Mark Jacobs - Server Transfer Service Incoming

[waylander]

Link

Folks,

Over the last few weeks the team has implementing a transfer system to allow both players and guilds to move between our servers. This technology was not available for WAR at launch and building it has proven to be a little more complex than originally expected. I’m happy to say that starting next week we will begin public testing of the service and if things go well, we will be able to offer it free to our players (for a limited time) either next week or the week after that. I apologize for the delay in making this service available but again, it did take a little longer than we originally expected.

We will be posting details next week about the public test and then the parameters for the free service.

Mark

Quick points:

1.
I hope guilds transfer too because having to level your guild all over again when lots of people are 30-40 is going to suck.

2.
Since less than 5 of the 55 servers are high population, we're basically looking at medium to medium or low to medium server population transfers.

3.
Higher populations alone won't solve the ORVR issue. They have got to increase the Keep Taking and BFO exp rewards, loot rewards, etc. At the same time they've got to reduce the number of PQ's per tier, re-itemize, and increase PVE experience drastically so they get more people into T3/T4 PVP.

4.
Even with this, I think they should try to cluster scenario queuing with multiple servers like the WoW battlegroups in order to keep those things popping regularly. No matter what they do with ORVR there is going to be a segment that is only going to play in scenarios most of their PVP life.

[ghost]

3.
Higher populations alone won't solve the ORVR issue. They have got to increase the Keep Taking and BFO exp rewards, loot rewards, etc. At the same time they've got to reduce the number of PQ's per tier, re-itemize, and increase PVE experience drastically so they get more people into T3/T4 PVP.

And they need to include more rewards for defending.  Increased population would go a long way to improving things though.

[raydeen]

I like number 4. I've found that while there seems to be quite a bit of newbie action on Drakwald, trying to get the Khaine's Embrace scenario to pop is nigh unto impossible. I did manage to get into one instance but it took 2 hours of waiting. It kinda makes completing the scenario quests impossible if it hardly pops when you're on.

[EWSpider]

This might sound contrary at first, but when you think about it really would help.  One thing I want to see is an additional Scenario and Kill quest NPC placed in the starting area of each Scenario.  Not only will this make Scenarios more convenient, but it will encourage people to spread out more and do other things while waiting for the next Scenario to pop.  If I don't feel chained to my Warcamp in order to ensure I can always turn in my quests and get new ones, then I'm more likely to wander into the RvR lakes or PQs in-between Scenarios.

[Mrbloodworth]

I wonder if they are going to add a way to identify higher population servers. It would suck if you went to one and it was worse than the one you came from. The high/med/low on the server list isn't the best indicator.

[Brogarn]

Part of the fun of DAoC was knowing your enemy and what to expect of them. I think number 4 takes away from that part of the server community. I'd rather wait and see if guild and player server transfers balances things out before going that route.

[Nebu]

i'm encouraged by the fact that Mark is doing the things quickly that are in his power to do quickly. 

I am also against #4.  The best part of any pvp game is knowing your enemies and building up a server society based on recognition. 

[raydeen]

I guess I don't see a problem with 4 as I regard scenarios as a quick little diversion. If the RvR was instanced and used enemies from other servers I'd have a problem. Scenarios to me our akin to random games in UT. I'm just jumping in to get some kills and laughs and the more unpredictable the better IMO. I don't care who I'm fighting as long as I'm fighting.

[Nebu]

Let's see if I can help. 

In the endgame, you'll eventually get to a point in your reknown rank where it takes a long time to progress. During these times, fun in scenarios and RvR will come from not only taking objectives, but in who you took those objectives from.  Perhaps I'm placing too much personal bias here, but after 5+ years in DAoC rvr I got more of a thrill from beating one of the top groups on my server than I did from gaining rps.  It becomes more about competition among competitors than an rp race after a while. 

[Brogarn]

In the endgame, you'll eventually get to a point in your reknown rank where it takes a long time to progress. During these times, fun in scenarios and RvR will come from not only taking objectives, but in who you took those objectives from.  Perhaps I'm placing too much personal bias here, but after 5+ years in DAoC rvr I got more of a thrill from beating one of the top groups on my server than I did from gaining rps. It becomes more about competition among competitors than an rp race after a while.

That.

[raydeen]

I can dig it. I never played DAoC except for a bit in open beta so I never experienced the PvP rivalry aspect. I do recall some WoW players getting hot and bothered when Blizzard did this to BG's but it didn't affect me there either as I didn't start PvPing until my 50's or so. Most of my MMOG career as been that of a care bear. I'm only now developing a taste for the sweet sweet tears of the enemy.

[ghost]

i'm encouraged by the fact that Mark is doing the things quickly that are in his power to do quickly. 

I am also against #4.  The best part of any pvp game is knowing your enemies and building up a server society based on recognition. 

