Server Cap or Merge Servers

[Shiamorah 20]

The inevitability is very clear here. Elysium has two options. 

1.) Continue to support and maintain Anathema and Darrowshire, devising new ways to grow and sustain their population

2.) Merge servers.

 

Option one is obviously the preferable one to most players, but the hardest to implement. Obviously, staff will continue to push out new content that Anathema and Darrowshire will receive before Elysium. But the true issue here is the constant comparison of servers. A good example is this: When Elysium first launched, maintaining 12k+ players, they were forced to open Zeth'Kur. The less popular server, some players started shouting out that the server was dying, when its numbers dropped from 7k to 5k. A substantial reason that the dead server meme was so self-prophesying was because population numbers are constantly reflected off of each server. While this is one project, the reality is that each individual server is competing with each other. You can see this, even today. Go into any chat, and tell the players you are new and you were wondering what server to go to. Elysium will be recommended, because it has the strongest population. 

This is not necessary. This type of environment exists because of Elysium's attempts at making their servers capless. Strict caps would be a solution to this, and would have been a solution a long time ago. What I propose in this case is to limit server caps to something like 7k players. This will also improve lag and disconnect issues with the servers. Additionally, open up free transfers from Elysium to Darrowshire or Anathema. Without server caps, there will always be one server dominating over others. By setting a server cap, not only will you be stabilizing Elysium, but you will also be opening the flow of increased population to Darrowshire and Anathema.

 

 

Or... if you choose to continue allowing your own servers to compete against each other, eventually history will repeat itself as it occurred with Zeth'Kur. These servers will continue to lower their population, and players that have invested 50+ days of game time will find their characters unusable and cry out in dismay. It is already happening everywhere around us. Either you examine the current flaws and trends of your servers if you want to attempt to keep them all alive, and attempt to balance your populations, or you let them die and eventually do forced merges/transfers. By not analyzing the current issues going on with your server populations, you are constantly losing more and more players. This is no different than taking off a bandage. A harsh reality is in the future of Elysium, the future of Anathema and Darrowshire. Delaying these issues will only make them worse down the line.

 

I don't necessarily expect there to be discussion about this, but it is just simple to understand that something will eventually be done about these servers, whether it is ways to blossom populations in the smaller servers, or eliminating the servers by merge/transfers. Either way, by not taking a proactive stance you are slowly losing more and more players. Please take some time to consider the future of Elysium, for the sake of all the players who have serious investment here.

[Roxy 8]

This is probably the best suggestion on this matter. 

7k cap is perfect, less competition for mobs and herbs ect. Less lag, While still maintaining a massive population.

And the population on the other two servers should increase, if they would allow transfers. which would benefit elysium as well with getting more testing on their future patches.

[Hurricane2 2]

I do not want a server cap on Elysium.  Boosting the other servers populations at the expense of Elysium's population will only hurt in the long run.  The servers are in their current state due to player choice so there isnt much the devs/gms can do other than maintain a quality experience.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Hurricane2 said:

The servers are in their current state due to player choice so there isnt much the devs/gms can do other than maintain a quality experience.

Quote

there isnt much the devs/gms can do

You mean like adding a cap to the servers so players may be diverted in a less hostile way to the other servers that desperately need new pop?

[Shiamorah 20]

2 hours ago, Hurricane2 said:

I do not want a server cap on Elysium.  Boosting the other servers populations at the expense of Elysium's population will only hurt in the long run.  The servers are in their current state due to player choice so there isnt much the devs/gms can do other than maintain a quality experience.

As Phoosy said below, there is plenty that can be done to mitigate population while still providing an optional experience. In fact, setting a cap would solve issues like lag and wouldn't be working the server as hard.

The reality is, someone needs to be done. Even if staff decide to hold off on that for months, hoping that they will regain population (similar to how Zeth'kur was treated), there will eventually come the time to make a hard decision and one or the other options I posted will have to happen. I don't see any other alternative. The purpose of this thread is to say that we should be proactive with this realization and make changes sooner rather than later, so the servers do not destabilize.

[Hurricane2 2]

5 hours ago, Phoosy said:

You mean like adding a cap to the servers so players may be diverted in a less hostile way to the other servers that desperately need new pop?

Doing that at the expense of Elysium would only give anathema a short term boost and would hurt the project in the long run.  The devs have been trying to steer players to anathema for awhile now and it does not seem to make much of an impact on anathema's pop.  Again that's due to player choice and there isn't much they can do about that beyond what they've already done.

