Evolution (aka Merges) Incoming, FAQ Addresses Concerns - ArcheAge - MMORPG.com

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Evolution (aka Merges) Incoming, FAQ Addresses Concerns - ArcheAge - MMORPG.com

ArcheAge News - The ArcheAge site has an important announcement for its player base: Server merges, or Evolution, are coming. Understanding that many players may be concerned over the loss of land that an Evolution brings, the team has published an FAQ to outline each player's options and what servers will be affected. Legacy servers are not affected by the Evolution.

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Forgrimm

This game is hurting. Everytime I check streams there's about 5 or 6 people streaming with a total of 20 or so viewers. The server sub-forums that used to be pretty active now have threads on the front page that are 1 to 2 months old.

Albatroes

Forgrimm said:

This game is hurting. Everytime I check streams there's about 5 or 6 people streaming with a total of 20 or so viewers. The server sub-forums that used to be pretty active now have threads on the front page that are 1 to 2 months old.

Tbh, the game is hurting because of Trion's greed in this instance, I must admit. Business wise fresh start was smart, but it really didn't do anything except shift people around. You had newer players, yes, but just as many older players quit as a result. Rumor has it they are planning to do fresh start again for 4.0, so maybe they are just trying to get as much as they can in these surges of population before its time to call it.

SpottyGekko

No doubt there will be another Fresh Start in future. This cow still has milk !

Eothas

Not surprising. The community is full of bad, boring 4chan trolls. Their subreddit is a disgrace. I follow it for the drama though, it's entertaining. I can only feel bad for new, naive players trying to join this game and deal with that shit.

Albatroes

Just noticed on their site, during the evolution actual period, the game will down for 2 whole days. RIP. But they'll give current patrons a week of patron time supposedly. My guess is that the FS servers will be integrated into the "general" population as well. Glad I got all those 100g apex around the time FS was still relatively new. Logged in after 3 months to find out it shot up to 900-1k gold lol.

Renoaku

Yeah I know and sad thing is I love Arche Age, I don't love the company running the game because they are the ones who trashed it... But so far Arche Age imo was better than BDO and one of the best games I can say I have ever played, but decisions made by the company totally ruined the game in so many ways.

RPGMASTERGAMER

the game great but it realy p2win and trash
great game destroyed by free to play greed

remove all the cash shop, literaly everything , make a subs, im playing !!

FlyByKnight

Then they'll make another fresh start server, screw up the launch, make ANOTHER which will cause players to free farm it, then allow THEM to transfer to the original fresh start with no caveats and f#$% the ecosystem up causing everyone to quit. Then another round of scumbag merges where everyone gets royally boned.

I wish Trino nothing but bad fortune man. I mean this.

Tiamat64

Server merges in a game with limited open world housing. Yea, that's going to go over well...

Well, that's what they get for making the housing be so limited in the first place, I suppose.

Renoaku

Tiamat64 said:

Server merges in a game with limited open world housing. Yea, that's going to go over well...



Well, that's what they get for making the housing be so limited in the first place, I suppose.

Yeah im so tempted just to log on there with my several accounts and take up a lot of space lol.

itchmon

Instead of a fresh start server there should be a patron only server with an extremely limited or non existent cash shop.

I would sub on the yearly recurring plan in a second.

Albatroes

I agree, this game would be amazing if it was sub only with a cosmetic CS at most. But Trion's greed and desperation would never allow that. Its really sad that so many great games are actually currently out but are being ruined by developers/publishers.

KnightFalz

Trion's "greed" only exists because of the players' greed for something for nothing. If alternatives to the subscription only model weren't so embraced as to be effectively demanded now by the vast majority of players then they would have been long since abandoned.

But they were, so here we are, in a situation where MMORPG companies have to grub around constantly for money to keep things going because working from an established, ongoing revenue stream is no longer viable, save for Blizzard in the case of WoW.

lucyfluffy

I'm hype for server merge because you can see the real player of Archeage, paid pro vs paid pro player. Until now I don't see of any fantasy MMO do this pvp

Pemmin

RPGMASTERGAMER said:

the game great but it realy p2win and trash
great game destroyed by free to play greed

remove all the cash shop, literaly everything , make a subs, im playing !!

this.

really enjoyed the game itself. couldn't justify spending the cash needed to remain competitive.

Pesky

I don't care anymore. I tried to go back to ArcheAge a few weeks ago. But these new patches are an absolute abomination. ArcheAge is no longer ArcheAge.

They have ruined what used to be the best MMORPG on the market. The only way I would ever want to go back to playing it now, is if they reverted the game back to the way it was before patch 3.0.

As it is now, I just don't ever want to play it again.

Problem

Pesky said:

I don't care anymore. I tried to go back to ArcheAge a few weeks ago. But these new patches are an absolute abomination. ArcheAge is no longer ArcheAge.

They have ruined what used to be the best MMORPG on the market. The only way I would ever want to go back to playing it now, is if they reverted the game back to the way it was before patch 3.0.

As it is now, I just don't ever want to play it again.

"Best MMORPG on the market"? What the hell dude? Does any NPC talk english yet? i mean guards, vendors... etc. The game is not even fully translated but might be the best on the market, let alone the pw2 aspect. Critical /facepalm

centkin

There is absolutely no reason why an MMO couldn't have sub servers and ftp ptw servers.  The former would cater expressly to the $20 per month crowd while the latter would cater to the $500 per month and $0-$5 per month crowd.

