Bronzebreak

Blortad wrote: »

Anything can be "cracked" by those with the experience or money to do so. Whats to stop those same people from "cracking" the game as it is now? Il tell you what, the exact same things that would be stopping them if cross-server content became a reality. Its not like if cross-server becomes a thing, suddenly the game is going to be open to a plethora of hackers that it somehow wouldnt be open to already. And what do you mean "dangerously close"? That makes no sense. The people against a server merge are against it because of the various problems it comes with such as the difficulties in transferring bank information, character names, and guilds. The people who want a server merge push it as a suggested means of dealing with the glaring lack of population in group only content. The only "dangerous" aspects of a server merge are the above mentioned problems, none of which exist in the context of cross-server content. So tell me, what exactly is "dangerous" about this suggestion, cause this idea shares literally zero of the "dangers" that a server merge potentially comes with. On the same token, what could even possibly be exploited? Seriously, name one thing that even MIGHT be a legitimate concern with cross-server content? You brought up trading, but that makes no sense either. Its not like having an item from another server is going to make the universe implode, and its not like there will suddenly be extreme market saturation either. Even if they DID make the AH and Housing boards cross-server as well, which doesnt need to be done and adds unnecessary logistical problems anyways, there wouldnt JUST be more items in the overall pool of available items, there will be players to match that. Suggesting market saturation comes, inseparably, with the suggestion that items just appear on the AH and in shops spontaneously on their own. This is not the case, every instance of an item that is up for sale is there because a player got it from a drop and put it there. Every item that sells does so because a player buys it. If there are more players playing, there will be more items for sale, yes, but there will also be more people looking to buy those items meaning more of them will sell to match the more of them that will be posted for sale.

Really though, its not like some people are against a server merge because of some misplaced sense of group superiority, like theyre thinking, "I dont want no filthy Ruairi plebs on MY server!" No, the reasoning is entirely on problems related to transfer of data and MAYBE overpopulation. All the cross-server content would do is allow people who have trouble doing group-oriented content access to a larger pool of players to group with.

Let me be clear, Im NOT saying that cross-server content is completely without problems. It can be disastrous if implemented incorrectly. Anyone who played WoW during their early cross-realm features knows what can happen, but the practices that caused those problems are harder to implement anyways and are unnecessary as far as solving Mabi's population issues is concerned. The exact opposite can easily be true, anyone who has played WoW since they figured out how to do it right knows how amazing cross-server stuff can be.

The problem in a nutshell was that they had it set to automatically apply cross-realm features to zones upon entering them. This meant that when you entered a zone with cross-realm functionality, you would see every player from every realm who was in that zone at any given time. This was problematic because world resources and bosses and rare mobs became impossible to get because of the massive volume of players that were suddenly there looking for those same things that were from other realms. They fixed this simply by not having that happen by default and instead only activating cross-realm features when two players from different realms were in a group together. The difference being that if I was on one realm and went into a cross-realm compatible area, the only way I would see players from other realms is if those players were currently invited to a group by someone from my realm. In short, if i wanted to do questing or a dungeon or whatever with a friend who is on another realm, I just had to invite them to a group and they would pop into my realm with a tag on their name specifying their home realm, then they would return to their realm when the party was disbanded. This allowed cross-realm play to occur, allowing players to get into groups much more easily and allowing them to play with friends without starting over, but didn't cause the same problems that were caused when it was done automatically and involuntarily. What Blizzard did with WoW at first for cross-realm zones would be the thing that would have potential repercussions on gameplay and would be functionally the same as a server merge in respect to lag and world resources, but what im suggesting is more similar to what they did to solve those issues later, that is isolating the functionality to private groups.

We dont need an increase in players in overworld content, which is what a server merge would result in, we need an increase in players in instanced content like the apostle raids and Rabbie Phantasm and SM's and Sidhe Finnachaid. Even if inviting players from another server to a group didnt bring them to the overworld for your server at all and merely allowed them to assist in instanced content like shadow missions and apostle raids, that would be just fine, ideal in fact.

The biggest issue here would potentially be nobody even doing it anyways. With how party joining works currently, apart from apostle raid groups, the only way to join a party is to click the box to do so. If youre on another server and thus cant see or click on the box, how do you join that group? For that matter, if you want to do content but nobody on your server is running it, how do you go about figuring out that another server has a group you can join? My initial suggestion was a single cross-server zone you could enter for the purpose of forming cross-server groups, but now that I think about it more, I realize that we already have an answer, the almost completely ignored party board. If they used that feature to house the cross-server functions then heres how it would go down.

step 1: someone from another realm registers a group they make to the party board.

step 2: you find that group on the party board and join

step 3: you stand on the means of entering the instance just like you normally would (shadow altars, dungeon altars, near the insignia for the apostle raids, etc)

step 4: the group leader enters the instance after making sure the cross-server group members are standing in the entry method on their respective realms just like they would with a group made of only home-server players, then enters

step 5: finish whatever SM, dungeon, raid, etc you are doing and exit as normal, returning you to your native server and leave the group if you dont want to do more content with those players, just like you would with a home-realm group

If corss-server content were made available only for instanced content then no players from one server would ever actually enter another servers overworld, thus eliminating the need to change names or delete guilds or hassle with transferring bank information as well as any worry of overpopulation. What it WOULD do, however, is allow me (and many others like me, suffering from the problems of the low population realms) to actually reasonably be able to get things like their weekly and daily orders finished more consistently and their crusader skills trained in a reasonable amount of time.

Even before cross-realm zones, WoW implemented exactly this, corss-realm dungeons and raids only. Before this change, it got to the point with that game where most dungeons were impossible to run because they absolutely could not be soloed, but nobody ran them on anything but the most heavily populated realms. After they implemented cross-realm dungeons and raids, it instantly populated all dungeons across all realms because when any given realm lacked players running that specific dungeon or raid, it would simply pull players from another realm to fill the missing spots. After that, nobody had the problem of not being able to find a group for their content ever again. The average time spent trying to get a group for a dungeon in a low population realm went from 1-4 hours average to 30 seconds to 30 minutes average depending on the class and spec you played.

Like many other players, Im on the fence about a server merge because of problems with names, guilds, and overpopulation of the overworld. Corss-server content, however, I have absolutely no qualms with. If you dont want to do stuff across servers, dont do it. If you hate how low your servers population is and want to do stuff with other servers, do it. There would be no involuntary change to gameplay of any kind like there would be with a server merge. It would not effect anyone in the slightest unless they, themselves, decided to join or form a cross-server group.