Orien is no longer the default server....

[thegreatcthulhu]

Ghallandha is now the default server.

I think this is a mistake.

Default servers only matter to new incoming players; showing the half rotting carcass of what is effectively a quasi-dead server is not going to be a great first impression.

Which is funny since EG7 (and maybe Daybreak/SSG) is anticipating new players after March 31rst due to some kind of a "movie". Personally, I don't think many people are going to take the plunge, but we'll see.

[slarden]

History is the best indicator.

The default server always gets a bump in population, lfm and social gaming in general. This include Orien which had complaints about lack of lfms and players and thus was named the default server much more than it's fair share the past several years to bring it back to life and it worked.

It will work on Ghallanda as well.

If there is some sort of unique lag on Ghallanda as claimed the devs should look into it, but at least when I did favor runs I never noticed it, and I've done favor runs on all servers with multiple accounts.

the real problem here is the way default server is allocated. It should have been moved from Orien long before it was to try and help out other servers, but for some reason Orien kept default server for an inordinate amount of time.

As an example, when Sarlona was default server for a very very short time long ago, population jump was noticeable very fast and there was a reasonably high retention rate. Population now is higher than it was before it was default server for the few months that it was default.

[Wizard1406]

Hey guys I understand how ya'll feel for those staying on G-land.

But you have to admit some brand new player seeing this:



..is not a good look.

Just let it die with some respect and transfer over to Orien.

If they want to make a good impression to new players as a >MMO< then they should make a proper server merge. Probably not more than 3 servers total, and recommendations according to playtime (maybe 1 America west/middle, 1 America east, 1 all others server)

[NemesisAlien]

If they want to make a good impression to new players as a >MMO< then they should make a proper server merge. Probably not more than 3 servers total, and recommendations according to playtime (maybe 1 America west/middle, 1 America east, 1 all others server)

No, should be 1 america, 1 euro and 1 asia.

[Ereshkigal]

I recall everyone complaining how dead orien was before it was made the default server which is probably why it was the default server.

We've had a few people move to Sarlona that tried out Orien and didn't like it. Plus I keep hearing how bad the lag is so it seems like the only thing we know for sure is that the grass always appears greener on the other side.

I hope the change helps out Ghallanda.

It's been a long while since Sarlona was the default server, but the population grew and Sarlona had a very high retention rate from that growth spurt.

If Orien wasn't helped by being the default server, why would Ghallanda be?

It's backwards thinking.

DDO would be doing better if:

* They fixed or removed the horrible character paths
* The Introductory quests gave xp & favor for joining a players guild
* Ensured new players had an easy time grouping, if that's what they want to do.

[slarden]

If Orien wasn't helped by being the default server, why would Ghallanda be?

It's backwards thinking.

DDO would be doing better if:

* They fixed or removed the horrible character paths
* The Introductory quests gave xp & favor for joining a players guild
* Ensured new players had an easy time grouping, if that's what they want to do.

Orien was helped by being the default for more than it's fair share of time.

[Ereshkigal]

Orien was helped by being the default for more than it's fair share of time.

while i don't dispute that it was receiving 'help' - it wasn't enough help to make it one of the most populated servers - in fact I left Orien to go to Argo during HC season 6 because it was too difficult to find groups on Orien. Argo was much more heavily populated at the time.

receiving help and actually getting a decent benefit from that help are separate things.

[slarden]

while i don't dispute that it was receiving 'help' - it wasn't enough help to make it one of the most populated servers - in fact I left Orien to go to Argo during HC season 6 because it was too difficult to find groups on Orien. Argo was much more heavily populated at the time.

receiving help and actually getting a decent benefit from that help are separate things.

Before the flood gates opened Orien already had plentiful lfms and grouping options. That was the direct result of being the default server for so long. That is the reason people were moving to orien.

[LT218]

The default server always gets a bump in population, lfm and social gaming in general. This include Orien which had complaints about lack of lfms and players and thus was named the default server much more than it's fair share the past several years to bring it back to life and it worked.

It will work on Ghallanda as well.

When Orien, Sarlona and even previously Ghallanda were the default server, they were still reasonably healthy populations, just a bit lower than the others. Adding some new players was just enough to bump them back to healthy norms.

If making a server the default were some magical fix-all for low population, they should have made Wayfinder the default years ago. Gee, I wonder why they didn't? Could it be that they know introducing a new player to a server with an average of 2-3 LFMs across all levels at any time isn't a great newbie experience?

Ghallanda was already ghost town status during HCLs even before this. The population was close enough to the edge that the drop during few HCLs caused more long-term guildies to quit the game than any other time or event I can remember in DDO. Since SSG waited until Ghallanda was completely gutted by the free server transfers before making it the default server again, I'm not so sure this fix it. It's only a half-step above Wayfinder at this point.

Even if some newbies stick around, many (most?) won't due the lack of readily available LFMs. It definitely won't fix it overnight. In the meantime, how many more veteran players are going to leave Ghallanda or quit altogether due to the lack of groups while the newbies slowly trickle in? DDO is an old, mature, and very complex game that is hard on newbies if they don't have a plentiful veteran community around to mentor them.

