Merge servers or allow cross-server grouping/sg'ing

The latter of the two options is ideal, and using name appending (such as Fire Guy - Champion) should be relatively easy, since missions, trials, etc, are all done within instanced spaces rather than the roaming world part of the game.

The problem is, most of the servers never hit 2 dots, and even though a few servers will benefit from free to play, after it dies down at least half the servers will continue to be ghost towns. If you can provide an LFG interface for grouping across servers, with people still all meeting at the door and then joining together once inside, it would eliminate most of the negatives to this.

Further, you could have cross-realm pocket D's for low pop servers (while letting virtue, freedom, and other high pop servers keep their own Ds).

Heck, you could even have cross realm versions of atlas park and other zones that people could opt to travel to rather than their own server specific.

Free unlimited server transfers for all premium and VIPs (and not just one per month for VIPs) would be the least attractive option, but if you can't do the above or merge low pop servers, this should be done instead. I know you want $$$, but in the long run, if people can't group, feel alone in an mmo, and have no recourse, then you will lose more money in the long run than by implementing some sort of solution.

Here we go again. Bill, don't you have a paste for this?

Sorry, still all out of facepalm this week. I'll get back t'ya.

Also; No to server mergers. This has been covered, many times before. Misconception =/=Fact

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

oh boy look another thread about server merges...reminds me of lemmings....

oh so cute lil' rodents, now go jump off a cliff....

First and foremost, Larker? That was a myth. Lemmings DO NOT commit suicide. That was Disney (when they used to do the Animal Discover shows) trying to PROVE it was true, they'd herd them and scare them off the cliff.
Secondly, I agree with the OP. On my parent server, evenings were the worst. 32 people on the entire server, and out of those, only 18 were lvls 45-50 (of those that were lvl 50, there weren't enough to form a trial). If I needed to get ixp, I couldn't form a trial for the life of me.
I ended up getting frusterated at the fact that my 4 accounts logged in (I dual box a lot) ended up being 10% of the server population. I got fed-up and moved to a higher populated server.
Once I moved, it blew my mind that people were actually hanging out under the Atlas statue, sewer teams were forming, costume contests happened, ship raids, hami raids, etc. That alone tells you how dead my parent server is/was.
While I do support merging servers, I understand it'll probably never happen. I think that if each of us gives CoX some free advertising and spread the word about how much we love this game and have friends log in (especially now that it's soon-to-be-free), perhaps we can do something about how dead many of the servers are. In the end, I guess it's up to us.

This is the third thread he's started in three days where he's complaining about dead servers, and one thread someone else started.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nox__Fatalis Any way? I am really... frustrated. I rolled on a dead server to play with some friends who are not praetorians. I rolled a defender... it's slow. Please give me a way out that doesn't involve rerolling or getting to 20.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nox__Fatalis I only ever see a few people in my level range. Literally right now 2 others as I try to level here. Is everyone 50, or is there a time of day when people actually play here?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nox__Fatalis This forum is practically dead, the union forums are practically dead, and I've never seen Union with 2 dots since I started up a week ago. It's depressing. NCsoft, just merge some servers or something please...

And what's going on that has the OP upset?

Well he created a Praetorian on an EU server to play with his friends but . . .

1. None of his friends have Praetorians.

2. None of his friends are online or are willing to power level him up to 20 so he can leave Praetoria.

3. He's not playing during peak EU hours.

4. For whatever reason he refuses to make a character that is the same faction as his friends.

Needless to say the OP has earned the Ultimate Japanese Schoolgirl Karate Facepalm.



For when the Fail is so great you have to put your face thru 15 inches of
concrete bricks.

isnt this the 3rd thread about this just this week?

as others have said, HELL NO to server merges

I don't agree with the OP, neither his predictions of ghost towns, nor his proposed solution. However, grouping IS going to be a different animal post-Freedom. If you are one who relies on typing "/b LEVEL XX MISH TEAM LFM! Please Send Tell FOR INVITE" to fill your team, it is not going to be optimal (if it ever really was). The number of people who CAN'T "Send Tell" is going to be much greater. Likewise, the various "LFG" private channels will not be optimal either since there will be people who can't see them OR respond to messages on them.

We, as a community, have to train ourselves to make better use of the tools we've been giving, including our search flags, search comments, and yes... the LFG tool for trials. Not doing this is going to segregate a potentially large segment of potential teammates that we won't have access to.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frosty_Femme I said "ur" which is not a word. It's a sound dumb people make when you ask them to spell out "you are".

On a somewhat related topic, I wonder if all the 'server upgrades' and issues might not be related to a transition to a virtualized server infrastructure. This would provide them with better resource scalability and could provide them with an infrastructure that might support merging servers in the future should they choose to do so. (Not that I am advocating this.)

The first step in virtualizing the CoH infrastructure would be to consolidate the physical servers to a single data center location, which I think was already done when they moved the EU servers stateside.

Battling I/O issues, having groups of servers crash simultaneously, ... these would all be indicative of taking a handfuly of physical servers and virtualizing them onto a single hardware platform.