Server Merge Coming Soon??

[Turial]

....
And, like DfC said, merging servers before a huge push to get new people seems...well...backward.

So does handing out free gamecards a few months before the NPE and telling people all about the NPE but thats just me.

[ArkoHighStar]

So does handing out free gamecards a few months before the NPE and telling people all about the NPE but thats just me.

Its backwards in the sense, had they done the NPE way back before the server merge we would have possibly had less need to merge the servers. But the past is the past I suppose and better late than never.

[greystone306]

Ya I cant possibly see a reason for a server merge

daytime on thelanis about 15 people and about 3 lfms

nightime on thelanis about 39 people and 6 lfms

if your not in one of about 6 guilds ...your feeling major grouping pain and that cant possibly be good for attracting new players...

long in and actually look at it from a new non guilded perspective its bad real bad for those types

raid zone entrances that used to have 100's of people have 3 standing there, there are only 1 instance of meridia at this point...its bad

jrp

andd you arent considering the 2 new raids in the marketplace....I see more people running them more often then the shroud now and they also have the subteranian to go through.. so as soon as raid is full or close to full they arent standing outside subt entrance...

I dont see population lack problem at all on Khyber.

[Thrudh]

I play on Thelanis, and I don't belong to a guild...

I see multiple Shroud and Hound LFMs up every night... I have no problems finding groups...

Over the last month, I've been leveling a new cleric, and I've had NO issues finding groups even in the dreaded 8-12 range (of course, it helps that he's a cleric).

Last night, I ran all nine Threnal quests, Madstone Crater and Crucible. As soon as I finished with one group... I checked the LFMs and immediately found another group...

I spent maybe 1 minute last night ungrouped...

The night before I ran Titan and the Shroud on one of my capped characters... Logged in, saw the Titan run, joined it... finished Titan, checked the LFMs, saw the Shroud, joined it...

Every night when I log in, I check the LFMs and there is pretty much ALWAYS a LFM up that ONE of my characters qualifies for (and that I want to run).

I'm seeing NO problem on Thelanis and all I do is PUG... In fact, groups are so easy to find that I'm having problems finding time to go get another beer!

(I'm central time... usually play between 7:00 pm and midnight)

[roggane]

No

[Deathseeker]

I play on Thelanis, and I don't belong to a guild...

I see multiple Shroud and Hound LFMs up every night... I have no problems finding groups...

Over the last month, I've been leveling a new cleric, and I've had NO issues finding groups even in the dreaded 8-12 range (of course, it helps that he's a cleric).

Last night, I ran all nine Threnal quests, Madstone Crater and Crucible. As soon as I finished with one group... I checked the LFMs and immediately found another group...

I spent maybe 1 minute last night ungrouped...

The night before I ran Titan and the Shroud on one of my capped characters... Logged in, saw the Titan run, joined it... finished Titan, checked the LFMs, saw the Shroud, joined it...

Every night when I log in, I check the LFMs and there is pretty much ALWAYS a LFM up that ONE of my characters qualifies for (and that I want to run).

I'm seeing NO problem on Thelanis and all I do is PUG... In fact, groups are so easy to find that I'm having problems finding time to go get another beer!

(I'm central time... usually play between 7:00 pm and midnight)

I don't want a server merge, but I gotta disagree with you slightly on this (just slightly though)...

Last night, on from 6pm to 11pm pacific time, running my level 7 ranger. Had a tough time finding pugs. Put up my own LFM's for Von 3, Atraxia slayer, and such, and never got a hit on Von 3. Atraxia filled up after about 20 minutes.

Joined Tempest group, but they added an 11 and got powerleveled. Same with Tear of Dakahn.

I was able to run quests, but it wasn't easy, and killed plenty of time rearranging my bags and cruising the auction.

I think being a Cleric is a much bigger deal than you realize...

But, with all that being said, I don't want a merge. At low leves I have ZERO problem getting a pug, and at 10+ same thing, no problem. It's just these mid levels that get a little slow...

