find out they don't use voice chat anymore- and most don't reply if they can hear you or not so I wind up typing "Can you hear me?" and some say yes others say nothing. IDK if its a cycle of new players? Did the old ones leave? Seems to be drying up with new plants not being as sturdy

[GoldyGopher]

And hence it makes sense to think that is why the cut down on the number of servers? Because they envisioned originally DDO as a huge hit, and when it wasn't, they didn't need the much smaller population spread out between 18 servers? I mean, I like reading about this stuff, but are you making my point?

If the server leases were up in Sept. 2009 the server merge wouldn't have happened until July 2009. That's what I am telling you, there needs to be a compelling financial reason for a game company to spend money. Not renewing the leases on all that hardware was.





More populated servers have more LFM postings going on, in DDO 2019; that is a fact. Whether these other games did poorly after merging because of it, or rather, because the games were doing down anyway and merging was a last attempt, is beyond the point here. There aren't enough players in some servers, and just because yours has a sufficient number for you (arguably you are in one of the most populated), it doesn't mean that all is good. Transfer to Thelanis with BoBo for a few months and tell me how great that is.

You are making an apples to oranges comparison to justify your position rather than look at what historically has happened when DDO and other games did a server merge.
Let say you merge Khyber with Thelanis. Right now Khyber has 10 LFMs posted and Thelanis 4. What you expect to happen is that the new combined server to have 14 LFMs. It won't if it follows the historical norms other games have seen after server merges. First there is overlap in the LFMs, where both servers have the same LFM posted, those merges into a single LFM, second players in smaller guilds typical jump ship and join bigger guilds, they no longer will be posting LFMs. There also will be guild alliances running content together in private channels. So instead of 14 or 10 LFMs there will only be say 8 LFMs. Is that accomplishing what you want?



100 players, that's great. Now suppose we manage to go from keeping 10% to (10)to 20%, surely a big success. Yet, that's 10 extra players. How does this solve the problem of Thelanis and Argonessen? The game brings in a relatively low number of other players (as it is natural for game its age), and keeps very few of them. Getting servers with enough players won't happen if we expect the new players to be the lion's share of the growth.

For argument sake, let say 1,000 new players a month try out DDO. Right now I suspect the retention rate for two months is in the low single digits. So 5% would be 50 players. We know that retention rate is higher than the loss rate of current players because the number of players on the default server climbs. It not huge but if the server is losing 45 players a month and it is gain 50 that is a net sum of 5 players. If the retention rate goes up even a couple of points the growth would be larger. So instead of growing by 5 players a month the server would grow by 25 players, five times as many players.
Now start rotating that default server around.
Now server experiencing a loss of 45 characters suddenly see a growth and secondary growth starts as 5 players decide to stick it out another month because there is more people to run with...



Let me put it this way: why would it bother you if they offered free passage and some help (guilds, etc.) to a new "consolidated" server?
I would rather see SSG spend their limited resources elsewhere.

[BigErkyKid]

I would rather see SSG spend their limited resources elsewhere.

So I guess we are done here.

I appreciate the civility of the tone, but honestly, saying this to us folks in small servers is harsh. And transfering to a server with a marginally higher population won't solve the issue. Your server in my European play time has 160 players, still not a lot.

[LucidLTS]

...
DDO actually attracts a fair amount of new players. Currently most of them are now on the current default server. There are many reasons why, but the retention rate is abysmal, the other day there was more than 100 unguilded characters on that server under level 8. By far and away the most characters under 10 of any four other servers combined. That to me screams new players. Those characters get to level 8 to 12 and generally disappear.
First, I want to say that reading your interpretation of the events is fascinating. A member of my gaming group tried DDO at launch but reported it as buggy and not worth it, so the rest of us stuck with pencil and paper. I played console games, but no PC RPGs. So I wasn't really paying attention to what was going on. This explains a great deal.

But to your comment about retention, this very much mirrors my observations. I make a point of helping new players when I can, even giving them my IRL contact info if we hit it off in game. I also recruit RL friends into the games I play, sometimes including DDO. I brought 2 new players into DDO in 2018, both lasted to about level 6.

It wasn't lack of grouping that caused them to bail, though. They had plenty of opportunity (including a standing offer from myself and another guild member to go online with them whenever they wanted someone to game with). They didn't even want me to open the quests up to PUGs or non-guild friends I game with when they came on, they wanted me to keep it just guild after a few quests where I tried to show them how LFMs work. Not because any of the puggers or my friends were jerks, either, I thought they were decent runs.

I still group with them, just not in DDO, we continue to play in other games. They bailed on DDO because of frustration. Frustration with lag, frustration with inventory, frustration with being a lot less powerful when they grouped with established players, and frustration with bugs like unresponsive pets, targeting errors, AoE gaps, etc.

This whole thread seems to take for granted that not enough players around is the main reason people leave DDO, but I just don't think it's that high on the list of why most people leave, it certainly didn't even make the list from the ones I know we lost.

[Maldorin]

This whole thread seems to take for granted that not enough players around is the main reason people leave DDO, but I just don't think it's that high on the list of why most people leave, it certainly didn't even make the list from the ones I know we lost.

Low pop is definitely a reason many veterans leave or take breaks.

My entire guild disappeared on Orien around 2012 right before Menace mostly because grouping issues.

Usually when I can't play with my friends I do something else. I pug every now and then and have concluded the 30 level spread combined with so many types of TRing, reaper and bravery bonus have made grouping kind of challenging. I like reaper. But it wasn't all good for the game.

[whoolsey]

Why should the devs merge the servers?
Sure, for a short whille, it will fix things now but what about the long term? What about identifying why the game bleeds people?

