Unless they open up a large amount of new land, people who have land are going to lose some. The only real subscriber benefit is land, without land, you really dont need the extra labor. These server merges will cause even more people to leave the game once the land rush is over. Think of all the ways people will lose the chance at land, open the servers during working hours when some people cant even play. Open the servers in the middle of the night or crazy early in the morning when some people need to sleep. Whatever they do, I predict another Trion clusterfudge which will cause more people to wake up and realize the true talent behind trion left them years ago.
We also dont know how many servers will be merged. Just merging two will cause half the land owners to lose land. Imagine if they merge three servers together???
"Sean (Murray) saying MP will be in the game is not remotely close to evidence that at the point of purchase people thought there was MP in the game." - SEANMCAD
Since you have zero visibility on what goes on between Trion and XL - your entire post is pure conjecture.
Here is something that is not conjecture. Either Trion did:
A.) Signed a contract to publish a game without giving them the control they thought they had which is apparent when Scapes stated they had a lot of control over the cash shop but now turns out he was wrong as the final contract gives them very little control. Meaning they suck at business and signed a contract allowing XLgames to hammer Trions reputation into the dust
or
B.) they do indeed have more control than your buddy at Trion knows and they do actually suck at game design.
Either way you look at it Trion is not blameless by any means.
"Sean (Murray) saying MP will be in the game is not remotely close to evidence that at the point of purchase people thought there was MP in the game." - SEANMCAD
so server mergers = another failure for the game that trion had hoped would succeed when it failed everywhere else. Just those with the bigger wallets will be upset, after all, it did require subscription AND item shop usage on a frequent basis.
Trion have announced on their forums that mergers will be occurring along with server transfers later this year, either Q3 or Q4.
They state they don't plan to merge servers in the traditional sense, they are planning something different. We all wait to see what they mean by this, because with the non instanced housing a normal merge will upset a lot of people. Lots of players have spent many months building their houses and plots, usually at great expense. To see that wiped would be heartbreaking.
Sounds to me like "opening trial servers" allover again.
Like according to Trion, in fact they never actually closed servers in Rift but OPENED trial servers instead.
Since you have zero visibility on what goes on between Trion and XL - your entire post is pure conjecture.
Here is something that is not conjecture. Either Trion did:
A.) Signed a contract to publish a game without giving them the control they thought they had which is apparent when Scapes stated they had a lot of control over the cash shop but now turns out he was wrong as the final contract gives them very little control. Meaning they suck at business and signed a contract allowing XLgames to hammer Trions reputation into the dust
or
B.) they do indeed have more control than your buddy at Trion knows and they do actually suck at game design.
Either way you look at it Trion is not blameless by any means.
Nobody is blameless. Trion made a bunch of mistakes with AA as this was their first published game, so as with any first in life hindsight is 20/20. Let's see how they do with their next published game, prior experience goes a long way.
In that case, here is to hoping that they don't get suckered into any more deals like the XLGames one
Unless they open up a large amount of new land, people who have land are going to lose some. The only real subscriber benefit is land, without land, you really dont need the extra labor. These server merges will cause even more people to leave the game once the land rush is over. Think of all the ways people will lose the chance at land, open the servers during working hours when some people cant even play. Open the servers in the middle of the night or crazy early in the morning when some people need to sleep. Whatever they do, I predict another Trion clusterfudge which will cause more people to wake up and realize the true talent behind trion left them years ago.
We also dont know how many servers will be merged. Just merging two will cause half the land owners to lose land. Imagine if they merge three servers together???
The four new NA servers created after launch to ease congestion are now pretty much ghost towns. Three of those are in one auction house cluster (AH5) so it would make sense to merge those three servers together (Ezi, Lucius, Calleil). I play on Ezi and the server pop is not too bad but still too low for how the game is meant to be played.
As for the EU servers, I've heard only one of their servers has a decent population, so I suspect most mergers will happen there.
I cant pretend to know how Trion will handle the land in a server merge, but I can offer up what other versions of the game (KN) did, and you should expect something similar to happen.
They removed all owned land from both servers, sent all the blueprints back, and when the new server opened, it was a massive land grab all over again. Neither server had priority, you had to run and fight for the land you got, just like on launch (but worse because everyone is leveled and geared now). I would expect something similar to happen here. The only difference may be if Trion recognizes the need for different time zones and availabilty, and opens up only certain zones and housing areas, and fills them in time slots.
I believe you are right, but in the KN mergers didn't everyone get mailed their house/farm plans, furniture and building materials? So all they had to do was find a plot and build. Of course when you merge there just simply isn't going to be enough plots to go around so many will miss out. Especially guilds who have multiple plots joined with mansions etc.
