EQ2 Server Combines

January 30, 2006 on 10:37 am | In MMO (Live), EQ2

This isn't your typical "End of All Things" type comment about server combines in a game. Rather, it's a different sort of look at the recent announcement by Scott "Gallenite" Hartsman, Senior Producer for Everquest 2, about the combination of lower population game servers.

Basically, I take what the letter states at face value. This is, for me, a first.

First, I'm copy/pasting the letter on the off chance the link doesn't, or no longer, works. Skip past it if you've read it.

Thanks to all of you, EverQuest II is growing. 

We've been attracting more and more people over the past months. That's one of the big factors that went into our decision to spend time improving the progression for new characters. We've been getting a lot of feedback on it, improving it as we go, and we look forward to it going live this week as a part of Update 19!

There's another topic we've been listening on that I wanted to talk about today. Server growth, and the perception of the size of the worlds.

In reality most of our 36 US, Europe, and Asia EQ2 servers currently house the same number of people as your average server from any MMO. Because of the size of our game world, some of the worlds feel less full than they should for them be ideal, fun places to play.

When we first started out, EQ2 had 369 total zones or instances of zones. The game has since expanded to having over 600 of them, just about doubling the playable space.

On some worlds, it can seem like there are fewer people to make friends and group with, fewer opportunities to bump into others. Nothing makes a world feel more alive than other people. When you don't run into enough other people, folks who otherwise love the game are more likely to drift away.

It's no secret. It's a problem that's been discussed on a few of the server forums, and it's one that we've been spending quite a bit of time thinking about as well.

Over the next few weeks, we're going to do something that might seem counterintuitive on the surface for a growing game, and combine a few of our existing servers reinvesting in the ones that remain.

We're going to do this in a way that is meant to have the least interruption or negative impact on those who are affected.

The Plan

From now until the launch of Kingdom of Sky and PvP, here is what we plan to do:

1) On Thursday 2/2/06, we will be temporarily opening the Character Transfer Service to all users free of charge.

During this period, normal operation of the EQ2 Character Transfer service will be suspended and all characters can opt to move elsewhere once.

If you've been debating joining friends on a different server, you can take advantage of this opportunity no matter which server you're coming from.

This is to let people who don't mind leaving their guilds (or are not in a guild), and can pack up all of their shared bank belongings, choose any destination server they prefer, except for Antonia Bayle.

For the free transfer period, Antonia Bayle will be removed as a transfer destination. It's already the most full server that we have, and we unfortunately can't risk a situation where that server would become overloaded.

2) At the same time, Update #19 will be going live. During the downtime for this update, we will be doing some database maintenance to prepare for the server moves.

One thing that we will be doing is removing placeholder characters who are under level 5, have less than 1 gold, and have not been played in more than 60 days.

If you have characters that you wish to keep that are under level 5 and have less than 1 gold, please make sure to log them in at least once before Thursday 2/2/06 if you want to keep them.

3) From there, this is the schedule of daily moves:

• On Monday, 2/6/2006, Faydark will move into Befallen
• On Tuesday, 2/7/2006, Innothule will move into Crushbone
• On Wednesday, 2/8/2006, Steamfont will move into Oasis
• On Thursday, 2/9/2006, Oggok will move into Blackburrow
• On Friday, 2/10/2006, Neriak will move into Kithicor
• On Monday, 2/13/2006, Lavastorm will move into Nektulos
• On Tuesday, 2/14/2006, Grobb will move into Everfrost
• On Wednesday, 2/15/2006, Highkeep will move into Butcherblock
• On Thursday, 2/16/2006, Toxxulia will move into Guk
• On Friday, 2/17/2006, Shadowhaven will move into The Bazaar

Throughout the process, we plan on using some of this time to augment all of the worlds and their databases with new hardware to ensure they're even better positioned to handle the growth EQ2 sees week to week.

4) On the weekend of Friday 2/17 through Sunday 2/19, as a part of the pre-launch event leading up to the release of Kingdom of Sky, Bonus Experience Weekend will be returning on top of the existing live event that will be occurring in many of the overland zones. If you missed out on helping build the Griffon Towers, you won't want to miss this weekend.

5) On Monday, 2/20/2006 after everyone has had at least one weekend to decide if they enjoy their destination server, the Character Transfer service will once again begin charging for the transfer service and will again be available for transfers to Antonia Bayle.

