103309-is-merging-servers-really-a-bad-thing

== Content ==
			So i have heard a jabillion times that merging servers indicates dead game, but I think that doesnt mean they shouldnt happen anyway, Wildstar has a few super popular servers but the rest are either decent or barren. So I think they should merge most of the worst realms together, and maybe leave the high ones or merge those with medium, or just do it randomly i dont really care, but the only reason servers are barren is because people demanded more servers at launch, and now look, so please consider merging.	
----
			dude the game has been out for how long?  Give it time.	
----
			
I dont think they need it,
 
Was on yesterday in Thayd I was getting massive FPS drop because of too many players lol.. and I am Widow.. so I cant imagine what Pergo of Pago is like	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
dude the game has been out for how long?  Give it time.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Around 2 months, but the game has to many servers and to high caps for servers, there are some terrible servers at the minute that could benefit, although i should not of said all servers should be merged, only the lowest ones, i mean its possible im not seeing anyone due to phasing
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
and I am Widow
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
In theory all they would need to do is reduce the cap so that meduim and full are displayed more readily. Most of these threads wouldn't even be made.
 
I have question though. Why is the word "low" on a server a bad thing without actually knowing the number of players on at that time or even subbed?
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
In theory all they would need to do is reduce the cap so that meduim and full are displayed more readily. Most of these threads wouldn't even be made.
 
I have question though. Why is the word "low" on a server a bad thing without actually knowing the number of players on at that time or even subbed?
----
			
Not really a bad thing. If there's a very low pop server why leave it? Better to merge it wouldn't you think?
 
Plus is the player base growing or is it dying?	
----
			
There are a lot of factors that go into the thought of merging servers.
 
1. What are the populations like on the considered servers (especially for each faction)
2. What are the communities like on each server and if merging does happen will they mix well
3. If our game does start to increase and the servers that are merged begin to fill do we un-merge them
4. Does this show a negative draw to the game
 
 
Just a couple I thought of, and I am sure there are plenty more.
 
I'm not saying that it is a bad thing, but it should be something that is thought about heavily and thoroughly before done	
----
			
A thing to remember is, they probably don't already have the code for server merges sitting there ready to turn on.  The folks who would write that code are working on other things right now.
 
So it's not really a question of "is this a bad idea?", as much as it's a question of "is this one of the best ideas right now?".	
----
			If they merge the servers I will laugh at them and call them failures.	
----
			If you sell server transfers, why would merging servers be a priority? :)	
----
			In before the "Well MY server is fine therefore all of them are!" crowd.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
If you sell server transfers, why would merging servers be a priority? :)
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
If you sell server transfers, why would merging servers be a priority? :)
----
			
People get invested in MMOs.  When you merge servers you send a signal that the developers have lost confidence in the game's ability to grow.  It's always true that MMOs are more populous when they're released than 2 weeks later, but still people like to bring it up as evidence of DOOOOOM.
 
Since you're getting invested, or deciding how invested you're going to get, seeing server merges makes you nervous.  You wonder why you should bother spending so much time building up a character if the game is going to be dead soon anyways. It doesn't mean the game actually will be dead, it's just a very normal part of every modern MMO lifecycle.  Always a boom when the game is releaed, and then a lag when the first month is up, and then it stabilizes.
 
The thing is, Wildstar has a way to deal with this about 90% of the way.  You can communicate and group with players cross server.  I think what they should do is allow for cross-server friends, guilds and circles. 
 
If they were to do that, there's not much reason to merge servers.  You could have a cross realm looking-for-guild channel, a cross realm looking-for-group channel and a cross-realm advice channel. It wouldn't matter if you were on one server and a bunch of your guild was on another server.  You could still chat with them, visit their houses, join their instances, or sync to their world zone if you wanted to.  Then being on a low population server actually would be nice because there'd be less competition for spawns or gathering nodes.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
The thing is, Wildstar has a way to deal with this about 90% of the way.  You can communicate and group with players cross server.  I think what they should do is allow for cross-server friends, guilds and circles. 
 
If they were to do that, there's not much reason to merge servers.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Economy.  Throw in a cross-server auction house, exchange, and CREDD market, and ... you're basically on a megaserver instead of distinct servers (which IMHO is a better design, if you're going to instance world zones anyway).
----
			It's an unnecessary thing.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I think they should do what Blizzard and Square have done: Make WildStar a game millions want to pay to play.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Why?
 