My guess is that it ticks up slightly in the short term, levels out in the medium term, and then drops back to ghost town status in the long term. Think about what the next HCL is going to do to Ghallanda's population. That'll make the newbie experience even better, eh?

[Ereshkigal]

Before the flood gates opened Orien already had plentiful lfms and grouping options. That was the direct result of being the default server for so long. That is the reason people were moving to orien.

as a long time denizen of Orien (up until september of last year) I 100% disagree with you. LFMs were not plentiful, and they were scarce during hardcore.

[Oghma_Infinium]

Nope, Ghallanda's not going to look greener any time in the near future. It has had persistent, abnormal lag and performance issues even with the lower population pre-transfer. It was bad enough that it consistently caused problems when trying to push skulls in end-game raids.

Thus far, even though Orien has 2-4x more active players than Ghallanda, we lag less during raids. Sure, there's the occasional lag spikes that are to be expected given the high number of players and activity on Orien currently, but we expect that to level out in the next few months.

I would add , that since I moved to Orien 3 weeks ago , the lags increased since the transfers were enabled again.

The process of transfer involve locks & copies of chunks of embedded tables between separate DBs , thus this is not a light activity for a DB engine.
So far , without any insight about the internal hardware infrastructure (afaik : virtual server) and system (& game's server-side) design , we can only speculate.

This would mean that once the transfer period , we might see less lag.

[Valerianus]

it's imho pretty obvious that orien is no more the default.

i'm going to post this link again

https://forums.lotro.com/forums/show...e-to-lag-again


yes it is about lotro, evernight is one of the most populated servers.

that thread was started Mar 03 2021 and the last post is atm Oct 04 2022, the thread has 463 replies and 72,729 views. atm is not in the today's posts but it is there often, or was there over and over some other new thread about the same issue. yeah lotro too has lag issues like ddo.

if you want, read the whole thing, but the summary is: lotro players ended up to notice, if you have online between 800 and 1000 non-anon, it is really bad, really worse than usual.
(notes: 1- in lotro it's super easy to know how many are online, just need to look the social panel, it will tell you exactly how many, anons are filtered out, that's why there's that "non-anon"...that means the actual number is lower. 2-the lotro players culture, i am a total casual there but i noticed it is made often of a freaklot of alts across multiple servers, so stuff like this is easier to notice and track for them)


that said, obviously i hope that ddo is different, those numbers are ridiculous for a mmo but it is what it is, and it would also explain why no server mergers are being done, anyway the assumption can be made that the servers are more or less the same or may tolerate more or less the same load. about lotro, some official announcement was made months ago about future work on servers, but atm no one knows when, while ddo had no such announcement, but i repeat, i wish the best to my dear fellow players who moved for whatever reason.


this post is not about propaganda pro-against transfers, i'm not interested in this specific drama (even if i respect it and it's fun) like those that create sock accounts with sock toons to post lfm propaganding to move to orien. yeah i saw that. that's dedication, i respect dedication and drama.


i'm just saying, i don't care what others do, just posting info here, hopefully helpful and correct. if not, please anyone correct me.

[Stradivarius]

it's imho pretty obvious that orien is no more the default.

i'm going to post this link again

https://forums.lotro.com/forums/show...e-to-lag-again


yes it is about lotro, evernight is one of the most populated servers.

that thread was started Mar 03 2021 and the last post is atm Oct 04 2022, the thread has 463 replies and 72,729 views. atm is not in the today's posts but it is there often, or was there over and over some other new thread about the same issue. yeah lotro too has lag issues like ddo.

if you want, read the whole thing, but the summary is: lotro players ended up to notice, if you have online between 800 and 1000 non-anon, it is really bad, really worse than usual.
(notes: 1- in lotro it's super easy to know how many are online, just need to look the social panel, it will tell you exactly how many, anons are filtered out, that's why there's that "non-anon"...that means the actual number is lower. 2-the lotro players culture, i am a total casual there but i noticed it is made often of a freaklot of alts across multiple servers, so stuff like this is easier to notice and track for them)


that said, obviously i hope that ddo is different, those numbers are ridiculous for a mmo but it is what it is, and it would also explain why no server mergers are being done, anyway the assumption can be made that the servers are more or less the same or may tolerate more or less the same load. about lotro, some official announcement was made months ago about future work on servers, but atm no one knows when, while ddo had no such announcement, but i repeat, i wish the best to my dear fellow players who moved for whatever reason.


this post is not about propaganda pro-against transfers, i'm not interested in this specific drama (even if i respect it and it's fun) like those that create sock accounts with sock toons to post lfm propaganding to move to orien. yeah i saw that. that's dedication, i respect dedication and drama.


i'm just saying, i don't care what others do, just posting info here, hopefully helpful and correct. if not, please anyone correct me.

