Account merge, Server list merge, Forum merge
By
Baby_Phoenix,
Posted on: 2008-08-04 09:17 in Suggestions and Ideas
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i believe they are actually planning the implementation of a single global or serviles environment
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It's impossible to rule out, but AFAICS there haven't been any statements (or even hints) that it's something they're looking at.
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i would assume if they were doing this they would have some kind of way around the duplication of names (some kind of invisible character perhaps)
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That would be quite a challenge to type if you wanted to send a tell to a specific toon, though.
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i would also assume they would have some way around the potential server melt perhaps ones could be spanned across multiple servers to lessen the load or something
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There's the spawning of multiple instances of zones: "Atlas Park 1", "Atlas Park 2", etc... they already do. But if you have so many toons on the same system you need to do this all the time you're losing a lot of the benefit of having them on the same system in the first place, which is that it's easy for them to meet up and play together.
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If there is one large list... and playing will get bad because of too many players naturally some would transfer to other servers... maybe even to union for instance if that was also in the list.
- The Italian Job: The Godfather Returns #1151
Beginner - Encounter a renewed age for the Mook and the Family when Emile Marcone escapes from the Zig!
- Along Came a... Bug!? #528482
Average - A new race of aliens arrives on Earth. And Vanguard has you investigate them!
- The Court of the Blood Countess: The Rise of the Blood Countess #3805
Advanced - Go back in time and witness the birth of a vampire. Follow her to key moments in her life in order to stop her! A story of intrigue, drama and horror! Blood & Violence... not recommend to solo!
OMG I havent been on here for a week and the current topics are exactly the same lol.
Golden-Phoenix - Lvl 50 Fire/Fire Tank
Oodja Nikabolokov - Lvl 50 SS/WP Brute
Baby-Phoenix - Lvl 50 Peacebringer
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could Chuck Norris?
Why are we even having the same tedious discussion again?
Problems:
Legal issues relating to sharing of customer data outside of the EU
Forced Name changes: Upset the player base, they leave
Split groups of friends: They leave
No evidence that servers in the US will give any performance benefit to EU players
/em sigh
Thelonious Monk
To be honest this isn't the same discussion (kind of any ways)
What Liz is suggesting is that they combine the server list and so throw open all the CoH servers for every one regardless of who they pay there subs to. At most this would require a global name change there would be no need for character name changes unless the player decided to hop server.
I'm all for this idea. it pretty much solves every ones problems, more potential people to team with, more slots to create alts on, it doesn't brake up groups of friends and even the legal issue may be some what muted if subs were still payed to the relevant territory.
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To be honest this isn't the same discussion (kind of any ways)
What Liz is suggesting is that they combine the server list and so throw open all the CoH servers for every one regardless of who they pay there subs to. At most this would require a global name change there would be no need for character name changes unless the player decided to hop server.
I'm all for this idea. it pretty much solves every ones problems, more potential people to team with, more slots to create alts on, it doesn't brake up groups of friends and even the legal issue may be some what muted if subs were still payed to the relevant territory.
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But as has been explained before, there are massive legal issues with this - due to sharing data across the Atlantic
Thelonious Monk
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To be honest this isn't the same discussion (kind of any ways)
What Liz is suggesting is that they combine the server list and so throw open all the CoH servers for every one regardless of who they pay there subs to. At most this would require a global name change there would be no need for character name changes unless the player decided to hop server.
I'm all for this idea. it pretty much solves every ones problems, more potential people to team with, more slots to create alts on, it doesn't brake up groups of friends and even the legal issue may be some what muted if subs were still payed to the relevant territory.
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But as has been explained before, there are massive legal issues with this - due to sharing data across the Atlantic
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Actually that hasn't been mentioned as an issue since NCEU got merged with NC North America. Not saying it doesn't still stand or anything.
That being said even if it does still apply who says the US has to process the financial side? All the US servers would need to know is if someone has a valid account on them, they don't need to know anything about credit card details etc, just a small "Is Valid Account" check to an EU side machine which handles our payments.
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To be honest this isn't the same discussion (kind of any ways)
What Liz is suggesting is that they combine the server list and so throw open all the CoH servers for every one regardless of who they pay there subs to. At most this would require a global name change there would be no need for character name changes unless the player decided to hop server.
I'm all for this idea. it pretty much solves every ones problems, more potential people to team with, more slots to create alts on, it doesn't brake up groups of friends and even the legal issue may be some what muted if subs were still payed to the relevant territory.
