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We do have 2 server types now, and both have their own unique challenges and opportunities so I'll try to address them both.
The Challenge List:
- Renewal : Ymir declining population.
It was expected that some lowering of numbers would happen as this population came primarily from the "olden" days and would likely be attracted to our new Classic Server. I wish it were not so drastic a decline however, but it's numbers really haven't been all that healthy since its inception compared to what it's potential characters that exist are.
Other factors: WoE scene is stagnant, many godly items and wealth make a group very difficult to overcome for all but the "oldest" and most powerful guilds. I don't really have an answer to this other than to A take away their toys, and hope that equalizes (I don't think that would work), or B cut down on castle numbers so that more action does get done on those WoE days. WoE gets frustrating it seems when there is no action (boredom), cheating or when it is so lopsided that it is pointless to continue. I'm sure that Ymir has a bit of all this contributing to its issues. - Renewal 1 hour timer bug
We have been working with the development team since the bugs creation when Malaya was implemented. Never would I have thought it would take as long as it has to get a resolution. They have witnessed it happening on our live servers but not on their servers and are working to get this fixed in the next "build" we get. - Classic : Character server instability
There are actually 2 issues happening that not everyone is aware of.
1. the character server sometimes, randomly goes unresponsive, this makes it so you can't change zones or get in game, though you can login and get to character select. Our only solution to it is to restart the character select which quickly fixes it, but next time you change maps or go to character select you are disconnected. This makes sense as the character server does keep track of where you are and if it loses track of you it disconnects you.
2. Since the 1st issue does not sound any alarms or anything other than us noticing that character select is down we implemented an automated process to constantly restart the server so that under no circumstances would the character server be down indefinitely. We were caught a few times in July where it was down for over an hour before we were able to restart it, this automation was to make sure that sort of thing didn't happen. But the big downside is that doing this causes you every 30 minutes or so to not be able to move maps or go to character select. The upside is you can log back in immediately.
Outcome: Right now the automated process does cause game play problems, and I suspect it has contributed somewhat to the frustration of players, but we are waiting on a developmental fix for the issue of the character server going into "ignoring mode", before we stop the automated process. - Classic When is WoE starting?
We had originally planned WoE 1 to start prior to our Einbroch update in August, but with the character select issue that isn't possible. I can only imaging the frustration that would happen when every 30 minutes you can't go into a castle without being DCed, it would likely make many give up playing faster than the current state of affairs.
We are going to do a WoE test this Saturday September 15th on Classic just to make sure the system works, but the real WoE can't start until Character server is resolved. That issue is the highest priority we have right now as it directly contributes to gameplay problems. - Merger Talk : At the begining of Summer we planned to merge Yggdrasil into Ymir, to bolster both populations and to give us a better hardware set to work with on Classic. The overall population of the game really doesn't need 3+1 servers to house all the players, and it would be better to get a "fast launch server" + Classic + Renewal. The fast launch is for marketing, which then gets merged in with the renewal server regularly. Yggdrasil was intended to be that way, to go for a year then merge, but that detail was overlooked by many that started playing on Yggdrasil because that information was lost during a forum move and it wasn't as clearly stated as it should have been.
End of summer is here and realistically merging "should" happen to keep current population in-game as well as to spice up the PVP life. There are issues, from a game balance standpoint merging Yggdrasil with other servers isn't a problem as their item distribution isn't going to negatively effect the other communities. But players on Yggdrasil certainly may not like such a move.
Ymir has a density of god items that is absolutely unholy and is a critical problem. 8+ years of god item creation plus other merges and those items filtering down to a very focused group of players does create a power vacuum in any case if they are merged into another server. If that situation didn't exist the decision of how to merge would be very easy.
What to do? One idea is to change how god items work after the merger, we are discussing the long term effects of that with HQ as it may be a change that other versions have to cope with down the road as well.
