kinda but not really (yet) they're offering free server transfers, but i'm sure once everyone is settled in on new servers what ever dead ones left would be closed wouldn't make sense to keep servers running that no one plays on.
Rifts major problem is that you NEED a heavy populated server for rifts to be fun. even medium servers have rough time clearing off an invasion at non-prime time hours. hell my server was HIGH but i normally play late at night and i saw places over run with invasions with no hope of clearing them with the amount of people on at those hours.
and trion is just doing what every other mmo has done but not sitting on their hands and wait till the people that actually still like the game quit because they're stuck on a dead server after the first month runs out.everytime a new mmo comes out its REALLY popular the first month then people leave before rewnewing at all. i don't think the game is hurting by any means.
hell i quit too after hitting 50, i'm just not a dungeon grinder,never cared for gear much in any game.i had fun for awhile got my money's worth out of it.
After the first couple of transfers they will have to merge servers. I don't see them leaving almost dead servers running when they could be used for lowering the lag on over populated servers (assuming they can scale). However, allowing the players to transfer themselves off a dead server is a much better deal than the dev's deciding who is going where.
I don't think server merges will come any time soon. Now that they will introduce free server transfers open every 7 days, anyone that wants to move can.
"Server merges already?" should be more accurately stated, "Server merges, like normal".
In this mmo market, gamers have a lot of choices. This means that we can give up on a game earlier, as there are many out there that may have more appeal to our personal play styles.
Rarely did anyone quit EQ or WoW after the the initial first 30 days - at least in their early days - because, heck, what how many other mmos were their to choose from?
Early on, we could ignore the inconveniences or missing elements we thought an mmo should have because there were so few of them, the bells and whistles could outshine the bad.
Not so anymore. You don't like the pvp? Quit after thirty days - game x has better pvp. You don't like the animations? Quit after thirty days and go back to those cool animations you like. No one from your guild came over? Go back to your friends after the 30 days is up. Essentially, we couldn't make those choices before, but now we can.
What is the result?
New mmo's spike in their release. The gamer market is big now, so you have to have the servers to accomodate them. But that same big market also means a lower retention rate as consumers have more choices.
So.....the mmo industry has developed a pattern in the last few years of having a lot of servers at first, and then merging them after the 30 days.
We've already seen this trend with mmo's recently, and I'm sure we'll see it so much in the future, that it will become an expectation of all mmo's released - after 30 or 60 days, they'll need to merge servers.
This is not a sign of how unhealthy a game is, but rather how healthy the industry is.
Server merges are a result of those Hype scores you see plastered over this site. too many people think that a hype of 8+ must be a great thing, then they realise it is not the game for them and leave. Unfortuantly those same people keep getting suckered in by pretty shiny things. Even the ugliest, most evil thing in the world coudl attract such people with words like "revolutionary", "new" and "innovative".
Server merges will happen for every MMO until peoople stop being attracted to shiny things.
Trion is handling the natural slump in player population really well, starting with free transfers lets them see how much dead wood they need to get rid of while still allowing for some growth. They are going to put restrictions on transfers to the well populated servers so they can strive for balance on the low to medium populated servers, then we'll see about server closures, I don't see merges entering in to the equation at all at this point.
First the free server transfers have to have any effect on low server poppulations. When that doesn't work then they will merge servers. Do you really expect people to leave the populated servers to go to the under populated servers?
I hope you realise that xfire is only good at predicting trends and not absolute numbers, right?
Checking a game and noticing a 50% drop in played time is a valid way to predict subscription loss.
Having game A and game B and compare their numbers is not, since you don't know the exact percentage of people that both play the games and use xfire at the same time.
Typical Trion, like headless chickens. What do you "fans" think they are going to eventually do with all those servers that become underpopulated by the free transfers? Say what you will, but Trion is a company blown by the wind. They have no clue what they are doing from one day to the next.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II "People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
From the announcment it reads like it will be only from high pop > low pop which if that is right it wont change anything, noone is going to move from a decently populated server to a dead one.
Wow, Trion went "proactive" and started mergers in order to keep the population happy and filled with people to play with?
Now that's a company that knows what they're doing. Pretty cool of them. Nice that I came across this post. Makes me more interested in playing a game by developers who are actually proactive, and not just sitting on their hands doing nothing.
Wow, Trion went "proactive" and started mergers in order to keep the population happy and filled with people to play with?
