Are we getting a server merge soon?

[Immortta]

250~500 online is pretty bad for a MMO like FFXI, they really need server merge.

[Vae]

Even with however many people are currently on, always half of them are inaccessible.

If you were to take 1000 people online, half immediately are 2boxes/triboxes/pocket whm&geo/afk's, then another half of the remaining are jp (varies by server etc), so at any given time a person trying to accomplish something has a really slim chance of doing it.

Merges are STILL NOT THE ANSWER, I hate to be basically the only voice of reason on this, but seriously, merges, only create problems. What there actually needs to be is transfer fee negation. The ability to play on a deserted server, to do the things that you want to be alone for, and the ability to join a real server for "content".

Nothing would be better, than logging in to a dead server, and doing Ambuscade/dynamis/trails/farming/etc but then you have no chance of getting AHable gear/clears/endgame. And vice versa. Being able to wake up and log into dead server and farm, then log into real server when you want to do content would be absolutely perfect, hence, will never happen.

Merges just piss everyone off, and give you twice as many afk and undesirables.... You think that if your dead server merges with another dead server, shouts will suddenly spring up... sorry, it won't happen.

[Diavolo]

MMO doesn't mean everyone needs to be forced to move because you want them to. It means a lot of people get to have fun together. If SE gave out free transfers, the people you know could move with you for free too.

That's right, emphasis on "a lot" and "together."

If you were to take 1000 people online, half immediately are 2boxes/triboxes/pocket whm&geo/afk's, then another half of the remaining are jp (varies by server etc), so at any given time a person trying to accomplish something has a really slim chance of doing it.

Merges are STILL NOT THE ANSWER, I hate to be basically the only voice of reason on this, but seriously, merges, only create problems. What there actually needs to be is transfer fee negation. The ability to play on a deserted server, to do the things that you want to be alone for, and the ability to join a real server for "content".

Asura is almost always above 1,000 accounts online, sometimes getting up over 1,400 at peak hours, at least when I've checked, and yes, even with that many people online half the accounts are still idle in towns, but you're simply wrong to imply merging servers wouldn't bring about more activity. Create a mule on Asura and that $1 will show you just how different things are from one server to the next. The higher population makes a world of difference in an MMORPG like this.

As for playing on deserted servers... sorry, but that's not the voice of reason, that's the voice of laziness and fear if you ask me. Competition drives us to be better. Too much competition at a popular farming spot? Send them a tell, make a new friend, grow together, or maybe improve your methods for farming your materials. Better yet, use it as a chance to explore the world for a different way of making some gil. This is how things worked back when we had thousands of players online at all times with people in every zone and we were all better for it.

[Seriha]

I understand congestion fears, truly. However, I'm not sold on that being the sole reason to not unite people. Keep in mind, XI lacks a lot of the convenient features of more recent MMOs like better matchmaking tools and cross-server interactions. Since these are probably off the table due to spaghetti code and all that, it's why I jumped directly to the free transfer model. A player really looking to make it work would then be able to freely roam while taking advantage of sites like this or others to help find similarly minded players. And while you could say they can do that now, the real sting is dropping the money to find things just didn't really work. Someone might have the tolerance for this once or twice, but not everyone. I'm simply against paid transfers because Rift spoiled me in this regard years ago, by both abolishing them and allowing someone to freely jump servers whenever without actually changing their home server. And if this is truly a big money angle from SE in XI's current environment, I'd almost be inclined to call it shady.

Anyway, congestion issues can be fixed. They just have to try. Not enough Apex camps? Make some more and with mobs people will fight. Lord knows a vast chunk of Adoulin is going majorly unused. Figure out something with the Legion zones where the retired servers can be retasked to handle the greater load. Double or triple the various VW pop spots so campaigns like this don't wind up so crowded. What do you really want after that? Or is it more, "Someone's gonna come and kill my money making!" kind of fear? Because I'd argue this gil/augment economy probably isn't the best possible endgame we could be working with, especially with Skirmish being out of the popularity loop.

