Can we have a server merger after fee take place ?

[Bahn]

You see, the issue with only doing world transfers is that after the people on the dead servers leave for the populated ones, you'll have a bunch of servers with ghost-town populations and most importantly, a database full of dead/empty accounts. Sure Square gets some money from charging their world transfer fee, but after people leave the server, the already desolate population of that server will become even more desolate which may make more people want to actually stop subbing (instead of transferring out of the server). Furthermore, Square will have to continue running those servers just to upkeep those dead/empty accounts. e.g. As long as there's 1 or 2 people playing on those servers, the server will have to be left on, which doesn't sound like a terribly efficient use of company resources.

A server merge, on the other hand, will help consolidate that info so that it's stored on one server instead of two and will allow SE to save on operating costs. I can't think of a "perfect" way to do the merge without pissing people off, but it sounds like regardless of if they do a world transfer offer or the merge, there's going to be huge cons for each option. World transfer option for ALL worlds = people even on the mid-size worlds will transfer over to the already high-pop servers, making the server population balance even worse + wasted resources maintaining servers with already low populations. Forced server merge = bad PR for a game that already has horrible PR + risk of pissing off players who didn't want to move anywhere. Not doing anything = huge risk of losing server populations on already desolate servers dropping off after subs hit = more potential customers lost = less money for Square, but less of a chance of pissing off the people who are playing on those servers.

Sometimes, you just can't win.

[DyskoFox]

Melmond is a dying server for NA players and it will just get worse when P2P arrives. I plan to stay around but I don't speak Japanese which is the player base that is the largest in my server currently. I would really like others to play with and friends to chat with. But as the days go bye I lose more and more people that I normally party with. I don't ask to merge with a super big server but it'd be nice to join another smaller server so I had more people who are active to at least chat with. I would even pay to transfer my character to a larger server.

[Slyvannas]

Temporary server merge is going to be a must or everyone will get bored of never having enough people to play with

[Davorok]

You see, the issue with only doing world transfers is that after the people on the dead servers leave for the populated ones, you'll have a bunch of servers with ghost-town populations and most importantly, a database full of dead/empty accounts.

Sometimes, you just can't win.

We can win in this situation. SE just needs to announce that Servers "A, B and C" will be shutdown and allow peeps to transfer to Servers "D , E and F".

No ghost towns on desolate worlds plus players have their choice of new server...No Forced World Mergers!

[Shneibel]

We can win in this situation. SE just needs to announce that Servers "A, B and C" will be shutdown and allow peeps to transfer to Servers "D , E and F".

No ghost towns on desolate worlds plus players have their choice of new server...No Forced World Mergers!

and if all the ppl from server A,B and C, join only 1 server D because it have high population, that ll leave E and F with the same population, and this dont solve the problem from E and F when they also need more ppl.

if SE add restrict number to balanced the transfer then ppl who want to play with their LS or friend group might have problem to play together in 1 server.

And there is no "force" server merger.
Server merger purpose to merger the low population to a high population to enchant the community w/o effect player gamming exp (mean ppl who play as group will be able to play with the same group but now they will have more ppl to play with) , with server transfer on a low population game will solve nothing but just waste effor

[Petdo]

imo.. merge server = MMO that about to die
So SE might still hold their pride of top-quality RPG maker and refuse to accept the truth.

For me, I prefer merge server because there are very little people online on my server ( around 300-500 concurrent players )
and most people that still playing are already reach all DoW/DoM 50 =='

[Shneibel]

imo.. merge server = MMO that about to die
So SE might still hold their pride of top-quality RPG maker and refuse to accept the truth.

For me, I prefer merge server because there are very little people online on my server ( around 300-500 concurrent players )
and most people that still playing are already reach all DoW/DoM 50 =='

beside from the fact that the game you and I and other ppl playing is turning into a pay beta instead of the real game

[darkstarpoet1]

imo.. merge server = MMO that about to die
So SE might still hold their pride of top-quality RPG maker and refuse to accept the truth.

For me, I prefer merge server because there are very little people online on my server ( around 300-500 concurrent players )
and most people that still playing are already reach all DoW/DoM 50 =='

don't feel bad we used the search last night on karnak. we totaled 223 players total by adding up all of the players playing in rank ranges. this was less than 2 hours after the patch when the population should have been around their highest.

[neizero]

Sorry for the delayed response to this topic, but things have been a bit busy as the team worked to complete patch 1.20. I confirmed with Yoshida that we'll continue to monitor the in-game populations and situation, and if we run into issues where players are unable to match up with each other for parties and other content, then of course the possibility of mergers taking place is there.

Peak population
First month after launch: ~1400
Second month: ~800 (at this point the ability to view population was removed from the game)
(1 year later)
After 1.20 launch: ~350
After January 6th: ???? /panic

Please Let the devs know to get a move on with this problem because starting January ignoring this issue will cost SE money

[PrettyPrincess]

They dont need you to tell them they can find that info themselves.