Seeing a lot about server merges, here's an alternative to server merges.

I think it'd be a much better idea to have something similar to a "MegaServer" I understand it was started in WoW and GW2 what it does is allow people that made their characters on a specific server to play with others on lower population servers, not only that but with the megaserver the zones would be shared with the data center and people on 1 server would be offered to join a lower population server to help out with a FATE or hunt, something like that, it would also allow for a cross server party finder, and it'd be possible to ad something similar to playonline's mail system using the mogstation so you can talk to your friends on other servers, it'd have your friends on a friend list from all servers you added friends to your friend list the reason this would work much better than server merges is because you won't have to change the housing or offer transfers to lower pop servers.

Here is the con's for server merges.
1. people would lose their names (change thiere names).
2. people would lose their retainer names.
3. housing issues.

another option aside from the megaserver idea is locking out over populated servers for transfers, and offer incentives to people that are on over-populated servers to move to a lower populated server, I've went from a dead server to a over-populated server and the grass isn't always greener on the other side, what's your thoughts on this? what would you like to see? server merges or the megaserver idea?

I was reading a reddit thread and saw this post after I started this thread

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AveryFenix 2 months ago
If they just implement a megaserver system like Guild Wars 2 has, they dont need to change anything. Having separate servers is kind of becoming a thing of the past. MMOs need to start embracing the megaserver. It works well for everyone. Just keep all the housing areas on separate servers so the only thing your server really affects is housing.

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source he also brings up another good point

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AveryFenix 2 months ago
In a way, servers do nothing but separate the overall MMO community. If everything was merged into 1 big megaserver, it would be one big community. Then if they kept the housing areas on the dedicated servers and not merged, the servers would act more like neighborhoods. There would still be smaller communities based around the housing areas. There wouldn't really be a way to make megaservers work in housing areas anyway.

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I think if anything they should first consider altering which worlds are in each group. Having Gilgamesh and Balmung in the same group created a lot of trouble for all of Aether when HW launched. These worlds and some others like them are overpopulated at the moment and moving them might help the DF in other worlds. Adding more players would not help. If you instanced zones so they'd only support a certain number of players like GW2 does that could be ok, especially since we know they possess that ability. However, you still diminish the sense of community that specific worlds have. Gilga is a raiding world, for instance. Love it or hate it, it does have a specific culture of its own, as does the server you are on.

I'm sure it would help out some smaller worlds, but I see far more posts about people wanting to find nice little communities than I do for people wishing their worlds were merged.

I am about to move to a low or a mid populated server, so in the next 3-4 hours I will no longer be on Balmung, but the reasoning for this thread was a alternative to having server merges, we don't need merges but a mega server like GW2.

Isn't that similar to what a datacentre is, a 'mega server'? What they need to do is balance the existing servers across the datacentres to achieve an even population distribution & also implement datacentre wide party finders for instanced content. It obviously wouldn't work for Hunts or in world content but since when has quiet hunts been an issue? ;)

A mega server where everyone shared world content, & where you could get possibly a few thousand people idling in Idleshire with minions out, is a rather horrifying concept to many of us. The use of AoE spam & ridiculous shouts would deter many, I feel.

I would sooner they give free Transfers from over pop servers 1st. I know of people that would move but wont because of the price.

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Originally Posted by Kewitt

I would sooner they give free Transfers from over pop servers 1st. I know of people that would move but wont because of the price.

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Pretty much this. I wouldn't be surprised if there were even entire FCs in Balmung that want to move out but can't because of the sheer difficulty in getting everyone to commit/funds needed for everyone to jump ship.

I think Yoshi P already said there were doing a datacenter party finder for raids and stuff but its still being planned.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

I think Yoshi P already said there were doing a datacenter party finder for raids and stuff but its still being planned.

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I hope your right, that would help a lot.

I'm seeing more threads concerning what's heavily populated... high pop server doesn't mean it's a good server.

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Originally Posted by Twilite

I'm seeing more threads concerning what's heavily populated... high pop server doesn't mean it's a good server.

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ohh how well I know, the info of my character don't show it yet but I moved servers last night, to a mid sized server, bigger dosn't mean it's better especially when it comes to servers, not saying there's anything wrong with Balmung but it's not my "Cup of tea" so to say (prefer coffee anyways).

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Originally Posted by Twilite

I'm seeing more threads concerning what's heavily populated... high pop server doesn't mean it's a good server.

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That's very true, but what it usually means is that there's more in world activities that allow things like FATEs to be cleared more regularly. On low population servers most FATEs will lie there waiting to time out, which reduces the pop rate of more popular (or essential) FATEs like those for books or Beast Tribe quests.

Jenova is really bad, I'd say it's about between a mid sized server and a low server. Very hard to categorize it, but it suffers a lot and has a very erratic party finder. I can speak from experience how much better it would be if they merged the servers together, as it would help out my server immediately in all phases of the game.

If it was all opt-in I wouldn't mind, but otherwise it would kill our English community on Tonberry. But otherwise a better option would be to do what Blizzard does, they use the cross realm technology to connect to smaller servers and leave the high population servers, but even then it got a lot of negative feedback for killing the community of the smaller servers.

TC, did it not occur to you that a "mega server" is the ultimate end result of merging all the servers? How is a mega server an alternative to merging servers?

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Originally Posted by Roth_Trailfinder

TC, did it not occur to you that a "mega server" is the ultimate end result of merging all the servers? How is a mega server an alternative to merging servers?

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Like you said a mega server is all the servers. So if you let's say combine Goblin and Mateus, you'd get a bigger server, not anything close to mega, but if you combined all of aether and primal together you'd get the mega server. At least I think that's what they're talking about.

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Originally Posted by Roth_Trailfinder

TC, did it not occur to you that a "mega server" is the ultimate end result of merging all the servers? How is a mega server an alternative to merging servers?

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Originally Posted by Jetstream_Fox

Like you said a mega server is all the servers. So if you let's say combine Goblin and Mateus, you'd get a bigger server, not anything close to mega, but if you combined all of aether and primal together you'd get the mega server. At least I think that's what they're talking about.

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What I was talking about is each data center is on a mega server, example all of Primal is on 1 megaserver and all of Aether is on another, I'm not talking about every server being on a megaserver.

Isn't the whoel mega server thing super hard to implement? Because I played GW2 at launch and it took forever for the mega server system to actually be implemented because of technical issues and that was a game designed from the ground up around that type of server infrastructure.

Given that the (supposedly top-class) server architecture can't handle major releases as it stands, the horrors of it a giant server would be unspeakable.