Now that's a company that knows what they're doing. Pretty cool of them. Nice that I came across this post. Makes me more interested in playing a game by developers who are actually proactive, and not just sitting on their hands doing nothing.
Proactive lol, flapping would be my interpretation. The game is dull, it does nothing new. My prediction is the population will reduce more and more each month from now until the end of the year.
What part of they aren't doing server mergers is escaping you people? It's free server transfers, a rather large difference. Also, even if they were doign server mergers, it actually means nothing as far as the health of the game. Polly wanna cracker?
------------------------- "Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places..." ~ H.P.Lovecraft, "From Beyond"
Simple maths. Lets say Rift has 100k subscribers while Aion got 200k. What's preventing those two games having the exact same number of xfire subscribers playing them, say 20k?
There is a good reason xfire is accurate at predicting trends and not hard numbers. If you knew the total numbers of both player bases and the percentage that use xfire, then you could extrapolate hard numbers. Right now you can have 10% of Rift people using xfire and only 5% of Aion and still got an equal number of people on xfire for both games, although in my theoretical example Aion is twice as popular.
someone told you wrong, they are going ot allow server transfers, which will eliminate the need to merge.
Server transfers are nice, but mergers are absolutely, positively needed and needed bad.
Rift's launch was a massive event and they marketed it brilliantly. This led to a HUGE number of people for pre-release and release and Trion added many servers to accomodate that load. But the fact remains, Rift does not have anywhere near as many active players as the days after launch and there a many empty servers now. There was simply just a huge fall off of active players about 3 weeks after launch.
I have been frustrated with the lack of players on my server and was very surprised to hear that is it considered 'active' because it has a 'medium' status during prime time.
Rifts major problem is that you NEED a heavy populated server for rifts to be fun. even medium servers have rough time clearing off an invasion at non-prime time hours. hell my server was HIGH but i normally play late at night and i saw places over run with invasions with no hope of clearing them with the amount of people on at those hours.
Still? I thought they learned this lesson with WAR, as public quests had like 1-2 people in them... I was under the impression that rifts would scale to the population.
Before WoW (BW?) it was normal for an MMO to start with a certain number of servers because the MMO market was small. Therefore it was rare that server mergers would happen.
AW - (After WoW) it is now normal for the hype to cause a developer to make sure there are plenty servers for those who will play. Typical of today's MMO gamers is the first free month play and then return to WoW or whatever other game the gamer has been playing. Therefore it is becoming normal for games to merge servers after a game is launched.
My prediction is that SW:TOR will break records in pre-orders and first month sales yet within 6 months will be looking at merging servers. This does not mean that SW:TOR will be a failure, it means that the hype is so big and the IP so well known, that many will flock to it yet many will be dissatisfied with it and leave.
"I don't give a sh*t what other people say. I play what I like and I'll pay to do it too!" - SerialMMOist
Before WoW (BW?) it was normal for an MMO to start with a certain number of servers because the MMO market was small. Therefore it was rare that server mergers would happen.
AW - (After WoW) it is now normal for the hype to cause a developer to make sure there are plenty servers for those who will play. Typical of today's MMO gamers is the first free month play and then return to WoW or whatever other game the gamer has been playing. Therefore it is becoming normal for games to merge servers after a game is launched.
My prediction is that SW:TOR will break records in pre-orders and first month sales yet within 6 months will be looking at merging servers. This does not mean that SW:TOR will be a failure, it means that the hype is so big and the IP so well known, that many will flock to it yet many will be dissatisfied with it and leave.
Yeah, it is an interesting issue. If SWToR is substantialy profitable at 500k subs, they really do not have that many worries. Mass Effect 2 sold in excess of three million copies to Bioware fans, so 500k seems not that hard. Rift has an smaller budget. I would not be surprised if Rift had already made a profit.
They knew they were going to merge servers anyways. When the game 1st launched they added alot of new servers to keep the q times down so ppl could play. hey said they were going to merge servers when the dust settled. So saying you are shocked that they are merging severs any time soon sounds like you didn't keep up on the game when it 1st came out. And the free transfers are going to be nice because it will do their jo for them. It will show them which servers ppl are moving from and going to so they will have a better idea which ones to cut. ts a smart move and everyone who stayed on top of the game already knew this.
