Merging shards, the only fair way to do it.

[Woodsman]

This was what Jeff Skalski said a few months ago:

Watchertoo [15:16]: One of the questions came out is there any consideration [given] to combining shards to increase population?

Jeff [15:21]: We talk about it. We’ve talked it out from the one side where having that healthier population is a greater user experience for our players. And then on the other side, of course, we look at the cost too, because we have to maintain the hardware and all that.

Right now I don’t have plans on merging any servers. For UO specifically, compared to any other MMO that I’ve worked on, it’s very complicated just because of the housing component. It’s real “real estate” and it’s one of those things, honestly if I had to write the four pillars of UO that make it stand out and unique, our housing system is definitely one of the strong pillars, and also for what that does for the community. So I’m personally not comfortable with going through and saying okay we’re going to take this shard and this shard, and I’m going to merge these together, because my options would be either I tell one shard, “I’m sorry, you’re going to lose all your real estate, we’ll pack your stuff up and you’ll have to find somewhere else to put it,” which would be a cruel message. The other one would be I merge two and I just wipe everybody’s [house] and all the land and do a fresh reboot and there would be like a land rush for property. I don’t want to do that either. It’s so disruptive. So, I’m not planning on merging the shards right now. I know players are looking at migrating. Maybe we can possibly do something where we incentivize a little bit, because it is a lot to ask our players to do. But right now there are no plans, definitely in the near term, to do a server merge.

Jeff highlighted the only two ways to merge shards:

Method A: Some people on some shards (the larger shards) get to keep their real estate while some people on other shards (smaller shards) lose it all.

Method B: Nobody keeps their real estate and everybody has to start over on getting houses on new shards.

For those who support shard mergers, which would you prefer? If you support Method A, what do you tell people who might lose houses that they've had for over 10 years and why they should lose their houses while people on another shard don't?

Note: I'm not a supporter of shard mergers since I know too many people who would just walk away from UO if they lost their housing. Shard mergers are best in games like Warhammer or Camelot that require a large number of people to come together since the games are PvP/RvR-based, unlike UO where you don't need many people around you to be happy. I'm asking the question, because I see it brought up, but I never see the mechanisms discussed.

 

[Viper09]

Method B is the ONLY fair option. I can't honestly support method A, too many people would lose their spot while the other side is all comfy cozy, losing absolutely nothing. Method A is just too unfair.

Method B is unfair but at least it's unfair to both sides. But again it would run the risk forcing some people to quit. Real estate is the big problem with mergers for this game. A fair number of people just don't want to lose their house.

I like the idea of shard mergers but that's only because I don't rely heavily on my housing spots, I like to move around a lot. But I do understand there are people who love their housing locations and don't want to give them up, so while I like the idea of merging I can't approve it.

 

[Paps]

Just a thought here but house placement could be turned off on servers x,y,and z.Once enough houses fell to where nobody would actually lose their house/items a merge could be done.This however would not be easy and consume a LOT of labor hours,neither of which i think EA would be willing to deal with.Jus sayin.

 

[DJAd]

As it's been stated "But right now there are no plans, definitely in the near term, to do a server merge." so lets just forget about it for the time being.

 

[Sauteed Onion]

Hmm, server merges. This is a sensitive topic, with no "fair" option. Neither A or B is fair, if you really think about it. Think about all the Luna vendor houses on the shards in question. Look at the Makoto-Jima real estate. Some shards may be unpopulated to the point where these aren't in the multi hudred millions to billions. Anyhow, let's just take for examples sake (and only examples sake), say Sonoma, Lake Austin and Airang and it's been determined that the population cluster is so low on those that it is deemed they get "merged together" to form a new server that's called Mergetopia. Sonoma Lake Austin and Airang are given a 4 month notice, get ya stuff packed up on X Date we'll be taking your server offline and opening Mergetopia server. That server is only open for use for people who have had and maintained a house on those shards in question for the last year (at the minimum) for the first uh 2 days (or something reasonable).