Albatroes

centkin said:

There is absolutely no reason why an MMO couldn't have sub servers and ftp ptw servers.  The former would cater expressly to the $20 per month crowd while the latter would cater to the $500 per month and $0-$5 per month crowd.

Ragnarok online and probably a few others, used to do this. Having a p2p only server and f2p servers with cash shop. Would've been nice if trion did this but they probably make way more off of the cash shop.

Iambowman

I really like this game. It's too bad they ruined it. Since 3.5 came out, 80% of population has evaporated. Keep concept, rid of cash shop, make it pay to play and end game gear more accessible so pvp will be more evenly matched. Oh, and bring back to old way of running trade packs.

GeezerGamer

This sounds like the beginning of the end to me.

postlarval

centkin said:

There is absolutely no reason why an MMO couldn't have sub servers and ftp ptw servers.  The former would cater expressly to the $20 per month crowd while the latter would cater to the $500 per month and $0-$5 per month crowd.

I'd like to see a game developer set up three servers; one sub only with no cash shop at all, one F2P with shop + optional sub, and one F2P cash shop only.

Let them run for six months and see where the players gravitate.

May actually put part of the P2W argument to rest as well.

Tiamat64

Rhoklaw said:

Albatroes said:

centkin said:

There is absolutely no reason why an MMO couldn't have sub servers and ftp ptw servers.  The former would cater expressly to the $20 per month crowd while the latter would cater to the $500 per month and $0-$5 per month crowd.

Ragnarok online and probably a few others, used to do this. Having a p2p only server and f2p servers with cash shop. Would've been nice if trion did this but they probably make way more off of the cash shop.

I doubt they are making as much as they'd like if they are forced to keep merging servers. It's not even a 3 year old game and they already merged servers twice now.

The P2W F2P model works by acknowledging that your game will (probably) have a short lifespan.  One of the pros is the sheer speed at how quickly you can make the money, too.  After all, if you make 10 million in the span of a year thanks to whales, while another longer term MMO instead makes 10 million in the span of five years, who's the winner?  The former now has four more years over the latter to go do other things. Of course, we don't have access to Archeage's financials, but given all the reports of crazy people whaling it up alongside possible-if-unverifiable statements from "I am friends with some of Trion's employees" DMKano, odds are pretty good Archeage has made more than enough profit for Trion and merging the servers now is more like "Whatever. We already made tons of money from this game anyways.  Maintenance mode ho! TIme to move on." rather than "We didn't make much money from this game!"  That's how P2W F2P games roll.

Unfortunately lots of people don't seem to realize that. It seems a bunch of them at least learned that lesson with Archeage, though.  I recognized lots of former white knights turning on the game over the years as their eyes gradually opened.

Albatroes

Tiamat64 said:

Rhoklaw said:

Albatroes said:

centkin said:

There is absolutely no reason why an MMO couldn't have sub servers and ftp ptw servers.  The former would cater expressly to the $20 per month crowd while the latter would cater to the $500 per month and $0-$5 per month crowd.

Ragnarok online and probably a few others, used to do this. Having a p2p only server and f2p servers with cash shop. Would've been nice if trion did this but they probably make way more off of the cash shop.

I doubt they are making as much as they'd like if they are forced to keep merging servers. It's not even a 3 year old game and they already merged servers twice now.

The P2W F2P model works by acknowledging that your game will (probably) have a short lifespan.  One of the pros is the sheer speed at how quickly you can make the money, too.  After all, if you make 10 million in the span of a year thanks to whales, while another longer term MMO instead makes 10 million in the span of five years, who's the winner?  The former now has four more years over the latter to go do other things. Of course, we don't have access to Archeage's financials, but given all the reports of crazy people whaling it up alongside possible-if-unverifiable statements from "I am friends with some of Trion's employees" DMKano, odds are pretty good Archeage has made more than enough profit for Trion and merging the servers now is more like "Whatever. We already made tons of money from this game anyways.  Maintenance mode ho! TIme to move on." rather than "We didn't make much money from this game!"  That's how P2W F2P games roll.

Unfortunately lots of people don't seem to realize that. It seems a bunch of them at least learned that lesson with Archeage, though.  I recognized lots of former white knights turning on the game over the years as their eyes gradually opened.

Well honestly, they've pulled this same routine before. They did FS start servers with Morpheus, let them out for a few months then added them to the general pool servers a few months before the next FS servers. 4.0 will get FS servers again and the same thing will happen. I personally wouldn't mind the FS server idea if they made them sub only for at least 6 months to test how the revenue was before doing anything about. I usually say add a cosmetic only CS because honestly every game, f2p/p2p/b2p has a CS in the past decade so its kind of inevitable at this point, but as long as its only cosmetic it shouldn't be as bad. Players do need to compromise these days, its just a matter of where. I do think the game would retain more members if it had at least one sub only cosmetic CS only server though.

Kimo

Tiamat64 said:

Server merges in a game with limited open world housing. Yea, that's going to go over well...



Well, that's what they get for making the housing be so limited in the first place, I suppose.

I agree. As a game company, you're trying to sell a product. But when you only have a limited amount of said product, people go somewhere else.

It's a video game for crying-out-loud! An unlimited resource (essentially) and you only offer a small portion? What did they think would happen?? Ha!