Merger – Page 2 – MMO Fallout

LOTRO Will Merge Down To Ten Servers

We learned back in May of Turbine’s plans to merge the Lord of the Rings Online servers, but the company has finally come forward with more specific details on the hows, the whens, and the wheres. All but ten servers will close as part of the merger, five in the US and five in Europe, with players from affected servers being given free transfers to any one of the ten remaining.

We will begin the transfer process by opening the test world, Bullroarer, for character copy. We will then open transfers between the 10 remaining worlds. Then the worlds that are closing will be opened for transfer, a few at a time, in the order they are listed below. Please watch the website, forums, and launcher for announcements regarding timing. *Note: Brandywine will be unavailable for incoming transfers for a time until population and load can be re-evaluated on new hardware.*

While ten servers remain, the announcement notes that Brandywine will not be available as a transfer destination until the server can be moved to upgraded hardware.

(Source: Official Website)

Everquest 2 To Merge Servers

Daybreak Game Company has announced that servers for Everquest II will be merged at some point in the near future. In the latest producer letter, Holly Longdale announced that servers will be merged ahead of upcoming cross-server dungeon tech, with more details to follow in the coming months.

We’ll give you specific dates as we get closer. This is very challenging work that will branch off from our Cross-Server Dungeon work. Luckily, what we plan to do for true Cross-Server Dungeons & Battlegrounds logically helps us merge characters to new servers. We’ve already had our incredible coders working on the foundation of cross-server processes for a few months already. Our database changes earlier this year were the first step.

Everquest 2 players can also look forward to time-locked progression servers.

(Source: Everquest 2)

City of Steam Merging US Servers

City of Steam developer Mechanist Games has announced that the three US servers will be merged into one, bringing gamers together and dealing with waning populations. The merger is set to take place on October 21st and is expected to require four to five hours of downtime. Players from servers 2 and 3 will receive compensation in the form of subscription time and resources to compensate for the head start that players on server 1 received by launching several months ahead of the other two.

European players can fire an email off to Mechanist Games to receive a similar compensation.

(Source: City of Steam)

Rift Frees Inactive Character Names

Losing your character name due to a server merger sucks, especially if you can’t find a new name because all of the good ones are taken up by people who haven’t logged in since the game first launched. The good news is that players who do end up losing their names when the servers merge on October 23rd will have a bigger pool of alternatives to choose from. Trion has announced that characters who have been inactive for a long time will have their names reset when the servers merge.

Trion has not detailed exactly what counts as “inactive,” but characters that fall into this pool will be contacted via email to warn account holders to log in before it is too late. If you don’t log in, well that’s on you.

If one of your characters is going to be impacted by this change, you’ll be getting an email from us in the next day or two with instructions. If you are one of these inactive characters and want to keep your name, you’ll just need to log in with that character before October 23rd.

(Source: Rift Junkies)

Neverwinter Readying Server Mergers

Neverwinter’s upcoming server merger is no surprise, the company has been straightforward about the fact that the three servers were there to spread out launch traffic as much as possible, and that they would be combined as soon as possible. In an FAQ posted to the Neverwinter forums, Perfect World has noted that the merger is close to being ready and will be rolled out as soon as possible.

We have always been fans of the single-shard model, and like our previous games, we’ve always wanted to optimize Neverwinter’s infrastructure to be able to meet this goal. We are excited to be close to meeting this goal and are excited about allowing all players in our game world to be able to communicate and group with one another.

The good news is that thanks to Perfect World’s unique handle system, players do not need to worry about changing their character name or guild name even if there are duplicates. When the merger does go through, all auctions will automatically expire and either sell to the highest bidder or return to the seller if there are no bids. Astral Diamond exchange orders will be withdrawn as well, and all mail and currencies will be merged to the new server. There is no timeline on when the merger will take place other than “very soon.”

Check out the entire FAQ at the link below.

(Source: Neverwinter)

Age Of Conan Implements Patchless Events

Don’t you hate temporary events in MMOs? Forgetting the other issues around the time-limited nature of the event itself, then you have to put up with the obnoxious issue of the game requiring a patch (and thus downtime) both before the event begins and once it ends. Wouldn’t it be easier if there was a way to, oh, let’s say update an MMO with temporary event content without having to patch the servers? Well you are in luck! Age of Conan’s latest Game Director letter details a new system put into action with the recent fifth anniversary event. From now on, Funcom no longer has to patch the games to boot up or wind down a game event.

