Is this why when 1 server goes down the rest follow? This seems to be a step backwards to how things used to be.
It can be it depends on what goes down, crashes can occur for different reasons. It's not specifically a single thing every time.
@Dreamweaver, Will vox get the options trakanon has , as far as the free server transfers off ? and the exp bonus ? if not can we get a bonus for not receiving the benefits of that server ? because before daybreak took over and sony owned this game , they did in fact merge servers that had benefits and kept them. ??????
For an MMO there are almost always going to be shared databases. Three reasons: - Login database MUST be shared at some level because when you login you can pick which server to login to. There's no separate "login to Cazic Thule" application. Yes, it could just be a server list, but it's also tied in with the billing database to know which servers you're allowed to use. - a common database is easier to administer. If you have replicated per-server databases they need to be sync'd with a master database, which can be error prone and which requires more effort and more hardware. Which brings me to... - databases are expensive. database "Big Iron" is expensive. For any MMO which has "shards", what we call different servers, the quest is Do I buy one smaller database per shard or I buy one big one for the whole MMO? Duplicate hardware for DB servers results in more power use, more rack space, more maintenance costs, and depending on the DB, more software licensing costs. One big DB server is expensive up front, but can handle the load for all the shards, and can reduce software licensing costs, etc. It just depends on the technology being used.
[added later] Also I'm not sure what you mean about how things used to be. What I describe above is how we did it in about 1999 at EA for a now long gone MMO.
Cool that Brekt gets a free 50% bonus. Lame that the Brekt folks are now labeled as Roleplay and forced onto Elvish language that they never signed up for. *shrug*
They honestly should merge Drinal with some other server, FV or something. They have like 80 that play over there. Drinal is just hogging bandwidth.
The roleplay tag is a meaningless relic attached to the server name, the amount of people who actively RP in EQ is vanishingly small. Brekt is going bye-bye because 50 people how who play now and then isn't a viable population.
So, shall we start a pool on how many bugs and other issues we get from the 24 hour downtime today? I am betting at least 6 identifiable issues.
Nah, everything will go smoothly. In fact, they'll finish 2 hours early. And they'll discover an optimization tweak that cuts the lag in half going forward.
@Skrekk on Vox, I disagree, when did SOE ever do this? I think most can tell this rarely happened given the present server list having very few special rules/modifiers beyond the TLPs & FV. Usually the surviving server's rules prevail. For example: Mayong merged into Tunare. Tunare's players did not receive the ability to boost characters to level 50. Stormhammer, none of the "Legends" benefits carried over to the merged servers. In this case the users received a choice of merge because they were paying a premium subscription fee. Quarm was a limited special event server and the bonus Bottles of Adventure were advertised in advance as part of the server's kick-off promotion. It wasn't to compensate anyone for the impact of the merge. https://www.everquest.com/news/quarm-event-server-launch-july-13-2016 @dreamweaver, my 2 copper is that Vox rules shouldn't change based off past precedent. I play on Vox because I want a vanilla no rule change experience, if I wanted faster experience I would play on FV. Likewise, in Trakanon's case the players already had free server transfers they could have used to move over to FV if they wanted to keep accelerated experience. The merge was announced well in advance of today so there's no reason a Trakanon player couldn't have moved to their desired server.
Will characters under a certain level that have not been logged in for a year plus be purged during the mergers?
I'll be extremely peeved if they wipe Overseer progress, like they do when characters transfer servers. @dreamweaver - any info on that?