Server Merges - How will they actually handle it and the patch's recent impacts

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Hi guys,

So I know for a lot of players on high pop servers, server merges aren’t really a big concern, but I feel them being an increasingly big worry on low pop servers. (Yes I know the option to transfer is there but keep in mind some people value their server community more than just being a number. Others have also already used that transfer to come to the low pop realms).

I play on US East, the Amano Iwato server. This server was 1 of only 2 servers in its world set at launch, the other being Olympus which I’m sure many US East players know is a very popular server. Since launch and with the painful queues during that time, a lot more servers were opened up in my world set, as well as many others, with let’s be honest, sub par preparation for merging servers when that initial overflow of players tapered off, as happens in any MMO.

This most recent patch has made the issues on low pop servers even worse. First of all, PvP quests needing you to kill players, which I completely agree with because…well pvp duh, but on low population servers the only way you’re gonna get that is by paying people 100g a pop to let you kill them… Secondly, invasions. My. God. Invasions. It’s already bad enough that it’s a guaranteed downgrade on settlements because we don’t even have enough players to fill the invasions, let alone high level and skilled enough players to successfully defend, even with Sprig nerfs and such. It takes OVER a week to get enough people doing town board to upgrade a station to tier 5, and then in a highly advanced settlement, we get 3-4 downgrades only for the next invasion to be in 4 days? It’s ridiculous. Thirdly, the roided out upgrade to end game elites like in Myrk. We needed MINIMUM 15 people to do myrk last night. That’s not easy to find on a server with barely over 100 players during peak times. Something needs to be done.

I get that server populations are a top priority, but how many players do you want to lose before something is done? I understand if merges are not ready to happen but you need to make adjustments to the game on low pop servers so those of us who play on them don’t constantly feel like we’re winning a losing battle. Sure we get all the resources with no competition, but how long do you think that interest is going to last when we can’t progress in anything?

I’ve heard and read varying things in regards to merges. I’ve heard that only 2 servers will be merged together and the host server simply absorbing the other server, territories and all. I’ve heard that there might be a “magnet server” which 4-5 servers will be merged into. I’ve seen that maybe territories will be wiped and companies given compensation, thus getting ready to duke it all out again.

I personally feel that the original servers that dropped on launch should have priority in terms of merging. Those were the foundation of the game to start. Yes, I have some bias because the server I’m on is one of those original servers. I currently own 3 territories, operating at a loss, and putting in a significant amount of my own coin just to try and maintain some server health and sense of community. I’d hate to see all that work go for nothing. I’m 600 hours in and have no intention of stopping, but it would certainly be discouraging.

I’m sorry for rambling. This is my first forum post and I’ve had a lot to get off my chest. Thank you for taking the time to read this if you’ve made it this far. If any of you have clarification or input on this please feel free to leave it. I browse the forums often and try to pick up on posts devs have replied to but it usually just feels like a goose chase trying to track down the right info.

Also, please leave the toxicity outside the door. We’re all already annoyed enough about how everything is going right now. Let’s try and have some constructive conversation instead of knocking each other down for view points. High pop players, please try to see where us low pop players are coming from. Thanks everyone for your time. :grin:

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I doubt they will handle it…
I doubt there will even be merges
They seemed focused on “fixing” things that need no fixing
Nerving things that need no nerfing and to top it off stealth nerf things in the hope we are blind and don’t take notice.
Besides Merges don’t earn them cash. you know what does earn them cash?
Payed transfers…

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Yeah…I mean it’s Amazon so I certainly am not and never will be surprised by any sort of cash grab tactic. However, some of the things in this past patch… did they just blatantly ask for all this feedback and then throw it in the shredder? NONE of us asked for a good handful of these changes. We want simple quality of life improvements. Shouldn’t be such a big ask. It’s a shame really.

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Previous to PTR, several requested changes have been implemented. Last patch brough a good chunk of hidden QoL fixes, but as usual, undocumented. It also brought nerfs ofc.

They are indeed listening but people need to understand feedback is not addressed right away. Is not like they are staring at the ceiling waiting for PTR feedback to be groomed and filtered to start working.

Why are they taking so many weird decision? The corrupted would know why because their focus should be fixing the current issues before new content, but they also have a handful of loud people wanting more content and that’s why the attention splits.

People hate cash shops, I honestly don’t care, as long as cash shops sales make the higher ups happy to give moee backing, release whatever you want lol

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The thing is though, the QoL fixes are for high pop servers, not low ones. That’s more so what I’m getting at. I can see how a lot of them benefit people who play on a very lively, active server, but those of us who are really trying to keep the dead servers as healthy and happy as possible, it’s even more difficult now. Things should’ve been handled differently based on server population if the fix for population issues isn’t to be implemented. They have a whole audience to tend to, not just high pop.

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My server peaks 150 on prime time

I don’t know you, but the extra speed on roads, although small, is nice. Spec resets lowered are also nice. Good to no see more hair clipping, the tents don’t go submerged on the terrain now, I dont need to rage anymore when I press E on the storage, no more “Upcoming war” message…

All this are QoL but idk how this only helps populated servers

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I didn’t mind the weapon nerfs/buffs they did. The void gauntlet is a nice new touch. But they messed up big time with buffing up mobs and nerfing the loot.

Doing Elite Runs daily is what kept my server alive. It’s what made players that weren’t lvl 60 yet motivated to get to lvl 60 to join us on the elite runs. Now its not even worth doing them. It’s just way more tedious and the reward is so little to even make it worth anyone’s time.

They really need to revert it back to the way it was. They definitely will be losing a lot more players keeping the elite areas like that.

