Ever getting server merge?

Was wondering if there will ever be a server merge among the smaller servers? It pretty dead lately in Mateus, think we are the smallest population for NA, and seen a few other servers complain about the low pop in their servers as well. While server transfer is a thing, not everyone is willing to do such, and I rather not end up leaving like 1/2 my friends and FC mates in a dead server, not to mention all the hard work we have done, so yeah...

Well if they do happen better hope the other server merges with yours, if not you might lose all that hard work and not by choice.

I can see this work if they add 2 more sub-districts to each housing zone and they copy paste from one server on to the other. If not, then I don't want any mergers.

Unless they can deal with the housing issue that would come with it, there won't be any merges. And it's not like there are too many servers, the real problem is that everyone and their grandmother wants to play on those few specific servers.

SE should offer free tranfers away from those servers so people who wouldn't mind a lower-pop server have an incentive to do so.

The best approach for this would be to wipe X servers and transfer them to a new server, otherwise housing would clash, FCs & names.

This would still take a lot of resources so the amount of servers dead would need to satisfy the cost of a new server+ transfer costs.

As long as housing exists, it's not going to happen unless the devs magically make more wards. No matter how dead some severs appear to be, there's bound to be players using houses and last thing we need is more poo fan storms over housing again.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MihaelB

The best approach for this would be to wipe X servers and transfer them to a new server, otherwise housing would clash, FCs & names.

This would still take a lot of resources so the amount of servers dead would need to satisfy the cost of a new server+ transfer costs.

---

How is that gonna solve the housing and FC problems? Forcefully take away all houses, dissolve all FCs and linkshells? That would make people happy for sure.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sove92

How is that gonna solve the housing and FC problems? Forcefully take away all houses, dissolve all FCs and linkshells? That would make people happy for sure.

---

It doesn't, it solves the dead population issue. You can't merge something with existing conflicted data which is housing, FCs & character names.

If you ever used excel or any basic merging program, it's the fundamentals.

Since the population for the game is theoretically growing, what SE does instead is lock the over-full servers to new character creation, and encourage people to plop onto the lowest population server instead.

It will be a few years before SE considers server merges. As Sove said, they're far more likely to to encourage people to transfer off the over populated servers than they are to merged two lower population servers.

It wasn't until most of the XI servers had a prime time population under 1000 that they merged them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MihaelB

It doesn't, it solves the dead population issue. You can't merge something with existing conflicted data which is housing, FCs & character names.

If you ever used excel or any basic merging program, it's the fundamentals.

---

Actually server merges are commonplace for MMO's. Same character name? They give you a free name change before you can log in again. Same with (guild)FC names. More housing areas would be needed to place the old servers player housings. I don't know, I think it could work, but really at this point I don't think a merger is necessary, even on my home, Goblin.

Think if there will never be server merge, then they should at least add some kind of data center wide Party Finder and maybe even market boards, or at least with a few servers in one. I think that would help things a lot, the only other thing I can think of would be to start restricting transfers or character creations like how they did when FFXIV ARR 1st started but that would prolly piss a lot of people off, >.<

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hanayumi

Think if there will never be server merge, then they should at least add some kind of data center wide Party Finder and maybe even market boards, or at least with a few servers in one. I think that would help things a lot, the only other thing I can think of would be to start restricting transfers or character creations like how they did when FFXIV ARR 1st started but that would prolly piss a lot of people off, >.<

---

Something something data limitations, something something server limitations.

It's not data limitations, it's not server limitations. It's not even limitations. It's been said already, the only reason Square would merge servers is to reduce costs by merging the lowest population servers. The only reason to reduce costs is if the game is on it's way out. We're only a couple months into first expansion with the second expansion already being worked on, we're far from 'on it's way out'. I foresee server merges happening in a few years, but that's a few years from now.

I think the reason low population servers are feeling to some, empty, is not that they are actually empty or in decline, it is that Duty Finder is universally light on players right nos,because so many are gorging on Diadem. I'm on Behemoth, not a low population by any means, but I tend to play at off peak hours, and the current state of the Qs reminds me of when the Hunts were first implemented. So many people were doing little to nothing else for weeks, Qs were long, and PF was near empty. After a few more weeks things will return to normal. Another factor is the spread of players throught the content, so players are less likely to congregate in the same area because their individual goals differ.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Adire

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hanayumi

Think if there will never be server merge, then they should at least add some kind of data center wide Party Finder and maybe even market boards, or at least with a few servers in one. I think that would help things a lot, the only other thing I can think of would be to start restricting transfers or character creations like how they did when FFXIV ARR 1st started but that would prolly piss a lot of people off, >.<

---

Something something data limitations, something something server limitations.

