New server transfers

[Zzulo]

https://accounts.eamythic.com/transfer/transferhome

My server, Ulthuan, is there <3

[Bismallah]

Wow, so now that's what 28 some 'source' servers that people have been allowed to move from. Anyone know the status of those 'source' servers post transfer?

Out of 55 total servers, give or take from my first look, you can move off of 28? Whew... not only did they overestimate their servers a little, but they drastically underestimated the players that were going to stick around. I want to break it down via server type:

Core servers which had 39 total, 22 of those have become source servers to transfer onto other remaining Cores. So you had less then a 50% chance that your server wasn't about to turn into a ghost town within 6 weeks of release and be forced to transfer off it to be able to have a decently enjoyable playing experience.

Open RvR they had 8 total on creation, of those 2 have become 'source' servers to head to the other 6 destinations, much better odds.

True RP, non Open RvR, there were 7 at creation. So far 3 of those have become 'source' servers and one of them that was an RP looks like they could transfer to a Core (Lustria?). So you had another close to 50% chance that your server was going to be a source server and turn into a ghost town, move or die decision basically.

Assuming those 28 source servers shitt the bed and folks leave them to die and move to the 18 remaining that they have a choice to move to, your net server loss was 10. Since you started with what 55? Within 6 weeks or so you just gutted 20% of your servers. Hmm... I have been reading all day so I could be misrepresenting data but I can go over it again tonite with a fine tooth comb.

Let's break that down even further, they are claiming 800k subscribers. If you just had a net loss of 10 servers, so to speak, that leaves you with 45 total. 800,000 subscribers divided by 45 servers is about 18,000 per server, or almost 9k per side, per server. Seeing the number of low/low still around, I'd say with reasonable certainty that their true player base right now is 450-600k. That's being lenient.

I am not all doom and gloom, I just expect people (and companies) to be truthful with their numbers.

[Mrbloodworth]

Max on a server is not the same as max concurrent online. Low/Low is a indicator of concurrent users online, not characters made.

[Bismallah]

Right I got that, but what percent would you give to prime time NA population as shown on the login? 35% total of the server population? If that's the case then Low/Low equals almost 3k each side, I could live with that... that's manageable to sustain a server, for now.

I am not sure what they define as Low, Med, and High, but I am just thankful I am not Order on Monolith they got an omgwtf huge incoming Destruction population. Last nite they were Med/Full(with queue) for Order/Destruction. Ouch.

If you say that prime time NA on an NA core server represents maybe 50% then you are starting to look decent. I think Mythic overshot their server estimates by a large margin and this might have been what led people away quicklike. They got to T4 turned around, saw no one behind them, in front of them, or next to them, and thought wtf then left.

I am still going to wait for those December numbers ;)

[ghost]

I think the global summary of what you are getting at is the following:

You can't have a situation where you are offering mass transfers off of half of your initial servers (not including Oceanic servers?) and expect for people to believe you when you tell them "everything is going great!"  I mean, that is like opening a chain of restaurants 55 strong and closing 28 of them.  Your investors would go bonkers.

[Bismallah]

Yes, basically we opened 55 restaurants, we would like those of you that used to eat at these 28 restaurants to go eat at those other 18 restaurants so we can 'remodel' those 28.

But apparently Mark is going to release some 17 pages worth of patch notes for 1.0.5 (probably most of which they had intended for 1.1 but they have to start emergency damage control asap) sometime today?

[ghost]

Yes, basically we opened 55 restaurants, we would like those of you that used to eat at these 28 restaurants to go eat at those other 18 restaurants so we can 'remodel' those 28.

But apparently Mark is going to release some 17 pages worth of patch notes for 1.0.5 (probably most of which they had intended for 1.1 but they have to start emergency damage control asap) sometime today?

Well, I certainly can't wait to see that. 

Now the real question is this:  can they make changes without royally screwing the pooch?  Oft-times these patch changes are equally bad for a bit.  THAT.....would be a real disaster at this point.

[Zzulo]

don't really care if the patch will introduce some new bugs, as long as the content of the patch shows that they're moving in the right direction

[Bismallah]

well the quote that scares me is "adjustments to every career in the game"...

part 1 of the patch is on the vault, looks like they are fixing some glaring issues, but wow, changes to every career in the game can be really good or leaving folks thinking wtf just happened to my class.

[BitWarrior]

I mean, that is like opening a chain of restaurants 55 strong and closing 28 of them.  Your investors would go bonkers.

You'd still have investors?

