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The Merger
Bannne
Member Posts: 244
Yes folks the merger is going ahead which i think can only be a good thing and that's coming from one of the longest playing vets...me..)
Run on over to the forums to check out the details,it's now being worked on.
Oh, and while you are here check out one of the latest vids showing Vanguard in all it's beauty.
One of my favorite areas ..An Oasis In The Desert..
River Valley.. i still use the panther mask now..)
Comments
Meh, they merged servers before with this MMO and it didn't help. So I don't know if another merger is gonna do anything really helpful, but whatever.
Oh isn't there only a 3-4 servers now anyway?
SOE have pretty much given up on this puppy. They should just make it F2P and be done with it.
i have to agree sadly. i also played during beta and release.the game was fun but it was lacking in something. it just didnt stick with me very long. after this many years, i would have to say a server merge is good, but down to how many servers? 2? with so few servers, i also feel it should be f2p. im glad u guys are getting your server merge though
I think there was 4 servers last time I played. SOE should have made this F2P along time ago and im surprised they didn't jump on the banwagon when DDO went F2P. They must really hate this game and really don't want it to do better than EQ2. IMO the game is a good game its just the lack of people that make the game no fun to play in the beginning.
Yeah, I agree it is a fairly good game. The landscape graphics are great along with a huge world to explore and with some unique features (Diplomacy). The classes are diverse and fun to play. The only thing I can't stand is the character models and their plastic doll like appearance.
If this was F2P it would almost certainly be on my hard drive.
All the people saying the game should just be F2P are just against subscription-based games anyway. The rest of us know what the subscription fee is for. You say it's not worth a sub fee, but it's a double-edged sword. They can't make it better without subs, but you won't sub until they make it better. Classic case of cutting your nose off to spite your face.
If it's just not your cup of tea, fine. If you don't feel you got your money's worth, I get that. But until you can show me a F2P game that is worth playing, please just remove it from your vernacular. Going F2P won't solve anything. It will just make you feel better about the game not making money because *you* don't feel it's worth it.
That's not a classic case of cutting off your nose to spite your face, in fact it doesn't even fit the description. Cutting off your nose to spite your face means hurting yourself as a byproduct of achieving a frivolous goal. A more accurate example would be getting angry at being ganked in a PvP game, then going to the forums to demand all PvP is removed even though the player loves PvP. Their momentary, irrational anger at a specific individual could cause them to lose something they enjoy a great deal.
As for your example, it's closer to a catch-22. It's hard to attract new players to a great game if it's empty and costs money, but if the costs are removed then it is difficult to maintain a great game without the income. This wouldn't be a dilemma for the players as much as the developers.
The gamers, on the other hand, just don't want to pay for a game they know is probably mostly deserted. That's not a catch-22, because it's not their responsibility to attract themselves as customer's, and it's not cutting off your nose to spite your face, because they're not spiting anyone. If you feel snubbed, it is a completely irrelevant side-effect of their choices, I assure you.
The morning sun has vanquished the horrible night.
I don't think its fair to say the merger last time didn't help, it may not have got the result we hey wanted but it certainly made things a lot better. Good news and I for one will resub.
Well, I'm glad they are merging the servers. It can only help as there are die hard players of this game who play regardless of the population (myself being one of them).
This is a good thing. And I'll check out hte video as well. I've been thinking of making one too because there is just so much cool stuff in this game.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
It isn't a catch22 or double edged sword. It is the job of the game owner to attract new players. It isn't the job of the players to fund expansion of the game when it doesn't warrent such funding. Thats pretty basic stuff.
If a company isn't advertising, expanding or making changes to attract customers, then lack of customers will be the result. There is no reason to expect customers to join for no reason and then expect that money to be used to grow the game. If a company is not willing to fund growth, then they are more likely to take any extra money from a project they don't plan on fully supporting and diverting that to another project they think has a bigger future.
As for the merger iteself, that is long overdue and good news. It will be a good time for people to check out what the game would be like with a better population. Not sure it will be a better experience for new players as the population will still be more top heavy, but maybe it will improve for a while.
Err.
They are already down to 4 servers.
Any further merging is completely stupid at this point.
Especially since there was only one european server left in the first place anyway, and I'm not going to accept a bad ping in a game like this, where bad ping means you suck big time.
Why is it stupid? At this point there is a set of die hard players who are just in game because they like it. Making it so that they can find each other easier is smarter in my opinion .
Regardless of whether the merge server or not they are still only raking in x amount of dollars so they might as well make it so the experience is an enjoyable one for their players.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I agree. This is good news for people who enjoy playing the game, and would like more people to play it with.
It really is a good game. I wish SOE had supported it better.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
Can someone post a link to the announcement that there aregoing to be server merges? Maybe I'm being dense but I couldn't find any info about it on VGPlayers. If there was one server with a decent pop I'd resub.
Im all for paying 15 bucks a month for a game if there are enough people to play it. If VG went F2P and ended up getting enough people around and had an option to just still pay 15 bucks a month then I play it for sure. But no use paying 15 bucks a month to pretty much play a solo game since the game is so top heavy and there next to nothing being made when it comes to more content.
