111868-megaserver-feedback-thread-page-10

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What I saw most recently with a new game that had mergers ( SWTOR ) was that people went out of their way to "behave badly" RPers and Non-RPers alike.
 
Non-RPers would go out of their way to disrupt RP events with banal ( and sometimes offensive comments ) and RPers would go out of their way to "ERP" in public.
 
Resist this please.  Don't be a "jerk" regardless of the side of the fence you fall.  Heck each camp might try "evangelizing" the other to their PoV.  Quite frankly those of us that do like to RP are just as into Raids and PvP as those that do not.  Perhaps those of you that don't usually RP might give it a try as a "secondary" hobby within a hobby since we all have to live with each other and to the RPers, just don't do that ERP crap in public, take it to group or whispers.  :P	
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Why is the RP community under some false delusion that no one but players on an RP realm roleplay? There are plenty of us on Stormtalon that roleplay when we're bored just like you guys raid and probably pvp from time to time. I have never seen anyone be an asshat on my realm for roleplaying even though we don't have the RP "label". Most everyone I've come across that still plays mmo's are either tolerant of RP or even participate from time to time no matter what realm they chose.
 
There are also a multitude of places to RP...not just your home city....housing is absolutely perfect for it.
 
Hell, give people a chance. This is a MMORPG after all, we all knew that when we bought it.
 
Edit ~ As a matter of fact I have some guildies that RP~PVP and we are on a PVE realm, it happens :)	
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			Here is something I am sure someone besides me is thinking ... will "game mail" be opened to cross faction per account with the advent of megaservers?  Some thing to win points with us altoholics. ;)	
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Practical question about the defaulting of common channel languages on the megaservers: Let's say a German player goes to /trade and wants to sell his [Epische Butterherzchen Handschuhe des Gewinns]. How do players with the English and French clients see that item link? Would they see the German version or do they see [Epic cupcake gloves of win] / [Gants de gagne épiques cupcake]. I'm asking because I recall seeing french/german item link languages on the beta realm channels. This might already have changed, but it can get confusing if there are multiple indications of the same item.
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3 Minimum.
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As an RPer, My only concern was sticking with my friends, and making sure we all landed in the same place. Then I remembered Circles, and woo! Happy Unicorn Time!
 
But hey, I'm optimistic, and generally a positive fella. 
 
RPers do get grief, but it has been my personal experience that it is few and far between. I've also had the experience of a Non RPer ask about it, the rules, etc, and suddenly NEW RP buddy!
 
And besides, a lot of RP Events happen on Personal Housing Plots anyway! 
 
So to my fellow RPers out there...
 
Chill out. Don't overreact. Get in touch with your fellow RPers, and stay together! And STAY POSITIVE! I love this game, and look forward to meeting new people!
 
And yay! Last names! :D	
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3 Minimum.
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 <_<
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Looked forward to be B A ?  :D
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			Thank you so much for this Carbine. I really want this game to succeed. I got left behind the initial rush due to real life obligations and am a casual player in general, so it's been rough finding people to play with.	
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I am all for the idea of the megaserver/mass server merge that is proposed.  Love the chance to rename my characters and the opportunity to play every class on both factions on the server.
 
That said, how is the whole optimization stuff going?  If people are hitching and freezing in places with the populations being what they are (or aren't) on the various servers, how will jamming all of the populations onto four servers affect those same people?  This may have been brought up somewhere back in the 66 pages or so of this discussion and if it has, I apologize for asking the question a second time.	
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All of this, I hardly used headstart. I preordered for the name reservation. I paid extra for a certain wildstar item (one reserved name) and now the entire purpose of it is being ruined :|
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I paid extra for a certain wildstar item (one reserved name)
 
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Linked items/quests should be displayed in your client language yes :)
 
 
3 Minimum.
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Bah. No names like Dr Doom, El Dorado, Mr Smith, MC Hammer, Al Capone, Jet Li, Project X, Frankenstein Jr, etc. :(
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First of all, thank you carbine for doing this for us.  :wub: 
 
I am on Zhur and for a guild that is aimed toward PVE and PVP with about 60ish members this is a big save because we will finally have a good economy and actual chance to recruit more people from time to time.
Also, I am so happy for the idea of finally getting some open world PVP action!
 
Personally I am a PvPer primarily and RPer secondary, so I totally understand all you RPers there who are not happy about this move to megaserver as immersion sucks when people talk everyday things in /say , and of course with all those people who just troll during RP (special place in hell *rolleyes* ). 
But personally, I am happy for it! I will finally have an opportunity to join an RP circle and RP my character!
 
If you open your mind to the possibilities at hand you will maybe see that RP could stay as good as before and you might get more additions to RP community such as myself that are casual RPers. :D
Altho, unfortunately, not a lot of RPers will join a PVP server (if any), but I still have small hope that I will be able to RP. :3
 
I mean, now you guys can also have a good stable server economy and will be able to do raids properly if you wish so.
 
Even I, who never really liked PVE that much (too easy and repetitive) am having fun with it in wildstar.
 
In any case, try to be flexible and enjoy this wonderful game and it's lore.  :wub:  :wub:  :wub: 
If you can't get over this merger, well... your loss :P and hope you find a game that better suits your needs.
 
Also, about last names, no idea why are you guys not happy about it. *shrugs* Personally, I am happy that I might have my name/surname combo!
 
 
P.S. Cougar, awesome post at page one. <3 Thank you for listening and for all your hard work!	
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Ok....I feel like throwing my coffee cup right about now.....but thanks!
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FIRST.IF you're new to the thread and don't want to waddle through 66+ pages, please read here.
 
A lot of you are repeating the same things, dredging up the same arguments over and over, this is not going to help anyone. Please try to remember to be courteous to one another, we're all in this together unless you just give up and unsub. Carbine has already tried to make an effort to work with everyone, that is the ENTIRE point of this thread, so please try to keep it constructive.
 
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Well, don't be so harsh. Some folks are only just now finding out about this. Unlike myself and the other regulars, they haven't had 24-36 hours to cool off and reflect on *all* the potentials, not just the negative ones.
 
For my part, I'll just ignore any rudeness that comes my way and /report anyone who makes a jackass of themselves out of spite. Then I'll post that jackasses name to every RP guild, group, channel and circle I know, to make sure *they* can be on the lookout and report them as well. I think most of us are slowly coming around to the idea of "sharing our space" with others, so long as we're not being shunted off or actively harassed.
 
I want to believe the community as a whole is more mature here, if only due to the pay wall in place. Whether or not that proves true, well ... we just have to wait and see.
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3 Minimum.
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3 minimum for the whole name, or 3 min for the first name plus 3 min for the second name? If it's the first, does the space count as a character?
 
