Euro/AB players, you moving or staying?

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Cidran, Aug 27, 2017.

  1. MyShadower All-natural Intelligence

    I hope my server is fortunate enough to break down and its players forced to choose between dealing with it or transferring to yours.
  2. Derka Power Ranger

    Exceptional would be players that actually know how to play their class and have put their time in. Server population has nothing to do with that. There are players(not talking about just myself) with 35k+ AAs, 2600-2700 of their heroic stat in group gear, maxed hero AAS from all progression, tanks with 250k+ hp. We don't use magelo and we don't raid current expansions but we have fun flying under the radar playing the group/old expansion raid game on the newest live server. We had lag issues years ago, a lot of people transfered off to other servers and so began the downfall of the raid population. When vox first came out you couldn't transfer your old money or toons to play on it, it was a fresh server for fresh starts. Transfers didn't even open up til 2014 I believe and that's when our economy went to hell.
  3. Imrahil Augur

    Even after having to cancel 2/3 of our raid days the second week in a row (or was it the third?), I still don't see us taking the "offer" to move individually - to Vox or to any other server!

    If they merged us, OK, if they built a corpy of AB in the US, OK - we would take it and hope for stable service. I have started on Solusek Ro, so have played with higher ping before. Moving individually would break the already shaky community from AB completely and that is the reason why pretty much nobody takes DBG up on that "patch solution".
  4. Maedhros High King

    AB is dying and noone is willing to transfer to Vox because they would rather quit than all collectively move individually.

    If the server was as much of a close knit community as you all seem to think, I cannot then understand why it is so difficult to all say, as a community, "we are all going to take the FREE transfer to Vox on Wednesday September 13th and we are going to reform all our guilds and get everything under a semblance of normalcy as soon as possible".

    Quitting out of stubbornness rather than taking a very generous free offer just makes the plight of AB seem less unbearable than you claim.

    It really comes down to the guild leadership. I assure you that if Cazic Thule become unplayable and a free server move became an option, that I would take my guild and move to another server and do my best as a leader to calm the fears and nervousness of my members to make the move easier on them.
    Then again, I am not going to lay down and quit like AB players seem to be doing.

    I suppose at least now that you are all willing to lay down and quit, maybe we can swap to 5 day lockouts on raid content instead of the ridiculous 4.5 day nonsense thats in place now to give Asian and Euro guilds a chance to compete. If youre all deciding to not compete anymore then we sure dont need to have the lockouts set to 4.5 days.
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare likes this.
  5. heruthemonk Lorekeeper

    And you would be moving to another US based server with other players who are in the same time zone, that you can recruit from. Not exactly taking a big risk there chum...

    Don't quite know what is so hard to grasp about this, AB is a server with a European base, all on roughly the same time zone. Moving piece by piece is not a solution, especially a one way move that will split the "community", as while they keep AB open with the carrot of a fix, not everyone will move.

    Either close AB and move all players, communicate the plan to fix the problem or expect to lose some subs and expac purchases..

    Not sure why your not supporting us, as the lost subs and expac purchases will mean less devhours to develop content for everyone else.

    Just do a server merge and close AB, simples
    Thancra likes this.
  6. Maedhros High King

    I think they should do a server merge of AB, but what you or I think doesn't matter much. You have a free option to continue playing that is being spurned. AB players world rather quit than take a very reasonable option.
    Sounds pretty stupid to me.

    Also, if all the AB population took the free server xfer, you would have an even larger base to recruit from. Hate to spoil anything with logic though.
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare likes this.
  7. heruthemonk Lorekeeper

    I can't speak for anyone else, I have unsubbed my boxes and won't buy the next expac, but have never said I would quit. People will naturally moan and complain about poor service and even worse communication, but my (casual family) guild at least, is trying to keep EOK progression raiding and still getting full raid turns outs despite the awful service.

    No one trusts DBG, or that the problems won't continue on Vox, the few that tested it had issues with chat lag there. Even a return to AB token would solve most people's issues, but even that is too much for them to offer.
    Yinla likes this.
  8. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    Players were asked to try Vox to see how it was, players reported similar problems to AB but not as severe.

    There are no guarantees once players transfer to Vox that we will not encounter the same issues we have now.

