Server Merges and Population

[Adurna]

Honestly, the code may have changed since 2007. However, I higly doubt they were moronic enough to make it worse by changing it.

[kanordog]

I just TR'd, I'm level 3
I have 3*20 inventory slots + 1*20 bank space for a total of 80 slots
I have a TR cache of 5*20 inventory slots + 3*20 bank space for a total of 160 slots
What am I supposed to throw away form my things when all the bta/unbound items are already on alts/mules?

I'm level 13
I have 5*20 inventory slots + 3*20 bank space for a total of 160 slots
I have a TR cache of 5*20 inventory slots + 3*20 bank space for a total of 160 slots
I can pull my TR cache into my inventory and bank space but how am I supposed to get to level 20 with full inventory and burdened?

What about the money and time I spent on my guild?

Why do I have to call my main "kdgfkgdgkpeortjkdgm" because the name "Ironfist Bouldertosser" was taken already (by a 10 years unactive account?)

All of this just to get more lag and lockups while I am soloing/duoing?

No, thanks.


ps.: if You want to retain new players than don't shame them for not being able to solo a tower in wizking or for dying in durk's on elite.

[Heathir]

This would be why I also suggested free server transfers. For the next 30 days we will offer all players a free server transfer to x server. Let's them pull the people who want groups to one server and leave all the people who only want a solo or duo experience alone on the server.

[slarden]

This would be why I also suggested free server transfers. For the next 30 days we will offer all players a free server transfer to x server. Let's them pull the people who want groups to one server and leave all the people who only want a solo or duo experience alone on the server.

At a minimum they should do this for the lowest populated servers.

[Heathir]

Right find your two lowest pop servers and offer free moves for a certain time period to a specific server. You will have people funnel from low pop servers to one server.

[Brandall]

As far as naming is concerned, it is not a major issue as they will likely do what they did previous with redundant names, they will add -1 to the end of the first name.

The elephant in the room is that they know people are clamoring for better population on servers via a server merge. Why would they do it for free when they can bilk us out of 1500 points per toon to transfer us? I have 19 toons on g-land, mostly bank toons, the cost to transfer,even if I could get it down to 10 is astronomical, and some people are paying it. There is no incentive for them to do it voluntarily until people start leaving the game.

[Heathir]

As far as naming is concerned, it is not a major issue as they will likely do what they did previous with redundant names, they will add -1 to the end of the first name.

The elephant in the room is that they know people are clamoring for better population on servers via a server merge. Why would they do it for free when they can bilk us out of 1500 points per toon to transfer us? I have 19 toons on g-land, mostly bank toons, the cost to transfer,even if I could get it down to 10 is astronomical, and some people are paying it. There is no incentive for them to do it voluntarily until people start leaving the game.

Paid doesnt work as well as a targetted Transfer. Paid still has people going to all kinds of servers. A free targetted transfer concentrates players in one place. I am sure there are models for profits both ways.

[Stormvessel]

One big hyper-server. It phases players in and out of various phases - but for every player, the world is full.

For instance, Player A sees Player B, Player A also sees Player C, but Players B and C cannot see one another.

The server does this automatically - and it respects things like partying up, friends, etc.

If DDO switched to something like that, then as long as one server could be filled, players would always be adventuring with a world completely full.

[Livmo]

Paid doesnt work as well as a targetted Transfer. Paid still has people going to all kinds of servers. A free targetted transfer concentrates players in one place. I am sure there are models for profits both ways.

Totally, DDO could work that angel instead. And it could be rotated like the server for new peeps.

[Renvar]

We all know the real issue. Game is not worth any amount of investing it’s at a stage where they want to squeeze revenue out of the remaining players with minimal investment.

Source?

I don't *know* that. You don't *know* that. You *think* that is the case. You might want to learn the difference between what you think, what you know, and what you can prove.

I'd say Ravenloft is evidence of them investing a fair amount into the game. Expansions are real effort/cost and risk for the developer. By all accounts and several metrics (revenue and customer feedback and player activity) it was very successful. I don't think this game is done with investment. Lots of people said the game would never see another expansion after Shadowfell. And they were wrong.

I *think* SSG functions like a for profit entity. (which they are, by the way, even though gamers find it appalling to think revenue generation is a factor in design) There needs to be an ROI or cost/benefit analysis on any decision.

Perhaps server merges will happen when the value of merging becomes higher than the cost of executing the merge. Perhaps that point hasn't been reached yet. A small minority of anecdotal reports of having difficulty finding groups might not be indicative of the entire situation.

[Livmo]

What about the money and time I spent on my guild?

Why do I have to call my main "kdgfkgdgkpeortjkdgm" because the name "Ironfist Bouldertosser" was taken already (by a 10 years unactive account?)

All of this just to get more lag and lockups while I am soloing/duoing?

No, thanks.


ps.: if You want to retain new players than don't shame them for not being able to solo a tower in wizking or for dying in durk's on elite.

Those are some of the reasons why I have the same guild name on each server and have the same toon name on each server. To lock down the names. Thus I'm Livmo on all servers, same with other toons, and the toon name and build are the same on each sever for ease in cross-server play.

I'm most concerned about the airships and lag.

[Livmo]

Source?

I don't *know* that. You don't *know* that. You *think* that is the case. You might want to learn the difference between what you think, what you know, and what you can prove.

I'd say Ravenloft is evidence of them investing a fair amount into the game. Expansions are real effort/cost and risk for the developer. By all accounts and several metrics (revenue and customer feedback and player activity) it was very successful. I don't think this game is done with investment. Lots of people said the game would never see another expansion after Shadowfell. And they were wrong.

