Server Merge Ideas

I approve.

keep it up, I know where the rest of the thumbtacks aretl;dr: come to asura

Honestly they should probably add more instances of instanced content regardless Fenrir is pretty far from overcrowded and I still have to wait occasionally for BCs and stuff (of course I think part of the problem is a lot of people are soloing now instead of partying up).

I remember days of overcrowding when like 6k people were online, shout groups for stuff it was great. Then again the world was smaller then in the sense that the game wasn't completely top heavy and the entire world was useful, not the world is physically larger but most of it is useless.

That said I think a server merge is due, on Fenrir the AH is barren, most of my things won't sell after sitting for 9 days for 1 gil, and shouting for people is often an exercise in futility.

Alternatives to proper server mergers could be:
1. merge all the AH to one. This would likely fix some of the economic issues (of course others are game play driven, useless items are useless, but mildly useful stuff should see a small tick and supply and demand)
2. potentially do something like this: make the chocobo race area merged between all servers people can yell, party up and bazaar there. When you exit you go back to your own server or the server of anyone in your party. Obviously people can quit and hang out on the 'new' server. But once they went back they'd need to party up again to move. (The game would probably also need to add the home world as a surname or something to each character when you entered the racing area or moved to a different world).

The existing infrastructure would need to be completely revamped to support either of those, which isn't going to happen. Cross-server play is just never going to happen with the existing engine and logistics.

They do need to do something about BCNM "instances" though. Trusts and settable difficulty have completely changed how those those things are consumed.

I hope I'm wrong, but I bet they'll never instance BCNMs. They've even expressed unwillingness to increase the number of battlefields/zone, which would probably be less complicated than porting mobs/mob behavior and hooking up the BCNMs to their instancing system.

I don't think this game even has real instancing, aka dynamic zone creation. Instead they just make three to five copies of a battle field and whenever you enter you get assigned to one. I just don't think they will bother going back and creating more copies for preexisting battlefields, just the way it is.

It doesn't, and that's why I put "instances" in the quotes.

Anyway, I'm holding out the completely unrealistic hope that they'll use some of their newfound console freedom to make some changes there. I also am hoping for a supermodel to deliver my Powerball winnings by next week.

The game has "instances" in the sense that there's a server that creates copies of "instanced" zones on demand (Salvage, MMM zones, etc.)

It doesn't have dynamic zone creation in the sense that maps change between instances, but there are some differences in different instances of the same zone (Mad Bomber position, etc.)


BCNMs are not instanced at all. Those zones are just 3 battlefields with a common lobby area.

Yeah, I should have clarified. I was talking about BCNMs in particular.

Probably all true. I was merely trying to put forth an idea that could help the economy the dearth of players and limit overcrowding. I don't actually expect anything to happen except a server merge (and no clue when). Certainly don't expect SE to be reading these forums anyways.

I'm sure its possible as its simply a mere matter of software, but on a shoestring budget with a limited demand, very unlikely. Its a bit of a different concept but I picked the race area since its instanced already to know which area you came from, similar concept, I'm sure jumping servers is less trivial though.

I'm going to take a wild shot in the dark here and say this is probably because players there found one or two fights they can clear reliably/efficiently and rarely ever deviate, at least in the case of boulder/pluton/beitetsu farming. That's how it's been on Cerberus where you would be hard-pressed to see English speaking players attempt anything other than Tenzen. It's just pure laziness.


That's both a great reason for server merges and for ensuring the populations on the new worlds remain as balanced as possible. I'd find it annoying if I went to work and life on my server came to a standstill because everyone else was at work/school, too.

Paging OP

Do you still feel server merges are necessary?

Was waiting for this. I 90% agree that server merges are currently unnecessary as all they do is create an illusion of more people. In reality, aside from maybe Asura, majority of servers do not really do shout or pickup groups and they stick to their linkshells/friend circles. The less people on servers, the better in my opinion.

It's depressing to see how prevalent this sort of opinion is in today's so-called MMORPGs.

Why? My Linkshell has over 50 people in it, I essentially only play with those people. All the other people on my server? They offer zero benefit to me, and as Ambuscade has shown me just generally drag down my FFXi experience.