Played Aoc/DDO/FFXI/WAR / LoTRo / CO / Aion Playing Rift
Waiting for FFXIV to be the game it should. so sad =(
Comments
someone told you wrong, they are going ot allow server transfers, which will eliminate the need to merge.
I don't think they are doing 'merges' but allowing free 'transfers'.
Doing merges would admit they do have dead servers (like mine), and that wouldn't be good for business.
kinda but not really (yet) they're offering free server transfers, but i'm sure once everyone is settled in on new servers what ever dead ones left would be closed wouldn't make sense to keep servers running that no one plays on.
Rifts major problem is that you NEED a heavy populated server for rifts to be fun. even medium servers have rough time clearing off an invasion at non-prime time hours. hell my server was HIGH but i normally play late at night and i saw places over run with invasions with no hope of clearing them with the amount of people on at those hours.
and trion is just doing what every other mmo has done but not sitting on their hands and wait till the people that actually still like the game quit because they're stuck on a dead server after the first month runs out.everytime a new mmo comes out its REALLY popular the first month then people leave before rewnewing at all. i don't think the game is hurting by any means.
hell i quit too after hitting 50, i'm just not a dungeon grinder,never cared for gear much in any game.i had fun for awhile got my money's worth out of it.
Love the game but they desperately need server merges.
After the first couple of transfers they will have to merge servers. I don't see them leaving almost dead servers running when they could be used for lowering the lag on over populated servers (assuming they can scale). However, allowing the players to transfer themselves off a dead server is a much better deal than the dev's deciding who is going where.
Is this when the people start leaving the game?
Guild Wars 2's 50 minutes game play video:
http://n4g.com/news/592585/guild-wars-2-50-minutes-of-pure-gameplay
Everything We Know about GW2:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/287180/page/1
Its the normal as the free trail period where they have more servers than needed. This is pretty standard these days. No surprise.
I don't think server merges will come any time soon. Now that they will introduce free server transfers open every 7 days, anyone that wants to move can.
"Server merges already?" should be more accurately stated, "Server merges, like normal".
In this mmo market, gamers have a lot of choices. This means that we can give up on a game earlier, as there are many out there that may have more appeal to our personal play styles.
Rarely did anyone quit EQ or WoW after the the initial first 30 days - at least in their early days - because, heck, what how many other mmos were their to choose from?
Early on, we could ignore the inconveniences or missing elements we thought an mmo should have because there were so few of them, the bells and whistles could outshine the bad.
Not so anymore. You don't like the pvp? Quit after thirty days - game x has better pvp. You don't like the animations? Quit after thirty days and go back to those cool animations you like. No one from your guild came over? Go back to your friends after the 30 days is up. Essentially, we couldn't make those choices before, but now we can.
What is the result?
New mmo's spike in their release. The gamer market is big now, so you have to have the servers to accomodate them. But that same big market also means a lower retention rate as consumers have more choices.
So.....the mmo industry has developed a pattern in the last few years of having a lot of servers at first, and then merging them after the 30 days.
We've already seen this trend with mmo's recently, and I'm sure we'll see it so much in the future, that it will become an expectation of all mmo's released - after 30 or 60 days, they'll need to merge servers.
This is not a sign of how unhealthy a game is, but rather how healthy the industry is.
Server merges are a result of those Hype scores you see plastered over this site. too many people think that a hype of 8+ must be a great thing, then they realise it is not the game for them and leave. Unfortuantly those same people keep getting suckered in by pretty shiny things. Even the ugliest, most evil thing in the world coudl attract such people with words like "revolutionary", "new" and "innovative".
Server merges will happen for every MMO until peoople stop being attracted to shiny things.
Trion is handling the natural slump in player population really well, starting with free transfers lets them see how much dead wood they need to get rid of while still allowing for some growth. They are going to put restrictions on transfers to the well populated servers so they can strive for balance on the low to medium populated servers, then we'll see about server closures, I don't see merges entering in to the equation at all at this point.
First the free server transfers have to have any effect on low server poppulations. When that doesn't work then they will merge servers. Do you really expect people to leave the populated servers to go to the under populated servers?
I hope you realise that xfire is only good at predicting trends and not absolute numbers, right?
Checking a game and noticing a 50% drop in played time is a valid way to predict subscription loss.
Having game A and game B and compare their numbers is not, since you don't know the exact percentage of people that both play the games and use xfire at the same time.
