Discussion: Dbl XP Weekend and Server Performance
By
Agent_X,
Posted on: 2008-02-06 19:48 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
To NCsoft,
Thanks for a fun weekend! The server upgrades seemed to work fantastic. Some of the population issues were frustrating, but not insurmountable.
I apologize if this post offends, repeats previously made points, or doesnt fit anyone's personal experience. I didnt take the time to read all of your comments in the above posts.
CoH ROCKS! 
(and LH, all is forgiven that you dont always get my humor, and felt the need to lock me upSo heres to you!) 
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no, you rocketed past ddx. you got LIGHTHOUSE -evil musak-
-DDH_Hamenopi
~
OMG--- remind me never EVER to click one of your links again tig... OMG... all i can say is ... ow
- _Rose_
~
@Tiglath-Pileser
Freedom with 50% more /JRanger:
Nurse Goodbody Emp/Rad
Son Of Yow Pain Fir/Kin
&
--------->Virture:
American Decoy Ill/Rad
New Global: @American Decoy
�You are hereby promoted to Tiglath_Pilesest� - Squez
�no, you rocketed past ddx. you got LIGHTHOUSE -evil musak-� - DDH_Hamenopi
I played about 50 hours this weekend on Victory and I only had 2 minor issues. 1 was global chat, went down a bit for us on Sunday. 2 was eye strain LOL. All the players I encountered were real nice and tons of teams were looking for players in just about every zone red and blue side. It was a fantastic weekend for me and my SG/VG mates.
Thank You to the Devs for a great weekend and working through your days off to make this a smooth event for most of your customers.
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Here's the thing... did anyone not know that Freedom has the highest population and that this event would bring more players online over the weekend? Are you going to tell us that there was nothing you could have done to prevent this on your own? Like tell your friends, "Hey, in case the server gets too full, maybe we should make some alts someplace else."
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Why even use double XP if you're going to then have to create new characters just for the event?
People are majorly overreacting to the lockouts IMO, but that is a flawed argument.
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Because you can play those alts year-round. I doubt many people would create alts specifically to play only during double XP events. The point is that you don't put all your eggs (characters) in one basket (Freedom), that's all.
Overall, I had a great weekend of play on Liberty, Protector and Virtue. I had a few performance issues, but I'm pretty sure that was 100% on my end. (I was tired of getting random errors and reboots so I dropped a stick of RAM out to see if I have a bad stick, so I went from 2G to 1G) I was only Map Served once, and that was on Virtue at WW in Talos, while swapping between the game and the forums.
I think the devs did a great job and look forward to next double XP weekend. 
Cyclone Jack
-= idspispopd =-
[size=1]Arc ID: 3155 - Project Prometheus (Seeking Feedback, now with less invalidation)[/size]
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Oh, and I kept a tally of how many times the globals disappeared on me during the Double XP Weekend when I was logged in: 73 times.
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You're far more determined than I am. After #5 I just gave up and figured I'd deal with it being a bit quieter than normal. With the global issue, I personally blame Freedom. (Hey, it's a trend!)
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Here's the thing... did anyone not know that Freedom has the highest population and that this event would bring more players online over the weekend? Are you going to tell us that there was nothing you could have done to prevent this on your own? Like tell your friends, "Hey, in case the server gets too full, maybe we should make some alts someplace else."
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Why even use double XP if you're going to then have to create new characters just for the event?
People are majorly overreacting to the lockouts IMO, but that is a flawed argument.
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Because you can play those alts year-round. I doubt many people would create alts specifically to play only during double XP events. The point is that you don't put all your eggs (characters) in one basket (Freedom), that's all.
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To be fair, though, there are a lot of people who make one server their playing home. Their friends are there, all their alts are there, they have people they regularly team with, and so on.
If Pinnacle had been blocked over the weekend, my entire SG would have had to message each other and say, "Um, wanna all make L1 toons somewhere, or just wait?" Because the toons we wanted to level were all on that server. I wanted to get my empath past the late 30's doldrums, not start a whole new toon that most likely I would never play again.
"Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to let you in."
QR: I had a few weird disconnects and crashes--but all in all my sole complaint comes from a virtual lack of any and all global chat for the entire weekend. I play this game to spend time with my friends--without them, it's just not fun.