[BBWallace]

People won't be happy till this game is dead.

[Amalon]

I'm seeing alot of arguments just skimming over all the posts here, and valid points brought up on all sides concerning the drop in population of alot of the servers. Simple fact of the matter here now is that something does need to get done whether its a server merge, or either giving everyone a one time free transfer to move to another server or just removing the world transfer fee.

I only play now during the free log in campaigns simply because my server Quetzalcoatl is literally dead, there was only about 265 people on that server when I checked during this last free log in campaign. When I stopped playing there was less than 1000 people left on the server and no one did shouts for anything anymore its literally been dead for about a year and a half to 2 years now. I can remember way back when there was over 3000, 4000, and 5000 players on the server yea sometimes things got a bit laggy in busier areas but it was always very active. From what I've been seeing there is alot of servers now that have basicly died out and lots of people like me that have or are looking at stopping playing because of it and feeling tht we shouldn't have to pay to transfer from a dead server.

Personally i think if something isn't going to get done about a server merge or removing the fee to do world transfers then Square Enix should just be shutting the entire game down. It was a great game but its become a shadow of its former glory!!

[Diavolo]

I wonder how much more willing the dev team would be to undergo another round of server merges if they were able to delete characters that failed to meet certain criteria beforehand, such as having accumulated X amount of playtime and having been active at least once in the last year. I imagine the headache caused by the large scale character renaming process associated with a merge would be much easier to bear if that were to happen.

[lllen]

Having survived one server merge, Hades to Cerberus it was't so bad, it was nice to see couple thousand + people playing, big headache was the dynamis schedule...remember those. I immigrated to Asura end of March, Cerberus would have 250-300 people listed, you would go to Jueno and see 2 people moving...use to be lag city. I made mules and played on several servers before going to Asura. $1 for a test run was easy way to see what is going on. I play solo now, had my fill of 7 days a week every evening end game runs (but I'll never forget the fun and drudgery of getting Dio), most of my friends were young and now have families (I'm old) so they are no longer playing. But their is a warm fuzzy feeling see people running around everywhere, even in Bastok.

The dynamics of the game has changed, mainly because the players as a whole have grown up playing this game, rl has a way of interfering few have the time to be in game for hours. I agree a merge would be a good thing, but even better would be for SE to have a free transfer period and let people readjust the servers, self leveling you might say. Only one problem, what if only 50 people left on server...do you force them to move or automatically move them. I can see other problems with free transfers so not sure what the best answer is at the moment. But I do think something needs to be done.

Just thought of another old time thing, remember when you couldn't find a camp in the dunes.

[Amalon]

One thing i have thought about with doing free world transfers is that I think the world transfer system is set up for both FF11 and FF14 because both games are run through the square enix account management.

One idea that had gotten formed on another thread I had started was to do some type of expansion/add-on/quest idea where you could go back and forth between FF11 and FF14 and either your character from the one game gets converted to the equivalent it would be on the other game or you have a character made for both games and can switch to that character while in a lobby that is set up in between the 2 games. That could improve the server populations for FF11 by people wanting to return to FF11 to play a little there as well as players that are currently on FF14 that have never played FF11 to explore and play FF11.

[Limecat]

One idea that had gotten formed on another thread I had started was to do some type of expansion/add-on/quest idea where you could go back and forth between FF11 and FF14

That was actually one of the early ideas SE was kicking around during the 1.x days, a way to link your new XIV character/account to your XI one so that you could basically walk through a shining door in either game to transition to the other one. In the end they gave up on it as being far too complex to mess with, to say nothing of oddities arising from trying to launch two different engines from inside one unified UI. Would have been pretty cool if it could have been pulled off. Maybe we'll get lucky and someday they'll have an opt-in rebuild of the game that uses XIV's engine/UI at least.