This game needs Mega Server tech ASAP

I don't think cancelling a account means today what it used to mean. With free to play and all. Someone can cancel their monthly sub and spend more money.

That said, the lack of server mergers is just one reason why I cancelled my account nearly a year ago. I still play but I don't pay. I have over a $100 U.S. in Station Cash just sitting there. I log in and play but I play for free. I'm happy with my max level characters and the gear they have. Every once in a while I buy some broker credits with my SC.

If SoE did just a few things I'd gladly give them money. Server merges is just one of those things. If SoE created 1 new Mega Server but required a monthly sub to play on it I'd do that.

If this were a brand-new game, & SOE didn't already have its replacement coming down the pipes, then talk of a mega-server would make sense.

Since neither of those conditions are true, it makes no sense whatsoever for SOE to implement such a radical, costly change now.

I think its time to fix the low population problem on some servers, on valor its not really posible to get a group for the weekly or maybe the daily, mega servers will fix the problem and bring the players togehter.

No one has any thing from a ghost server with 100 players, server merges and/or mega servers are a great thing!

This is going to sound mean. and I do apologize in advance, because i can't think of a way to word this were it doesn't sound mean. So here goes, please don't take it personal, and don't try to shove hot coals down my throat for it.

The servers are not likely to be merged anytime soon. they got no plans for it. for myself, that implies to me that from thier numbers, they don't consider the servers in a population dip needed for merging (or for like Naggy, it's not really feasable do to the whole 'entire different rules sets and warfields and ect for pvp). everyone thinks that they can't find groups because the populations are too low. no one you picks you when you advertise, you have trouble getting things going when you try to make groups.

Have you ever considered it may just be you?

That you have earned a reputation for one reason or another that people are choosing not to group with you? we have a few on Oasis...and one that every other week has a different name because he constantly tries to reinvent himself to get people to play with him. never takes long before someone outs him.

we've been through 2 server merges already. and it seems 6 months after a server merge, someone posts for yet another one, because they can't get groups. I have to think that either your server has become heavily polarized in guilds (ie most the player base is in a guild and only groups with other guildies) or maybe people just don't like you.

of course it can always be the 'PuGs are a swearword' scenario a lot of old gamers like myself have. you play games like these for 15+ years, and see some of the bs people do, and you might also swear off the idea of random groups too.

Again not to be mean. I'm just saying in Eq1, you earned a reputation for that actions you do. no matter how long ago, some of that can stick. you had a bad day as a tank or a healer, you looted something for an alt that you though was okay but someone in the group took offense to, you had to LD yourself after a quest update not because you were being an *** but because you had a 'omg I gotta get up right now jeebus' emergency....or, maybe you were a dick to someone in the past, and word of mouth spread enough that it's impacting your present. Just becuase it's a game, doesn't mean that people won't remember when things go sour on them, and be inclined to remember who might have caused it if someone did. (wether rightly or not) might also be an aspect to take into consideration as to why people can't find groups.

As far as whether a megaserver will help fix the "I can't get a group" problem or not - I think while it might help make some things better, it brings its own set of problems in that would have to be dealt with. Plus - it's only part of what probably would need to be done to really fix the problem for the majority of players experiencing it. I'm not going to repeat what I posted in the server merger thread but it's the same list. Go take a look if you're curious about what I think

I will say, as someone who deals with cloud-scale applications on a daily basis, that there are several bottlenecks that we players usually don't think about when we think of megaservers. Things like:

- How do you merge the databases from all the current servers and prevent data collisions?
- How do you insure that the new merged database is performant enough to function under the combined load? (This usually requires structural changes to the database itself - not an easy process)
- How do you insure that you have sufficient network capacity between your server nodes to handle the increased load?
- How do you insure that you have dynamic scale-out to new nodes so that when the population of a zone instance suddenly triples, the nodes powering that zone don't start to peg their CPUs or hit a storage bottleneck.
- How do you make sure that transitioning users between nodes is seamless? It does no good to have a megaserver if you then subject players to 5 minute loading screens.
- How do you make sure that your code can handle the increased number of players? This is doing things like making sure that your functions are allocating enough memory buffer so that they don't truncate data during processing, or insuring that your code is instrumented well enough to be able to catch overflows and collisions before they start crashing zones or causing deadlocks.

