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Helsa
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Helsa
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The pen may be mighier than the sword but the shovel is mightier than the pen.
These are probably the reason it hasn't happened with Mabinogi. If it did happen in China and was problematic I should think that would give pause to whomever has to be the one to "make the call" and put their job on the line for their decision. Doing so with Nexon NA, which is basically the flagship version of Mabinogi, means Nexon shying away from it is understandable. Having gone through it once they would be more prepared should they decide to do so again. Regarding issues with other game server mergers being problematic, they are worth noting but is not as important to the issue as the one that Nexon performed on the Chinese version of Mabinogi. We don't know what the conditions are from other games. If by a merger, say, they had to move from a regular to a clustered database then that is a big deal and could be the source of the issues they experienced.
So, what if Nexon decides that they are ready to do so? Mabinogi is already set up to use clustered databases. Each "server" is really a separate database cluster and each "channel" is a box. This is why when they "reboot" channels it says rebooting server; they really are rebooting a server. Now the named servers themselves are probably run on a separte box as well that handles all the query marshalling to and from each of the channels. In the end a server merge would probably work like this:
- in an earlier maintence (before the merger) everyone's record is modified to have an extra field per character and pet to handle duplicate names, and the field is filled with, say, the present server name, but more likely a number between 0 and 3 so that a short int can be used instead of a string.
- the merge would be announced with plenty of warning and expectations set. One of the main ones being that guild stones will be cleared and have to be reset.
- purchasing of farm fields, castles, and housing would be halted and allowed to expire.
- during the merge maintence, likely Alexina would be modified and set up to handle 28 channels.
- the databases from Tarlach, Ruari, and Mari would be exported and then imported into Alexina.
- Alexina would either be renamed, or more likely the server name would no longer be displayed at log in.
- Scripts would walk the database to confirm the import was successful.
- Mabinogi NA would go back online.
Now, if that's how it would work then that's not really all that bad. But of course, in so many things, the devil is in the details.