Many members of my old guild left, citing the grind, p2w and nerfs.
The grind is insane in ddo, so many past lives, reaper points and gear runs.
P2w is another issue, bags, inv&bank space, tomes (that rarely drop anymore), p2w classes and races, etc.
And ohhhh boy, the nerfs, nothing feels like a kick in the nether region like finishing all your past lives, getting back to cap and hear your build just got nerfed into the ground, for no good reason.
And i include mechanical changes that leave playstyles behind as nerfs.
A good example was reaper mode, it favored some playstyle over others. Thus some players started running around with reaper wings a month after the introduction (often by exploiting a select group of quests)

Combined with the now 14!!! Difficulties, sread over 30 levels, it's getting harder and harder to find groups, not only within your level and prefered dificulty but also within the correct player skills for that setting.

Ddo is just to time consuming and the difficulty just too insane for less dedicated people, players who can't fill a normal or hard lfm.

My wife and i look on the boards from the outside, we stopped playing a whille ago, we still haven't bought sharn.
Her (uber completionist) toons underpreform in content (due to the content and mechanics changing), making it a lot less fun to play.
I only check the boards for 1 topic, a good reason for her to start playing again, the preposed changes to primal and hopefully a fix for 2hf feats.
Of course some of the dev responces (flimsey and lyn) haven't inspired us to start playing either. It looks like the loot is still a mess and feedback on gear for certain playstyles automaticaly falls on deaf ears.
But until them, we're one of the thousands of players who stopped playing, occasionally popping our heads in to see what's going on, hoping for better days.

So maybe, instead of server mergers, the devs could focus on retention?

[MasterKernel]

Sweet! Just let me know which server contains ALL the other players and I'll merge over to it right now!
It's easy — the one that do not work at all. Find it and thranfer there. XD

No, really. Look at the anniversary event's streams : ~40 people in one zone waiting for the goodies from Cordovan = insane lags and server crash. Therefore, the server with all of the current players won't even start. But you can keep your dreams about servers merge, yeah.


PS. Servers merge won't solve a thing. 20 people playing on 2 servers within their guilds or 20 people on 1 server playing within their guilds — there is no any difference ! LFM would be empty, the chat would be dead and you still won't be able to find a group. The only thing servers merge can possibly bring are insane lags ! :-\

PPS.
P2w is another issue, bags, inv&bank space, tomes (that rarely drop anymore), p2w classes and races, etc.
Oh, stop with this nonsense already. There is nothing to win in DDO. There is no PvP in DDO. What are you going to win, eh ?! P2W concept can't be applied to DDO at all.

[whoolsey]

It's easy — the one that do not work at all. Find it and thranfer there. XD

No, really. Look at the anniversary event's streams : ~40 people in one zone waiting for the goodies from Cordovan = insane lags and server crash. Therefore, the server with all of the current players won't even start. But you can keep your dreams about servers merge, yeah.


PS. Servers merge won't solve a thing. 20 people playing on 2 servers within their guilds or 20 people on 1 server playing within their guilds — there is no any difference ! LFM would be empty, the chat would be dead and you still won't be able to find a group. The only thing servers merge can possibly bring are insane lags ! :-\

PPS.
Oh, stop with this nonsense already. There is nothing to win in DDO. There is no PvP in DDO. What are you going to win, eh ?! P2W concept can't be applied to DDO at all.

You're mixing p2w with pvp.

If i wanted to complete a raid, content i paid for, i need a group of people capable of doing so, not just in terms of being able to play together, listen to directions, etc but also mechanicaly being able to pull off a build that can survive and do it's role.
With the growing dificulty and groups wanting to do the higher difficulties to compensate for the abysmal droprates, i need to have toons at the right level range that are powerfull enough to do so.
That or turn into that guy that posts for leg shroud every evening and never filling.

So stat tomes,
Skill tomes,
Exp tomes (pl grinding)
Space (to carry the loot to sell/deconstruct or feed to a sentient gem)
Exp potions,
Shards to reroll chests,
Slayer pots,
Epic destinies,
Classes and races for racial&heroic completionist,
Etc

All bought power, all of that and more makes it more likely to be picked for a raid or quest party.

If you don't keep up, you fall behind, you fall behind, you're left behind..... No acces to the raids you paid for.
You pay to keep up, you pay to bypass some of the insane grind, just to be there when a raid is fresh and new. Miss out by 6-12 months and barrely anyone will play it, p2w.
You just have a limited view of what winning is.

[BoBoDaClown]

Oh, stop with this nonsense already. There is nothing to win in DDO. There is no PvP in DDO. What are you going to win, eh ?! P2W concept can't be applied to DDO at all.

That's not how most people view p2w, since most games don't actually offer a literal pay to win.

You are paying to get an 'advantage' = p2w.

This is the most p2w game I have played and it doesn't sit well, but it is what it is.

[MasterKernel]

You're mixing p2w with pvp.
Nope.


If i wanted to complete a raid
You need to have the adventure pack and sometimes do the pre-quests. Sometimes you need several people to help you with the levers and such. That's all you need. Put the difficulty slider to 'Casual' and do your stuff with half-naked HOrc Bard/FvS/Rogue half asleep. There is no need to do anything on R10 to make it counts as 'complete' it would be complete on any difficulty setting. And even on R10, what would you win at ? There is nothing in the game to compare your achievements (that don't exist in DDO too) with, therefore, how can you determine who is the winner ? :-\

So you may stop with your accusations, all of them are lies anyway.

[MasterKernel]

You are paying to get an 'advantage' = p2w.
Yes. So, what advantages will you get from a bag ? Less log-in/log-out to swap your stuff (you won't ever use but can't let it go) ? Such huuuuuge advantage, how can we live without the one !

Or Tomes ? You'll kill that one monster in 5 seconds compared to 7 seconds with the character without the tomes boost ? Yeah, cool.

Yet it can't change the fact that you can't compare your characters or your achievements or anything in the game. Therefore, there is no way to determine the winner. Can't win — no P2W.

[BigErkyKid]

Yes. So, what advantages will you get from a bag ? Less log-in/log-out to swap your stuff (you won't ever use but can't let it go) ? Such huuuuuge advantage, how can we live without the one !

