Cross Server Praetoria?

What if the devs decided to release the new GR Praetorian Zones as single "serverless" zones? Imagine logging in to see 5000+ people online and ready to team. Would it work? Would it be fun? Of course, there's not enough time to make it happen, but it's fun to speculate.

Next Up, merge the Hive and the Abyss into one massive "serverless" zone as well. Then do the same for the PVP zones.

Just because you enjoy high-population servers, doesn't necessarily mean that I do, or that everyone's computer can handle it. I can see what your'e going for, but it wouldn't suprise me if someone gives the copy and paste 'Reasons not to merge servers' answer. I know that isn't necessarily what you're suggesting, but a lot of the same reasons would fit well here.

Isn't there already a server for people who like crowded servers? That's what server transfers are all about. I don't see would be gained by forcing everyone into a situation they didn't want.

Just move to Freedom or Virtue and leave the rest of us alone. That way everyone can be happy.

I wonder if the process they've developed to allow you to keep your prestiege and sg membership could be adapted to work with server transfers. I think I might even be willing to fork over some real cash to enable me to temporarily transfer a toon to another server to allow me to team with some friends on a special event-- a TF, for example-- I'd really like to do with them so long as I could transfer back without losing my SG or the prestiege I had earned for it.

Serverless would pretty much require instancing. So you'd have Praetoria 1, Praetoria 2, Praetoria 37, etc.

And as above. Some folks like things quiet, some like it busy, etc. I'm not against a serverless setup but I would be concerned about losing the server communities/personalities.

Not to mention the name issues.

I call dibs on the name Knowmad for the merge...

... oh look. It's server-merge thread time!

I'm beginning to feel like Linkara reviewing anything Frank Miller writes.

Okay: here's the short version: Games tend to merge servers to either force players to work together, or to to lessen support costs.

At this time the City of Heroes servers are paid for, and there's money left in NCSoft's bank to continue paying for bandwidth. There's no immediate rush to shut down equipment to save operating costs.

At this time the City of Heroes franchise is going into a major expansion after having several months of competitors offering their wares. This expansion will be selling throughout the Christmas / Holiday season. It will be another 6 to 8 months after the launch of the expansion before NCSoft will be in a position to judge whether or not the subscriber base has genuinely fallen to non-recoverable levels, or if the dropping rate of players is due to external game factors. As such, there's no immediate rush to consolidate servers to try and force the existing player-base to play together.

City of Heroes, as a game, was never set-up to handle a server merge, with each server having multiple unique identifiers ranging from Super Groups, to global names, to individual names. As the typical reasons for consolidating players do not apply to CoH at this time, there is no reason for the developers to examine options that force players together at this time.

The most likely result is that if Going Rogue is not able to result in a sustained return to previous subscriber levels, NCSoft / Paragon Studios will instead focus on the City of Heroes 2 project, which will likely deal with a cloud environment and be built with the idea that players will share a common global server access.

The point of this is that as of right now, Paragon Studios doesn't have an incentive to actively develop any sort of cross-server functionality. Cross-server functionality, if it arrives, would likely be with a sequel title, rather than trying to implement a cloud-like system into the existing engine.

We want you to be able to. We really do.

I'm sure that's no consolation, though.

LEGION OF VALOR - Be a part of the Legend!