I can live with whatever, I'm just curious and trying to plan my names. :)
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Doom PhD?
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 While I understand the need to tell everyone about certain "jackasses" in the game, I'm very thankful you said "lookout". A vast majority of the community won't go on a witch hunt from a name alone, they're going to want to see for themselves who is causing trouble before they report them. If the RP community knee jerks and tries to band together to report someone only on the word of one of their own... I foresee problems. Please, please remember that you should be on the lookout for people acting up and not encouraging others in your Circle of Influence to report offenders, no matter how sound your word is.
 
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FIRST.IF you're new to the thread and don't want to waddle through 66+ pages, please read here.
 
A lot of you are repeating the same things, dredging up the same arguments over and over, this is not going to help anyone. Please try to remember to be courteous to one another, we're all in this together unless you just give up and unsub. Carbine has already tried to make an effort to work with everyone, that is the ENTIRE point of this thread, so please try to keep it constructive.
 
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Well, yeah. I wouldn't expect people to block report someone if they weren't actually *there* to see it.
 
Now, if said jackass pulls a stunt in front of 20 of us ... well ... expect 20 /reports.
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I have relatively mixed feelings about the MegaServers. From early launch (when I started) I've played the game solo, and I rarely see any players, so it would be nice to find more easier. The main issue I have with MegaServers is that my computer doesn't handle the game as well as I would like (the game only runs lag free on minimum settings), meaning a lot more players could cause me several problems in terms of frame rate, lag, etc, and I don't have the money to upgrade my PC right now. I don't want to have to stop playing till I can afford to upgrade, but I can't handle the game lagging.
 
I'm extremely disappointed about the RP servers being merged. I enjoy RP and, while I don't actively take part in them right now, I always enjoy watching them and learning about other players' characters. I enjoy my time on LightSpire even though I rarely see other players (especially on the Exile side), and will be really disappointed if the RP community becomes smaller.
 
The other issue I have is renaming my Chua. I have a couple of surname ideas I can use for my Aurin (provided I'm fast enough to get them) but I really don't know whether I want to keep my Chua's current name, and just give him a surname, or rename him entirely. I like him having a unique (at least I think it is) name, but the fact that I can give him the name I originally wanted for him is really tempting as well. I know I can remake him later if I change my mind, but I'd rather not as I've spent a lot of time levelling him already.
 
Overall, I'd prefer the servers to remain the way they are, but I can live with the MegaServers, provided my computer can handle the increase in players in the areas.	
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Will we be able to use current in game titles as a name? For example...Rancher Falkor. If I do not show my title it would appear that I have the title and one name. Although I do not have the title Rancher, I could make it seem that way. So people can attach a rare one word title to their name with this system yet not achieve the title. Not that I personally care, but just curious.
 
Edit...man think of the nameplate lengths..	
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The other issue I have is renaming my Chua. I have a couple of surname ideas I can use for my Aurin (provided I'm fast enough to get them) but I really don't know whether I want to keep my Chua's current name, and just give him a surname, or rename him entirely. I like him having a unique (at least I think it is) name, but the fact that I can give him the name I originally wanted for him is really tempting as well. I know I can remake him later if I change my mind, but I'd rather not as I've spent a lot of time levelling him already.
 
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Oh look, a bus....
 
We did indeed talk about just adding the account ID, like "Bob.12345" as every account does have a 5-7 digit unique ID.  We felt that most people would prefer to name themselves rather than to have an arbitrary number tagged on all their characters.  So once again, I will state that we made the decision based on what we thought would be best for the majority of players.  We also discussed player harassment and reporting, and if we had a hidden number on every character there would be an army of Bob's causing trouble, and they would become more difficult to report because the number wasn't displayed by default.
 
As for why we didn't use account name, the forum account name is not actually shared to the game.  As far as the game is concerned, your account name is your e-mail address.  Displaying peoples e-mail addresses along with their character name we felt would be a severe violation of privacy.  And only using the part before the @ would still be an invasion of privacy since many people use their real names in their e-mail address.  And only using up to the @ is not guaranteed unique anyways.
 
Silly side thought of the day... does anyone expect a character named "Bob Where" shortly after the megaserver goes live? :)
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Will we be able to use current in game titles as a name? For example...Rancher Falkor. If I do not show my title it would appear that I have the title and one name. Although I do not have the title Rancher, I could make it seem that way. So people can attach a rare one word title to their name with this system yet not achieve the title. Not that I personally care, but just curious.
 
Edit...man think of the nameplate lengths..
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Will we be able to use current in game titles as a name? For example...Rancher Falkor. If I do not show my title it would appear that I have the title and one name. Although I do not have the title Rancher, I could make it seem that way. So people can attach a rare one word title to their name with this system yet not achieve the title. Not that I personally care, but just curious.
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30 characters max with a space.
 
I don't see what you would not be able to change your name to Rancher and use Falkor as a last. I'd call you Ran, Rancher, Ranc. So I guess be ready for that.
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See if there was someone named Awesome Kaelish...I'd still call em Kael not Awe :P
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The surname brings up a question. Are we going to be able to abbreviate names through a menu?
Final Fantasy 14 (FFXIV) uses a surname, but you can go by Joe B., J. Blow, or Joe Blow.	
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I will totally throw my coffee cup at them. At anyone who becomes some etc+Kaelish. DO NOT WANT. .-.
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I will totally throw my coffee cup at them. At anyone who becomes some etc+Kaelish. DO NOT WANT. .-.
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The surname brings up a question. Are we going to be able to abbreviate names through a menu?
Final Fantasy 14 (FFXIV) uses a surname, but you can go by Joe B., J. Blow, or Joe Blow.
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So I have lotsa alts that need renaming... B)   *kiss*
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Will we be able to use current in game titles as a name? For example...Rancher Falkor. If I do not show my title it would appear that I have the title and one name. Although I do not have the title Rancher, I could make it seem that way. So people can attach a rare one word title to their name with this system yet not achieve the title. Not that I personally care, but just curious.
 
Edit...man think of the nameplate lengths..
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My feedback is that I hate the idea of forced last names.  I've grown attached to the name I have now.
 
The most baffling thing about this change is it's like you are trying to be different for the sake of being different.  Other companies like Blizzard (Diablo III) and Cryptic (Neverwinter) have already come up with a better solution to giving the players the names we want while still keeping them unique with a player-specific handle (that can be hidden).  	
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Will there be a minimum character limit per name? I have MrT...can it be Mr T after the change?
 