It's on the forums and people are talking about it. The community manager in one thread indicated that he had nothing new. I even saw a quote of a post by one of the devs indicating it was in QA and in discussion. But can't seem to find anything original.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
LINK
We are still working out the details on this. We are finalizing the process and running it through QA while working on the marketing side so we can get the word out to people and a good bit of forewarning. Hopefully we can get the official word out soon. Sorry for the lack of updates but it really has just been constant QA of the process so we can have as few bugs as possible once this occurs. This combined with getting the other content releases out the door has made things rather hectic around here. -Silius
That was posted in a thread called "The Big Merger". I think this is the source everyone is refering to, but there may be something else.
Again, free to play really does NOT work with this style of game at all. Why make this free to play if they can still get money out of it by keeping it pay to play?
Also, I will be returning for one last hurrah, to see the beautiful world again and enjoy as much grouping as possible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p6TrEPSr50
I always liked VG,i recognize it as one of the top 5 MMORPG's.The problem it always faced was yet another EQ clone,Blizzard has it's faithful following,who no matter what were goign to support Wow,...i mean eq1.5,the other long vets of EQ/EQ2 were staying put,so there really was no crowd to follow into VG...err i mean EQ2.5.
I like the idea behind VG,this is problably what EQ2 had envisioned,but rushed out the door to beat WOW to market.
Personally i don't want anymore of these Eq clones,where by you login and chase boring quests.If some dev wants to come along and make some cool quests,like maybe 50 in all..QUALITY over quantity ..GREAT,but no more questing for xp,that idea is just dumb and actually had no part in any of the earliest rpg's.
So i hope one day we get another VG type game,wide open viewscapes,great graphics,some other ideas i am ok with like LORE and faction,but give me FFXI combat/class and quest system anyday.
BTW..there is no way VG would make it F2P,how could they make any money to run it?I already mentioned the only reason it even exists,and that is to be part of SOE's package deal,so in essence it can be near free if you buy and play the station games.If VG went F2P that removes it from the station package,so no way it is going F2P,unless SOE has a few other games to replace it in the station deal.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I more or less agree with this. That's my gripe with EQ clones. I love the PvE content, but only when there's a PvP alternative like in DAoC. I don't want to just do raids all day and night, and I want to explore and hunt to level up, not do "quests" that are more like kill tasks.
If Vanguard had another year of development, it would have launched with a territory control PvP system in the vast oceans between continents, and then it would have been perfect.
You make it F2P to attract more people, once the people are there you say hey, you can either do micro transactions or pay 15 bucks a month and not worry about restrictions. Then you have the chance that since the population is good again most people will choose to do the 15 a month. If the people don't they are either spending a ton of money paying for things or you got the people like like to grind, which im sure aren't many. Right now people don't play the game cuz the population sucks. Dont get me wrong the game is a good game, but with the server merge how much longer do you think the game will last?
DDO was failing hard.
Turbine made it free to play.
Now DDO has more players than it ever looked possible.
Turbine is making money out the ass on DDO.
DDO has had steady updates with real content ever since.
Your logic fails. Hard.
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.-
-And on the 8th day, man created God.-
I think the server merge will concentrate the playerbase and funnel new players into a more vibrant world.
I have to say that both yesterday and today both Seradon and I believe Xeth were medium population (whatever that means) and that a bit earlier, Veskal's Exchange had a lot of people going through.
There are people playing this game. But i imagine that a good amount of them, besides some jsut trying it out, know full well what the game is like, creakiness and all and they don't care.
I don't require groups to have fun. Even though I did group up today in order to help another player do some quests in this somewhat vast spider cave. That was a lot of fun.
But I had two quests that took me into what was clearly grouping areas. So much so that one of the quests said "small group".
I just played well, was careful and though in one area I died several times I was able to take down these mobs whihc really were meant to be killed by two or three people.
It was hard but was a lot of fun and I have patience for stuff like that.
If people are self proclaimed soloers then they can have a blast in Vanguard. Until they land in a tower courtyard and have cyclopses take their lunch money.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
From my point of view this is good news (well, anything from SOE and what they are doing with Vanguard is good news). I will kick up my level 45 ranger and see if the game is a bit more fun becuse of the merge.
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DDO once had 14 servers and currently has 7, so I am pretty sure DDO doesn't have more players than Turbine could have possibly imagined.
I still think it is to early to call DDO a raging success and claim it is making money hand over fist. I'm not sure how much money a game with only 7 servers and free to play can possibly make, but I doubt it is as much as a game with 14 servers of all paying subscribers.
I don't think that 500% increase in revenue based on a failed game equals making money out the ass. Doing better, sure. Gaining over 1 million players, but only retaining enough for 7 servers pretty much says a lot of people still do not enjoy the game, even for free.
I have to agree with quasi. Making VG free to play would attract more people, but the structure of the game wouldn't really encourage people to buy things. Vanguard is built on the idea of players adventuring for everything they need or crafting it themselves. In order to give anyting in the cash shop value some of that would have to be taken away. You can't simply make a game free and expect people to shell out money for things that are not even defined.
Futhermore Turbine needed to salvage DDO or else be the company that released back to back mmos that closed down. SOE doesn't need to save vanguard. Their focus is not on revamping old games so they can get another server or two full of people. Soe is aiming for games that will bring in millions of players and anything short of that is a disctraction. Even their flagship EQ2 is no longer a sustainable product. It has seen its best years some time ago and they have been ramping down development for a while now.
Soe is setting out to rebuild their stable of games and their playerbase and I very much doubt it will include the likes of us who appreciate the design of older games. Their new focus seems to be on games that offer bite sized content that come in 10 minute chunks and is aimed for younger players.