---

LOL I'm sure that the default answer for requests is something along those lines these days. That said, if they can handle cross server Qs and matching in DF then data center wide MB would be relatively easy. A cross server/data center wide party finder would be harder since you'd really want cross server friend lists and blacklists to go with it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

7kiukiu7kiu7

---

You're asking the devs to change the DF so that it can access servers outside of its own data center. The servers would explode trying to connect with each other like that in large chunks.

Actually, the Duty servers used to pool from all servers. The problem from that was lag. Players from Japan, Europe and the Americas routinely played together inciting lag the likes of which hasn't been seen since. They instituted data centers to reduce the lag. There's leftovers of this old integration in the Duty with the language selection. Reintegrating the Duty servers would hasten queues but also bring back the old lag. Good luck dodging AoEs.

Yeah, I really think cross server Party Finder and possibly Market board would be the next best thing, if server merging would be too difficult to have happen. Heard mention of a cross server PF in the works but only for Raids, so guess its a start but still a ways from a good solution to things. :o

Don't merge. Lock Chocobo, Gilgamesh, Balmung etc. Let the other ones fill up.

I don't want a merge either. My server is tiny - I'm very often the only player I see online in Idyllshire, Limsa Lominsa and the like and party finder is literally empty most of the day - and it is frustrating if you aren't playing at prime time. You really have to start your own PF groups, at which point people suddenly start surfacing from their solo activities and assemble to take down a hunt or participate in some other task together.

However, a server merge would be a huge amount of unnecessary upheaval for something which might well be a temporary issue. I don't want to lose my house and airship progress just because my server is quiet. If new players were landing on the quieter servers instead of queueing up en masse to join Balmung, Gilgamesh and the like, there would be no problem to begin with.

It's ludicrous that there are endless threads about housing shortages and queues when everyone is still piling onto the same handful of servers. You can just walk into The Goblet on my server right now and buy a house without any competition. They're at the lowest prices and have been for ages because there aren't enough players on the server who want housing to purchase all of the land available. I don't think I have ever seen a queue longer than 5 people when logging on, and that was the very first day of Heavensward. I've never seen these legendary instanced areas that the development team has to implement to prevent overcrowding when new content is released. Free transfers from the overcrowded servers to the empty ones would be the most logical first step in any rebalancing strategy. Block all transfers and character creation on the overcrowded servers, but let existing players invite friends or alts (alts in particular) if needed - this is how it worked in FFXI and it's far less frustrating than the current 'hang around until a specific time of day and sneak onto the server' workaround.

I also don't really think that merges will help the real problems. I sat in a queue for PVP for 7 hours a couple of days ago, and 4 hours last night. That's not server-specific, that's happening because they just dumped a whole load of new instanced content into the game and Diadem is a more attractive prospect than PVP for esoteric farming, gear etc. If an entire data centre can't scrape together enough people for an 8v8v8 Seal Rock outside of peak times then no amount of server merges is going to help; they need to improve queueing and incentivise all different kinds of activities first.

(One other thing to add; the language settings are still important in Duty Finder even if the worlds are split by data centre now. There are French-speakers in North American time zones and Australian English-speakers on Japanese servers!)

I agree that they should do free server transfers from high pop servers to low pop servers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AnaviAnael

I agree that they should do free server transfers from high pop servers to low pop servers.

---

And how is giving free transfers from high pop. servers to low population servers going to get people to move out. When players are already paying and flocking out of the low pop. ones to the high population servers.

They have done server merges in the past, as in 1.0. I remember my original server Saronia merged with another large one and became Sargatanas.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Natashio

And how is giving free transfers from high pop. servers to low population servers going to get people to move out. When players are already paying and flocking out of the low pop. ones to the high population servers.

---

I know quite a few people who want to get off Balmung, but won't do it because some of their FC members can't afford the cost. In XI, there were whole linkshells that would transfer to different servers when the option was available.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Altera

They have done server merges in the past, as in 1.0. I remember my original server Saronia merged with another large one and became Sargatanas.

---

Yes, I remember that, too. I was there for it though all my server got was a name change... (Selbina to Ridill) I also remember that when it happened 1.0 was undeniably on it's way out. There was no future for 1.0 at that point so they decided to cut costs and merge the low population servers. XI has done the same, and I was there for that, too! It wasn't long after Wings launched, if I remember correctly. Maybe around Abyssea's peak... But by then XI had 10-11 years under it's belt and was showing it's age with slowly dwindling subscriptions and thinning player base. Again, cutting costs. Server merges are rarely if ever about improving communities.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AnaviAnael

I know quite a few people who want to get off Balmung, but won't do it because some of their FC members can't afford the cost. In XI, there were whole linkshells that would transfer to different servers when the option was available.