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Those aren’t the QoL things that are ruining gameplay. Some examples are:

  1. Invasions taking out 3-4 things in a developed settlement, it taking 1-2 weeks to re-upgrade everything, just to get slammed with an invasion you have no hope of winning every 4 days.

  2. PvP quests being changed to kill players when there’s no players online to kill. How do you push influence productively?

  3. Settlement upkeep costs. How are we supposed to pay 10s of thousands of gold when the settlements don’t make NEARLY enough because we only have 100 players on at peak times.

The list goes on and on. Yeah it’s great that I get 10% speed on roads, but guess what…my shortcuts through the woods are still faster.

There are core and crucial QoL improvements that need to be made for low pop servers. The little breadcrumbs don’t change the core issues that make these low pop servers not only unenjoyable, but borderline unplayable. It’s starting to feel like we’re all wasting our collective time.

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Big facts there. 100% agree.

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Those don’t fall under the category of QoL and that’s why my examples didn’t mention any. My bad for getting carried over with the term

I do agree with what you say about gameplay nerfs, but this stuff has been requested previously. I remember indeed discussing new PvP missions to someone and killing players was a popular one.

The thing is, they already tested merges in PTR with minimal problems. And a couple weeks a dev mentioned they were working on it because they are aware of the situation in low pop servers.

Just last night we lost our only t5 loom on the server and people is struggling cause 1. Town boards for lvl 60s do nothing and many just dont wanna work on those.

There are more problems, 1 big company carried a single man company on a war vs an almost dead guild on WW and you can imagine the taxes and state since the big company owns EF as well.

I personally don’t see the value on working for fixes for low pop servers that are going to be merged. That work will simply go to waste.

Merges as you mentioned were indeed explained on some dev notes, there was another link for more detailed info. One world becomes host and other worlds will be merged into host world.

Companies from non-host world owning a territory will get 50k gold as compensation but host world won’t suffer any change besides an influx of players.

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They do fall under QoL when you put them in the perspective of low population servers though. I know it doesn’t fall in the official category but think of it objectively.

The game can not and does not function the same on low pop as it does on high pop. They aren’t quality of life issues on high pop servers because the systems work on high pop servers. They make low pop server experience aka quality of life, miserable and just an overall waste of time. I understand what falls into the general table of QoL, but when you take systems that are already a disadvantage to low pop servers and then make them even worse, that is certainly a QoL problem. I’ve put in 600 hours. I can guarantee that a person who has put 600 hours in on a high pop server is probably farrrrr ahead of where I am in terms of gearing, trade skills, territory profits, etc. Whether it fits the generic term or not, it is certainly affecting our QoL.

ALL of our time on low pop servers is spent playing catch up because the systems that are in place are not even doable. Invasions are a perfect example of that.

I can see you totally get where I’m coming from and tbh the terminology isn’t even what’s important. I saw the post they made about merges and the tests they were doing but have we gotten any confirmation on the who/what/where/when of these merges? Any ideas whatsoever? Because all I experience is a goose chase trying to find accurate or viable information.

I am interested by some of the details you’re mentioning though so if you could post the link to that thread I’d super appreciate it. :slight_smile:

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Here is it, not sure if I linked correctly. It’s from a week ago dev post

And yes, I completely understand what you meant and that’s why I apologized. However, in the big scope it still falls short to be included on it.

I also suffer the dame issues haha, 150 on peak is kinda depressing or if you wanna be positive, you can take advantage of that luck. (Yesterday literally spent 40 mins skinning rabbits out of EF and had not a single conflict lol…)

Sadly and as cliche as it sounds, I am a software dev outside of gaming, but ETAs aren’t given until you have everythint set. Only reason you will ever get an ETA is because the fix is ready and has been tested many times already. (That’s why you can see an estimate on how long it takes to patch since they patch somewhere else before)

I do am hoping the merges arrive soon, it seems like it is going smooth as the test had a only an issue with some people char failing to persist but they claimed to already have a fix for it. Hopefully next week we can get a more insight on this process because as I’ve said, I 100% understand this (The 21 sumptuous rabbits I got from farming are staying there cause we lost our t5 kitchen on an invasion later lol )

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Thank you! Yeah I understand the ETA thing from a dev standpoint. I knew that was a pretty basic rule. It’s more so the lack of communication in general. Yeah they respond to a thread here and there, and yeah I get they’re busy, but if you don’t communicate with your community properly or listen to them…you’re gonna struggle. That’s why I’ve quit wow after 17 years on top of Blizzard’s overall clusterf*ck. Thank you for the information my friend. Keep fighting the good fight. :slight_smile:

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They have improved quite a lot with communication compared to the beggining haha

What I’m only lacking is more in-client communication and shorter/direct communications.

I love dev posts, I don’t have a single problem with reading the entire thing but many prefer the short and concise paragraph. That thread has valuable information but the size is so big and the title doesn’t points to a specific thing that people won’t give it the importance it deserves.

But yeah, really hoping we can get more populated server soons. I have made new chars on other servers and it feels so much different. For the moment I will just take advantage of the new extra luck haha

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Anyone else have any good feedback or insights? I’m trying to relay as much as I can to a lot of friends who really don’t use the forums.

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Une solution ? == > Proposer les transferts de personnages gratuitement vers des serveurs à moitiés pleins! et fermer ceux qui sont vides , en proposant les transferts juste prévenir que tel et tel serveurs sera fermé dans 1 mois … simple et efficace!
Je suis sur 2 serveurs morts … 400 personnes sur un et 600 sur l’autre! les économies sont inexistantes et le réseau social est mort.
Faites vite mais faites bien. Il est grand temps d’agir!

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