Game Guides Archive
Thread: Server mergers?!
AEK wrote:
Lol, I started out in Doaba at release and there were plenty of people around to go in hunting groups and dancers in the cantina. I stayed there probably for a month until I got enough credits and courage to explore to Tyrena and Coronet. Those places were an order of magnitude more populated than they are today. Friendly people all around sharing each others experiences.
Technical reasons as mentioned prohibit merging of servers. The real cause of the problem of course though is the negative flux of people (largely denied or hidden) due to NERFS, UNBALANCES, & BUGS (NUBs). Things have gotten better lately (except for the graphics which were recently lobotomized) and there is hope with the upcoming CURB, but let's just wish it's not too late and that SWG hasn't reached critical implosion mass.
While I won't disagree with the server numbers decreasing over the years, I think there are two things that aren't being considered....JTL and player cities. Obviously, people up in space will reduce the number of ground players at any given time, and from what I've heard, many people still play JTL. Player cities don't really give a reason for people to hang out in NPC cities unless they want to leave the planet...lets be honest, aside from Bestine/Theed/Coronent, there isn't even a social aspect left to NPC cities.
What I have seen over the years, is more people move from large cities for buffs and the like, to player cities or NPC cities that have established themselves as good locations to grind out of...*cough* jedi. Given that the prep time to start one's grind is greatly reduced if you can quickly locate a solo group and buffs, no wonder people are congretating to the smaller port cities such as MO on Dant, where the grinding is typically done.
I doubt a server merge is realistic...a few people above mentioned the technical challenges, and they are correct...no script would tidy up the mountains of conflictions. And I really don't think we'll see a change to the problem until we are allowed to place vendors in cities...that woudl rule...or rent apartments in cities. Hell, I'd be happy for a scroll bar to control NPC population, so cities of suposed millions had more than 30 wandering NPCs and a few meatlumps with a grudge.