[Xithos]

Thelanis population doesn't seem healthy from my perspective if you were a new/unguilded player; hopefully the NPE will help retain some of the folks who are trying this game out and I'm praying there is enough high level stuff to bring some people back and keep them here for awhile. I'm just thankful that I am in a guild that has late-nighters on or I would be really hard-pressed to find a group at some of the weird hours I play from time to time. However, I came to this game from Final Fantasy Online which had Japanese people playing during the weird hours so maybe I'm spoiled

EDIT: I would love to open up the LFM tab and see 6 shrouds up at the same time; I have personally never experienced that.

[Turial]

...
EDIT: I would love to open up the LFM tab and see 6 shrouds up at the same time; I have personally never experienced that.

Come to Ghallanda...where the devs themselves walk among us.

(legal disclamer: The devs do not actually walk among us, we think atleast.)

[Riddikulus]

...and see 6 shrouds up at the same time....

If you see six at once I would think there is some other problem, like not enough healers. You should never see more than a couple... the rest would already be in the quest.

[Zenako]

If you see six at once I would think there is some other problem, like not enough healers. You should never see more than a couple... the rest would already be in the quest.

Nah we got scheduled departure times so sometimes it feels like a dang subway stop with all the crowding and pushing outside the Shroud entrance. You know, when multiple guilds all plan to have there "guild run" at 9PM EST or something like that....

The number of newly dead bodies dropping from the heavens into the tavern can be unsettling to the diners I am sure. A quick rush to the bar, to refresh for the new travails, an occasional wait for the odd "ahem runner" to clear and rejoin....

[icculus]

Id also point out that before the last merge we had months of people complaining about server population.

We also never heard 'rumours' about a merge, Turbine came out and told us.

Now, Im not saying a merge is not gonna happen but rumours arent anything to get excited about.

Not sure what game you were playing back then, but there were rumors of a merge well before the European merge. Once that happened, the spin went into overdrive and there was constant debate back and forth. It was not for a long while until Turbine confirmed a North American merge.

Further, back then as has been demonstrated in this thread there were huge disagreements over whether a merge was needed or not - hardly months of people complaining any more than the debate in this thread.

I agree that there is no reason to get worked up about it yet, but I was against the first merge and I would not be happy with a second

[VirieSquichie]

I play on Thelanis and I'm going to have to disagree here. When I log on (which is usually weekday evenings or Sunday morning Eastern), There are usually 10+ LFMs spread across the entire level range and there are often 39 or more characters merely on my screen if I'm near a mailbox or auction house guy. I would estimate that the who panel has at least 100 people during the times I play.

I am in a small guild (4 IRL friends) and I have no trouble finding people to quest with if that is what I want. Sometimes I have to start my own group if I have something specific in mind, but even groups for unpopular quests (like the Shadow Tomb series) fill pretty quickly.

I'm not saying you're wrong, juniorpfactors, but I apparently have a very different experience on Thelanis than you do. Maybe we're playing at different times or on different days or something. In my opinion, there is absolutely no need for a merge (at least not for Thelanis) because grouping is not at all difficult.

My experience has been similar to what Jr. is seeing. If you factor out the extreme stuff (hound, vision, shroud), the pure favor runs and the new character harbor stuff there's very nearly nothing else going on. I've even had trouble finding enough reaver runs for the 4 characters I have that are reaver ready, these last couple of weeks. That used to be a given...nothing else going on, there would be at least one reaver run forming every few minutes during prime time.

Since most of the long-established players either can't make new characters (on their home server, and without deleting an established character to do so) or are simply tired to death of doing the same 2 dozen or so level 1-4 quests over and over (how do the permadeath people stand doing that?) there's precious little incentive to log in any more. Soloing gets dull after a while, and I've seen more groups fall apart waiting for more players (not even clerics...sometimes it's just waiting for a 4th or 5th person so the difficulty can be bumped up a notch) lately than ever before - even just prior to the last merge.

I'm against another merge, partly because the existing lag is so near my tolerance threshold already and partly because I'm pretty certain any further consolidation would render the servers unusable in the rush following any new content update(s). They've barely held up each time content has been added in the last year, what makes anyone think they could handle another consolidation?

I really hope that they're planning a major marketing frenzy that happens about a couple weeks after the NPE is launched, and continues well into next year. Why a couple weeks after? So they can iron out the post-launch bugs before any new players actually see the ads and come try the game. It would be damning to run ads and then subject the new players to an unstable, buggy NPE.