I mean it.  Why?
 
If they can make enough money to fund the game at a healthy level by targeting a niche in the market (eg. "hardcore players"), and by doing so they reduce competition because other companies are not targeting that niche, why is that worse for you?
 
(Also: what Square game do you mean?)
----
			
The devs didn't open as many servers as they could have at launch because they anticipated a population drop after the first month and they didn't want to have to merge servers. The problem is, people assume the only way for the population to go is down, and if that were the case, every MMO would be dead in a year or two.
 
Carbine is just starting to do promotions for the game, both through free trials and appearing at conventions. This is the first time they've done this since launch. It's normal. It's not "the game is dying so they have to resort to offering free trials 2 months after launch". It's the way companies drum up interest in their products after the initial launch, and it's going to be an ongoing thing. Also, people will be coming back (or become interested in the game) because of the UltraDrops.
 
The biggest problem with merging servers (aside from the perception that "the game is dying") is the names. Not only will many people be forced to rename their characters, but names are restricted to A-Z with no spaces (with accented characters being the same character as unaccented characters). Although, I suppose, if they did switch to a megaserver, they could simply append your account name at the end (the way they do with server name in cross-server groups) since that function is already in place. Add-ons could easily be written to not display the @account information.
 
And before people suggest it in this thread, adding a last name would be a terrible option, given that many characters have either been created with one name in mind, or created as first and last name in the name field.  If you have characters with names like (for illustrative purposes only) "Chewbacca" and "HanSolo," appending last names would just ruin the names.  Also, it would require revamping the chat and mail functions, which they were unable to do to add spaces in names, so I doubt they'd be able to add last names at this point.
 
Anyway, I'd said many times back in beta that no MMO should launch without a contingency plan that allows players to keep their character names in the event of a merge, so let's hope Carbine has considered that if they're considering merging.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I dont think they need it,
 
Was on yesterday in Thayd I was getting massive FPS drop because of too many players lol.. and I am Widow.. so I cant imagine what Pergo of Pago is like
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
So i have heard a jabillion times that merging servers indicates dead game, but I think that doesnt mean they shouldnt happen anyway, 
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
You should see rowsdower. Maybe 15 people in the trade area of thayd at any given time during peak hours. We desperately need a merge. 
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
If their intention is to be Niche why are we debating server merges? They should go ahead and do them. There isn't going to be a huge influx of players. People left this game because of it's inaccessible nature. Not because the game is too easy.
 
This Square game: http://xivsoul.com/ :D
 
I can't believe it either lol. But there's literally people on top of people in every zone I've been in and I'm still  leveling. I'm getting instant Dungeon Queues at level 26.
 
P.S. That Square game is also, SUBSCRIPTION.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I have question though. Why is the word "low" on a server a bad thing without actually knowing the number of players on at that time or even subbed?
----
			If they don't merge servers after Warlords of Draenor hits, it's probably not gonna happen.	
----
			
Only way I can think of for Carbine to do a merge and not make it look like "oops our servers are empty" is to brand it as a technical feature.
 
For example - what if they merged all the realms of one type (PvE, PvP) into a single supernode.  That they could do and just bill it as "Wow look what we can do now!  Shiny things!"
 
Honestly with all the instancing / sharding and whatnot I wonder why they went the way they did - unless it's a technical limitation of some sort.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
To be fair, at launch, you would NOT have called FFXIV a game millions would want to play.  That game was so horrific they had to completely redesign it.  That game has actually been around, technically, for four years.  Only recently has it been any good.
 
And Wildstar doesn't have Final Fantasy's name recognition.  Wildstar's going to be just fine at that kind of time scale.  Using FFXIV as a model, Wildstar is WAY better than the piece of shit that game was at launch.
----
			
 When launch came.. we raised our torches and our pitchforks and heralded "Bring more servers while stomping our feat in unison"
So they listened..
 