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OMG... finally someone who understands what I am trying to say here... And have been saying from the first post... thank you 
Me and Vanex came on this idea after he and 2 friends left for the US too. And more and more are doing this. Without having the ability to come back. As it is the lure of full servers will slowly kill us. This is the moment to act...
- The Italian Job: The Godfather Returns #1151
Beginner - Encounter a renewed age for the Mook and the Family when Emile Marcone escapes from the Zig!
- Along Came a... Bug!? #528482
Average - A new race of aliens arrives on Earth. And Vanguard has you investigate them!
- The Court of the Blood Countess: The Rise of the Blood Countess #3805
Advanced - Go back in time and witness the birth of a vampire. Follow her to key moments in her life in order to stop her! A story of intrigue, drama and horror! Blood & Violence... not recommend to solo!
I am so /signed with this. Just taking a swipe at the US servers for a while would make me happy.
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As it is the lure of full servers will slowly kill us. This is the moment to act...
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Ahh ha ha ha ha... see now your missing the point, there are 2, TWO of their servers that have higher populations, the other 9 do not...
at waht point are the vast majority of their servers "full"?
Tbh, US servers might be good or not and moving there is something to consider carefully imho.
I myself have decided there's no point in keeping two accounts for the time being in EU servers, so cancelled both subscriptions allowing me plenty of time (one expires on December the 1st while the main one on the 21st) to in the meantime try the US servers and see how it really goes, two servers with much higher populations are better than none, plus not playing at US peak times might be an issue or not, so I'll give it a go before my main account expires and then will be able to make a decision of whether fully move to the US or staying in EU or just leaving the game.
It seems at first sight that having 9 underpopulated servers and two overpopulated ones is calling for some review about the number of servers required for this game, but something similar could be said about EU servers.
Certainly, an idea like the one Liz proposes could give more versatility to the game by dedicating more servers to other languages if any future plans to expand the playerbase worldwide are into any kind of consideration.
On the negative side, I blame Cass for never teaming with me 
Hmmmm, after thinking about this subject for a while, there's something i'd like to comment, in my opinion, having 15 servers worldwide with 2 of them bordering critical mass (and seems that reaching it on certain events) and 11 with several degrees of population (please bear with me, not entering in whether the population is low or not) seems a bit weird to me.
That makes me think that either there are plans for a massive population increase since they have the resources already (servers) and it would be a matter of maximizing their profit on them OR that the game needs less servers but they don't make that move for some reason (long term contracts with server hire, could be considered a doom sign...)
Dunno, in all honesy I prefer to think it is the first option the one they are after (call me optimist or poorly informed pessimist but I prefer sex god) just wanted to say that, if the case is that there are plans to substantially increase payerbase, well, there's no time like present time.-
Aha, somewhat disheartened after creating an US account and measuring figures BST times:
18:59 INFINITY 170 - DEFIANT 122
19:02 TRIUMPH 99 - DEFIANT 120
19:05 CHAMPION 103 - DEFIANT 116
19:07 VICTORY 114 - DEFIANT 121
19:09 PINNACLE 122 - DEFIANT 121
19:11 PROTECTOR 141 - DEFIANT 117
19:14 LIBERTY 136 - DEFIANT 115
19:16 GUARDIAN 135 - DEFIANT 115
19:18 VIRTUE 379 - DEFIANT 115
19:20 FREEDOM 605 - DEFIANT 116
That means there are three servers I'll test during this month and see how it goes. Even if Infinity is not much higher than Defiant, well, it's 48 more people on EU time weekday plus upon entering Atlas Park (all other toons remained in outbreak) a nice Blaster gave me a lvl 50 recipe and a magic lvl 50 enhancement (I'm soooo prone to be bribed) and alo... there's always Virtue and Freedom, will measure again on Friday and try these three servers to try get a grip of the American Experience.
I trust these figures should go up on a weekend, we'll see.
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/em facepalm
why are ppl still discussing about a merge, there something called a global server.
if they implanted just one global server, any problem with merging servers or anything els would just blow away.
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I told in this thread a lot now... NO merge of servers... BUT merge of server list. All servers in one big list available to all players.
But that would imply a global account merge.
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/signed
of all the merges, it's actually the only realistic merge that makes sense.
get's rid of all the rename etc. problems, and we can play with everyone of both contents.
just a small thing that i just thought of, what about the asian servers?....if there are any.