Typical Trion, like headless chickens. What do you "fans" think they are going to eventually do with all those servers that become underpopulated by the free transfers? Say what you will, but Trion is a company blown by the wind. They have no clue what they are doing from one day to the next.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
From the announcment it reads like it will be only from high pop > low pop which if that is right it wont change anything, noone is going to move from a decently populated server to a dead one.
Wow, Trion went "proactive" and started mergers in order to keep the population happy and filled with people to play with?
Now that's a company that knows what they're doing. Pretty cool of them. Nice that I came across this post. Makes me more interested in playing a game by developers who are actually proactive, and not just sitting on their hands doing nothing.
Proactive lol, flapping would be my interpretation. The game is dull, it does nothing new. My prediction is the population will reduce more and more each month from now until the end of the year.
What part of they aren't doing server mergers is escaping you people? It's free server transfers, a rather large difference. Also, even if they were doign server mergers, it actually means nothing as far as the health of the game. Polly wanna cracker?
-------------------------
"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places..." ~ H.P.Lovecraft, "From Beyond"
Member Since March 2004
Simple maths. Lets say Rift has 100k subscribers while Aion got 200k. What's preventing those two games having the exact same number of xfire subscribers playing them, say 20k?
There is a good reason xfire is accurate at predicting trends and not hard numbers. If you knew the total numbers of both player bases and the percentage that use xfire, then you could extrapolate hard numbers. Right now you can have 10% of Rift people using xfire and only 5% of Aion and still got an equal number of people on xfire for both games, although in my theoretical example Aion is twice as popular.
Server transfers are nice, but mergers are absolutely, positively needed and needed bad.
Rift's launch was a massive event and they marketed it brilliantly. This led to a HUGE number of people for pre-release and release and Trion added many servers to accomodate that load. But the fact remains, Rift does not have anywhere near as many active players as the days after launch and there a many empty servers now. There was simply just a huge fall off of active players about 3 weeks after launch.
I have been frustrated with the lack of players on my server and was very surprised to hear that is it considered 'active' because it has a 'medium' status during prime time.
Still? I thought they learned this lesson with WAR, as public quests had like 1-2 people in them... I was under the impression that rifts would scale to the population.
Before WoW (BW?) it was normal for an MMO to start with a certain number of servers because the MMO market was small. Therefore it was rare that server mergers would happen.
AW - (After WoW) it is now normal for the hype to cause a developer to make sure there are plenty servers for those who will play. Typical of today's MMO gamers is the first free month play and then return to WoW or whatever other game the gamer has been playing. Therefore it is becoming normal for games to merge servers after a game is launched.
My prediction is that SW:TOR will break records in pre-orders and first month sales yet within 6 months will be looking at merging servers. This does not mean that SW:TOR will be a failure, it means that the hype is so big and the IP so well known, that many will flock to it yet many will be dissatisfied with it and leave.
"I don't give a sh*t what other people say. I play what I like and I'll pay to do it too!" - SerialMMOist
Yeah, it is an interesting issue. If SWToR is substantialy profitable at 500k subs, they really do not have that many worries. Mass Effect 2 sold in excess of three million copies to Bioware fans, so 500k seems not that hard. Rift has an smaller budget. I would not be surprised if Rift had already made a profit.
do you guys pay any attention to the industry at all?
this was announced after blizzard announced a fee for cross realm grouping.
it was an opportunity for trion to say "see, we wont nickel and dime you like blizzard will" and they took it.
god, how could you guys not notice this was announced on the same day and AFTER blizzard made their announcement.
also. i dont see why anyone would think rift is hurting for players. my server (wolfsbane) still has a 20-40 minute queue at peak time to log in.
Games i'm playing right now...
"In short, I thought NGE was a very bad idea" - Raph Koster talking about NGE on his blog at raphkoster.com
They knew they were going to merge servers anyways. When the game 1st launched they added alot of new servers to keep the q times down so ppl could play. hey said they were going to merge servers when the dust settled. So saying you are shocked that they are merging severs any time soon sounds like you didn't keep up on the game when it 1st came out. And the free transfers are going to be nice because it will do their jo for them. It will show them which servers ppl are moving from and going to so they will have a better idea which ones to cut. ts a smart move and everyone who stayed on top of the game already knew this.
Played Aoc/DDO/FFXI/WAR / LoTRo / CO / Aion
Playing Rift
Waiting for FFXIV to be the game it should. so sad =(