And of course, if you are not there to log in within the first 5 minutes of the server opening you are screwed. All the plots will go in nano-seconds.
I suspect Trion will know this will lose them customers, but they are willing to wear that because the near dead servers must be losing them money.
It's not about money loss - if it were - they wouldn't wait til Q4 to do this - it would be happing like next week lol.
Higher pop servers provide a better player experience - a better player experience means happier players- a happier player is a customer who is likely to spend more money.
This is why any game merges servers - to improve player experience because that always leads to higher profits.
That's pretty subjective to what makes a better playing experience. I play with multiple guild members who moved to the low pop server I'm on simply to escape the harassment of the high pop servers. That plus it was the only way they could see how to get land in safe zones.
Yes many of the players desperately want the mergers so they can experience bigger battles more often. But there are many carebears enjoying the low population for various reasons.
XLGames certainly are not going to create a new server merge process just for the NA/EU servers, so what happened in Korea and Russia will also happen on the western servers.
They will create a new "target server" for those that will be merged and everyone will have to race for the "best spots". On login on the target server, everyone should find all their resources and deeds from their previous holdings refunded in their inventory. But of course, many will lose out due to launch time-slots, login problems, refund glitches, etc.
Two-into-one-won't-go. So if all the land was taken in the safe zones on both servers (highly likely), then 50% of those landowners will lose their holdings, with no way to get it back.
Trion's PR department will try and spin this all in the most positive way. But, as always, they are just sugar-coating the decisions handed down from XLGames.
Instead of merging servers, why doesn't Trion start working on actually attracting players to the fucking game? Oh, because step 1 would require they stop doing literally everything they're doing that's pushing people away - and that'll never happen.
You know, I wish Trion never picked ArcheAge up. Not saying it would have been perfect with another publisher, but I'm positive another company would have done some things better.
Since you have zero visibility on what goes on between Trion and XL - your entire post is pure conjecture.
maybe , but the server merges supports his theory
given the history of the devs and AA community, this will be a cataclysm of EPIC proportions
something, like this killed all the dinosaurs..maybe this one will bring them back?
Actually no. His theory is that Trion had significant influence on the form the game took in its release to the West, this is not supported by any evidence. He further theorizes that Trion is in a position to alter the game to attract a larger audience, again this is not supported by any evidence.
What is available is evidence that server mergers will happen and I see this as a sign of a low population.
As DMKano said "Since you have zero visibility on what goes on between Trion and XL - your entire post is pure conjecture. "
TRION decided to sell this game in the West
no matter what other influence they have in the process, they still took on a responsability towards those paying customers
no matter how you twist and turn , they still failed on so many levels, and now the numbers show that
Instead of merging servers, why doesn't Trion start working on actually attracting players to the fucking game? Oh, because step 1 would require they stop doing literally everything they're doing that's pushing people away - and that'll never happen.
You know, I wish Trion never picked ArcheAge up. Not saying it would have been perfect with another publisher, but I'm positive another company would have done some things better.
Since you have zero visibility on what goes on between Trion and XL - your entire post is pure conjecture.
maybe , but the server merges supports his theory
given the history of the devs and AA community, this will be a cataclysm of EPIC proportions
something, like this killed all the dinosaurs..maybe this one will bring them back?
Actually no. His theory is that Trion had significant influence on the form the game took in its release to the West, this is not supported by any evidence. He further theorizes that Trion is in a position to alter the game to attract a larger audience, again this is not supported by any evidence.
What is available is evidence that server mergers will happen and I see this as a sign of a low population.
As DMKano said "Since you have zero visibility on what goes on between Trion and XL - your entire post is pure conjecture. "
Agreed, Trion have come in for a lot of flack over this game, which i am not sure they really deserve, as unless they have some kind of control over the games coding, there is not much they can really do to improve/change things, thats not to say that Trion are entirely blameless, but perhaps they are not the devils they are often made out to be, strange though that Trion comes in for such a lambasting and yet XLGames seems to get a relatively free pass, all things considered.
I agree, and its nice to see a few people actually saying this now.
I find it strange people are still defending Trion. They knew what they were doing in all of this, the one thing they're not inept at is making money.
The only reason we keep hearing about XL is because it suits Trion. XL doesn't have to sell its game to the public so they don't care if they get the blame, Trion can rely on players to blame XL and wash their hands of it all, while making a ton of money off the very people who should be at their door.
It's not in Trion's interests to have full control over XL, as then people would realise that as publisher they have to accept responsibility for the game -- people might even realise that as publisher they have 100% responsibility for the game. The developers are completely irrelevant outside of Trion.