Or Tomes ? You'll kill that one monster in 5 seconds compared to 7 seconds with the character without the tomes boost ? Yeah, cool.

Yet it can't change the fact that you can't compare your characters or your achievements or anything in the game. Therefore, there is no way to determine the winner. Can't win — no P2W.

Oh dear, the p2win discussion has entered the thread...

I will bite: p2win, in games, takes many forms because in reality it is p4fun what you are doing.

In PVP games, fun equates to winning (for a lot of people), meaning beating the opposing team. Hence, things that give you a power advantage are p2win<->p4fun.

In PVE games, fun can take many forms, which, as you say, don't necessarily have to do with traditional "winning":


Faster rate of progression (p4experience): XP tomes, XP pots, otto boxes, I hardly ever see anyone leveling without a pot, probably the top money maker of DDO atm.
A chance to try again (p4lifes): cakes, since having to repeat a long quest because of a tiny mistake or bad lack could be aggravating; arguably, not super popular in groups in DDO.
Better chances at loot (p4loot): Chest rerolls, soon elixirs of discovery.
Making life easier (p4convenience): Bank space and a lot of other things.
Avoiding waiting (p2playnow): Raid timers.
More power (p4power): Tomes of various kinds, which have abysmall drop rates.


Non of those things come with the base game, all of them are designed, in conjunction with game design, to make the game more fun if you spend money. Sure, some people will grind PLs and gather free SSG points. Others will favor farm. That is fine, but the game is not designed for them or around their playstyles.

You'll notice that, possibly, the least amount of revenue comes from p2play. Have a look at the price of ravenloft today, and compare it to a lot of the p4fun options listed. I bet that's whats keeping the lights on, given the current business model.

[whoolsey]

Nope.


You need to have the adventure pack and sometimes do the pre-quests. Sometimes you need several people to help you with the levers and such. That's all you need. Put the difficulty slider to 'Casual' and do your stuff with half-naked HOrc Bard/FvS/Rogue half asleep. There is no need to do anything on R10 to make it counts as 'complete' it would be complete on any difficulty setting. And even on R10, what would you win at ? There is nothing in the game to compare your achievements (that don't exist in DDO too) with, therefore, how can you determine who is the winner ? :-\

So you may stop with your accusations, all of them are lies anyway.
No? Yes demonstrably so
Casual raid setting, realy?
Lets assume it was a mistake and you meant normal, go take your suggested gimp build and go do a normal kt, thth,rots or even a shroud. Please, let us know how it went.
And where are these other people magicaly popping out off?
People can't get a shroud, ridding out the storm or even killing time filled.
It's clear you're no where near the game experience that we have, feel free to return when you have walked a mile or 2 in our shoes.


Yes. So, what advantages will you get from a bag ? Less log-in/log-out to swap your stuff (you won't ever use but can't let it go) ? Such huuuuuge advantage, how can we live without the one !

Or Tomes ? You'll kill that one monster in 5 seconds compared to 7 seconds with the character without the tomes boost ? Yeah, cool.

Yet it can't change the fact that you can't compare your characters or your achievements or anything in the game. Therefore, there is no way to determine the winner. Can't win — no P2W.

5-7 seconds is the difference between life and death for a melee, not all of us play casual arties and casters.
And tomes are required on some builds for feats.
There is also reputations to uphold, a bad rep(from dying to much or not holding your own) gets you blacklisted asap, esecialy from the higher tier crowd that can actually complete a raid.
If you don't measure up, you'll end up ignored and don't get to play or finish a raid.



Oh dear, the p2win discussion has entered the thread...

I will bite: p2win, in games, takes many forms because in reality it is p4fun what you are doing.

In PVP games, fun equates to winning (for a lot of people), meaning beating the opposing team. Hence, things that give you a power advantage are p2win<->p4fun.

In PVE games, fun can take many forms, which, as you say, don't necessarily have to do with traditional "winning":


Faster rate of progression (p4experience): XP tomes, XP pots, otto boxes, I hardly ever see anyone leveling without a pot, probably the top money maker of DDO atm.
A chance to try again (p4lifes): cakes, since having to repeat a long quest because of a tiny mistake or bad lack could be aggravating; arguably, not super popular in groups in DDO.
Better chances at loot (p4loot): Chest rerolls, soon elixirs of discovery.
Making life easier (p4convenience): Bank space and a lot of other things.
Avoiding waiting (p2playnow): Raid timers.
More power (p4power): Tomes of various kinds, which have abysmall drop rates.


Non of those things come with the base game, all of them are designed, in conjunction with game design, to make the game more fun if you spend money. Sure, some people will grind PLs and gather free SSG points. Others will favor farm. That is fine, but the game is not designed for them or around their playstyles.

You'll notice that, possibly, the least amount of revenue comes from p2play. Have a look at the price of ravenloft today, and compare it to a lot of the p4fun options listed. I bet that's whats keeping the lights on, given the current business model.

Yeah, kinda like this, you pay for an advantige, sure there is no clear finish line but money does get you ahead.

[BoBoDaClown]

Or Tomes ? You'll kill that one monster in 5 seconds compared to 7 seconds with the character without the tomes boost ? Yeah, cool.



7 seconds -> 5 seconds.

nom

[Chai]

Oh, stop with this nonsense already. There is nothing to win in DDO. There is no PvP in DDO. What are you going to win, eh ?! P2W concept can't be applied to DDO at all.

Its pretty widely accepted in video game communities that the practice of paywalling+grindwalling items = p2w. There are a number of videos now exposing this even in single player games with zero pvp, where they allow you to buy an endgame weapon up front and use it, but if you earn it in game you dont receive it until very close to the end of the plot when there are 1-2 maps left to play through. Due to the gaming community exposing those titles for engaging in such activity, most if not all flopped/didnt meat projections/and in some cases cancelled in specific markets due to failure in markets already released in.

