111543-servers-merging-with-new-server-tech-ya-rightas-soon-as-someone-designs-it

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Frost (dev) says they are looking into megaserver technology.  I find this funny as looking into using new tech to hide how few servers this game actually needs from the media would be a ways off still.  Looking into trying out new server tech is probably not a good idea as there are so many other problems that seem to be more important.  It would be best if they just put all of North America onto 3 or 4 servers which would probably be about right with todays current server populations.
 
There is a strong rumour that the reason they have not been cannibalizing all the servers together is that they are trying to hide the health of the games population from the world and media in their first quarter financial report (super important during the games first quarter release).  Any businessman can tell you that the uppermost management stepping down right before the quarterly report is bad juju at any company.  A sign of negative subscribership and declining servers at a time when they should be filling up and/or expanding is very disconcerting to investors like NCSoft.  Once the gaming news community were to see this, you can bet there would be a ton of articles about "F2P Around the Corner for WS?" or "Carbine grossly over estimates subscription numbers coming out of the starting gates", so on and so on.
 
Combine the above with the fact that the president recently stepped down from Carbine (before someone white knights me here citing his health issues, note that he has beaten his cancer and it is definitely behind him now).  He did a great job getting this game through design phase and has decided to move on to working at another company while at the same time still consulting for Carbine.....which is another negative indicator....if he says he is quitting Carbine to spend more time with family, then why is he moving on to work at another company while at the same time consulting for Carbine?  Doesn't sound like much of a family vacation to me.
**In my opinion** What we have here is very clearly a change in leadership brought on either by NCSoft (the investor) or by internal.  Many players stated months ago that some big executive changes would forcibly happen if game changes did not happen fast, and here we are.  Ultimately there is no benefit to speculating on whether or not he was shown the door or stepped out on his own so there isn't much more to be said on the subject imo.
 
What looked good on paper- designing a full-on "AAA" MMO for the hard-core player ultimately doesn't work financially.  Some would say it doesn't really work in any way as it creates a "toxic" gaming environment.  What do you get when you mix primarily hard-core raiders along with the 'other' players made up of casual to medium core?  You get a toxic environment.  I mean while things have cooled down a bit recently, up until now it has been a battle between the white knight hard-core players and the 'filthy casuals'.  This is so prevalent that the forums seem to be painted with complaints, and the words "Filthy Casual" and "White Knighting as a Hard-Core Player" have literally become common words around here.  The toxic environment will go away once they start throwing some bones to the "Filthy Casuals" I am sure, but who knows.....a lot of the casual and mid core player base have already left.
 
The Glorious Guilty Issues (thank goodness many are being worked on now):
 
The other issues that are all fair sized problems are the gating with the attunement.  Personally I like attunement, but a lot of people really hated it and left over it.  A fix is in the works apparently.
The LFG or LFD had and still has some big problems.  I wont get into the problems, you know them.  I think they have gotten better a little bit lately.
Itemization of gear has been a massive problem where you put in tons of time and effort only to get a crappy blue chest piece for your gold or silver SSM run that is plastered with 2 earth slots.  In WS's defence the itemization is being worked on (only on the rune slot side of things). With slots improved, the crappy blues with unrewarding stats will still be there in vet dungeons.
People have complained about Adventure loot, but I think its perfect as is.  I think players were spoiled early on with all epic adventure rewards that were and still are better than Vet Dungeon gear in many cases.
 
I could go on....but you know what?   I think its all fixable, but did they wait too long to realize their folly and start working these issues?  Clearly its been too long as server populations are ghost towns on a lot of servers.  I mean its not like they don't have this awesome game already designed up right?  If they made some massive sweeping changes things could be on track in 3-4 months possibly.  Making those changes as fast as possible is the big challenge before there is nobody left to play the game.  So Wildstar and Carbine please swallow your pride a bit and do what needs to be done...like merging servers, fixing bugs, giving something other than dirty stinky cupcaking dailies for the casual and mid core players to do at level 50 that gives reasonable rewards. 
 
We love your game, it just has a lot of problems....with the recent management changes lets hope things get on course so that we can start to get some of those players subscriptions back here again.  It seems as though you are commiting to change...so lets wait and see!	
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Hello,
 
There are already active threads on each topic discussed here. Instead of creating a new thread, please continue the discussions in the active ones. 
Population and technology
Gaffer
Attunement 
 
Thank you.
- Team WildStar 	
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