Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Server Merge What The-?! Hilarity Ensues....

Okay, heart attack time for all of you who haven't yet heard of this:

IAH is implementing a server merge for SEA / ANZ Granado Espada effective 7 October 2008.

News and Sources:

Granado Espada World Migration Official Announcement

Bulletin 1: World Migration Family and Faction Migration Guide

[More bulletins to come, apparently, and I will update the post as they are released.]

Official Forum Thread for Comments and Complaints:

Granado Espada World Migration Official Announcement

It's Maintenance Day! Ask [Mee Pok Tah] about the World Migration here!!

Please, for the love of Grace Bernelli or Andre Janzur, PLEASE read through the news articles and the official comments in the thread above, before anyone panics!

[And have some sympathy for the IAH staff because even while this development has caught everyone flat-footed, they are now the ones who have to face the collective wrath of the community.]

***

I've already had my freak-out over this news, so maybe I can contribute my comments and suggestions - in the hope that I've calmed down enough to be coherent AND rational, of course.

The major themes in the thread linked above have been:

Compensation for this sudden merge, and the losses that people may incur in its implementation
How the PK and the non-PK servers will be affected, respectively
Channels, or the current lack thereof
Items and how they will be dealt with in case of loss; special mention to items such as character cards, limited-edition items such as Divine Angel Wings, and the non-tradeable RNPCs such as Rio, Irawan, Feng Ling, and Bai Hu

And then there are the people who dashed headlong into the thread without knowing what's going on. I refer you again to the beginning of this blog post for the relevant links.

My comments on the themes:

Hrin mentioned something called the "World Migration Package":

We have proposed to IMC and HBS to allow us to have a World Migration Package for you guys.

To ease all migrants’ transition into the new worlds of Bach and Rembrandt, all users who log in between 7 September 2008, 0000hrs (GMT+8) -7 October 2008 0000hrs (GMT+8) will receive the following on 9 October 2008, Thursday, after the merger is complete:

a) 3 Combat Manual (1 day)
b) 3 Stance Manual ( 1 day)
c) 3 Forgotten Territory Pass (1 day)
d) 3 Ancient Territory Pass (1 day)
e) 3 Lucifer Wings (1 day)
f) 3 Devil Wings (1 day)

Yes, that is not a cure-all for all item losses, but it's a start.

Alternatively, a friend of mine suggests doing the following:

- Create a mule account for every server: specifically, one mule account that has only one family in each server
- Merc the characters you want to save
- Pass the items, the vis, and the merced characters to the mule account
- Pray the merge goes through properly
- Retrieve the stash from the mule accounts

The merge works this way:
Cervantes + Caravaggio + Vivaldi = Bach -> Three PK servers become one PK server
Carracci + Pachelbel = Rembrandt -> Two Non-PK servers become one Non-PK server

Since Viv and Pach were the last two servers to be released, some players from those servers have the complaint of lagging behind the other servers in terms of growth and age. The particular comment about Pach was that its population was simply going to be incorporated into Carracci.

The way I see it, yes, there will be problems with overcrowding, but at least it MIGHT become easier to get together for pick-up raids and missions. I can't really judge it until it's actual merge time, though.

When it comes to talking about channels, this quote from Hrin scares me:

As for additional channels, we will observe the situation after the world migration before we discuss further with IMC.

Um, BOO HISS...? It's my firm belief that having the additional channels will immediately assuage the community's fears of having overcrowded servers.... Though someone HAS pointed out to me that this is not a likely thing to happen. This might have been the one truly depressing thing about this. Where in heck are we going to find spots if all the spots get taken very fast?

I really hope IAH pushes for more channels.

And about the rather thorny problem of legacy items...I personally have no stake in it, but I understand that it DOES become a major concern for everyone who went to amazing lengths to get those items. I have nothing to say yet since I want to think about it some more. I guess that means there will be follow-up posts.

So, let's talk about this in the comments. Everyone is welcome, but no trolling or foul language please.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

World migration... at the FIRST YEAR anniversary of this game? Hmmm... it doesn't look very good.

Last night, I went online to transfer some of my vis to one of my friends who has actually just started playing Granado Espada!

The bots weren't broading (a good sign), but there were no other people broading their stuff too, and there wasn't as much people in Auch as it used to.

Auch looked like as if it went back in time, way back in open beta, when the highest leveled characters were just in their 50s and people have yet to reach that far. But instead of excitement, I felt sad... really sad.

(I hope everyone was really raiding).

Unknown said...

re: mule accounts

you can't transfer items/vis on a lvl 1 family. that's going to be tricky.

if you still would want to pursue this, then i suggest talking to a HIGHLY TRUSTED friend who will take your stuff for safekeeping and give it back to you after the merge.

pros & cons aside, i'd like to enjoin the entire GE community, especially the PH players to band together to keep the community strong. open up discussions like these so people will be enlightened & questions can be answered thoroughly. we can always direct our queries to the proper authorities since they understand the gravity of this matter. let's all be calm & rational as we think what is best for the game & the community in general.

in other words, look at the forest & not on the trees.

Palukz™ said...

You can transfer vis/items to a Level 1 Family if you have 700 reputation points. Just do the Pioneer quest until you are asked to give a certain certificate to Cristelle in Reboldeoux. Correct me if Im wrong...

Unknown said...

yah, but does everyone have the time to get rep points in time before the deadline?

Jeremy said...

That's one place where we at the NA version of GE beat you - we had a server merger about 6 months ago (just our two PK servers though). The new merged server got 3 channels

PJ Punla said...

@ jeremy

how was the experience before and after the merge? what triggered it? what has happened since?