Free transfers versus Merges

[Diddlemus]

been thinking a little about it and tbh, i don't really see the point in free transfers.
As it s now, a free transfer would downright kill the shard i am on.
Playing on Refuge-EU.
Think of it lilke this:
Free transfer: you basicly shift people around, strecthing population thin on several shards.
This will make it harder to form groups via lfg-tool (as it was'nt hard enough allready). the economy (ah) would suffer aswell. my currecnt shard's AH is like sahara! empty!
Benefits of Mergin shards:
you get higher population on several shards, making it easier to use LFG, economy will flourish, and you can actually use trade chat and ah for something. I don't see a problem with people standing in line to do a quest mop. can only speak for my own shard, but i rarely see anyone questing same place as me.

Seen from Trions point of wiew: less servers, more cost efficient. as it it now, people are dropping off because of the low pop servers and the insane amount of time you have to wait for a lfg group. I've been waiting 4 days for my lvl 43 rogue to get a random sofar so getting higher pop servers will ultimately also keep people subscribing. i will anyway, if it was more active.

That was my 2 plat of suggestion, feel free to comment on it, in a constructive way, keep the flame for yaself.

[Reevin]

Cross server queing and warfronts?

There's already too many people on my server I can't even load Meridian correctly. Now if only some of them would leave the city and come help with invasions...

[Ayenn]

Free transfer: you basicly shift people around, strecthing population thin on several shards

This is a wrong headed asumption. People from buisy servers will not move from them. The medum population server residents, which will be likely to move, will probebly have a limited number of servers to move to. There are no actual low pop servers. Don't even go there. They are all medum or high at thier primetimes.

[Diddlemus]

found this during my browsing of forums, http://riftideas.com/shardwatch
if i read it right, it is still a fresh tool so may not be accurate, and values are still subject to changin.


i take 0 credit for any of this, merely found it on forums. all credit goes to Meritt of RiftIdeas.com.

[Warm]

Xfers allow them to eliminate servers at a more steady pace instead of just merging a ton of them. Not every server needs a merge.

[Delphya]

The biggest can of worms with merges is how do you handle names?

Aion totally messed up their server merges and as a result many of the servers went from medium to almost empty. YES! People value their characters identity that much.

At least with server transfers, the transferring party is already aware that they may not get their name but then again they really have no identity on the new server anyways.

But to penalize multiple people (especially if some of them are RP servers) by forcing them to lose their carefully created and managed identity is just wrong.

[Ayenn]

Xfers allow them to eliminate servers at a more steady pace instead of just merging a ton of them. Not every server needs a merge.

If eliminating servers was the goal, which it is not.

[tafoya]

Guys this would be a bad thing. You merge with another sever it's going to be hard for you to win loot. Trust me When WOW merged it's servers it went to hell and you have toon running on idle and selfless. Going back to the loot your going to have to run more work harder becasue 90% of the time you are going to get ninjaed. When I tanked for WOW epic loot would drop and i would have to fight for the gear or leave the group in mid instance becasue that loot should have gone to the tank. You dont want a merge sever. The grass is not greener on the other side.