Discussion: One game, one global server access

I didn't think underscore was allowed. I could be wrong it's been know far to many times

But as aside I'm looking forward to meeting some of the name from across the pond

I belive to make the entire thing fair when there is a global name conflict is to put _US at the end of the US players global and _EU at the end of the EU players name then give both a rename token. That way if one of them wants to keep their orignal global they can change it back or can change it to something new. Also this would help if the global conflict is linked to a dead or inactive accounts either side. If they did it this way it would make alot more sense to me rather than just picking on the EU community say we must change our globals.

Right. I'm gonna post my thoughts on this. I don't use the forum very often, and I'm sure that people has already voiced a lot of my thoughts below, but in this case it's more important that you get to hear as many voices as possible.

First of all, I'll start with my yay feeling. I think that merging the servers is a wise move that long-term will be beneficial to all over us (with increased playerbase and such.). And I have been wondering why it hasn't been done previously.


Now to the global name problem.

Who am I?

I am a EU player. I will be recieving my 36 months veteran reward come april. I go by the global name @Q. . I was previously named @Quildo, and I changed it when I realised it had double meaning, I didn't want to be associated with it's other meaning (yeah, go on, google it). In addition to this, I've always been called 'Q' by most players in the european servers.

My interpretation of your solution.

1. It's discrimination. Why?

I'm likely being forced to change my globals when the merge goes down just because I happen to be european. That is discrimination no matter how nicely you put it. If you want to draw this to it's point - You could just as easily be telling africans they have to change their name, just because they're black. Harsh comparison, I realise, but as I interpret it this is basically what you are saying.

2. But this way causes the least hassle! No, it doesn't. Why?

You claim that this way will affect the least amount of players. I disagree. Regardless of how you turn it around, it will affect the same number of players. -You- are choosing to force this change on the players that, again in my opinion, are less valuable.
Either way you do it, will piss half of the affected players off. I realise how this might be troublesome for you, and why you'd want to avoid as many arguments as possible.
But you can't go about this change without realising that the fairest way of doing this is by allowing both sides (the same global names) to individually have their chance to voice their opinion. What if an american player is willing to change their globals, but a european isn't?

3. This change will perhaps be easiest for you, but not for us. Why?

The European servers and the american servers are two completely different communities. While a merge is good (the more the merrier!), both sides have their groupings and people they like to hang out with.
From a roleplayers perspective, we have a massive wiki page where we have gathered information about ourselves and our characters (http://union.virtueverse.net/). Your change means we have to manually change every single page we ever made, to accomodate this change.
In addition, you will be causing a game wide confusion because frankly, everyone affected by your name-change will no longer know who they're talking to.

In addition to the above, I am wondering why you're asking for people's opinions when you with the current solution clearly have no regard for your entire european clientelle?

My gut feeling? I'm feeling disappointed. My interpretation of your initial idea shows me that you think europeans are second-rate customers. I can give several reasons for my feelings.
You have no European based help-lines - we're limited to online support unless we are willing to pay for international calls. You've stopped releasing over-the-counter game titles in Europe, stating it's too expensive. Come on, let's be serious, with the amount of cash you roll in, you should be able to afford it.
I've stated -this- point to support before. I pay my subscription in Euros. I've found that many of my UK friends, who pay in pounds, pay around 2-4 euros less for their subscription. I'm not even going to try recalculate how much americans pay - it'll probably upset me.

So basically me and everyone with me who was given euroes as their currency are currently paying 4 euros more per month to play a game where by each issue we recieve less.

Frankly speaking, I love this game, I really do. I love the style and the mechanics but most importantly I love my community from which I've gained many real life and life-time friends.
You (the devs) are mostly doing an outstanding job, and as someone being leader-trained, I know what a pain in the *** cat-herd this must be.

I think what you're trying to accomplish with this is honourable, but you have to rethink your methods. A lot of players I have talked to today are saying other unnamed hero MMOs are looking decidedly better.


