When will there be a SERVER MERGE?

I'm going to explain to you why they are doing transfers, not merges. Merges would involve transferring characters of player who quit and aren't coming back. They aren't here to put in a new name or legacy name. Merging them onto another server is just moving people who don't play onto another server, which serves no purpose. Once all the active and dedicated players choose to transfer and do, that server left behind likely will be subject for a merger or closure at a later date.

I'm going to explain to you why they are doing transfers, not merges. Merges would involve transferring characters of player who quit and aren't coming back. They aren't here to put in a new name or legacy name. Merging them onto another server is just moving people who don't play onto another server, which serves no purpose. Once all the active and dedicated players choose to transfer and do, that server left behind likely will be subject for a merger or closure at a later date.

I believe the last statement was that they are "in the cards". But you obviously know more.

Let's clarify here: allowing people to transfer off of a low-pop server to a higher one, then shutting down the server is NOT a merge.

A merge is the buggy, convoluted process of "merging" the software, economies, loot tables, entire server environments of two server clusters into one server cluster. It's a buggy, overly complex way of just allowing people to move off the dead server and shutting it down.

This is what Rift did last year with great success. Weren't around when the server was shut down? Next time you log in, you get a window allowing you to pick a server, pick a server, click login, and voila, everything's moved and you're ingame. Simple as that. Name conflict? You get another window to enter your new name, and that's that. It's literally as fast as logging in normally to transfer to another server.

Why ask for something more complicated that will only take more time and likely result in unplayability? No, we don't need merges, that's an out-dated system.

Let's clarify here: allowing people to transfer off of a low-pop server to a higher one, then shutting down the server is NOT a merge.

A merge is the buggy, convoluted process of "merging" the software, economies, loot tables, entire server environments of two server clusters into one server cluster. It's a buggy, overly complex way of just allowing people to move off the dead server and shutting it down.

This is what Rift did last year with great success. Weren't around when the server was shut down? Next time you log in, you get a window allowing you to pick a server, pick a server, click login, and voila, everything's moved and you're ingame. Simple as that. Name conflict? You get another window to enter your new name, and that's that. It's literally as fast as logging in normally to transfer to another server.

Why ask for something more complicated that will only take more time and likely result in unplayability? No, we don't need merges, that's an out-dated system.

Wait... I get it now. You're arguing semantics.

People are talking about one thing. Population consolidation. How it's done is irrelevant. Players will move. Servers will shut down.

Ok, now I see you DON'T know what server merges are... Merging servers would have nothing to do with software, economies, and loot tables. It would simply be merging the player data.
Server merges would simply be player transfers without the ability to pick the server you want to go to. It also would not have to be simply combining 2 servers.
I can understand wanting the ability to choose the server you go to. It will just make it harder to get the servers more balanced.
With mergers they can group the servers so that most of the merged servers are starting with approximately the same number of players. With players choosing servers, either they constantly change what servers are available (and people get pissed because their friends moved to a server they can't) or you risk too many people going to the same server and other servers still having population issues.
It would also allow them to do things like keep guilds intact.

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For related discussions, please see the following threads:

• Daniel Erickson on Server Population.
• FREE Character Transfers are Coming!
• Free transfers in the future?
• Server population is dropping...

Please also see Dallas Dickinson's reply to the April 27th Community Q&A:


Thank you for understanding.