The only thing #4 does is allow the low pop servers to limp along by giving the folks there a way to get RR.

Better to let them die their slow death...........or to speed it up if that suits the Mythic folks better.

[khaine]

I despise the idea of cross server queues , with enough population from transfers/merges this shouldn't be necessary

I want to fight against the enemies on my server only ,

But I do like the idea of making the turnin quests universal for the scenarios , i.e. make it where you can participate in any of the tier scenarios and turn them in any of the areas , so you don't end up all huddled in Elryion only to turn in Tor Anroc and so on

Also I would like the thought of making the quest npcs for scenario turn ins in the middle of a large RvR area , so you're forced into at least being in a general place for open RvR to get them to begin with

[Vinadil]

#4 is not necessary if population is high.  Last night scenario pops in T3 were instantaneous.  Once they popped before our group even queued... we just got pre-invited to join a scenario.  And, we are on a balanced server, it is not like we have Low Order and High Destro.

I think scenario issues are almost purely a funtion of Population and LEVEL imbalance.  More than NUMBER of people, Developers need to find a way to build servers based on Playstyle.  We chose a RP server this time (Ostermark), first time ever for our guild.  We are loving it.  We don't RP, but this server is casual and committed.  So, just about everyone on the server is levelling at the same speed, and everyone wants to take part in all aspects of the game.  We had a few quick-levelling "hardcore" types who got frustrated 2 weeks in and left for "better" servers.  Good for them, you need to find a place with people who play like you do in a timezone that fits you.

Those are the most important things about servers in my mind: 1) What is "primetime" for this server.  2) What is the Prime Tier on this server.  If you have a server like ours you can easily see that at 4 weeks in it is an Eastern Primetime and currently a T2/3 Prime Tier.  That means if you don't play 9-12 Eastern and you don't level casually... you probably won't like it here.  I don't know how they would communicate that info, but it is the kind of thing that might be helpfuly to people making a move.

[ghost]

#4 is not necessary if population is high.  Last night scenario pops in T3 were instantaneous.  Once they popped before our group even queued... we just got pre-invited to join a scenario.  And, we are on a balanced server, it is not like we have Low Order and High Destro.

I think scenario issues are almost purely a funtion of Population and LEVEL imbalance.  More than NUMBER of people, Developers need to find a way to build servers based on Playstyle.  We chose a RP server this time (Ostermark), first time ever for our guild.  We are loving it.  We don't RP, but this server is casual and committed.  So, just about everyone on the server is levelling at the same speed, and everyone wants to take part in all aspects of the game.  We had a few quick-levelling "hardcore" types who got frustrated 2 weeks in and left for "better" servers.  Good for them, you need to find a place with people who play like you do in a timezone that fits you.

Those are the most important things about servers in my mind: 1) What is "primetime" for this server.  2) What is the Prime Tier on this server.  If you have a server like ours you can easily see that at 4 weeks in it is an Eastern Primetime and currently a T2/3 Prime Tier.  That means if you don't play 9-12 Eastern and you don't level casually... you probably won't like it here.  I don't know how they would communicate that info, but it is the kind of thing that might be helpfuly to people making a move.

Yeah, I tend to like RP servers as the population (particularly on WOW servers) tends to be a little more mature. 

My big issue with that is that one of the cooler professions, Witch Elf, is a chick and I don't RP chick toons.  It's too weird.  I did run across a guy in WOW once that was RPing a chick toon over vent though.  It was freakin' hilarious and very, very, very weird at the same time.  Creepy.

[Beld]

Let's see if I can help. 

In the endgame, you'll eventually get to a point in your reknown rank where it takes a long time to progress. During these times, fun in scenarios and RvR will come from not only taking objectives, but in who you took those objectives from.  Perhaps I'm placing too much personal bias here, but after 5+ years in DAoC rvr I got more of a thrill from beating one of the top groups on my server than I did from gaining rps.  It becomes more about competition among competitors than an rp race after a while. 

Couldn't agree more.  Part of the fun in DAoC was the IRC conversations after a particularly good 8v8.  I will also say, my server, which is a high pop server, is already up down to 5 minutes or so in between t4 queue pops.  I don't think cross server scenarios are needed and I do think they will detract from the open rvr.  It's not that instantaneous scenario pops are bad, but once you get guilds able to fight other guilds from other servers, you will find some of them only hammering scenarios so they can get cross server bragging rights or the like. 

As has already been pointed out, of course, this is just another step.  Still need to alter the incentives for open rvr, but it certainly shows they are focused on attacking their issues.

[ashrik]

I'm going to throw my voice in the echo chamber here.

I'm strongly against cross-server queues as a solution to this problem. The problem being population- there are two ways to go about it. Consolidation of players/guilds is one way, cross-server queuing is the other.

