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Are SOE ever gonna merge the servers?
John.A.Zoid
Member Posts: 1,531
Just playing again on my old account and all the servers I had characters on are dead. Theres noone in all the original older zones or the starter places and the big cities are still empty and funny how when making the game SOE said these would be populated trade centers......... This is whats killing the game for me because I want to group with people to do content and yet theres noone around and even if you get a group you always need a class that isn't around, So boring soloing and the way the game is setup I still don't understand why SOE don't just make it one server and clone the same zones over and over like they did in beta and it worked cause the zones were busy.
I'm sure the higher level zones have people in them but you can't expect someone to solo their way through the levels, missing out on all the good content and being bored alone. I WANT TO GROUP!
Comments
I have been asking that for a long time. There are like 1-2 servers that have a good population and the majority of players are at end game if it is still anything like it used to be.
LOL, they should merege. The game needs it badly.
I read that the PVP server either have or are going to be merged.
I very recently went back to giving this game another go as well. I havent played it enough to encounter problems with grouping up yet but I totally agree that they may as well just get on with merging the servers. There really isnt any point in having multiple servers for this game any more considering that nearly all of them are almost empty and the majority of the players seem to flock to Antonia Bayle and Lucan DLere. If there was just one server then it wouldnt lose players who accidently pick an empty server and then quit thinking the game is empty.
No, why would they do that? Everyone who says the servers are dead just aren't looking and taking things at face values. There are hundreds of zones, plus all the instances. And no one goes to the cities because they can go to their guild instead.
Next time don't make claims without understanding what it is you are talking about.
But the general consensus seems to be that servers populations *have* dropped over all. Lack of population is a sure fire killer for MMORPG's ( I watched DAoC die the death of a thousand knife cuts as the population dwindled away ) and server merges should be done on a proactive basis *before* populations go into a "circling the drain " status.
Keeping your remaining game population happy should be a priority for any game, especially for a game that is not at the top of its form.
But the general consensus seems to be that servers populations *have* dropped over all. Lack of population is a sure fire killer for MMORPG's ( I watched DAoC die the death of a thousand knife cuts as the population dwindled away ) and server merges should be done on a proactive basis *before* populations go into a "circling the drain " status.
Keeping your remaining game population happy should be a priority for any game, especially for a game that is not at the top of its form.
When you do a advanced search during primetime you will be suprised about the server population.
The main problem is that basically everyone is hiding within their Guild Halls since it's introduction.
They have everything they need through amenities. They can craft everything, they can broker everything, they can bank everything and they can port instantly to any zone and instance they want to.
So with that, the Cities itself have pretty much been rendered useless. Hence the reason they have turned into ghost towns.
And because they dumbed down the game so much in the level 1 to 60 range... it has become a boring tedious SOLO grind, so the retention rate of new players is extremely low.
As no one bothers to group anymore until after level60 or so. As there is no point anymore.
So most people you see after level20 are mostly people powerleveling their number 314139480234 ALT.
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So you see. Merging servers isn't going to solve anything, other then to create lag issues. (check Antonia Bayle server).
SOE needs to get their act straight and do something about the level 1 to 60 bracket and revamp the cities, so they become interesting and viable again. So the new player retention rate will go up again.
EverQuest 2 is a great game. And there are plenty of good and fun dungeons in the level10 - 60 range, but no one bothers doing them anymore as they have been rendered useless with crap loot drops.
Mastercrafted gear is so good, that you can just craft your own gear at lvl10, 22, 32, 42, 52, etc and you're set to go for another 10 levels. It just dwarfs the dungeon drops completely.
Cheers
I miss the beta when there was one server and Antonica and CL were cloned 6 times and so was everyother zone in the game. I was running around the cities and they were packed, like that little hobbit starter area had like 20 people in it. I'd go into the areas surrounding and they were packed full of people doing quests and grouping. Then I'd go into CL (on my evil char) and there were so many people there you'd get groups very easily for the content you wanted to do and the forced grouping wasn't a problem because there was enough people to make it fun that you played all the content. The quests in Everquest 2 were amazing aswel when you were with a group because they didn't feel like your standard boring quests you'd get in other mmorpgs at the time. I was in a group from levels 10 right the way to 20 and we did the armour quests. Then you go into Nek or TS and the game fell apart because them zones sucked but Nek had an amazing instance.
