Server Merge

I just took a couple month break and came back to Phoenix and noticed a considerable drop in the amount of american time zone players. (I.E. searches in Port Jueno are below 200 and Adoulin looks considerably less populated.) I've been doing a pickup shout here and there but that has slowed way down as well. I'm not saying that FFXI is dead, but the playerbase is dwindling and Phoenix could use a boost in numbers.

If merges are going to happen the issue below needs to be addressed

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-Fix instance caps on AA mission fights. (Don't know if this is still an issue, but I remember issues a couple months back with it and with an influx of players could cause some grief.)

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I realize that the fan boys will rush to say join an active linkshell that does events, but come on guys you have to be noticing what i'm saying here. I'm in an active linkshell and we are seeing membership numbers dropping. The population poses a serious problem and you need a way to boost it and support the increase in population numbers. Without that, the numbers will fall at an increased rate as the population goes lower.

I'm sure there are several other factors that need to be considered, and if another server beside Phoenix has a healthy american time zone population let me know. I don't mind transferring to it. I mainly play between 9 PM CST and Midnight CST.

Thank you,
Tumz

I agree with you tumz but if they do server mergers again, I believe that is a lot of technical work they would have to do again and They are debating what to do with the test server but I'd like to see that they some how see the test server merged into the rest of the servers with your current characters and have it be a closed off area that is accessed by speaking to the moogle since i really cant afford another character at this point to play on the test server.

Also I know that if I click on the icon play on test server, it will say sorry test server software not installed on.... {forgot what it says from after on}.

SE posted sever losses for last year, playstation dumped all it's SE stock, and they're basically bleeding cash, I wouldn't count on them doing much of anything in the way of server mergers if it cost money to do. They put out FFXIV and claim 2 million players on the front page of their lodestone, but if that was the case they wouldn't be so hard up right now. I don't know what they're thinking, but they could have kept alot of people by doing a merge when they saw populations declining, that would have kept some of the players here, because let's face it, quite a few have left because there is a lack of people to do things with, and it gets quite frustrating at times.

Somehow I get the feeling that they want us to spend the money to transfer to other worlds, but that probably isnt going to happen, if they allowed free transfer service to select worlds the problem could be solved without them spending alot of cash to fix it

Didn't SE have a really good 2013 after a terrible 2012?

Rather than merges, we really should just be allowed a 1 time free change of server.

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Originally Posted by detlef

Didn't SE have a really good 2013 after a terrible 2012?

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After the mess with 14 they did have it rough but no where near as rough as when Spirits With In tanked. They also cashed in on some easy money with the HD remakes of a few games that needed little investment and turned good sells numbers so SE isn't in dire straights. They are no where near where they should be thanks to 14 but not close to going belly up either.

With the server merges it's tricky if you are doing it to try and keep people and more people quit because of the merge then you just wasted everyone's time. Losing your name could be the trigger that finally pushes many people over the edge and they move on. So a catch 22 situation for SE merge and hope enough people are happy or merge and more people are pissed off that they lost their name. It'll happen at some point but it will not happen because of NA numbers.

What do you need a server merge for? Most stuff you can do solo or with small groups. This issue keeps coming up. Someone says "server populations are dwindling", like this is an inherent problem.

Have you ever tried to do a Dynamis farming run at the same time? More than like 10 people and every camp is over farmed.

Salvage gets overcrowded and people need to wait an hour or more to get in. Same with Limbus and Ark Angel fights. You do a server merge and this gets worse.

I suppose it is a catch 22, FFXI can't support more players, and less shouts / parties means more folks jump ship. I enjoy the 18 man runs and getting good groups together to run the skirmish 3. With lack of players, this become harder and harder to do. Waiting to do salvage, AA fights, and Dynamis overcrowding isn't a big deal. Everyone is sick of running them, and when I'm forced to either party or go do DC mobs is very welcome in comparison. Soloing Dynamis for 160 days, and/or Salvage is my idea of a very slow painful death... I'm going to go play some Diablo 3 because this conversation just depressed me lol.

They also have DQX selling like hot cakes over in japan. People get to the point where you can use the casino and then just stop doing anything except playing the casino games lol.

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Originally Posted by tumz

I suppose it is a catch 22, FFXI can't support more players, and less shouts / parties means more folks jump ship. I enjoy the 18 man runs and getting good groups together to run the skirmish 3. With lack of players, this become harder and harder to do. Waiting to do salvage, AA fights, and Dynamis overcrowding isn't a big deal. Everyone is sick of running them, and when I'm forced to either party or go do DC mobs is very welcome in comparison. Soloing Dynamis for 160 days, and/or Salvage is my idea of a very slow painful death... I'm going to go play some Diablo 3 because this conversation just depressed me lol.

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"No /shout" really isn't player population issue, it's more like the lack of trust in PUG or the lack of specific jobs.

If you go out and make a delve 6 man pt /shout, I can promise you you can get your 3x DD in a few min. Then you may spend 1hr looking for a SCH and BRD.

Even if the player population increased by 100% after merge, you'd just see 2 party /shouting for BRD and SCH. When BRD SCH finally pop only 1 party can 6/6.

FFXIV had more player than FFXI at launch, but back then if I try to queue on a DPS job, I can wait for hours but tank job was instant queue. Because there were more tanks than DPS. It doesn't matter if the server was full with 7000 players, there are just more DPS than tanks.

FFXI had same issue, everyone and their mother wants to play DD, nobody want to play BRD SCH.

Another reason is because most of the good players doesn't trust /shout, so they only do stuff with ls/friends.

I think the main reason why SE wouldn't do server merge is probably because of AA/salvage instance issue. Once I made an AA pt on JP prime time and there were 77 people in zone and nearly 1hr wait time, with server merge it'd be over 140 people and what, 2hr wait time?

You may not think it's a big deal to wait for that long, I think it is. Personally I can't tolerate it.