Povar is the lowest population blue server. It's Weds. night and there are 296 in General chat. Many are alts. 30 in POK. Under 100 in baz. 46 in lobby, all afk, hoping for buffs overnight. Out of my guild of 2841 toons, 6 people are playing ATM. We've been promised a merger with Selos, so I made a toon to check it out. There was nobody in the lobby, 4 in tutorial, 1 in POK! This is NOT going to help us! We need players! We need to double our size. What are you going to do about this and how soon?
Can probably expect to see a few TLP merged with povar though that won't be drastic numbers. 296 in general doesn't sound so bad to me though that's more than 3x what I saw on Phinigel today
Selos was already merged with povar, but Selos players were also given a free transfer to another server of their choice. Their choice was bertox, so povar gained nothing.
Bad news, the biggest guild on Selos used the free transfer to go somewhere else (Bertox). Edit: Didn't refresh page from last night, someone else mentioned they transferred. However Selos hasn't been merged, look for "EQ20th Selo" in the server list.
As much as I love EQ, you also have to bring the fact that most of the countries that has EQ players, are re-opening from more than a year of lockdown, where a lot probably played more EQ than they normally would. Can't really blame them for doing something else, now that they are able to go out and do something.
FV is borderline over crowded. Even random lower level zones will have 4 or 5 people in them (often box groups though.) It feels like any new player in the past 5 or 6 years has come to FV instead of normal live servers. The free transfers they had many years ago, combined with the permanent 50% exp bonus and the free trade system making catching up on gear for new/returning players has done wonders for the population. Probably hard for low pop dime a dozen normal servers to ever compete with that.
If DBG chose to, they could increase experience on other servers, esp. ones that are hurting. They could increase grouping xp. They could do so much to encourage people to actually socialize again. The Overseers made it so people don't group because group grinding exp sucks.
Also, the best way to get more population is to get a reputation for having high population. FV has that reputation. I think it's one of the reasons the TLPs do well too - each TLP has been busy, so people who might have been interested in returning to their old characters on Live servers play on TLPs instead, since they know there will be dudes around to play with.
Group grinding exp sucks because of the choice to ramp up the required XP for level 111-115. Overseer made that less painful by putting in an easy button to snag a couple % per day. Kind of like burning lessions maloing a trivial camp with out moving from guild hall.
I've decided that ToV, for me, is right behind PoR and DoN for worst expansions ever. You are forced into the progression whether you want to do it or not because the regular XP is so bad. I imagine CoV is just as bad.
It's true they always had a short-lived exp boost for new zones. I'd happily group with people farming ores if the experience were somewhat worth it.
But raiders don't need our help to farm new content. By the time groupers can handle it, the xp sucks.
How about offering double experience, full time, on Povar? And a free transfer here. That should attract some players.
I'd welcome the Zekians. All that I have met who came from there were socially adept and exceedingly polite.
Selo was not merged yet, not that it matters as there is basically no players left on the server. Waiting for Povar would have been a death sentence for our guild.