Here we are now..Looking around at the empty spots that used to be our comrads in arms..
And once again we raise our pitchforks and torches stomping our feet in unison "Merge the servers"
 
The moral of the story?
I like stories.. and i like a community to tell them to..	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
The point of my comment is Blizz and Square Flagship MMORPGs share a very similar formula and it's working. The template for grand success couldn't be more obvious whether a certain crowd likes it or not.
----
			 Server merges while not a bad thing it has a bad stigma.. I think best bet would be to just allow free transfers to start rolling again and let the community cluster making more pop on certain servers.. and quietly let the community merge itself. While slowly phasing out the dead servers. Or they can keep servers and allow guesting onto other servers make zone chats cross realm and let guilds branch cross server so players can still play with each other while being on another server.. So the only thing that separates the player base is where you log in. Just and idea.	
----
			
They should have invent the global server at the beginning of the game especially AH. Now AH is like small size of stock market, people been dragging prices every now and then far too easily. It's because the market is too small so that it is so easy to control making them profits but get other people frustration. Early morning augmented rune still 25g, now? 40g. Shadowblast used to be 1.5p now 6p...That's ridiculous AH played.
 
Games like guild war 2 has good system to introduce combining of server's population into PvE map. Carbine should have take a look and brought them in. the AH also center AH which make it harder for ppl to manipulate.
 
All in all, i think Wildstar is screwed. AH is officially screwed.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I beg to differ.  FFXI was the flagship MMORPG and makes the grind here look like a joke.  Blizz actually started with a lot more gates on the exact same kind of content, and in fact started to "lose" (in reality just cycle through) more subs once that was no longer their M.O.   FFXIV, if you held it to Wildstar's standard, would have been dead in its first few months.  SE didn't make an otherwise decent game on a bad formula, FFXIV 1.0 was a bad game.  A badly made, horribly designed game.
 
If anything, I'd say Wildstar is really only more "grindy" than current WoW overall.  In FFXI, you need a full group of five to even bother leveling.
 
In FFXIV, everything, from your gathering professions to your crafting professions to your classes, can all be picked up on the same character and all grinded up.  In fact, that's how you get things like soulstones that give you group dynamic abilities.  But the quests don't reset, they just give you an XP buff depending on the difference between your highest and lowest levels.  The only answer is to literally grind all these different jobs one at a time, by running around picking at instanced ores in given areas, or by crafting things on your crafting log one by one, or by grinding FATE quests.
 
I mean, if you want to compare it to WoW nowadays, WoW now definitely has less gates.  And I've played all these games; they're not bad games.  But they're not really the ones I'd bring up to poo-poo Wildstar.  Hell, I think Wildstar is better than FFXIV right now (I cancelled my WoW and FFXIV subs on the same day to focus completely on Wildstar) and Wildstar's only been out for two months.  I can only imagine how good it's going to be in a few months, let alone three years worth of content drops.
----
			
Ravenous is clearly dying (I assume). I know this because I monitor it...sort of. 
 
Got me a pretty impressive rig with a sub par GPU. So you can imagine in Thayd I get a slide show apart from late at night or during working hours. 
 
So I had to turn GPU settings down to medium, only takes 2 seconds, before travelling to Thayd. 
 
Now I run around Thayd on full GPU again and pretty decent frames during peak hours.
 
This means one of two things:
So either they upped the performance or the population is dropping. 
 
My guess, population is dropping. 	
----
			
Well a few billion years from now our galaxy the milky way is going to merge with another galaxy with Andromeda, Since the latter galaxy is bigger our galaxy will be eaten away.
 
So server merging is like cannibalism in a techie way :P  :P  :P  :P  :P  :P  :P	
----
			
Merging servers is too much burden on an already over-burdened dev team at this point in time. Let them concentrate on the real issue first: squashing bugs.
 
Big picture, OP...... BIG PICTURE	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
If they merge the servers I will laugh at them and call them failures.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I beg to differ.  FFXI was the flagship MMORPG and makes the grind here look like a joke.  Blizz actually started with a lot more gates on the exact same kind of content, and in fact started to "lose" (in reality just cycle through) more subs once that was no longer their M.O.   FFXIV, if you held it to Wildstar's standard, would have been dead in its first few months.  SE didn't make an otherwise decent game on a bad formula, FFXIV 1.0 was a bad game.  A badly made, horribly designed game.
 
If anything, I'd say Wildstar is really only more "grindy" than current WoW overall.  In FFXI, you need a full group of five to even bother leveling.
 
In FFXIV, everything, from your gathering professions to your crafting professions to your classes, can all be picked up on the same character and all grinded up.  In fact, that's how you get things like soulstones that give you group dynamic abilities.  But the quests don't reset, they just give you an XP buff depending on the difference between your highest and lowest levels.  The only answer is to literally grind all these different jobs one at a time, by running around picking at instanced ores in given areas, or by crafting things on your crafting log one by one, or by grinding FATE quests.
 
