regarding clustering

Post by **Lieva** » Wed May 18, 2005 6:48 am

why do people hate clustering so much anyway?
atm people moan rvr sux. wouldnt clustering make it better?

pikeh · Post by **pikeh** » Wed May 18, 2005 7:19 am

rvr is good atm, it was terrible when rvr was all centered around one zone.

Heta · Post by **Heta** » Wed May 18, 2005 7:40 am

cluster will make rvr better, more people=people will spread over larger areas=easier to find fights without having to run around a zerg

Takitothemacs · Post by **Takitothemacs** » Wed May 18, 2005 7:54 am

IMO Clustering will expand the options available... but thats my opinon.

Briannon · Post by **Briannon** » Wed May 18, 2005 8:14 am

Banana wrote:why do people hate clustering so much anyway?
atm people moan rvr sux. wouldnt clustering make it better?

See my posts in other threads Banana, I've discussed this exhaustively. In essence though clustering was a solution to a problem on the US servers and has worked there becuase there are 19 servers and therefore multi-realmers like myself still have the options of playing on all three realms. Over here, we only have 2 english normal servers and if Prydwen and Excalibur are clustered, because of the cross-realming prevention measures people will effectively be condemned to one realm. Any new players will only ever have the choice of one realm. If a new player creates a mid, hib or alb on one server they are tied into playing the same realm on the other server.

A lot of the debate has been around RvR and making that better. People who only see DAoC as an RvR game are therefore very in favour. People who see DAoC as a game of more than just RvR will find their experience constrained by clustering two servers.

I've said before, and I am very serious about it, if Excal and Pryd are clustered then I will close all my 3 european accounts and play permanently on the US servers. The product difference between the US game and a clustered European game would, imho, be huge, and having experienced the US product offer a clustered European version would be far far inferior.

I suppose a good thing about closing my european accounts is that it would save me £225 a year. So if GOA want to help me save that money then please go ahead and cluster.

One final comment: people in favour of clustering are assuming it will make the populations in the frontiers larger so more fights. It is possible that having been served up an inferior product the populations might fall as more people migrate to the US servers and WoW. I know of at least three other people who are considering moving permanently to the US game.

Quinlan · Post by **Quinlan** » Wed May 18, 2005 8:37 am

Briannon wrote:
One final comment: people in favour of clustering are assuming it will make the populations in the frontiers larger so more fights. It is possible that having been served up an inferior product the populations might fall as more people migrate to the US servers and WoW. I know of at least three other people who are considering moving permanently to the US game.

1. People flocking from WoW back as crazy as there is no descent PvP.
2. hmm 4(0) people leaving to the US or a full fontier with alot of action due to 2 servers combined and a shitload of people coming back. Difficult choice ;p

Briannon · Post by **Briannon** » Wed May 18, 2005 9:04 am

Quinlan wrote:1. People flocking from WoW back as crazy as there is no descent PvP.

Yet. WoW battlegrounds are now in testing so watch that space.

4 people possibly leaving that I know off. Please don't be so cocky to assume that no others are thinking the same way.

Mostly I respect your views Quinlan, even if I don't always agree with them, but the point I am making is that GOA, and to an extent the European player base cannot be complacent about the current game population. To assume that one action (in this case clustering) will lead to improvements, without considering the down-sides, could be a very dangerous thing to do. All I'm trying to point out is that if one particular course of action is followed it does not automatically follow that everything will get better for everyone.

Also, one other thing not mentioned so far in the clustering debate is that when they did it in the States, all the population bonusses were re-set to the default i.e. all servers, for a while had the 7 day timer for the free level. Would the Prydwen community be happy if the 2 day free level was lost and restored back to 7?

Maeloch · Post by **Maeloch** » Wed May 18, 2005 9:27 am

Wonder how they gonna stop peeps with 2 accounts rp/xp farming their alts in another realm, especially as they're worth a big fat wad of xp now. Seems that might be a real issue (I've seen deathspam of peeps doing it b4, but it's a v small minority with 2 accounts on different realms on same server atm...not so after clustering).

Briannon · Post by **Briannon** » Wed May 18, 2005 9:46 am

Maeloch wrote:Wonder how they gonna stop peeps with 2 accounts rp/xp farming their alts in another realm, especially as they're worth a big fat wad of xp now. Seems that might be a real issue (I've seen deathspam of peeps doing it b4, but it's a v small minority with 2 accounts on different realms on same server atm...not so after clustering).

That is already illegal in the game and would attract a ban so it would be nothing new in the clustered environment.

If, say, you currently had one account with hibs on pryd and mids on excal and you wanted to set up another account with mids on pryd and hibs on excal, you can do that now but under clustering the new account would be restricted to only one realm, so you could set up mids on pryd or hibs on excal and not both. As cross-realm rp farming is illegal I wouldn't recommend it anyway.

However, if after clustering you wanted to use your new account to create a bot then you could set up either hibs on pryd or mids on excal but not both. Under clustering any new account on excal/pryd would be restricted to one realm only.

Existing accounts with hibs on one server and mids or albs on the other could continue with that configuration but you'd have to wait X hours between logging out your pryd alts and logging on your excal alts - this is a cross-realming prevention measure.

Moley:) · Post by **Moley:)** » Wed May 18, 2005 9:52 am

Maeloch wrote:Wonder how they gonna stop peeps with 2 accounts rp/xp farming their alts in another realm, especially as they're worth a big fat wad of xp now. Seems that might be a real issue (I've seen deathspam of peeps doing it b4, but it's a v small minority with 2 accounts on different realms on same server atm...not so after clustering).

That's what im worried about , it's a shame/lame but still there are some :censored: people who will just rp farm .. imo its a bad idea as we will lag/ld a lot with so many ppl about .. zerg vs zerg aswell to make it worse.

It will become thid but at a grander scale (including barely any blody hibs cause everyone will use the OP chars

)