I'm still not liking this... :(
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			My reservation is the name change. It’s not really surnames, and it’s not being able to keep your own name. It’s a kind of fudge of them both. I would much prefer a SWTOR style legacy name that only I can have.	
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which server is everyone moving to? PvE or PvP?
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My feedback is that I hate the idea of forced last names.  I've grown attached to the name I have now.
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Cross post from my Tumbr, regarding using groups to sync to the same phase:
 
You’d have to do that every time you zone in to Thayd/Illium, because they’ll always be broken into multiple phases, and hope that some random people are also in that phase. But it isn’t that simple for larger events like the Malgrave beach party, partly because grouping doesn’t work cross faction. Even on Evindra things can get awkward with such large events, and we don’t have to deal with questers being in the zone causing phasing by themselves yet! I don’t see many people wanting to bother with using the Sync to Raid/Group function with how clunky it is. Typing /sync4 to sync to Instance 4 is a lot easier than:
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Me: /z Hey who has the raid for the party?
Person1: /z wat party
Person2: /z Uh I think Bob does
Person3: /a Join Steve for a raid now!
Whisper from Person4: /join Herman for party
Whisper from Person5: gtfo loser
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I will totally throw my coffee cup at them. At anyone who becomes some etc+Kaelish. DO NOT WANT. .-.
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This and the lack of support for easing the transition of the RP server are what are really getting me. We've had months to connect with our character name and the character; it doesn't feel right to force us to change it. This is the same kind of concern that Blizzard faced when they started working on revamping old character models, except with names. I just really don't understand why they couldn't put in the effort to make it optional and delineate names in whispers with /w "Mary Sue" or /w "Mary".
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Stop throwing perfectly good coffee!!! ;)
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When they decided to do transfers they made PvP to PvE possible, but not vice versa, I was not in that meeting when they decided to pass up money.
 
.....slowly puts $20 back in pocket......
 
https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/111868-megaserver-feedback-thread/page-55&do=findComment&comment=1163359
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First off. LOVE megaservers.  I've been stating for years now that I hate having mulitple servers and have such a time co-ordinating which server you roll on so you can play with your friends.
 
Second. I'm not a RP'er, but I understand the frustration. I do have a possible solution.... just like you can flag yourself for PVP, why not have an RP flag?  Basic rules of the RP flag,
 
1) You are sharded into an RP shard
2) There is a 4 hour timer before you can unflag from RP (not an automatic action)
3) RP rulesets apply the the RP shard, so you can report griefers who jump into your world.
 
This combines everything that should be combined, and gives RP'ers a place to go where they can maintain their immersion.
 
What do you think?
 
Abbye
 
NOTE: THis may have already been stated, but I can only read the first few pages, not all 68 at this point.	
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But it is a perfectly good reason to throw perfectly good coffee at a perfectly good excuse of a person!
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Okay, so I read through the first 20-some pages before writing this. I didn't see mention of it anywhere.
 
First, background. I've got 20 years experience as a database programmer, working for various government agencies in two (two!) countries, currently working at a major California State university, most of that time working on databases and the front-end systems that interact with them. This is mentioned so that I don't get immediately shut down as some sort of crank (which I possibly am anyway, but hey).
 
So, open proposal to Cougar:
 
Hey there big cat.
 
In a nutshell, has this been considered by the engineering team, in order to cater to the RPers without incurring the much-feared huge logistical costs Anlath lamented?
 
* Add a checkbox to character creation, call it "RP? [ ]"
* When checked, a flag is set associated with the new character, the RP_flag
* This flag cannot be changed after character creation (except by $20 CS fee - hey look, revenue stream!)
 
As I understand it, the server tech you're using (and will continue to use post-megaserver) will create instanced "shards" so that local populations don't get out of control or burdensome on clients or the servers. If this is true:
 
* Add a property field to each shard, RP_shard
* If the game tries to place a player into a new shard, it checks the status of RP_shard. If player is RP_flag and shard is RP_shard, player is placed. Likewise for !RP_flag and !RP_shard. If no match or a current shard is full, a new shard is created and is set with that player's RP_flag value. This should segregate RPers from non-RPers.
* Players can sync between like-flagged shards, or from RP_shard to !RP_shard (but not vice-versa unless your character is RP_flag). !RP_flag should never be able to get to an RP_shard.
 
This does a bunch of stuff:
 
* Uses existing tech to create RP-friendly spaces for RPers without fear of griefing beyond what can happen now
* Eliminates the abuse a system of manual RP_shard selection (as previous posters have requested) could create
* Keeps RPers happy with no impact on non-RPers
* Enables the setup of RP-PvP (!) characters, one of the bigger requests I saw from open beta and headstart
* Still keeps everyone on a mega-server, and allows for interaction
* Is resource-cheap (?)
* Confines any extra processing and system overhead to (I assume) the code that runs at shard assignment time, and possible a few other non-intensive locations
* Does not increase server data storage requirements beyond a few boolean fields here and there
* Does not require running a special RP server
* Seems, to my mind, single and elegant, and therefore fairly robust and resistant to bugs (ha! says my programmer side, a fine jest)
 
Anyway, please run that by your team, see if any of it sticks. Thanks for reading!	
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			Also, lol@Abbye, great timing! Very similar proposal.	
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First off. LOVE megaservers.  I've been stating for years now that I hate having mulitple servers and have such a time co-ordinating which server you roll on so you can play with your friends.
 
Second. I'm not a RP'er, but I understand the frustration. I do have a possible solution.... just like you can flag yourself for PVP, why not have an RP flag?  Basic rules of the RP flag,
 
1) You are sharded into an RP shard
2) There is a 4 hour timer before you can unflag from RP (not an automatic action)
3) RP rulesets apply the the RP shard, so you can report griefers who jump into your world.
 
This combines everything that should be combined, and gives RP'ers a place to go where they can maintain their immersion.
 
What do you think?
 
Abbye
 
NOTE: THis may have already been stated, but I can only read the first few pages, not all 68 at this point.
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			I think there must be a better workaround mandatory surnames, I'll kill myself the moment I see someone running around with a name like "Bear Grylls the Bug Hunter". Name plates are already fairly long with some titles...	
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			I reckon this will be a good thing. The only thing I don't fancy is the enforced last name :p it would be cool if it was an option, or at least a 'hide' option for it. I've never used last names in MMO's and would really appreciate a way to not display it.	
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Addressing "shards".
 
I had to read a number of posts to figure out what people meant by "shards", and I "think" I figured out that some people are using shards to mean realms, and some people are using shards to mean instances.  So my responses are going to use realm & instance instead of the word shard.
 
Definition:
Realm - The realms you currently choose from, like "Stormtalon", "Evindra", "Ascendancy".
Instance - A "copy" of a region of a world that a limited subset of people are in, even if they are in the same play area, they can be in separate instances, and not see each other.
 
Q:  Why can't we keep the RP/other realms?
A:  A realm is a collection of servers & databases that run a particular copy of the servers to play the full game.  Some of the servers (machines) are exclusive to a realm, and some are shared.  We can't keep some of the realms around because we're taking all of our server hardware and juggling it (and hopefully not dropping any...) ;) to make the new MegaServer.  The server machines that are shared under our current realm system will not be shared under the mega server method.  The machines that the realms are currently using (both shared and not shared), will be moving into the mega server architecture, so the hardware simply won't be available.
 