But then, I've also hoped for a few (plural) character slots to be added along with it, so I can have some new characters to play with these new people...and that hope has already been dashed.

[Riddikulus]

Further, back then as has been demonstrated in this thread there were huge disagreements over whether a merge was needed or not - hardly months of people complaining any more than the debate in this thread.

There was definitely months of debate, dozens of threads including several tracking game pops. The data, as inaccurate as it was pretty clearly said a merge was needed. I am not seeing those kinds of threads here now.

[Xithos]

If you see six at once I would think there is some other problem, like not enough healers. You should never see more than a couple... the rest would already be in the quest.

I would like to see 6 shrouds and think something along the lines of a large population with a lot of active guilds running shroud that just need to fill out a couple spots with some puggers and get on their way; maybe some groups need tanks while others need clerics and the guild groups are too large to just merge w/ another LFM.

[Beherit_Baphomar]

<stuff I agree to disagree about>

I agree that there is no reason to get worked up about it yet, but I was against the first merge and I would not be happy with a second

Not sure why you, or anyone, would be unhappy about a server merge. If Turbine see the need to merge them then Im sure that need is there.

[Beherit_Baphomar]

There was definitely months of debate, dozens of threads including several tracking game pops. The data, as inaccurate as it was pretty clearly said a merge was needed. I am not seeing those kinds of threads here now.

Yup, thats the same game I was playing back then too. People counting server populations, people arguing about annonymous not being shown, people guessing what % of the population was annon and saying it too small to make a difference.
There were threads saying Argonnessens the server to jump to because it had a healthy population, in fact Merlask brought an entire 'survey' of what each server was like right before the merge.

This thread is the third thread in the last month or so about server merges and population being low. We had that many in a day before the last merge.

Ive not really logged on in the past 6 weeks so I cant really comment on what server population has been like for that time period, but before that Id say Argonnessen was the same as it always was.

[Pyromaniac]

Here's my reasons for wanting a server merge right away:

1) New players join the game, figure out they can't find groups and have to solo. Big percentage of new players leave game, NPE is completely a waste of time.

2) Huge drop in active players on at least Thelanis due to slowing of new content. I have minimal expectations the pace of content will increase so we need more of the diehard players that will continue to do that 1000th shroud on the same server.

3) I have faith that it is possible to have one server that can hold the player base. Maybe I'm way off here, maybe not. I can live without the server wide 1 or 2 live events per year if it means more people to play with.

4) The last server merge was a success, met many new people to play with and breathed new life into DDO for me anyways.

5) Maybe there will be some groups going for more than the 20 odd quests that always have LFMs up. Of course rebalancing XP among quests properly would fix this as well. Sure I can lead groups - but what about players who aren't in a guild or are new?

We're not as badly off as we were last server merge - but I'd rather not see the NPE be a total flop. I think the NPE is a waste of development time, but hey it might as well do something if its there.

[Borror0]

It's been almost 4 months since Turbine updated the game, it's still warm outside, Warhammer went live not too long ago and school started already.

Do you really expect the population to be that high?

[theblaz]

On Thelanis.

I don't have a problem finding groups above 13 or below 8, which is typical.

I see reaver runs all the time. See GH quests all the time. It's not that hard to suggest to a group running favor to do some higher level quests for that favor too.

I play in central time like jrp and I could not disagree more. I find groups, I start groups, see shroud, VoD, Vons, Hound, reaver, titan, even queen raids quite often. See vale quests for flagging, see GH quests, invaders, other high level non-raid quests.

Sometimes it'll be a slow night, and no one will be on for maybe 20 minutes. Then, suddenly, the LFM explodes because.....people were all in quests and raids, and now they're out. Spots open up, people disconnect, people drop and leave.

I hope there's not another merge, I was lucky enough to get to keep my guild name and my character names, I don't want to tempt fate again.

[greystone306]

I'm wondering why they did away with suggested servers.. when I joined 2 years ago it would have on the opening screen the suggested server for new players to join.. this was way before a merge was really even thought about..I'm sure it was trying to help funnel people who didn't have current friends in the game to the server that had the lower population of the existing servers.. Maybe it is time to bring that back? although I still dont think it's time for a merge..