[Shiamorah 20]

3 minutes ago, Hurricane2 said:

Doing that at the expense of Elysium would only give anathema a short term boost and would hurt the project in the long run.  The devs have been trying to steer players to anathema for awhile now and it does not seem to make much of an impact on anathema's pop.  Again that's due to player choice and there isn't much they can do about that beyond what they've already done.

I do not see how this change would hurt the project on any way. You are not forcing any players to do anything, you are setting a realistic limitation on the server. I guarantee you that hundreds and thousands of players would prefer mitigating 10% of their population for a significant boost in performance.

[Hurricane2 2]

Capping the most popular server at 7k would only lower participation in the project overall.  It doesn't usually work out like Cartman's amusement park where it suddenly became popular because he told every one "you can't come".  If you tell people to come back later then eventually they will quit bothering altogether and the server cap will only accomplish decreasing the overall project size.

[Shiamorah 20]

18 minutes ago, Hurricane2 said:

Capping the most popular server at 7k would only lower participation in the project overall.  It doesn't usually work out like Cartman's amusement park where it suddenly became popular because he told every one "you can't come".  If you tell people to come back later then eventually they will quit bothering altogether and the server cap will only accomplish decreasing the overall project size.

This makes no sense, it sets realistic expectations based on server resources and demand. Proper allocation of population improves all servers. The way it is currently is not sustainable and that is not difficult for anyone to realize. Elysium cannot handle migrating all servers together, it already has lag and dc problems as is. If server population is not balanced or even taking measures to balance, they will always be butting heads together and that is what will diminish he population, not the other way around. It is easy to see this. Your perspective is extremely biased towards one server and not the entirety of the project, it is not hard to notice that. 

The only other alternative here is just ignoring it all together, which has consequences for 2/3rds of the project.

 

[Hurricane2 2]

The devs have tried to boost anathema's population and it's not producing results.  That is not due to mismanaged servers, lack of attention to any server or ignoring problems on the part of the devs.  It's because of your fellow players choices.  You call reducing Elysium's pop a "proper allocation of population" but that is merely an opinion and a minority one at that.  The current situation is in fact sustainable.  My perspective is biased to the project, not any one server.

How long is a single server supposed to last?  Anathema has basically been around for 2 years or so?  What could be done to keep it going 3-5 years?  How long can a player be expected to stay before quitting/moving on to something else?  Those are not easy questions/problems for the devs to answer.

[Shiamorah 20]

13 minutes ago, Hurricane2 said:

The devs have tried to boost anathema's population and it's not producing results.  That is not due to mismanaged servers, lack of attention to any server or ignoring problems on the part of the devs.  It's because of your fellow players choices.  You call reducing Elysium's pop a "proper allocation of population" but that is merely an opinion and a minority one at that.  The current situation is in fact sustainable.  My perspective is biased to the project, not any one server.

How long is a single server supposed to last?  Anathema has basically been around for 2 years or so?  What could be done to keep it going 3-5 years?  How long can a player be expected to stay before quitting/moving on to something else?  Those are not easy questions/problems for the devs to answer.

No, it is because the servers have no cap :'D

You have no restrictions on population and the end result is exactly what we see today. Servers competing with each other in the same project. There is no future for Darrowshire and Anathema, simply because Elysium generates a large majority of new players. Why? Because there is no cap. Make cap 7k, open transfers and allow players to move freely if they want whenever off Elysium. This creates real incentive for new players to aim for Darrowshire and Anathema- who wanted to wait in a queue when there are perfectly good alternatives? 

You have a fatalist viewpoint and while you say that you want what is best for the project, your defense against this suggestion is completely tailored to the idea that Anathema and Darrowshire are sinking ships, when that clearly isn't the case. 

The incentive to join Elysium is obvious. It has the largest population. To mitigate that incentive, you apply a population cap and now new players that want to join will either join darrowshire/anathema or have to wait in a queue. This is a far greater incentive to repopulate these servers than anything else previously discussed.

[indi 10]

People aren't going to roll on the already progressed server with vastly less people, we already saw this with Zeth'Kur. Realistically there isn't a whole lot the staff could do beyond what they are already doing to "save" Darrowshire and Anathema. In my opinion those servers have already run their course in terms of content (your average player will probably reach ZG/BWL but not much further beyond that due to the amount of time required for both AQ and Naxx). This along with the "Big Fish" small pond syndrome with Elysium itself being the magnate that keeps this project afloat. 

There are inherent risks setting a cap or opening transfers from a "healthy" realm to one entering in the final phase of its lifespan (Anathema is 2+ years old now right?) that the staff surely know about, its why nothing was ever done to "save" Zeth. 