Q:  Why can't we instance everyone who wants a different play ruleset into their instances (like RP)?
A:  Simply put, because we don't currently have the tech to do that.  Is it possible for us to write that tech, sure, practically anything is possible.  But it would probably take us a really long time.  I won't say this will never happen, but I will say that there is practically no possibility of this being ready in time for the mega server merger.  We would not take the rewriting of our instancing code lightly, because if a bug were to get introduced into that subsystem, the game would pretty much not run.  This request is significantly more complicated than it sounds, mostly because our entire play space relies on that code, and it's already super complicated, much more complicated than it sounds when discussed.  The suggestion has been heard, but I can't really say anymore than that, this request is outside my realm of responsibility.  If it were to become a reality, it would be months from now at the soonest.	
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Addressing "shards".
 
I had to read a number of posts to figure out what people meant by "shards", and I "think" I figured out that some people are using shards to mean realms, and some people are using shards to mean instances.  So my responses are going to use realm & instance instead of the word shard.
 
Definition:
Realm - The realms you currently choose from, like "Stormtalon", "Evindra", "Ascendancy".
Instance - A "copy" of a region of a world that a limited subset of people are in, even if they are in the same play area, they can be in separate instances, and not see each other.
 
Q:  Why can't we keep the RP/other realms?
A:  A realm is a collection of servers & databases that run a particular copy of the servers to play the full game.  Some of the servers (machines) are exclusive to a realm, and some are shared.  We can't keep some of the realms around because we're taking all of our server hardware and juggling it (and hopefully not dropping any...) ;) to make the new MegaServer.  The server machines that are shared under our current realm system will not be shared under the mega server method.  The machines that the realms are currently using (both shared and not shared), will be moving into the mega server architecture, so the hardware simply won't be available.
 
Q:  Why can't we instance everyone who wants a different play ruleset into their instances (like RP)?
A:  Simply put, because we don't currently have the tech to do that.  Is it possible for us to write that tech, sure, practically anything is possible.  But it would probably take us a really long time.  I won't say this will never happen, but I will say that there is practically no possibility of this being ready in time for the mega server merger.  We would not take the rewriting of our instancing code lightly, because if a bug were to get introduced into that subsystem, the game would pretty much not run.  This request is significantly more complicated than it sounds, mostly because our entire play space relies on that code, and it's already super complicated, much more complicated than it sounds when discussed.  The suggestion has been heard, but I can't really say anymore than that, this request is outside my realm of responsibility.  If it were to become a reality, it would be months from now at the soonest.
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That I certainly more detail than I was expecting to hear... which brings up new questions.
 
1.)  Thanks for explaining why Evindra has to go (because hardware shared by multiple servers (of which Evindra is one) is being re-commissioned for another purpose, if you still don't get it).  So if you're literally reusing the physical hardware that the current servers are running on, exactly how long can we expect the megaserver cross-over downtime to be?
 
2.) I'm curious what in particular about implementing an instance selection feature makes it likely to break other code.  I assume the server knows how many instances of a zone there are, and you can see that somehow in your data metrics for population load.  So if you can see it, why not let users also see it through a UI element?  Now, once the user can see it, why not hook onto the existing system that syncs groups by simply syncing to any random player the server knows is in that instance?  I really don't see why you need to make any significant changes to the entire system and endanger the core code.  In my mind (I do some light coding, but mostly for test engineering applications so not the same level and this is my first thought of how I would do such a thing) all you need to do is add a subroutine which would limit the potential failures to that subroutine.  When called, it either works, or it doesn't. 
 
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« Previous Developer Post
Addressing "shards".
 
I had to read a number of posts to figure out what people meant by "shards", and I "think" I figured out that some people are using shards to mean realms, and some people are using shards to mean instances.  So my responses are going to use realm & instance instead of the word shard.
 
Definition:
Realm - The realms you currently choose from, like "Stormtalon", "Evindra", "Ascendancy".
Instance - A "copy" of a region of a world that a limited subset of people are in, even if they are in the same play area, they can be in separate instances, and not see each other.
 
Q:  Why can't we keep the RP/other realms?
A:  A realm is a collection of servers & databases that run a particular copy of the servers to play the full game.  Some of the servers (machines) are exclusive to a realm, and some are shared.  We can't keep some of the realms around because we're taking all of our server hardware and juggling it (and hopefully not dropping any...) ;) to make the new MegaServer.  The server machines that are shared under our current realm system will not be shared under the mega server method.  The machines that the realms are currently using (both shared and not shared), will be moving into the mega server architecture, so the hardware simply won't be available.
 
Q:  Why can't we instance everyone who wants a different play ruleset into their instances (like RP)?
A:  Simply put, because we don't currently have the tech to do that.  Is it possible for us to write that tech, sure, practically anything is possible.  But it would probably take us a really long time.  I won't say this will never happen, but I will say that there is practically no possibility of this being ready in time for the mega server merger.  We would not take the rewriting of our instancing code lightly, because if a bug were to get introduced into that subsystem, the game would pretty much not run.  This request is significantly more complicated than it sounds, mostly because our entire play space relies on that code, and it's already super complicated, much more complicated than it sounds when discussed.  The suggestion has been heard, but I can't really say anymore than that, this request is outside my realm of responsibility.  If it were to become a reality, it would be months from now at the soonest.
 
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I think there must be a better workaround mandatory surnames, I'll kill myself the moment I see someone running around with a name like "Bear Grylls the Bug Hunter". Name plates are already fairly long with some titles...
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{| class="blockquote"
 
Q:  Why can't we instance everyone who wants a different play ruleset into their instances (like RP)?
A:  Simply put, because we don't currently have the tech to do that.  Is it possible for us to write that tech, sure, practically anything is possible.  But it would probably take us a really long time.  I won't say this will never happen, but I will say that there is practically no possibility of this being ready in time for the mega server merger.  We would not take the rewriting of our instancing code lightly, because if a bug were to get introduced into that subsystem, the game would pretty much not run.  This request is significantly more complicated than it sounds, mostly because our entire play space relies on that code, and it's already super complicated, much more complicated than it sounds when discussed.  The suggestion has been heard, but I can't really say anymore than that, this request is outside my realm of responsibility.  If it were to become a reality, it would be months from now at the soonest.
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{| class="blockquote"
This is the post I feared. So basicly no RP instance. I understand the time needed might've been too much, but I'd really like to understand how putting "RP" next to an instance name in the UI be that much more code. Unless that means we won't be able to manually change instances.. If that's the case.. Well.. Great game Carbine, really good, but this is such a change to my playstyle that it's enough for me to leave.
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			Had a random thought just now. Since things are on a short timetable I doubt this can happen, but I'm really hoping it can.Please consider implementing the ability to re-order our character select, since we have no control over which characters will get merged where on the new list, it would be really nice to adjust things to our liking.	
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Addressing "shards".
 
 
[...]
 
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"The Bug Hunter" is an ingame title though.  :ph34r:
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Q:  Why can't we instance everyone who wants a different play ruleset into their instances (like RP)?
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Addressing "shards".
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 Trolling general chat is going to be so much easier when my name is Redactineer ASoKnZtIrPDQ.  And the titles I could append to that!
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Just to reiterate: WildStar already has overflow channels. All we need is the ability to willfully move between them.
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A real evil genius would use some random combination of 1, I and l, so that it would be almost impossible to type his name, with some W's thrown in for increased space usage.  Actually, WWWWWWWWWWWW is growing on me, not only is it huge but it is really difficult to tell how man W's that is.
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So if you're literally reusing the physical hardware that the current servers are running on, exactly how long can we expect the megaserver cross-over downtime to be?
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			LOVE IT...BRING IT...CAN'T GET ENOUGH!	
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Addressing "shards".
 
