Server Merge

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Raylen, Jul 29, 2018.

  1. Aurmoon Augur

    I totally understand your pain. I have purchased I believe 26+ character transfer tokens in the last four years (I’ve lost count - 3 server moves across multiple accounts), all of which were at full cost. While I too would love super discounted character transfer tokens, I’ve frequently left some extra characters behind on prior servers when transferring. If you indeed have 100+ toons that you would actually want to transfer and couldn’t easily be replaced (like a low level tradeskill or bazaar mule), then you are in a super unique category of EQ player and probably aren’t the target for this sort of situation.

    That said, the 1000 station cash cost was just to illustrate the idea. Perhaps sell them in bulk and make them available via /claim, so you could buy 10 for 2500 station cash and /claim them across multiple characters on multiple accounts. In fact, I would MUCH rather see this as the methodology of distributing some of the marketplace items rather than the current methodology.
  2. Geroblue Augur

    I realize it was for illustration purposes, but even then 10 for what ? $25 seems a bit too much.

    I did have around 180. I have reduced them down to about 150. My first account is mostly full. I boguht an extra slot, so some servers have 9 characters on them. Second account has a few full, and some empty character slots on several servers. All the way down to number 5 account, which has characters on only 3 or 4 servers.
  3. menown Augur

    I am curious, what is the class distribution between all of your characters.
  4. Geroblue Augur

    Shaman, druid, ranger, cleric, enchanter. A few magician, and one shadow knight. One or two wizards.

    Mostly shaman, enchanter, and clerics.

    My first ever character back in 2004 was a warrior. After getting killed a number of times due to monstyer running away and bringing back friends I deleted it.
    snailish and menown like this.
  5. Xianzu_Monk_Tunare Augur

    You're lying. It was stated when the Quarm event was announced that the characters created on Quarm would be transferred to a new server after the event ended. It was also stated, before the Quarm event began, that the ruleset for the resulting new server (Brekt) would be the same as your standard live servers excepting that it would use the FV No Drop rule and that you would NOT be able to transfer characters off of it.

    There was no change; the server was always going to be exactly what it is. If you would stop trying to rewrite history and make yourself into a victim and instead start making realistic and fair requests, then you would likely start getting support from a wider portion of the playerbase as well as the Dev's themselves.

    I know that a large number of people on FV would be eager to move from FV to Brekt; there are likely whole guilds who would happily make the move. Free transfers from FV to Brekt for a set period of time; like 2 months, then wait a month, followed by a 2 month window for transfers from Brekt to FV; and you'd probably have a far more balanced pair of servers. And additionally, after this was done they could allow transfers for a fee between the two servers. As other's have said, Brekt's issue is more that it has no central guilds or public alliances which are doing at or near current content. Get a few guilds like that and things will change.


    They are not stating concerns, they are stating facts as learned from previous mergers. Both of the forced rounds of mergers resulted in fewer total players, and the death of even more guilds. The /pickzone options are not going to change this. Mergers do not at all increase your chances to get a group. If you want to find groups be sociable and join a fellowship and a guild.

    People also perfectly understand how pick zones work; they know that they don't solve any of the issues unless you have so many people in the zone; and if the over all population reduces then you can easily lose your camp to other people who were also camping the exact same spot in a different pick. Also, there are just as many people against this who do not box as there are that do; and it has nothing to do with pick zones.
    snailish likes this.
  6. Evertrek Augur


    no clue why or how this was the case. my guess is guilds like their private servers now, but i don't see any new guilds forming these days other than maybe spin-offs of old guilds. Luclin is dead in pickup groups and only seems to be active raiding night. i have played on Luclin since launch. TLP has killed all but raids on my server.

    SOE used to post player counts per server then dropped that. now they have the current meter, which from what i can tell, indicates most of the servers are idle often. it would seem that if they merge servers, that the few that login would meet up on the new server in larger numbers. the issue would be that there maybe bottlenecks with raid targets (again) for guilds.

    maybe just add 2-3 live servers that require a sub and let peeps move guilds and such all for free. keep one free to pay (your way) server and let free moves to it and then shut down the rest. most MMOs these days require a sub and i'm fine with it.
  7. Xianzu_Monk_Tunare Augur

    It was the case because, the middle guild got devoured by the upper guild who got cherry picked by the cutting and bleeding edge ones; as well as ones from other servers as both of those mergers also allowed players to choose to movelog for free for a short period of time. The mid and low tier guilds however didn't get anyone coming to them. As a result lots of mid and low tier guilds went belly up as well which lead to several players at that time quitting due to having liked their guild and not being interested in a different one. In the end, most of the servers ended up with more than they had originally but significantly less than the combined servers had prior to the mergers.