6) On Tuesday, 2/21/2006, Kingdom of Sky will be coming to all servers and five PvP servers will be launching as well:

• Two in the US (One will be Station Exchange Enabled and the other will not),
• One in the EU-English language launcher,
• One in the French launcher,
• One in the German launcher.

EverQuest II will then be a game with 31 worlds across our global locations.

The Effects

Moving characters and guilds around has traditionally had effects such as names needing to be changed as a part of the process. The idea is to make the move as transparent as possible. That's not to say that there won't be a few visible effects.

Here are some of the details of what people can expect as a part of these moves.

For those characters who do not choose to move early via the Character Transfer Service and are moved automatically on their moving day, some may be automatically renamed (with one or more 'x's appended to their name) in the case that their name is already taken by an older character. If that occurs, the renamed character will be able to use the /rename command once to choose a new name for themselves.

For guilds who are moved, the same thing may occur with the guild name, though is much less likely. For those guilds who are renamed as a result of the automatic moves, a guild leader can use the /guild rename command to rename their guild once.

Characters who move across servers will retain memories of their item discoveries from their old servers, just like they do today. No one will lose records of discoveries.

Characters who move and have items up for offline sale on the brokers will need to re-list their items on their new servers.

Characters who wait for the automatic move day will have their settings and posessions migrated with them, including UI settings, in-game mail, stored notes for Friends and Ignore lists, recipe filters, macros, socials, guilds, and shared banks.

The day that Shadowhaven moves, all listed auctions will be reset and listing fees refunded. Items will be returned to the game.

In Closing

I understand that this move will be seen as a controversial one, especially so given that we're not doing this for the reasons games have done it in the past.

Hopefully the above steps that we are taking clearly communicate that we have every intention of ensuring that there is as little disruption to your game experience as possible. We ask that you view this move in the same way that we do: a short term disruption followed by a much longer term period of continued growth and server community health.

Your game is our passion. We wouldn't want to do anything that we felt was hurting either you or it. As always, you have our thanks for playing EverQuest II. - Scott Hartsman Senior Producer, EverQuest II

Ok, so there it is. Server combines that take 20 of the 36 servers and turn them into ten. This sort of announcement is typically a gateway of the short path to "OMGzorz!1! The game iz hemoragging players!!!". 

But I'm not so sure.

First, Background

Like most level-based MMORPGs that grow over time, EQ2 suffers from inevitable player spread. As stated in the letter, the world of EQ2 has almost doubled in size in the year it's been live. While this doubling happened at a faster pace than most other games, this doubling is not uncommon to the genre in general. Basically, game worlds always grow.

Unfortunately, the per-server population generally does not keep pace with this growth. Games that double the size of their playable game world do not also double the number of characters played on that server. It may actually be technically possible for companies to do this. But, I've sat through many queues in WoW, and seen many instances go up in CoH and EQ2 too, and seen fun-crushing lag in countless others.

These experiences have lead me to believe that a server's population will surpass critical mass relatively early in its life, and then it'll decline into a sustainable plateau of concurrency. That decline may be as a result of technical issues, or as a result of players deciding technical issues exist in the face of denials to the contrary. Whatever the cause though, I feel this is a bit of Crowd Wisdom in action. Non-specialists not in-the-know decide what the proper population needs to be for a server.

Yet, there's a clear downside here. The "proper" density of population as directed by players is based on their own resource needs. They need just enough people to achieve their goals in games all about individual achievement. Even though EQ2 attempts to integrate more "meta"-like pursuits like Guild and City levels, ultimately, the amount of people that are needed to achieve these goals is probably somewhere well south of what the server can support.

Another complication is the general level of the players in the game. Characters grow up. Either others keep up or the people they used to group with will outgrow them. So the average level continues to migrate upward over the life of that server. Those who come late, and those who roll unsupported/untwinked alts, are left with empty newbie and early-level zones, hoping the game allows them to solo effectively. It happens in all games of this style, though some handle it better than others (in old EQ1, players used newbie zones for global trade, in WoW, trade is actually conducted and crafting well-supported in newbie cities, and EQ2 uses the one major social center per faction to support players at all levels).