As this relates to DDO, this gets brought up in alot of merge discussions, as most of the issues for why a merge wont happen are not tech related, but paid-feature related. Money sunk into guild ships, character slots with each character having bought-and-paid-for character power on them, shared bank slots, etc...is what will cause the riots here if merges ever do happen and are handled poorly.

People claiming it wont solve the population issues are simply incorrect. No one will get mad having more people to play with. The self imposed solo hermits can self imposed solo DDO regardless if there are 100 players per server, or 1500 players per server.



Or Tomes ? You'll kill that one monster in 5 seconds compared to 7 seconds with the character without the tomes boost ? Yeah, cool.


Buying a +8 tome = buying a 20% chance to land DC spells. Show me another game where you can buy a 20% increase in character power straight cash, and I'll show you a p2w game.

[BigErkyKid]

DAY 5 -- 12/7/2019 - UTC 12:49 - Argonessen: around 108 players

[Goalt]

I went on Thelanis and opened the "Socials" tab to find that, on the entire server, there were only two level 14s (including myself). Great!
7/5/2019; 5 a.m. UTC


SSG probably doesn't even care. I feel like there have already been a lot of topics about server merging, and they (claim) to check the forums, so they're probably not listening. I mean, do you really think SSG's going to hold onto DDO for long?

... :confused:

As for new players, most of them leave because the game gets boring. DDO is a MMO. If all you have out there are VIPs trying to grind out xp as fast as possible, it doesn't make the game very fun. Imagine playing WoW without friends.

But hey, who cares, right? Just as long as SSG gets the $$$, everything's good, right?
They're making the game as if it were still alive.

[0ldschool]

Cannith pop counts (who panel)

Total (Lvl 20-30, Lvl 30 only)
__________________________________
330 (109,?) 7/13/19 @ 1745 UTC (Sat)
317 (83,?) 7/14/19 @ 0445 UTC (Sat/Sun)
470 (134,47) 7/14/19 @ 1830 UTC (Sun)
187 (54,24) 7/15/19 @ 0530 UTC (Mon)
153 (41,13) 7/15/19 @ 0700 UTC (Mon)
405 (105,43) 7/16/19 @ 0245 UTC (Mon evening US)
190 (49,18) 7/16/19 @ 0600 UTC (Tue)
201 (52,25) 7/16/19 @ 1430 UTC (Tue)
283 (79,35) 7/16/19 @ 1800 UTC (Tue)

[Yokido]

Signed, either merge or make lfms cross server, either is a valid fix imho.

Lfms =\= Someone to play with

Many things require a full party to run such as THTH or Baba's hut or LH Shroud or KT.

Unless a raid can be shortmanned I don't expect to get a raid going at -any- time of day on Cannith of all places. Tonnes of small groups running Reaper or xp farming, but that's about it. For raids if they reduced timer penalties by a day or so that might help too.

[CaptainPurge]

Unless a raid can be shortmanned I don't expect to get a raid going at -any- time of day on Cannith of all places.

Because the raids you try to run are old and irrelevant and there is an opportunity cost of time vs running content people care about. You can run heroic HoX and ADQ all day meanwhile other people play newer content that they find more interesting in 2019.

[Yokido]

Purge my sanity check isn't due until Wednesday, you're early, and now I'm sad.

Are you happy with yourself, making innocent adults that look like children cry?

For shame.

[BoBoDaClown]

So, tonight it looks like Thelanis is having a good night - a whole 142 people! IT'S ALIVE. (time of numbers = time of posting, roughly)


I went into each server to see what the numbers were for levels 1-19, 20-29. 30, total. My main interest is 30. and 20-29.



SERVER 1-19 20-29 30 TOTAL

Thelanis 82 37 23 142

Khyber 67 30 21 118

Cannith 124 30 10 164

Argo 76 24 10 110

Ghalland 73 34 21 128

Sarlona 85 39 16 140

Orien 70 19 9 98





So, to those who come up the fantastic idea of paying for a transfer in a already ridiculously expensive game, there are two issues:

1) While I could potentially transfer, I have a guildee who it would cost a heap of money to do so for - since he has, get this, more than one character... So sticking it on the customer is often prohibitively expensive.


2) What's the point? Those numbers are all dire. My server has some of the best numbers for endgame and etr - which is the only part of the game I'm concerned with, and my servers numbers are DIRE.

So DIRE, that SSG should be addressing this.

-cross server LFM tool- tech probably too hard for them
-server merge - fraught with difficulties (I'm fine with it though)
-free server transfers - this seems to be the way to go. Just do it SSG.

[BigErkyKid]

Thank you, everyone, for your continued support in the thread. Please keep posting the samples!

[BigErkyKid]

DAY 7 -- 14/7/2019 - UTC 09:42 - Argonessen: around 102 players

[CaptainPurge]

Purge my sanity check isn't due until Wednesday, you're early, and now I'm sad.

Are you happy with yourself, making innocent adults that look like children cry?

For shame.
Look, i wasn't being a **** just pointing things out.
I provided a truthful statement. If that makes you cry it's on you. My statement in general was to your idea that raiding is dead on Cannith just because you can't fill an ADQ. For shame. Area 51 raid incoming.

[BigErkyKid]

Many things require a full party to run such as THTH or Baba's hut or LH Shroud or KT.



Because the raids you try to run are old and irrelevant and there is an opportunity cost of time vs running content people care about. You can run heroic HoX and ADQ all day meanwhile other people play newer content that they find more interesting in 2019.


Look, i wasn't being a **** just pointing things out.
I provided a truthful statement. If that makes you cry it's on you. My statement in general was to your idea that raiding is dead on Cannith just because you can't fill an ADQ. For shame. Area 51 raid incoming.

I am missing something here? How are THTH, Baba, KT, LH Shroud "old and irrelevant"? How is this a truthful statement?

Right when I logged off there were barely enough capped players to fill a SINGLE raid group in Argonessen. I logged in, tidied up inventory, crunched some stuff, then logged off.

Why? Because there were no players to run the content I want to run; i.e. end game content (and not necessarily a raid). It is not a matter of being in a channel or what not; there aren't enough bodies in the server!

