Server consolidation: I want it

[guises]

DDO is now (almost) ten years old. Between the rate at which technology advances and the declining player base I'm betting that it's possible by now to put everyone onto a single server. I don't see any good reasons why that shouldn't happen, and I see one very good reason why it should.

I need more multiplayer in my MMO.

[FranOhmsford]

Reduction to one single server would be too much in my opinion - DDO doesn't need to go that far.

However...I would like to ask yet again for the 8 Servers we currently have to be reduced at a minimum to 6 and maybe even 4.

Wayfinder into Ghallanda is a blatantly obvious merger for obvious reasons:
Ghallanda is well known as the European Server and Wayfinder as originally a German Server would fit in well.
Ghallanda is a strong server with a friendly population and could take the 1000 or so Wayfinderites with ease.

Orien into Thelanis would be my second choice for a merger for the reasons that both Servers are strongly vet based, Orien is the weakest of the big 7 population wise and Thelanis is one of only two Servers not to have had the Default since Wayfinder was introduced and is therefore also suffering from a reduced population as opposed to it's heyday {Khyber seems to have fared better and after Argo Thelanis really should be next to get the Default}.


As for the other four Servers my personal preference would be for:
Argo+Sarlona
and
Cannith+Khyber
But any combination would work fine so long as we get the extra character slots {14 Characters on Sarlona as well as 29 on Cannith with only 30 slots really doesn't go! I have 7 characters on Khyber but could work that one out.}.

[Flavilandile]

Until time is spent to solve the various issues tied to merges, nothing will happen.

Said another way : Do you want to loose :
- your characters name
- your guild name
- your guild ship
- your guild loot

if it's no to any of the above, then you are against a merge... as a merge WILL make you loose them, even if you chose some inventive character names, some of them will have been already used in the destination server.

[Drelak]

Also there are questions about number of character slots, first time server favor TP boni, cultural conflicts between servers and the Lag.

[FranOhmsford]

Until time is spent to solve the various issues tied to merges, nothing will happen.

Said another way : Do you want to loose :
- your characters name
- your guild name
- your guild ship
- your guild loot

No, No, No and No!

if it's no to any of the above, then you are against a merge... as a merge WILL make you loose them, even if you chose some inventive character names, some of them will have been already used in the destination server.

MAY!

Not Will!

I personally don't think the Devs would do a Merger at this point if they couldn't get around those {and other} issues that players have made very well known since the last Server Mergers!

Character names is the simplest as the Devs can just add "of previous server" to the names of any duplicates.

Guildnames {although it could end up with some funny ones like Guardians of Cannith of Cannith for instance} could be treated the same way.
Players and Guild Leaders of course could also be given free namechange and Guildnamechange tokens so they can fix any issues AND Guilds of the same name could be offered a Guild Merger opportunity combining the renown of both and giving both Leaders complete immunity from the other.

Guild Ship could be copied over - I don't see how this would be a problem.

And I'm not sure why Guild Chests would be a problem either - If the Devs can fix the TR Cache in the case of a Merger {I'm surprised you didn't mention the TR Cache?} then I'm sure they wouldn't forget about Guild Chests.

[Augon]

DDO is now (almost) ten years old. Between the rate at which technology advances and the declining player base I'm betting that it's possible by now to put everyone onto a single server. I don't see any good reasons why that shouldn't happen, and I see one very good reason why it should.

I need more multiplayer in my MMO.

The only reason you really give for doing it is that you want it. So a reason I can give for not doing it is that I do not want it. The age of the game and the technology advances don't seem like reasons to merge the servers, so I assume you are saying those are reasons it's doable. I guess the implied reason is server population, but I don't think that outweighs the many reasons for NOT doing it.

Anyone who does not see any reasons to not merge the servers needs to review some forum threads (at least one a month) where this topic has been debated and the many good reasons to not do it are listed time and time again.

I have no problem grouping on Sarlona. the only reason I ever solo is because I just want to at that time. I do not understand why folks have problems finding a group.

Personally, I wish folks would just drop it. Its a bad idea that would be very difficult to accomplish, very error prone, and I am confident it will cause major bugs.

[Bolo_Grubb]

I dont see it ever happening.

Turbines earlier game Asheron's call still has 9 servers, each of them a ghost town. That game came out in 1999 and is still played by some.

[TrinityTurtle]

I can see several good reasons why it hasn't happened yet, and may not happen in the future.

- Issues with naming, guild naming, guild ships, ets.
- The failures of characters to transfer from one server to another. I'm not talking about them being closed, I'm speaking of the apparently common techincial transfer where one character just can't make the move. For example, my toon Joriel is abandoned on Orien, Codde's toon Betelguese, Dre had 2, JImmy had another, this isn't exactly a rare issue. Until they solve that, I imaging a lot of toons would just vanish, and we as players won't know which ones are going to vanish until it happens. I'm not okay with that possibility.
- Server lease penalties. We do not have any idea what Turbines leasing agreement states with the server farms. And a lot of these contracts have hefty fines if you break them early. This could be an incredibly bad financial move for them. And it's pretty clear they don't own there own, or there wouldn't be a data migration to a new server service coming up.
- It wont' really help grouping as much as people think it will. Unless the population of people willing to post lfms instead of just looking at the lfm board goes up, you will just have a bigger group of people competing for the few lfms, and they will fill quickily and the board will still be empty.

[Ykt]

All servers should be merged into one: Khyber.

All current Khyber players should receive a special title or extra TR wings to not confuse them with the new arrivals.

Only on Khyber will you find a cleric asking a raid group to pay him in advance for the healing he's going to do in the raid. I named my pet spider after him, because he a pest and should be crushed.