I'm 100% sure that Trion will AGAIN make a huge mess of the merging process and we will see the same people defending them here like "you guys don't understand that there is little Trion can do since XL is the evil force behind it all".
Instead of merging servers, why doesn't Trion start working on actually attracting players to the fucking game? Oh, because step 1 would require they stop doing literally everything they're doing that's pushing people away - and that'll never happen.
You know, I wish Trion never picked ArcheAge up. Not saying it would have been perfect with another publisher, but I'm positive another company would have done some things better.
Since you have zero visibility on what goes on between Trion and XL - your entire post is pure conjecture.
I think your opinion on this subject has been tainted beyond reason. Trion's management of this game has been a disaster, when will you admit this fact?
Instead of merging servers, why doesn't Trion start working on actually attracting players to the fucking game? Oh, because step 1 would require they stop doing literally everything they're doing that's pushing people away - and that'll never happen.
You know, I wish Trion never picked ArcheAge up. Not saying it would have been perfect with another publisher, but I'm positive another company would have done some things better.
Since you have zero visibility on what goes on between Trion and XL - your entire post is pure conjecture.
I think your opinion on this subject has been tainted beyond reason. Trion's management of this game has been a disaster, when will you admit this fact?
My question is will AA all of a sudden get better if we blame the right body of people?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
If people want things to change in the game point to xl games, want support, better servers and getting your word out to xl game that unhappy with them, go point to trion.
Is like gpotato with allods all over again, don't blame allods teams just gpotato is evil they was doing it all the problem, then find out was more allods pulling the string, just people got fooled on who was pulling the string, but it seem like same people that getting fooled will happen again to the next game they play.
I'm 100% sure that Trion will AGAIN make a huge mess of the merging process and we will see the same people defending them here like "you guys don't understand that there is little Trion can do since XL is the evil force behind it all".
Mark this post.
XL has already developed a merge process that has occurred in Korea and Russia. That's probably Trion's fault too. Trion has plenty to be taken to task for, but a lot of what is wrong with AA isn't on that list.
Trion needs to give back control of AA to XLGames and call it good. Then maybe, just maybe they could save face and one day regain the trust of players on future projects.
This is yet another reason why Kickstarter games will be the future for the niche MMO market. Having separate devs, backers, and publishers puts too many hands in the pot and is terribly difficult to pull off correctly. Part of me wishes we could fast forward to the end of 2016 when many promising Kickstarter titles will be released or on the verge of being fully released.
Now if you all will excuse me, I have to get back to my next disappointment in the chain of disappointments that has been my gaming experience for the past decade, Skyforge. Why? Because I never learn and this could be the one!
/runs off naked laughing like a madman
Reality crits for 93928716492837469827634 WTF damage.
Your are dead. Resurrect and play the next P2W, imbalanced, released-too-early, buggy, bot-infested, cancerous-community MMOG?
I cant pretend to know how Trion will handle the land in a server merge, but I can offer up what other versions of the game (KN) did, and you should expect something similar to happen.
They removed all owned land from both servers, sent all the blueprints back, and when the new server opened, it was a massive land grab all over again. Neither server had priority, you had to run and fight for the land you got, just like on launch (but worse because everyone is leveled and geared now). I would expect something similar to happen here. The only difference may be if Trion recognizes the need for different time zones and availabilty, and opens up only certain zones and housing areas, and fills them in time slots.
I believe you are right, but in the KN mergers didn't everyone get mailed their house/farm plans, furniture and building materials? So all they had to do was find a plot and build. Of course when you merge there just simply isn't going to be enough plots to go around so many will miss out. Especially guilds who have multiple plots joined with mansions etc.
And of course, if you are not there to log in within the first 5 minutes of the server opening you are screwed. All the plots will go in nano-seconds.
I suspect Trion will know this will lose them customers, but they are willing to wear that because the near dead servers must be losing them money.
It's not about money loss - if it were - they wouldn't wait til Q4 to do this - it would be happing like next week lol.
Higher pop servers provide a better player experience - a better player experience means happier players- a happier player is a customer who is likely to spend more money.
This is why any game merges servers - to improve player experience because that always leads to higher profits.
A lot of players will loose their land they have worked so hard to own and maintain all these months.
Please tell me how loosing land will provide for a "better player experience"?
The money has already been made. The objective now is to get it to a point where they are not bleeding the money made. In that process, they may lose more players but they will remain in the black because their overhead will be manageable. Trion went into this venture knowing there was a niche market for it. They made a lot more initial money than they could have ever imagined with their alpha entry fees. It is now settling into what they thought it would be but their overhead is still large due to the initial on-rush and it is starting to eat into their profits. They are going to make it manageable by down-sizing. This move will down-size the operation and keep the business model profitable. Trion may be wet behind the ears as a gaming company but they are very savvy when it comes to business and making money.