    AB players would prefer a merge or a transfer to a new US server to replace AB than an individual one way transfer to another server. Personally I would prefer a new US server with just AB players, that way we can see if it is the physical location of the server the location of the players or both causing the issues on AB, then once AB is fixed ( if it is ever fixed) AB players can be transfered back with a minimum amount of disruption to players on any server..

    Daybreaks fix in August that we weren't supposed to notice any difference, made things much much worse. Resulting in characters going missing, even more houses going missing, unknown errors trying to log in the server, and even more chat lag than we had before.

    I'm nervous about new horrors coming with Septembers patch, not that AB could get much worse than it is right now.

    But I will question, how much testing was/will be done before changes go live on AB? Were they tested in the same location as the AB server?
    Perplexed likes this.
  9. Zhaunil_AB Augur

    Leonard Nemoy would do never-ending facepalms on your claim!

    Your logic isn't all too... erm.. logical.
    Because in order to make your point and have your conclusion "appear" to be based on whatever twisted logic you follow, you omit crucial elements in your model of the AB-situation.

    You say it's about the guild leadership.
    I say it's about the guild member base really.
    Your guild might work on absolute obedience to you or the leadership.
    Here in Europe though, absolute obedience isn't exactly en vogue anymore since like.. 72years or so.
    Here, guild leadership (like any leadership) HAS to take their members into account and they know that if they do not they would be without a membership in quick order.

    What you seemingly cannot grasp is that AB is unique among all the server in that it offers a "natural home" for... well... european players.
    As such, we are 6 to 9 hours "ahead" of most population from the American continent.
    And we are 12 to 6 hours "behind" players from the pacific/asian area of the world.
    If you had any guild-leadership role ever in your life, you'd know that lack of a recruitment pool of players IN YOUR TIMEZONE means certain folding sooner rather than later.
    Fluctuation is a matter of life, also in EQ.
    The guilds on AB aren't stupid, nor are our guild's leaderships.
    They're just not AS short-sighted as you.
    Thankfully!

    Another thing you don't care to take into account are ties that have developed over time BEYOND guild-boudaries.
    If two guilds would take the one-way "offer" (as was said above: to ANY server), they would cut many of the non-raiding ties of their members (provided all of their members were to follow their leadership's decision - let's just assume that against logic for the sake of your argument) to the two other raiding guilds and some of the non-raiding guilds as well.
    Which in turn takes away from member's... motivation/willingness to log on outside of raids or required progression.
    A guild that is only on for the 3-4months it might take to finish an expansion is a dead guild.
    Not a good prospect.
    And let's not even talk about returnees that would find themselves "stranded", left behind.

    You claim that if we were ALL to move we'd have an "even larger base to recruit from".
    Yet you fail to see that, as pointed out above, this isn't true, because that "even larger base" isn't playing in our timezone.
    Revealing this as a bogus argument.
    Ever tried to get 100% result based on INDIVIDUAL decisions?
    Even in the eastern bloc they weren't naive enough to forge their votes to "100% agreement" ones.. they instead made it "99.7%" results - and everyone still knew they were forged.
    Heaven's sake - BRexit was decided based on a 51.9% "majority"...
    And that's not even 51.9% of the population, but only 51.9% of the electorate...


    Yes i think we'd - for the most part - rather quit than take INDIVIDUAL transfers, especially when they are one-way.
    No, we are not stupid for doing so.
    Just realistic.
    And we're just not AS self-centered as you see the world, basing our decision on far more than you seem to be able to grasp.
    WE are in need of an "all or nothing solution" because we are in an "all or nothing situation" basically.