It's because I care about the game. Trust me I've been through more MMOs than some of the devs have years on this earth. You absolutely need at least one mega-server. It's what we call an "anchor store" in commercial Real Estate parlance. It provides the mainstay store that gathers people that will also lend itself to smaller stores nearby.

The devs seem solely focused on going after whale money (which is not neccesarily a bad thing), but you absolutely need that one server that people can point to (and new players can play on) that will basically be a giant billboard that says, "I ain't dead yet!"

[slarden]

as a long time denizen of Orien (up until september of last year) I 100% disagree with you. LFMs were not plentiful, and they were scarce during hardcore.

You already said you left orien previously. Orien was the default server and continued to grow after you left. Stats were provided and lfms looked good right before the floodgates opened.

[Valerianus]

It's because I care about the game. Trust me I've been through more MMOs than some of the devs have years on this earth. You absolutely need at least one mega-server. It's what we call an "anchor store" in commercial Real Estate parlance. It provides the mainstay store that gathers people that will also lend itself to smaller stores nearby.

The devs seem solely focused on going after whale money (which is not neccesarily a bad thing), but you absolutely need that one server that people can point to (and new players can play on) that will basically be a giant billboard that says, "I ain't dead yet!"

dude, i agree with you...but the best billboard saying it ain't dead would be first off someting as common as a general chat in a mmo. a real general chat. it's a mmo right? this tell us we are forced to keep our expectation really low. stuff that should have been solved years ago, but it was not and it will not. this game was myopically coded as a single player game from the 90' with multiplayer options, not as a mmo....and that's why it is still alive, so actually it was brilliant, its best features are exactly related to single player games that's why ddo is so cool, but its major flaws, all the features that were left out, keep getting harder and harder as time passes and after so many years the lack of em is totally absurd for newer players. at least, make them play in a lag-free server...it does not exist, a lag-free server, let's say a decently lag-free server.

did they made wayfinder the default server? obviously not. i don't care about wayfinder, or orien, or ghallanda, but for sure if wayfinder was made default server i'll be one of the first players to post something like seriously ***?! for the reasons you mentioned. anything else, it's fine...given the tech limits.

(sorry my dear fellow players on wayfinder, i admit i don't understand why your server even exist, but i don't care as long as you are fine being there and having fun your way, if you are happy, all is good and fine as it is, that's what is important )

[Stradivarius]

dude, i agree with you...but the best billboard saying it ain't dead would be first off someting as common as a general chat in a mmo. a real general chat. it's a mmo right? this tell us we are forced to keep our expectation really low. stuff that should have been solved years ago, but it was not and it will not. this game was myopically coded as a single player game from the 90' with multiplayer options, not as a mmo....and that's why it is still alive, so actually it was brilliant, its best features are exactly related to single player games that's why ddo is so cool, but its major flaws, all the features that were left out, keep getting harder and harder as time passes and after so many years the lack of em is totally absurd for newer players. at least, make them play in a lag-free server...it does not exist, a lag-free server, let's say a decently lag-free server.

did they made wayfinder the default server? obviously not. i don't care about wayfinder, or orien, or ghallanda, but for sure if wayfinder was made default server i'll be one of the first players to post something like seriously ***?! for the reasons you mentioned. anything else, it's fine...given the tech limits.

(sorry my dear fellow players on wayfinder, i admit i don't understand why your server even exist, but i don't care as long as you are fine being there and having fun your way, if you are happy, all is good and fine as it is, that's what is important )

Spot on with this analysis. A general chat would be a massive boon to the game and create community and make it look not so dead. Often times I would direct a "true newbie" to Hardcore eapecially if the season has just started. The way Korthos snowy side is bustling makes the game feel like people actually play.

This game has some upper management issues. Everyone on down from Sev; so from Tolero on down is absolutely golden. I love how they keep pumping out content and keep those voice actors fed.

Problem is the upper management; they have a very cynical view of what is normally seen as an "old game". And I'm sure they have XYZ business plan for games this old. Even Sev might be excused because I'm sure he get's his marching orders from enad7.

I just wish they can be slightly more thoughtful on the player end, just slightly.

[LT218]

Problem is the upper management; they have a very cynical view of what is normally seen as an "old game". And I'm sure they have XYZ business plan for games this old. Even Sev might be excused because I'm sure he get's his marching orders from enad7.

I just wish they can be slightly more thoughtful on the player end, just slightly.

Umm, no, he shouldn't be excused. Nor should Tolero. It's not like anything has changed much from a business or marketing operation since before SSG was acquired. It's just more of the same ol' short-term whale-milking stuff.

[Malveaux]

Umm, no, he shouldn't be excused. Nor should Tolero. It's not like anything has changed much from a business or marketing operation since before SSG was acquired. It's just more of the same ol' short-term whale-milking stuff.

When the old boss is the same as the new boss. You won't get any change. Figure out who the Chairman of the Board of EG7 is. Then you will realize you been hoodwinked. lol SSG was always Daybreak. EG7 is just a bigger more robust portfolio of Daybreak.