I see a common comment in many various Progression threads tied to population. It's always some variant of "Vulak should be merged into Fippy..." Well this won't work at all for several reasons: First and foremost, the population on Vulak, while low, is active and plays here BECAUSE it is a quiet / drama free server. Rolling us into Fippy, will simply cause us to stop playing EQ altogether, or at least on the new Vulak / Fippy. Our guild, which makes the majority of Vulak, has talked a lot about this point. And the overwhelming consensus is that if we were merged, we'd stop playing. My family would for sure, and the majority of the rest of the guild will as well. Right now, the two servers, have very different playstyles. Our server and guild has actually been gaining members / population. And the growth is not coming from poaching other guild members, to create an artificial impression of numbers. It's people choosing to roll new toons, level them up, and join us. They're doing that because they want the quiet, casual, but consistent playstyle that we have. It is very different from the dominant playstyle on Fippy. I'm not saying it's better. Ours suits us better, just as the hard core raiders of Fippy prefer their playstyle, and it's better for them. Combining the two, will just create a huge net loss in subs for SOE, as there will be 50+ subscriber cancellations immediately on server merge. Plus, with that playstyle and guild eliminated, there will not be the draw of new people that want the casual type of play. And that will translate into no huge new spike in active members raiding / playing on Fippy. There probably would be a couple, but my experience says even the couple will be temporary as it will be more people playing out their current sub if that. Fippy's population issues are caused by the players on that server. As I've mentioned in the past, our server / guild has been growing and progressing on this 'dead' server of Vulak. You don't see our server population posting a desperate need for 'fixes' to our population, because we're enjoying the play we have, quiet, drama free, complete lack of epeen measuring... We've finally (at our own pace, which is all we're looking for) progressed into farming OMM raids. That itself will make a massive impact on our success, just as it did for the Fippy guilds when they got access to them. Just a summary of the other side of that merge topic. Fippy players should certainly not think that a merge with Vulak would do any good to improve their population. It's putting false hope in the wrong direction. And if anything, that misdirection is keeping them from looking to the cause of their server decline over the last 6 months and focus on changing that.
Ummm, nobody has mentioned a merge in over a month on this forum, and that was some guy saying they should have done it earlier while EoE was still over there. In fact, the only post about a merge I've seen recently happened 15 minutes after this one, and I'm pretty sure that guy is trolling you. This is obviously more of your "Fippy is bad, Vulak is totally fine, come run SoD raids with us until the end of time at your own pace" propaganda.
and if Citizen, Darkblood and EoE all decided to server change to your precious Vulak, you would quit too? Seems like its more your ego than 'the health of the servers'. Why would merging with Fippy affect you one way or the other except then you couldn't be king of the hill anymore. PS omm raids can be gimped w 6 mages, i suggest you look into it for mass gearing up.
The first highly publicized way to do OMM raids with very few people, it ended with some bans. That probably wouldn't happen today on live servers, since the gear isn't current, but I would watch what you say about it with regards to the progression servers, where it may or may not still be relevant.
Give it a rest man. Everyone has heard this same speech in every TLP thread you post in. It really did not need its own thread. But we are flattered you spend so much time thinking about us <3
Seems to me SOE would have done that back when the servers were at the same progression level. It really isn't fair now that the servers are different, and growing more different quickly. That, and a merge apparently requires coding changes (and testing, and then support afterward for the inevitable issues), it may not be worth the effort. After all, the Vulak population has been growing lately.
https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/fippy-dead.214000/ poster in middle couple weeks ago stated Vulak should be merged with Fippy. Not going to hijack someone's thread from the OP and steer it off course. If you don't like the message, feel free to move on. But our community cares about the fact that we do not want to be merged with Fippy. You're server is dying rapidly, and we all know why. We want no part of it. The hate (and sarcastic backhanded hate disguised in polite words) just shows why we want nothing to do with Fippy or it's culture. It has nothing to do with worrying about what goes on there. Our only focus is on enjoying the game here. That's the whole point to this post. To make sure the powers that be, and community at large, sees what we have going here and to keep it that way. Any thought of merging the servers would do Sony no good from a revenue standpoint, or Fippy no good from gaining population, since we'd just stop playing EQ. We're posting here to keep what we have going, not bash anyone else.