If we had a cross server AH, then there really wouldn't be any point to those other players. But we don't have that. So :/

As always the "It doesn't affect me, so the threat is not there" mentality.

Not everyone has the luxury of a ls to do things with. Not everyone has the play schedule to be able to grind events and campaigns night and day like others can. It's great to be able to say "Server merge is a bad idea, I like doing things with my niche group", but you're speaking for yourself and nobody else.

With that being said, I prefer having some accompaniment via shout and ls, as I tend to do both. But I wouldn't completely shut down the idea of server merge fully, just that it's probably going to be implemented in the most shitty way with the worst timing ever.

So right now, merge makes little sense. If there were dozens of things grabbing our attention as to new content (which would never happen), I could see some people feeling left behind by not having groups.

Two sides to every story.

This is exactly why small server is bad. All the people that's not in your ls or don't like your ls are pretty much *** since there are no shout group going and there probably aren't many mid size ls out there as well....since a 50 people ls would be 20% of na community on a lot of smaller server lol.

A "healthy" MMORPG community isn't about a players and his ls+friends. It's about having the options join a ls that you like the most, instead of being forced to pick one single ls to stick with. If you like PUG you should have the options to do so.

Asides from congestion, I don't know how more people "drag down" your FFXI experience if you don't play with them. And congestion isn't a good reason to claim "server is better with less people" since it's just the result of technical limitations.

There are so many things wrong with this post I don't even know where to start or if it's even worth the effort to type it out as my experience discussing this topic in game and on forums has shown me it's a losing battle, but as my days here may be nearing their end I may as well.

1. It's depressing because we're talking about a massively multiplayer online RPG, one that hosted as many as 10,000 players online at any given time on each of its 32 servers/worlds. Now players such as yourself, who appear to be in the majority, think even 50 players is more than enough per server. This promo video is probably foreign to many of today's subscribers, but take a look at how FFXI was marketed back in 2004:


This is clearly not the same game anymore and that's because you don't want to meet new people. You don't want your game to be a "living, breathing, persistent world that exists 24/7 whether you're in it or not," you just want it to exist when you log on, everyone and everything else be damned. That sense of adventure that compelled a lot of us to give this game a chance over a decade ago has been lost. You want instant gratification, the path of least resistance, which is why we've had goblin NPCs giving us end game rewards just for logging into the game. I mean, really, at this point, why even bother playing at all?

2. Those other players on your server do provide a benefit to you. For starters, chances are a great many of your linkshell mates were once those "other people" that "offer zero benefit" to you. Those "other people" sell their items/services to you so that you don't have to spend your time going out to farm absolutely everything yourself. They buy the stuff you put up for sale, in turn enabling you to buy what you want/need. They make mistakes that you (and your linkshell) can learn from or find new ways of approaching content you hadn't already thought of, saving you valuable time. They pick you up when you get knocked down or kick you and motivate you to do better... or maybe they just walk right by you acting as if you don't exist, like you do to them.

3. Ambuscade hasn't shown anyone anything except that the development team has absolutely no idea how to manage an MMORPG whose strengths lie in its open world design and not its alarmingly low number of "instances" which aren't instances at all. You are not the first person to use it as an excuse against merging servers and you will not be the last, but know that it is an extremely poor one.

4. If every server had only one LS on it and you removed all those "other people" because, as you said, they "offer zero benefit"(again, utterly depressing thought) it would make for a practically useless auction house, cross-server or not.

I don't care how you spend your time in game. I don't care if your linkshell has 2 members or 200. I don't even care whether or not you prefer solo/low man content to more challenging content like T3+ NMs in Escha/Reisenjima. What I do care about is the health of this game, genre and the game industry as a whole. Low population servers like Cerberus are scaring people away, that's just a cold, hard fact. Some of them run off to Odin or Asura, some of them choose to stop playing altogether. It's basically a different take on "the rich getting richer and poor getting poorer" where players are the currency. I believe a lot can be done, involving very little effort, to accommodate both the old school players and the newer/more casual players, but it begins with the realization that having 16 active servers today is doing more harm than good.