Like several folks have said up above, converting a game after it's launched is work. EQ2's database was put together very well compared to other games of its era, but turning it into a megaserver game is NOT trivial. We might be looking at a year or more worth of work on the dev team and massive code changes on the existing clients and servers just to make sure it's ready to merge everyone together in its current state. And that's not even counting the data work that would be part of that merge operation.

I think we'll see a "traditional" copy-and-paste style server merge before we see a megaserver, just for that reason.

Apparently, Oasis has raiding issues, because someone from that server has been logging into Unrest on a level 1 toon for the past month to spam our channels with recruiting messages to fill their raid force. If they're doing it to Unrest, they're probably doing it all of the other ones, too.

One of my former guildies got a tell from the #1 guild on the Freeport server, recruiting him to join their raid force. Considering this guy had to stoop to the level of doing cross server tells to a member of the #3 raid force on the server, it says something about how far guilds at any level will go to fill their ranks. Oh, and after this former guildie paid to leave Unrest to join this top raiding guild on Freeport, the guild leader pulled the plug less than 2 weeks later. Former guildie has now quit the game. I'm sure if we had free server transfers, he would have bothered to look at other top end guilds, but it wasn't worth another $25 to server hop yet again.

Its not a problem from one person, its a problem from one server.

You can read the chat and you see guys searching healers, tanks or scouts for a weekly or daily up to 45 minutes, they are all different and its not a problem from a guy with one name

It is a server problem, we have logged out some times because we cant find a tank or a healer, thats why we create the key classes by our own and it works a little bit better, we have now the important classes but its doesnt change the main problem.

It cannot be that you need to create a key class to play the game, this game has more than 20 classes and i need to play what i want and not whta the server wants, we have not enough players thats the problem!

I can repeat it its not a problem my myself, some other players on valor has the same problem, some groups crashes in the creating because we cant enough players.

A world wide group search tool is great and its posible as you can see in games like, tera, wow, rift and GW2.

Sever merging is a great solution for the population problem on every server in eq2, sorry but its time to change anything, some players are not playing because they dont found a group...

Megaservers won't change anything. The OP needs to find a guild of his peers. Not join some guild full of vets with multiple maxed alts and bags full of plat. He'll never be able to attain/maintain parity gear-wise. He'll always be behind the curve unless he's spending real cash to buy / sell kronos.

But...there are always new guilds starting up. The ride to Guild Level 95 with people that are leveling at or close to your speed is where the fun is. Not artificial groupings on things like DF.

There is a very good chance that if SOE were to build a new Xeon System 8 server cluster with an SSD RAID array, that they could host the entire English speaking EQ2 population on one server, possibly with an improvement in performance. This would cost a lot less than many think, on the order of $100K. There might even be incentives in terms of reduced cost to operate that would recoup the investment quite quickly. Eliminating just one employee would make such an investment pay off. There is a reason that companies like Google and Facebook are constantly upgrading hardware. The new stuff pays for itself so quickly it is ridiculous.

The fact is, SOE is hosting this game with ancient hardware. The newest hardware was new when the game went free to play in 2010! The rest of the hardware is absolutely ancient. However, while their game design staff is competent, their IT leaves a lot to be desired. SOE is not really a technology company, so it might be a bit too much for them to do anything beyond babysit what is currently present.

The German, French and Japanese Servers have been Ghost Towns for a long time already and their population is not representative of the population on the US / UK Servers.

Even if this did happen you'd still have to split the Megaserver into two or three slices.

RPPVE, PVE and PVP.

Yea, I had forgot about the global channels (I 100% solo, so I forget some of the grouping features). I realized that after I posted, but was to lazy to go back and edit it My points still stand though on the rest of the post.

That's nice, but during closed beta they gave us the real reason on the beta forums: That size database would cause too much server instability. I'm sure the post-launch excuse you're quoting sounded better to Zenimax's P.R. Department, though, lol.