    I hate to have something as your "opinion" presented to me as being "based on logic" when it's clearly.. not.
    Perplexed and Imrahil like this.
  10. Imrahil Augur

    @Maedhros: Even if I was able to command my complete guild to move and even IF the other 3 EoK guilds would move completely too, that would still not be enough, because the rest of the server would not move completely too. All those people who log in now and then, all the returning people, all the smaller guilds, should I command them too?
    Sorry to burst your bubble, but even with your god-like leadership I somehow doubt that you would be able to make EVERYONE from your server follow your exemplary lead and jump to a new and untested server. Now, for your guild it would be NP at all to jump to another US server as there would be plenty of players to fill up spots, but let's say your server was unstable and you were offered to individually move only to AB with it's awful timezones (really annoying, that you poor fellows have to deal with nasty 4.5 raid day lockouts because of all the pariahs /comfort), would you REALLY take it? I doubt it very much
  11. High Voltage Augur

    And while everybody picks on everybody - DGC sells a broken product to those poeple playing on AB. We will lose players, subscribers and whatnot, which is not good for the game we all want to play.
  12. Maedhros High King

    I think youre saying that when World War 2 was over Europeans became anarchists and no longer followed any rule of government? Totally relevant to EQ, by the way, I agree.
    If you care to bring Spock into the conversation, he would also remind you that "the needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few, or the one"

    I am a very successful guild leader as you would have noticed if you had taken 2 seconds to look at my magelo tag.
    I have had Europeans, Canadians, Australians and Americans in my guild.
    I have personally played EQ while I was stationed in South Korea and Iraq while I was in the army.
    I am totally sure that you can play EQ in Europe on other servers than AB.
    My guild currently operates on EST US NYC time zone, yet I somehow play and manage my guild from PST US LA time zone. Crazy right?!
    My Australian players have to wake up incredibly early, or stay up late to play and raid with us, Australians dont have their own special server, yet they still play, whats so special about AB?

    Do you think AB guilds are the only ones suffering in EQ right now? There are guilds crumbling that has nothing to do with server stability. They are crumbling because they couldnt quite beat the expansion because it was just a touch too hard for them. When this happens some people quit, others try to stick it out in the rumble that remains of the guild, and many others move to new servers to start a new chapter in their EQ story. At least 1/3 of my guilds active roster consists of server transfered players that did not begin playing on Cazic Thule/Fennin Ro. They made new friends, made new ties, and thats normal.
    Good leadership would value the playtime of the people who are logging in to this frustration that AB is experiencing, over the people that gave up, quit or went MIA during all this.


    Youre pretty bad at math. If 100% of AB players moved to a different server, if even 1 person from that new server was a possible new recruit, because they worked a shift that they realized would coincide well with Euro timezones, then you have a bigger recruit pool.
    Again, taking Coldwar era politics or voting results of Great Britain leaving the EU is totally relevant to EQ.

    Fine quit, you can begin by giving up all the pointless arguments you make on these forums.
    Yes it is stupid, and cowardly to quit rather than take the free transfers and the opportunity to forge something new out of the ashes of AB.
    Quitting is not being realistic, it is just quitting because of the fear of uncertainty on Vox.
    The only thing that is certain, is that if all the AB people quit rather than take the free transfer, and if they dont merge the server, then all your years of history and culture on AB are finished.
    Lets not fail to take into consideration that in all likelihood, if AB ever does indeed get merged, it will almost certainly be with Vox.
    As far as not being self centered, I can think of nothing more self centered than suicide. Youre basically telling me that most of the people are intending to do essentially that in EQ, the self imposed death of their toon rather than take the free options to move.
    If youre waiting for an all or nothing solution to most things in life, or definitely in EQ, I wouldnt recommend holding your breath.
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare likes this.
  13. Mizar Lorekeeper

    - AB would mostly accept a merge with any standard server, it's not an issue with any server
    - AB community is not made of armies where soldiers follow the 'loved leaders', guild leaders earn people's respect and they get it back from them, even though there is always freedom of choice for the individuals and that doesn't convert us son 'anarchists'
    - With moving having to be done individually in no way we would ever get up to 75% of the population to move, and that doesn't mean we are not a 'close knit' community. Again, we are not an army, nor ants, we care for each other and everybody's word count.
    - With 2 'de facto' euro servers, the permanently shrinking playerbase will become split. The leftover of the recruiting pool on AB would dry up as they would have cut the chance to know their potential recruiting guilds. Returning ppl would find themselves in a ghost town and come back to sleep, so the rare spawn of new players lured on 'preferred euro' server tag would too.
    - Had most guilds to move to any server keeping AB up would mean basicaly a slow attrition game of canibalistic cross guild recruiting. Maybe our guild leaders are not so 'good' and 'successful' but personally, with its ups and downs, I am quite proud we have reached a point for quite a long time of mutual respect in such a way that we all see this is not the right thing to do.
    - What you call 'fear of uncertainty' as a drive for not moving we see it as a 'certainty of fail' that justifies not doing it. We assessed the chance and it seems there is a consensus that chances to succeed are so slim that it's not worth to even try.
    - Finally, quitting rather than moving unrealistic ?. Quick death rather than slow death ? I want to keep out any US-Euro cultural exchange, but maybe that may be the root why it may be hard to understand that. You know, a few countries here allow euthanasia, dieing with dignity, I'd rather say we mostly accept that rather than slowly fading in black, call it suicide or being a coward if it makes you feel more comfortable.
    - Worry not, we are not holding our breath, we are not newcomers and most of us have seen EQ management evolving since Verant's days to DB's and our hopes are thin. But I would like to end with a well known 'euro' quote which basically wraps up why the way this incident is being sorted by DB should matter to other non AB users:

    First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
    Because I was not a Socialist.

    Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
    Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

    Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
    Because I was not a .

    Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
    Zhaunil_AB likes this.
  14. Zhaunil_AB Augur

    You think wrong, that wasn't what i was saying at all.
    "Any rule of government"...
    EQ is not RL, guild leadership has no hold whatsoever over it's "citizenship".
    We follow out of free choice, or do NOT follow. Again out of our free choice, for our own individual reasons.
    There IS no "rule of government" in EQ.
    Only more or less commonly agreed-on terms.
    But it sounds as if you are far too caught up in your own picture of your "glory" to see that.

    I honestly don't give a rat's rear about whether you are a GL or not, "successful" or not.
    I see you have finished the expansion quite quickly, ok.
    But being in a guild, or even the guild's leader of your server's number two doesn't give you any more credit than the next guy.
    You must have some good people that do the actual work for you, because
    based on what i see in your posts, I am sure you'd fail miserably among europeans.
    You fail to grasp the situation of and on AB yet make claims in a rather typical american "i know it all and the world would be a better place if all followed my rule" way.

    We have American and asian players on the server too.
    But THEIR schedule has to fit ours, not the other way around.
    If an american works weird hours (for an american job), he might be a candidate for us yes.
    But how many of those do you have on an average US server?
    Even moreso on a low-population one?
    You seem to be proud of your knowledge in math...
    Apply some common sense to that then and you might reach a probablility that tends towards zero without actually reaching it perhaps.

    No actually i do not.
    Neither have i given any indication to that end.
    On the contrary.
    Had you read my posts as you claim by referring to them,
    you'd see that it's one of my points against a move that OTHER servers are suffering from the exact SAME symptoms as we do, only at a much,MUCH smaller scale.
    Which would make the symptoms bearable - or perhaps even "hardly noticeable" IN COMPARISON.
    So if we HAVE TO choose between the two evils, we'd take a server-move - as pointed out by several people along the way now.
    However, individual basis is no good in that regard.
    It MUST be a "move all or noone".

    As to guilds crumbling:
    Guilds do not crumble because they did not beat an expansion by now.
    They crumble because their spirit is broken, the members do not have sufficient ties to/among each other.
    There are always people who place their own "goals" above the other members'.
    Which brings me to the absurdity of
    Hmm...
    I might be "pretty bad at math".
    But you are even worse in applied science.
    See, the whole points is that there IS no "100% of AB players move".
    Not under the present conditions.
    The relevance of RL to EQ in this context?
    Well... if even in RL you have nothing similar, even under the most dictatorial circumstances imaginable...
    How can you be so dumb to expect such in a virtual environment, even dumb enough to place your argument on "100%"?
    When people are just a few clicks away from a (far) more enjoyable experience?
    You are being far too ignorant about things that matter just in order to TRY to make your point.

    That's why i - if you were following my posts as you claimed you were - am advocating for a "copy" of AB onto some US environment for the time being.
    That is the only way to "ensure" the 100%.
    In ANY other case, your basic assumption is faulty and therefore also your conclusion.

