Populations are very low, even on the biggest server Antonia Bayle it gets very low on off-peak hours. I don't care if they have only one server, but seriously the active playing population could easily be put on 2 or 3 without breaking anything. Not even a month into a new Xpac and it's already pretty dead. It's too bad there isn't an analyst sitting in SoE looking at how many people complain and quit due to so many ghost towns, because if they did, they'd see the necessity to take action NOW. The cost would certainly outweigh the numbers dropping. At least give out free server tokens gamewide to subscribers so the people that pay the bills will stop bailing because of this.
I'm not sure if its possible with EQ2's architecture but older games have accomplished this in less conventional ways such as Dark Age of Camelot. Could just make a final destination server with everyone having the option to char copy their character to that server upon login, give all new players this prompt whenever they log into their server for the first time.
Let's Compare: I count ~17 servers on EQ1's site and ~16 on EQ2's site. Given the full, 3/4, half, 1/4, and barely boxes it seems like EQ1's hardcore population stabilized worldwide and is larger than EQ2's. 12/17 look half full on EQ1. EQ2 has 8 half fulls and 1 full box (AB). So there are more active players in EQ1 fresh after an expansion on a Friday night playing during US EST time than in EQ2? _ _ _ I know AB is more full than almost any server (of any SOE title) but is the EQ1 base the one paying the bills? PS2 has ~5 servers. DCUO has ~4 servers and no surprise the PS3 one is full tilt. I can't wait for EQN to be PS4 enabled so I can get back on the couch / move around with a headset / controller and unchain myself from the desk to play. The Blizzard cartoon has 246 according to my Excel paste because I got tired of loosing my place trying to count them by hand. Trion has 7 US and 6 EU. They look kinda 'medium' at this time as well. Lightsaber club has 8 US and 9 EU. The F2P leader from Turbine has 8ish. _ _ _ I don't want to make this about Brand A vs Brand B but is there any reason other than character/guild names that turn into an X after them not to tighten down the hatches? I already reserved a 'lastname' for EQN via a new SOE account that has cash on it as it was a little ambiguous as to how existing accounts would be renamed or if it is going to be a wild land grab.
Make transfer tokens free for all access and make an announcement,in game mail as well, that you have 30days to choose a server. Choices are: AB, Freeport or Nagafen (unless you give a character enabling option for PVP on all servers.) If you didn't make a choice, then put them all in the biggest other server that remains, Unrest? Devs already stated they would be making agnostic dungeons worldwide in January so that would help a bit too. Problem solved.
Sorry that just does not work for me. What has happened in other games is the Griefing/Ganking player runs around taunting and interfering with the PvE player trying to get them to either log out or flag for PvP, if they are silly enough to flag for PvP (there is usually a minimum time period to unflag) they get ganked and spawn camped until they log out. Then there is the public quest or grouping issue, In other games if you heal or buff someone that is flagged for PvP you get flagged for PvP then the ganking starts. Then there is the smack talk in general chat. No if your system was to be implemented on a megaserver I would be out of here before the patch hit.
Thing here is, SOE has never (to my knowledge) indicated what criteria they are using to measure the "fullness" of a server in either game. I would not be surprised if each game had different criteria, so you can't just outright say 1/2 full in EQ is the same # of players as 1/2 full in EQ2 - well, not unless you actually KNOW how they are determining that for both games. Do you?
Eq2 has 16 servers?!?! You smoking crack? You don't even play Eq2... You shouldn't even have a voice in this server merge matter at this point. Face it everyone they cant do a MegaServer. We just need the normal Server Merges they started doing 9 years ago, but stopped doing!!!
Don't forget all the dead quest-givers and griffon tenders. At least the spires, druid rings and bells can't be killed
That list is just the US servers. Add the EU, and Test servers as well. Edit: That's another factor in the megaserver issue. Welcome to the cyrillic alphabet in general chat! Not to mention lots of French, German, etc. I'm sure they'd just love all the English, too.
