Merge the non-hardcore servers

[Anuulified]

Only two? I'm starting life 4 but it still sucks.

Yes only two. I play about 1.5 hours a day, except weekends. So 1 etr takes a weekish lol.

[Odysseus2011]

Hardcore is simply a cash grab on ssg’s behalf. If they make more money with hardcore then they will continue repeating it until they bleed people dry. At the current moment I believe it is profitable since there are plenty of morons willing to spend points to give themselves a slight advantage over other players. I mean some idiot spent over $1,000 on gold rolls to be the first to hit level 20; he died like 2 quests later. It’s like a dream come true for SSG since players sink tons of money into trying to reach the top, and yet a lot of them get killed along with all the items they bought, then they just rinse and repeat.

[concavenator]

merge or die its at that point now

[Pendraagon]

merge or die its at that point now

allowing t guild leader to cash in guild assests for shsards takes care of the guild ship merge issue.

this leaves the server based favor andjiont bank issues to address

[concavenator]

im not even playing the game anymore because hangout here to venting gets way more player interaction than my dead server does. and as soon as the weather stop being hot as hell im gon go ride a bike or something

[Drunkendex]

The real issue will be when those enjoying the full groups on HC return to the normal servers and find them ghost towns by comparison.

There is a latent risk that more people will stop playing after that than if HC had never happened.

Imho SSG have taken a great risk with the HC server if they are not ready to deliver cross server grouping shortly after - which I doubt they are.

I agree with you.

Everyone is happy on HC server for various reasons, and when it ends, will they remain happy? We'll see.

[Erudain]

MERGE NON-HC Servers for once and for all!!!

HC is a good idea, but it's just not for me. I am more of a noob who dies often and needs to start over.

But I'd gladly join VIP if I had non-HC servers merged, or any commercial trick that will make LFMs happen more frequently.

I'd even pay twice the VIP fee as long the non-HC servers wouldn't seem like ghost towns.

[NemesisAlien]

Make Level 1-10 one server, then auto migrate to another server on level 10 after you log back in.
Next server 10-15, then auto migrate to another server on level 15 after you log back in.
Next server 15-20, then auto migrate to another server on level 20 after you log back in.
Next server 20-30, then auto migrate to 1st server after you tr, after you log back in.

Note if you never log out, you can stay on that same server and rot.

Now we got 8 servers, not counting hardcore, so basically 2 servers each can be merged for added memory.

Also note hardcore will be separate.

Best solution right?

[Careall]

If we're talking an actual merger, not free-roam migration and let servers deplete themselves to death, the big question is how?

Example Problem 1: I have 26 character slots, and each server is pretty much filled. If the eight main servers are merged into two servers, that would be 108 characters per server. I'm not sure DDO can handle that since the maximum number of slots is around 47 or something. We're not even talking about shared banks and TR caches yet.

Example Problem 2: Character names. When characters with the same names are merged onto a single server, which player gets to keep the primary name, and who has to suffer some extension name and work on a name change? If we were to just say "the oldest character gets to keep the name," then a lot of dead accounts would have name priority over more recent active accounts.

Example Problem 3: Guilds. Folks have spent lots of time and effort on guilds and guild ships. I've seen folks with personal guilds and ships paid for with real-world money. SSG doesn't even have a way to migrate guilds across servers yet, and I'm pretty sure it's not easy: Names, Guild xp, purchased amenities, items in vaults or chests, and probably more would all need to be worked out how to migrate a guild. Then there would be the guild membership and making sure guild membership transfers. While most members wouldn't be a problem, the leader and officers could just re-invite folks, but what if a leader is inactive and officers don't migrate properly?

I'm certainly not saying these and other merger problems can't be resolved with time, effort, and clever solutions. I am saying a merger is something that isn't a "just do it" style project and will take a lot of time to get it right.

That said, certainly allowing players to self-migrate would help a lot, but it wouldn't solve everything. Name conflicts would still need to be resolved, and guilds would have to be abandoned - or forfeit the voluntary transfer to stay on a dead server. Also, does SSG say something like "free transfers to Server X and Server Y," or do they let each player decide? If each player decides, I'm not sure the migrations would result in an effective merger.

For the folks that don't like hardcore for various reasons - your opinions are valid. However, the significant number of players, perhaps a majority, that don't share that perspective have valid opinions as well. Like it or not, SSG will, and should, follow the money. Regardless of how you or I may feel about someone blowing $1k on DDO for kicks, that's a valued customer and the rest of us are either customers or something else (I think F2P players provide a valuable population service to DDO in exchange for free play, but I don't know what to call that relationship).

[Yokido]

There's a few different good solutions...

Make quests/raids/lfms/chats/auctions cross-server, which might be quite technical, BUT it would achieve the needs of the players without showing weakness.

Merge a few servers. This has been said numerous times, and yet the devs are hiding from this issue whenever it's mentioned. To me it shows initiative, and my appreciation from having people to play with will outweigh any judgements passed on the game that this is a "sign of the game dying".

There's a few different bad solutions...

Give everyone a server swap token. While this might make people -feel- better, it won't solve the issue in the long term. In-fact this may worsen the outcry since many won't -want- to server swap if there's a choice, and we'll be left with several extremely dead, instead of mostly dead, servers, with one or two "active" servers.

Make server swaps free with perhaps a timer. This is a volatile idea from a technical and player-base perspective. What if all of a sudden everyone on Earth could move anywhere they wanted, whenever they wanted? Yes, it would cause quite a lot of chaos, similar to what it would do to our game.