I had to read a number of posts to figure out what people meant by "shards", and I "think" I figured out that some people are using shards to mean realms, and some people are using shards to mean instances.  So my responses are going to use realm & instance instead of the word shard.
 
Definition:
Realm - The realms you currently choose from, like "Stormtalon", "Evindra", "Ascendancy".
Instance - A "copy" of a region of a world that a limited subset of people are in, even if they are in the same play area, they can be in separate instances, and not see each other.
 
Q:  Why can't we keep the RP/other realms?
A:  A realm is a collection of servers & databases that run a particular copy of the servers to play the full game.  Some of the servers (machines) are exclusive to a realm, and some are shared.  We can't keep some of the realms around because we're taking all of our server hardware and juggling it (and hopefully not dropping any...) ;) to make the new MegaServer.  The server machines that are shared under our current realm system will not be shared under the mega server method.  The machines that the realms are currently using (both shared and not shared), will be moving into the mega server architecture, so the hardware simply won't be available.
 
Q:  Why can't we instance everyone who wants a different play ruleset into their instances (like RP)?
A:  Simply put, because we don't currently have the tech to do that.  Is it possible for us to write that tech, sure, practically anything is possible.  But it would probably take us a really long time.  I won't say this will never happen, but I will say that there is practically no possibility of this being ready in time for the mega server merger.  We would not take the rewriting of our instancing code lightly, because if a bug were to get introduced into that subsystem, the game would pretty much not run.  This request is significantly more complicated than it sounds, mostly because our entire play space relies on that code, and it's already super complicated, much more complicated than it sounds when discussed.  The suggestion has been heard, but I can't really say anymore than that, this request is outside my realm of responsibility.  If it were to become a reality, it would be months from now at the soonest.
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My reservation is the name change. It’s not really surnames, and it’s not being able to keep your own name. It’s a kind of fudge of them both.
 
I would much prefer a SWTOR style legacy name that only I can have.
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{| class="blockquote"
My reservation is the name change. It’s not really surnames, and it’s not being able to keep your own name. It’s a kind of fudge of them both.
 
I would much prefer a SWTOR style legacy name that only I can have.
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			I duno if anyone's brought this up for the RPers saying they don't want two names... think of how many people wanted a name but they couldn't have it because it was already taken? A title/surname/descriptor will let everyone be the name they want. I wasn't able to name any one of my characters what I hoped, this will fix that. Countless people have gained alot more freedom because of this.	
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And there are some serious design issues you'd need to solve to prevent people from abusing RP instances.
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having to make a first and last name just annoys me, everyone will turn them off anyways as long as the option is available because it'll take up so much screen room. Why not just make something that remains hidden unless you talk in chat and doesn't involve all the tedium of thinking up a complicated RP-like name.
 
I also think if you just made the chat options for RP better and less accessible to the uninterested community that may help more and be a far less complicated temporary solution for the unhappy RP players.	
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having to make a first and last name just annoys me, everyone will turn them off anyways as long as the option is available because it'll take up so much screen room. Why not just make something that remains hidden unless you talk in chat.
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			Well, if you can't pick and choose I know addon nametags let you hide titles/names entirely :P	
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Well, if you can't pick and choose I know addon nametags let you hide titles/names entirely :P
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They're not "rp instances" - they're overflow channels that we already get dumped in if a place gets overpopulated. And there are no real abuse issues in other games that let you manually switch channels.
 
 
What do final raid bosses have to do with open world overflow channels?
 
 
You'd gain the exact same freedom if it was optional, with the bonus of people being able to stick with lore and/or the character name they've come to love.
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When an instance has a certain player count, it just spins up another instance.
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They're not "overflow" in the sense of other games that had overflow implementation.
 
When an instance has a certain player count, it just spins up another instance.  This 2nd instance is in every way identical to the first instance, it's not an "overflow" instance.  If the first instance empties up, the people in the 2nd instance don't all the sudden fill the first instance, they stay where they are.  If the 1st instance empties out completely, it shuts down.  If the 2nd instance then gets enough people to justify another instance, a "3rd" instance will spin up.  And they aren't even numbered 1st, 2nd, etc..  They're like instance # 8675309...  Everything is an instance, and all instances of the same map are the same as far as the game is concerned.
 
The idea of an overflow server that I've seen in other games was when the instance was full you went to the overflow, and as people left the main instance people were transferred from the overflow back into the main instance.  That is not at all how our game works. The only way we have to allow you to switch instances is so that you can join your party if they happen to be in a different instance.
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Ah, I see. So rather than be persistent channels like in TERA, they're isolated spawns.
 
Thank you for the clarification. I can see how it would be more complicated to come up with a way to manually change between these instances. However, you can at least see how extremely detrimental the current overflow system is to open world rp, yes? Right now it's not really an issue, because the servers don't generally get populated enough to trigger them, but it's pretty much a guarantee once we have megaservers. Without the ability to switch between them, it's going to be almost impossible to find walk-up RP. It's one of the key complaints y'all are getting from the RP servers regarding the megaserver transition.
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			I do not understand 1 thing about INSTANCES on maps.Instance 1 is up and running - It is full and instance 2 is up and running and gets full so we get 3rd instance which has just me and my group mates that just logged in. Now my group mates are logging out and im staying in game.In this situtation basicly i have to get stuck all alone on an instance till i relog while there are plenty of ppl in instance 1 and 2. Is this how its gonna work? Cause that is HORRIBLE. Have to let us join between instances (cant create only join.) or i dont know how else you can make that work.	
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I saw this asked earlier, but haven't seen it answered.
 
Now that we are getting 12 slots, which makes it possible (and probably why they chose the number) to roll each class on each faction. Will you be removing the mail restriction between different faction characters?
 
Also, is housing still going to be faction restricted?	
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I saw this asked earlier, but haven't seen it answered.
 
Now that we are getting 12 slots, which makes it possible (and probably why they chose the number) to roll each class on each faction. Will you be removing the mail restriction between different faction characters?
 
Also, is housing still going to be faction restricted?
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			Mail restriction between factions should never be removed and i highly doubt they will. Curious on the answer there from Carbine	
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Although I'm killing my account due to this megaserver joke, I wanted to express my thoughts on the way carbine uses this round around talk when it comes to programming.
In my experience from working as software engineer who moved to administration, the crap you spew on here to placate the community is sickening and would get you fired if you were working on my team.
 
