There are many potential perks and downsides depending on how well executed a round of merges is managed. I will say that my server, and I think it is true of most servers, loses about 1 raiding guild per year. If I wanted to dig up the dates I could probably do it with some input from others with some help. So from the Rathe Big Killers. Legend of Marr, Scarlet Phoenix, Halcyon, League of Levity all died between TSS and the server merge, shortly after the merge Fates Unbroken from Prexus faded (I don't now most of the other before merge Prexus guilds). Once things settled we had Brotherhood of the Spider, Loyal Rebellion, Clan Ta Veren, Shining Alliance (joint raid with Callidus), Grey Hawke, Frayed Knot, and The Silent Minority. 2013 Bots last win 10-17 2014 TSM adds second team 2014 LR and CTV merge to make Phoenix Rises 7-9 2015 SA last win 2-21 2015 FK and PR start joint raids 12-17 2016 GH last raid 4-11, Tertium starts but last raid 7-5 2016 TSM second team splits to make Scarlet Vengeance in 10-1 ish So now we have 3 raid teams. SV, TSM and alliance FK/PR.
Server merges won't cure people having developments in their personal lives that forces them to prioritize, and sometimes EQ doesn't make that list. If people want more populated servers, move to a more populated server. Save your DBG cash for half a year and then move. That gives you time to make a new character on another server and see if you like it there. I was involved in the forced server merges way back, when ever that was, and I didn't like the influx of people that came with it. Before you give me the argument about F2P and they don't have SCash, yada yada...they are F2P, you get what you get.
I respect your opinion, but I hope that DBG does not do this kind of thing. I have many characters across many servers and I play them all. I can not accept it if there is no option such as free server transfer or freecharacter slots. I do not want to delete my characters.
They should reduce the cost of server to server transfer tokens to $10 then almost anyone can afford to transfer ... YiMin
That wouldn't be bad. It'd be nice too if they offered some guidance on "preferred" servers for both playstyles, populations, raiders, and time zones. Like which servers are still running old P4 cpu's and which are running 28-core Zeon's.
You have family, addict them to EQ, If you have no family, addict your friends to EQ, and if you have no friends go make some, so you can addict them to EQ.
I think to determine which server gets to keep their name, they should put everyone from each server in one zone and have a battle royale. Last man standing's server is the new name.
What level of population is $ viable for them is only known to them. Vulak was kept up a long time with minimal accounts logging in... I think they are waiting for Phinny to get to live at which point it will keep all of the special rules it has. If they really want this to work they will give it bonus conditions such as XP (really seal the deal and do rares & faction too). Keep it sub only but offer a window of free transfers in. This scenario doesn't directly squish any live server, but clearly a preferred server (think legends 2.0) situation would exist. Even a F2P Phinny with just the current special rules is going to have appeal if it has held a viable population... but why not milk a bigger cash cow? As far as Brekt goes... let FV transfer to Brekt and I think you'd see a big population upswing. Also, do a Quarm event #2 that dumps to Brekt...
No one asking for server merges ever considers that the online population is nowhere near what the total number of players is. When RoS launched there were threats of training and lots of friction in Overthere because it could support the number of players who wanted to get progression done there. A double exp weekend can really clog any of the live servers and Daybreak knows that. Maybe they'll find a way to handle it but until they do they don't need to be randomly merging servers
You can cure that problem code-zero by standing in the zone you want to fight in and /general Free Krono @ soandso - Wait..../pick
Or they could just allow the few people on Brekt to transfer to FV. An extra 50 people on FV is not going to cause a problem, if there is even 50 on Brekt. Allowing FV to Brekt would not result in many coming to Brekt. Unless a whole guild wanted to make the move and have the server all to themselves, and I don't see that happening.
That's also a result of current design. Few zones per expansion, small zones, low mob population plus a game pace that quickly depletes mob population results in zones that can only handle a few groups at a time. Add to that the progression formula that drives every player through the same bottlenecks rather than a more open world design where people go where they want to. The direction the dev team has taken the game works better with lower populations.
Rathe has its own historical idiosyncrasies that led to it being the terrible server (raid wise) that it is today. The rotation system, fighting (successfully) to change which server it merged with, a long term talent drain to other servers with few moving to the Rathe before the server ended up dumping the rotations. Really, you had a long period where the top guilds coasted due to the rotations and few people retired (I remember it being YEARS before BotS had an opening for a paladin, for example), many had to change mains in order to get into any decent guild. Also led to a glut of "mid-tier" guilds during that era, compared to other servers. So when forced into the modern raiding, you had lack of talent, a lot of high end people leaving en masse, and not a lot to recruit from as most of the good players gave up the ghost and left. It is not representative. Done the analysis, as have others. We have steadily lost ~2 raid guilds per YEAR among ALL servers (more than 2 die, but new ones pop up), if you consider raiding ANYTHING in the new expansion before the next one starts as the viable raid guilds.
Many of us that play on Luclin are doing just fine and quite happy as is, so no thanks. If you are not happy on luclin, you may wish to explore a server transfer to somewhere else.
I decided I needed to investigate this a little more since my perception is biased. So newer guilds added since 2012 excluding all data from the Rathe, Vox and Progression servers. Return of the Exiled, Age of Unity, Prosperitas, and Valhallah Guilds gone since 2012 based on guilds I recognized as raiding guild but no longer see from the Guild Recruitment Forum. D PIKEY, Darkwind, Raging Fury, AB Shahrazad, Descendents, Bertox Rest in Peace, Legion of Valor, Sol Invictus, Bristle Hellfire Club, Sacred Fyre, The Stone Coven, CT Real Faith, Valorguard, Resolution, Emarr Red Band Brigade, Drinal Five Rings, Allied Raid for Cestus and KOE instead of solo, Luclin Fire and Fury, Symphony of Arms, FV Grey Horizon, Tunare Pandamonium, Zek Seems the average is closer to 3 per year, or 1 guild per 4 years per server. Some servers seem much worse off than others as far as raiding success. With 3 Blue servers with no completed RoS (ignoring zek) for Bertox, Emarr and Tunare. Several more with just 1. So my question is...would those servers without a strong top end raiding presence want to merge. For me personally, the only reason I want merges is for recruiting for raid guilds, though I did have a period I considered moving servers but I didn't want to sever ties with existing friends who were not prepared to server move.
