Thornblade to Mischief

I've spent the last 2 years or so asking and almost begging for a population balance of some sort...denying even wanting a merge because I'd rather just have some sort of population balance. They did nothing as per normal. I'm not going to sit here and keep hoping the server gets better when the company refuses to do anything about it, why when I stated in the op that I figure this would also fall on deaf ears.

Yes I want all my guild members that can possibly transfer to be able to freely since this is the companies doing, not our faults. And as I stated in my other post, either way the server will die with nothing being done. We are currently on track as a normal tlp is where you will have 1-2 guilds for live and that's it. This is a rare situation where we have a sister server to actually go to.

Want to blame someone for the server dying, blame DBG. I'm just trying to keep my guild afloat, and give my members the best options available if not, through their idiocy.

It's a reasonable request, but like the OP said, I wouldn't want anyone to get their hopes up. The track record speaks for itself.

I made a throwaway toon on TB last night and saw a couple dozen or so people throughout the tutorial, CR, and BM. A lot of them were missing visible gear, so unless they were intentionally handicapping themselves by not twinking or PLing, they were clearly new players to the server. The point being, people are starting on TB, just as they still do on every other live or TLP server. Guilds would be well advised to hang out in those zones and offer help or at least strike up a conversation. That's one way that server communities can be built, and that's also how they can be rebuilt.

Guess you had a bad run in with them on previous servers. Leadership is now not the same leadership as before

And yah, I did put it in a recruitment post.

And the server could use a boost from the community of TB, so I 100% support them to do a free xfer.

It's like Mischief, but without the active player base

I tried to go back to my characters on Thornblade and it just did not feel like an MMO anymore with the population. I am not prepared to shell out real dollars to move all my characters so just stopped playing. It felt quiet in PoP to me and coming back in TSS for a month. It definitely isn't a toxic server and the people left are really nice but i think that's mainly because there just isn't a lot of people so they have to behave to get anything done. If there is not a merger this year i think i think they need to just allow free transfers off, its one thing when servers die off because there's no similar timeline/ruleset alternative. It would kill Thornblade but honestly i think i think its pretty much done already and at least gives those remaining players a viable path to live.

It is not what it is. The fact is Darkpaw should have merged the two servers last year, period. Each day they do not do it, they lose more and more subscribers. In the end they will leave Thornblade to rot like they did Fippy, where there was 5 of us logging in the last 6 months, it was so pointless we were posting screenshots daily of days wen 3 ppl were on at primetime, or 5, once we had 7 and thought the server was going to implode. Huge waste of time and money to let servers wither like that.

I think you are more likely to see a server merge to Mischief rather than free server transfers to Mischief. I could see them doing free transfers to Thorneblade from Mischief to try and improve the population. But at this stage of the game, most have friends and guildmates they don't want to leave behind.

Personally I'd push for a merge.

I don't think Darkpaw ever said that was a plan, I think that was an assumption on the players part. IIRC, it was originally just Mischief announced, and then due to the amount of player anticipation they quickly announced Thornblade as a second server.

I get the problem, I'm on Thornblade. We went a different route this year, due to how PoR was last xmas time. We went from 60 people to 35 people within a week when it came time for the holiday period, and barely pushed through to clear PoR.

Same thing this year. 2 weeks before xmas we had 57 in raid. Within that 2 weeks we dropped to like 43. Those are numbers with alts being boxed.

So knowing the second tier of underfoot prior to convorteum is unforgiving, and the short time frame on UF, we are allied raiding 1-2 days a week. It is clunky, but works. Took down brath and arthricrex the first day, took down lichen creep the second day, took down fungal and took a look at brell's temple trials the third day. With mid 40s we probably would have taken brath/arth down, and fungal. But with our set up lichen would have no happened IMO, and the brell's trials would be rough for that many boxes.

This is just to get both guilds through the holidays so no wasted progression time, honestly. But its working. Goal is to clear convorteum before next expansion. First Creation might be rough, but we'll see. HoT is easy, and everyone will be back to raiding (last year we went back into the mid 50s by end of january).

But there are plenty of expansions after HoT that aren't as box friendly if you aren't using cheat software.

So I get it.

But the issue is simply that you stated a problem, and your solution isn't a solution to the problem, it is just for freebie to get you out. They aren't going to do that.

Push for server merger, its the only hope long term. Last year the pop was good enough, this year it seems like a good time to merge them.

There are people/guilds on the server who would rather not merge, so I'm not going to try to force that nor do I expect them to until the server is completely dead which it isn't. Which is why I'm asking just for a free xfer token per account of those on Thornblade to give the option for those who want to leave. I'd be fine with either...just stating give people the option of those who want to stay and those who don't (and that it isn't out of the pocket of the consumer when it's the companies doing).

One of my concerns now would be the loss of Overseer Progression. Since that is tied to the Server and not the Char, transferring to Mischief from Thornblade would wipe any progress done in Overseer. I'm not sure how Server Merges handle that. I would assume they would merge Overseer Progress, but no idea if that's true or how that would work. That would definitely push me towards Team Merge vs free transfers.

I'm also in the camp "I don't think DBG will merge anytime soon". As unfortunate as it is, they have a reputation of waiting way to long to finally do that. Thornblade will truly be "Dead" by the time they get around to doing that. We're definitely approaching the time when they should start planning to merge, but their track record shows it will be another 2+ years before it's done. And as always, too little too late.

For overseer, the only way they merge is with a true server merge but I don't think it's a full merge if you have existing data on both servers. Think it takes the highest of the two. You can retire all of your agents before transferring, but still not the same and you would lose your levels.

I'm personally against a full merge at this point as I feel mischief is still too populated to require it. The best they could do imo would be allowing free transfers from mischief to thornblade for a month. But if people are currently paying for xfers, it makes no sense from a business standpoint.

I guess we'll find out soon if they will merge the two in July when they release the 2024 roadmap in a couple weeks. Hope they don't, but I can see why a couple guilds would want it.

Doubt they merge, they never do, but free transfers would be fine. It would essentially kill the server and most would move and the crazy few who wanna be on a dead server can have their dead server.

Kinda hit the nail on the head. Free transfer from TB to Mischief would kinda force everyone else to make the trip. Merging servers without all the junk alts no one uses.

If everyone can transfer for free then there is no more 'dead server' problem because everyone can leave the dead server for free and keep playing, rather than quit. how is that not a solution?

Thats something I said in my original reply. I'd assume they'd rather keep a sub and give a free transfer.

Lets be real. If they opened transfers only from Mischief to Thornblade then the majority of people that would use it would be people going to mischief for their bazaar then transferring goods to Thornblade.

If they opened it from Thornblade to Mischief it'd prevent people from quitting (at least). Sure it would hurt Thornblade but people would quit regardless which hurts Thornblade.

Being proactive saves subs and your guildmates. None of the three mid tier guilds want to merge. The Council of Quorum (Still CoQ) experiment may be getting you to convorteum but (from what I've heard) will end there and put everyone back where they were. We keep putting bandaids on everything. As much as I personally don't want to go to Mischief at least its something fresh with a lot more people and a lot more opportunity.

As far as "you only want a free transfer". Well heck yeah. If a cruise ship was going down I hope the lifeboats are free. I'd assume DB would save money shutting Thornblade down as well. So why shouldn't it be free?