I have to laugh when I see people say that they are against merges because they don't want to compete for a harvest node or because they can't interact with a guide quest ? These people are casuals that couldn't even kill a current content contested mob in the first place. If you want to play alone and harvest that's fine, but please be considerate of the majority that are paying players that actually enjoy grouping and raiding the ability to do so and have fun.
Do they move the question every month or so? It's been discussed consistently for years, probably in a different forum. The problem is that moving guilds is time consuming and difficult. IMHO, create a brand new US server, give free transfer tokens to everyone a week in advance via in game mail and ask that guild leaders open a ticket for a guild transfer, if they so desire. The rest of the servers slowly get merged into AB server like the 20+ servers that already have and call it done. When Varsoon opened there were several zones with 15+ instances for a month or so, there's a reason why almost everyone is on a TLE server or end game -- they want to easily group/raid and do chat with each other.
I feel you, looks like they created a forum especially for it called Zones and Populations. <3 Perhaps someday though. Maybe someone did a fancy algorithm that shows they'd make more money from people transferring characters than addressing one of the core drivers of people quitting? Never know!
I AM a paying player who also enjoy's grouping and doing solo things. I see no reason to merger every server into one. It has been my experience in other mmo's that doing so is digging the grave for the game. Please be considerate of other players who might not be in the mood to fight for every single little thing in the game. As I said some of us play this to relax not get our blood pressure through the roof.
we weren't on the same page i think. I'm not for a "mega server". But I wouldn't mind seeing AB into MD and Skyfire into HoF...or some variation of that. 2 live servers would suffice. Although....now that i think of it..even if it was shrunk down to 2 servers...still might not be enough population....
I honestly don't care about your inability to get to the shiny or harvest node before the next person, with all due respect. It's an MMO not a RPG. If you don't want anything contested, you should really look into RPG's. Everquest has and will always be an MMO. An MMO requires population or it goes stagnant. Do you really think your precious harvest node will be there if raiders just decided, welp nothing really left and I'm not paying to move 12 alts and my main, guess I'm done", seriously? There would not be enough left to keep the game going. Use a little common sense.
I get what you're thinking here because I'm thinking the same thing. I like Jrox's idea on the 50/50 merge to test to see if this could relieve some of the pressure but I'm not sure it will be enough. Based on a few comments in other threads by the Developers, they are aware. I just hope that help arrives sooner than later.
Do you think we need a server just for that? I've been a cheerleader for specific server playstyles for a very long time. Raiding and grouping is the very heart of EQII. Even thou I'm a Soloist, I never want to see that go away. What's your suggestion to this problem that is real? Because doing nothing is not going to make it go away.
"Fixing" the game's population is entirely in the hands of the company. If they make a game that is fun to play, then people will play. The overwhelming feedback about this expansion is that it isn't fun, it drives away players, and new/returning players quickly get overwhelmed and leave. Merging the servers so that the few remaining diehards are all in one place might prolong the decline, but that's all it will do. https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...-restriction-for-you-all.609724/#post-6727686
Sounds like the perfect way to make the game survive longer then because we aint gonna get expansions as good as KoS, EoF and SF ever again..
with the decline in population and the internal fighting within more than just a few raiding guilds, it's a glaring sign that people have gone back and forth about for the last 6 or 7 years. People can't say "oh the game is fine, you just worry too much" anymore. any raider can see that the downslope has become even more steep. Feels pretty bad because it's no longer a hunch...the evidence is very apparent. Doesn't matter if you raid or not, this is a time when all players should rally for server mergers. To save prolong the game.
the few remaining diehards? Sounds like the sky is falling again. Could it be that the players in game have changed their play styles? That they tend to lean more heavily towards a specific style based on many different things? I will spare you a list. I’ll just throw out one, Time. But you may know exactly what your talking about. It could really be that the game has tanked and it’s drove all the players away except the few remaining diehards. And if this is the case and no one is here playing but the few remaining diehards then a full merge shouldn’t matter at all.
Love the game, but the more difficult it is for returning or new players, the more quickly our game will decline. If you really love the game then you want more people playing. How is this not on everyone's radar. I really don't get the solo mentality in an MMORPG?
tbh at this point i think the ship has long since sailed on new players. Especially with no real way of advertising other than word of mouth from existing players. Enticing people that have played 5+ years or so in the past back to the game would be the only avenue i could see as being viable....but the big question...how do you "catch up" to a player base with a stable of fully developed characters with items, buffs, tradeskill xp from 15 years of playing....piles and piles of plat..... do you ask someone to come back and play the entire xpac behind because they wont have the time or resources to get all the perks from the previous xpac? "just let people carry you and wait till next xpac" no one wants to do that
The gearsets and Panda *were* a step in the right direction. The real problem though is an ever-increasing backlog of miscellany that is not addressed by the gear that keeps players from achieving the stats needed to get to the "exciting part" -- the group game. Merc levels, Familiar levels, Mount Levels, and related gear for Merc and Mounts has created a ridiculous amount of secondary stat bloat that a new player with no assistance and no plat will take at least an expansion and a half to even hope to catch up on -- and at that point everything they've obtained is immediately made obsolete. Merc and Mount levels being made account wide instead of tied to the individual mount/merc would be a huge, huge leap in making players more equal. Battalion Buffs and the Stat Buffs would be enough to make new mounts/mercs sellable to the playerbase if one is really worried about that. Familiars are harder, but I feel like there is an answer for this too.
They have the tech to operate numerous zone copies. It wouldn't be a scene of people tripping over people. The only reason to be concerned with server mergers is the lack of names and the devs inability to put in a system where more names could be used. After a merger, with the current system, there would be a whole lotta x xx xxx names out there.
LOL PUGs have dropped off near zero these days due to scripts and over the top game mechanics (resolve, etc).
