Any Hope For A New Server Merge?

Howdy, just more or less came back from a month or so break recently from XI, and good ol Lakshmi went from a little over 2,000 players on average to barely over 1,000ish every day now for the past week, even on the weekends. Considering we previously merged with Garuda... Those numbers are pretty scary, in honesty.

Anyone know what kind of funky voodoo dance and ritual it takes to get SE to possibly consider another round? Or is this just a Lakshruda problem currently?

if it lowers the cost and gets the money in fast by merging 2 or more servers they will do it.

Honestly, I feel more mergers would only make things worse. At any given time almost 75% of Phoenix is level 70+. Merging servers would only compound the "there's no one on problem" which is really only a problem for the people below level 70. The game would just go from having 1000+ people standing around waiting to do abyssea to 2000+ people.

Well... I gotta admit Gilgamesh is a cool server but is not so good to switch ...

some days ao 40+ left to asura due to low population in shiva, i wont mind if a merge brings shiva more people to party with, then again may just bring a bunch of morons to the population.

The only thing that can fix the failing 1-70 game is to either go on a super advertising spree to get new people to give the game a try, or to tweak the xp gain incentive by either bring aby down some or bringing everything else up. Until then the majority of players won't see fit to bother themselves with doing anything else.

As great as aby is, it more or less the final nail in the coffin for non-endgame content.

Or they could just raise aby entrance level to 70+ or something

I'm sure that would help, but I doubt it'll ever give the 70+s incentive to bother with the people below them that need parties.

Does transferring still cost $25?

yes

Maybe more people will come back for new update version anyway.

Then they won't merge servers until they absolutely need to.

This. Server mergers are bad PR.

I'm curious how many people are actually for another merger? Personally I would choose not to have that happen for quite some time... I know competition is good and all but personally I really like having no competitors every now and then at nms, even if it's only once or twice a week...

I'm quite happy with 1-2K players thank you. I'd rather a smaller server than to have even more competition.

Yeah it seems that in general, the style of the game is the fewer the better. It hurts crafting and ah stuff, sure. But, take like the Abyssea nms for example. I've been in alliances that wipe to stuff that we cruise through with 4-6 people. There's not a lot of new content, too. Less people in a smaller area may as well be more people in a larger area.

Now, if there was some really content, complete with story, it might be weird having fewer people. But I would say that the overall quality of each release of whatever addon/storyline or battle area has gone down with each one.

I don't know though, either. I am pretty tired.

Also, with caps removed and levels increased, things like dynamis and sky and whatever else people wanna do, takes fewer people.

Server merge will happen again. Maybe next month, maybe next year, maybe two years from now. But, eventually it will happen. Inevitable.

^

Seeing how FFXI is a business, I'm sure they have the requirements for another server merge already in place, just depends on what the requirement for it to occur is.

Most likely, its something along the lines of, "Each server must have ###XXX### of people on during peak hours, average, before we merge again, with exception of it being this (insert time frame here.) long since last merger."

But I bet, that they have every server merger thought out in advance, all the way up until there are 1~5 servers left, even if it takes 3 more merges for it to happen.

Just a matter of time before they implement them.

Never thought about the whole business side of the bad PR it likely would generate. That right there would probably be a good reason for them to hold off for a good while on such an action, since I'm sure they still want to present XI as booming and alive to outside eyes.

Ah well, hopefully the coming Mog Lotto and ever looming Christmas break period will liven the place up some more in body count, given I have no clue how we lost about 1,000ish players on average a day in just a month or so time period.

Better not. Abyssea is hell enough with 1k~ people, let alone more.

I was thinking about an advertisment spree. Im no part of SE obviously but i sure do want new players, people say its a dead game, well i see WE do something about it. Im not bothered about 14. Id much rathre they improved 11 and i got to use all that ive worked for. I Was honestly thinking the other day about even making a FFXI Facebook page (Hell theres probably already one) With a link to the steam site to buy that mega bundle for 4.99. Every add it to their friends list and advertise it everywhere. ID much rather see new players on here. Alot of fan base complain theres not enough people online, then i say the fan base should do something about it. We cant expect SE to magically create new players.

I really think S-E shot themselves in the foot by rushing FFXIV.

If you're a prospective MMORPG player, who doesn't have any current affiliation to a game ... are you really gonna choose FFXI when there's shiny new FFXIV on the shelf at the store, too? And remember, 9 out of 10 are gonna choose WoW before even considering FFXI vs. FFXIV.

That said, if S-E is genuinely concerned about attracting new players to FFXI (which I doubt), they're going to have to raise the minimum level for Abyssea participation, preferably to level 75. Very few people are going to EXP a level 30+ job in a standard "old school" EXP party when they could just leech in an Abyssea alliance instead. And if no one is LFG between level 30-70, what incentive does a new player have to join or make an EXP party? And what hope does that new player have of understanding his/her group role/function in endgame without practice and experience that we all got when leveling up our job(s) in years past?

Be glad if your on a server that had a merger.Alexander has less than1K ppl on most of the time except on some weekends.I pray for a server merge to take some asshats & returds from Alexander to a server elsewhere! Game On!

Sylph seems like it's over crowded most times

I don't really grasp people wanting server merges, I mean like 1k+ people is still alot of damn people.

I mean that 'I wish there were more people' *grass is greener on the other side* will wear off the first few times NMs, camps ect you want get over camped.

hell even with the 'Low Numbers' we have I'm still finding Pop NMs I want to do people camped in Abyssea

SE did a horrible job on the last server merge. They basically *** the populations of source servers by taking our names away, yea I'm still pissed off I lost my name to someones *** mule. I called SE continuously in reguards to this, sent them over a dozen emails to their feedback section, I never got one email back and was basically told tough ***on the phone when I did manage to get someone. It wouldn't have been difficult at all for SE to neutralize duplicate names and the first one to log on would get to retain it, but even that was too much effort for them. Sylph is over crowded, was 1700 people on this morning before maintenance. We fight like hell to get Xarcabard for Thursday night dynamis, getting it on the weekend is impossible as there are a couple of large links that have enough people to monopolize the zone. A friend of mine wanted to camp Roc a few weeks back thinking she could pick it off and have a nice staff till ToM. Apparently there was several other people who had the same idea cause we had a good bit of competition... over Roc. Another server merge is a horrible idea and if you want another merge then you're a horrible person, I hope you're reading this post while warming your car up in your garage.

^ Totally agree with this!

What really supports now is the fact PS2 users can't get past 85 now.
PS2 support = gone.

Will they give us some new graphics updates now? Probably not :(

the only thing that will help this game get back on track is a influx of low level players, or higher level players to start leveling lower level jobs again, and not blow thru levels in 2days...
there is a need for for people to start again crafting lower level gears and items/weapons, and for people who are at that level to then buy them....
Server merge, wouldnt kill the game, but if they do have another one here soon, it really should be the last one, because at that point the game will decline to rapidly.

they really need to reinvent low level content, and make it interesting for people to come into the game again, and not just to reach lvl90 but to actually experience and enjoy the game from the beginning.

I think that the game will somewhat stabilize after level cap reaches 99 if that even ever occurs, and then maybe through that time SE can throw in some lower level content to make it more interesting, and not just FOV stuffs, but new lower level cap qeusts like how CoP was and the like.. but at that point, how many people will this game have lost in the process.