Feldon It looks like those plans to merge Lucan D’Lere with Crushbone weren’t quite so preliminary and subject to player input. From SmokeJumper:
It’s official. We’ll be doing the merge that Rothgar describes. LDL will merge with Crushbone. Sometime in early February, preferably. (It’ll take a bit to get everything set up for it.)
Earlier in the thread, Rothgar addressed questions asking about just allowing free transfers to Antonia Bayle, the only other Roleplay PvE server:
The whole reason we don’t consider merging LDL with AB is because AB is big enough already. Opening up free transfers to AB from LDL would just create the situation that we are trying to avoid in the first place.
When the Runnyeye/Splitpaw mergers in Europe were brought up, Rothgar reminded the poster about the maintenance necessary to those servers before a merge can be completed:
The merges that involve our Amsterdam data center require some maintenance before we can proceed with the merge. That is being worked on now and we hope to start them the first week of February. Nothing we do can change that schedule, whether we attempted an LDL merge before then or not. So while I’m not commiting to any dates, know that your merge date will not be affected by our other plans.
UPDATE: An additional quote from Rothgar:
Typically we keep the name of the server with the larger population which would be Crushbone. Also I believe Crushbone was a launch server and LDL was added later.
As far as retaining the RP tag, I think that might be more misleading to new players that create a character there and expect the server to be mostly RP when in fact most of the server probably won’t be RP’ers at all.
frack me.. really.. they better go ahead with the hardware upgrade.. Crushbone is one of the top pop servers, and we feel it every time we raid..
hm… EU merge cancelled? no word anymore on eu merge it seems..
Interesting I thought we would have seen some angst from the people on LDL about this.
Angst? I’ll try, but a lot of us on LDL are a bit past caring. Is any EQ2 player really surprised by bizarre decisions being imposed from above any more?
The players of LDL and AB have been calling for players from the overcrowded AB to be allowed to move to LDL for years. that would have reduced pressure on AB, and helped LDL.
That was apparently not as good an idea as merging us with some random non-RP server.
Funnily enough, LDL players can still pay to transfer to AB. This may prove to be a nice little earner for SOE.
Yeah this could be a nice earner for SOE. They *should* give free transfers from LDL to AB for any who want, but I’m sure they won’t.
Not too sure how I feel about this. I’d prefer having LDL remain an RP server, but there are those that will say LDL wasn’t much of an RP server to begin with. Regardless, I’ve been on LDL since February of 2005 and had hoped to remain on an RP server since I do participate in RP.
I’m just curious how this will affect those of my friends on LDL and whether they decide to stay or leave after the servers merge. I don’t know about leaving for AB myself either since I don’t know a single person that plays there. I do have friends on other servers, but I suppose I’ll have to wait and see if this does come to a realization and then see how things are once the scheduled merger is complete.
The most disappointing thing is names that are already in use on the other server and how that will play since someone will get the boot for their name and have it altered/changed.
As a long time LDL player I see the merger as a positive thing. Spontaneous and open RP on the server is virtually non-existent but RP does exist. It will continue to exist as well. The thing with roleplay is that being exposed to the creation of personal stories in an MMO can garner the interest of those who may never have really tried it. So in this light, a merger is a lot of potential new creativity. It will depend more on how the roleplayers respond than the response of others.
There will always be non-roleplayers. But really, those people have no influence over anyone’s RP experience and should be accepted for how they want to play just as much as anyone else. I think if we all embrace the merger and not try to see it as negative, or an us versus them situation we will be the better for it. We are all EQ2 players and that alone is a decent enough base.
That being said, I would like to say I disagree with a merger in Feb. When the expansion comes out there will naturally be new subscribers, but more importantly, you will see a spike in resubs from old Crushbone players and LDL players. A new server merger, a new expansion and a lot of returning players all at the same time is a poor move. Give it a few months and let the populations normalize before merging them.
Every other merged server will have a month or two to get used to each other. If this goes through in Feb, it will be a lot more difficult than it has to be, strictly from a social viewpoint.
Except I’d guess the majority of LDL has zero desire to move to AB.
I think a lot of LDL players may be interested in moving to AB. I see a lot of that type of convo going on in level chat from our role play community.
Merging with Crush Bone seems.. ok. I mean LDL is dying we need more people so maybe this will help. I just hope the LAG isn’t following us.
This just makes me glad i stuck with AB… For now… Who knows what the future holds for AB though.
I hear stories of LDL players dissing AB a lot because its too crowded. When in fact there are plenty of times it surely doesn’t feel that way when i play. It may be the most populated server but i can go to a lot of places and only see a few people along the way. They really don’t have anything to worry about with moving there.
LDL was collapsing fast I kid you not. True blood, Transchedence , Enigma have all left the server during the last 3 months. Some of the best players have left for other servers, or quit the game altogether. We at Vidid loose at least 2-3 oldtime raiders every month that transfer to other servers because the server is dead outside raidtimes.
Some people that I don’t know and never seen starting any groups keep poping in different forums and claim population is fine and they can get groups all the time.What was the last time that a pug group was formed? When was the last time a pug group did anything outside the quest zones?
It’s sad that it has come to ldl being a server that will be merged with crushbone, a decently populated server and we will still be smaller than AB.
I Have No Problem with it. Everyone has their own opinion about it but bottom line its their 14.99 a month. Play your toon the way you want too.
I think it is fascinating that they say that AB is too big already but they are guaranteeing that it will continue to get bigger by having AB be the only RP tagged server. A new player to the game interested in RP will see one server and go to that. I don’t think the decision makers are thinking clearly.
Hiyas!: “Leoko is from the LDL server, I personally can’t do much on eq2 atm anyway (my net connection is terrible) however… I have lots of friends there and I’m rather interested in meeting all the new people after the merger. But, I also am (like a fair number of LDL-RP’ers) interested in AB as well. I think… that (considering AB is ‘over packed’ ) let AB’ers free trans over to LDL and even out the population. Leaving two medium level RP servers. But, I guess this will work too… if not slightly less effective.
PS. Haz a nice day! -Smiles and waves lightly-
Rothgar’s got memory issues. I have been playing LDL since launch and I mean… practically to the hour. I preordered and took the day off to geek out when EQ2 base game came out. LDL was not “added later.” This whole merger is a TERRIBLE idea. Letting ABers transfer over to lighten their load and bump ours up a bit would have made much more sense. Also… are people actually complaining that LDL is too light?? There was a pur just the other day and frostfell was hoppin. I prefer LDLs slightly quieter atmosphere. I’ve tried to make AB toons before and it was way too crowded for me. I don’t like to have to camp a mob while 5 other groups do the same and try to gank it from me. That’s just me…