The populations are small and very spread out. While some servers, at some times, seem to have more activity, this is far from universal, and it doesn't cover enough of the day for other time zones.

Consolidating the playerbase would most certainly expand the grouping possibilities. Not everyone will group, post, accept PUGS, be open to strangers, and what not; but certainly a fraction will. This is precisely what the game needs, consolidated servers so that players don't log off because they cannot find people to run content.

[boredGamer]

Because the raids you try to run are old and irrelevant and there is an opportunity cost of time vs running content people care about. You can run heroic HoX and ADQ all day meanwhile other people play newer content that they find more interesting in 2019.


I am missing something here? How are THTH, Baba, KT, LH Shroud "old and irrelevant"? How is this a truthful statement?


It's right in the quote you quoted. CP obviously *implying* Y tries to run hox / adq and doesn't fill.

I don't know how true *that* statement is - but it seems pretty obvious what the implication is here.

[BigErkyKid]

It's right in the quote you quoted. CP obviously *implying* Y tries to run hox / adq and doesn't fill.

I don't know how true *that* statement is - but it seems pretty obvious what the implication is here.

Yes, but the original statement by the poster Cptn was replying to is in my post, and it says nothing about HOX/ADQ.

Poster Yokido: I cannot fill raid groups for THTH, KT, Strahd, Baba, or lShroud.

Poster Cptn: You are trying to run irrelevant content like HOX/ADQ so your groups won't fill; people want to run the newer content.

That's why I was asking if there was something missing, or the second poster came up with a straight Xoriat **** answer.

[CaptainPurge]

It's right in the quote you quoted. CP obviously *implying* Y tries to run hox / adq and doesn't fill.

I don't know how true *that* statement is - but it seems pretty obvious what the implication is here.

I know him on Cannith and he's run HoX pugs for centuries, there's nothing wrong with that but you are correct.

[Yokido]

Capt knows I don't only run ancient stuff these days (or atleast he should). He's right I ran retro raids only for many years hehe. Truth be told though, still can't fill the current bread n butter raids even with sending 100 /tells to advertise it.

<3 You Purge

[BigErkyKid]

So, one more day, one more data point.

DAY 8 -- 15/7/2019 - UTC 14:02 - Argonessen: around 101 players.

With 15 players at level 30, tell me about running raids.

[SpartanKiller13]

Many things require a full party to run such as THTH or Baba's hut or LH Shroud or KT.

Unless a raid can be shortmanned I don't expect to get a raid going at -any- time of day on Cannith of all places. Tonnes of small groups running Reaper or xp farming, but that's about it. For raids if they reduced timer penalties by a day or so that might help too.

I've run Baba, LShroud, and Strahd with 8-10 players a number of times (9 last Tuesday for Baba, including 2-3 first-timers). LN mostly if shortman (LH for Shroud sometimes) and it can't be an entirely new player party, but you definitely don't need a full party for those. I can't speak for -any- time of day, but I can say that's after there's a full raid group of my guildies (and often the PUG ppl are shared between us and Silver Legion).

THTH is the latest and greatest raid so it'll probably need a full party for a bit unless y'all have some uber toons, and KT I'm not super familiar with so I can't speak to it.


With 15 players at level 30, tell me about running raids.

What about 28-30? 29 if you want full gearing? Or people who have a raid alt that they can swap to if they hit your LFM? Not saying it's easy, and I don't run an Argo so I don't know the playerbase, but it seems you could get a raid group going? At least for a LN shortman?

[BigErkyKid]

I've run Baba, LShroud, and Strahd with 8-10 players a number of times (9 last Tuesday for Baba, including 2-3 first-timers). LN mostly if shortman (LH for Shroud sometimes) and it can't be an entirely new player party, but you definitely don't need a full party for those. I can't speak for -any- time of day, but I can say that's after there's a full raid group of my guildies (and often the PUG ppl are shared between us and Silver Legion).

THTH is the latest and greatest raid so it'll probably need a full party for a bit unless y'all have some uber toons, and KT I'm not super familiar with so I can't speak to it.



What about 28-30? 29 if you want full gearing? Or people who have a raid alt that they can swap to if they hit your LFM? Not saying it's easy, and I don't run an Argo so I don't know the playerbase, but it seems you could get a raid group going? At least for a LN shortman?

28-29 is just a few players. Ultimately, it is not whether you can short man or not; maybe you can. But what are the odds that such a large fraction of players of the total want to run the same thing at the same time?

This is why, to find coincidence of interests, you need a healthy playerbase. Take it to the extreme: you just need 6 players to form a group, and 12 for a raid. But you certainly want more players than that in a server, right?

I have been tracking numbers for a week, and logged off several times this week because I couldn't find players to play the content I wanted. I refuse to solo in a MMO, so...

[Yokido]

@Spartankiller

Most pugs are newer players or players looking for xp to finish an ETR. If people are below 29-30 there's a huge loss of power. If I can get a pug of seasoned players that's an oddity, and in those cases I try to fill for the sake of the noobs who don't get let into good raid runs.

Idk how things are in your server, but Cannith has TR farmers & elitists who, as an afterthought, help the little people.

[boredGamer]

@Spartankiller

Most pugs are newer players or players looking for xp to finish an ETR. If people are below 29-30 there's a huge loss of power. If I can get a pug of seasoned players that's an oddity, and in those cases I try to fill for the sake of the noobs who don't get let into good raid runs.

Idk how things are in your server, but Cannith has TR farmers & elitists who, as an afterthought, help the little people.

One thing which has been suggested before and I have advocated for is having much more of the ER run be at level 29. Let's say the last 3 or 4 million xp.

1-2 - 21 -24
2-3 - 25-28
3-4 - 28
4-8 - 29

Or whatever. Maybe I made that too steep but one can only hope. Then half your ER you are basically at level cap, can use gear, raid, etc. Seems like an easy way to improve the end game drastically but easily.

