Server Mergers

I'm curious what is the general opinion of merging servers among the community here?

I recently transferred off of Balmung to Mateus, and it's like a completely different (and depressing) game. Like, this transfer was hands down the worst decision I ever made in this game and there are no take backs now. If I didn't still have a character I could go back to on Balmung, this would be enough for me to quit the game over, but as it is, I feel like my main is effectively dead besides weekly raids.

I know Balmung gets a lot of flak but it has a level of activity that should really be the norm on every server. Hunts are busy, chat is active,the market is good, zones have plenty of people running around in them - it's alive in short.

Balmung is the way it is cause it way overpopulated it has 2,3 maybe even 4 times the amount other servers have.

Isn't this what the incentives with transferring are for? It might not be enough to entice everyone, but it's definitely enticed some people.

If you transferred just to play the game on fight/general content, there's always other servers that are not Balmung that have a decent population. I don't know if Mateus is the "new roleplaying" server for Ex-Balmungers, but if it's not, and roleplay is not your main focus, all you need is some research to know how well populated some other servers are and transfer again. Only Balmung and Gilga are closed anyways on Aether.

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Originally Posted by Lexia

Balmung is the way it is cause it way overpopulated it has 2,3 maybe even 4 times the amount other servers have.

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Lel, it's not that excessive.

Here are some numbers posted literally today about server population.

OP, Mateus is a smaller server. Maybe have a look through at the first comment and try one of the larger ones instead?

Reddit link

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Originally Posted by Lexia

Balmung is the way it is cause it way overpopulated it has 2,3 maybe even 4 times the amount other servers have.

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Hence, the topic.

As far as being overpopulated, it's only really an issue during launch windows. The population stabilizes, the queues go away, but the server is still busy. Balmung's activity really isn't any different than the amount of people you'd see running around in GW2 at any given time either.

Unless they do major changes in how servers are set up, etc. I'd say server merges are out of the question for now.

Many servers are quite full - to the point where they have been declared congested and you can't get into them if you aren't already there. SE is currently trying to get people to move away from those servers and onto less populated ones.

Server merges are usually done when overall population gets too low. Right now FFXIV has rather the opposite problem, so new servers are more likely than merges.

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Originally Posted by FrogDog

Hence, the topic.

As far as being overpopulated, it's only really an issue during launch windows. The population stabilizes, the queues go away, but the server is still busy. Balmung's activity really isn't any different than the amount of people you'd see running around in GW2 at any given time either.

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GW2 uses Megaservers so population is never a problem. Here however servers are contained in the open world, only instances allow cross world interactions.

To be honest, I think the way housing is set up means server mergers are almost impossible. I remember reading about the Korean servers being merged and it meant that one whole world lost their housing.

Well, I'd say to each his/her own. There were plenty of people actually COMPLAINING that the server got busier and honestly? If someone wants to play on a ghost server - or small town server as they'd prefer to put it -, more power to them. I don't mind having such servers for those who do.

Personally, I quite like Balmung even during EU times. The activity is like Cerberus (An EU Server) during peak times and that's a level I feel quite comfortable with. What seals the deal for me, though, really is the market board - Prices on smaller servers are outrageous. I've scouted them with alts and... lol. Things are often 2-3 times as expensive as on Balmung. Monopolies and Oligopolies galore. I couldn't even afford my alt and glamour heavy playstyle on those servers without becoming an active crafter myself. That's just a no.

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Originally Posted by Tigerlilley

To be honest, I think the way housing is set up means server mergers are almost impossible. I remember reading about the Korean servers being merged and it meant that one whole world lost their housing.

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Yeah the housing is the biggest hurdle. I wish they would come up with some way to figure it out, because servers like Mateus shouldn't exist; and the incentives haven't been enough to correct it.

No. I prefer smaller to medium pop servers. Not everyone wants to be a Balmung type server in terms of population. If they did merge servers how would they handle the housing? Someone would lose a house as you can't have 2 in the same spot.

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Originally Posted by FrogDog

Yeah the housing is the biggest hurdle. I wish they would come up with some way to figure it out, because servers like Mateus shouldn't exist; and the incentives haven't been enough to correct it.

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You are right, they shouldnt exist. Balmung should have been locked at the start of 3.0, and then there wouldnt be this problem. Server mergers are bad, and usually only happen when a game is on its way out, like 1.0.

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Originally Posted by FrogDog

Yeah the housing is the biggest hurdle. I wish they would come up with some way to figure it out, because servers like Mateus shouldn't exist; and the incentives haven't been enough to correct it.

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Au contraire, Balmung as it is presently shouldn't exist. Fortunately SE has been taking steps to rectify that.

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Originally Posted by FrogDog

I recently transferred off of Balmung to Mateus, and it's like a completely different (and depressing) game. Like, this transfer was hands down the worst decision I ever made in this game and there are no take backs now. If I didn't still have a character I could go back to on Balmung, this would be enough for me to quit the game over, but as it is, I feel like my main is effectively dead besides weekly raids.