[Zzulo]

remember that even those of you with inactive accounts can transfer your characters

[Bismallah]

I'd dare say that even if you didn't transfer they will merge you eventually.

And yeah, if you still had investors... this 1.0.5 is serious damage control and most of us who have played MMOs for any length of time know that if you do sweeping changes like this you are going to royally piss some folks off that have taken advantage of overpowered classes who will leave, and/or you will piss off folks that have gotten to love their class and now their roles have changes, etc... its just bad juju. I wont assume that every class is getting a total retool but I bet some classes get serious buffage/nerfage and the rest are middle of the road.

Left Axe nerf inc.

[ghost]

I mean, that is like opening a chain of restaurants 55 strong and closing 28 of them.  Your investors would go bonkers.

You'd still have investors?

Probably not after closing 28 restaurants.

I'm pretty sure EA had some initial money sunk into this thing from outside sources.

[Lantyssa]

Right I got that, but what percent would you give to prime time NA population as shown on the login? 35% total of the server population? If that's the case then Low/Low equals almost 3k each side, I could live with that... that's manageable to sustain a server, for now.

Conventional wisdom is that 20% of your player base is playing at any given time.

[Bismallah]

Excellent, thank you. I have been looking for a good number to use for some time...

[Goreschach]

Right I got that, but what percent would you give to prime time NA population as shown on the login? 35% total of the server population? If that's the case then Low/Low equals almost 3k each side, I could live with that... that's manageable to sustain a server, for now.

Conventional wisdom is that 20% of your player base is playing at any given time.

That's way too high. That would mean the average player would be putting in around 5 hours a day. The average player.

[UnSub]

Right I got that, but what percent would you give to prime time NA population as shown on the login? 35% total of the server population? If that's the case then Low/Low equals almost 3k each side, I could live with that... that's manageable to sustain a server, for now.

Conventional wisdom is that 20% of your player base is playing at any given time.

That's way too high. That would mean the average player would be putting in around 5 hours a day. The average player.

That's on average: there would be a difference between peak times and off-peak times, and the player who spends 12 hours a day playing and those who put in a few hours on weekends.

[Lantyssa]

That's on average: there would be a difference between peak times and off-peak times, and the player who spends 12 hours a day playing and those who put in a few hours on weekends.

This.

Remember, a person who plays one hour and a person who plays nine, average out to two players playing five hours a day.  It's a very rough guide to populations, and the best I've heard out of a dev's mouth.  When they're willing to give more precise metrics I'll gladly use those instead.

[dd0029]

Mythic deserves a nod for the technical side of the server transfer process.  You request it and its done, no waiting.

[Just Testing]

Mythic deserves a nod for the technical side of the server transfer process.  You request it and its done, no waiting.

It does.  It also makes the lack of server transfers in Europe a bit more curious.

[Bismallah]

I like 20%, I think I can make that work with number crunching on various games I have seen... it's a fair estimate. We all know statistics can be skewed, but I thought this was funny (playing with sticky notes and numbers at work)... or sad however you slice it. Xfire already has WAR dropping out of the top 10 games played as of Nov6 time wise daily. I know it's not the best resource to pull from but its been dropping like a lead balloon since its peak around release. It was topping 55-58k now it's barely breaking 30k

November 2nd, a Sunday, showed the following:

-488k hours played for WoW
-33k hours played for WAR

If we go off a ratio for players per game and WoW is showing 488k hours, WAR is showing less then 7% of the same played time as WoW per that statistic. If WoW is showing 11m members worldwide then 7% of that is 660k users. Right around the number that a lot of people have been assuming. Seeing as that number has been dropping big time, if it continues to spiral and the introduction of WotLK I expect the total number of users to be around 350-400k by the next month. That also means that WAR has lost another 1/4 or more of their initial subscribers within a month... not a good trend. (since they were claiming 800k or more active subscribers)

If we assume, and we are taking a big leap with those numbers, that is the current trend of WAR, its hemorrhaging badly and this patch is merely a band aid on the real problem - RvR just isn't what it was cracked up to be, period.

[Goreschach]

That's on average: there would be a difference between peak times and off-peak times, and the player who spends 12 hours a day playing and those who put in a few hours on weekends.

This.

Remember, a person who plays one hour and a person who plays nine, average out to two players playing five hours a day.  It's a very rough guide to populations, and the best I've heard out of a dev's mouth.  When they're willing to give more precise metrics I'll gladly use those instead.