[Zenako]

So on Sarlona at this time: 8:40 EST
In the Social Who; 65 level 30's who are not anonymous. (and 10 level 29's)
All levels we have 275 players who are not anonymous.

[Saekee]

I have never understood why the devs have never commented upon or even attempted to implement any efforts to retain new players or imaginative ways to support grouping. It is a good game with years of content. Its age is its strength not its weakness.

[BoBoDaClown]

One thing which has been suggested before and I have advocated for is having much more of the ER run be at level 29. Let's say the last 3 or 4 million xp.

1-2 - 21 -24
2-3 - 25-28
3-4 - 28
4-8 - 29

Or whatever. Maybe I made that too steep but one can only hope. Then half your ER you are basically at level cap, can use gear, raid, etc. Seems like an easy way to improve the end game drastically but easily.



I haven't heard that idea before - I love it.

I think it would definitely improve endgame - a bunch of those lower 20s would now be 29ish and endgame capable.

[Jeromio]

I took a break for 3 years and came back a couple of months ago for Sharn. I love to raid and I play on Cannith. When I left 3 years ago, the raid scene was quite healthy, and I could easily participate in 3-4 PUG raids per evening of play.
During the last two months I've been able to participate in 2 R1 VON:s and one LH Shroud. IMHO, the raid scene, at least on Cannith, is in a quite bad state, at least in my opinion.

LFM:s for running dailies and R1 sagas is quite plenty.

So, IMO, it would be better with a server consolidation.

[LurkingVeteran]

I have never understood why the devs have never commented upon or even attempted to implement any efforts to retain new players or imaginative ways to support grouping. It is a good game with years of content. Its age is its strength not its weakness.

I think this is a good point. Perhaps they have carefully studied the problem and just not said much about it. However, there might be some simple ways to improve the grouping situation, e.g. just opening up the level ranges a bit.

[BigErkyKid]

So on Sarlona at this time: 8:40 EST
In the Social Who; 65 level 30's who are not anonymous. (and 10 level 29's)
All levels we have 275 players who are not anonymous.

Thank you for your submission. To give you an idea of the issues we face, let me give you a comparison point.

DAY 9 -- 16/7/2019 - UTC 11:31 - Sarlona: around 122 players
DAY 9 -- 16/7/2019 - UTC 11:35 - Argonessen: around 73 players

This is closer to my play time. Do you see why transfers don't really solve the issue?

Server differences in pop flatten after some peak times (probably someUS times), and make transfers irrelevant for a lot of people. Besides the fact that server pops vary over time (I had some notes on that some years ago, and Argo was close to top dog), and SSG does not make the data public, making it a gamble (and yet they monetize transfers...).

[BoBoDaClown]

DAY 9 -- 16/7/2019 - UTC 11:31 - Sarlona: around 122 players
DAY 9 -- 16/7/2019 - UTC 11:35 - Argonessen: around 73 players

This is closer to my play time. Do you see why transfers don't really solve the issue?

.

Agreed. Looking at the sample I took of all servers, at the time I play, I wouldn't want to be on any of them. And that was a very good day for numbers for my server.

[BigErkyKid]

Agreed. Looking at the sample I took of all servers, at the time I play, I wouldn't want to be on any of them. And that was a very good day for numbers for my server.

Pretty much. For example, right now, in Argo, 21 players at cap. If we were to combine 2-3 servers, we'd be looking at a much healthier end game.

[0ldschool]

So on Sarlona at this time: 8:40 EST
In the Social Who; 65 level 30's who are not anonymous. (and 10 level 29's)
All levels we have 275 players who are not anonymous.

That's an impressive ratio of level 30 to total, Cannith doesn't come close to that. Though that may be mostly due to all the new players defaulting there. Still, 65 Level 30's would be a huge number on Cannith. I am quite jealous of the teaching raids hosted on Sarlona, really wish that was happening on Cannith (though my play time is always a challenge even if they were available). I wonder if those teaching raids are keeping more people at cap and creating the larger at-cap popluation on Sarlona?

EDIT: Wanted to give thanks to High Lords for hosting those learning raids on Sarlona. Even though I can't take part, I'm sure that you are contributing greatly to the enjoyment of the game on your server and helping SSG retain players. I wish this was happening on all servers.

[SpartanKiller13]

28-29 is just a few players. Ultimately, it is not whether you can short man or not; maybe you can. But what are the odds that such a large fraction of players of the total want to run the same thing at the same time?

This is why, to find coincidence of interests, you need a healthy playerbase. Take it to the extreme: you just need 6 players to form a group, and 12 for a raid. But you certainly want more players than that in a server, right?

That's fair, and I'd certainly like more players, but what I'm getting at is it's a bit more possible than you're making it out to be? And yes, a lot of people agree with you that they don't want to solo so they'll hit whatever LFM's show up. At least in my experience, where the LFM panel might be empty but fresh LFM's get more hits.

I'm not arguing that there's no problem, just that I think y'all could raid more if you wanted?


@Spartankiller

Most pugs are newer players or players looking for xp to finish an ETR. If people are below 29-30 there's a huge loss of power. If I can get a pug of seasoned players that's an oddity, and in those cases I try to fill for the sake of the noobs who don't get let into good raid runs.

Idk how things are in your server, but Cannith has TR farmers & elitists who, as an afterthought, help the little people.

Not sure your experience with PUGs, I get plenty of vets too :) As well of course as new players, but I'm fine with that. My guild's rule of thumb is 28-30 (for guildies or PUG ppl alike) and while there's a noticeable difference in power, it's a bit wider of a range than only accepting 30's.

I'm on Cannith lol. As mentioned multiple times, and in my signature and on my profile's location. All servers have all types of players, not sure what you're trying to say there. But at least two guilds (Hand of Death, Silver Legion) run scheduled raids that are often at least partially PUG'd (and are new player friendly), and the vast majority of players I've met have been great people, a couple steps past the "as an afterthought".