You come in here and make it sound like it’s the end of the world to have a special instance spin up with the RP rule set knowing full well that the programming already exist, or there would be no RP servers right now. And considering most programming is done in modular format, moving and integrating that code might take some work but not that much. And when it comes to letting people choose the instance, I bet that the programming that lets people choose the difficulty of already existing instances could be adapted.
 
If you (Carbine) wanted to be truthful, you could say that technically speaking everything needed to do this already exist, we just don’t want to do it!
It all comes down to this, all of you pay but not all of you matter. And we are taking the “RP” out of our MMO”RP”G.	
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have a special instance spin up with the RP rule set
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Meh RP servers COULD be special.
 
There COULD be rule sets to allow PvP between guilds on agreement (SWG had this ... ).
 
The company that offers such a server COULD enforce:
 
Naming conventions
Provide GM coverage to enforce RP ( EQ1, SWG ... )
 
RP servers COULD be quite a different place than "just another PvE server". Developers have ben lazy regarding this since every game developed after 2005. :P
 
Even MxO had RP elements.
 
Bottom line is that we fans of RP need to work our rule set regardless if the server type because the Industry does not seem to want to invest in the RP part of mmoRPg these days. :P
 
AND  there are plenty of @$$hats out there that want to ruin the enjoyment of RP for those that like to do so.
 
I blame ubiquitous access to RPGs "by the masses" as a watering down of our hobby.
 
Now-a-days, MMORPGS are "just yet another entertainment" format and the Geek culture that was the progenitor of such games ( e.g. Dungeons and Dragons ) has been absorbed into the mainstream.  Again, these days "everyone games" or so it seems based on how games are developed.
 
Developers of our games our NOT our friends.  They are no longer true to the geek culture that gave rise to the impetus of the possibility for capitalizing on our hobby and needs.
 
Welcome to the Dessert of the real *Morpheus* :P	
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RP servers have special rules?
I thought they were just PvE servers with an RP tag so people would know what server to expect roleplaying on.
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Wow this has been the week for bad news on top of bad news. Reading between the lines of those last two dev posts, I see shard/instance control as pretty bloody unlikely beyond using the existing join to party method. Basically what's been said is "that technology doesn't exist" and "creating it would endanger the working of the game." Carbine's not going to create that tech just for roleplayers. We're simply not of that great an impact to their bottom line. The lack of which will make cross-faction RP impossible to co-ordinate and large event intra-faction RP difficult to pull off outside of housing. That's the way it's going to be in Wildstar, pretty much end of story.
 
I do appreciate the direct and honest answer from Carbine's dev folks on the matter. However, I just wish the answer had been something that would give me some hope about RP in the game. When I signed up for Wildstar in Beta and then found out on the transition to release that we couldn't talk cross faction, it made me angry enough to quit because of how damaging that is to RP. I changed my mind though, taught myself LUA and created Killroy, because Carbine said if there was something I didn't like about Wildstar, I had the freedom to change it. That was different than any other developer I'd ever come across and I wanted to support it with my money and my time. I wanted to be part of the solution. Now, basically, I don't see a solution. This isn't something I can code a way out of. It's a fact of game infrastructure becoming fundamentally opposed to open RP. I don't know if I can continue to support a company and a game that's not going to support me and the way I play.	
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I see that megaserver are needed and right for us players to meet more player while questing. Carbine, you always said you listen to the community and i hope you know that this is not only the PvE & PvP Community. The guy playing RP in Wildstar seems big enought. Even when they are less than a thousand. They ARE part of the community you said you're listening to...
 
So don't forget them. Don't make mistakes that others make.
 
The only solution i think which would make be sence and i was thinking about is, to use already implemented features!
There is a UI ingame for the chat settings, where you can choose between the visability of text messages: "No RP" - "RP"  - "All".
 
For my opinion its too hidden.
 
So, while not do something like this:
 
 
Then when pushing the button you can set where you want to get to. Like a dropdown menu to switch the prefered instance you want to get to: "Roleplay only" - "No Roleplay" - "Both"
 
If "Roleplay on", players only switch and fill an instance with "Roleplay". If "Roleplay off", they Never were transfered to a roleplay server. If "Both" the transfering is done randomly. The default should be "Roleplay off".
 
If no intance with "Roleplay" already exist, a player who turns on Roleplay, automatically fills a new instance. I guess he will not be alone for too long.
 
This would maybe help to let a part of the community not beeing forgotten.
 
I dont know how your databases work, but imagine a new database field with even only 3 values "0 - 2".
 
Im not a pro at photoshopping. Add a logo and maybe mirror the button ... but you get the concept. Is that an impossible thing? Or is my idea just bad?
 	
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I see that megaserver are needed and right for us players to meet more player while questing. Carbine, you always said you listen to the community and i hope you know that this is not only the PvE & PvP Community. The guy playing RP in Wildstar seems big enought. Even when they are less than a thousand. They ARE part of the community you said you're listening to...
 
So don't forget them. Don't make mistakes that others make.
 
The only solution i think which would make be sence and i was thinking about is, to use already implemented features!
There is a UI ingame for the chat settings, where you can choose between the visability of text messages: "No RP" - "RP"  - "All".
 
For my opinion its too hidden.
 
So, while not do something like this:
 
 
Then when pushing the button you can set where you want to get to. Like a dropdown menu to switch the prefered instance you want to get to: "Roleplay only" - "No Roleplay" - "Both"
 
If "Roleplay on", players only switch and fill an instance with "Roleplay". If "Roleplay off", they Never were transfered to a roleplay server. If "Both" the transfering is done randomly. The default should be "Roleplay off".
 
If no intance with "Roleplay" already exist, a player who turns on Roleplay, automatically fills a new instance. I guess he will not be alone for too long.
 
This would maybe help to let a part of the community not beeing forgotten.
 
I dont know how your databases work, but imagine a new database field with even only 3 values "0 - 2".
 
Im not a pro at photoshopping. Add a logo and maybe mirror the button ... but you get the concept. Is that an impossible thing? Or is my idea just bad?
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It would probably be easier to just set it at your house to RP, then you automatically queue to some kind of RP instance of all zones.  Since houses are their own instances, this means you don't have to be actively phased.
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Hmm, i dont see the sense in that. So you have to teleport to you house and activate your teleport cooldown to change it. With a button in the UI you can turn it on and off from every place of the world. You have to set it once, then its forever as long as it is set. So, dont want RP anymore because you have to farm or whatever, turn it off. Also, you already invite players to be your neighbours before they visit your house. But when i think about it ... for a public marked house, it would make sence to do it like you said. This should be additionally done! Put also your own house to RP. So that only RP marked players can visit or only non RP player may visit or even both.
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Mail restriction between factions should never be removed and i highly doubt they will. Curious on the answer there from Carbine
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			All they really have to do, since it will have to be instanced anyway once the merge is complete, is set up a little transport board within the city to switch instances, and have one of those instances permanently labeled as Roleplay.  Like there are currently Roleplay servers.  Make it so people don't "normally" end up in that instance of the city unless they have flagged themselves to do so.  A simple preference in the Interface menu.  "Instance Selection:  [X] Roleplay  [  ] No Roleplay	
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Will there be a minimum character limit per name? I have MrT...can it be Mr T after the change?
 