There's no Asian servers any more from what i understand City of hero never went down all that well in the East possibly because it didn't have that grind for leet gear element that many of the big MMOs have (wonder how it would do now what with purple sets and inventions)
I usually avoid this whole thing as it always goes around in circles, however after thinking about it, having a full server list, dropping one of the lesser used american ones to another langauge etc does seem a good idea. Plus we all get to keep the names so do they for that matter and I dont see why there would be legal problems as the accounts would still be processed as they are. Other games do this I know its a totally different system but cames like counterstrike FPS i know always let you play world wide so why would a MMO not. Anyway I ahve a great time on Defiant and Union, I don't think I would leave them. Just as an idea I don't see why this would not work.
The end is just a new beginning, Goodbye all my coh friends and even the enemies, its been a blast I will miss you all. Thank you Paragon team, you gave me a home from home I will always appriciate it.
*sigh*
You know, just because the US and EU branches are now being managed under NCWest, that still doesn't mean that the legal issues preventing sharing of data between the EU and US have gone away...
Until NC themselves actually say they've resolved the legal problems, which are quite complex and expensive to sort out, even merging the server lists is NOT possible. It requires the sharing of personal data which is protected under EU data protection laws, and these differ wildly from US ones.
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Oh, that is true, but I am sure that there are lots of ways to work that around, specially since any european can have an US account, so I'm pretty sure it can be overcome, unless it is the only system affecting international laws that doesn't have a window exploit or a technicality... US legal System is known worldwide because most of the famous and biggest dictaminations ever have been acheived through a gap in them, being mainly based on past court decisions which are taken as valid. That's what makes true the expression "America, land of opportunity" these days.
Gah, can't find the right wording in English soz
Sure you can get a US account, but that then comes under the US data protection laws, not the EU ones. Our accounts come under the EU ones, which are not directly compatible with the US ones, and vice versa of course.
To open all servers to all players, they would require whole new accounts coming under ONE legislation. Then there is the problem of physical server locations. If our personal data is stored on a computer physically located in Germany (as is the case), then no matter what they try to do, EU data protection laws will always apply. They would have to transfer our data to US held servers, and if they do THAT, they may as well just close the EU servers down and give us US accounts as it would be FAR cheaper.
So sorry, but "merging the server lists" is actually more complex than just shunting us to the US game.
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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*sigh*
You know, just because the US and EU branches are now being managed under NCWest, that still doesn't mean that the legal issues preventing sharing of data between the EU and US have gone away...
Until NC themselves actually say they've resolved the legal problems, which are quite complex and expensive to sort out, even merging the server lists is NOT possible. It requires the sharing of personal data which is protected under EU data protection laws, and these differ wildly from US ones.
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ehh.. *network admin cap on* A list like this is made up of ip-adresses.. even the name of the server can be taken from the original eu location. Logging in there just is a shortcut. No data transfer of any kind from the account. Even the account merge can be done without data transfer to US.
- The Italian Job: The Godfather Returns #1151
Beginner - Encounter a renewed age for the Mook and the Family when Emile Marcone escapes from the Zig!
- Along Came a... Bug!? #528482
Average - A new race of aliens arrives on Earth. And Vanguard has you investigate them!
- The Court of the Blood Countess: The Rise of the Blood Countess #3805
Advanced - Go back in time and witness the birth of a vampire. Follow her to key moments in her life in order to stop her! A story of intrigue, drama and horror! Blood & Violence... not recommend to solo!
Even if all this is true.. Keeping the compagnies as two seperate ones will in the long run not help us any...
Keeping them seperated is a form of self limitation...
All our accounts are by one compagny.. not two.. We pay to the same compagny. Who holds our accounts. Or am I wrong here?
the account is on secure.plaync.com not on secure.plaync.co.uk
the account is global, the payment is global...
I dont care where they are located, I pay with Credit Card and they get my money
- The Italian Job: The Godfather Returns #1151
Beginner - Encounter a renewed age for the Mook and the Family when Emile Marcone escapes from the Zig!
- Along Came a... Bug!? #528482
Average - A new race of aliens arrives on Earth. And Vanguard has you investigate them!
- The Court of the Blood Countess: The Rise of the Blood Countess #3805
Advanced - Go back in time and witness the birth of a vampire. Follow her to key moments in her life in order to stop her! A story of intrigue, drama and horror! Blood & Violence... not recommend to solo!