Also does an EQ2 server support exactly the same number or players as an EQ1 server or a WoW server? A server ( or half server) is not a unit of measure I am aware of. Perhaps you should use Firkins instead? (A Firkin is an old general purpose unit of measure in Australia. Generally found in twos. As in two firkin high, two firkin long or two firkin hot)
I think another poster already made the clarification necessary. SOE is in business due to worldwide demand for their products. I am on one of those servers that during COE and TOV were 'hopping' places to be for PUGs until January. I am on your side about keeping up appearances just because it might show weakness to the other "Brands" of MMOs. Honestly, at 200+ servers I don't think Blizzard will even compare themselves with SOE. _ _ _ Now if EQN gets 50 servers and WOW drops to 150... That will get their undivided attention but I think the Internet will have to be taxed or throttled worldwide for the WOW generation to be pried away from that game unless someone makes a game easier to play (not an easier game). Even the new Single Player Games (Torchlight 2, Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms , etc.) are taking the 'best' parts of the WOW interface and display and adapting them. EQ2 bet wrong in 04'. It happens. EQN is their chance to be on the other side now. _ _ _
What nobody knows is how to get people to log in. (See Free Realms) The days of desk/keyboard games with 3+ hour sessions are numbered. This might be part of EQ2's problem in AoM. The game is great but I have to sit at a desk chair or have a slightly immovable laptop in a couch/chair. I can't really lay down and play easily without a wonky setup with a hospital monitor stand that flexes over a twin xl bed. Tablets/SurfacePro's/PS4s that let people do more than put their feet up on a desk are the future. I still say it is shameful that LON is not on Android/Apple tables where it belongs - the only worse example of corporate-itis is the Gummi Bear Seasons that were only half released on DVD. _ _ _ Short play engagements are win as well. Dragon's Crown at ~8 min per dungeon got that right on my Vita. I can play for hours but I can also easily play for 15 min.The Nyko Grip made the thing 100x more acceptable to play both for holding and battery life for constant wifi. I can easily keep my hands off the back for games that use the back as the extra buttons. If PS4's remote play is enabled with the Vita Camera / mic with the PS4 doing all the 'work' I know how I'll be playing EQN -touchscreen coding not necessary. Vita, Nyko Grip, and the portable charger block nearby if I break a 3 hour session so it still doesn't need to be wall plugged. There aren't as many Vita devices as there are PSPs but really - SOE could lead by example and show other vendors how to get people off their desk chairs and couches. I want to lay down flat sometimes and I'm sure devs with 6hr raids on top of full workdays do too. I don't think I can lay flat with a surface pro 3. I could if I was remote playing a Vita with a Nyko. Just make it so anyone can lay down/lounge move around etc. while playing and they'll be more likely to play more as they get older and can't take more then 45 min in a chair. The new crop of 15-25 year olds just don't want to sit at a desk if they don't have to. I wouldn't mind not having too either. _ _ _
Not sure what you mean by "bet wrong in 04" unless you are perpetuating the myth that WoW captured the market from the other publishers in 04. It did not, what Blizzard did was bring millions of players into the genre from its existing franchises Diablo and Warcraft. Well I beg to differ, I hate consoles, controllers and touch screens and would much rather sit in my comfy chair using my keyboard and mouse. While I do not sit there for three hours at a time I do sit there for an hour maybe two for up to eight hours a day either playing, writing or just surfing the internet. Oh and before you ask, I am a retired person with a disability.