There are no words for what this community, and the friends I have made here mean to me. Please know that I care for all of you, yes, even you. If you Twitter, I'm MrThan. If you're Unleashed, I'm dumps. I'll try and get registered on the Titan Forums as well. Peace, and thanks for the best nine years anyone could ever ask for.
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Here's the thing... did anyone not know that Freedom has the highest population and that this event would bring more players online over the weekend? Are you going to tell us that there was nothing you could have done to prevent this on your own? Like tell your friends, "Hey, in case the server gets too full, maybe we should make some alts someplace else."
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Why even use double XP if you're going to then have to create new characters just for the event?
People are majorly overreacting to the lockouts IMO, but that is a flawed argument.
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Because you can play those alts year-round. I doubt many people would create alts specifically to play only during double XP events. The point is that you don't put all your eggs (characters) in one basket (Freedom), that's all.
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To be fair, though, there are a lot of people who make one server their playing home. Their friends are there, all their alts are there, they have people they regularly team with, and so on.
If Pinnacle had been blocked over the weekend, my entire SG would have had to message each other and say, "Um, wanna all make L1 toons somewhere, or just wait?" Because the toons we wanted to level were all on that server. I wanted to get my empath past the late 30's doldrums, not start a whole new toon that most likely I would never play again.
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I certainly can sympathize with anyone getting locked out of their home server this weekend, I know I would be bummed. But I would also expect making my home on the busiest server comes with possible downfalls. Just like people on say, Protector and it's lower population, have the downfall of possibly having fewer teammates to choose from.
One thing they could do is lock server transfers to the busiest 2 servers or limit any new accounts from creating characters there but there would be a whole lot more outcry from that then having 6 days out of the year with the possibility of no access during an event. Like MissInformed pointed out it's impossible to make all the people happy all the time.
Just in closing I had a great weekend, no lag, lots of players, everyone I played with was nice and helpful. This was by far one of the most fun weekends on CoH I've had in a long while. Good work Devs
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2- Suggestion
Stating the obvious: Freedom needs an upgrade. It's by far the most populated server, so that server needs to be bigger to allow for it to never EVER be greyed out.
Virtue could also use this.
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As others have pointed out already, for maintenance/sanity sake every game server except maybe test is configured identically. There is probably one additional backup server at each of the three (don't forget Europe) data centers encase of a catastrophic failure of one. There are also most likely separate servers to handle global chat and the market in addition to the account server that validates that the account is active and where billing is done. These last three are most likely located in their main data center.
Now for the question I have.
Do players play on Virtue and Freedom because of the large population/load that the dots represent or do people play on them because of the unofficial reputation as the RP and PvP servers?
Are the other servers shunned because of their reputations?
Have bad PUG experiences discouraged casual players from teaming extensively?
Has the looking for team flags become become a counter indicator? Do team leaders avoid these players because if the player was any good they wouldn't need to advertise?
Has the nonofficial increase in hardware requirements made 8 man teaming something to avoid for players who had superior hardware when either CoH or CoV launched but is now noticeably sub par?
The reasons behind these questions is that the usual excuse I hear about "dead servers" is the lack of players to team with and that is why characters are rolled up on the servers at the bottom of the server list. More dots = more players = more large teams.
So are players who prefer to simply grind for XP naturally gravitate to the most populated servers to play on reinforcing the large population gets even larger.
I was chatting with a friend over the weekend and while chatting in KR on Virtue he was complaining that even with the "Looking to team/Anything" flag up he couldn't get a team. Not even with the SG he belonged to, he was lvl 16 at the time. On the other hand I had to keep swatting team invites away and I was lvl 11. We were both the same AT and powersets (Scrapper DB/WP).
So what can be done to attract more players to the other servers? Would officially classifying servers as PvP/RP/Casual like that other game balance them any better? Would an inverse teams that are looking for teammates search help players looking for teams but are hesitant in organizing them?
Just asking for ideas on how to deal with the obvious server population imbalance.
Edit: Oh and my friends and I roll new characters for 2xXP weekends because it allows us to skip the story arcs we've played time and time again and allows us to get a new AT/PowerSet combination to levels where they became "more fun" to play than taking one of the few low 30s we have and push to 40, missing out on story arcs we had yet to play even once and due to the time commitment less likely to encounter again (flashback helps this a bit).