Finally, the new content problem. New zones come with new quests come with new compulsions to explore outward and onward. What of the old content though? What of the new players who haven't yet gone through the old zones in order to get to the new ones? There is no easy answer to that question. Anything short of zone redesigns (as happens in EQ1 to a fair degree) will eventually marginalize those old zones into little more than curiosities, memory-inducers of times gone by while people find new adventure in newer players.

All of this results in empty zones, whether they are newbie zones or just old zones. Empty zones are a problem for MMORPGs because they give newcomers the impression of a "dead" world. People need to see other people in order to think a world vibrant. They need to achievements of others to compel them onto their own. They need to feel like there's other people out there with which to group, share stories, buy from and sell to. Otherwise, what's the point of this game over another? Game features will only take a player so far. Without other people to share them with, even the most ardent soloer gets bored.

Even if there's a zillion people on a server, it's very easy to think there's no one around. This can and probably has resulted in a lot of cancellations in a lot of games. It's why games with lots of people have an easier time attracting lots more people. Lots of people like to be around lots of other people, even if they do so only to complain about them.

Now, the News

The problem SOE seems to want to solve is the perception of low population servers. Maybe it's because the people on these servers are all higher level. Maybe it's because these servers actually are lower population. Regardless, it's obviously a problem or they wouldn't be trying to fix it.

Of course, this event is not happening by itself.

The first of the server transfers comes mere days after the launch of Publish 19. Like so many other EQ2 patches I've read about in the past year, this one contains a number of far-reaching changes. Most notably, the entire system for creating characters has changed. As noted in that link, players no longer chose a base and sub class. They now choose their archetype at creation, ala old EQ1 or even WoW.

Further, players who choose Evil no longer start on the Isle of Refuge. In fact, it's not even the Isle of Refuge anymore. The island is now split into two facets: Queens Colony for those who chose Good and Outpost of the Overlord for those who chose Evil. While the geography is the same, the contents, look, and feel are not. And, in both cases, players are not kicked off of these islands to seek citizenry with their eventual host cities. They are citizens when they land on the island after the opening intro (which currently no longer includes the boat sequence).

The impact of this change is fairly easy to see. Everything one did from levels 1-19 in the current Live EQ2 is different. This should have the direct and immediate results of:

1. Compelling alts.
2. Dragging in new players.

I've only been back in EQ2 for about a month, on and off, but have already seen a slight upswing in new player activity. I attribute some of this to WoW's expansion being some indeterminate period of time off yet. But there's also other factors, like news about SOE traveling various circles covering the changes they've made to SWG, those to PS, and those to EQ2.

Players are curious, and even it's not like leaving a game to check out another has any sort of relevance like it used to. Back in the olden days, you stuck to a game or wrote long flowery exit statements and secretly stayed on anyway. Nowadays there's just too many titles to ignore for those with even the minimum curiosity.

I don't think it's impossible to expect new players to come for EQ2 and for veterans to roll alts. As of Publish 19, it is going to be much easier to determine if you like a class, because they're all very different from Level 1 on up. Instead of having to wait until the mid-20s, possibly a month of work or maybe a few weeks, now players can test out a bunch of different classes more quickly, and better yet, within new content they haven't seen yet.

In theory, this should result in a more active newbie and early-level game.

I personally don't think that, by itself, the newbie changes in Pub 19 would have "saved" the 20 servers from being continually underpopulated. There were too many new servers for players to choose from, raising their chances of landing on a perceptually empty one. This may have been offset by a collective succumbing to Alt-itis across the veteran players on that server, but I wouldn't want to have bet on that.

Therefore, I think Publish 19 and these server merges coming at the same time is auspicious and positive. Nobody likes to combine servers. Nobody wants to admit their game didn't do as well as they had hoped or thought. And nobody wants to try and argue what success really is to a playerbase that likes to measure it purely by the number of advertised subscriptions alone.

But here again we bear witness to a company truly making real and concerted efforts to right past wrongs. These are not minor changes SOE has been making to their games. These amount to fundamental rethinks of core concepts and systems, a sort of subtle apology and corrective action without being called that. Basically, they seem to have come through their prior success and the niave complacency that inevitably follows with a new understanding of what has gone and changed around them.

They have a lot of damage control to do in some of their recent endeavors, and the traditional issues that plague them continue to do so. But they do not seem willing to roll over, to go quietly into that dark night, to become an also-ran in a genre they once ruled. They have much more work to do, including how they handle changes in their other games. But I give them kudos for making the tough decisions.