The only way to make a game easier than WoW way is to make it easier to play than WoW. I think EQN is tuning the gameplay/mechanics/look/etc. on target from what I've gleaned but log ins are going to be its weakness. Letting players MMO with a handheld or very small tablet or something is the next /login hit. PS4/Vita might have it, I don't know I'm not a coder or network engineer. And yeah, the interface in EQN is going to be tuned to be at 24-27" monitors on a desk but a 'mobile' setting with less clutter (for viewing area) should be trivial to implement. Maybe start/select button to bring up menu-like interfaces like non-MMO titles would be appropriate to access less used UI elements on the smaller screen? _ _ _ Even on a PS4 (as is now) someone has to choose to login to EQN or PS or DCUO rather than hit Hulu or Netflix while sitting on the couch eating dinner. Any dependents (or spouses) will have to compete for 'time' on the family TV as well so having more ways to play when there aren't free TV's in the household that don't require sitting at a computer would also be win. People who aren't ready for their own 50"+ flatscreen (college dorms, etc.) could easily still get out of those desks with a PS4 and a handheld on remote play [SOE needs to tell SNE to put enterprise login wifi so that college players will be able to use campus wifi outside of their rooms! Even an ipod touch can do it!] Less clutter and 'spare' towers floating around as well means smaller residential square footage in worldwide markets makes it less cumbersome to game in cramped/shared living spaces. Every MMO title could benefit from this not just EQN. It is an industry wide problem. From the people who tried to poach me to TOR or the people I know who no longer play WOW... They'd all be more likely to 'pop in' to their games if they didn't have to be chained to a sitting position to do it. Voxels and storybricks are great but that desk still feels like hard labor. There are many non-gaming jobs that come to mind that would benefit from this kind of advancement as well. The surface Pro 3 still requires a sitting position - Smurf Village, Farmville, etc. on a tablet does not.
For complex interface games like EQ2 I agree... Keyboard and mouse only. But the new ones won't need the precision. PS2 launches on PS4 in short order. EQN is button limited since there is a 100% chance it will be on PS4. I'm just chiming in early to make sure that features that aren't needed (touchscreen) make SOE overlook what it would take to ensure their upcoming PS4 titles (that make sense) are remote playable.
Antonia Bayle (RP server) Barren Sky (Russian RP server) Butcherblock Crushbone Everfrost Freeport Guk Harla Dar (Russian language PvP) Nagafen (PvP) Oasis Permafrost Sebilis (Japanese language server) Splitpaw (UK English server) Storms (French language server) Unrest Valor (German language server) That is 16 live servers - the list doesn't include the Test and Beta servers, because they aren't live servers. Inclusion of them would bring the total to 18 servers with 16 live and two test servers. So, if ignorance of the true number of EQ2 servers determines whether or not someone plays the game*, then by your own standards, you don't play the game and "shouldn't even have a voice in this server merge matter at this point." However, my purpose isn't to try to shut down discussion (even if I don't agree with certain viewpoints), but I do think that you owe Smite an apology for deriding him or her for not knowing the total number of live EQ2 servers, when it was you that didn't know that number. Until we have data that is not anecdotal, then all we have is 'best guess' which may or may not reflect the true number of regular players. Instead of requesting merges for a perceived problem, maybe we should request that the total count of accounts be available through census and that it be something that can be cross referenced with the date last played (which would allow someone to determine the number of accounts that have logged into the game since a certain date). I understand why they don't currently make that info available, since there is nothing stopping people that work for their competitors from accessing the data, but having that (or something else similar) would allow us to better estimate the current active population - instead of basing our assessments on our own experiences, which is one of the least accurate (except by pure accident) means of assessing a game's population. A lot of folks have tried to extrapolate the game's population from the LFG chat. All that gives you, though, is the number of people that are looking for PUGs. It doesn't tell you anything about the people forming groups from within their guild. Another means people try to use is using their own guild's active population and comparing that to the total number of guild members in their guild, then trying to extrapolate that percentage to the server as a whole. While it might be a little bit more accurate than the LFG method, all it definitely tells someone is the percentage of the total guild members that actively play within that guild. Am I saying that people using the above methods are definitely wrong? No, I'm not. They could accidentally get it right. Heck, even a 12-hour clock that no longer runs is right twice a day. But without solid data to back up observations, there is no way to know whether conclusions based upon the observations are even remotely correct. So, the best that we can truthfully state is that we don't really know with 100% certainty, but that it looks barren from where we are sitting. * And here I thought it was whether someone logged on and used their character to accomplish stuff within the game that determined if they play the game