My point is an mmorpg is only fun when each zone is populated and you can find groups to do all the content. Otherwise you feel lonely and right now I can't find groups because the game has become so broken with all the new starting areas and how the population died because of WoW but theres still too many servers.
I could sit there and solo but whats the point if I'm not having fun? I miss getting a group all the time and seeing zones full of life and being scared of dying so the group always tried their best and played good cause we didn't want XP debt.
But the general consensus seems to be that servers populations *have* dropped over all. Lack of population is a sure fire killer for MMORPG's ( I watched DAoC die the death of a thousand knife cuts as the population dwindled away ) and server merges should be done on a proactive basis *before* populations go into a "circling the drain " status.
Keeping your remaining game population happy should be a priority for any game, especially for a game that is not at the top of its form.
If they have its because the market is saturated. There are hundreds of MMO's and only so many people that like to play them. If I say "MMO" to anyone that I work with in the building, only one of them even knows it is.
Number of subscribers is no longer a measure of how well a game is doing.
With instanced zones I'm not sure why they couldn't do what you suggest other then that chat might become way to overloaded.
However I'm not sure even merging all the servers would really help. Now days eq2 can be soloed through the lower levels really fast way faster then in the past. I ran my cleric from lvl 1-36 in about a week of playing casual. The problem is you don't got enough new players in the game over time to make these starting areas have a populuation. And the second issue is that once you join a guild you will very rarely ever go to the main cities unless you have a quest.
The days when a game is released are the exception not the standard. Never will you see newbie zones packed in any game.
At the high levels population is a problem. Contested mobs like avatars are always a race even on servers like Najena that are not considered that populated. I also think that over the years they have increased the size and number of players and instance can support. Maybe they should rethink that some and drop it down to 50-70 people per instance but then that would defeat what you suggest by thining the population.
The only real solution to your issue is to find a new game that just launched. I don't think merging servers would really be viable. What might be an interesting solution is for games to rather then be pop per server based to layer in levels. So a set of servers for 1-10, anthter set for 11-20 etc. So at start maybe they got 20 servers for 1-10 and 5 servers for 70-80, then later they rebalance it so they have 20 for 70-80 and 1 for 1-10? course then you have issues with how you move from area to area to mentor someone lower or chat with them... Or maybe the scheme that free realms usues is sufficient...
Actually I just had a great idea...
Use the system in free realms where you can play on any server, ie you chose the server to play on when you start the game. But the twist I'd put on it is level restrict the servers.
So if you are lvl 1-10 you can only play on server alpha.
If you are lvl 1-40 you can play on alpha and beta.
If you are lvl 1-80 you can play on alpha, beta, charlie, delta, and omega.
So the number of available servers would change over time.
Guild chat would be cross server. Guild members could hop servers maybe using some sort of meeting post or some device in game they click and it switches them to another server.
chat like ooc would be restricted to the server you are on.
Tells would go cross servers. Maybe some things like guild halls would be instanced to all servers so that if you were on alpha and you went into the guild hall you would see all guild members reguardless of the server they started on.
So if you were interested in mentoring you could hop over to server alpha. Or if you were wanting to focus on high lvl grouping you would stay on delta. Guilds would all switch to the server they want. This might even be nice for contested mobs if delta is down lets check charlie and omega. For a company like soe it allows better use of hardware resources which would save money.
I gotta say this seems like a brilliant solution to the whole issue for all games going from new to mature!! Remember you read it her first :P
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Ethion
But the general consensus seems to be that servers populations *have* dropped over all. Lack of population is a sure fire killer for MMORPG's ( I watched DAoC die the death of a thousand knife cuts as the population dwindled away ) and server merges should be done on a proactive basis *before* populations go into a "circling the drain " status.
Keeping your remaining game population happy should be a priority for any game, especially for a game that is not at the top of its form.
When you do a advanced search during primetime you will be suprised about the server population.
The main problem is that basically everyone is hiding within their Guild Halls since it's introduction.
They have everything they need through amenities. They can craft everything, they can broker everything, they can bank everything and they can port instantly to any zone and instance they want to.