---

Yep - a large FC on Balmung with no house and few ties to the server outside of the FC would jump at the opportunity to switch to one of the few low population servers with housing available. But for a 100+ member FC, the cost of switching is at a minimum $1800 collectively. Too much for some individuals, too complex for a single whale, of which I doubt there are many on the RP server. (The XI linkshell jumps usually happened because a whale would pay 20 other people to jump ship with him. That was chump change compared to the $3000 NASA bot a few of them shelled out for.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

You're asking the devs to change the DF so that it can access servers outside of its own data center. The servers would explode trying to connect with each other like that in large chunks.

---

Something I want to clarify before I reply; the language SE uses to describe their server groups as data centers creates semantic problems when you talk about the JP data center, NA data center and EU data center. Both the JP and NA data centers (physical locations) host multiple server groups that SE refers to as data centers. I'll stick to 'server group' to refer to the 'data centers' such as Primal, Aether, Gaia, Elemental, etc., and I'll use data center for the physical data center location that hosts the server groups.

I wasn't suggesting that DF should access anything outside it's own sever group. Let me clarify as my post may not have been clear. I was agreeing with the idea that someone suggested for cross sever MB & PF (within the same server group - for example 'Primal'), not across multiple server groups. I was here during Beta 3 & 4 and when they changed DF to only span server groups (what SE terms data centers). I know they can't simply span all servers, especially now that the EU servers have physically moved to the EU, resulting in 3 physical data center locations separated by 1000's of miles and many milliseconds of network latency.

Given that the server groups (SE calls them data centers) are co located in physical data centers and share the same networking infrastructure, some might ask why things like DF cannot span all server groups within the physical data center; for example a DF spanning the Elemental, Gaia and Mana server groups at the JPN data center. As you said, that would likely not work because the increased load on the servers responsible for Qing and matching, along with the extra communication across all servers would cause problems.

I was saying was that since we already have DF/DR that operates across all severs within a server group (which we do) then implementing a cross server (within the same server group) market board should be feasible. I also said that a cross server Party Finder (within a server group) might not be as easy since PF across multiple servers would seem to require cross server (again within a server group) friends lists and black lists which would be new functionality and hard to maintain.

I hope I was clear enough. I wasn't suggesting that we should bridge everything together, not only do we already know that doesn't work well, but the geographic separation of servers between JPN, NA and EU creates even more issues of latency and bandwidth between the locations.

What I tried to say was with Square constantly saying how they can't add this or do that because of sever limitations. I feel they'd just give that excuse again when it comes to your idea. I want better server infrastructures.

Lets look at the ball of worms they have made for themselves.


Personal and FC Housing,
FC rank,
FC Names,
LS


What is under populated?
Also You can pay for a server move

I don't think housing will be the issue everyone assumes it to be ( at least for those stating concern ). With less servers overall they should be able to support the extra housing wards needed in the merged servers no problem.

I would be concerned about someone having your name, FC name, so on and so forth ;o If your server merged into another one you better be ready to come up with a new identity! They've already taken a step in making a change like this easier by allowing FC name changes.

I don't see LS being a problem when you can already rename them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hanayumi

Think if there will never be server merge, then they should at least add some kind of data center wide Party Finder and maybe even market boards, or at least with a few servers in one. I think that would help things a lot, the only other thing I can think of would be to start restricting transfers or character creations like how they did when FFXIV ARR 1st started but that would prolly piss a lot of people off, >.<

---

I'd have literally unsubbed if staying on a small server was my only option. I briefly debated it, but looking at recruitment for servers like Gilgamesh and Leviathan convinced me to give moving a chance.

Preventing transfers or in any way forcing or pressuring players onto small servers is a terrible idea. The MMO experience some people play and pay for is only available on large ones. Maybe a merge isn't the answer, but the other options (short of simply leaving everything as-is) are even worse.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Catwho

Since the population for the game is theoretically growing, what SE does instead is lock the over-full servers to new character creation, and encourage people to plop onto the lowest population server instead.

It will be a few years before SE considers server merges. As Sove said, they're far more likely to to encourage people to transfer off the over populated servers than they are to merged two lower population servers.

It wasn't until most of the XI servers had a prime time population under 1000 that they merged them.

---

Remora went much sooner than that.

