Time to say goodbye :(

[Mamalian]

I'm sad that so many people decided that a slightly higher population of strangers was more important than our people.

Everyone I care about has moved, those of you left behind are the strangers.

Don't be the last on a sinking ship.

[kpak01]

Don't be the last on a sinking ship.

If DDO is sinking, I'm perfectly capable of quitting, don't you worry about me. In the meantime, I'm not going to jump through stupid hoops because SSG can't get their **** together.

[LT218]

If DDO is sinking, I'm perfectly capable of quitting, don't you worry about me. In the meantime, I'm not going to jump through stupid hoops because SSG can't get their **** together.

That's an interesting hill to choose to die on.

Emptying TR caches and shared banks, then starting the client up, clicking Transfer and checking a few boxes doesn't really seem like much in the way of "stupid hoops", but to each their own.

From where I sit, this free xfer thing has multiple upsides.

If you have toons and/or bank mules on other servers, you can consolidate them on a single server for free now.

You can move to a server that has a healthier player population, which is usually pretty high on the list of importance for an MMO where the social aspect is a valuable part of the game.

You gain the opportunity to meet a whole new group of friends in addition to still being able to group with the current/old friends who moved, too.

There's also a decent chance that Orien and Sarlona won't have the same weird, persistent lag and queue performance issues that Ghallanda does. Obviously, all DDO servers lag some, but Ghallanda seems to be a special kind of stupid with lag. I've played several seasons on the Hardcore server with more than triple the active number of players as Ghallanda and it doesn't lag like Ghallanda. It does lag sometimes, but it's a very different type of lag from G'land.

[kpak01]

That's an interesting hill to choose to die on.

Why are the people trying to stampede everyone off GLand so over-dramatic? There's no hill, there's no dying, there's no iceberg, there's no sinking ship.

[LT218]

Why are the people trying to stampede everyone off GLand so over-dramatic? There's no hill, there's no dying, there's no iceberg, there's no sinking ship.

Over-dramatic? I'm thinking you don't understand that phrase. In the context it was used, it's the textual equivalent of a an eye-roll and a shrug.

To go with your sinking ship analogy however, if healthy grouping and social populations are the ship that MMOs sail the seas upon, it's pretty obvious which of these servers is going to sink first. Low/unhealthy grouping and social populations are a self-reinforcing negative feedback loop in an MMO.

As a guild, we were a bit nervous about transferring, but even just a week in, everyone is very happy that we did.

We've already got our airship amenities back to par with what we had on Ghallanda. The guild level is climbing quickly and I suspect we'll be 150+ in a couple months. While Orien lags, it doesn't seem to lag nearly as badly and consistently as Ghallanda even though it has approximately double the number of players on it.

The real bonus however is that the grouping scene is so much healthier. I've been checking the level 8+ LFMs and player population on each server during US prime time hours each night since the transfers opened. Orien has consistently had around double the number of online players and noticeably more LFMs at any point I looked. Filtering on level 8+ minimizes the skewing of the results by any large amount of low level bank mules.

Here's an example. Orien's LFMs and Who panel on the left, Ghallanda's on the right. 378 level 8+ toons on Orien, 166 on Ghallanda: