[Silirrion]

With the announced start of the server merge process not quite having gone as planned I wanted to take the time today to speak to you all explain where we are at with the merge process and what the schedule looks like.

Basically, on Wednesday when we came to do the first live merges we encountered an issue with the structure of our data that we hadn’t found or experienced during testing. This issue caused there to be a risk, on some servers, under specific circumstances, of items having non-unique identifiers in our database. This in turn might have lead to some cases of player’s items not surviving the merge. It didn’t happen at all during our testing, and may have been (in the scale of all players and all items in the game) a possibly rare occurrence. However this was not an area where the team and I were willing to take any risks with whatsoever.

This is also exactly why we decided not to announce all the merge schedules in advance and to ensure we could do them in a live environment first before we went ahead with all the merges. While it is never ‘nice’ to have your contingency plans called into action, this approach has meant we caught a potential issue before it could possibly affect people’s actual game experience.

It also showed up a legacy issue with code that allocated those identifiers that hadn’t been apparent before. It is very important to me and the team here that we resolve these issues thoroughly and comprehensively and resist the temptation to rush a temporary, manual or ‘band aid’ fix to meet the goal of completing all the merges prior to the holidays at the possible expense of risk to players progression or items.

This meant we had to make the decision and do this task correctly. That means both resolving the conflicts in the database and fixing the problem with the allocation correctly so that it can’t happen again (the ‘band aid’ solution would for example have meant ongoing character transfers might have been problematic in the future).

So we have taken the decision to do everything that needs to be done to ensure that player’s items or characters are not risked, as that’s just not a risk I find acceptable. We should, and will, do everything we can to ensure that the process of the merges is done smoothly and with the least risk to your characters.

Ok, so what does that mean exactly in reality I hear you ask? Most importantly this means that the merge process will almost certainly continue into January. We will now have to do some additional ‘ground work’ as it were to prepare the databases for the merges again. The community team will provide more details on this over the coming days and weeks in terms of schedules and when you can expect downtime so please keep your eyes out for details.

I really appreciate everyone’s patience with this process and hope that you all understand that I want to ensure that no corners are cut or unnecessary risks taken with a process as important as this. I am very disappointed that we haven’t managed to deliver the merges on the time scales we were originally intending, but it is far more important to me that these things are done with all the care and attention such a process deserves and hope everyone sees that while unfortunate in terms of time required this course of action is better for everyone.

Moving on from the merges, and on a much brighter note, the progress of the next major update is starting to shape up very nicely. Update four should go to the test server relatively soon. We hope to have a version up and running on the public test server next week and in preparation the provisional update notes are now available on the test server forums for everyone to go and take a look at. There is quite a bit there, some you already know about, some you don’t.

Update four will most likely be deployed to the live servers in January, but we have to see how the testing goes first before deciding on dates.

It has been very pleasing to see players enjoying the new content, changes and fixes that have been going into the game over the last few updates. The team is working very hard to both address the issues that you guys have brought up since launch, and also to add new content and features. Heading into the holiday season I am very glad to see that progress is being made and that we are hopefully managing to keep on improving your Hyborian experience!

[Wexx]

Thanks for the communication Sil. Always nice to know what is going on behind the scenes.

[Sintax]

Great to hear.

Thanks for the update.

[hornin48]

Thanks for the update.

[fluorineAOC]

You do realize, because you aren't letting players transfer servers until all merges are done, that some of those (like those on Hyperborea) will have to wait until February before they can transfer to Cimmeria?

Wow...just wow.

F

[Wexx]

Originally Posted by fluorineAOC You do realize, because you aren't letting players transfer servers until all merges are done, that some of those (like those on Hyperborea) will have to be waiting until February before they can transfer to Cimmeria? Wow...just wow. F

Umm...where did you get February from? He just said it will drag on into January to do all of them....doesn't say it won't be done until late January into February.

[ForgottenLRRP]

Thanks for the Heads Up Sil.

[fluorineAOC]

Originally Posted by Wexx Umm...where did you get February from? He just said it will drag on into January to do all of them....doesn't say it won't be done until late January into February.

He said the server merges are going to move into January. Character transfers will not be allowed until after that. You really think there is any realistic possibility that the day or two after merges are finished they are going to allow character transfers?

You my good friend are dreaming.

It will be February...at the earliest.

[Jimmyup]

Initiate Character Transfer Before Server Merges.

I like your game, but I despise how you update it. These server merges that have been announced almost made me re-subscribe. Glad I did not, I am not going to resubscribe until I can play on a populated server. Logging on at five to eight P.M and finding maybe four other rival players PvP'ing in Kheshatta is terrible. There might be others in Keshatta, but since this zone is not a strict PvP zone most are grinding alts (the only thing to do as of now). This leaves you to search all over this large instance.

If merging is not an option at this time, add a character transfer *before* merges, that I know can happen due transferring Live characters to to the Test-Live servers. I know why you chose not to do this, the populations of the many remaining barren servers will flock to Tyranny or Deathwhisper. Is that truly a terrible thing to happen? Is it truly terrible for players to wish for other players to play with, in a *massively-multiplayer* online roleplaying game? To have content available on a pay-to-play game? You have taken too long in the process of patching, and now of merging, to save these servers. Let them die. Let players transfer to a different server of their choosing now.

Perhaps add "fresh-start"servers, and force transfers only to these, keeping the populations of Tyranny or Deathwhisper from being overwhelmed by a large influx of players. To hasten this character transfer ignore guilds or guild cities. I do not care about finished guild cities or battle-keeps anymore, those can be replaced. What cannot be replaced is the large number of subscribers spread to thin across a score of servers lacking enough players to use certain numerous group content.

Why would it be bad to allow character transfers now, half the meager populations of the dead servers have already re-rolled new alts, or mains as these toons have become, on Tyranny. That is how reckless this situation has become, to give up five months of grinding to create a new character. Acknowledge this and allow transferring before the merging ends (or begins). This is needed desperately , if you allow transfers now, that saves you time with server mergers as well as the money of players who refuse to pay for close to nothing.

The populations of Tyranny and Deathwhisper have had almost seven months head start on those who are rerolling, these servers did not do anything special to have a high number of players, merely chance. You are punishing those who have subscribed to your game for seven months. Where July to September was plagued by one-shotting, and November to January is now plagued by empty servers. Three out of seven months of unplayability. The length you take to fix problems in your game is outrageous.

The item issue does not seem to hinder character transfers, if players do not want to lose items then they can chose to stay on their empty servers. I would not care if I lose some of my epics if I could start playing with other players and maybe be able to obtain new epics from full raids.

Am I being to negative for asking for content, to be able to max PvP XP on more than 6 different people in a twenty-four hour period? Having the most PvP come from duels? I do not think so.

[fluorineAOC]

And, by extension, this means that server transfers are going to take more than two months, from the time they were decided on to execution.

Running a skeleton crew Craig? I feel sorry for your bud.

F