And you see nothing wrong with this? That for every person who plays casually, there's one that plays all day, every day? Maybe, just maybe, that's accurate for WOW if you assume they have a couple million gold sellers in china that really do play WOW as a job, but I can't imagine this being accurate for any other mmo. 10%, maybe, but I'd guess more like 5%.

I'd imagine that a good percent of the current active accounts in WAR are playing 0 hours a day.

[BitWarrior]

I'd imagine that a good percent of the current active accounts in WAR are playing 0 hours a day.

Oh yeah? Well I actually play -5 hours a day, so there. I developed a time machine so I could go back and warn myself.

Just sometime for you to consider in your calculations. Time machines.

[Trippy]

You people are interpreting the "1/5" rule incorrectly. That's not the "average" number of players on a server at any given time, it's the "peak" number. I.e. at prime time on the most busy day (e.g. a Friday or Saturday) you would expect roughly 1/5 of the total number of accounts on that server to be playing at that time. This rule of thumb is actually backed by real numbers if you look at the WoW China numbers. Peak concurrency numbers for WoW China hit 1 million in April and they have ~5 million "subscribers" (they use time cards over there so it's actually the number of people that play at least once a month).

[Goreschach]

That makes a lot more sense.

[Zzulo]

I hope you guys who were involved in this latest transfer moved to Red Eye Mountain. Constant RvR and fast scenario pops in T4. I hope it lasts.

[Evildrider]

I hope you guys who were involved in this latest transfer moved to Red Eye Mountain. Constant RvR and fast scenario pops in T4. I hope it lasts.

I've gone from RR 35.75 to like 38.5 since the transfer.. I've had like 3000 rvr kills since I switched over.  I love it.. lol

[Bismallah]

Naaa, I am on Ostermark and its still a ghost town... we ran around Dragonwake with a WB last nite and ran into 4-5 Destruction, heh. Praag was about the same 2-3 groups running around attacking each other, not Warbands, groups...

[Arthur_Parker]

Linky

Over the next few weeks we will be enabling server transfers to help balance the population. Players on some servers will have the option to move to a different server. To begin with we will be offering transfers from either low population or very busy servers to medium population ones. We are currently testing the systems that will make this possible and expect to be able to give you a firm date for the start of this process within the next few days.

In the meantime we are able to give you a list of the servers that will be open for transfer as well as the destination servers. They are as follows:

Core Roleplay Servers
Players on Makaisson will have the choice to move to Burlock


Open RvR Roleplay Servers
Players on Ellyrion will have the choice to move to Alarielle


Players on the following Core servers will have the opportunity to transfer to either the Karak Izor or the Karak Norn server:
Karak Ungor
Karak-Vlag
Karaz-a-Karak
Tor Anroc
Yvresse
Zhufbar
Worlds Edge Mountains


Players on the following Open RvR servers will have the opportunity to move to the Dragonback Mountains server:
Clar Karond
Mount Silverspear
Sea of Dreams
Tiranoc
Finuval Plain


Please note that this will be a character transfer and not a clone, if your character moves then this will not be reversible. You should be sure to talk with your guild and your other friends on the server to ensure that it is the right choice for you before you make a decision. Also please note that the restriction on realm choice will remain and so you will not be able to move to a server where you already have a character of the opposite realm, you will need to delete all such characters on the destination server before you move.

To assist you in your new home, all destination servers will benefit from a blanket 20% xp bonus to both realms.

As our tests conclude, we will be able to give you further information on this process so please be sure to check the news regularly for updates.

14 EU WAR servers currently listed for merges free character transfers.

[Bismallah]

Ouch.

So thats a net loss of what, 9 more servers to add to the 10 net they are losing from the 6 versions of merges they already did. (Granted its GOA, but still)

What was that Mark Jacobs quote again about 6 weeks out if they arent opening new servers they were in trouble? Heh.

[schild]

That quote needs to be tossed into a pit. I'm not defending him, but simply put, had they made servers have a higher pop and had optimized a shitload more, they wouldn't have started with so many servers, wouldn't have had many of the problems they had, and would in fact probably be opening servers - just very slowly.

[UnSub]

That quote needs to be tossed into a pit. I'm not defending him, but simply put, had they made servers have a higher pop and had optimized a shitload more, they wouldn't have started with so many servers, wouldn't have had many of the problems they had, and would in fact probably be opening servers - just very slowly.

Yeah, Mythic made a mistake by opening more servers, then enhancing all their existing servers to more capacity.

However: it is a dumb thing to do in shooting your mouth off before a launch.