@Devs: Please allow us to travel at will between servers.

[Abriael]

One my biggest pet peeves of most MMOs nowadays is the division between servers. I know it'll become an even bigger pet peeve with ARR with the upcoming regional labeling, that will basically tear server communities apart with most people going to servers of their respective regions to get the best ping.

Have you ever met someone online and wanted to play with him/her, only to have that plan thwarted by the fact that you are on different servers? I bet you did at least once.

Fact is that the division between servers doesn't really need to exist. It's a relic of the past from when server technology was a lot less advanced and a lot more rigid. Today's technology allows the borders between servers to be a lot less restrictive than they were in the past, solving almost all the problems that server divisions bring with them.

A Realm Reborn will already have a cross-server content/dungeon finder that will allow people of different servers to play together (in a random fashion), but why not bringing the whole thing a step further?

The system I have in mind works in a very simple but also quite clever way:

-Every player selects a "home" server pretty much like he always did. That's the server in which he starts every time he logs into the game.
-Communication is allowed between servers. If you send a tell to someone in another server, he'll receive it like he was in your same server. Of course local communication (say/shout and so forth) is just local. Name uniqueness is guaranteed either by the name/surname system (that rules out most duplicates) or if we want to avoid any problem, you can just append the server name to the name for cross-server communication purposes.
-It's possible to manually create groups across servers.
-the Friend List works across servers. Meaning you can add everyone from every server to your friend list.
-Linkshells should be cross servers as well. Free companies, I'd keep them server-based, but that's just my personal opinion.
-Once a cross-server group is created, players can simply select a "meet up" command to be automatically transported to the same location on the group leader's server.
-Even when not grouped, players can, at any time, select another server and instantly teleport to that server. Maybe a cooldown of like 30 minutes could be added to the "at will" teleport, depending if the devs feel it's necessary.

This solves a number of problems coming with server segregation.

1) You can play with ALL your friends. No matter what servers they are on. A click and you're with them. You don't even need to worry too much about your initial server selection, because you can just travel between them freely.
2) It completely and easily solves the divide in the community between those that want regional servers to have a better ping and those that don't because they like the community to be international. You can select a server from your region as home, and have the best ping. Don't like the ping you have at any given time on your server? Just teleport to another. Want a taste of international culture? Move to a server of your region of choice whenever you want. Want to see your European/Japanese/American friends? Go see them. Nothing stops you.
3) You're playing at off times compared to your region? Can't find many people around at 4 AM? Just move to a server in which it's peak-time and find all the people you want.
4) It makes server merges unnecessary. No matter how many subscribers the game loses (I hope it doesn't lose any, but hey, prepare for the worst if it ever happens), you'll always be the population of ALL the servers combined to play with, not just yours.
5) It should actually lower the concerns of those that fear that the cross server content finder will encourage people to behave like idiots without fear of consequences. Complete server accessibility means that the contacts between servers will be much more frequent and much less random. As a consequence, the reputation of a player won't be limited to his server only, and people will be encouraged to behave decently even when playing with people from other servers, because they most definitely can and probably will meet them again.

Before someone comes in and tells "it's impossible!" or "It can't be done!". Yes, it's possible, and yes, it can be done. The cross server content finder is already a base for this system, as it implies that communication between servers is already in place, but more importantly, this system has already been done in The Secret World by Funcom, and it works like a charm.

The one and only drawback I can see for this system is that Square Enix would have to give up possible income from server transfers. Mind you, funcom still sells "home" server transfers, and it seems to be working for them, so I don't think it's a big loss. In any case I feel that whatever the loss is, it would be far outweighted by the *massive* convenience improvement from the players, that would definitely help the game retain subs.

[Cedri]

Content finder will be cross server. Isn't that more than enough? >.>

[Pwnagraphic]

Content finder will be cross server. Isn't that more than enough? >.>

This right here but it doesn't help the OP's idea with meeting someone here on the forums and wanting to play with them.

Simple solution is. Roll a character on that server. It's not that easy to just allow server transfers at will with your character like we may think it does. It cost time and energy to move data between servers like that hence why they normally charge you to do it. It's not because they don't want people to exploit it, but someone has to code you into that server. It's just not that simple.

[moriandrio]

What you want is a Superserver where everyone plays on same server and just uses differences instances if a zone gets too full.

And just cause something works in another game doesnt means its possible here, you don't know if server structure allows it or the netcode or or or.

[Pseudopsia]

What you want is a Superserver where everyone plays on same server and just uses differences instances if a zone gets too full.

And just cause something works in another game doesnt means its possible here, you don't know if server structure allows it or the netcode or or or.

GW2 has something like this per server. At launch and it was annoying as hell to play with my friends. Sometimes it would take up to an hour to be allowed in the main zone so we could group together. When we changed zones we had to do it again.

[Abriael]

Content finder will be cross server. Isn't that more than enough? >.>

No. Dungeon/content finders are completely random. They solve none of the problems mentioned.

What you want is a Superserver where everyone plays on same server and just uses differences instances if a zone gets too full.

No. I don't. This works in a completely different way. This works with a local server as a home, and you always start from there. It just allows you to move to freely travel between local servers if you want to.

It's a radically different structure, feature set and functionality. It effectively takes the opposite approach compared to a megaserver.

And just cause something works in another game doesnt means its possible here, you don't know if server structure allows it or the netcode or or or.

Server structure and netcode can be changed and modified. They're not set in stone.

[moriandrio]

Alot of games use that system, most of them make it possible to change anytime as long you are grouped even if the zones is flagged full. It works but i don't like this system, I prefer a good stable server community like all the good old games...

Sure a system to group up with friends via friendlist like Blizzard introduced it with RealID would be cool but Serverjumping all the time is a bad Idea. And I doubt it will be possible at least now, they working on a server structure for the regional servers they can't just change that in a few weeks.

[Starlord]

Channels would be a very good thing.

[Pseudopsia]

Channels would be a very good thing.

If it's channels like what is in Aion, this doesn't reduce server load. All it does is allow players to have decent gameplay instead of being clustered together fighting over a limited amount of monsters. I do like channels, however it won't allow everyone on a single server.

[Abriael]

If it's channels like what is in Aion, this doesn't reduce server load. All it does is allow players to have decent gameplay instead of being clustered together fighting over a limited amount of monsters. I do like channels, however it won't allow everyone on a single server.

In fact this idea has really nothing to do with channels. It can work in conjunction with channels, but channels, or shards, or instances, however you want to call them, are not an essential part of it.