Now that Blizzard has millions of players paying $15 a month its SOE's challenge to scoop a fraction of them up. SOE did fall short in 04'-06' though just as TOR (trumped up SPRPG), DDO, and other games with large non-MMO bases that failed to take off did. More % EQ2 subscribers have been lost since peak population than WOW - which is not a myth. That is policy in action. Not as bad as Blockbuster Video but they've been suffering from corporate-itis for some time. Some of that is also out of their control (the existing Blizzard SPRPG base). _ _ _ To give a restaurant analogy Smokejumper and the other devs are focused on making great meals / menus / atmosphere / service but Smedley is paying attention to how easy it is to get in and out of the parking lot and what the business taxes are. That fellow has one of the hardest jobs at SOE. /point developer army /pray for financial victory. Kickstarter just won't work for MMOs. The best middle class restaurant in the world will go belly up if customers have to go out of their way to get in or have a hard time parking their cars. We've all seen examples like this (gas stations, Burger King - McD's, etc.). I'm just saying that SNE has some silly policies (lack of enterprise and they wonder why Vitas don't sell on campuses) and since EQN is going to be console ready I'd take the little extra effort to think how to make it even more portable later if it's not trivial at launch. Maybe the Vita isn't it but there is something that fills that void. I wanted a smartphone in 2003 but they didn't exist. I want to be free of a desk and TV if I want to and I don't know what kind of hardware is the solution. It probably won't exist till 2020 since I'm usually early in my consumer wants. _ _ _ I think the Free Realms product was spot on for the audience but how many tweens can easily sit down and play long enough to be profitable? The answer was not enough. I didn't hear about a $1400 spending spree by a minor in Free Realms on the news like I did the one about Smurf Village.
Log ins are the weakness for all MMOs. - Should they merge EQ2 servers - ??? - .... We'll see how cross server grouping goes... _ _ _ But since they're lowering the interface barrier in EQN/PS2/Future Titles I'd ask SNE PSN what they have on tap for 2020 or pull an Atlus and consider making games with the talent in house that feature story, progression, RP, & multiplayer. I don't know about everyone else but I'm saturated with SC items. I'm running out of things to buy from SOE. Champions of Norrath 1 & 2 were nice diversions but if new kickstarter dungeon crawls are coming out of the EU studios that are as polished as Diablo without the always online thing how come non-MMO's aren't in SOE's sights? EQ2 is great but sometimes I'd just like a diabo-ish click fest with good voice acting and story - The structure of EQOA didn't make sense but a pure single player game with ad hoc or PSN (or steam based) groups does. I'd challenge SOE to do something Baldur's Gate-ish (or get Obsidian to do the work) with EQ lore. It shows 4 million to make Pillars of Eternity on Kickstarter - That's chump change to SOE if they spent 30 million on Free Realms and buried it without blinking. Twohy chose to scale the Riddick budgets back to gaurantee profits and Stallone is laughing all the way to the bank with those low-budget 80s-like action movies making triple digit millions. SOE is trying to come up with more Avatars, Lord of the Rings, X-Men, etc. That's just too hard unless SOE has no competitors. It reminds me of the Hanks movie with the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company before the storm.
1. (EQ2) is a testbed for many EQN calculations - this is policy beta where they can shoehorn it in. - EQN affects EQ2 - 2. I want a superserver in EQN and (EQ2). The Dev Video Updates said no way. They like ~7K players per server. - status quo in EQ2 is status quo in all their titles - 3. (EQ2) will lose a non-trivial fraction that will go to EQN just as EQ2 took EQ1 players. - none of us have numbers but this is true - 4. I'm chiming in here to support whatever it takes for them to get the network plumbing in (EQ2) right for a superserver so EQN can have it when I move and so I can PUG without having to transfer to AB in (EQ2) until then. - I believe in the spirit of the thread - 5. (EQ2) populations feel very dilute and EQN will have the same issue. - I'm agreeing with others about the thinness - 6. Lobbying for changes in (EQ2) are easier if you get SOE's attention with revenue - i.e. EQN. - thus the aside about general SOE title populations. - SOE is not nimble and resists change / social inertia - _ _ _ Raging about EQ2 only will fall on deaf ears. If everyone really wants mergers we'll have to convince Smokejumper and the other top 3 managers that they need to find a way to have 50K players per server unless it's like the 4GHz CPU limit and is limited by physics. They only act on revenue. Liken our problems in EQ2 to what could occur to EQN and you'll have their attention within reason. If it is possible they'll at least investigate if it's possible or at least tell us - why not -.