I don't see this being a thing for a while. I just don't see it in the cards this early after the first expansion has released. I think what needs to be done is that the other servers just need more chances to shine. There is no reason for balmung to be THE RP server or gilga to be THE raid server or whatever. Not many people speak up and say, yeah come here and we will work together to make this a thing on my server. It's saddening but true. I have to say I at least applaud JoeNever for starting something that is presently only in the Primal DC.

If this is accurate, then your population looks more then fine. Do you play in the low traffic times? http://xivsoul.com/

What are you even referring to? Cue times? Party Finder trends? New content popularity vs the old content? More information is needed before jumping 300yalms over Woad Whisper Canyon to reach the conclusion of a server merge.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zephanoa

There is no reason for balmung to be THE RP server or gilga to be THE raid server or whatever.

---

Is Gilgamesh really seen as a raid server or was that just an example? 8.5% have cleared final coil compared to 15.1% on my server, and as far as I know we don't have a label o_o.

:3 These stats are interesting to look at

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Niqote

If this is accurate, then your population looks more then fine. Do you play in the low traffic times? http://xivsoul.com/

---

I wouldn't trust this as a measure of server activity.

It states that Zalera has a higher population than Leviathan... but when I was there, there were 0-3 ads primetime, no activity in /shout or /yell, and mostly empty zones. Leviathan is bustling.

The site owner says the population is the number of player characters on the server, not the number of active subscribers. Maybe some of these were roleplay servers or something at one point, so at a glance it looks like small servers are actually large.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Adire

Something something data limitations, something something server limitations.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

What I tried to say was with Square constantly saying how they can't add this or do that because of sever limitations. I feel they'd just give that excuse again when it comes to your idea. I want better server infrastructures.

---

Completely agree.

Sigh... seeing as people have this notion that a server merge is something can 'just happen' I will detail what a server merge means and what all is involved. Give me a bit to write my novella.

Square will announce well in advance when they will perform server merges, easily more so than they do maintenances. They will also announce which servers will be affected and how. When servers are merged one server is assigned the role of host. For this server all that's changing is it's population size, the other server(s) being the ones immigrating to the host server. For the server(s) immigrating to the host server, though, alot is going to happen. All linkshells will be broken. All free companies will be disbanded. All property will be relinquished, maybe refunded. The reasons for all this is that the only thing they are carrying over to the host server are your characters and anything directly connected to them like gil, items and retainers. In that regard it's not unlike a server transfer, look that up for the particulars that goes with it though you might be able to keep all your gil instead of a set amount.

This is because the server merge process favors the host server over the immigrating server(s), just like server transfers. This is also why server merges are not something Square does idly, there's alot of inconvenience involved for players. Between removing and storing furniture if you have a house or room in a company house, preparing with linkmates or company members about reforming on the new server, running afoul of naming issues, etc., it can be daunting. That's just the player side of things, server side can take a day or two to move all the character data to the host server. Setting up the European datacenter alone took a day, and that was just a straight copy onto blank servers.

This is why server merges is something they save for when they need to cut costs, it's easier to justify the time and effort when it means saving money.

Sigh.. This isn't FFXI. The list of possible rage quit reasons for a server merge and eventual shut down doesn't exist yet. Or to the extent where it is long enough to be funny. I would wait until midway to the end of 4.0 where the current layout ends and we are given the possibility of a new director/producer and story line. At least by then well have enough material to transpose that list from FFXI to FFXIV so we can properly talk about server merges, existing population levels, and going back to old content to make up for the lack of new content.

But I think part of the perception of server pop is probably due to the inability to see the number of total users at various times. Not knowing what region is on what world or cluster and the amount of used and unused bots/accounts filling the server pop. Maybe one players game time is during the majority populations bed time. It could be that most folks are looking to servers by name recognition or word of mouth. Thus is leaving some worlds empty due to alternate characters and transferring to other worlds when an opening becomes available.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sove92

How is that gonna solve the housing and FC problems? Forcefully take away all houses, dissolve all FCs and linkshells? That would make people happy for sure.

---

The housing system it utterly terrible. Having plots in a neighbourhood might sound nice but practicaly it's terrible. You get the abandoned houses and of course you get the not enough space for players. Then they make the personal rooms that for some reason are programatically tied to your FC so you can't access your house if the FC decide to troll you, or even demolish it.

They need to go back to the drawing board with housing.

Well with the already low population in Mateus, many people are just transferring out for the larger servers, and unfortunately not everyone wants to do such and rather not have people left behind to such conditions, so yeah that why I asked about merging or something of the sort and its been like this well before even 3.0 came out. >.<