One thing which has been suggested before and I have advocated for is having much more of the ER run be at level 29. Let's say the last 3 or 4 million xp... Then half your ER you are basically at level cap, can use gear, raid, etc. Seems like an easy way to improve the end game drastically but easily.

+1 Also hadn't seen this suggestion, and I'm totally in favor of it :)

[BigErkyKid]

That's fair, and I'd certainly like more players, but what I'm getting at is it's a bit more possible than you're making it out to be? And yes, a lot of people agree with you that they don't want to solo so they'll hit whatever LFM's show up. At least in my experience, where the LFM panel might be empty but fresh LFM's get more hits.

I'm not arguing that there's no problem, just that I think y'all could raid more if you wanted?


There aren't enough players, I cannot stress it enough. Right now, European night, we have between 20-30 capped players, and around 110 total players.

But you know how it works, there are always some AFK players in the ship, a fraction of soloers multi boxing (or not) some quests, others running sagas for eTRs, and so on.

You cannot count 20 players and say that there is enough to raid, it is completely unrealistic; it is not about enough players to fill a group, it is about ENOUGH people wanting to do the same.

I don't want to sound like a jerk, but thinking that such small pops are enough to sustain satisfactory groups is simply ignoring the reality of how people play.

To get enough people wanting to do the same you need a decent population, there is no way around it.

[Maldorin]

There aren't enough players, I cannot stress it enough. Right now, European night, we have between 20-30 capped players, and around 110 total players.

But you know how it works, there are always some AFK players in the ship, a fraction of soloers multi boxing (or not) some quests, others running sagas for eTRs, and so on.

You cannot count 20 players and say that there is enough to raid, it is completely unrealistic; it is not about enough players to fill a group, it is about ENOUGH people wanting to do the same.

I don't want to sound like a jerk, but thinking that such small pops are enough to sustain satisfactory groups is simply ignoring the reality of how people play.

To get enough people wanting to do the same you need a decent population, there is no way around it.

What is concerning is there was just an expansion. It doesn't seem to have boosted the population much at all.

[BoBoDaClown]

What is concerning is there was just an expansion. It doesn't seem to have boosted the population much at all.









91, Thelanis, this moment in time.











Using SteamCharts to see trends (I know many don't use steam, but it might be useful for seeing population trends, as opposed to its raw numbers):


Sharn hit mid May, May's peak population: 528 - holds up reasonably well against Rloft data below)
Two months later (now), July's peak population (so far): 394 - a big drop off. June was a big drop-off at 425.

December, 6th, 2017 (Ravenloft lands): 550
Two months later (Feb, 2017): 551 - maintained its population.

link (https://steamcharts.com/app/206480#All)

Perhaps people enjoyed Rloft more for some reason?

[BigErkyKid]

91, Thelanis, this moment in time.

Using SteamCharts to see trends (I know many don't use steam, but it might be useful for seeing population trends, as opposed to its raw numbers):

Sharn hit mid May, May's peak population: 528 - holds up reasonably well against Rloft data below)
Two months later (now), July's peak population (so far): 394 - a big drop off. June was a big drop-off at 425.

December, 6th, 2017 (Ravenloft lands): 550
Two months later (Feb, 2017): 551 - maintained its population.

link (https://steamcharts.com/app/206480#All)

Perhaps people enjoyed Rloft more for some reason?

Personally, I think the quests in RL have far more flavor, and seem to have more room to explore (at least some); the setting just seems bigger. Ravenloft is iconic, it has a lot of pull, and sharn / eberron IMHO does not compare. Could be biased because I don't like steam punk (I loved moving to Forgotten Realms).

That said, I do not know how sharn compares to RL for those serial TRists. Is the gear needed? Are the quests good XP/min? End game wise, you could skip RL almost completely in most builds and have BiS, so there should be an incentive to buy and run Sharn.

As for the historical trends in pops, I think they are reasonably stable (beyond bumps like the ones you describe). The problem is that at their level, they cannot fill servers reasonably at prime time in Europe. Prime time US has some servers with OKish population (given the game), but I don't claim to have the full picture.

To me, the most obvious way to solve this would be to have designated servers per area (at least nominally, everyone is free to go to ghost town if they want). That way new players have a good guide to choose a server. East / west coast US, Europe, and whatever other major player populations they have. They should release data on activity per hour to allow people to choose the best server for them.

Consolidate into fewer servers, or allow free transfers to these new "time zone"servers. If you put the say 800-1000 daily European players together (or a big enough fraction of those), you have a healthy population for grouping.

There is no bigger frustration in this game, for me, than not being able to play the content I want with like minded people. And this happens to me every time I log; getting a group going is not easy, I often compromise and play what I can group for rather than what I truly want to play. Other times it is so dead I just log off.

[Potvin]

What is concerning is there was just an expansion. It doesn't seem to have boosted the population much at all.


I can only speak as a newer player, but the expansion pricing is ridiculous to me in today's day and age. $40 bucks for an expansion, and not even getting the universal tree with it?

I remember the old subscription based model, where expansions were basically free as a subscriber. VIPs get no access to even older DLCs. instead we get pushed to a DDO Store page where it defaults to "Come buy the collector's edition for $129".
It's fairly obnoxious to me.

Then, I looked and saw how Cannaith has a higher population. I looked at potentially migrating. 2400 DDO points? Really? LMFAO.

The fleecing of the player base is doing them no favors. At least with the power creep, I can understand that (if not like it).

[Yokido]

Perhaps the issue isn't necessarily the quality of the play or loot, but rather the fact that a second expansion was released -so shortly- after Ravenloft? People don't like expansions, VIPs don't like expansions.

We put up with expansions, we definitely don't prefer them.

Further on this topic... When I personally was trying to buy Sharn within this last week, it was Heck and a handbasket just trying to get the purchase -to go through-. I could add the item to cart, but once I tried to finalize the purchase it wouldn't let me continue.

