My humble suggestions - Player/NPC animations, server segregation

If so, that person faces some possible solutions to his problem--none of which would be solved by mashing the servers together. It would just create a huge mess, and piss off a lot of people.

He needs to learn how to find people via global channels, go to a server thats sufficiently full, and possibly learn how to take opinions that he doesn't want to hear.

Cryptic, NCSoft, and Paragon Studios have rarely given out straight numbers on the number of unique IP addresses representing unique individual players. When numbers have been given they are mostly in a rough estimate format. Alternatively the player numbers are extrapolated from NCSoft's published financial reports.

CoH is widely considered to have a "stable" population of around 80,000~120,000 players worldwide. Over the past couple of years the number of stable subscribers has likely been closer to 60,000~80,000.

One of the longer-term community problems with MMO's is the inevitable "player-churn" as various subscribers run out of money, get burnt on the game, or have other issues crop-up. While the overall population might remain relatively stable, the influx and egress of players can radically alter the make-up of that population.

Now, is the player base significantly less than it was in 2005?

I don't think so. I think in terms of total current subscribers versus retail sales in 2005, the actual player-population isn't that radically different.

Something else to keep in mind is how much the game has changed over the years. Back in 2005 nobody that I knew of used Global Channels for anything. All of the events, teams, and tf's that I participated in were arranged through Supergroups, Coalitions, and zone-broadcast spamming. Back then all of the groups I was involved with heavily relied on the friends and global-friends list.

These days nearly all events are scheduled or run through Global Channels. I don't really see the reliance on supergroups, coalitions, zone-broadcasts, or global-friends list to arrange and participate in teaming.

That shift in how players communicate to each other is more likely to influence perceptions that one server or another is not as "good" as it once was... far more than a couple thousand less players overall.

We already have a feature that creates multiple zones when one becomes too crowded.

The problem isn't with server population, the problem is with players that

1. refuse to take the initiative and use the tools provided to form their own teams. They just want to sit there like a lump and wait for someone else to do the work of getting a team together, and

2. some of the people complaining have such pleasant personalities that they've gotten themselves 1 starred and /gignored by a significant portion of their server community so they can't find anyone willing to put up with them. Rather than pay for a server transfer where their bad reputation isn't as well known they whine for server merges.

3. Some of the people simply have unrealistic expectations. For example a recent complaint about server population and finding teams was made by someone upset that he can never find teams in the middle of the week in the late morning/early afternoon on the NA servers.

He couldn't grasp the concept that most Americans are at work or in school at that time, and if he wants to find teams he needs to hook up with the EU players.

Yeah that's why VIP's will be getting a free server transfer each month when Freedom goes live as well as a minimum of 400 points store credit which can be saved and used on server transfers.

The only people that will be buying transfers are the impatient ones that never plan ahead.