I'm still not liking this... :(
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All they really have to do, since it will have to be instanced anyway once the merge is complete, is set up a little transport board within the city to switch instances, and have one of those instances permanently labeled as Roleplay.  Like there are currently Roleplay servers.  Make it so people don't "normally" end up in that instance of the city unless they have flagged themselves to do so.  A simple preference in the Interface menu.  "Instance Selection:  [X] Roleplay  [  ] No Roleplay
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Q:  Why can't we keep the RP/other realms?
A:  A realm is a collection of servers & databases that run a particular copy of the servers to play the full game.  Some of the servers (machines) are exclusive to a realm, and some are shared.  We can't keep some of the realms around because we're taking all of our server hardware and juggling it (and hopefully not dropping any...) ;) to make the new MegaServer.  The server machines that are shared under our current realm system will not be shared under the mega server method.  The machines that the realms are currently using (both shared and not shared), will be moving into the mega server architecture, so the hardware simply won't be available.
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Except apparently, if I'm reading this right, the "instances" in WildStar were never set up with that type of functionality in mind.  They're like throwaway sessions.  There is no readable name for them, and they are dynamic.  It's not like channels that you may have seen in games like TERA - they're apparently constantly being created and destroyed as needed.
They'd have to first code in a way to name the sessions.
Then they'd have to code in a way to pull up the session list so we could choose.
They wouldn't be reworking existing code - they'd have to build a whole new structure for this.  Developers and programmers tend to work months (and sometimes years) ahead of what you see in game now.  They may have already put many dev cycles into creating something else that depends on the current instancing code, and it would gut those efforts.  We don't know.  They do, and I trust them when they say it's not feasible.  You know why?  Because if it WAS that easy, they would have probably already started work on it.  Devs love to grab the "low hanging fruit" and throw little bones to their users to keep them (us) happy.  The fact that the devs haven't been able to throw this bone to us indicates that it must be harder than it looks to those of us who do not work directly with the game's code.
 
I'm happy to see all the detailed dev responses, and I'm really happy to see the community trying to think of solutions.  This is great.  Just remember that something that may LOOK simple to us is often not because we can't see the big picture.  I hope we keep trying to brainstorm possible solutions, and maybe eventually one of them will stick with Carbine and they'll say, "Hey, you know, with a little tweaking...that could work."
 
-T.
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If they don't have named instances, I'm then curious how you're supposed to join your groupmates.  I'm in one shadow instance of Thayd and I join my friend.. does everyone around me disappear as I am magically whisked into their shadow instance?  What if I'm just outside the city, looking in across whatever arbitrary boundary that decides where the subzone instancing occurs.. who do I see?  Will they disappear once I cross that invisible line?
 
I love that the game has no physical zonelines except when switching "continents" but it just causes confusion in things like this.  Maybe the devs have explained it - I honestly haven't sifted through these 70 pages yet, or tried to read Kaelish's wall of text TL;DR of it all.  I'm just plopping ideas into the fold as they come to me.  I know that's bad of me, but whatever.. it's Friday and I still don't want a surname forced onto me.	
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So basically, it really *is* "tough luck, we aren't going to bother with your RP crowd because it would take too long, cost too much and make everyone have to work."
 
Am I reading that right?	
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{| class="blockquote"
 
Am I reading that right?
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@imukai. The instances are named, as the devs said, with a serial number of a sort. They're just not permanent and their existence is transparent to the client. That means as constructed, the client has no way to query what instance it's in. Basically when you send a "join party" request, the server gets it, looks at what instance you're in, what instance the group leader's in and then moves you over. While the game may not have zone "lines" it does have a collection of zones/maps. Those maps have instances spun up based on population, so there can be one, or two or a dozen versions of Illium for example. As it stands now, which one you're in is totally transparent to your client computer. All it knows is that you're in Illium, basically. The problem is, with the high populations of a megaserver, RP'ers will be sprinkled over a half dozen instances at best, diluting their population to a very invisible minority and essentially killing open world RP. Without some client side ability to manage that instancing, we're basically up a creek without a paddle.
 
We're financially not a sizable demographic, I don't foresee development occurring that will mitigate the damage. Carbine's not likely to experiment with changing tech that can break the whole game just for us. Should they? I can't give a non-biased answer to that. I get why they wouldn't or why their backers wouldn't allow them to even if they wanted to. In the end, they're a company and they have share holders to answer to. As I said originally, I'm sure they've done the math. At this point, we're written off as acceptable losses, triaged as it were. They did the same thing with the RP-PvP folks at launch, if you'll remember. They did the math, decided they couldn't support two RP server rulesets and they triaged the RP-PvP'rs, estimating that it wouldn't hurt their subscription numbers significantly.
 
I think, personally, that whomever did that math did it with a short term bias in mind. However, they've made their decision and it's not changing. This is as it's going to be, so there's no point in asking "Why didn't they just do conventional server merges for the low pop servers?" or "Why can't they just keep the RP server up and merge the others?" They've told us what they're going to do. They're not asking us what they should do. As players and consumers, we have to decide now do we enjoy the game enough to keep paying, given that this is how the game will be or do we drop our subs and move on.	
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If they don't have named instances, I'm then curious how you're supposed to join your groupmates.  I'm in one shadow instance of Thayd and I join my friend.. does everyone around me disappear as I am magically whisked into their shadow instance?  What if I'm just outside the city, looking in across whatever arbitrary boundary that decides where the subzone instancing occurs.. who do I see?  Will they disappear once I cross that invisible line?
 
I love that the game has no physical zonelines except when switching "continents" but it just causes confusion in things like this.  Maybe the devs have explained it - I honestly haven't sifted through these 70 pages yet, or tried to read Kaelish's wall of text TL;DR of it all.  I'm just plopping ideas into the fold as they come to me.  I know that's bad of me, but whatever.. it's Friday and I still don't want a surname forced onto me.
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Well that's the pessimistic interpretation (which I don't blame you for adopting, don't get me wrong).
The optimistic interpretation is: "It's impossible to do until the megaserver launch but we'll try to work something out in the long run."
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So basically, it really *is* "tough luck, we aren't going to bother with your RP crowd because it would take too long, cost too much and make everyone have to work."
 
Am I reading that right?
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Mail restriction between factions should never be removed and i highly doubt they will. Curious on the answer there from Carbine
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I can't speak for the devs, but that's not how I interpreted it.  More like, the current possible solutions are not gonna work.
I didn't read anything yet that said, "...and we're going to stop looking for possible solutions and stop listening to your possible solutions."
 
Vic, I think P said that wouldn't work because of the way the sessions were implemented.  They're throwaway.  I get the impression it's more like um...trying to get somebody to join your specific web browser session rather than sharing your screen, to try an analogy on.
 