That STILL isn't fair but is more reasonable than option A, and is extremely similar to option B, but how do you begin to explain to Luna or even Yew gate home owners and Makoto-Jima home owners that they'll quiet possibly loose their home slot? This is what I believe Jeff and all previous Development Team members have gotten "stumped" on, but sooner or later someone is gonna have to take the bullet, but it definately should not be the players. If they do that, they'll have to make special modifications to the new server that those previous servers were merged from. Like add an upper layer to Luna. Or a sub level. Perhaps just expand the walls enough to guarantee they get their luna spot back. Perhaps destroy luna altogether on that new server, and give them a story of it's a different shard of the gem of immortality that was found and damaged, so there were great cataclysms that changed that "copy" of sosaria story line. Give them SOMETHING special if they are gonna get merged and everything they loved taken away, except for some items. And if they don't like their new server or whatever, give them complimentary 20 hour timer character transfer tokens that they can go the help menu and claim during the first month of the merger. I still think it's terrible that a merger would have to happen if at all, and sad it's a major topic for discussion these days because of the dwindling UO community, but it is often brought up. Just some Sauteed thoughts meow.

 

[Tazar]

Method A would work for me since I play Atlantic - but it would not be fair at all to those forced to move. Method B would mean I'd close all accounts as fast as possible. There is no way I can rebuild anything even remotely close to what I have now on a clean shard with a land rush. Player run towns would all be destroyed. In addition, I've developed characters on most every shard... How could I move 14 or more characters to one shard? There's also too much history on all shards for me to even consider shard mergers as a valid option.

 

[Shadefox]

Method c: 2*fel 2*tram 2*malas etc... Everyone keeps the houses. Any other option and I (and probably many, many more will go away) I couldn't even begin to think what I have to do to get close to being where I am today if I lost my houses.

Sent from my HTC Sensation Z710e using Tapatalk 2

 

[Woodsman]

That STILL isn't fair but is more reasonable than option A, and is extremely similar to option B, but how do you begin to explain to Luna or even Yew gate home owners and Makoto-Jima home owners that they'll quiet possibly loose their home slot? This is what I believe Jeff and all previous Development Team members have gotten "stumped" on, but sooner or later someone is gonna have to take the bullet, but it definately should not be the players.

I would like to think that if populations got that low, rather than spend money on merging shards (and it would cost money in salaries), that they would make an attempt at bringing in new players and stopping the exodus of current players. Shard mergers are not going to stop people from leaving UO. If anything, as you pointed out, you get into people who lose very valuable housing spots, plus those people who are attached to their houses, and a lot of those players are liable to leave.

I still think it's terrible that a merger would have to happen if at all, and sad it's a major topic for discussion these days because of the dwindling UO community, but it is often brought up.

I wanted to bring it up, because I see people throwing it out there as if it's a solution (although I think some troll with it), but they don't offer an actual solution. They've never sat down and thought about what would be involved from a developer point of view and from a player's point of view. I also think that some of the people who push the idea are not attached to their homes or believe they are safe being on a larger shard.

 

[Woodsman]

Method A would work for me since I play Atlantic - but it would not be fair at all to those forced to move. Method B would mean I'd close all accounts as fast as possible. There is no way I can rebuild anything even remotely close to what I have now on a clean shard with a land rush. Player run towns would all be destroyed. In addition, I've developed characters on most every shard... How could I move 14 or more characters to one shard? There's also too much history on all shards for me to even consider shard mergers as a valid option.

That's another aspect I forgot - since we have up to 7 characters on a shard, and most of us over the years have developed them elsewhere, how do you tell people under Method A which characters they have to delete or transfer from a shard?

You mentioned that with Method B, if you lost your houses, you would be closing accounts. I think most people who would lose houses they are attached to would leave. I know many people who can go a year without logging in, but they pay their accounts up to keep their houses on the off chance they return. UO is so unique in that aspect - it's crazy how attached some are.. I know many people for whom their in-game houses are kind of an escape from real life issues and worries. Taking that away would not only massively disrupt those people's lives, but it would scare the hell out of everybody else who doesn't lose their house, because most of us would be thinking that if it can happen to them, it can happen to us.

 

[Woodsman]

There is the financial aspect. Some people claim that it would save money. We know the shards are on blades since the lead engineer mentioned they upgraded them to blades last year, and may even be virtualized to an extent which makes them extremely cheap to operate. Blades are cheap, and the blades have long since been paid for (probably within a few months of the upgrade last year) so you don't save any immediate money just closing them from a hardware perspective. The difference in software and support costs would be minimal as well. The team is already small, and the people they need for the current shards are still the same people they would need for 10 fewer shards.

So say you close down the 10 least populated shards. You won't see any actual savings until the next hardware upgrade cycle, when you don't have to upgrade as many servers. That could be a few more years down the road.

Let's talk the cost of actually implementing the merger.

If you put 5 developers and Q&A people on a shard merger team as well as supervisors and other people who would be working on it, that's easily $20,000 a month. Easily. There's no way that a shard merger solution could be developed, tested, and implemented in a month, let alone 2-3 months, not to mention everybody else outside of that little team that would be involved.

Honestly I couldn't even see a 5-man team doing the design, development, and Q&A, but if you could pull it off with a 5-man team, you're looking at $60,000 in costs if you could pull it off in 3 months.

In our mythical 5-man 3-month shard merger project, you've spent more money on just the salaries than you would save in 5 years of hardware costs. And then factor in lost revenue from people who leave because they got pissed off over losing a house...

If UO ever reaches that point where it might make sense, I think it'll be put on a timer, and EA won't spend tens of thousands of dollars on it shard mergers.

 

[Tazar]

That's another aspect I forgot - since we have up to 7 characters on a shard, and most of us over the years have developed them elsewhere, how do you tell people under Method A which characters they have to delete or transfer from a shard?

You mentioned that with Method B, if you lost your houses, you would be closing accounts. I think most people who would lose houses they are attached to would leave. I know many people who can go a year without logging in, but they pay their accounts up to keep their houses on the off chance they return. UO is so unique in that aspect - it's crazy how attached some are.. I know many people for whom their in-game houses are kind of an escape from real life issues and worries. Taking that away would not only massively disrupt those people's lives, but it would scare the hell out of everybody else who doesn't lose their house, because most of us would be thinking that if it can happen to them, it can happen to us.

If it were just a house, I could easily move and rebuild it. That is not the issue for me. What I have are 11 houses with 8 - 18x18's, 2 - 18x17 and 1 - 18x16 all in a cluster that have been merged by illusions to look like one large house. The project started in 2003 and has been a work in progress ever since slowly watching for IDOC's or buying out neighbors.

If I were forced to move, there is no way I could accomplish that again during a land rush. Considering the time spent rebuilding all 11 (with additional goza-mat floors) - just the rebuilding would take the better part of a year. The history would be lost. The town banner can not be moved... etc.

I don't see shard mergers as a viable idea at all. Too many would be impacted negatively and the player base would further suffer. Part of what gives UO the feel of a living world is the history and too much would be lost.

 

[lit2fly]

If it were just a house, I could easily move and rebuild it. That is not the issue for me. What I have are 11 houses with 8 - 18x18's, 2 - 18x17 and 1 - 18x16 all in a cluster that have been merged by illusions to look like one large house. The project started in 2003 and has been a work in progress ever since slowly watching for IDOC's or buying out neighbors.

If I were forced to move, there is no way I could accomplish that again during a land rush. Considering the time spent rebuilding all 11 (with additional goza-mat floors) - just the rebuilding would take the better part of a year. The history would be lost. The town banner can not be moved... etc.

I don't see shard mergers as a viable idea at all. Too many would be impacted negatively and the player base would further suffer. Part of what gives UO the feel of a living world is the history and too much would be lost.

please tell me where your town is and I would like to pay a visit!!!!

 

[Taylor]

please tell me where your town is and I would like to pay a visit!!!!

UO Stratics *New* | Falling Waters Fortress

 

[Woodsman]

If it were just a house, I could easily move and rebuild it. That is not the issue for me. What I have are 11 houses with 8 - 18x18's, 2 - 18x17 and 1 - 18x16 all in a cluster that have been merged by illusions to look like one large house. The project started in 2003 and has been a work in progress ever since slowly watching for IDOC's or buying out neighbors.

If I were forced to move, there is no way I could accomplish that again during a land rush. Considering the time spent rebuilding all 11 (with additional goza-mat floors) - just the rebuilding would take the better part of a year. The history would be lost. The town banner can not be moved... etc.

Holy crap that is amazing!!!

I can see why you woulnd't be happy. That is incredible dedication.

 

[Tazar]

It has grown quite a bit since that photo was taken 4 or more years ago. The town is on Atlantic just west of the lake in Malas. If you go to Luna out the south gate, there are links to all of the player run towns. 2x click the small statue on (I think) the 3rd statue east of the south Luna Gate. The sign should say "Falling Waters Fortress".

Even after all this time - the house is still under construction...

 

[Tazar]

Holy crap that is amazing!!!

I can see why you woulnd't be happy. That is incredible dedication.

That is incredible addiction...

 

[Luvmylace]

plain and simple ...lose my real estate ...quit the game

 

[Woodsman]

plain and simple ...lose my real estate ...quit the game

There's the biggest problem with this whole thing, and the fans of shard mergers have never been able to counter it.

If shard mergers result in fewer players, UO would be in even more trouble than it was before the merger. I've never heard of a shard merger scheme that would keep or increase the number of overall UO players currently playing.

UO is not like Warhammer Online where you need a certain level of population to effectively play.

 

[lit2fly]

merge all the lands without player houses, e.g.... all the dungeons except SA, Ilshenar... create a central vendor mall accessible by all shards.... you can keep everyone happy.....

 

[Woodsman]

merge all the lands without player houses, e.g.... all the dungeons except SA, Ilshenar... create a central vendor mall accessible by all shards.... you can keep everyone happy.....

Originally it sounded like Ilshenar was going to be just that. Unfortunately EA probably makes decent money from shard transfer tokens, at least enough that they don't want to lose it.

It would be awesome though. The merger fans would sort of get their wish - it would be up to them to sell their shards to potential residents. We could take part in bigger events easily, people could spread out more, maybe have houses on the lower populated shards.

Would be good all around.

 

[Andrasta]

I'm against merging shards because of what it would do to people like Tazar and established communities.

Maybe they should give up some of that money from shard transfers and do a moongate to all shards or central mall as suggested above to keep the population spread out on all the servers and the game healthier.

After all they won't be collecting money on shard tranfer tokens if everyone is on Atlantic.

 

[Tanivar]

I've started characters on Atlantic, it's to busy a place. I like the less crowded shards and would leave if forced into a zoo like Atlantic. They would have to keep a few low population shards or lose customers who would be no longer happy playing the game.

If your preferences run to high population shards, consider the options of transfering your characters or starting fresh with new ones on such a shard.

Some people can't stand having elbow room, others insist on having it and then some.

 

[Woodsman]

Kids, this is why we don't want shard mergers/transfers. I'll include quotes from the threads.

BioWare is transferring people from servers to servers, asking some groups to go to some servers.

Lots of confusion.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=479484&page=6

If LA already has the ideal community...why are people leaving?

Simple fact no one knows what will happen to servers. Bioware has been very closed about what will happen to people if they dont' leave . There has been little information and most would rather move than take a chance of being forced to do so at a later date.

My problem isn't per se the community that Hawk may have had is the community that we may have to deal with with all the other servers being put into one. For the most part LA rarely had too much of a problem (a few bad apples yea) but when you combine 6 servers into one unfortunely you add a lot more problems.

This whole thing is tearing my guild apart already. One person already transferred, assuming we would all do the same. Now she has no way to come back, if we stay. Another person had some issues with other people on EH and simply cannot bring himself to transfer over there (I don't know the problems, don't ask). Just the fact that we were TALKING about transferring made him panic and quit the guild. At least 2 other people said they are definitely not moving, if they have to leave Lord Adraas because it's being shut down, they're quitting the game. A couple of others definitely want to move, but don't want to leave the rest of the guild behind.

And I sit in the middle, with my #1 priority, which was that whatever happens the guild stays together, already shot to hell because of the shoddy way Bioware is doing this.

I don't mind the transfers, that system is actually working OK (I tested it with a non-guilded character, worked great). But the lack of information. Is Bioware planning to ultimately merge ALL the east coast RP servers onto EH? And this is just the first step? If so, we need to KNOW that, and move now. Or, is there a chance that, after EH fills up, one of the other RP servers, maybe, possibly, our beloved Adraas, will be chosen as destination #2? And in that case, we'd be willing to take the gamble and stay.

But we have no information, so people are panicking, making bad/foolish decisions, and the guild may very well not survive this move.

And if that happens, if the guild dies, my time in this game is probably done.

I know some of the guilds that transferred from kath hound, and i didnt like them.. i dont want to go to ebon hawk..

more importantly i have 6 toons on kath hound, and 6 on lord adraas.. im not transferring now, but people keep telling me i wont have a choice, in the near future.. im not going to delete toons, but am told that i should

"transfer your favorite ones" ( general chat)well.. uhm.. sorry they are all my favorite ones. to which i get the rply well it's happening, you will have to deal with it.. well that sucks i love my toons.. so does anyone know what is realy going on, i keep hearing closing kath hound.. shutting down adraas.. is any of it true or all rumours, and guessing.?

I think the reason people ARE worrying is that there was NO NOTICE about this. They didn't tell us a few weeks ago how this was going to work. It wouldn't have entered my, or anyone in my guild's, wildest dreams that Lord Adraas was on the so-called chopping block. We all thought LA was one of the most active servers and would probably be a destination, if it came to transfers or mergers, not a source. And nobody was told whether LA was going to be a source or a sink until literally the minute it was made one, so it was impossible to plan this out at all.