[BigErkyKid]

DAY 10 -- 17/7/2019 - UTC 19:14 - Argonessen: around 140 players

[BigErkyKid]

Perhaps the issue isn't necessarily the quality of the play or loot, but rather the fact that a second expansion was released -so shortly- after Ravenloft? People don't like expansions, VIPs don't like expansions.

We put up with expansions, we definitely don't prefer them.

Further on this topic... When I personally was trying to buy Sharn within this last week, it was Heck and a handbasket just trying to get the purchase -to go through-. I could add the item to cart, but once I tried to finalize the purchase it wouldn't let me continue.

I wouldn'tknow, I did think it was a bit soon, but I think it has to do mostly with the fact that people don't play end game.

New data!

DAY 11 -- 18/7/2019 - UTC 13:04 - Argonessen: around 108 players

[Zenako]

That's an impressive ratio of level 30 to total, Cannith doesn't come close to that. Though that may be mostly due to all the new players defaulting there. Still, 65 Level 30's would be a huge number on Cannith. I am quite jealous of the teaching raids hosted on Sarlona, really wish that was happening on Cannith (though my play time is always a challenge even if they were available). I wonder if those teaching raids are keeping more people at cap and creating the larger at-cap popluation on Sarlona?

EDIT: Wanted to give thanks to High Lords for hosting those learning raids on Sarlona. Even though I can't take part, I'm sure that you are contributing greatly to the enjoyment of the game on your server and helping SSG retain players. I wish this was happening on all servers.

The High Lords on Sarlona do a lot of cool things. Not only teaching raids, but they also host various contests and games throughout the year. I know they get a good crowd each time. Sarlona is blessed to have such a supportive and engaging high end guild that works to makes things more accessible for newer folks (and some old timers as well).

Tonight at 10PM EST

290 Total in the who are not anomymous
47 level 30's who are not anomymous


PS there were 14 High Lords who were not anomymous tonight. Seems like a normal weeknight on Sarlona from what I can tell.

[BoBoDaClown]

I wouldn'tknow, I did think it was a bit soon, but I think it has to do mostly with the fact that people don't play end game.

New data!

DAY 11 -- 18/7/2019 - UTC 13:04 - Argonessen: around 108 players

I think you missed my number from the 17th: Thelanis, 91, 3.04am (forum time)

I'll try post another tonight - will be my last for a while, moving house and no net connected... sigh.

[BoBoDaClown]

92, Thelanis, now

[Ghwyn]

So much complaining, yet people don't do anything to help. Posting off peak numbers is not showing the true health of the game. Last weekend on Cannith there were around 800 people online.

Now how about doing something? Don't wait around for others, make something happen yourself. Do some promoting, get friends to join, etc. There is much you can do.

Want a server merge? Organize one.

Complaining does nothing, so stop and get to work.

[ChadB123]

So much complaining, yet people don't do anything to help. Posting off peak numbers is not showing the true health of the game. Last weekend on Cannith there were around 800 people online.

Now how about doing something? Don't wait around for others, make something happen yourself. Do some promoting, get friends to join, etc. There is much you can do.

Want a server merge? Organize one.

Complaining does nothing, so stop and get to work.

Agreed. There is lots of stuff players can do to promote the health of the DDO community. Orien is doing some pretty cool stuff. We recently started a Orien Raiding discord and it has been a success so far.

[BigErkyKid]

Want a server merge? Organize one.

Complaining does nothing, so stop and get to work.

Do you think it is fun to have to count and post pop numbers? We cannot organize a server merge, sadly. Otherwise it would have been done ages ago.

This are fellow players who cannot enjoy the game because there aren't enough people on at the time they play.

In my case, European peak time; and all servers are mostly the same at that time (100-200 players tops).

How about less hostility and more solidarity? One would expect that this would be an issue that ANY PLAYER could get behind.

[boredGamer]

How about less hostility and more solidarity? One would expect that this would be an issue that ANY PLAYER could get behind.

Contrary to modern thought that if you're not completely for something, then you are against it : discussing downfalls or workarounds does not mean you still wouldn't like more groups or people to play with.

I know in modern day bullet point headline speak you are either on side x or y, but adults with the ability to understand nuance are happy to discuss components of an issue independent of our overall view on an issue.

And of course discussing things within known or unknown constraints makes that nuance even more complicated. So don't belittle people and boil down their argument into basic components and shove them into your predefined camps.

[BigErkyKid]

Contrary to modern thought that if you're not completely for something, then you are against it : discussing downfalls or workarounds does not mean you still wouldn't like more groups or people to play with.

I know in modern day bullet point headline speak you are either on side x or y, but adults with the ability to understand nuance are happy to discuss components of an issue independent of our overall view on an issue.

And of course discussing things within known or unknown constraints makes that nuance even more complicated. So don't belittle people and boil down their argument into basic components and shove them into your predefined camps.

Have you even read his post?

[boredGamer]

Have you even read his post?

Yes.

[Ghwyn]

Do you think it is fun to have to count and post pop numbers? We cannot organize a server merge, sadly. Otherwise it would have been done ages ago.

This are fellow players who cannot enjoy the game because there aren't enough people on at the time they play.

In my case, European peak time; and all servers are mostly the same at that time (100-200 players tops).

How about less hostility and more solidarity? One would expect that this would be an issue that ANY PLAYER could get behind.


Negative people like to complain and do nothing about making anything better. They do seem to take some pleasure from it, but I see it as a waste of time.

I mentioned a number of things that would directly improve the complaints in this thread. I don't expect a single negative person to do a single thing to make things better. They will make excuses why they can't and will continue to complain.

[Zenako]

At 10:00 PM EST Friday Night on Sarlona

332 Folks (who are not anonymous)
76 level 30 folks (who are not anonymous)

[Livmo]

At 10:00 PM Friday Night on Sarlona

332 Folks (who are not anonymous)
76 level 30 folks (who are not anonymous)

Now 808 pm PST on Sarlona yo!

FoT up right now comm huntin...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmCKnVaU7H0

[concavenator]

Mergmergmerg