We've been playing for over 3 years and I have the only 50.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
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(and LH, all is forgiven that you dont always get my humor, and felt the need to lock me upSo heres to you!)
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Owwww! You were Shatner shiv'd!! OMG! The humanity ! The humanity!
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QR: I had a few weird disconnects and crashes--but all in all my sole complaint comes from a virtual lack of any and all global chat for the entire weekend. I play this game to spend time with my friends--without them, it's just not fun.
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odd I had global chat all weekend long while I was on Infinity and Liberty...
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10,000 seems kinda low for Freedom server not to be able to handle it. With total subscriptions between 120-150k, I would think there is close to 10,000 people on Freedom most the time. Maybe they should have added a few more hamsters to Freedom's and Virtue's wheel while updating.
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I'm surprised that the actual number is so low. With a subcription base of near 150,000, divided among 12 servers, a cap of less than 10k players means part of the subscriber base will be shut out if the event is big enough.
It seems the hardware upgrades have been modest at best. A certain other top MMO could gobble up the entire CoH/V population on a single one of their servers and still have room for dessert.
I had constant global chat drops on Virtue. I didn't have to manually re-add channels though, it was just a server communication failure, after 5-15 minutes I'd automatically rejoin all my globals and get o see my global friends list again. It seemed to happen mostly during 'peak' hours.
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Mr_No_Pants wrote:
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Yeah..how dare the Devs grant us movement between servers after we asked so long for it.
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Wow. They gave us movement between servers? I thought we had to pay $10 per character for this?
s/Mr_No_Pants/Mr_No_Brains
Thanks for the extra XP !!
Had a great time with friends on Virtue, a few lag peaks on 1-2 missions and the global drops from time to time but nothing major/game breaking.
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We've been monitoring the performance of all servers throughout the day and early evening, and based upon recent data from Freedom, we're going to throttle down the maximum number of players that will be able to access the Freedom and Virtue servers for the remainder of the weekend.
Players will not get kicked off the server while we make this adjustment. However, if you log off, you may not be able to log back into the server (i.e. it will appear grayed out on the Server Selection screen).
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Just out of curiosity, can you tell us what that maximum number is?
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Sorry, but we do not make specific numbers publicly available outside of shareholder's information.
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So if we buy 2 shares of stock we can know?
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You can't please everyone, so lets concentrate on me.
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The point is that you don't put all your eggs (characters) in one basket (Freedom), that's all.
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Huh? Choose a server to play characters is now supposed to be like day trading in the stock market?
The problem has both an immediate component, and a more serious long-term component:
Double XP Weekend
359 days of the year most of the servers other than Freedom/Virtue are pretty slow. Unless you are part of a great SG or coalition (fortunately, I have such a thing on Triumph) then you're pretty much screwed. Finding *good* teams for TFs, Trials, or just xp/inf is much harder on those other servers. If you happen to like to play villains (*comfort* *pity*) then servers other than Freedom are almost totally dead.
But then along comes double xp weekend, which is supposed to be a really fun and special event. You should be able to run into old friends and old faces you haven't seen for a while, and have a blast playing with them. But if Freedom or Virtue is your home, you're borked. You miss out on the experience.
I don't think the solution here is to just ignore and blow off people who play on those servers, or to attack them for their choice. There are VERY GOOD REASONS to play on those servers.
Long Term Problem
CoX has some real population issues right now that need to be addressed seriously. Whether that means server merges, or free transfers from Freedom/Virtue -> anywhere else, I'm not sure. But something needs to be done.
In that same context, something has to be done about the rotting shell known as the Rogue Isles. A good first step would be merging the markets. My personal belief is they should admit the error, and just open up the whole game to everyone. Yes, some comic book purists will freak, but in the long run, it is all about playing the game together and enjoying content more than anything else. You can play things "pure" in the PvP zones or in the way you set up your SGs.
There are both advantages and disadvantages to creating your characters on the busiest servers. The advantages are, most of the time, there are more players to team with or to gank. The disadvantages are there are more players, particularly during events, to make server performance suffer. You take the good with the bad.
Other large MMO's try very hard to encourage you to make your characters on their lower utilized servers. Some even offer free moves from overpopulated servers to underpopulated servers. I see this as really no different than any other MMO. They all have imbalance issues.
