Just came back to the game after around 4 - 5 months away, Connery seems dead to me. May need to merge it with another server.
Emerald loses about less than 100 average player count per year since 2015. Connery loses less than that per year since 2015, with the exception of now with Soltech transfers. I've got two new characters on Connery but haven't played there recently to see what it is like during prime times, but it does not look encouraging. Perhaps as has been suggested many times before, a new central server could be created to merge Emerald and Connery, since the population loss is obvious and this game is designed for large scale team battles not constant 1vs1 with poor hit detection, server-side and lag-related advantages/disadvantages.
I don't think Emerald can handle more people during prime time, unless they were to unlock 3-4 continents at once. Emerald basically fills 2 continents now during prime time. The server already struggles to deal with the 300+ people who rush to the biggest fight on the map. If that were to hit 500 or so the game would simply be unplayable.
Connery is not dead!!!!!!!!!! It doesn't have the pop that emerald has but it's far from dead. There are 96 plus fights every single night especially on the weekends. This is during prime time of course. Between 6pm and 12pm there are plenty of planetmen to fight.
Big caveat that others already noted. Emerald has 96+ fights at almost anytime day or night. Connery did too, until Soltech (which was a great move by DBG because Connery had so many Asian hackers/laggers that it was driving people away from the game).
Please don't merge Connery with a server that isn't based in the US West region; some of us actually care about having the lowest possible latency, and do not wish to become 'lag wizards'.