I mean, if you want to compare it to WoW nowadays, WoW now definitely has less gates.  And I've played all these games; they're not bad games.  But they're not really the ones I'd bring up to poo-poo Wildstar.  Hell, I think Wildstar is better than FFXIV right now (I cancelled my WoW and FFXIV subs on the same day to focus completely on Wildstar) and Wildstar's only been out for two months.  I can only imagine how good it's going to be in a few months, let alone three years worth of content drops.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Keep in mind, a lot of players are out in the world, you know, playing. And a lot of players are on their skymap where they can do almost everything the city offers, but the AH and costume changes. Not saying there aren't "dead" realms. Just saying they might not be as dead as you think. 
 
By the way, I play on Avatus, which seems to be alive and well, and at times, even peak times, the AH might dwindle. I mean, after all, peak times are play times. 
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
No No you didn't. No one cancels their WoW sub cause it's annoying to have to resub again, and we all know you will. If you were going to really quit WoW you would have done that in Cata like a lot of people did. Mists was a very good expansion even for panda haters. ( who hates pandas though seriously. ) Blizzard is taking their game into the next wave of MMO players we all knew this was going to happen. Easy as hell content is there for the casuals, Hard content is there for the more dedicated.
 
I've been on both sides of the fence with causal and hardcore and I can tell you the ones that *cupcake* and moan about WoW's too easy free epix now haven't done any hardcore raiding or high end rated arenas ever in their life and really are just a casual scrub nub looking to be cool..News flash you're not.
 
Carbine should have known better on a number of things. It's not like the market has made this dramatic change out of know where in the last 5 years. The game is solid it's buggy but they will get sorted. The servers are quiet from time to time but I think carbine knew this would happen. They sold this game as for the "hardcore" but in reality that was never going to work without the casual and or lazy crowd buying the game buying credd..Carbine can't survive with just a niche group of players ( Hardcore ) It just doesn't seem likely.
 
This is my opinion and only based of my own experiences. 
 
On topic Server merges would not be in the best interest of carbine right at this moment, there are a lot of people on the fence already.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Merging servers is too much burden on an already over-burdened dev team at this point in time. Let them concentrate on the real issue first: squashing bugs.
 
Big picture, OP...... BIG PICTURE
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I am not sure why you keep referring to FFXIV. FFXIV and FFXIV: ARR are two different games. They shutdown FFXIV for a reason. I mean it's a different name, different director and development team even went through an alpha and beta stage.
 
Now FFXI was pre-WoW and it actually did very well I think at once point it had about 500k subs which was pretty good for a game that stood on the verge of being themepark and sandbox and also being grindy. 
 
I realized (why I didn't respond to your other post) that you constantly bring up your experience and not facts. You say Wildstar is better than FFXI and WoW but you know the facts state that FFXIV:ARR and WoW are performing much better in terms of sales and player retention. We don't know how much subs WS have but we probably will find out in August. I am pretty sure WS doesn't have as many active subs as FFXIV: ARR which last I checked had 2 million subs, I even doubt there's 500k or more subs in WS today.
 
But the jury is still out for WS. However, since we don't have official numbers we can look at things such as xfire and realize that the trend for wildstar is in a decline where as the trends for FFXIV: ARR and WoW are steady. Not to mention there hasn't been a new server launched since launch which also indicates that the game is not growing.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Yes, yes I did.   :lol:   Believe me, it was weird doing it because my sub hasn't been inactive since launch, but I cancelled because I don't plan to go back.  No point in shelling out subscription money to keep a game active that I'm not playing.  It is strange seeing my authenticator fob and knowing I won't ever need it again.  I am still planning on getting an Alliance Lion's Head tattoo on my arm, though.  I may not be playing, but it was ten years of good times.  Almost feels like a chapter of life ending.
 
To your more relevant point, Wildstar can survive on a niche group of players if it has to.  Hell, FFXI and EVE Online have been doing it for a decade and both have always remained profitable.  There are two important questions to answer before that can be judged, though:
 
1.  How many players does Wildstar NEED to remain viable?  This doesn't have to be much if they covered the cost of production in box and CREDD sales (I think they did).  If so, they need to pay developer salaries and the light bills.  That doesn't really take much, usually, especially for a division of Carbine's size.
 