I play on Virtue, Infinity, and Victory and, not surprisingly, I have had many more problems on Virtue than on the other two over the years (though I had no major problems this weekend on any of them).
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We've been monitoring the performance of all servers throughout the day and early evening, and based upon recent data from Freedom, we're going to throttle down the maximum number of players that will be able to access the Freedom and Virtue servers for the remainder of the weekend.
Players will not get kicked off the server while we make this adjustment. However, if you log off, you may not be able to log back into the server (i.e. it will appear grayed out on the Server Selection screen).
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Just out of curiosity, can you tell us what that maximum number is?
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Sorry, but we do not make specific numbers publicly available outside of shareholder's information.
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So if we buy 2 shares of stock we can know?
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Shareholder information (including CoH/V subscription figures and maximum concurrent player numbers) is released publicly sometime after the end of each quarter. I don't think we've yet seen Q4 2007 figures, so we probably won't see Q1 2008 figures until early May or so.
On the other hand... given that such figures will be released publicly, it would be nice if Lighthouse could fast-track it and let the playerbase know what the maximum concurrent player figures were from across the past weekend. If the concurrent player numbers have gone up, the server load wasn't being driven by server transfers.
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Mr_No_Pants wrote:
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Yeah..how dare the Devs grant us movement between servers after we asked so long for it.
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Wow. They gave us movement between servers? I thought we had to pay $10 per character for this?
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You would have a stronger point if the OP had used 'given' at any point during his statement.
He didn't. Players asked for server transfers and, as is pretty standard in MMOs, it was implemented with a charge for the service (and a lower charge compared a lot of other MMOs).
Seriously, lern2flame.
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It seems the hardware upgrades have been modest at best. A cetain other top MMO could gobble up the entire CoH/V population on a single one of their servers and still have room for dessert.
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Which one?
My understanding is that WoW caps out at 3000 (1500 per side) which is less than Freedom experienced over the weekened. Players outside of that figure go into queues, which would hardly see them gobbled up.
EVE could possibly take more players than CoH/V concurrently, but it's designed to be a single server operation (i.e. one game world, no shards) that does have issues when large groups of players congregate in one area.
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Here's the thing... did anyone not know that Freedom has the highest population and that this event would bring more players online over the weekend? Are you going to tell us that there was nothing you could have done to prevent this on your own? Like tell your friends, "Hey, in case the server gets too full, maybe we should make some alts someplace else."
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Why even use double XP if you're going to then have to create new characters just for the event?
People are majorly overreacting to the lockouts IMO, but that is a flawed argument.
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Because you can play those alts year-round. I doubt many people would create alts specifically to play only during double XP events. The point is that you don't put all your eggs (characters) in one basket (Freedom), that's all.
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But this has never been a problem before. People went to servers for whatever reason, built up friendships and whatever, filled up their global channels and the like and now nearly four years into the game we're being told to not put our eggs into one basket.
I'm not whining at the devs, it was a good event and I only had the problem of the globals dropping all the time. I just disagree strongly with the attitude some people have that it is the fault of the players for not being prepared for something that came into effect a couple of days ago.
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Do players play on Virtue and Freedom because of the large population/load that the dots represent or do people play on them because of the unofficial reputation as the RP and PvP servers?
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I play on Freedom and Virtue beause the specific people I wish to play with, are mostly on Freedom and Virtue. I could give a toss about the rest of the people on those servers. ^_^
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I was chatting with a friend over the weekend and while chatting in KR on Virtue he was complaining that even with the "Looking to team/Anything" flag up he couldn't get a team. Not even with the SG he belonged to, he was lvl 16 at the time. On the other hand I had to keep swatting team invites away and I was lvl 11. We were both the same AT and powersets (Scrapper DB/WP).
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Tell him not to feel too bad; one SG - the reason I moved to Freedom for heroside play - has gotten to the point, I don't show up for meetings anymore; sometimes I'm left standing there, teamless (even though I know there's room on one or more SG teams), and most of the rest of the time I feel like I've pushed my way onto a team, by being too damned insistent. 8( MAkes me regret being on Freedom at all, right now.
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[...] server merges, [...]