I know Balmung gets a lot of flak but it has a level of activity that should really be the norm on every server. Hunts are busy, chat is active,the market is good, zones have plenty of people running around in them - it's alive in short.

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Mateus has had several points since SB release, to even now, where character creation got locked. People are actually complaining that there's too many people now. Specially when there are now 0 housing plots, all gone super quickly.

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Originally Posted by Jijifli

Mateus has had several points since SB release, to even now, where character creation got locked. People are actually complaining that there's too many people now. Specially when there are now 0 housing plots, all gone super quickly.

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Yet Rhalgr's Reach and Kugane aren't exactly bustling, and they're dead quiet. Hunts aren't active.

Where are all these people?

And when people say Balmung as it is shouldn't exist, what do they mean? A server with a healthy economy and people who talk to each other shouldn't exist?

I would recommend moving to a bigger server. Leviathan, Behemoth or Cactuar will all have the busy towns you're looking for. I'm on Behemoth now and hunts a busy, Kugane is busy. There are other large communities outside of Balmung!

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Originally Posted by FrogDog

Yet Rhalgr's Reach and Kugane aren't exactly bustling, and they're dead quiet. Hunts aren't active.

Where are all these people?

And when people say Balmung as it is shouldn't exist, what do they mean? A server with a healthy economy and people who talk to each other shouldn't exist?

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I don't know, hunts have been fairly active, and I've seen lots of people in the Reach and in Kugane. As many as Balmung? No, but its not dead.

Balmung was overcrowded due to people bypassing char creation lockout by transferring. So yes, Balmung shouldnt exist. There should never have been a server that everyone was told they had to be on if they wanted to play.

As someone who was on Balmung before it was Balmung, I don't miss it at all.

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Originally Posted by FrogDog

Yet Rhalgr's Reach and Kugane aren't exactly bustling, and they're dead quiet. Hunts aren't active.

Where are all these people?

And when people say Balmung as it is shouldn't exist, what do they mean? A server with a healthy economy and people who talk to each other shouldn't exist?

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Odd how I hit Kugane with an alt since SB and people are concerned I went too fast, then there's questioning why the places are dead.

People are leveling man. Not everyone is desperate enough to transfer off a server with no way back.

Why make the jump to Mateus if you didn't want a small server feel? The population is only going to keep shrinking as SB hype dies down :confused:

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Originally Posted by FrogDog

Yeah the housing is the biggest hurdle. I wish they would come up with some way to figure it out, because servers like Mateus shouldn't exist; and the incentives haven't been enough to correct it.

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Uninstanced housing was ALMOST the worst short-sighted decision this MMO has ever made...

Carrying a copy of your entire inventory around as an active object though - is an even worse one... (read every response to why we can't have more inventory - if you understand what they say, from a tech point of view, you will be shaking your head and wondering just how a dev managed to not realize that would be a problem. Then again, I work in tech; and I'd say every company has something like this buried in it's code. Many companies have a lot more of them than SE does... devs who join later always find these things and just wonder WTF somebody was smoking... but also realize fixing them would require some major architecture revisions...)

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

You are right, they shouldnt exist. Balmung should have been locked at the start of 3.0, and then there wouldnt be this problem. Server mergers are bad, and usually only happen when a game is on its way out, like 1.0.

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Some people actually leave games when server mergers happen because it is such a well known 'sign of the apocalypse.' Back when WoW was bleeding players, it did some mergers, and I'd wager that only served to hasten the flight and inspire a lot of people to go look for a 'WoW killer'.

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

Unless they do major changes in how servers are set up, etc. I'd say server merges are out of the question for now.

Many servers are quite full - to the point where they have been declared congested and you can't get into them if you aren't already there. SE is currently trying to get people to move away from those servers and onto less populated ones.

Server merges are usually done when overall population gets too low. Right now FFXIV has rather the opposite problem, so new servers are more likely than merges.

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First part you get a cookie. For a company that had an MMO and a design team that is supposedly gamers. They have not designed this in anyway to make merges as painless as possible.

Second part not so much. If you look at unofficial numbers pre free transfer. About 5 should have been merged. Considering what population numbers were and if a server got locked or was considered a destination. Again I admit the math is a little wonky since it tracks characters and not accounts.

No thank you! As someone who has been on Mateus since around 2.X I'd rather there be no server mergers. I miss the small feel of Mateus, and hope it kind of dwindles back down after the SB hype, however, it is growing on me that I've been seeing people actually doing things in the server. Mateus hasn't been dead in the slightest since SB hit. Hell, there are even people hanging out in Ul'dah- which used to be a barren wasteland. Someone told me that's Mateus become another sort of un-official rp server since Balmung is closed.

As for it not being active. There are plenty of people hanging out in Kugane. I asuume everyone else hangs out at their newly acquired houses or are off doing other things in the game.

Pros of one big server: Everyone can play with their friends, becuase its just one server, No RP servers required because you RP where you please, and those are both pretty big pros.

But with the way a lot of the game is designed, it might not work out well, because instances would become mandatory, and you'd never be able to escape that free company you hate or the jerks who offend you just by looking at them.
(although the latter is just a con of one server games)