    That's true, and it's done.
    If - through all this, attendance has dropped from 60 to 70 with people on the bench to 30,35 or 40 you get to see who'll stick with you and who doesn't.
    And yes, these people are being valued and they are forming a more special bond because of these shared difficulties they went through together (or at least tried to).
    Yet, as said above:
    Aside from DKP and in extreme cases forced guild.removals there's not much guild leadership can do about it, can they?
    It's not as if you could send some thugs over to the place where they live and force people to come online.
    And even if they could, that's not how we in Europe work.
    By the way: it's not how people in the US work either, unless at gunpoint perhaps.

    People make choices, and GOOD LEADERSHIP anticipates those choices (and more importantly the reasons for them) and does it's best to "steer" in a certain direction.
    But noone can take the choice away from the member/player.
    That's the nature of things, even moreso in a virtual environment where people have EASY and FAST alternatives.

    We've always had people jump ship and go for seemingly greener pastures.
    and "good leadership" copes with that just fine.
    It's when you are facing issues BEYOND your control, such as server "stability" or non-working-chat accompanied by mass-disconnects and when things become difficult and just NOT manageable.


    No i can not, sadly.
    They might be pointless and especially in your case, since you are unable to put yourself in our shoes.
    Or because Daybreak simply have made up their minds already and don't give a .
    But pointless they aren't.
    The point is to give the "move us all" crowd just one more voice.
    Even over the shouting of ignorant folk like you.

    Neither is anyone planning to commit suicide either.
    But most of us are perfectly all right with cancelling our subs (most already have cancelled all but their main account) and hope for better times, server-side.
    How the community will look like at that point though, we are not so sure about.
    That's why we want the above-mentioned "100%" COPY sooner rather than later.
    It seems to be the only "compromise" possible, given the stated intent of the company and the needs of the community, their CUSTOMERS.
    In the end, money talks loudest.
    You as an american should understand at least that.
    We're not the herd of sheep you seem to picture us as.
    But mostly adult players with alternatives to something we like DESPITE some issues and shortcomings.
    But there's a point where "like" is just no longer enough in the light of all the "despite" that's been building up.

    And if i can, along the way, show just that one not-so-selfcentered-and-ignorant non-euro our point of view to some extent, then it's not even wasted effort.
    Though the chances seem rather small if you were in any way representative for your population.
    Which i am glad to know is not the case.
    Even in a country that's notorious about keeping the majority of their population hardly educated there's far more common sense than you are showing!
    Imrahil likes this.
  15. Deillusional Augur

    Simply put unless all the population moves it will not work.
    Imrahil and Yinla like this.
  16. Blackjaw_SolRo Lorekeeper

    @Maedhros: I agree that raiding on any server except AB is possible regardless of the player's IRL location. And if AB players had only their main character, the move to Vox would be a no-brainer.

    Sadly most of us have more than one character, more than one account, more than one plot. I only have 14 chars spread over 3 accounts and only one plot, and when I leave AB for good I would of course need to and want to move all of them - similar to a merge. Since it is NOT a merge, friends might decide to stay, and we lose them to play with.

    But why should I invest the time for this when the cause is entirely not on me ? Plus fight for possible renames for each individual character, wait until guild has set up a new neighborhood, ...
    Not to mention the time wasted from GM Woebot and others in restoring anchors, guild halls and housings over and over.

    Even a free move back to AB is not an option at this point. I have all my mules for a reason, and I need them on the same server.

    10 days until silver.
    Imrahil and eliandra like this.
  17. Ranpha Augur

    The only move I'll be making won't involve a server transfer if these problems keep up on AB.
    Imrahil likes this.
  18. Blackjaw_SolRo Lorekeeper

    AB ping-ponging between Up and Down again ...
  19. Bolfo New Member

    since weeks ,every sunday the same, server down and up, cant see chars in char select-or i must wait xx min, zoning over 5 min,login problems in general, chatlags, Houses and GH plots gone or bugged....and DBG dont do anything.Sorry DBG but its a joke what you called "support" .Never ever i had seen a so bad server performance since 1999. And i dont move all my chars on Server XX without knowing >better performance.
  20. savrin Augur

    With all the problems on AB and Daybreak doing nothing about it, I am surprised they all still have active accounts at all. Why server transfer when they should just quit playing until it's fixed or just retire completely?
    It's pretty clear they don't care what happens one way or the other and are just milking the game for as much money as they can get.