Just my thoughts.

Sincerly,
Kim (@Q.)

Maybe in a way we EU's can use this situation to our advantage, we will be subjected to this scenario rest assured, the powers that be had no problems with all our complaints regarding boxed editions in EU, so this is just a minor inconvenience to them.

What could be a nice way to look at this, would be to use EU at the front of your global as a title and a honour, an achievement showing how loyal you are to this game through all the crap they keep throwing at us and the way we get treated.
Seeing someone walking about with EU_ in front of their global marks what type a player they are, and how committed to the cause they are.

Just a suggestion, but would be a nice substitute to having your original global.

Remember stay Defiant, keep your Union strong, Zukunft to the Na players who feel this is just another of a long list of EU wine and stay Vigilence till the end. (see what I did there )

The purging of old trial accounts MUST happen, considering how many including me, have an old trial on US servers with same login and global name set as the one EU.

I have contacted support requesting they remove my US trial game account from my master account. Lets hope its a positive response. If not there needs to be a function added to account management to allow that.

Regarding global name and channel clashes, i hope they change to a more "fair" solution, the current one willl just piss people off.
Appending .eu and .us as suggested above to ALL usernames would be best solution.

Or tbh, just skipping the entire merge...

I just wanted to toss in my 2 inf on the official discussion thread: As a North American player, I think it stinks that the Europeans are getting shafted.

I realize there is no perfect solution, and that the Europeans probably have more to gain by the merger than the North Americans, but I would consider it more fair to have the decision based on vet reward levels.

I know it's been said before, but the devs might be counting responses so I wanted to chip in.

To add to numbers if this thread is being read - I agree with the critisms about the EU account holders being arbitrarily having their globals changes rather than by veteran level.

Was there not something similar to this concerning retaining names of toons in periods of inactivity? Can something a little more fairly been done along the lines that this finally ended up being i.e. no loosing name if subs up to date etc.

I think the examples listed about inactive accounts used for 1 month at go live in USA vs full time fully paid up Eu account and the EU account loosing out are totaaly valid points personally.

I think this needs a re-think.

Well, I've been waiting until I calmed down a little before adding anything to this. I'm not sure how much I've calmed down, but I may as well add this before the thread goes moribund.

Pretty much anything I may want to add has already been said, so I'm doing not much more than reiterating for emphasis.

On a gut reaction level this feels like one last shafting of the EU players before they're not a significantly separate entity any more (other than language for Zukunft and Vigilance, currency used to pay subscriptions, etc.). And this is a gut reaction because frankly, EU players have gotten used to getting the short end of the stick. Hell, it took us months to even GET Global Chat after it was rollled out in the US.

To the argument from the US players that 'but look what you're getting for potentially losing a significant part of your in-game identity, more servers!' I say 'Yeah? So? I play on one server and one server only as it is. I only have alts on Union, how does that have any bearing on me?'

I'm currently at 6 and a bit years veteran status, I played in EU beta, and the thought (even though it may not happen, just the thought) of my global name being taken by a US trial account is a matter of concern to me.

Is my sustained loyalty to this game thought that little of?

You may note, if you've read that far that I care relatively little for the technical arguments. My in game/global identity is something that has non-financial value to me. Just like the memories of people I've teamed with and personalities that go with my toons are a personal thing. Having Paragon Studios/NC (whoever made the decision) apparently decide that because I happen to live in the EU, that I'm intrinsically worth less (I know they've said no such thing, I'm talking impressions here) than a North American player... that just grates.

Oh, and any EU players with their Globals either in their board profile or signature? You may want to remove those, save yourself some potential griefing, because there will always be a couple of idiots who think it's hilarious to do such things, regardless of how mature and sensible the rest of the board population may be...

Hi Avatea,

I was just curious, what effect, if any, will this have on the speed and performance of the servers? Will there be any server upgrades during this change? I know people have been a bit concerned with server performance for a while, especially on the more populated servers.

Have a good day!

Be sure to drink your