I *think* SSG functions like a for profit entity. (which they are, by the way, even though gamers find it appalling to think revenue generation is a factor in design) There needs to be an ROI or cost/benefit analysis on any decision.

Perhaps server merges will happen when the value of merging becomes higher than the cost of executing the merge. Perhaps that point hasn't been reached yet. A small minority of anecdotal reports of having difficulty finding groups might not be indicative of the entire situation.

I'd still rather have new content and game fixes. DDO is not a charity and I respect their decisions on how they allocate their resources, even when I don't agree with the outcomes. Either way, they know better than I on how they can get the most bang for the their $s. I'm thankful the game is stlll up and running as it's my favorite MMO/1st person shooter to play!

[SirValentine]

Without fixing the underlying cause of why people don't group/socialize (the worst LFM/grouping system in MMO history being one of them) having more people would be a temporary band-aid fix at best

So we should bleed to death now, instead of applying a bandage now, because we might bleed to death later?

Having 7 times as many people to group with now would be a good thing, even if someday the game goes under. Do you prefer DDO to die sooner?

[Heathir]

So we should bleed to death now, instead of applying a bandage now, because we might bleed to death later?

Having 7 times as many people to group with now would be a good thing, even if someday the game goes under. Do you prefer DDO to die sooner?

This is my thoughts exactly. If they didnt want to do the whole merge thing, then targeted character transfers would let them gauge the desire, effectiveness, and cost associated with it. Offer the two lowest pop servers a free transfer to the 3rd lowest pop server. Those who chose not too would be vocal about how great it was, or would voice their opinions on a reduced player base. Either way it would give them metrics on the effectiveness.
they would also be able to gauge the impact on the one people transferred to if the lag became too great or if it caused more issues than it helped.

[Zenako]

OK, old timer here. I was here back when they merged servers a long time ago, that is why I have a few characters with the name-Adar now. Those characters had been on Adar, and were moved to Sarlona (My main server anyway.) However back then, there were no guilds ships or items other than the guild name, very few server bonus issues, and frankly not a lot of account bonus issues with specific servers affected. Evern with that relative simplicity of the system, there were a ton of issues, lost items, characters issues with more combined characters than character slots (I think the limit was 10 back then and EVERYONE was on a paid subscription at that time! so we all felt like we had been paying for something that was being taken away) and a LOT of folks got rightly ****ed and left.

The other part of the issue back then was server personality. There were clear and distinctly different personalities and player behavoir that was acceptable. Sarlona and Thelanis were considered newby friendly and gerenally populated with a lot of cooperative players. The rep for some other servers was either more hard core, or elistist with little tolerance for noobs. Now some of that was surely hyperbole and just being loud on the forums, but I did play on multiple servers back then and there were clear differences in how new players were treated when trying to join LFM's (which also worked a lot diffferently back then...)

Bottom line, it happened and reduced the number of servers, but there was most definitely an impact on the total player base. That also led to a lot of folks being more selective about who they grouped with and tending to stick to guild only runs a LOT more. Some of the new folks on the server had play styles that just were not in sync with many long timers on that server.

So while the techincal problems can probably be addressed with various levels of ease or player discomfort, I personally think the social issues will be a more significant issue.

IF the issue is trying to find more potential players to group with, but the players that are playing are perfectly fine playing with existing groups of friends, most of those do not bother with LFM's, they just gather on their ship or at the quest and form in person. I know that is how it was for our guild most of the time. So having more players, that you are not going to interact with anyway, does nothing to help that part of the grouping issue.

I noticed at the time that the number of characters logged on was growing a lot, but the number of LFMs was dropping, due to this exact type of issue with forming groups privately.

With the expansion of level cap and the introduction of the Reaper mechanic, that further segments the player population into smaller buckets. Back when the level cap was ten, you could almost break it down to 3 tiers of questing. Level 12 added a new top tier, as did many of the subsequent level cap increases. Spreading the same players over a much wider range of characters, makes it more and more unlikely to find LFMs for just the level range you are looking to join.

Thoughts from a long time player (who is still playing many times a week with guild members...and sticking to bacically non-repear questing.)

[Captain_Wizbang]

The idea is not dead, and is still being discussed by the team. I have this from a reliable source (devs on forums)

Here's the last published info from Severlin..........

Originally Posted by (executive producer)Severlinon November 10, 2015We plan on revisiting the idea of server merges after we've moved to the new datacenter which is slated for in sometime in the new year.
We want to make sure we have lag under control before we concentrate the players. We recently made some fairly large changes to help combat lag, particularly in the Stormhorns and other places where monsters can use persistent AoE effects. We haven't heard any feedback that lag is reduced, but the nature of that beast is that we only hear about it when lag is bad.
There are some obstacles to overcome, like making sure shared storage and guild move over and players have good tools to deal with name collisions for both characters and guilds.
Sev~

[Monkswizzz]

I've been checking back every month waiting for a merge. I attempted to come back a couple months ago, but I don't have a constant solo intention, I got bored after 3-4 days.

Played DDO from 2009 to 2015, but the game simply hasn't got enough to it now population wise to make me want to play - I don't speak just for myself, there's hundreds of people out there at least that would come back knowing servers have life brought back to them, new players come and go because there's nothing or nobody to help them out.

Come on SSG, it's seriously time to merge before it's too late.

[BadDoc]

I'm not sure how many others are still around from the last server merge, and I know that there were issues then, but overall it was necessary at the time and I think it is again. Say if Sarlona and Argo merged, players with the same name ended up something like this

Kargon-Sarlona
Kargon- Argo

Each charactar was given the option of a free name change token.
Could they possibly test a merge build on Lamannia?
We play odd times so we have to duo, AH is bare, same symptoms as the last time.
Please consider it SSG. still a badass game.