And yes, they are "sinking" ships whether people like to acknowledge them or not, I remember people telling me Zeth would have been fine with 200 pop, unfortuantely the vast, vast majority of the people playing this project are here for the high pop pvp realm, that is the entire allure of this project, not the scripting or the service, but the population. Nost fundamentally changed how the private server community viewed things, for better or for worse depending on your opinion. No longer is a 1-2k realm "acceptable" to the massive zerg of Vanilla players who seem to roam from server to server.

 

[Shiamorah 20]

12 minutes ago, indi said:

People aren't going to roll on the already progressed server with vastly less people, we already saw this with Zeth'Kur. Realistically there isn't a whole lot the staff could do beyond what they are already doing to "save" Darrowshire and Anathema. In my opinion those servers have already run their course in terms of content (your average player will probably reach ZG/BWL but not much further beyond that due to the amount of time required for both AQ and Naxx). This along with the "Big Fish" small pond syndrome with Elysium itself being the magnate that keeps this project afloat. 

There are inherent risks setting a cap or opening transfers from a "healthy" realm to one entering in the final phase of its lifespan (Anathema is 2+ years old now right?) that the staff surely know about, its why nothing was ever done to "save" Zeth. 

And yes, they are "sinking" ships whether people like to acknowledge them or not, I remember people telling me Zeth would have been fine with 200 pop, unfortuantely the vast, vast majority of the people playing this project are here for the high pop pvp realm, that is the entire allure of this project, not the scripting or the service, but the population. Nost fundamentally changed how the private server community viewed things, for better or for worse depending on your opinion. No longer is a 1-2k realm "acceptable" to the massive zerg of Vanilla players who seem to roam from server to server.

 

What are you referencing here regarding desire for high pop pvp realms (8k+)? Felmyst was planning 3k servers, Crestfall planning 5k servers, all the hype for recent private servers has been focused on servers that have no plans whatsoever for high population servers. I don't know where you are getting this from, unless you are referring to the desire to play a high pop pvp realm 7+ months ago.

 

In terms of all the recent server launches and where this massive zerg goes, making a 7k cap here would still be larger than anywhere else...

[indi 10]

18 minutes ago, Shiamorah said:

What are you referencing here regarding desire for high pop pvp realms (8k+)? Felmyst was planning 3k servers, Crestfall planning 5k servers, all the hype for recent private servers has been focused on servers that have no plans whatsoever for high population servers. I don't know where you are getting this from, unless you are referring to the desire to play a high pop pvp realm 7+ months ago.

 

In terms of all the recent server launches and where this massive zerg goes, making a 7k cap here would still be larger than anywhere else...

Felmyst wasn't a successful launch by any means, I don't see how you can use them as an argument for small cap. Crestfall is still in the very beginning of beta testing, there is a lot of work for us to spend time on and population caps are anything but final.

The high pop realms have been in demand since Nost, Warmane particularly is the biggest offender of "population inflation" with their obscenely high pop realms killing off all their other competition. PlayTBC was also uncapped, as was the successive TBC servers L4G and Hellground before they had to put in caps due to horrific server performance. K2 was a giant server with 8-9k + que in the beginning, another giant project for you to think about. 

The standard is high pop or no pop these days, and Anathema and Darrowshire combined barely sniff the required amount to satisfy the mindless horde that is our community, it is why Elysium is so much larger and successful. People want the high pop.

[Shiamorah 20]

9 minutes ago, indi said:

Felmyst wasn't a successful launch by any means, I don't see how you can use them as an argument for small cap. Crestfall is still in the very beginning of beta testing, there is a lot of work for us to spend time on and population caps are anything but final.

The high pop realms have been in demand since Nost, Warmane particularly is the biggest offender of "population inflation" with their obscenely high pop realms killing off all their other competition. PlayTBC was also uncapped, as was the successive TBC servers L4G and Hellground before they had to put in caps due to horrific server performance. K2 was a giant server with 8-9k + que in the beginning, another giant project for you to think about. 

The standard is high pop or no pop these days, and Anathema and Darrowshire combined barely sniff the required amount to satisfy the mindless horde that is our community, it is why Elysium is so much larger and successful. People want the high pop.

I agree with you on that, but I think the reality of the situation is that the desire for a high population is a something relative. Meaning that players compare three servers against each other in terms of population, which is what I mean in my original post when I say "These three servers are competing against themselves". The larger the disparity between the population amounts, the more influence they have over the pull of new players. You can witness it all the time in any public channel, when new players ask which server they should pick, everyone refers them to Elysium. Darrowshire and Anathema could be perfectly healthy servers, but Elysium will trump over them 100% of the time because of disproportionate population. Setting a server cap would be a huge step into eliminating the disparity, and making Darrowshire and Anathema a more preferable choice. 