If the population on both servers is fairly low then it would be more profitable to merge them, and begin a new one where more profit will come in. Vulak was a backup server that probably should have been merged a couple years ago.
While Vulak started because of the overwhelming demand of progression server play, what's happened is that the communities of both servers have evolved to suit very different playstyles. Which is good for SOE because they get more total customers than they will if they merge them. Merging the two won't be profitable, since they won't keep both populations on one server. (And it would cost in house resources to manage it, which by all comments are dedicated elsewhere and too expensive for such a small customer base). It would be like owning a country bar and a hip hop club and thinking 'lets just merge the two and we'll have more people in our combined club !' It won't work because a good amount of people from one place, will not want to hangout in the new / different club. Instead they'll look elsewhere for something that suits their taste. And again, this is not a criticism of anyone's preferred playstyle. It's an acknowledgement that there can be different playstyles within the same game. Forcing one culture on everyone doesn't make them accept it, it makes them leave. Look at what happened to Vulak's population and then Fippy's. So you can say what 'should' happen, or acknowledge what has happened. Deciding that others should accept what they see as an unenjoyable playstyle is pretty arrogant. They'll simply log off and go somewhere else. And in the end, that doesn't really help keep the game you want alive, since you're chasing away your gaming company's revenue. It should be obvious all that's going to do in the end is ruin your game. What SOE can take from all of this, is whenever (if) they release new progression servers they should simply release two at the start, with very different timelocks. One geared to the hard core full time gamer that wants the cut throat competition of racing over everyone. And one that has a much longer timelock that won't attract the full time gamer (or if they do start, they'll get bored fast and leave). That way those that want a more casual playstyle will collect on one, and the hard core gamers can collect on the other.
This. I can't believe they didn't do that at the beginning. Make one server focused on hardcore progression, maybe even look at easing the restraints and let them go as fast as they can. Have the other server (Vulak in this case) be the slower paced one. That's what we have now. Vulak is getting new people in fairly regularly. It's still a small population, but we should be allowed to grow it back up. We lost our population since SOE permitted transfers from Vulak to Fippy. Those who wanted that have taken that option, and now we have a slower paced server in which the current raid content cap exceeds the population itself. We will still be a while before we open up the next expansion. It's a great time to come to Vulak and to catch up. We aren't racing ahead with expansions, and frankly our open statements to that effect seem to be what is bringing people to the server. If you want fast progression, start on Fippy. If you are looking for a more leisurely pace, Vulak is the place to be. Threads like this one are started by Fippy people, not Vulak. We can go to Fippy if we want, the transfers are there. We simply chose not to. Forcing it on us won't make us suddenly progression focused, because the people who were progression focused transferred off already.
I second this motion. I am very content with Vulak at this time. I enjoy the fact that we have the same people logging in and playing and are slowly gaining new players that are mature. Vulak is very low drama where as previously before the merge it was not. And as previously mentioned by everyone, if we wanted to merge with Fippy, we would just transfer. If they merge the two servers, my 12 accounts will be cancelled just due to the fact I didn't like all the drama that it caused before hand. These are all my own personal feelings, thoughts and choices. I would love to see another progression server setup.
Or merge Fippy with a live server since they are almost there already, and start a new progression server which is again fast paced progression. Vulak is already there for more casual progression. If someone is unhappy with Vulak, they can move to Fippy already. The people on Vulak are not playing the same content as Fippy, so a merge isn't reasonable. Plus, Vulaks population is slowly growing. My wife and I feel Vulak is worth paying to play on. We like it and the people who we play with. If they merge us with a fast paced progression server like Fippy, we would cancel All-access on all of our accounts and just play on the server we did before (Test).
if you raiders are feeling stuck join TFO on test we are right where you are now and moving through content you would be raiding day one. http://thefacelessorder.com/