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ehh.. *network admin cap on* A list like this is made up of ip-adresses.. even the name of the server can be taken from the original eu location. Logging in there just is a shortcut. No data transfer of any kind from the account. Even the account merge can be done without data transfer to US.
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Technically Liz, that's quite correct; Legally however, it really really isn't. If we want to connect to a US server, then the US servers MUST have access to our accounts, and therefore our personal data, and that's where the data protection laws come in to play. Same applies to the US players accessing EU servers. THAT is where the legal issues arise, and THAT is why a shared server list is very unlikely to ever happen.
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Even if all this is true.. Keeping the compagnies as two seperate ones will in the long run not help us any... All our accounts are by one compagny.. not two.. We pay to the same compagny. Who holds our accounts. Or am I wrong here?
the account is on secure.plaync.com not on secure.plaync.co.uk
the account is global, the payment is global...
I dont care where they are located, I pay with Credit Card and they get my money
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Your account is with NCSoft Europe; a separate legal entity to NCSoft, NCSoft West, or any other branch of NCSoft. NCEU is now under the control of NCWest, this is true; but your account is covered under European law, not US law. Yes our accounts are with one company, but it's not the US one.
This is the difficulty people fail to understand. The problems are NOT insurmountable, but they're complex and expensive to overcome. So expensive that it WOULD be cheaper to just give us US accounts and copy our characters over should they ever need to.
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Yep but still, being both now same Company or NCEurope a branch of NCNW (don't know the legal situation) has some kind of allowance, or at least it HAD.
I WAS a bit familiarized with the system since I was destined to California back a few years ago to take care of a branch from a Spanish tile factory, we took care of the whole US operation after purchasing the shares from the majority partner and shared data, brand names etc from Spain to US without major problem, it just required a Miami lawyer to arrange all the paperwork.
Can't remember the exact details but I was quite on top of it being myself the link (aka victim) between Spain and US and it was easy (as in just tons of paperwork to fill) and cheap since it was a lawyer regular's fee, maybe the law has changed since 1999, but still I'm sure there is a suitable and easy way to do it on such cases as Company Absorptions, branching etc, specially being the case of an US Company taking control of a foreign Company and getting a data income for the benefit of an US Company, US Law used to be quite gentle when it came to benefit of US based companies.
Of course, all this would generate US tax for NCNW and that's probably the main reason, which is understandable, US taxes aren't to be taken lightly.-
Keeping us seperated will limit growth and eventually EU will lose. If moving the EU servers to US and keeping the support in the UK to do remote server support for the EU as US branch working in EU is the solution to this... GO FOR IT!
This is long term planning I am talking...
And there are ways around the VAT.
- The Italian Job: The Godfather Returns #1151
Beginner - Encounter a renewed age for the Mook and the Family when Emile Marcone escapes from the Zig!
- Along Came a... Bug!? #528482
Average - A new race of aliens arrives on Earth. And Vanguard has you investigate them!
- The Court of the Blood Countess: The Rise of the Blood Countess #3805
Advanced - Go back in time and witness the birth of a vampire. Follow her to key moments in her life in order to stop her! A story of intrigue, drama and horror! Blood & Violence... not recommend to solo!
Oh I'm sorry, did they hire you to do that for them? is that why you are suggesting this?
the only thing that would make any difference to the quality of live for players on either side would be a full server merge so that there are more high pop servers, and if you really think NCsoft don't know this, and know the down side, you're being very short sighted.
they are playing a balancing game, not merging the servers is to stave off the doom mongers that appear when it does happen going "clearly the game is dying" and not driving people off because most of the servers "are empty"
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i believe they are actually planning the implementation of a single global or serviles environment i would assume if they were doing this they would have some kind of way around the duplication of names (some kind of invisible character perhaps) i would also assume they would have some way around the potential server melt perhaps ones could be spanned across multiple servers to lessen the load or something
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like @charactername.union for instance... idea was mentioned earlier yes.
- The Italian Job: The Godfather Returns #1151
Beginner - Encounter a renewed age for the Mook and the Family when Emile Marcone escapes from the Zig!
- Along Came a... Bug!? #528482
Average - A new race of aliens arrives on Earth. And Vanguard has you investigate them!
- The Court of the Blood Countess: The Rise of the Blood Countess #3805
Advanced - Go back in time and witness the birth of a vampire. Follow her to key moments in her life in order to stop her! A story of intrigue, drama and horror! Blood & Violence... not recommend to solo!