1 Large House, 1 Small House, 1 Large Farm, 1 Small farm per account.
I think this server would be packed.
That and also change crafting. Remove RNG, increase necessary materials or make materials harder to acquire. Then add item degradation so weapons need to be repaired, and eventually replaced. Boom, just fixed the game, and the long term economy. Free of charge.
Were they to do both of those things, they'd have multiple packed servers.
1 Large House, 1 Small House, 1 Large Farm, 1 Small farm per account.
I think this server would be packed.
That and also change crafting. Remove RNG, increase necessary materials or make materials harder to acquire. Then add item degradation so weapons need to be repaired, and eventually replaced. Boom, just fixed the game, and the long term economy. Free of charge.
Were they to do both of those things, they'd have multiple packed servers.
Perfect. Another solution that would also make me happy is if they just removed Apex, Labor and RNG (more/rare mats like you said) and they can even keep the cash shop, but everything should be available in game. (not just sold by the player either, I mean In. Game.) They would make $ on subscription and small optional boosts and cosmetics on the cash shop. Mounts and other useful items should all be avail in game as well for certain achievements. No more lottery boxes!
Now Playing: Bless / Summoners War Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
Instead of merging servers, why doesn't Trion start working on actually attracting players to the fucking game? Oh, because step 1 would require they stop doing literally everything they're doing that's pushing people away - and that'll never happen.
You know, I wish Trion never picked ArcheAge up. Not saying it would have been perfect with another publisher, but I'm positive another company would have done some things better.
I got this far into this string before I found something that I 100% agreed with.
Archeage is a bear of a game that has been turned into a bullish piece of ignorable crap by a company more interested in making the maximum amount of money during the products projected life-cycle rather than extending that life-cycle in any way, shape, or form.
But then I guess that's what you are going to get from a company that has no real stake in its own product right? All they, meaning Trion, are, and have been there for from the start is to invest and recoup money.
Comments
Unless they open up a large amount of new land, people who have land are going to lose some. The only real subscriber benefit is land, without land, you really dont need the extra labor. These server merges will cause even more people to leave the game once the land rush is over. Think of all the ways people will lose the chance at land, open the servers during working hours when some people cant even play. Open the servers in the middle of the night or crazy early in the morning when some people need to sleep. Whatever they do, I predict another Trion clusterfudge which will cause more people to wake up and realize the true talent behind trion left them years ago.
We also dont know how many servers will be merged. Just merging two will cause half the land owners to lose land. Imagine if they merge three servers together???
Trion shouldn't have any games, its a horrible company, driven by people who have no sense of customer service.
Here is something that is not conjecture. Either Trion did:
A.) Signed a contract to publish a game without giving them the control they thought they had which is apparent when Scapes stated they had a lot of control over the cash shop but now turns out he was wrong as the final contract gives them very little control. Meaning they suck at business and signed a contract allowing XLgames to hammer Trions reputation into the dust
or
B.) they do indeed have more control than your buddy at Trion knows and they do actually suck at game design.
Either way you look at it Trion is not blameless by any means.
Sounds to me like "opening trial servers" allover again.
Like according to Trion, in fact they never actually closed servers in Rift but OPENED trial servers instead.
In that case, here is to hoping that they don't get suckered into any more deals like the XLGames one
The four new NA servers created after launch to ease congestion are now pretty much ghost towns. Three of those are in one auction house cluster (AH5) so it would make sense to merge those three servers together (Ezi, Lucius, Calleil). I play on Ezi and the server pop is not too bad but still too low for how the game is meant to be played.
As for the EU servers, I've heard only one of their servers has a decent population, so I suspect most mergers will happen there.
That's pretty subjective to what makes a better playing experience. I play with multiple guild members who moved to the low pop server I'm on simply to escape the harassment of the high pop servers. That plus it was the only way they could see how to get land in safe zones.
Yes many of the players desperately want the mergers so they can experience bigger battles more often. But there are many carebears enjoying the low population for various reasons.
XLGames certainly are not going to create a new server merge process just for the NA/EU servers, so what happened in Korea and Russia will also happen on the western servers.
They will create a new "target server" for those that will be merged and everyone will have to race for the "best spots". On login on the target server, everyone should find all their resources and deeds from their previous holdings refunded in their inventory. But of course, many will lose out due to launch time-slots, login problems, refund glitches, etc.
Two-into-one-won't-go. So if all the land was taken in the safe zones on both servers (highly likely), then 50% of those landowners will lose their holdings, with no way to get it back.
Trion's PR department will try and spin this all in the most positive way. But, as always, they are just sugar-coating the decisions handed down from XLGames.
While they're at it..
1 Server
Subscription Only (no Apex)
No Cash Shop
Restrictions:
1 Large House, 1 Small House, 1 Large Farm, 1 Small farm per account.
I think this server would be packed.
TRION decided to sell this game in the West
no matter what other influence they have in the process, they still took on a responsability towards those paying customers
no matter how you twist and turn , they still failed on so many levels, and now the numbers show that
thats all the VISIBILITY i need
I agree, and its nice to see a few people actually saying this now.
I find it strange people are still defending Trion. They knew what they were doing in all of this, the one thing they're not inept at is making money.
The only reason we keep hearing about XL is because it suits Trion. XL doesn't have to sell its game to the public so they don't care if they get the blame, Trion can rely on players to blame XL and wash their hands of it all, while making a ton of money off the very people who should be at their door.
It's not in Trion's interests to have full control over XL, as then people would realise that as publisher they have to accept responsibility for the game -- people might even realise that as publisher they have 100% responsibility for the game. The developers are completely irrelevant outside of Trion.
I'm 100% sure that Trion will AGAIN make a huge mess of the merging process and we will see the same people defending them here like "you guys don't understand that there is little Trion can do since XL is the evil force behind it all".
Mark this post.
I think your opinion on this subject has been tainted beyond reason. Trion's management of this game has been a disaster, when will you admit this fact?
My question is will AA all of a sudden get better if we blame the right body of people?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
If people want things to change in the game point to xl games, want support, better servers and getting your word out to xl game that unhappy with them, go point to trion.
Is like gpotato with allods all over again, don't blame allods teams just gpotato is evil they was doing it all the problem, then find out was more allods pulling the string, just people got fooled on who was pulling the string, but it seem like same people that getting fooled will happen again to the next game they play.
Trion needs to give back control of AA to XLGames and call it good. Then maybe, just maybe they could save face and one day regain the trust of players on future projects.
This is yet another reason why Kickstarter games will be the future for the niche MMO market. Having separate devs, backers, and publishers puts too many hands in the pot and is terribly difficult to pull off correctly. Part of me wishes we could fast forward to the end of 2016 when many promising Kickstarter titles will be released or on the verge of being fully released.
Now if you all will excuse me, I have to get back to my next disappointment in the chain of disappointments that has been my gaming experience for the past decade, Skyforge. Why? Because I never learn and this could be the one!
/runs off naked laughing like a madman
Reality crits for 93928716492837469827634 WTF damage.
Your are dead. Resurrect and play the next P2W, imbalanced, released-too-early, buggy, bot-infested, cancerous-community MMOG?
/clicks yes
Yup, I'm a sap.
A lot of players will loose their land they have worked so hard to own and maintain all these months.
Please tell me how loosing land will provide for a "better player experience"?
http://www.entropiapartners.com/?r=22415
The money has already been made. The objective now is to get it to a point where they are not bleeding the money made. In that process, they may lose more players but they will remain in the black because their overhead will be manageable. Trion went into this venture knowing there was a niche market for it. They made a lot more initial money than they could have ever imagined with their alpha entry fees. It is now settling into what they thought it would be but their overhead is still large due to the initial on-rush and it is starting to eat into their profits. They are going to make it manageable by down-sizing. This move will down-size the operation and keep the business model profitable. Trion may be wet behind the ears as a gaming company but they are very savvy when it comes to business and making money.
That and also change crafting. Remove RNG, increase necessary materials or make materials harder to acquire. Then add item degradation so weapons need to be repaired, and eventually replaced. Boom, just fixed the game, and the long term economy. Free of charge.
Were they to do both of those things, they'd have multiple packed servers.
Perfect. Another solution that would also make me happy is if they just removed Apex, Labor and RNG (more/rare mats like you said) and they can even keep the cash shop, but everything should be available in game. (not just sold by the player either, I mean In. Game.) They would make $ on subscription and small optional boosts and cosmetics on the cash shop. Mounts and other useful items should all be avail in game as well for certain achievements. No more lottery boxes!
Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
I got this far into this string before I found something that I 100% agreed with.
Archeage is a bear of a game that has been turned into a bullish piece of ignorable crap by a company more interested in making the maximum amount of money during the products projected life-cycle rather than extending that life-cycle in any way, shape, or form.
But then I guess that's what you are going to get from a company that has no real stake in its own product right? All they, meaning Trion, are, and have been there for from the start is to invest and recoup money.
The business model is bad from the top down.