The new system allows us to create events and activate them whenever we wish. This means that we can run events on the fly, without taking down the servers and escalate them on the fly, as we did each day of the 5th Anniversary event. It means that a GM can kick start one of these events in the game by running a simple command. Obviously this has many applications, but the upshot of it is this – you can expect to see a wider variety of events in Age of Conan going forward.

The letter also reminds us that the merger of servers with similar rulesets is still coming this summer, along with a new network layer to improve server stability after everyone is tossed into one location.

(Source: Age of Conan)

The Old Republic Closing Asia Pacific Servers

In their attempt to respond to ongoing community concerns, Bioware asked players on the Asia Pacific servers what they wanted to do about low population issues. Rather than merge the three APAC servers down to one, given that each represents a different playset (PvP, PvE, RP-PvE), the decision has been made to merge each server into an appropriate North America server. On the Old Republic forums, Bioware Community Manager Eric Musco posted the following:

Mastar Dar’Nala (PvP) will transfer to The Bastion (PvP)
Gav Daragon (RP-PvE) will transfer to Begeren Colony (RP-PvE)
Dalborra (PvE) will transfer to The Harbinger (PvE)

There is no current date on when the servers will be merged.

(Source: The Old Republic)

TERA: Buy 1 Get 1 Free, Amazon

What is better than one copy of TERA? Endless shrimp at Red Lobster is not a valid response. The answer is TWO copies of TERA for the price of one. Moving along from the shellfish, Amazon is currently running a deal on the digital version of TERA:

Until September 22nd, you can pick up TERA for $9.99 USD (an 80% discount). With it, you will receive a promotional credit for $9.99 which can only be redeemed on TERA. The credit is good until October 15th, but you will have to actually buy TERA before September 22nd. An unusual, and rather unnecessarily complicated method of delivering the key, but what can you do?

The moves comes on the forefront of TERA’s server merger in North America, bringing the number of servers from eleven to three. En Masse is also introducing a new protection on accounts: deleting characters now requires a seven day wait if that character is above level five. The cool down timer for joining guilds is also being increased to two weeks.

(Source: TERA Website

TERA Merging Down To 3 Servers

Good news, TERA players. Since the MMO launched, you have created two and a half million characters, formed more than fourteen thousand guilds and over a thousand Vanarch candidates, and over three hundred fifty thousand of you newbies died on the starter island. What more, you newbies dying are precisely the reason why En Masse will be merging servers later this year. Of course I’m exaggerating. Due to low population metrics on a large number of servers, En Masse Entertainment has decided to perform a merger this fall.

But they aren’t seeing this as a bad thing:

Where some might look on this as a negative, I feel differently. By combining our servers, we facilitate a more unified community and give players a more full, alive world where finding groups, locating rare items (for lower prices!), and getting into dungeons quickly are the norm. Most importantly, combined servers will allow us to run more regular, player-focused events where we get to interact with our players.

There are plenty of plans for new content on the horizon, with player events and holiday events coming soon. The eleven current servers will be merged down to three: one of each game type (PvE, PvP, RP). Players will be required to delete characters if they have more than 8 on a server post-merge. Names will be offered on a first-come first-serve on who logs in first after the merge.

(Source: TERA)

(Also: Merger FAQ)

Age of Conan's Upcoming Single Server Technology

I know what you are thinking: “Crom… grant me one request. Grant me single server technology! And if you do not listen, then to HELL with you!” You aren’t? Well, is this your card? Funcom’s recently launched The Secret World carried a rather significant upgrade to the Dreamworld engine. The Secret World runs on one server with several dimensions, allowing players to group up with one another even if their “home” dimensions are not the same. This also allows players with friends on other continents to play seamlessly and without the need for a separate account or subscription.

Well that tech is coming to Age of Conan. According to a recent blog post, on August 7th/8th, Funcom will be updating Age of Conan to allow for the future consolidation of databases. When servers are finally merged, Age of Conan will be left with one server of each type (PvE, PvP, Blood and Glory) for each region (NA and EU). Unfortunately due to the manner in which Age of Conan was coded, long before the single server technology was even thought of, implementing the cross-continent technology from The Secret World is impossible and players from North America and Europe will remain separated.

And yes, a server merger by any other name is still a server merger. According to several of my Age of Conan on-the-field informants, Funcom had expressed interest in combining the separate server types into one server. This may be confirmation that such a merger will not happen for an unknown reason.

(Source: Age of Conan Forums)

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It:

Spread It: