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Final Fantasy XIV server merges reassessed; merges to take place in March
Only four days ago, Square-Enix announced that it would be reevaluating the previously announced Final Fantasy XIV server merges based on player feedback. Well, it looks like the reassessment is complete, and the server merge details have been solidified. In a post on FFXIV's Lodestone website, the studio announced that server merges will be taking place next month on Tuesday, March 27th. The stated reason for the server merge is "to improve the player experience during the period up to the launch of FFXIV version 2.0." The studio goes on to add that "new worlds may be added in the future, for example after the relaunch or when player numbers increase." Beginning on March 1st, players will be able to use the site's world transfer application page in order to declare their destination servers. It's worth noting that the early bird gets the worm, and by worm we mean server of choice, due to the fact that once a world reaches its population cap, it will (obviously) no longer be available as a destination. To get the full details on the upcoming server transfers, just click on through the link below to the official Lodestone announcement.
Waaaghon Ho!: Warhammer Online merging servers following free transfers
Saddle up, rough riders: It's time to head to more fertile lands! Starting next week, select Warhammer Online players will be given the option to transfer between servers for free. The decision is Mythic's attempt to merge underpopulated servers, and the company hopes that this move will drive up the action in RvR for previously quiet locations. Players on the Gorfang (North America) and Karak Azgal (Europe) will be able to move house to Badlands and Karak Norn, respectively, starting December 14th. Once this happens, Gorfang and Karak Azgal will be marked as "Legacy" servers, keeping new players from rolling on them, and then after three weeks, the two servers will be shut down completely. Any characters left on those servers will not be playable until they transfer to their new homes. Mythic is also paving the way for guilds to move wholesale to new servers, with more information about this coming next week.
LotRO removes server transfer restrictions
Ever since free-to-play came to Lord of the Rings Online, players looking to move from one server to another have often run into a big, forbidding wall. To keep the server populations from capsizing, Turbine disallowed transfers to select servers for over a year. It looks like this has changed, as Turbine recently posted an update to its paid premium services forum thread. In it, the studio announced that all such transfer restrictions are removed: We are also happy to announce that NA World Character Transfers are now available for transfer between ALL North American servers as of 9th November, 2011! Yes, you may now transfer TO Brandywine, Crickhollow, Dwarrowdelf, Elendilmir, Imladris, Landroval, or Riddermark! European players have access to this service as well. Unfortunately, these transfers aren't free but come with a hefty pricetag. Players looking to move server homes will need to shell out either $24.95, €21.95, or 2995 Turbine Points. There is also an issue with moving a character back to a server that it came from, so players cannot do that until Turbine resolves the issue.
Blizzard extends new guild services to additional realms
As promised, Blizzard's been slowing rolling out its new guild services to new realms. It's now added the Whirlwind and Emberstorm battlegroups and will continue to add more realms in the coming weeks. Guild services include realm transfer, name change, and faction change, among other things. You can read the complete FAQ at our original announcement post, and after the break, find a list of both the previously available realms and a list of the newly added realms.
Enter at Your Own Rift: RIFT's battle plan
A month or so ago my colleague Karen looked at RIFT's own future forecast for the game, and it's apparent from Trion Worlds' state of the game reports that the company is confident and clear in the direction it wants to go. The problem is that nobody consulted me, personally, on what I think the game needs as it heads forward. Not that I'm any great gaming guru, mind you, but it would be nice to be asked. In a very real sense, RIFT is at a crossroads. It will shortly cease to be the newest big kid on the block, a position it has enjoyed for a majority of 2011. I won't invoke the names of the power hitters on deck, but trust me, many RIFT players are well aware of the competition. Players and guilds are evaluating the game as it is right now and whether or not they'll want to stay when the new hotness is released. My prediction? Some will, some won't. You can quote me on that. Personally, I think RIFT is in a remarkably good position. It continues to grow in subscribers, according to the company, and it's proven to have staying power a half-year after launch. I'm encouraged when I see friends and fellow players randomly praise the game even though its honeymoon veneer has long since worn off. There's something worth fighting for, here -- but a fight it will have. Hit the break as I lay out what I think should be RIFT's battle plan for the next 12 months.
Scott Hartsman: 'Happy customers stick around longer'
"Here's the overall philosophy behind all this: Happy customers stick around longer," Scott Hartsman said in an interview with Gamefront. "That's what we think. That's the beginning and end of it." It may seem like common sense, but for Hartsman and the team at Trion Worlds, it's a lesson they feel is easy to forget. He cites this as the driving force behind one of the game's major upcoming changes: the ability to transfer characters between servers for free. Trion hopes that the character transfers will help friends connect without the obstacle of separate servers getting in their way. Hartsman said that the tech behind the transfer is impressive -- not to mention "instantaneous" from a customer standpoint. Hartsman says that the team places a premium on talking frankly and frequently with players. If Trion doesn't always come across as perfect, he hopes that the company makes up for it with communication and sincerity: "We don't want to hide behind a big wall, and we don't want everything to come through a formal mouthpiece. I'd rather have us all out conversing with people and occasionally making a mistake here or there on the assumption that because we are talking to people more means that overall, things are going to be better." The lengthy interview covers a wide range of pressing topics, from the "bumpy" River of Souls event to the LFG system and the free trial program.
Enter at Your Own Rift: Rethinking server transfers
Last week's big RIFT news was that free server transfers were on the way with the next major game update. Players who have been stuck on lower population servers have been clamoring for the ability to join up with higher population servers, and now they'll finally have the ability to do just that. But any time things like free transfers and server mergers are brought up, the immediate conclusion is that it's a sign that a game is losing players, and as a result, is failing. Free transfers are usually only seen as an act of desperation, and they usually come on the heels of drastic server mergers, as we've seen in games like Vanguard, Warhammer Online, and Age of Conan. But if a game is believed (by the masses) to be doing OK, transfers are seen as a service that comes with a price, as in games like World of Warcraft or EverQuest II. So how do we interpret the news of free weekly transfers in RIFT? Read on for a look at why it's actually great for the game and why they're more than just a shrewd marketing campaign.
Zarhym talks premium WoW services
A WoW forum-goer recently asked why Blizzard was charging for premium services like character server transfers, re-customizations, and the other multitude of options and services Blizzard provides players. Blizzard Community Manager Zarhym hit the thread to discuss the nature of Blizzard's premium services for players and let players know that really, premium services are for people who want them and feel they are worth the cost. Zarhym first makes the point that these features and premium services are in no way made to be needed to play the game. In fact, I'd take things a step forward and say that so far, Blizzard has been exceptionally good at providing only cosmetic and quality-of-life premium services, where other games could have already cashed in on a playerbase like WoW's. These optional services can improve your own personal quality of life, be it race-changing to an obviously superior blood elf or transferring servers to be with a new guild, but they are not tied to the core gameplay experience. Zarhym's full statement, after the break.
Officers' Quarters: That other guild reputation
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available now from No Starch Press. These days, when you say "guild reputation," most people think of the guild rep grind that's required to buy items like the Armadillo Pup and the Dark Phoenix. Cataclysm didn't invent this concept -- the expansion simply turned what already exists into a specific number with some fun rewards attached. As long as there have been guilds, there have been players with an opinion about them, and vice versa. This kind of reputation plays a huge role in a guild's success or failure, particularly when it comes to recruiting. This week, an officer with a rep problem asks how to deal with a handful of former members who are sabotaging the guild's recruiting efforts. Hey Scott, So my guild is fairly new (about 3-4 months) we started at the beginning of cataclysm as a guild of friends who wanted to raid on the weekends together. We slowly built up and developed a raider base however it was very difficult to get new players as every other guild on the server was looking for people. We had around 6-7 devoted raiders but those last 3 or so raiding slots left it difficult for us to pug and find members in general who were willing to raid. We went through a variety of members in these slots but most of these people didn't understand the concept of a "raiding guild." Some misunderstandings occurred and over the course of our guilds existence we developed about 4-5 "haters."
Breakfast Topic: How do you find a new realm to call home?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. Home. It's where the heart is. It's where you can relax and be yourself. Sometimes, it is where you have been all your life. Other times, you have to move around several times to find the best place for you. The feeling of home in World of Warcraft is no different. Because of a lack of guild activity, I've thought about moving my main to a new realm for several weeks now, but I have been hesitant to just do it. Part of it is the anxiety that comes with going to an unfamiliar realm. I've done research on several different realms and even rolled low-level characters on them to see what the environment is like, but the one thing I've learned is that you can't get a sense of what the raiding scene is like unless you are in it. The other part of my anxiety is getting to know everyone all over again. Sometimes, the hardest part of moving to a new town is introducing yourself to the neighbors. I thought about rerolling but have too much invested in my main to retire him. So, fellow citizens of Azeroth, how did you find your WoW home? Is it the first realm you rolled on? Did you transfer somewhere else or reroll altogether?
Updated: Latest round of Aion server transfers botched
Aion players have been anxiously awaiting this week's round of server transfers. They waited for their chance, paid their subscription fees, and looked forward to server transfer day. That day was supposed to be today -- the Aion servers were down for maintenance with server transfers being part of the deal. Unfortunately, there was a glitch in the system somewhere. When the servers came back online, players found themselves on the same old servers. Aion's Community Manager Andrew Beegle has been keeping frustrated players up-to-date via Twitter, and the latest update from about an hour ago indicates that the transfers won't happen today. "Greetings Daevas! We had to postpone transfers due to some technical difficulties. We will have a new date for the transfers ASAP. " We'll keep an eye out for that new date here at Massively. [UPDATE: We've heard from NCsoft, and Aion players will be happy to hear that the server transfer issue will be cleared up very soon. "The transfers will be executed at 10am CDT tomorrow for North America and 10pm CDT tonight for European territories."]
Aion developers acting to correct server imbalances
Aion's July community address mentions the upcoming 2.0 patch, of course, but that's not what grabbed the attention of the fans. The recent server merge created some predictable imbalances, and the Aion team has made a few decisions on how to begin rectifying them. NCsoft's Lance Stites, who penned this month's address, tells fans that server transfers have been temporarily disabled while the devs sort things out: "All the associated Aion teams are working on a solution to allow character transfers to resume with appropriate limits in place to prevent radically unbalanced servers." Furthermore, race creation is "selectively" limited on each server, in the hopes that it will help balance things out. "For instance, if you're playing on a predominantly Elyos server, Asmodian creation will be the only race available for new characters," says Stites. The situation is only temporary, and hopefully only a first step in sorting things out on the newly-consolidated Aion servers. Take a look at the Aion site for the full July community address.
Aion server merge mail and warehouse policies explained
Wringing your hands over the possibility of losing your mail (or more importantly, your account warehouse items) during the upcoming Aion server merges? Fear not, as Andrew "Tamat" Beegle is here to soothe your concerns. Well, technically he's on the official Aion website, checking in with a post that explains the details of the forthcoming merges in regards to item and mail transfers. "All mail will transfer over to your new server, including attachments. However, to eliminate any likelihood of anything going wrong with your mail and attached items, read and delete your mail, and store attached items in your inventory," Tamat says. "All items will be saved in the account warehouse, but you will not be able to access any items that do not fit within the account warehouse's 16-slot limit. Any items exceeding 16 are still stored in the account warehouse, but will remain invisible until some items have been moved to another storage space, such as a character's cube or warehouse," he continues. Read all about it on NCsoft's official Aion website.
Aion offers six free server transfers per character
With NCsoft's upcoming Aion server merges looming, chances are you've taken the time to figure out where your daeva's new home is going to be (as well as marked your calendar to be sure you get first dibs on keeping your name). What you may not know is that you've got plenty of opportunities to test out the various Aion server communities after the merges are complete. In its weekly Eye on Community featurette, NCsoft answers a player-generated question about transfer specifics. "During the free character transfer period, characters you submit for transfer are placed in a collated list, together with transfer requests from other players. The transfers outlined in this list will all be executed at the same time during weekly maintenance. Because transfers are moved in a batch each week, you will be able to transfer your character up to six times before the 18th of August, when the free character transfer period ends. Our intent is to let you test the waters so that you can decide which server best suits you," says the featurette.
Officers' Quarters: Emotionally invested
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available this spring from No Starch Press. When you're frustrated with your guild, it's tempting to jump ship. But sometimes it's also difficult to let go. This week, one officer asks, can you be an officer in one guild and a regular member in another? Dear Scott, I am Raid Officer in a casual raiding guild. I attend the most raids and am one of the highest output players on each raid on all my characters. I am one of the most active, hardest working Officers in the guild. We have always been lenient with who is allowed to raid -- we have some healers who do less than 50% output of other healers who are similarly geared, we have DPS that do less than half of what they should be doing (with "casual" expectations, I don't expect everyone to do 10k DPS but 4-5k is low for a well geared player in ICC with the buff). Even members of our A-team have been slacking a bit. Many players don't pay attention to the leaders in Vent, don't react well to constructive criticism of their gear, spec etc. PUGs are further progressed than our guild is.
Breakfast Topic: Strange habits
As I write this, I am dreading the week to come. After many months of going back and forth on the matter, I have decided to leave my guild for greener pastures. I'm reluctant to leave, though, since I do like my current guild; the people are nice, the raids are fun and we have a raiding philosophy of "work with what you've got" that I have always enjoyed. Still, for everything that I love, there are shortcomings and I am willing to risk losing what I have to see if my perfect guild exists somewhere out there. So off I go to a new guild and server where I know no one. I'm scared -- scared I won't be good enough, scared they won't like me even if I am and scared I might be making a huge mistake in leaving my friends. You just have to swallow those kinds of thoughts, though. As a raider, I'm no stranger to moving around, and I've come up with many ways to deal with it. One thing I do to cope is heading up to the spot you see in the picture before I transfer. This is my favorite hiding spot in the game, only accessible by players meticulous enough to complete the Higher Learning achievement. Up here, I will sit and eat some cake, then after I've had my fill, set out my little green rag doll on the bed and /sleep. The reason for this is so that when I log back in after my transfer has gone through, I know exactly where I'll be and I can pretend I'm waking up from a dream (or nightmare) to a new, promising day. I'm not sure why I do this; maybe the familiarity? It's really all quite silly, but I've been doing it for well over a year now and it seems natural. Do you have any strange habits or rituals you do in game?
Breakfast Topic: How realms evolve (or don't)
While writing a recent news post on Blizzard's decision to open free transfers to Drak'thul, I nosed around the server's forums to see what the inhabitants thought of the coming flood. As a server that was converted from a PvP to PvE realm, opened to transfers, and listed as a Recommend realm to boot, Drak'thul's undergone a fairly drastic set of changes, and all within a short period of time. As you'd expect, player feelings on the subject were mixed, but there was one former Drak'thul player who really got my attention. Drak'thul, he/she claimed, had been home to some of "the most mean-spirited PvP (he'd) ever experienced on ANY realm." It sounded like a tall claim, but there are a lot of other threads on the forum with oblique confirmations; players recall Alliance towns and quest NPCs "being camped 24/7," and holiday events and Alliance leveling zones being swarmed by opportunistic Horde players. Drak'thul became a low-pop server with a murderous faction imbalance -- Warcraft Realms listed the server's active population as 94% Horde before transfers were opened -- and I wonder how much of that be traced to the relentless ganking and camping campaigns three years ago. I look at realms like Cho'gall with equally crushing faction imbalances, some of which started out with fairly balanced faction ratios, and wonder -- how the hell does this happen? What spurs the departure of so many players from a specific faction? Is it really that simple as a relatively small number of players exercising such an impact on what happens to everyone on the server?
Free realm transfers announced
Blizzard poster Turrit announced yesterday that free realm transfers are being made available to address faction imbalance and overpopulation issues on the following PvE realms: Aggramar (Alliance only) Area 52 (Horde only) Blackhand Hellscream Stormrage (Alliance only) Thrall (Horde only) Undermine Destination realm: Drak'thul The free transfer period will run from Tuesday, May 25 (today) to Tuesday, June 1 at 11:00 a.m. PDT. However, Turrit did make a point of mentioning that Blizzard has a transfer goal in mind, and if it's reached, they may shut the free transfers down early. If you're on any of the affected realms and have been considering a transfer, this might be a good chance to save yourself $25. To my surprise, it turns out Drak'thul was actually a PvP realm until very recently, and after a quick look at WoW Progress's list of U.S. realms, I have to agree it looks like the server needs some love. While it's possible the page hasn't been updated, it's apparent that the Drak'thul's raiders are struggling -- and there's some rather illuminating commentary in this thread (I'll grant I can't verify the accuracy) on how some of the server's troubles may have gotten their start. Two things come to mind: Blizzard's observations a year ago concerning only PvP realms being low-pop, and: what's happening on Cho'gall. Interesting. The full announcement is past the cut.
SandForce makes SSDs cheaper, faster, more reliable -- just how IBM likes it
We've been covering the progression of SandForce for over a year now, creator of smart SSD processors that extend the life of flash storage by better spreading writes across them, boosting performance and reliability along the way. This, according to the company, makes them reliable enough for enterprise use, and IBM has added its vote of support, configuring a 9189 Power 780 server with 56 177GB SSDs (10.5TB in all) sitting behind SandForce's SF-1500 processor. That combination, when running the TPC-C benchmark, delivered a performance of 150,000 transactions per minute per CPU core. That's 50 percent higher (per-core) than other entries in the TPC-C benchmark -- and considerably cheaper, too. IBM's configuration is set to be available around October of this year, perhaps ushering in a new era of the platter-free enterprise.
Pirates of the Burning Sea announces server merges
Are you a fan of Pirates of the Burning Sea, and feel like the population in game has been a bit thin these days? You're certainly not alone. Other players have been expressing the same opinion, and Sony Online Entertainment has been listening. On March 5th, Pirates of the Burning Sea will be closing three servers: Blackbeard, Defiant, and Rackham. The two remaining servers, Antigua and Roberts, will serve the entire player base. Sony Online Entertainment is giving players a month to make plans and choose a new server. Beginning this Friday, February 5th, players on Blackbeard, Defiant, and Rackham will be able to transfer their characters to either of the remaining servers. Character creation on those three servers will be disabled at the same time, so start making your plans for new characters and transfers of current characters now. Character transfers can be done via the PotBS character transfer service.
