This game needs Mega Server tech ASAP

My wife and I have a total of 4 gold accounts and for us , our medium server is great. Of course we prefer to solo/duo and aren't in guilds. Having played EQ 1 for many years we remember crowded servers with all the drama , plat farmers , waiting in line forever to get a chance at some of the mobs..etc , so we're quite happy with the lower population on our server. I understand the frustration of many people who want to group all the time , after all EQ 1 and 2 are social games , but for a few of us a mega server would probably ruin the game. I would be all for mergers as long as they keep a couple medium population servers around for us old folks.

Or maybe just nobody on those servers wanted to be in those guilds. Not saying that's necessarily the case, but I've seen guilds that have problems recruiting not because of population but because nobody wants to be in them.

There used to be way more raiding guilds on Unrest, but they broke up because they could not recruit enough decent raiders to bother to keep on going. When Paradigm broke up on Unrest, a group of us joined Dominatus, and we we pretty much made group #4. When Dominatus broke up, a group of us went to Symphony of the Night, and again, we filled up group #4. Unrest is a "global server" because we had the Asian/"Down Under" server(s) merged into us. The one Asian raiding guild broke up and the #1 guild on the server now is mostly made up of people from NZ/Australia. We also used to have several successful guilds that spanned the 4 time zones in the USA/Canada. Because we're a "global server", we didn't get access to having more USA-based players.

I think one thing to remember here is when these games began, ten years back, players that are still active were in a different place in their lives. In the beginning many of us had very different demands; ten years for many of us has brought partnerships/marriage, kids, graduations, careers that demand more time.

I do think those real life things impede one's ability to raid or keep up with a huge guild. It certainly affects me! Back in the day I raided and did pvp. Not so much anymore. I'm still active, but the intensity I can commit to is far less than it was ten years ago.

Hit the nail on the head for me ^

10 years ago I had 1 kid, I have 2 now with another about to be here. My wife is wrapping up college, both of us work full time and while we are both still active game wise we cant raid or pvp like we use to and that's fine. Honestly im happy and surprised when I see brand new players pop up, though I realize being on AB that's probably more likely.

The divide seems to be between people who like the solitude of the solo/duo life, and the people who want a vibrant, robust server.

That being the case, let the solo-duo people transfer to the dead servers so they'll have their peace & quiet, and let everyone else transfer to AB and have the most robust economy and most active grouping and raiding experience possible.

Well people can do that now, it just costs them the transfer fee.

What we have to remember in proposing a change like server mergers or 'mega servers' is what the business case is.

First you have to show Holly Longdale how this is going to result in increased cash flows that are greater than the costs. Then she has to write that up as a business case and convince Georgeson, Smedley et al that the business case is sound and that the payback for the investment will be within whatever internal guidelines SOE has.

So far I have seen lots of costs: develop this, merge that, give us freebies. But no one has yet provided even the suggestion of how this increases SOE's revenue or substantially cuts ongoing costs.

I'm still not convinced we have all these dead servers, yes some could do with more numbers and a merge but I've visited other servers that seemed to be doing fine. Chat wasn't dead, the home voting area had plenty of wonderful submissions and there were people in the newbie areas. I didn't see a single tumbleweed the whole time, nor hear the sound of the west wind as it moaned across a prairie dotted with the greyed husks of once thriving towns.

If someone wants more vibrancy in their raid or grouping that's cool and a perfectly fine goal, currently attained in two ways: rerolling on Freeport or AB or Crushbone or whatever, or buying a transfer there. Soe has stated they won't merge anytime soon. I'd like to think these many threads on the topic might sway them to at least allow free transfers from low pop to mid pop servers, but alas, poor Yorrick, we are stuck for now.

I group with my friends when they aren't around I don't group. I've heard many negative comments made about peeps in groups which I'm sure doesn't help folks who want to do pick up groups, and some folks just like to be nasty which doesn't help grouping either. So...imho theres room for a lot of tlc in the game....SOE isn't running players off ...players run players off. The old Golden Rule applies here as well as in real life. Also its summer..peeps are spending time with their families..taking vacations etc....and that is definitely as it shud be. Things will pick up in the fall after school begins and the cold weather blows in lol....

With one very active raid guild that moved to AB permafrost is dead. No groups are forming at any time anymore.

And to add something to my post from yesterday:

Both Paradigm and Dominatus on Unrest had about 18 loyal raiders who showed up to raid and we rarely missed. There are around 3-5 members of Paradigm still playing on Unrest. Some have quit, but have come back on and off over the years. There were a few people who wanted to quit, but they did not because they did not want to be the cause of the guild breaking up. When the guild finally did break up, those people quit playing; likewise, with the members of Dominatus. Of those 18 people who always showed up, there are like 8 of us who still raid in Symphony of the Night or Inner Circle on Unrest. The other 10 or so people totally quit the game once the guild broke up.

If we had more people on the server, both Paradigm and Dominatus might have been able to recruit people from the server to raid. Officers and leaders of both guilds just got tired of the constant dance of "get new people in, gear them up, others quit and need replaced and geared up".

Instead, SOE lost well over 30+ paying raiders in those 2 guilds alone. I know there were several other guilds on Unrest that dissolved during these past 6-7 years because they could not recruit raiders. Two guilds struggle to get 24 warm bodies to show up, one folds, the other guild absorbs the people who still want to raid. Rinse.Wash.Repeat.

There is nothing about that that is unique to Unrest or these guilds. This is pretty much the natural progression of a guild as a game goes thru the steady decline/attrition of its playerbase.

You reach a tipping point where new people coming onto the game/server/playstyle becomes slower than the natural attrition rate. I find in a group of ~34 players needed to have a raidforce, there is a standard attrition rate of 1 person every 6 weeks. This is just the speed at which players burn out with the game. If you can not recruit at the same rate or higher, then you will come to a break point where a guild will fold. Certainly drama events, or other things can cause an 'event' that accelerates the natural attrition, but this rate of 1 person / 6 weeks is the attrition rate I've found in when a guild is healthy, its just normal burn out with a gaime.

When a guild folds you have a significant group of people that were staying on just for the good of the team, and when it finally ends they leave the game. Then you have another group of people that will try to find the best new home they can, and an insanely passionate (yet foolish) few that will try to rebuild the glory again.

It is true, that MMO's like this are constantly dwindling down players, and if they do merge servers it helps stem these types of problems as there becomes a larger pool of players to draw from. I do agree that Unrest, Oasis, and a few other servers are in a pretty bad place. I find I'm having to get many of my recruits from server transfer now. It is also true that the server is again at a tipping point where one guild will fail again, we'll lose some players as a result, but the remainder will 're-fill' the remaining guilds.

It is just a poker match now as we watch and wait to see which one folds first.

And I understand all that, because this game has been declining over the past decade. Guilds fold, people either quit and some sort of a small merger happens. Unrest got the short end of the stick because when the first server merge happened with the Asian/"Down Under" server(s), we didn't get as many "USA-based" time zone players added to our server-wide player base.

We've been lucky over the past few weeks to pick up a few returning players. Yay for using your friends list as a recruiting tool. You see a long lost friend's name log in, and you're like OMG HI MISSED YOU and then you start to /recruit. At least at this stage of the expansion, you can get them geared up in potent/AS gear. The only thing they are missing out on are etymas to get gems green/red gems made. Pity you cannot use your stash of 10,000+ etymas to make gems for your friends.

Going to go ahead and lock this as it has become non-constructive.