There's a few different long-term solutions...

Make the game more appealing to new players. There's many things that could be done to help with this, but DDO suffers from an inherent "growing complexity" AND an under population problem at the same time. If those two issues get addressed, then perhaps growth can be put back on the table.. For now we're in "management" mode.

Improve player retention. This is something that we've seen the devs work on within the last few updates, and it speaks volumes to their level of appreciation toward their player-base. There's been many recent quality of life fixes that shouldn't be ignored or discredited. At the same time, I think we could benefit from some of the older content/shinies getting a face-lift. Such as Sands epics, or the red/green/blue/yellow/white augments getting a few new augments every now and then.

[count_spicoli]

Ya merge em already. All dev efforts into this. Ot xp chsnges or class passes or new stuff. Get these servers merged. No excuse in 2019 with all the teklch available to not do this

[jayne1973]

but what servers get merged and to where? I merged from Reidra to Khyber. please dont make me move again

[Cantor]

Make Level 1-10 one server, then auto migrate to another server on level 10 after you log back in.
Next server 10-15, then auto migrate to another server on level 15 after you log back in.
Next server 15-20, then auto migrate to another server on level 20 after you log back in.
Next server 20-30, then auto migrate to 1st server after you tr, after you log back in.

Note if you never log out, you can stay on that same server and rot.

Now we got 8 servers, not counting hardcore, so basically 2 servers each can be merged for added memory.

Also note hardcore will be separate.

Best solution right?

How do you deal with alts, friends 1 level higher than you, shared bank, etc... this just wouldn't work at all.

Cross server grouping seems much more viable. Allow players from separate servers to go to the same quest instance.

[DirkTyrant]

There must be something horribly difficult that the SSG developers aren't saying.... about why a merge of servers hasn't already happened. It is overdue. It is killing the game. But whatever they decide to do - it needs to happen soon.... while they still have enough players to make it worth the effort.

[kelavas]

Hardcore is simply a cash grab on ssg’s behalf. If they make more money with hardcore then they will continue repeating it until they bleed people dry. At the current moment I believe it is profitable since there are plenty of morons willing to spend points to give themselves a slight advantage over other players. I mean some idiot spent over $1,000 on gold rolls to be the first to hit level 20; he died like 2 quests later. It’s like a dream come true for SSG since players sink tons of money into trying to reach the top, and yet a lot of them get killed along with all the items they bought, then they just rinse and repeat.

I do not know who was the first. The first notable one that players know is Quantum.

[HungarianRhapsody]

If we're talking an actual merger, not free-roam migration and let servers deplete themselves to death, the big question is how?

As time goes on, I'm becoming more and more convinced that "Here's a free transfer coupon for each of your characters. Move to Cannith or Khyber and guild leaders get a coupon for a bunch of guild renown if they're in a guild with lots of renown," is the thing that SSG needs to do and just make the server move happen without worrying about TR caches server unlocks and other things that don't/can't move over.

[Rubysblade]

Would be cool if they had just 2 severs and divided the pop between the two. currently there are 8 servers so 4&4 but I think a big problem is the fact that some people play multiple servers so what will happen to the toons on those other servers I think they should just lock all your toons and you get to pick and choose which ones you want unlocked with your current amount of character slots then they gotta deal with monster manuals, favor, pets, gear such as anniversary gear like 1 item per server etc. it just comes with a lot of issues with in it self but I think looking past all that this game would definitely grow with a server merge and if it gets much bigger then they can add a third and that server can have benefits like +2 to loot rolls or 10% heroic xp boost until that sever gains movement and has a good play base but over all I think its an amazing idea and would also bring in lots of money for ddo and definitely make lots of people happy personal im having so much fun on the hardcore server bc of the big player base the most fun ive had in a long time I hope for something similar in the future for are main servers

[HungarianRhapsody]

There must be something horribly difficult that the SSG developers aren't saying.... about why a merge of servers hasn't already happened. It is overdue. It is killing the game. But whatever they decide to do - it needs to happen soon.... while they still have enough players to make it worth the effort.

The SSG devs have already said why they aren't doing server merges - they can't. Too many things that don't transfer well (the last server merge happened before TR or guilds even existed) and the developers who knew many of those legacy systems left the company years ago. They straight up *can't* do a server merge today.

[Opener]

The SSG devs have already said why they aren't doing server merges - they can't. Too many things that don't transfer well (the last server merge happened before TR or guilds even existed) and the developers who knew many of those legacy systems left the company years ago. They straight up *can't* do a server merge today.

I know they have said about technical issues to make a full scale server merger... but, they did a Hardcore server and they are planning on transfer the characters created to a regular server.

So, they could make an Universal Server and plan a schedule to Transfer all active players of all servers to that one. During that scheduled time, all Character Transfers are Free. They can do it if we pay, why not make it Free?
The technical issue response is BS, to sell Transfers.

Ohhhh Guild Ships, Amenities and Buffs.
Everything is logged in a database, every guild and their members. Or it isn't?
Make a copy and paste to the Universal Server, some guilds could gain Levels during the schedule time (sorry, but it is manageable to regain).

[Chai]

The SSG devs have already said why they aren't doing server merges - they can't. Too many things that don't transfer well (the last server merge happened before TR or guilds even existed) and the developers who knew many of those legacy systems left the company years ago. They straight up *can't* do a server merge today.

They sure did create a situation where 1 brand new server where everyone must start over has the highest headcount currently. This could be easily replicated with a more permanent solution, and with free transfers, no one really has to start from scratch.