Unfortunately, that won't work. Taking the willing few to move to another server will cost them much more money and a higher percentage of players than consolidating now. I know it's a tall order, but it's very possible, and entirely probable, that if they don't merge at a significant level by 1.3, they'll lose their ability to grow this game the way it deserves. People who are still paying for multiples MMO's would rather drop one MMO and wait for another than pay additional money to fix one problem that shouldn't have been a problem in the first place. MMO's are over a decade old now, this is a very foreseeable problem, and the solution is equally foreseeable. There is no face to be lost by rearranging after a launch. It's not like they had any idea of where the player base would lie. They're simply correcting an issue that presents itself after every MMO launch before it leaves such a sour taste in the mouths of MMO players that they never return.

I somehow missed this thread when I posted, so migrating over from my unintentional locking . Anyway, my two cents. One of the things that kills fledgling MMO's is a stubborn refusal to merge and realign servers after the intial surge into the game. The new dugeon tool is a great addition, but even if you opened it up to cross server you should still bleed players on low pop servers that generally do not come back. It is an avoidable fate, but one that for some reason or another, game designers and administrators don't want to embrace. People play MMO's in part because they want to feel like they're part of this massive player enriched world. When on peak times you see only 5 people on Balmorra, 30 people in fleet, you don't get that feeling. You currently have roughly four times as many servers as you require. I read recently that your sub numbers are stable, but many players log in at many different times, so we don't see "peak hours" as we do in other MMO's. That may be true, but doesn't help your case. Like I said, this is a MMO, and you WANT lots of players on in the same area. Players that don't want to socialize play single player RPG's, such as Skyrim or the Final Fantasy series. MMO's are social animals, and you have to make a conscious effort to keep them that way. If you can count the number of other players on the same planet as you on one hand, or even two hands, you're in trouble. Lonely players lead to bored players, and bored players leave. This is one path to boredom that is well within your realm of control to eliminate. A dungeon finder in 1.3 will not be enough. It's time to migrate players to selected consolidated servers. You launched well with stable services and room for what is the biggest MMO launch in history. But you need to maintain the population as well. MMO's go through this ebb, it's natural. High launch, high attrition. The MMO that wants to get past that needs to realign the entropic nature of players that want to continue, but are left almost alone. From there, they continue to update as necessary and release new content, opening new servers as needed and allowing free transfers to fill them. Leaving the servers in their current state will increase the attrition of otherwise paying players at a much, much higher level than necessary, even running the risk of hemhorraging players at an unrecoverable rate. Not merging servers after launch is a huge mistake that many, many other F2P MMO's have made and is the reason that they are F2P

One of the things that kills fledgling MMO's is a stubborn refusal to merge and realign servers after the intial surge into the game. The new dugeon tool is a great addition, but even if you opened it up to cross server you should still bleed players on low pop servers that generally do not come back. It is an avoidable fate, but one that for some reason or another, game designers and administrators don't want to embrace. People play MMO's in part because they want to feel like they're part of this massive player enriched world. When on peak times you see only 5 people on Balmorra, 30 people in fleet, you don't get that feeling. You currently have roughly four times as many servers as you require. I read recently that your sub numbers are stable, but many players log in at many different times, so we don't see "peak hours" as we do in other MMO's. That may be true, but doesn't help your case. Like I said, this is a MMO, and you WANT lots of players on in the same area. Players that don't want to socialize play single player RPG's, such as Skyrim or the Final Fantasy series. MMO's are social animals, and you have to make a conscious effort to keep them that way. If you can count the number of other players on the same planet as you on one hand, or even two hands, you're in trouble. Lonely players lead to bored players, and bored players leave. This is one path to boredom that is well within your realm of control to eliminate. A dungeon finder in 1.3 will not be enough. It's time to migrate players to selected consolidated servers. You launched well with stable services and room for what is the biggest MMO launch in history. But you need to maintain the population as well. MMO's go through this ebb, it's natural. High launch, high attrition. The MMO that wants to get past that needs to realign the entropic nature of players that want to continue, but are left almost alone. From there, they continue to update as necessary and release new content, opening new servers as needed and allowing free transfers to fill them. Leaving the servers in their current state will increase the attrition of otherwise paying players at a much, much higher level than necessary, even running the risk of hemhorraging players at an unrecoverable rate. Not merging servers after launch is a huge mistake that many, many other F2P MMO's have made and is the reason that they are F2P.