    Mergers won't help pickup groups at all, ever, period. The majority of people do not play that way anymore; they don't have the free time to do it. People typically have set friends they group with, as well as fellowships and guildies. You could merger every single server, and the pickup group will be just as dead. Also, PUGs were dead well before TLP were even a thing.

    Exact online player counts for the servers were dropped long before SOE was even a thing. For the longest time, there was not even a meter. There are no bottlenecks in current content. All current content has /pickzones which could easily be manipulated to work for raid guilds. As I stated above, you won't find anymore people than you already do for PUGs. It isn't a lack of players that is the problem. It is a lack of people wishing to play with an unknown variable that could ruin the little time they have to play.

    Most people are not going to move to those servers. A few guilds may choose to do so, if they are on very top heavy raid servers, but for the most part people benefit too much from having easy access to additional free accounts. I would wager that those servers would end up even worse off than Trakanon did.
    snailish and code-zero like this.
  8. Evertrek Augur


    not true, most other MMOs have a grouping tool and peeps que up and run quick PUGS of dungeons and such. even with the EQ grouping tool noone seems to want to pull out their healer or tank and take lead anymore. mercs are being pushed as place holders, but have been nerfed enough to never be a good replacement for a player character. and in the end some level of raiding is needed to enjoy end-game content, gear, crafts. sweep the remaining active players onto one server seems to be the only option now. i would love to hear an official reason of why merges are not happening....

    i do agree server populations limited PUGs before TLPs, but they did kill any off-peak chances of grouping. Luclin is dead except when raiding and based on the websites meters most servers are dead most of the day. the only time PUGs worked were on new TLP servers these days.

    my guess is if they did rolling restarts daily the meters would show even less players online at any given time.
  9. Xianzu_Monk_Tunare Augur

    Other MMOs are not Everquest. They are not comparable. People who play EQ have chosen not to use the LFG tool; they ask the people they know, their guildies, and those in their fellowship; and that is typically it. People might ask in general if they are doing old content and need some bodies to request a mission or raid dz. But as a rule they do not

    Mercs have never been a good replacement for players, and they have never been intended to be good replacements for them. Also, a place holder is exactly what they are; they hold the place till you fill it with an actual person.

    It is an outright lie that any level of raiding is necessary to enjoy any part of EQ grouping. I mean, 2/3 of my gear is group gear from more than 2 expansions ago and I can still do some stuff in RoS solo. If I bothered to actually get TBM or EoK group geared, let alone RoS group geared, then I would be doing a ton more than I already am. I quite enjoy TSing and do no raiding at all.

    There is absolutely no need whatsoever for any of the standard Live servers to be messed with. Absolutely nothing at all would be changed if every player was put on a single server; you still would not get groups. In all likelihood, you would get fewer groups than you do now. Mergers are not happening because they don't help. The only servers that might benefit at all would be Trak and Brekt; and Brekt would likely benefit more than a merge. from allowing transfers from FV to Brekt. Trak will likely be merged at some point in the future when Fippy catches up to Live.

    No, server populations had absolutely no impact on the death of PUGs. There are just as much chance for grouping in off-peak hours as there ever has been. The fact that you cannot get a group does not mean that no one can. PUGs don't happen because the player base has changed; not because of server population.

    Who would be surprised that kicking people offline daily would result in fewer people online? That is kind of a given.
    Geroblue likes this.
  10. Funk Augur

    No I personally don't remember them saying directly after Quarm it would become a prison like FV.
    But thanks for calling me a liar because you must know what I remember inside my own head.

    Again we come back to you having no dog in this fight yet you believe quoting everyone in the thread and replying with your vast knowledge against others being able to enjoy the game.Telling people pick up groups are dead..why? You are 100% wrong I can get a pick up group right now on any decent populated server I have a character on.

    You're on Tunare, so what would someone moving from Brekt to FV do to you? That's right, absolutely nothing. In fact you'd have no idea who went where and when.

    Yet you troll these posts over and over with your negativity. Not too monkly dude.... not too monkly at all.
  11. Funk Augur

    To add to the previous post, the fact is that times have changed. A server with a population of probably less than 100 active players is a complete waste of resources, especially to a company with limited staff and budget.

    Allowing transfers just from Brekt to FV and shutting Brekt down is one less dead server to worry about, to have to fix with all the other populated servers. Forget FV to Brekt, just shut Brekt down after a time period for people to move.