They're already doing it one way, no reason to completely shit all over it by attacking it from the other end too. Specially in such a way that'd destroy the PVP community. I want to know who I'm fighting, even if it's just an unimportant scenario.

[Vinadil]

You could even say that, "Knowing who you are fighting is one component that brings meaning to a Scenario."

[waylander]

Knowing who you are fighting should matter more in RVR, and less in scenarios which were simply meant to be a sideshow.  As severs age the scenarios will simply get fewer and longer, and clustering would probably happen anyway just to keep them going.

Also knowing who you are fighting in this game is as simple as looking up the guild on the War-Realm site, and in scenarios you will never fight a full premade so its not like you are fighting "quality oponents".  You are fighting a few quality opponents and at least 6 random PUGS.

Scenarios are simply feeders to get you to T4 and real RVR, and thinking of them as quality matches is pretty dumb unless Mythic allows guilds or groups to queue as full premades.

[Brogarn]

I completely disagree with you, waylander. I think even in scenarios knowing your opponent, even without the premades, brings more to the fight than just random people from random servers.

[tazelbain]

You and Barrywhite.

[wuzzman]

sever community is BS as a reason for no cross server ques is BS in a pvp game. Again, you should never design a game on the assumption you will have 200,000 players doing the same thing at the same time on all hours of the day. Its just retarded way of thinking. If your great at the game people will know your name, plain and simple, if your not then why does anyone need to know you?

[Kamen]

sever community is BS as a reason for no cross server ques is BS in a pvp game. Again, you should never design a game on the assumption you will have 200,000 players doing the same thing at the same time on all hours of the day. Its just retarded way of thinking. If your great at the game people will know your name, plan and simple, if your not then why does anyone need to know you?

Bolded the important part.

[Warskull]

For destruction players cross-server queues have a genuine down side.  It hurt players who picked balanced servers by mixing them in with the idiots who rolled on servers with low order, full destruction populations.  The community issue is overblown and most players just seem to have the "OMG YOU WANT THIS GAME TO BE WOW!" kneejerk reaction more than anything else.

Probably the best way to do it would be to have cross-server queues with server pools, but preference to same server games.  For example you queue up and if it doesn't think it can make a match in a few minutes it shifts you to a small cross server pool, if it still can't make a match it bumps you up to a large cross server queue, and so on.

You could even add an option for the "but the community" people to always stay in the local queues.  If the party leader has this option off ("Participate in Cross Server Scenarios") you never go up to cross-server pools.

[UnSub]

And just to show that Mythic really does have no fucking idea about its players:

No Realm Population Bonuses to any servers until AFTER Character Transfers have occurred.

Don't they want to encourage players to shift to particular servers? Wouldn't an XP / Reknown bonus coupled with the free transfer help players to make the leap?

What complete and utter swamp poop.

[schild]

Haha what?

Yes, I can't imagine why someone would want to get every shread of bonus exp they could out of something. Either no one tells Mark when something is a stupid idea, or someone else is coming up with all this silly shit and Mark is already onto an expansion or worried about the new classes, or that whole studio has gone fucking insane. Mark needs someone behind him with a spray bottle full of water to train him on what is and isn't dumb.

[UnSub]

Perhaps the bonus can only be applied to one side at a time (which wouldn't be an oversight I'd put past Mythic).

Even so - offer it on servers that you want to see buffed up i.e. take your pick out of all of them.

Or maybe HRose's linked post is right and WAR is just a sideshow to the OTHER MAJOR MMO Mythic is actually spending its time on ... 

[Gurney]

Perhaps the bonus can only be applied to one side at a time (which wouldn't be an oversight I'd put past Mythic).

Even so - offer it on servers that you want to see buffed up i.e. take your pick out of all of them.

Or maybe HRose's linked post is right and WAR is just a sideshow to the OTHER MAJOR MMO Mythic is actually spending its time on ... 

To be fair the transfers and the XP bonus are two different population mechanics with different consequences and intentions.  One is based on re-rolls and the other is just a shifting of already existing characters.  Transfers cannot change the overall balance of Destruction vs Order whereas the XP bonus is intended to try to shift this.

Mythic not wanting to mix the two is not a bad idea as it would simply muddle things.

I have a sneaking suspicion that unless they highly regulate the transfer some servers will become wildly imbalanced since only guilds on each side will coordinate.

Also the XP bonus was causing some server to see very large spikes in concurrent players.  Mythic would probably be wise to limit transfer requests on a per transfer basis so that they avoid queues and force other servers to fill up.  If they do this and have XP bonuses it will be very hard to accurrately control population flow.


Probably they want more reliable and stable populations before they add the volatility of XP bonuses.

[Venkman]

Or maybe HRose's linked post is right and WAR is just a sideshow to the OTHER MAJOR MMO Mythic is actually spending its time on ... 