Find a good guild. That's so key to this game. Even for molo/solo types. Find a guild of like minded folks and share the fun and the work. Progress together. My guild gets 90% of my playtime. I just today deposited 1000 plat of shinies in our shared collection vault. My Norrath feels rich and full, and supportive. I moved houses in game this week and my guild leader was there on Skype and in the house helping me get it under control, unpacking crates, brainstorming with me. It wouldn't matter what server we were on or if it had only fifty other players. We have each other.

Two slices at most. RP means very little at this point. Also, there could be a PVE and a PVP version of each contested zone. It is hard to know how much coding that would require though.

I beg your pardon!? Rp means very little? According to who? AB has a lot of rpers and you can bet your bottom copper we are NOT getting shoved aside.

As far as how much coding is involved? A lot. Squashing us all into massive servers, telling rpers they don't matter and making pvp and pve instances left and right? Forgive me while I go laugh. It'd be a mess. A bloody nasty mess.

They weren't trying to imply RP wasn't a valuable playstyle, just that it doesn't require a completely separate server. AB is classified as the roleplay server yes, but it follows exactly the same rules as a normal PVE server. The roleplay tag is just an attempt to gather the RP community in one location, to increase the chances of RP taking place. On a mega-server that wouldn't be necessary, because the RP community would be gathered in one area naturally (because there are no other alternatives).

The same on PF. No grouping. If not megaserver or merges we at least need cross server df asap.

How much coding have you done? Let me guess, none. The game knows how to spawn instances of, presumably, all contested zones. I haven't seen an instance of a contested dungeon, but would guess it is possible. The question is whether they have stripped the dev team too much already, and whether it would be worth the effort. Obviously, something would have to be dumped from development to combine PVP and PVE. I know the Nagafen people would love having the entire population available to join them in Warfields. Other players might also enjoy PVP that isn't in the ridiculously artificial Battlegrounds.

SOE will most probably not squash us all into a modern server. All of the current hardware is 4+ years old and could probably use replacement, but there is no room for investment into this game. They are doing the bare minimum to keep it limping along. I would not be surprised if they don't do another server merge for quite a while. As was mentioned above, merging databases isn't fun. I would guess it is more than their stretched staff can handle with the regular Landmark updates constantly going on. It is much more likely that they will wait until the population dwindles to the point of fitting all on one server rather than invest in modern hardware.

You guessed wrong on the first. I've coded up and built websites, and worked with not one but two different game engines building terrain and mapping, one as the right hand to the lead map and terrain and spawn designer...as well as doing the graphic design and customization for forums just like this one. This means I still know nothing (as does anyone not employed by soe) about SOE's engine and code and creation dynamics, but unless they are running with something hugely different than most game creators, I can tell you, ideas about mega servers, or merges down to 2 slices, I think you said it should be?...well as much as we all may want it, it won't be simple, cheap, easy, or without hitches, if they are even possible at all.

You 'guessed' right on the second, they probably won't merger servers anytime soon as they've said that. Recently in fact, the dev team said they have no plans for server mergers.

I disagree about the game not getting future investment funds, but we do have to understand they are trying to launch a new game, not all economies are strong, and this is a period of trying to maintain balance given the reality of their parent company's demands, the need to pay their employees well and maintain retention there (retraining someone is frightfully pricey), as well as they have pricing strategy team and a global strategy guru giving them the low down on what whatever McKinsey study has shown. And in the business world, McKinesy analysis is something of the gold standard. A company as big as Sony surely employees them or someone of equal standards, and uses them extensively. SOE as a small part of a billion dollar hulk of machines, people, and infrastructure, is dictated to from above. Period. Something as costly as server changes won't just happen, and until it becomes on paper the correct financial decision, we are where we are. No one likes to disappoint people, I'm positive Holly, and Tom and Caith all wish they could grant our every in game wish.

I wish I could give you the server you want, because at the end of the day, I want you to feel listened to, and happy with your play. I wish they'd offer free transfers to a few of the servers so we would have 3-5 'AB' populated servers, and all of us would feel like the world was fuller, richer. If it was in my power, I'd grant your wish.

Alas, I've not got the billions needed to buy Sony. If and when I do, I'll be sure SOE has all the cash it needs to flourish. Till then, we all just gotta do the best we can, right?