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Plans if the MERGE occurs
Comments
Have mercy on your soul.
Merge all or bust, I like it.
It won't be a problem. All characters will be fine. All guilds will be fine. The only catch will be that guilds who have their stones in the same spot as a guild or guilds on another server or servers, may find that their stone has been either been moved or removed and that they will either have to find or replace it.
Accidentally presses reset servers button.
Oops, my hands slipped.
Also Reset back before even elves and giants existed, rip.
Perfect Game Reset Capsule
Part of the mission of these forums is to talk about what ifs. A merged server would not effect the ability to log in at all since right now all four servers are served by one log-in server. It would shunt log-in sessions to one server not four. A combined server would have many more than seven channels, so the channel with all the personal shops would be more likely to be full, this is true. But then the point of the channel is to shop, so there'd be more shops to go through. In the past before the Auction house this happened on Alexina where Channel one filled up, so the shops spilled over to channel two. Another reason to go to a popular channel would be to do that Tailteann daily where you need three people. Of course the busiest channel would be a nice place to find more people for that. On Alexina when channel one is full you can either keep banging away at it until you get in or just find another channel that might not be as busy but will be busy enough to get a party. In terms of lag a combined server will have a better chance to experience lag on individual popular channels, but with more channels available, the overall lag of the server as a whole will be the same.
I mentioned the log-in server because of what you said about log in problems. I had interpreted what you said as saying that it would be harder to log in under a merged server. Was that not what you meant?
As for server stability and so on, whereas, individual popular channels will experience more lag, the entire system as a whole will experience the same lag as before. The reason for this is that Alexina, Mari, Ruari, and Tarlach, although they are called servers, are not actually servers, they are database clusters. The individual channels are themselves servers, or individual boxes or computers. Given this architecture, in a sense, the servers are already "merged". It's just in software that Alexina and so on are treated as separate entities. The database containing the info about our characters is one database already, this is why we can friend and send notes to folks on other "servers". What is unique to each "server" in data is things like, what guild owns what castle, the state of the residential neighborhoods (types of houses and who owns them), who owns the farming plots in Tailteann, and guild stone placement. Under a merged server, the character database remains unchanged. The data items unique to each server though is what would need to be merged. The only sticking point there is guild stones in the same spot on different servers. On the login server the only change needed will be in the code that shunts the login session to the server. Rather than reading the character server of residence field, they will just shunt directly to the new combined server.
What about hardware? Nothing really changes, rather than four database clusters with 7 servers each you get one database cluster with, say, 28 servers. Personally I suspect it will 19, instead. At the end of the day the amount of traffic in and out of Nexon's data center is the same. The hardware is already in place, the database is almost ready even now.
Okay, so a fair question might be "then why didn't they do this from the get go?" With four servers you get 16 guild castles instead of 4, the spot just outside the west gate of Dunbarton toward the Moon Gate can hold four stones instead of one. If one in four database clusters needs to be restarted it's not as disruptive as one in one.
Another fair question then is "Why should they change". The simple answer is because people want it. The thing is businesses are conservative in their decision making meaning they prefer the status quo unless compelled to make a change so for them the question is "Do enough people want it?" And that is precisely what they asked at the campfire event.
You gave several examples of other games where server merges occurred and it didn't save the game. One possible interpretation of these facts is that server merges kill games. It's not an unreasonable conclusion and may contribute to why Nexon has thus far avoid it. Another interpretation is that these server merges were too little too late, which would go along with conservative decision making of corporations. They were hail Mary last gasps. In that case one might wonder, what if those server merges had happened earlier?
The topic on the discussion about server merge isn't always the same, I'm sorry to say that - the majority of Mabinogi people (myself included) are advocating the server merge because they will actually help Mabinogi become not as dead and it'd also help with the flow of newbies coming to join in the same server rather than having to pick one out of the four servers. If anything, it's you being the "drama llama" right now, Hardmuscle, mainly due to the fact that you seems to always throw a fit over something when it doesn't go in your way.
Who knows they might even enjoy a server that had more players even if it means more afking players as well xD
Raids likely have more players, More players to do shadow missions, and more players to do the new Tech missions :P
Ok everyone, pretty sure they had the "discussion" by now. Lets stop this for now and press for an update to that supposed discussion they had with the KR devs. Instead of endlessly going on and on with these conjectures and contingency plans. We should be asking them this pivotal question at this point. Is is actually going to happen? When we have that question finally answered then we can ask more important questions.
I could see it now. If there's a way to track our previous server and it would result in "(Player Name) previously a Milletian of (Ruairi/Tarlach/Mari/Alexina). I think it would be kind of a fun nod to the servers we grew up in. Either that or "(Player Name) survived the Server Merge!" with a fun little tag in the description about how Ferghus was involved with it. XD
We will have to get something. Maybe it will display when you hold down alt, like those card thingies do now. The reason is to be able to distinguish Buttmunch55 formerly of Ruari from Buttmunch55 formerly from Tarlach. Maybe it will be a coin thingie who knows.
Possibility 1: Moving a guild stone does not erase the gold or GP stored therein In this case then there isn't an issue regarding loss of these things if Nexon moves the guild stones that overlap rather then removing them.
Possibility 2: Moving a guild stone does erase the gold or GP stored therein In this case it is a problem. There are three ways to deal with it:
1. don't do a server merge, or
2. tough poop, engulf it up, or
3. during the maintenance, when the GM's will have to manually move the conflicting guild stones, give the GM's the ability to do so without consequence. It would only be a few lines of code.
I remember that Nexon wound up moving guild stones during the Mabinogi Anniversary because of the festival location in Tir by the moongate/trading tent, so it is possible for them to do. =3
Use your brains. When guilds want to move their guild stone they first have to destroy it. This action does NOT wipe gold or GP from the guild. So LOGICALLY when and IF this merger were to happen Nexon would more than likely remove all guild stones beforehand. Much simpler and honestly a small sacrifice for the greater good.
But I know some guild leaders are not going to like that. Tough bleep.