MMORPGs rely on social interactions and the more people you can comfortably fit in one virtual world the better off everyone will be for it. As hardware and software improves we should be pushing for larger worlds, not smaller ones, ideally coming to a point where games have their entire player base located on a single server/world, where you're free to choose if you want to be antisocial, take part in large scale events or anything in between. Having more choices open to us makes life more interesting for everyone involved, players and developers alike.

So, yeah, pushing for smaller servers and more "accessible" (re: unchallenging) content in a game and genre once known for its diverse communities and notorious monsters so difficult they made the news makes me a little blue.

Love this post^^

I swear, so many people say "I love having a small server". Right up until the point where there is nobody else to farm their crafting materials. There is nobody else to farm their pop items. There is nobody else to sell unwanted gear, or there is nobody else to do the lower level events. Until there is nobody doing enough killing in conquest/adoulin/aht urghan that all of the boons and services offered from having a population are gone. Astral Candy, gone. Ionis bonuses, gone. Crystals for synthesis earned form killing monsters in simple conquest areas, gone (funny, the higher we climb, the more we take for granted).

Can you imagine a campaign with wkr, vw, unm, or surge walk for 1 week and 50 players had to choose what to do in order to get what they wanted? How daunting that would be. You don't even realize the services that other people add to you until they are gone.

Seriously, people don't even think these things through before they talk. As much as people don't want to admit it, they need each other in this game in one way or another. You may have to deal with the congestion, which is a small annoyance. But compared to having dozens of other things to do because there is much variety, I'm sure you'd see that as a reasonable trade off. Well, a sensible person would.

wkr unm and surge walks are all easier to farm with less people, and vw is pretty much irrelevant if you're using displacers

there are a few times where i dislike leviathan's low population(escha blessings down too often), but generally it's preferable to a high pop

So voluntarily transfer to a bigger populated server. No reason everyone has to do it.

You're actually disregarding the gist of what I am truly saying. I didn't dispute they were "Easier" to clear, but rather the benefits of having multiple people doing it regularly means the supply is higher. It would be a pure pain in the *** (though some people prefer it) to have to farm every item you ever needed from UNM or Surge Walks. It would be maddening for every player to have to personally accumulate every piece of bayld, hpd, alex, etc to finish their weapons. It's a service that we take for granted because we have to wait a bit longer in a line? Are we that impatient that a few minor inconveniences makes us want to say "to hell with them all, move off my server"?

Seems silly to me. And I'm on a populated server, so I'm not speaking for myself. But most of the people saying smaller servers are better are just speaking about their own personal interests and nobody else. The server merge is not something I am advocating, but just objectively looking at it from all angles.

I really love when people drop phrases like cross-server grouping with no idea of the work that such an endeavor likely entails. It's just like the people that say "graphics update".

Just download giv_2016_graficks(1).exe!!

I've seen others say "just move xi to xiv's engine".

Btw none of this is at Scragg or Byrth but people whose game-engineering knowledge just learned, and wants to use, the words instance and engine.

I think it's safe to assume that people who are already paying a $13.95 per month subscription, don't want to take an additional one-time fee of $9.95 out of their pocket to transfer worlds. I suspect that many players feel this way: Any costs incurred by Square-Enix for merging underpopulated servers should be included in the monthly subscription. If SE has to take a financial hit in man-hours / payroll to do what they have to do at their data center, that money has to come out of SE's yearly bottom line. You don't gouge your customers for extra money to cover data center maintenance.

Eighteen Dollars ($18.00)

I don't get it, how does wkr and unm easier to farm with less people. With more ppl you kill them faster, thus more drops in an hr of killing them.

wkr: the difference between 6 people and 20 people is <1min if they're competent, but results in you losing 1-2 h-p bayld worth of evaluations

unity: if you already have a strong setup, adding additional people is unlikely to speed it up unless you also have additional buffs to give them

WKR doesn't scale, but randoms showing up generally makes the fights vastly more annoying. I've done Yumcax in like five minutes with BLU GEO BLM and some trusts, but when a random shows up and starts interrupting skillchains it takes twice as long and getting procs to remove aura is more of a pain. If all the randoms showed up on mage/support jobs then sure, but that's not likely to happen. As such, there's a pretty large range between "small group that kills efficiently" and "so many people that the NM just rolls over and dies" where the fight is actually more work for potentially less reward as noted above.