Server merges for cost effectivization and population increase.

[Undertanker 88]

3 hours ago, Storfan said:

 

TLDR: 1-2k pop was healthy in vanilla. It is not anymore due to a major shift in the way we play.

Per faction.

Am I the only one who played on a full realm?   /who giving 2.1k+ results any weekday, and raid nights up to 700 in queue.

[Storfan 24]

14 minutes ago, Zil said:

I think that's more to do with the hardware limitations in 2005. There's a reason why the server caps got bigger with each expansion instead of just creating more realms for the playerbase increase. I'm sure if blizzard could have had 4k people playing on a realm back in '05 they would've.

^This pretty much. The limiting factor in 2005 was hardware for the most part. The limiting factor in 2017 is software. As the Nostalrius team said, the server software starts to get cranky at around 15k players and that is one of the main factors of the Nostalrius lag.

[Ragingducks 9]

54 minutes ago, Zil said:

I think that's more to do with the hardware limitations in 2005. There's a reason why the server caps got bigger with each expansion instead of just creating more realms for the playerbase increase. I'm sure if blizzard could have had 4k people playing on a realm back in '05 they would've.

I agree that hardware was a huge limitation for Blizzard, but that fact alone shaped the way the world was designed.

The amount of players that each zone can handle in a healthy manner may be higher than the Vanilla cap? Yes, but after a certain point it feels unnatural, because you have to fight for mobs, herbs and you spend too much time running back to your corpse because PVP is too unnaturally frequent.

[Orpheus148 0]

Maybe I'm the odd one out but I actually like the 3k-4k zone...  lately on anathema it's been kinda high to me. Farming has been extremely difficult.

[Syanis 2]

I'd actually suggest merging all the pvp servers into one while allowing for a brief time transfers to darrowshire from elysium and zeth. To have a stable population a server needs to hang around 3-5k from offpeak to peak. One has to remember at any given time there is likely a couple hundred gold farmer accounts online on each server or bank alts so if a pop says 1500 more likely its 1200  when minus the crap.

[Fatorc-Darrowshire 0]

Darrowshire horde is dying out

[Playtime 0]

I doubt they are going to merge at this point. If they merge zk and elysium the horde/alliance ratio will get even worse.

[Playtime 0]

If they merge what will happen to our chars? we cant have both horde and alliance on the same server can we?

[Revo 34]

1 hour ago, Playtime said:

If they merge zk and elysium the horde/alliance ratio will get even worse.

how?

 

1 hour ago, Playtime said:

we cant have both horde and alliance on the same server can we?

yes we can, lul

[Playtime 0]

Pretty sure thats not Blizzlike 

[Muldreg 3]

5 hours ago, Playtime said:

Pretty sure thats not Blizzlike 

May not be blizzlike, but it is possible, as I have a level 40 something character on each faction.

As far as the OP, I do not like the idea of merging the servers yet. I do think it will be necessary at some point, but as someone still leveling up a character on Elysium I would prefer to not add even more chaos into the some of the mostly already cluttered zones.

I do agree that it sucks for ZK players at the moment, if during a persons peak playing hours the population does not seem to fit well with what they are trying to accomplish. Looking at the website now shows ~6800 on Elysium and ~1500 on ZK. Would seem that each server may be healthier if it was somewhere in the 4000-6000 range, but that's just my opinion. 

Edited March 16, 2017 by Muldreg

[Jimmy 2]

Clearly the answer is to merge Anathema and Darrowshire and to make it a PvP server. Too many Allies feeling safe on a PvE realm for my liking.

[Jubilee 0]

Please seriously consider this.  I play on Anathema and am beginning to have little incentive to log on anymore as more and more of the friends I've played with since Nostalrius are quitting.  I'm sick of hearing people saying 2.5k population is healthy and was representative of "high pop" realms back in the day.  The number one selling point Nostalrius had was it's population since it made the server feel so alive.  Population on all four realms are consistently plummeting and something needs to be done to remedy this sooner rather than later.

[Muldreg 3]

I do not ever see Anathema, Elysium, & Zeth'kur being merged into one UNLESS Elysium and Zeth'kur reach the same patch as Anathema. Currently Anathema is, I believe, 4 or 5 patches ahead of the other two servers. That is AV, BWL, and ZG all out already (and probably almost completely farmed to full BiS). 

Maybe someday the populations across all three of the PvP servers will be so low, that a merge will be necessary to save money and keep the remaining player base happy, but at the moment it isnt going to happen.  Especially without the two newest servers having had time to catch up to the patch that Anathema is currently on.

The best any of you wanting a merge might get is a Elysium and Zeth'kur merge, as they were both new servers that were created within two weeks of each other and on the same patch. Even then, I do not see this happening anytime in the near future.

Edited March 17, 2017 by Muldreg

[Revo 34]

On 14.3.2017 at 5:31 PM, Zil said:

I think that's more to do with the hardware limitations in 2005. There's a reason why the server caps got bigger with each expansion instead of just creating more realms for the playerbase increase. I'm sure if blizzard could have had 4k people playing on a realm back in '05 they would've.

just because you can have 10k friends (on facebook), it doesnt mean its better than before, having much less. technical inventions do not always have to be beneficial for everyone and every case. maybe blizzard was not able to have a 10k cap back then, or the effort it wouldve taken just didnt justify its profit, it still could be better to have a lower pop. especially if a lot of other aspects of the game are also tuned to match this population (world size, spawn rates, etc)

saying blizzard raised the pop cap in later expansions does also automatically mean its a good thing. blizzard also put flying mounts, LFG/R and many other terrible things in the game in later expansions. changes do not always mean improvements and bigger numbers do not have to mean "better"

 

however, if the pop of a server drops below 1k, its getting critical imo. but this is self made and a result of the latest drama

Edited March 17, 2017 by Revo

[Ragingducks 9]

Blizzard increased the cap also because the world got incommensurably bigger with very expansion added.

[indi 10]

Merge Zeth'Kur and Elysium - Transfers from Elysium just wouldn't work like you'd like them to.

This will consolidate all the GMs onto one server versus spreading them out between two PvP servers, this will also save the project a lot of money and development man hours.

The population has dropped enough on both realms to warrant a merger, so why not do it?

[killerduki 54]

Smells like Teen Spirit :

My Suggestion long time ago https://forum.elysium-project.org/topic/31392-dont-open-4th-server/

/Kind regards Killerduki

[cargalia 2]

Let's merge and get a queue then talk about multiple servers again. There's a suggestion sub forum, use it. Idiot.

[Lauren 2]

2 hours ago, indi said:

Merge Zeth'Kur and Elysium - Transfers from Elysium just wouldn't work like you'd like them to.

This will consolidate all the GMs onto one server versus spreading them out between two PvP servers, this will also save the project a lot of money and development man hours.

The population has dropped enough on both realms to warrant a merger, so why not do it?

should have leveled on Elysium like a man if you didn't want to get stuck playing with 17 people during peak hours.   We don't want you here, it's crowded enough already.

[indi 10]

4 minutes ago, Lauren said:

should have leveled on Elysium like a man if you didn't want to get stuck playing with 17 people during peak hours.   We don't want you here, it's crowded enough already.

Thankfully more goes into the consideration of merging servers than just "I leveled through STV with 10,000 Chinese players, so because of that we should let another server completely die while ours loses population as well!".

Zeth originally averaged 5-6k, I don't think anyone really expected the server to die this quickly and not stabilize around 2.5k-3k, so why not merge? It will be good for the entire project outside of a few pissed off levelers and maybe the mafia.

[Lauren 2]

That wasn't my point at all, my point was that you chose to level on a server that was very obviously destined to be less populated, and now you want to leave because the population is too low.  Just level a character on Elysium if you want to play here.  Merging the servers would upset the 10k elysium players, and probably more than half of the 4k zeth'kur players, so why would they even consider that?

[Lauren 2]

I wouldn't be against them opening a limited amount of transfer from Zeth ---> Elysium since there are clearly people who want to leave, but merging the servers is retarded.  There is not a whole lot to do on Elysium, so the competition is already extremely fierce since it's a new server.  This server has nearly the pop of nostalrius during BWL, and we aren't even at Dire Maul yet.... at launch Nostalrius had 1/4 of this population.. it is a clusterfuck, a merger would be an absolute nightmare.

[indi 10]

5 minutes ago, Lauren said:

That wasn't my point at all, my point was that you chose to level on a server that was very obviously destined to be less populated, and now you want to leave because the population is too low.  Just level a character on Elysium if you want to play here.  Merging the servers would upset the 10k elysium players, and probably more than half of the 4k zeth'kur players, so why would they even consider that?

There isn't "10k elysium players" anymore, try 6-7k. A combined server would put us around 8k on big time peaks, maybe 9k if we were lucky and the population didn't continue to drop week by week.

The issue has gone beyond "lol you rolled on the lower pop server" to the project as a whole starting to feel the effects of population loss.

Right now the project is divided by four different servers, including Zeth'Kur which costs 310 Euros per month to host. That is just not tenable to continue supporting and funding a server that will soon dip below the four digit mark on average. There is more to think about than feeling entitled that your realm should be closed off because you think the leveling was harder or something.

Edited March 18, 2017 by indi

[Lauren 2]

It's sad that I have to explain this to you, but not all of those who play on this server are online simultaneously.   There are 10k active players on Elysium, that doesn't mean there are 10k online at all times.  I mean even your cute little graphs show that the realm regularly reaches 7.5k, so how do you figure adding the >2k from Zeth'kur will = 8k?  If you took this time and spent it leveling on Elysium instead, I think you would be much happier with the result, since they're not merging.

Side note, the data just shows that Elysium has actually been quite stable, especially since the recent drop coincides with the release of Hellgrounds.. Zeth'kur on the other hand is admittedly dwindling.   The solution isn't to just throw everyone from ZK onto Elysium though, if anything they need to open up a limited opportunity transfer where a certain amount of people can transfer to Elysium(only from Zeth'kur).

You're viewing this situation only from your own perspective, yes, Zeth'kur is struggling;  however Elysium is struggling as well, with oversaturation.   You aren't taking into account the fact that the people on Elysium don't want 2000 more active players here.