So with that, the Cities itself have pretty much been rendered useless. Hence the reason they have turned into ghost towns.
And because they dumbed down the game so much in the level 1 to 60 range... it has become a boring tedious SOLO grind, so the retention rate of new players is extremely low.
As no one bothers to group anymore until after level60 or so. As there is no point anymore.
So most people you see after level20 are mostly people powerleveling their number 314139480234 ALT.
-----------
So you see. Merging servers isn't going to solve anything, other then to create lag issues. (check Antonia Bayle server).
SOE needs to get their act straight and do something about the level 1 to 60 bracket and revamp the cities, so they become interesting and viable again. So the new player retention rate will go up again.
EverQuest 2 is a great game. And there are plenty of good and fun dungeons in the level10 - 60 range, but no one bothers doing them anymore as they have been rendered useless with crap loot drops.
Mastercrafted gear is so good, that you can just craft your own gear at lvl10, 22, 32, 42, 52, etc and you're set to go for another 10 levels. It just dwarfs the dungeon drops completely.
Cheers
Very well stated. It is a strange phenomena of soe to make what appear to be great changes that somehow end up hurting the community aspect of their games. What they really need to do is take another look at how the game is first seen through the eyes of a brand new player and make changes with that in mind.
Since the game is designed to handle multiple instances when populations reach a certain plateau in a zone why not merge the servers. Take the hardware from the collapsed servers and put them to work as instance servers branched off the new "main server".
Very well stated. It is a strange phenomena of soe to make what appear to be great changes that somehow end up hurting the community aspect of their games. What they really need to do is take another look at how the game is first seen through the eyes of a brand new player and make changes with that in mind.
Since the game is designed to handle multiple instances when populations reach a certain plateau in a zone why not merge the servers. Take the hardware from the collapsed servers and put them to work as instance servers branched off the new "main server".
The biggest issue with doing this would be the chat channels. Consolidating all the servers would also drop all the chat together. i'm not sure how some of the more popular servers are but on najena the chat can move pretty fast. If you increased it by 5x it wouldn't be usable.
So you would need to change the chat structure which is what I think would be the problem with having a mega instanced server. And if you restricted chat to just an instance or something then it would be too restictive for people to communicate I believe.
Anyway other then the chat issue I like the mega instanced structure. But I consider chat to be a critical part of the game...
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Ethion
This would be a great idea...
If they would move the standard ruleset players... OFF of Antonia Bayle. The could probably get two standard ruleset servers to "high" population by doing this and AB would still have a large population.
Perspectives vary ... depending on where you play I guess.
Good point ethion. Maybe break chat channels down by instance of each zone.
I understand your point, but the scenario you create is just the case when a game freshly launches. EQ2 has now been around for quite a while and people have almost exclusively highly advanced characters. Guild halls adding to the ghost town feeling, but the game is that way. Maybe I go a bit over the top there, but EQ2 has become a game for raiders and people who like challenging high end group content. In my opinion there is no healthy line of progression from Level 1 to 80 anymore. As people pointed out, leveling is so easy now, most people just PL their alts to 60+ and there is not enough influx of new subs.
I can tell that first hand as I myself took the adventure of starting with EQ2 again rolling a new char. I was lucky I had a bunch of friends joining as well, so we all started from zero and reached Level 80 a few weeks ago and dig into more serious stuff. I couldn't actually believe how quick exp floats in now.
So in a nutshell, I think you need to look for another game, because the scenario you created in your post will never happen in EQ2 again, server merges or not. If you merge servers today you will just have a combined load of highly advanced characters who then will clutter up on the high end raid mobs, which are contested. It is just the way the game went, if it is good or bad everyone can decide for themselves. I am saying that totally unbiased, but I like the game as I can pick many activities I wanna do each day, as there might be no game around with that much content to offer. But again, if I wouldn't have had my friends joining with me and do the 1-80 Journey together, I prolly would have quit already.
I would move to a more popular server the game is great and the newest expansion was more about end game content to which the game has a good following. They have already done server merges once just a bit after release and on the crushbone server we see more and more new players as i lvl alts there are groups all the way from Fallen gate to End game.
So either find a new game or move to a better server one that has the people you crave.