2.  Will NCSoft care if they have enough for number 1?  That's the more important question.  Unfortunately, Carbine doesn't get to just worry about themselves, they have to pay the "rent" to NCSoft.  Wildstar could remain perfectly profitable, even have a few million subs and be, in the eyes of anyone else, incredibly successful, and NCSoft could still force changes.  They're aware of the kind of money SWTOR makes post-F2P, and they don't have a reputation for organic, home-grown game design decisions.  They're a sort of soulless money vacuum.
 
But I imagine Wildstar needs just a few hundred subs to survive indefinitely, and that ought to take them through until they've added more content.  I don't imagine they'll be wildly successful off the bat (I'd be absolutely shocked if they were at over 500k after the WoD drop) because their IP is an unknown and they have to make a name for themselves to get more than the experimental crowd regularly.  But if they can fend off the NCSoft sharks, fix their issues, and keep plugging away with content, I wouldn't be shocked if they hit a million subs within a year.
----
			
IMO, server mergers need to happen ASAP if they want to prevent the population decline falling even more sharply. Certain servers feel like absolute ghost towns, some don't, none have a healthy population.
 
This is depressing to look at. And no, the whole "people are working" excuse doesn't fly, a quick look at other game's server status pages show very different situations:
 	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I bring it up because it's definitely relevant when you're trying to use FFXIV as a model against Wildstar.  Like it or not, I agree with you, SquareEnix LITERALLY had to redesign the game because their initial output was a colossal failure on almost every level, and that's a very widely held and common opinion (not just mine).  You can say, "Well, it relaunched, it's a different game, it doesn't apply," but it does.  FFXIV:ARR is a success only because SquareEnix was ready to ride out a monumental failure, even if they had to rebuild from almost nothing.  Wildstar launched about two months ago, and no matter what your opinion, they haven't screwed up NEARLY as bad as SE did.  If SE can salvage a good MMORPG out of that garbage, Wildstar ought to be just fine.  They won't have to redesign everything in their game in three years, Wildstar is a great game now.
 
That's the whole point I'm making here.  Wildstar isn't in that bad of shape (games have come back from a LOT worse).  I would agree it's not bigger than FFXIV:ARR yet because, let's face it, Final Fantasy is a known commodity and ARR has been a solid product for almost a year in and of itself.  It didn't take off directly from its re-launch, it's had to fight for subs by convincing people that it's not the old FFXIV anymore.  Thus do I think Wildstar is going to work pretty well given time.
 
As long as it's given a chance.  Of course, SE, CCP, and Blizzard didn't have NCSoft looking over their shoulder with a knife.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
FFXI and EvE were games that were developed over a decade ago. So their costs of still doing business is lower especially when you add in the rising costs of inflation which includes the rising costs to develop games. It's like buying a commercial property back in the 90s. The cost of the property will be cheap compared to today's commercial property prices and in some cases taxes. It certainly gives you a huge advantage on how much income you need to generate to remain a profit, it won't be much when you compare it to a competitor who just recently purchased his commercial property.
 
Also I HIGHLY doubt wildstar could server off of a few hundred subs. I mean if that were the case the simple fact of 40 man wouldn't survive unless all players were on one server but then again still think it would be hard to get 40 men. Not to mention I am pretty sure these semi-mega servers costs quite a bit to maintain.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
SE has huge pockets they were able to afford to scrap the project and re-do it. If WS turns out like FFXIV the original Carbine will not have the means to scrap everything and re-do it.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
IMO, server mergers need to happen ASAP if they want to prevent the population decline falling even more sharply. Certain servers feel like absolute ghost towns, some don't, none have a healthy population.
 
This is depressing to look at. And no, the whole "people are working" excuse doesn't fly, a quick look at other game's server status pages show very different situations:
 
----
			
Why are people saying "merging servers is hard work". 
 
It isn't! And that's my professional opinion. 	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
SE has huge pockets they were able to afford to scrap the project and re-do it. If WS turns out like FFXIV the original Carbine will not have the means to scrap everything and re-do it.
 
Also to say WS is a great game now is once again your opinion. The problem is your opinion nor does mine pay the bills. The truth is the latest trend for WS using xfire which is the only measure we can use atm is that it's on a downward decline the simple fact that no servers have opened up also is another trend saying it's not growing.
 