By change I mean, change the recipes to be "easier" and change god items to character bound with the "old effects" and the item being permanent. Or player chooses to have a "temporary" god item that can be fully tradable and at full power. Doing this means that the surplus of god items would decline over time (likely take over a year) but would stabalize without taking away a guilds power. The trick to staying in power is to stay active in the guild to keep making the god items. From our standpoint making them temp/tradable for some and perm/bound solves issues of them filtering down to players over time, fixes RMT situations and allows a better control and activity levels in-game.
I'm laying this god item scenario out on the table just so you have an idea of what we are considering. It is NOT final, in fact it may be impossible to implement without approval (this is one of those big deal situations) and the merger talk is also not final as we have a lot of requirements that have to met before we can do a merger such as character slot limitation and name conflicts; we don't want extra accounts made, nor does the GM team have the time to do name changes manually as it is slow for the player and a huge sink of time for us.
A silver lining or 2 for when a merger happens, more players to play with, and better ability for us to saturate the server with GM presence to keep the game play as close to ideal as possible. Of course having the ability to handpick the best hardware also will help. All the servers are above RO specification, but there is some servers that are not the "most optimal" and getting more of those to where you are playing on them will only improve your game play.
From the final post:
We've been working on the merger plans since April, not because we knew it was going to happen but we knew it was a strong possibility. The solution is being developed right now, and likely won't be ready for us to use it until very Late october or more likely early in November. It will be Ygg merging into Ymir, we do it this way because the amount of data 'collisions" will be less doing it that way thus a cleaner merge. From the player point of view it will be your characters are now on that "new server" which will be named "Ymir" because change is confusing.
Now the God item discussion: Yes it is a touchy subject, and any change will undoubtedly make someone unhappy, just as doing no change will cause a very real issue in the long run (multi-year from now) due to quantity. This is what is happening with the WoE 1 items. (WoE 2 items are unchanged you can trade and do stuff with them to your hearts content).
1. God items will get bound up to the named owners account during the merge.
2. The items will be full powered and account bound.
3. If the owner wants to make it tradable an NPC will allow that:
- NPC will eat the perm item, give you a box (and a quest timer)
- Box contains a 6 month, full powered god item
- When 6 month expires both the item and your quest timer will be expired
- NPC will allow you to get another 6 month box. NPC will do this 4 times total: for 2 years worth of that god item.
4. NPC tracks the timer by character, so you will need to use multiple characters to have multiples of same god item in tradable form. You can have 1 each going in the quest timer though per character.
5. If you (account) has more than 9 of Same god item you could either opt to use it after the 2 years to keep it going longer. Or the GM team may allow you to move it to another account on your WP.
6. GM team will no longer readily intervene for God item moving and investigating. It is going to be back in the players hands as it used to be. The rubber banding will in essence be that 6 month timer expiring.
7. Special cases such as you have too many items under that account to use them all are the only intended cases of GM movement of them.
This seemed the best balance to allow longer term usage of the god items, while lessening the amount of RMT, and GM requests for item movement. It also serves the game purpose of rewarding continued play and activity by guilds to keep god items in their play, instead of accumulation by old guildies it becomes a "your current guilds" project to keep up with the god item scene.
The god item creation was originally intended to update as well, but that change is more than kRO is willing to bite off right now, and it is something that would have reaching effects to all ROs not just us because of examples we set.
IF this fails there is nothing stopping us from undoing it, but I honestly don't feel that the current amount of God items is healthy, when compared with the number of characters playing. It will take time for it to correct itself, but it will correct itself and we should have a more active WoE scene where the powerful are the ones playing rather than the ones that had elite acquaintences in the past. It was asked about how many WoE 1 god items were on Ymir: I don't have a "now" number but I did that pull last year: There are 208 MADE WoE 1 items, with more than 200+ worth of pieces still floating around. Some of those may be dead accounts or a GM here and there, but the vast majority (then) are in player hands and active.
I'm updating this info to the first post for clarity. Your feedback while brusque at times was appreciated and did allow fine tuning of this change to better handle your needs.