    It would be nothing but a good thing for everyone involved.
  12. Verily Tjark Augur

    Daaaaanngg...

    I think what he's trying to say is check yoself before you wreck yoself.
  13. snailish Augur

    I will politely disagree.

    1. Not sure what running an actual "server" costs them now. They kept Vulak up for a very long time with almost no population.

    2. As others have said, there are those of us with "retired" FV characters that would pay to move them to Brekt and possibly even play them. I much prefer the streamlined Brekt ruleset, and FV has always been the one server that is laggy for me.

    3. Quarm events feed into Brekt, that was said in the beginning (before they named it Brekt). Some of us assumed that we'd see an event every year that fed more people into the server. Didn't happen this year... hopefully they come up with 3-5 Quarm events that cycle every year and dump into Brekt. Do this and look back in 5 years Brekt might be one of the more robust servers.
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare likes this.
  14. Evertrek Augur


    i apologize to everyone in this thread. it's been a while since i've seen a troll here and thought he had something to say.

    i'm pro-merge at this time. not really sure why fans need to be spread out over so many servers...
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  15. Laronk Augur


    Really nowadays the servers are probably all virtual machines running on clusters and they probably use software like turbonomics to tell them when to adjust resource values such as cpu and ram for the VMs and then they get auto adjusted during the monthly maintenance.

    Closing down a server like brekt might be pretty much a net 0$ difference in operating budget. If closing the server doesn't make a difference in actual number of staff or number of physical servers there might not be a reason.

    The main actual reason for server mergers in games is not the cost of running the servers but instead its often along the lines of "Hey guys, if we merge these servers we'll increase player retention this year by 5% because its getting a bit sparse and people need others to play with"

    Reasons to not merge are often "we might lose x% of the population from a merge because unhappy customers" and "it costs this many man hours to do a merge where they wont be able to work on expansions and such"

    Trust me if the finances said "we need to merge brekt because it's costing us X and the players on that server only pay us X-Y" they'd merge the server yesterday.
    code-zero and snailish like this.
  16. snailish Augur

    Give Brekt the highest XP rate in the game and allow free transfers in from all servers but FV and I think you see an uptick.

    Allow FV paid transfers... I think you'd see a huge uptick. ---since this thread has got on the Brekt thing.

    As far as live servers go... I think it could be dangerous to mess with them too much at this point. I would consider trial offering free moves off the lowest population ones to maybe 2 more robust population ones for a month and see what that does --and by that I mean sit back and watch for at least 6 months after.

    Maybe the 6 lower pop ones are ghost towns, or maybe they have slightly smaller pops yet remain happy viable places for the playstyles still there? Does the influx to the 2 destination servers have a real impact?
    Funk likes this.
  17. Funk Augur

    I think we all can basically agree that some sort of promotion involving transfers would be a good thing.

    We don't really have to have merges, that way no one is forced onto a server they may not want to merge to.

    Throw a bone to Brekt and either allow just Brekt to FV, or both FV to Brekt also and see how that goes.

    Can be full price tokens, or discounted through a promotion.
  18. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    The problem is what do you do with the chars which are left? Anyone who returned from an EQ break and went to play their Brekt char would be disapointed if they found they had been deleted, especially if they had using Daybreak Cash on them.

    I think I'd prefer to see more Quarm server usage with the chars all going to Brekt, which was their original plan.
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare likes this.
  19. code-zero Augur

    I have noticed that flippant attitude about just deleting characters and closing servers popping up more frequently nowadays. I'm not sure where that comes from but it seems terribly self centered to me
  20. Xianzu_Monk_Tunare Augur

    If you had bothered at all to read any of my actual posts, then you would have known that I was fully in favor of people being allowed to move from Brekt to FV and FV to Brekt. The original request was to allow people on Brekt to move to any server they wish.

    As for calling you a liar, you claimed that there was no announcement that the resultant server from Quarm would have the exact same transfer rules as FV. Since that is not true; as it was explicitly stated in the same thread which included the announcement that the characters would be moved to a new different server after the event completed; what you said was in fact a lie. What you think in your mind does not change that; to lie, to say or write an untrue or inaccurate statement that may or may not be believed true by the speaker or writer.

    As far as pick up groups go, are you making the group or are you being invited to an already existing group? Dollars to donuts, that group is most likely filled with people who regular group together and is filling a single spot with someone they recognize.
    PUGs that are full of people who all just went lfg at the same time are effectively dead. There are typically enough non-full regular groups to use most of those who go lfg; but that is not a pick up group.


    Calling someone a troll because they disagree with you does not make them one. Also, there are not that many servers.