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[u]STANDARD "No Server Merge" RESPONSE[u]
"Why Server Mergers are a bad - no, absolutely lousy - idea" by Memphis_Bill
So, you've posted another "I can't find a team, merge the servers" thread. Since you apparently didn't search to find the reasons that have been gone over before as to why this is a *horrendously* bad idea, here's a quick rundown.
[u]Excuses for wanting server merges:[u]
1. "I can't find a team."
You're not looking. Sorry, but it's true, or you're not looking very hard. This isn't "Someone from Freedom/Virtue" talking. I play on every server, at various hours throughout the day/week, and can't think of a time I've had trouble getting a team.
Sitting around with "LFT" on (you DO change your flag, right?) doesn't do a lot. Use the team search. Make a team. I've lost count of the number of times I'll see people broadcasting "Level X AT LFT!" one after the other, do a mission, come out... and see those same people broadcasting, refusing to actually *form* a team.
Heck, if my *stalkers* can get invited to teams... it's not a problem.
2. "The subscription numbers are down!"
Did you bother looking this up? We've been reasonably steady on subscriptions for quite some time - and are doing well enough and looking viable enough for NCSoft to purchase the City Of * franchise and put more money into it. You don't show that to a dying product (see also Auto Assault.)
[u]Reasons against server mergers:[u]
1. Character name conflicts.
I have multiple versions of characters on multiple servers. I'd be very annoyed at any of them getting renamed. (For instance, my namesake is (a) a Fire/SS tank (the original,) (b) a Fire/EM tank, (c) a Spines/Dark scrapper (closer to the original concept,) and (d) a SS/DA Brute (almost an exact match for how I wanted him, but the combo was unavailable heroside - and villainside didn't exist when I started.) I play all of those characters One's just about 40, another's in the 30s as I write.
I also know some names are taken on one server that I have on another. Say I have SuperGuyDude on ... oh, Infinity, and someone else has it on Justice. The two are merged. Who gets to keep the name? Who *really* wants to be SuperGuyDude1? Or be forced into a rename?
Annoying your customers does not help you keep a subscription base.
2. Supergroup name conflicts.
See above.
3. Character overflow
I have many servers with more than six characters on them... to be honest, I can only think of one that doesn't. I have several that are full or near full. For instance, Pinnacle and Victory. 10 on Pinnacle, 11 on Victory. Now, suppose those two were picked to merge. Not only do I have a name conflict there (the Fire/SS and Fire/EM tanks,) but I have 21 characters. 10 characters - all of which I play, four of my five 50s and two of my near-50s, at time of writing. What happens to the "extra" nine? Which nine go away? What happens to their SG/VG, ENH in storage, prestige earned and the like?
For a game that *encourages* alts, this is a problem.
4. It sends the wrong signal to the community - game specific and MMO in general.
This was brought up not just by players but by one of our NCRednames - that merging servers sends a signal that the game is in trouble (see, again, Auto Assault.) Given that the game is doing fine, this is not a signal that needs sending.
5. For the reasons above, it would harm others game experience
You're breaking up supergroups, friends lists and the like just on *technical* reasons - not to mention people may not like/be able to handle the "busier" server now, and have to move to another. This is not the way to keep players.
6. Not everyone WANTS to be on a "busy" server.
Yes, some servers have more population than others, and/or a higher load. Some people go there specifically for that. Others avoid those very same servers, not wanting to put up with the increased nonsense in broadcast, lag and the like. You're reducing their choice... because you have teaming issues.
Yes, some people still play on dialup. Believe it or not, not everyone has a quad-core 3 Ghz CPU and dual GeForce 8800s with four gigs of RAM on a high speed broadband connection, nor can they afford to (or sometimes even have the *option* to) switch. I know several who still run "ancient" systems - Geforce 5 series cards on Athlon/Sempron/PIII/other near-minimum spec systems. Combining servers would drive them away as well.
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Here's the thing... did anyone not know that Freedom has the highest population and that this event would bring more players online over the weekend? Are you going to tell us that there was nothing you could have done to prevent this on your own? Like tell your friends, "Hey, in case the server gets too full, maybe we should make some alts someplace else."
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Why even use double XP if you're going to then have to create new characters just for the event?
People are majorly overreacting to the lockouts IMO, but that is a flawed argument.