Name a game that has come back from a lot worst?  What SWTOR?
 
We don't even know how well that is doing. Sure it has 2 million users but many could be playing literally for free. They never released how much profit SWTOR was generating and how much more it has generated since going F2P.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
 
I'm not saying they should or shouldn't merge servers as long as they don't merge Evindra (because I want my RP server, but sharding makes the other servers good candidates for a kind of superserver; which may, in the end, be cheaper because you don't have to run all the hardware all at once despite population).  I'm just saying that they've probably got a lot of time and breathing room before they die by attrition, and a huge upside.  One of the reasons they may not be merging servers is that they foresee an eventual population boom.
 
I'm not one to say they should bank on that.  I hardly think they're going to get a million-sub explosion until sometime next year, if ever.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
A screenshot from ... what? 3AM Tuesday morning?  :lol:
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I'm right here with you buddy, I don't want them to merge Evindra either, but if the population stagnates or drops (especially for Dominion) it may be necessary. I think ours is one of the worst servers in terms of population imbalance (blame the faction system, really...)
 
GW2 recently did their megaserver thing and you do see people RPing all about and the non-RPers just kind of don't pay them any mind as usual, so I don't think a megaserver thing would hurt too much.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
A few minutes before I posted.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
So 9am-ish?
----
			Why don't Israel and Palestine just server merge?	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Why don't Israel and Palestine just server merge?
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
You know, ironically, I don't think we have that big of a problem on Evindra, of anyone.  RPers have moved mostly into housing especially, but I was crafting at midnight last night in a packed Academy Corner.  We routinely go medium (which is funny, because we were medium when everyone else was high) and we're only really low during non-peak hours.
 
I think we're lower in pop than at launch, maybe, but we haven't fluctuated quite so much as some of the other servers.  Some started peaking high during launch and don't have more than we do now.  That's a pretty significant drop for them, especially since they don't have RP to keep them in the game.
 
No reason to not combine all the other servers into a megaserver, though, no matter the subs.  EVE has 500k active subs, and only maybe 45k on at peak times at one time.  So even if Wildstar has 500k people, it does no good for server populations if they're not logged in daily and playing the game.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I think they should do what Blizzard and Square have did: Make WildStar a game millions want to pay to play.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Yeah, though if you watch it throughout the day it stays almost exclusively low until 7PM~ EST when 2 or 3 servers eventually bounce to medium.
----
			Maybe it's time to turn off the "sharding?" iono...	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Maybe it's time to turn off the "sharding?" iono...
----
			
I was there during the entire SWTOR launch.  I will say the worst thing they did was to wait too long to merge the servers.  There were thousands of players who could NOT find enough players to do a 5 player event.  I was literally on a planet with 3 players.  There was no way we could do the event - ever.  So what did the brains above do?  They said the same things I see here - we are new and will grow to be the best - so players left in large numbers.  Only AFTER the huge exit did they finally announce the merge - way too late.  
 
My advice to any new MMO - you had better keep your servers full no matter what.  Tools should have been in place to make servers grow and shrink as needed.  But like so many other games that fail - it's always last minute thinking and desperation moves. 
 
Merging servers now is not a bad thing - it keeps guilds full and players happy.  If players cannot find a guild and get enough players to do a raid - it's over.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Hundred thousand, I'm sorry.  I'm still trying to wake up.  Modified the original post.  Definitely not a few hundred; I don't think 3000 dollars would cover their annual electric bill, never mind the raiding population.
 
I will say that FFXI and EVE weren't cheap games when they were made, even being made back in the day.  It doesn't really take that many subscriptions to remain viable.  I can't imagine FFXI (inflation counted) would cost that much less than Wildstar did; it was pretty intense graphically and operationally in its time.  It depends a lot on what they've got running at their home base, though.  Keeping servers running isn't really that expensive.  The money's in the labor for maintenance.
 
I'm not saying they should or shouldn't merge servers as long as they don't merge Evindra (because I want my RP server, but sharding makes the other servers good candidates for a kind of superserver; which may, in the end, be cheaper because you don't have to run all the hardware all at once despite population).  I'm just saying that they've probably got a lot of time and breathing room before they die by attrition, and a huge upside.  One of the reasons they may not be merging servers is that they foresee an eventual population boom.
 
