The consequences of server transfers vs merging

4th emipre?

With players chosing which server to play on logon like a typical FPS. The cash grab potential is that there will always be a completely full server, and hundreds of players sitting on the log in que watching subscribers get ahead of them on the que to the completely full server with mega-battles and lots of pew-pew.

Wrong that is not what would happen. This is what would happen:

During off-hours for each region there would be a completely full server that is perfectly balanced, then there would be an overflow server and that would be about half full but still more balanced than what we have here, and there would be about 2-3 empty servers where jokers could go to cap empty bases if they want or have little outfit warz on.

During Peak-hours for each region there would be 2 completely full servers that is perfectly balanced, then there would be an overflow server and 1 empty server for jokers to go cap empty bases and have their little outfit warz on.

What you think would happen is the opposite of what would happen.

All of these solutions you guys come up with will never give us completely full servers like what we saw during the first week after launch. The only thing that will give us completely full servers, where all sides are perfectly balanced, and there is lots of pew-pew going on, is simply giving the player the ability to chose which server they want to play on log-on. This solution is easy, quick, and doesn't require us to wait on these corporate snails over at SOE to take 2 years to micromanage server merges.

If I am to be alone on an empty server, so be it. Will not be my first grind mmo.

I will ghost it like no one has ever ghosted before. I will have no need for SC for I will be alone in a waistland...

War...

War never changes...

In this dark time of free to play grinding you are an inspiration, sir.

4th empiring is as I understand it pretty much changing factions whenever it looks like yours is about to start losing or when you can't farm as much. It was enough of a thing in PS1 for people to coin this term. For some reason I thought that change could stop people from doing their fourth empire stuff on the same server, or somehow lessen the impact of fourth empiring.

Also, they probably had a reason not to try that cash grab earlier. Either that or they did try to do that but grossly overestimated how many players would play(and stick to) their game.

Any news?

Since when is topic about getting full servers? A empty server = boring. A full server and a 30 minutes in the waiting line as premium member = boring. SEO just needs to temporary close down the low population servers, offer them all a free transfer the medium populated servers.

We're nowhere near filling up any US West servers, even Connery (I can't comment on any other servers that I don't have characters on, although I will say only Miller EU reaches "high" on any sort of regular basis) so I'm pretty sure even if you merged all 3 US West servers you wouldn't have one server that would fill up completely. Or if it did, maybe a few hours of primetime on the weekends. Which would be a worthwhile price to pay for a server that always had battles everywhere, including the non-indar continents.

Mattherson used to get full in the first weeks after release. One of the other East servers did too, or both of the older ones.(Soltech was the last to be added, it happened apparently because the others were full during release)

I think by December player numbers already had dwindled very significantly for the US servers. That's how I understand this. I think it must have been the same for Connery, especially since that's where the australians played before Briggs, right?

But doing that won't make them money. I've seen this before with other games. Offer paid transfers first then after you've milked it for all the money you can, shutdown servers and merge them for free.

In fact, it was SWG another SOE game that I saw this with, and go ahead and collect your prize if you guessed smedley was in charge there at that time too.

Mark my words, paid transfers first, followed about 6 months to a year later with merges. It might be as early as 3 months later depending on quarterly reports and how many people pay for the transfer. I'm guessing they'll be monitoring it very closely and once they see a majority has already paid to move or once they see more people quitting than moving they'll force the moves.

Of course they won't offer any type of refunds for the paid transfers once they do server merges.

If you could chose which server whenever you log on, for each region there would be 1 completely full server, even during off hours, and yes the waiting time would be high. If SOE wants players to subscribe, if SOE wants money, this is the only way to do it.

During peak hours there would be another full server and an overflow server which would be about half full. During off hours there would be an overflow server about half full. These would have no waiting times.

At this point, to be honest, I don't even care about the crash grab anymore. I mean, everything I said in the OP is right - merging is better - but ffs let me pay you for the priviledge of being able to play this game again. I miss it. My choices now are to go to a dead genudine and try to fight 5 other people, or give up my character that I've invested lots of time and money in and start a new one. I played this game to death in nov/december, I've only played about 1/20th as much in january/feb. I just want to be able to play this game as it's meant to be played again. Give us something ffs.

I hope that server transfer tokens become available soon. I'm itching to get into a larger server with more organized faction players, and significantly less "casuals" that seem to frequent every corner of the current server many play on. Surely this has come about after months of observing the overall stagnation present in the small-scale battles that seem to roll and fizzle (on our side anyways). I wish we had the ability to transfer our characters wherever we wanted, without having to start all over again.

I agree with you. Already rerolled once, and I will never reroll another character again. Too much time and money invested (having bought weaponry twice in most cases).

I'm hoping that there will be a transfer option in the near future. If not, I'm not really sure if I would want to stick it out on the server I"m currently on--too many randoms in our faction to be honest, versus an extremely organized opposition. Over time, the interest just starts waning--regardless of even having the best intentions.

If they make it so you can seamlessly play your hard-earned character on -whatever- server you want, I agree that empty servers wouldn't be an issue, and gamers who prefer a quieter environment or with an older computer could find solace there. Then everyone's closer to being happy.

What bothers me is they won't even admit populations are problem.

Has anyone been watching the SOE status page? I used to track it, but I haven't recently. How many servers now stay at "low" at all times of day, all times of the week? I know Genudine hit that stage about a month ago.

I find it sad that despite all the community interaction, road map etc. that they can't admit the server population problem. They could resolve this issue so quickly if they wanted to... It seems like they would rather grab the few thousand dollars they get from paid server transfers than the potential hundreds of thousands in the future from servers full of happy customers.

No, a server merge and a free transfer do not have the same effect. I've been through merges in some games, been through "free transfers" as well. The fact of the matter is that they don't want their game to appear to be "dying" and merging your servers is announcing to the internet and mmo world that you game failed to do what you expected it to. It's basically just a bait and switch. "Look, we could give you this merge right now, but instead, we're going to soak 3-4 weeks of money out of the more frustrated players, then give you a free merge."

*Nothing* they can do is going to appear to be a "good" thing, but the only thing they can do that doesn't completely revolve around bending us over and banging us until the quarters fall out of our pockets, is give us free merges. And they should.

The people suggesting that we should be able to just pick our server willy-nilly depending upon what looks best to us at the time, that is about the worst plan they could go with. Giving free reign to the player base like that is absolutely stupid.

Genudine is pretty much the only one

Fantastic news. From Smedley's Twitter

"Server merges soon. Info coming by Monday. No server transfers coming till after that's done. Wouldn't be right doing it other way around"

I wonder if we played a role in that.