The Plus and Minus points of clustering.

[Elrandhir]

well, someone smart would just create alts now and be able to play them when clustering arrives (IF IT arrives lol), and anyway, its a good thing that you cant play the same account successivley as mentioned before, it will stop x realming and RR blabbering etc.

True, wont remove them if already made..

[Elrandhir]

Ok, let me put it another way... does clustering represent better value for money?

Can´t say I care that much about money but if you never used the ability you had to play on different servers so "no change" really.

Only think it would be more fun with more peeps around really.

[Sharkith]

Given the choice though 1 playable server is more important than 2 unplayable ones and at least this way everyone gets to keep all the characters, rather than waiting for everyone to gradually migrate to Excal anyway

Yes we all know the ideal solution is for the game to be marketed etc and getting higher populations, but with Goa's track record do you really see that happening?

IMO a merger is always painful and to be avoided especially in a game. No point having one server with a lower combined population overall - the move would be a serious mistake. I would have thought the decision would be based on how many players would leave rather than the number in favour anyway.

[Xest]

The underlying problem is that DAoC (En-Eu) is reaching (Has reached?) the point where the population cannot support 2 servers. In order to maintain the best playability options for everyone Goa are looking at using clustering.

If the Excal/Pryd don't cluster you need to look at the alternative, living with a continually declining server population.

Personally, as I have mentioned before, I think this is an ideal opportunity for Goa to give the En-Eu community it's long awaited third server!

They could introduce a third server enabling everyone to play all 3 realms, it would obviously require a little adjustment to the system to allow characters to be created on all 3 realms. The hour wait between swaps seems a reasonably compromise between abuse and playability.

Given the choice though 1 playable server is more important than 2 unplayable ones and at least this way everyone gets to keep all the characters, rather than waiting for everyone to gradually migrate to Excal anyway

Yes we all know the ideal solution is for the game to be marketed etc and getting higher populations, but with Goa's track record do you really see that happening?

In fact the second best option would be to move Pryd & Excal to Mythic and allow us to become part of the US system, but that won't happen either

In response to the comments about sticking to one realm/server I disagree. It isn't hard to maintain characters on multiple servers. I've only been playing Alb on Merlin about 6months (Much less than that discounting weeks I didn't play due to holidays and such) yet by the end of this weekend will have 6xlvl50 chars including 1xML10 and 5xML8 with around 1.7 to 1.8mill rps combined. At the same time I have some high ML fully ToA'd chars still on Hib/MLF across all chars on US I have around 200plat also. Note also I don't play every day (although I do most) and I do work a 40hr week average. There are people out there with a lot more free time than me <cough> students <cough> So it's certainly possible to maintain characters of decent realm rank, equipment and MLs across multiple servers - especially if you only have 1 or 2 chars per realm instead of 5,000 like I seem to manage to level up somehow. I will say however it wouldn't be possible without the ML/Artifact changes that have occured in the last few patches - these have been a REAL boost when it comes to obtaining MLs/Artis (except Cloudsong and a couple of others which are now vastly harder to get).

Slightly back on topic, I have to agree with Ovi, the absolute best thing for English players would be to put under control of Mythic then have Excal/Pryd clustered - it'd give them freedom of choice of which realm they play without having to say goodbye to any of their friends and without having to start over from scratch, they'd also have the added bonus of no patch delays. That said however, I think if we're to be realistic we all know that this, sadly, isn't going to happen

[Briannon]

[quote="Sharkith"]IMO a merger is always painful and to be avoided especially in a game. No point having one server with a lower combined population overall - the move would be a serious mistake. I would have thought the decision would be based on how many players would leave rather than the number in favour anyway.

]

Maybe it'll only be me that goes, but I'd love to recreate the Marsh Horde on Gawaine - that would be fun.

[Xest]

This is probably THE best solution long-term for everyone, but as you say, can't see Mythic wanting to do that.

I think it'll be more likely down to GOA losing the revenue of English players (Which are a probably their biggest cash cow - same monthly fee yet they don't get the benefit of translation which the other language players get out of their monthly fee) and also potentially down to the original license. Still would be nice to see if Requiel has any comment on the subject to see if it is under any circumstance possible or if it's just not possible whatsoever and no matter what.

[Briannon]

In response to the comments about sticking to one realm/server I disagree. It isn't hard to maintain characters on multiple servers. I've only been playing Alb on Merlin about 6months (Much less than that discounting weeks I didn't play due to holidays and such) yet by the end of this weekend will have 6xlvl50 chars including 1xML10 and 5xML8 with around 1.7 to 1.8mill rps combined. At the same time I have some high ML fully ToA'd chars still on Hib/MLF across all chars on US I have around 200plat also. Note also I don't play every day (although I do most) and I do work a 40hr week average. There are people out there with a lot more free time than me <cough> students <cough> So it's certainly possible to maintain characters of decent realm rank, equipment and MLs across multiple servers - especially if you only have 1 or 2 chars per realm instead of 5,000 like I seem to manage to level up somehow. I will say however it wouldn't be possible without the ML/Artifact changes that have occured in the last few patches - these have been a REAL boost when it comes to obtaining MLs/Artis (except Cloudsong and a couple of others which are now vastly harder to get).

Slightly back on topic, I have to agree with Ovi, the absolute best thing for English players would be to put under control of Mythic then have Excal/Pryd clustered - it'd give them freedom of choice of which realm they play without having to say goodbye to any of their friends and without having to start over from scratch, they'd also have the added bonus of no patch delays. That said however, I think if we're to be realistic we all know that this, sadly, isn't going to happen

Xest, how do you manage ML raids? Most of the ones I've been aware of on my cluster have been at about 3am in the morning because of the time difference.

[Xest]

Xest, how do you manage ML raids? Most of the ones I've been aware of on my cluster have been at about 3am in the morning because of the time difference.

When I was playing MLF all the US raid leaders were well aware of their euro playerbase being a decent assett so they always ran them starting at like 5pm GMT (midday eastern US, 9am western US) on weekends so everyone could attend. I don't know if that still stands on MLF as I haven't needed to really bother with MLs there in a while. On Merlin it's the same except there are some euro leaders too. You can also just lead your own if you're missing a specific ML. Finally, if you wake up at like 8am - 10am you can also often catch asian/australian raids.

[Briannon]

Thanks Xest, this is worth knowing. Looks like I need to spend a bit more time on Merlin then

[Xest]

Thanks Xest, this is worth knowing. Looks like I need to spend a bit more time on Merlin then

Merlin defo seems more euro friendly than MLF did but I haven't played MLF as much since clustering so it could be purely down to population size more than anything Last time I logged on MLF it had about 500 hibs online and that was euro evening which is pretty compareable to Alb/Merlin at the same time of day so I think clustering's probably sorted the issue all round at a guess.