Given the lack of notice to this point, I don't think it's all that unreasonable for people to discount BW's claim that we'll be given "plenty of notice." Didn't they say something rather like that about server transfers in the first place? And while they may have notified us that the server transfers were coming in the general sense, nobody knew which servers were going to be destinations until they were opened. Are they going to do the same thing with stopping them? Warn us that transfers are going to be stopping on "certain servers" and then spring on us, "and now yours is closed"? They shouldn't... but then they shouldn't have done this the way they did.

As I said, my guild's already starting to be torn apart over the poor way this has been presented to us. A little warning could have prevented it. If they had told us, say two weeks ago, the list of probably destination servers, and we'd been able to see ours wasn't on it, then we could have planned what to do. Instead, they just opened everything up bang, without any real warning, and now people are scrambling to figure out what to do, to get their favorite name (impossible now) on Ebon Hawk, and so on. As I say, a couple of my guild members already jumped the gun over there, and one already quit the guild because he didn't want to leave. Several arguments have broken out among the guild -- a group of people who until 24 hours ago couldn't have been friendlier with each other. All because of the lousy way this was handled.

Honestly at this point, for the first time ever since December 13 when I got into EA and got my #1 character name (that, if I move to EH, I'm going to lose), I'm starting to eye the "cancel" button. And I'm not alone in my guild.

We knew transfers were coming, but not who or where.
That was annoying.

Yes and you've put your finger on the problem. We don't know whether our home server ever, might, possibly, perhaps, under the right conditions, have a chance of becoming a new destination server... or whether they plan to just leave it up as a ghost town and ignore it... or whether they plan to FORCE us to move down the line, and are just hoping they can get most people to do it voluntarily so they don't have to do too much coercion. We really can't know which thing they are planning. Oh, they already have decided one of these three things, I'm sure (probably the last one). But they haven't told it to us.

So... I'm willing to move. To just go ahead and do it right now. At least we know EH will be around a long time since everyone's being shuffled to it. But half my guild is holding out the hope that Lord A will become the "backup destination server" after EH "fills up." And however likely you may or may not think that is, they're not thinking with their heads right now, but their hearts, and they are holding out that hope. And there is just no way to know if it's possible, or impossible, because Bioware won't tell us what they're planning.

So now I'm faced with a worse choice... stay behind for them, and possibly leave the guild to fester and die under a ghost town server, or move the guild, and lose half of our remaining players (after the game's caused so many people to already cancel and our ranks have already been thinned). If I'm lucky I'll end up with 6 people moving with me. That's not a remotely attractive option.

I don't mind the transfers per se, as I said. But the way they are doing this, keeping us in the dark, hiding which servers will be source or sink servers until the minute they are unlocked for it, refusing to tell us what will become of the source servers after the smoke clears, that is what I find unforgivable.

If they're going to close all the RP servers on the east coast but EH eventually, fine. Then TELL US THAT. If they're not going to close the other servers, but have other plans for them (merging them in pairs, whatever), then TELL US THAT. But don't leave us up in the air about it.

Oh and for people who are no doubt going to say "Maybe they don't know what they're going to do yet," that's even worse. They should not have started this process without a clear roadmap. I hope they have one and are just not telling us, because not having one is even worse in its own way.

 

[Woodsman]

Now just imagine all of that - BioWare keeping everybody in the dark like they are with Star Wars, and adding houses, pets, thousands of items, etc. into the mix.

I'm glad UO is not the only game under BioWare where major moves are made while keeping people in the dark.

 

[Setanta]

I have a number of grandfathered houses on my account. If one of those shards is merged and I had to replace my house there, I would stand a chance of losing all. Better to see if houses overlap any given location and retain the oldest.

 

[Rhaven Nightwisp]

I'd have to agree with the many, lose my real estate (1 castle, 2 keeps right in front of it), I'd close my accounts (15 years) and be gone. I've paid more months then I've played sometimes just to keep my real estate.

Going from what I have to barely fitting in the smallest house on a very populated shard would not be an equal trade for me.

Besides, I like our small community on Lake Austin

 

[Uriah Heep]

The fittingest way, *IF* there were ever to be shard mergers, would be to merge the low pop shards with another low pop shard. No way in hell they could merge one with Atl, and everyone lose all their property, and nowhere to put new. If they did merge, I would figure they would give everyone transfer tokens, and let em go to the shard of their choice.