But man, much more of this and I'm gonna sound like an apologist talking about things I don't know much about.  I did do tech support for a software company once that had over a million users worldwide, and worked closely with QA and the developers / engineers.  It was always more complex than it seemed.  "Why can't you just take this feature out??  Why can't you just change your stupid ribbon??"  Sorry.  I wish we could...but it's just not that easy.  I guess I just started falling back into that role.   -_-
 
-T.
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@imukai. The instances are named, as the devs said, with a serial number of a sort. They're just not permanent and their existence is transparent to the client. That means as constructed, the client has no way to query what instance it's in. Basically when you send a "join party" request, the server gets it, looks at what instance you're in, what instance the group leader's in and then moves you over. While the game may not have zone "lines" it does have a collection of zones/maps. Those maps have instances spun up based on population, so there can be one, or two or a dozen versions of Illium for example. As it stands now, which one you're in is totally transparent to your client computer. All it knows is that you're in Illium, basically. The problem is, with the high populations of a megaserver, RP'ers will be sprinkled over a half dozen instances at best, diluting their population to a very invisible minority and essentially killing open world RP. Without some client side ability to manage that instancing, we're basically up a creek without a paddle.
 
We're financially not a sizable demographic, I don't foresee development occurring that will mitigate the damage. Carbine's not likely to experiment with changing tech that can break the whole game just for us. Should they? I can't give a non-biased answer to that. I get why they wouldn't or why their backers wouldn't allow them to even if they wanted to. In the end, they're a company and they have share holders to answer to. As I said originally, I'm sure they've done the math. At this point, we're written off as acceptable losses, triaged as it were. They did the same thing with the RP-PvP folks at launch, if you'll remember. They did the math, decided they couldn't support two RP server rulesets and they triaged the RP-PvP'rs, estimating that it wouldn't hurt their subscription numbers significantly. I think, personally, that whomever did that math did it with a short term bias in mind. However, they've made their decision and it's not changing. This is as it's going to be. As players and consumers, we have to decide now do we enjoy the game enough to keep paying, given that this is how the game will be or do we drop our subs and move on.
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I imagine instances like a big list that has to be filled. So i think there should be no problems with.
 
Like this example:
 
Instance "EU_PVP_INTANCE_31"  {
 
 
...
 
 
 
This is how i explain it to myself. :D
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Find another solution to the naming. We do NOT want forced surnames.
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A "while", it will certainly be our longest downtime so far.  But we haven't quite worked out how long it will be.  We are testing the work on a smaller scale on our dev servers to try and estimate the time for the larger deploy by multiplying by scale.  We don't even believe the hardware part will be the longest, we expect merging all the SQL data to be the longest part of the work.  We'll announce schedules and such as we get closer and have better estimates.  I don't want to give out any times now, because at the moment they would just be wild guesses.  By time we're ready to announce it, we should have a pretty good idea what it will really be.
 
 
Well, first of all, the Client currently has no concept of instances.  So we'd have to transmit it.  The client can't display something it has no concept of.  When you make a request to teleport to the instance of your party, you are just sending a request to the server to put you the same place as your party, and the server works out if you can or not.  The server has no concept of listening to the client about what instance to go to either, so the server would have to have to be modified to accept requests about a particular instance.
 
Next, there are rules about when you can and can't join an instance, all that logic would still have to apply to people who want to arbitrarily move to another instance.
 
We can't let you always choose the instance, because if we did that then you would be able to join the instance of a guild that's killing a final raid boss.  So choosing an instance would have to have a separate set of rules of when it's ok and when it's not ok to choose.
 
There was also suggestions about naming instances, well instances don't have names.  They have really long identifiers that no human would want to type.  So we'd have to work out some "human readable" way of identifying instances so you could have any hope of picking one.
 
None of these things are trivial.  And the system wasn't written to work that way, so it would be a fairly extensive rework of how the system works.  Currently a single daemon is authoritative on where it sends you, even when you are doing cross realm instances, it's still the responsibility of one of the daemons to choose where that will be.
 
 
 
I am a software guy, sadly I'm also a manager and have to worry about things I don't truly care about... ;)
 
But to help convince you:
Q:  How many software engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
A:  None, that's a hardware problem.  :P
 
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They're not "rp instances" - they're overflow channels that we already get dumped in if a place gets overpopulated. And there are no real abuse issues in other games that let you manually switch channels.
 
 
What do final raid bosses have to do with open world overflow channels?
 
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So like... don't put the existing Evindra hardware into the mega server architecture? Purchase additional hardware for Evindra and don't put it into the mega server architecture? I understand that you are clustering hardware together to create mega servers, I just don't understand why you are telling us it has to be all or none.
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I am in complete agreement.  I would like to see another solution to this such as having an option to hide them, or treat it similar to a "legacy" in SWTOR.  One common name that ties all your account characters together and can be hidden if so desired.
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It might be because they can't just separate "Evindra data" out of the shared servers selectively.
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Evindra data isn't shared currently. Just don't include it when you merge the server data. It's entirely possible for them to do this. But they would require another server for both regions, and that costs money (for hardware and maintenance etc.). So they don't want to do it.
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			Regardless of where the data resides, they've stated that maintaining the status quo for one server is not on the table. Not unreasonably so, and I say that as a roleplayer who's negatively impacted by this change. I can get behind not wanting to maintain two systems. That's simply not feasible.	
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Not sure why ya'll are psuedo-coding RP instances, the dev in charge of coding already said it's not that easy. I highly doubt you can whip up a "feasible solution" without ever even peeking at the coding for creating instances and/or moving between them.
I strongly suggest anyone attempting to "get caught up" on huge posts like this, start with the dev posts. The very first one is a dev post. There are links at the top of every dev post that allows you to skip to the next one. Read all of them. It's VERY likely your innovative idea has already been discussed and/or answered by them. There are still a few unanswered questions, but the one about phasing/instancing/RP tags etc. has been asked and answered.	
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Well that's the pessimistic interpretation (which I don't blame you for adopting, don't get me wrong).
The optimistic interpretation is: "It's impossible to do until the megaserver launch but we'll try to work something out in the long run."
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Not sure why ya'll are psuedo-coding RP instances, the dev in charge of coding already said it's not that easy. I highly doubt you can whip up a "feasible solution" without ever even peeking at the coding for creating instances and/or moving between them.
I strongly suggest anyone attempting to "get caught up" on huge posts like this, start with the dev posts. The very first one is a dev post. There are links at the top of every dev post that allows you to skip to the next one. Read all of them. It's VERY likely your innovative idea has already been discussed and/or answered by them. There are still a few unanswered questions, but the one about phasing/instancing/RP tags etc. has been asked and answered.
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			Evindra's night owl population seems to have experienced a sharp decline since the announcement.  I won't presume causation, but there's a correlation.  I'll also confess that my measuring stick was line of sight on the Academy Corner auctioneers shortly after midnight EST.  There were half a dozen people there, down from the usual that-had-better-be-your-frackin'-elbow levels it enjoyed between live launch and the beginning of this week.	
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