Man I hope you don't mean invis+]nok+no+kill&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=my]this one. The only thing I can find barely believable there is about laying off people. If they were doing it, then they are because your dev team moves to other projects while you roll in a smaller Live team at first. Until the point you realize enough fundamental stuff was broken to require dev-type fixes, or you didn't build the game on a dynamic foundation with tools that allow the live team to make easier adjustments.

CSRs can't get into Scenarios? Can't IP ban? Character data only remembered for four days? Come on.

[Arthur_Parker]

CSRs can't get into Scenarios? Can't IP ban? Character data only remembered for four days? Come on.

I personally have no idea if it's true or bollocks, it doesn't really affect me either way.  But just to be clear, you are saying every part of that is false right?  Because if CSR's can't get into scenarios, then all CSR's are going to know if that part is true or not.

Linky

Folks,

As someone has already pointed out, I said that there were a number of things that we expected to be in 1.1 that are already in (mail system, open RvR bonuses), etc. We will continue to get things in as soon as they are ready (other than the new classes) prior to 1.1. Oh, and if add up all our hot fixes + patches, I think we will compare very nicely to every other MMO in terms of fixing and adjusting things. What I'm hoping to do is for us to get a bunch of things in over the course of patching prior to 1.1 so then the naysayers can say "OMG, Mythic lied, 1.1 didn't have all the things that it was supposed to be in it!!!!" 

We got a lot of things coming but we are not going to rush them in and then take them out if we're wrong or didn't test enough, that would be worse than waiting a little longer for the changes. Based on what I've read on the boards here and elsewhere, I think we have just about every major issue either covered or we looking at how to do something about it. As I've said before, I could probably post some soothing words every time someone says "Hey, this is broken" or "This is unbalanced" but then what I say would become pretty meaningless. I prefer to address some things when either I think we could use the community's feedback on issues or when we have a solution but I, nor Mythic, will respond to every thread especially when it simply the same stuff again and again.

And as to some hot button issues:

1) CTDs - Way down for most people. We're not there yet but the last patch cut CTDs down by a huge percentage.

2) Server transfers - Still on track for testing next week

3) Class balance issues - Lots and lots of stuff going in. Every class is getting looked at and will get love and some will get tough love. We are not afraid to make any changes we need to in order to balance things out between the classes. Some things will be added prior to 1.1 and other things may have to wait till 1.1 (new code).

4) Open RvR - We have already made changes and we're willing to make more changes as necessary.


And as I've said, we also expect to have more major content patches about every 3 months.

Mark

[Venkman]

CSRs can't get into Scenarios? Can't IP ban? Character data only remembered for four days? Come on.

I personally have no idea if it's true or bollocks, it doesn't really affect me either way.  But just to be clear, you are saying every part of that is false right?  Because if CSR's can't get into scenarios, then all CSR's are going to know if that part is true or not.

That's what I'm guessing yes. And yes, a CSR would know or not of course. I only follow the link one deep though. It claims to be from the VN boards, but I rely on others to travel into that lair ;-) Does the original post purport to be from a Mythic employee?

[IainC]

Linky

For bonus points you have Sir Bruce posting in that VN boards thread. 

[waffel]

Anyone find it completely fucking retarded that they totally shot PvE leveling in the ass near the end of beta (to presumably slow down leveling speed so people wouldn't see their pre-pubecent end game) only to give exp bonuses to people on low population servers/servers with population imbalances?

[Arthur_Parker]

That's what I'm guessing yes. And yes, a CSR would know or not of course. I only follow the link one deep though. It claims to be from the VN boards, but I rely on others to travel into that lair ;-) Does the original post purport to be from a Mythic employee?

Yeah, I think so, I'm going to drop the subject, even if parts of it are true, the rest is probably just front line staff rumours.  It wouldn't be the first time someone got confused by differential and full backups.  Also on reading that old thread that links back to here, it shows how accurate Stray was, as for HR, I didn't agree with him then on all that ancient history and I still don't.

[tolakram]

I was curious on server numbers so I logged into 3 medium and 2 low servers.  One of those servers, Skull Throne, is what I believe to be the most populated server.

It only counts to 30 so I did the biggest level range possible without exceeding to reduce the number of searches.  I denote if a single level exceeded 30.

This was all done between 6 and 7:15pm EDT Saturday October 25th.  This is only counting Order players.

Assuming (and that's a stretch) even populations it appears the most populated server has ~1600 players, while the lowest has 200 or less.


Skull Throne
Medium
816++

Level 40: 30+
Level 13: 30+
Level 12: 30+
Level 07: 30+
Level 06: 30+

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Ostermark
Medium
506+

Level 12: 30+

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Ironfist
Medium
498

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Wurtbad
Low
209

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Grimnar
Low
95