The server merge: two of the dirtiest words among developers and player communities. But does the concept deserve its unsavory reputation? Has a server merge ever worked to better a game, rather than tear it down? We'll take a twitchy trip down merge memory lane today and explore both sides of the argument in Loading... Don't Fear the Merger.
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Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle Editor-in-Chief - The Ten Ton Hammer Network
Server mergers are a clarion call for the bitter, disgruntled and disenfranchised gamers to come out of the woodwork and blather on about how said mergers are heralding the death of the game, and how they were right all along with regards to the game being destined for epic fail because they personally didn't like it.
Game producers should strive to have as few servers as possible to begin with. Less servers equals better economy. I am a huge fan of the single server game like EVE Online. I'm not sure why more games are not willing to explore the technology to do this.
Having to choose a server annoys me because I always wonder what I'm missing on the other servers. What friendly, sociable players am I missing? Is the economy better on another server? What is the class mix on the other servers?
I say, merge, merge, merge, you shortsighted game producers.
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EVE - Brutus Agrippa - Currently looking for an active corp
Atalntica - Germanicus - Macedon Server - Enclave Guild
WAR had its staggered server rollout based on 'demand', even going so far as to clone some servers, but when all the launch shenanigans died down there were a lot of people crying foul about lack of population due to people migrating from one server to another with a higher population. They may have have been better off loosening the queue throttle on some of the initial server populations and saved themselves some of the headache of spreading out the 750k player launch population spread over a lot of servers, and then trying to find ways to make the populations on those servers balanced and fun for the 300k players that they retained.
The MMO playerbase is really a very fickle demographic, especially with regards to new games. Developers shouldn't fear that post launch server mergers are a sign of an impending death knell or epic failure, they have just become another statistic of the current trend of MMO hopping that appears to be the norm these days.
Better to consolidate your playerbase into healthy, manageable populations, than to listen to the whines of the lonely kids that can't find anyone to group with or gank.
Game producers should strive to have as few servers as possible to begin with. Less servers equals better economy. I am a huge fan of the single server game like EVE Online. I'm not sure why more games are not willing to explore the technology to do this.
Having to choose a server annoys me because I always wonder what I'm missing on the other servers. What friendly, sociable players am I missing? Is the economy better on another server? What is the class mix on the other servers?
I say, merge, merge, merge, you shortsighted game producers.
I completely agree. Who cares what people say about it, the only thing that really matters is the health of each server community! It doesn't help anyone's cause to pretend that everything is okay on dead servers when players know it clearly isn't.
Loading... Don't Fear the Merger
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