As far as server lifespans goes, we have no idea what Elysium plans to do when a server hits the end of patch content, but I can guarantee you they have no plans to just abandon a server and all the players lose their characters. Even if Elysium put their cap down to 7k players, it would still be the largest vanilla server around, and still be competing with every other project.

[indi 10]

Just now, Shiamorah said:

I agree with you on that, but I think the reality of the situation is that the desire for a high population is a something relative. Meaning that players compare three servers against each other in terms of population, which is what I mean in my original post when I say "These three servers are competing against themselves". The larger the disparity between the population amounts, the more influence they have over the pull of new players. You can witness it all the time in any public channel, when new players ask which server they should pick, everyone refers them to Elysium. Darrowshire and Anathema could be perfectly healthy servers, but Elysium will trump over them 100% of the time because of disproportionate servers. Setting a server cap would be a huge step into eliminating the disparity, and making Darrowshire and Anathema are more preferable choice. 

As far as server life goes, we have no idea what Elysium plans to do when a server hits the end of patch content, but I can guarantee you they have no plans to just abandon a server and all the players lose their characters. Even if Elysium put their cap down to 7k players, it would still be the largest vanilla server around, and still be competing with every other project.

You're correct on a lot of things and I'm not disagreeing with the substance to your argument in regards to the three realms competing with one another (which is a problem in itself as you perfectly mention), my disagreement is the execution. I don't believe a population cap will have any meaningful impact on Anathema and Darrowshire's population. The "community" is firmly entrenched on Elysium, trying to get them to budge could have disastrous repercussions on the project's health as a whole which is why I believe the staff haven't done anything just like they didn't do anything for Zeth either. The risk of propping up two ailing servers at the expense of your bread bringer is just not something the staff would attempt im my opinion.

Could be wrong though, your suggestions very well could work, but in my own opinion I don't see that happening.

[Shiamorah 20]

Just now, indi said:

You're correct on a lot of things and I'm not disagreeing with the substance to your argument in regards to the three realms competing with one another (which is a problem in itself as you perfectly mention), my disagreement is the execution. I don't believe a population cap will have any meaningful impact on Anathema and Darrowshire's population. The "community" is firmly entrenched on Elysium, trying to get them to budge could have disastrous repercussions on the project's health as a whole which is why I believe the staff haven't done anything just like they didn't do anything for Zeth either. The risk of propping up two ailing servers at the expense of your bread bringer is just not something the staff would attempt im my opinion.

Could be wrong though, your suggestions very well could work, but in my own opinion I don't see that happening.

I can understand where you are coming from with this, but as I tried to lay out in my OP, the current trend is just ignoring a problem until it's too late. There could have been plenty of things done for Zeth'Kur, and the most obvious one would have been to enforce a server cap at the very beginning so they both had equal populations. In my mind, I don't see any resolution to this situation besides either taking a risk with something, or just letting it do its thing. No matter what happens, there are going to be upset players in a situation like this.

[indi 10]

2 minutes ago, Shiamorah said:

No matter what happens, there are going to be upset players in a situation like this.

Agreed, there realistically isn't many options available to the team to "fix" this problem and the ones that do exist will surely incite the community one way or another.

[QQsya 4]

unmerge the servers, bring back zeth

#FreeDad

[Sirhc 0]

As mentioned above Anathema is too far along in released content and so Indi I agree with you 100%.  I as a new player want to experience the game from the beginning.  Going to a server that puts me behind the power curve is not something I would be willing to do even if transfers were available.  Quite honestly the only fix I see in all this would be a new server with transfers available to existing players on Elysium to include a hard cap on the new server.  The problem however is implementing a system that doesn't allow players to carry over gear not yet released with content.   The other fix could only happen in the distant future when both Anathema and Elysium are on the same timeline with content.  You would then merge the two servers followed by a split of population.  Again how does one balance friends playing with friends without breaking up a happy home.... again as said before anything forced by the DEVS will only create animosity within the community.

[jdavidlol 0]

Darrowshire isn't necessarily in NEED of saving. The pop is low compared to Elysium.. but it has maintained the same average population(1200-1500 average during peak hours since May) for a few months now because some people JUST want PvE. I think Anathema is more likely to drop off to unplayable population levels since it has been slowly declining. I absolutely think a cap should be put on this server... but to be honest I don't know if 7K Cap would help that much since the server is crashing during NA evenings at 5.5k players(assuming the crashes are population related). I can't even imagine what it's like during 10K peaks since I don't play during that time.