I'm not one to say they should bank on that.  I hardly think they're going to get a million-sub explosion until sometime next year, if ever.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
That seems a bit more close to true.  However, comparing any MMO since WoWs dominant arrival to WoW is foolish and unrealistic.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Actually, they did a few times.  Here's one of the first google links showing their profit doubled after going F2P.
 
Also, I wouldn't trust Xfire numbers because, let's face it, at this point there isn't much that's reliable.  According to Xfire, I'm not playing, for example, nor is anyone else I know (most of my old WoW buddies couldn't give a damn about tournament software).
 
I will say it's almost assured that they've dropped to some degree, I'll agree with that.  Every MMORPG starts with a massive boom in population then loses members to some degree for the next few months; not every game is for everyone.  MMORPG business models are a long game, you can't get money on short-term reactions and results.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Well no FFXI and EvE were cheaper back in the day. They were released in 2002 which means development taken places a few years prior so perhaps late 90s. In fact according to FFXI wiki it cost $17- $25 million and the game needed 200,000 subscribers to break even and start making a small profit.
 
WS estimated budget was around 50-75 million. Which is more than double or triple the price of FFXI which could mean it will need between 350k-500k at the minimum to break even and draw in a profit.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Games were also cheaper to buy back then and subs were normally $10 a month vs the $15 model nowadays. It's all relative to the market and costs.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Or turn on an option, like they had in GW1, to switch shards easily to go to the populated areas with players in them
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Which is my point. Games were cheaper back then because inflation was much lower back then. today everything costs more to produce or consume thanks to inflation. I remember the first XCOM for PSX game released back in 1994 cost below $200k to produce.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Why are people saying "merging servers is hard work". 
 
It isn't! And that's my professional opinion. 
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Yeah, though if you watch it throughout the day it stays almost exclusively low until 7PM~ EST when 2 or 3 servers eventually bounce to medium.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I would agree, except how do you handle players with the same name? From a technical standpoint it isn't hard at all until you have to consider duplicate names. Do you just "reset" all names and let it be first come first serve? That would annoy a lot of folks. This is probably the biggest hang up IMO, there's really no good way to handle it.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
The point I am making with this though is that it is all relative. yes games were cheaper to make back then but the return on investment from players buying and subbing was also lower. So It very easily could have been relative in the aspect of what it took to turn a profit. Yes WS was more to make but so is the amount to buy the game and to sub to it. 
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
From what i can remember EQ and UO sub fee were also $15, same for EvE. I don't know an MMO that had a sub fee below $15.
 
Now the amount the buy the games were a little higher from FFXI to WS stand point like $10 more. However, it'll still take about 350k or more subs for WS to make a profit.
----
			
The biggest fail was from the developers to make the game P2P, EvE is unique game, WoW is unique game(addictive graphic and atmosphere when its made) , The Secret World unique, only unique games going to survive to stay p2p, Wildstar is a wow-clone , if you like this name or not its true, not any wow clone without any unique system going to survive to start as p2p, TESO is going to be F2P sooner or later, every other games turned into F2P, once they realize micropayment means more money , bigger player base.
 
I'm played last night this game with my 7 days trial account, and now today too, at both time the server was Low, only seen 1 player with 6-8 hours gameplay. 1!!! :D I would rather go play diablo 2 if I want to play single grinding.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
The average gamer is 30+ so that makes a lot of sense that most people wouldn't be playing during work hours. I'm not saying that population isn't a problem, just that your particular evidence isn't sound.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Yes, we now their profits double but the question is how much were they making in the beginning?
 
We use Xfire because there is no other alternative. Just like when economist use forecasts, they're always wrong but there no other alternative to collect the data. But generally their trends are right.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Well no FFXI and EvE were cheaper back in the day. They were released in 2002 which means development taken places a few years prior so perhaps late 90s. In fact according to FFXI wiki it cost $17- $25 million and the game needed 200,000 subscribers to break even and start making a small profit.
 
WS estimated budget was around 50-75 million. Which is more than double or triple the price of FFXI which could mean it will need between 350k-500k at the minimum to break even and draw in a profit.
----
			If it helps population imbalance, I don't see how.	
----
			
Hey all,
 
Since it looks like we've got two server merge threads going on, both on the front page, I'm going to go ahead and lock this one up and ask the the discussion be continued over here.	
----