I wish they could split the server into Elysium PVP 1 and Elysium PVP 2, open optional server transfers to a second server with the same content progression so guilds could migrate, have a shared cross server Battlegrounds so that BG queues pop all around the clock, and if the server populations drop later on they could merge them back because they are evenly progressed. But then you have to consider PVP ranking, AQ Scarab Lord, and the possibility of guilds falling apart in the transfers. The idea would have been better when the server launched... but it might end up being another Zeth Kur if it happened now. 

I don't really know if they have a lot of good options... they may have to bite the bullet and make a choice that some people do not agree with. Either way... I hope they are working on some sort of plan to fix the server issues. It's a huge bummer... especially in this version of WoW. Getting groups together can sometimes take a while...especially a 40 man raid depending on the guild and time of day. Then the server goes down and all that time gets wasted... people don't log back on.. etc. :/ 

Fingers crossed for a fix or something!

[Smiter 9]

11 hours ago, indi said:

The standard is high pop or no pop these days, and Anathema and Darrowshire combined barely sniff the required amount to satisfy the mindless horde that is our community, it is why Elysium is so much larger and successful. People want the high pop.

I disagree with this to a degree. People just want that "Fresh Server" hype. That is why Elysium is so huge to this day, is because everyone was like OMG NEW THINGS and flocked to Elysium. Before Elysium PvP was launched, Anathema was up to 10k+ population.

The high population of a lot of servers  is that 90% of private server players are just waiting for the next NEW server to open to flock there with results in a huge population on that server.

[Shiamorah 20]

The sad reality is that at this point in time, it is not even worth it to direct new players to Anathema or Darrowshire. Without an official response on how this is being handled, new players joining these servers will be very underwhelmed. Content alone will not be able to drive numbers up, because the content is directed at players who are already max level. Which is great for players that are already in tight knit communities and guilds, but for the rest it is in a dire situation. 

I hope the staff here will devise a plan for these servers before it is too late, but at this point I can't see much happening. Anathema and Darrowshire are already lower concurrent population than Zeth'Kur when it was closed, and the last announcement we had regarding these servers is that they are not intended to merge at this time. 

I don't see any possible solution here besides attempting to ebb the flow of new players from Elysium to Anathema and Darrowshire through a population cap.... Or just closing Anathema and Darrowshire for good, and focusing solely on Elysium. However, Darrowshire is unique because it cannot be compared to Anathema/Elysium due to being a PvE server.

 

My ultimate suggestion is this:

Merge Anathema into Elysium - Name it Elysium PvP. Rename Darrowshire to Elysium PvE. Set a server cap to stabilize current population and encourage others to join Elysium PvE.

 

 

[Jabark 2]

On 06/08/2017 at 3:30 AM, Shiamorah said:

My ultimate suggestion is this:

Merge Anathema into Elysium - Name it Elysium PvP. Rename Darrowshire to Elysium PvE. Set a server cap to stabilize current population and encourage others to join Elysium PvE.

 

 

You can't merge a later patch realm with an earlier patch realm. You'd have to remove loads of items that aren't available in earlier patches, and that's just not happening. I don't see Elysium bumping everyone on Elysium up to Anathema's timeline either, that'll just piss off the vast majority of the community!

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Jabark said:

You can't merge a later patch realm with an earlier patch realm. You'd have to remove loads of items that aren't available in earlier patches, and that's just not happening. I don't see Elysium bumping everyone on Elysium up to Anathema's timeline either, that'll just piss off the vast majority of the community!

There's nothing stopping someone from actually doing the rather large amount of effort to apply an equivalent to the itemization patches on the character DB to remove items wholesale that aren't meant to be present in a lower level patch but time and knowledge. 

Shiamorah actually took a modified form of one of my suggestions which was a bit more drastic:

• Open transfers to Elysium from Anathema and Darrowshire, applying itemization to remove any items that are not meant to be present. Keep a database of all items removed from each player that are derived from quests and re-add those items once the appropriate patch releases.
• Forcibly merge the Anathema and Darrowshire databases of remaining characters, applying itemization to blah blah...to match Darrowshire's current patch.
• Rebrand Darrowshire as Elysium PvE, continue along the same timeline.

Done. We keep our PvE community, Anathema/Darrowshire characters aren't completely screwed by a merger with Elysium (if the player chooses not to transfer), Anathema characters possibly can get a much smoother AQ opening event experience this time around, and the Project continues to provide a home for Nostalrius's legacy that we have to desperately pander to. A lot more complex than this suggestion would imply, but as I said: time and knowledge.

Do I think it's an overall good idea? No, but short of just ignoring the issue I don't see many other options.