Feldon We have more details now about the upcoming Server Consolidation for EQ2 live servers, specifically which servers are merging where. To avoid confusion or “TL;DR”, we’ve prepared this handy guide to exactly what the server landscape will look like after this change:
(updated on October 6th with the new server names)
There’s no word on how character names will be reserved, as that is probably still being hammered out, but the most notable news today will likely be that Nagafen is merging into Freeport and Permafrost. This is not really surprising given how few players were logged in even at peak hours (maybe 30-40?). Deathtoll has shown that PvP can be very popular in EQ2, if the ruleset is right and there are limits on travel convenience.
Here’s the announcement from Holly “Windstalker” Longdale on the EQ2 Forums:
Good day, Norrath!
First, we want to thank you all for playing! We have got the best players around. The team has taken the opportunity to spend more time on our servers lately and it’s been a healthy reminder about why we do what we do as devs. And it has helped us with our plans as well.
We kicked off the early planning phase for the server consolidation of some servers so we can get the populations healthier and feeling more lively. We have identified the servers we will consolidate into new ones. Through the links below, we invite the players from those servers to start suggesting area or NPC names for their new server based on a theme which we will put to a vote for those servers.
Butcherblock, Crushbone, Oasis -> Desert of Flames Theme
Everfrost, Guk, Unrest -> Kingdom of Sky Theme
Freeport, Nagafen, Permafrost -> Rise of Kunark Theme
As you’ll notice, Nagafen, our last PvP server, will have its players moved to a new PvE server. We love our Nagafen players, but the population isn’t big enough to support development effort to sustain a PvP server as well as we should. We are sad about that, but at the same time we are happy that the new Deathtoll PvP server is doing well.
The engineering work for consolidation is still being worked on and we will go into testing in the coming weeks. Part of our diligence is around ensuring all your houses, dungeons, guilds, and all your “stuff” goes with you. We will also add titles for players from each server so you can identify your original server if you’d like to!
We are excited to see how these new communities grow and develop and we’ll have more details and news as we get closer. We will post votes on each server related to the suggestions you put forward for the server names in the coming weeks before the moves occur.
As we do that work, you may have seen our prelude events for the content coming in the months ahead. We are also thrilled that Domino – known as Emily Taylor – is back on the team to dig into the housing and crafting side of our game. Those who know her will remember she has very unique talents in that area of design!
As always, there will be more news to come!
Be well, Norrath, and thanks to all of you,
Holly “Windstalker” Longdale
Executive Producer, EQ & EQ2
24 top 100 guilds on Butcherblock, Oasis, and Crushbone.
17 top 100 guilds on Guk, Everfrost, and Unrest.
8 top 100 guild on Permafrost, Nagafen, and Freeport.
Seems like its not that even of a split. Given raid guilds do not incorporate the entire population of a server, but I bet its a good reference to overall active populations.
I dont get how they are doing this. They are piling up all the hard core raid guilds onto pretty much one server mostly. This will cause a lot of people to quit the game due to raid zone lag and fighting over contested Avatars.
In the meantime Freeports top 3 raid guilds are struggling for raid attendance and cant fill their rosters to kill anything much less Avatars so they are going to move a bunch of decorators/casual players/Naggy dead accounts with the Freeport server.
I really dont think they are paying attention at all to the raiding community it will be a huge fail.
I do enjoy the bad news (server mergers) mixed with good news (Domino’s’ return). Overall I am not too concerned until I see how character and guild names are going to be handled.
I was hoping someone could give some insight on the Guk and Everfrost servers since my toons are on Unrest. What is their player base for the most part, location wise?
Pretty sure Guk and Everfrost are US based.
That they are.
Thanks to both of you. We weren’t sure but it makes sense.
Hey Feldon off topic why are Bio pictures on EQ2U not updating anymore on character details?
It’s a census thing. I’m pretty sure that there is a slash command to force an paperdoll/headshot update.. if I can find it, I’ll reply, but I need to leave for work atm
Ok thanks for the reply was just curious why it was doing this now. 🙂
I can’t find a slash command, sorry. Maybe try clicking the Send Update button in the Character Window->Options Tab
I dont see options anywhere maybe its because Im using Mozilla I havent checked IE or any other browser. Just sucks because I like looking at peoples appearance armor in the bio area sometimes and now it wont update.
Paperdoll should export every time your character camps out. You can also change your armor in some way and zone. That should also force an update.
The headshot is updating but the bio picture is not 🙁
Traduction du post de Feldon en français sur http://www.guerrier-celeste.fr/48-frontnews/516-news-de-la-fusion.html
et de celui de Holly Longdale sur http://www.guerrier-celeste.fr/fusion-des-serveurs-les-news.html
I personnaly think that non U.S. servers are not yet int the merge process, because DBG devs do not know how they can manage to get different languages on the same server without changing the game core too much! this will surely happen one day …
should we be 🙂 or 🙁 ?
I have been playing on both Freeport and Permafrost. This consolidation means that I will have two full guilds worth of characters, all duplicated; a level 100 guild with 19 toons and a level 74 guild with 18 toons. I wish I could sell some of them as I did back in the olden days on The Bazaar.
I predict eventually one day there will only be 2 US servers. Antonia bayle, and everything else merged. If so I hope they rename it Lucan D’lere so the names match. Kinda like the old days wen we had 2 RP servers by those names.
lol, i like the name suggestion if it came down to that.
Wheres the like button for this ? 😮
I started on Lucan D’Lere back in the day! 😀
Wish I could find that account again, lol
Those of us on Mistmoore Permafrost aren’t terribly happy about the Nagafen thing either. Those guys have kind of a bad rep and we have enough issues with a lively community.
naggy will be intresting but is i was on naggy id be bitching that i should get a way to change my pvp gear to PVE .. thats just my .02
I haven’t really heard anything about Nagafen. I knew there were a few people left in PvP who were trying to hang on, but I also knew that it was dead enough that any further effort on it was wasted. As for the rep of Nagafen, I don’t know much about them in particular. What about them isn’t so great, Anaogi?
I do feel sad for those in Nagafen, though. It really is like they are being given up on – even if we all knew such an event was inevitable. I hope that we all merge alright… Permamoore with Freeport and Nagafen… What does that make us now? 😛
PVPers are, by nature, more aggressive and competitive. :\ I still think Clusters would have been a good solution for everyone.
Dark Age of Camelot’s answer to low population AND people who wanted to keep their names. was as follows.
“In order to combat the problems of dwindling population, Mythic began to initiate server clusters. This involved grouping various servers together, allowing players to interact with those from other servers. ”
And some of those clusters were PVP. (I hate PVP with a passion, but it needs to be there for the people who do like it.)
This to be meanink, standard PvP ruleset to be remainink for Harla Dar only, да?
[i]Permamoore with Freeport and Nagafen… What does that make us now? :P[/i]
I voted for “Gorowyn”.
And I heard Nagafen players were jerks. Mind you I’ve never seen to know but built-in friction isn’t a good sign.
Well, I butt heads with them whenever I wind up meeting them in a forum post or what not it seems, but here’s one thing that realllllly made me despise them. They were asking Devs to merge a PVE server with them… That’s the equivalent of dumping babies in a crocodile pit. -.-
But as I said, they still should have their playstyle available. Taking their playstyle away is no good. Rubbing it is with that “Our PVP/TLE server is doing great”.. well that was just giving them the finger. >.> Ok, so I snickered a little when I read it, but despite my dislike for their playstyle, I’d vote for them to keep Nagafen, even free transfers or copies from all other servers to there. (But GDIF and go to hell if any one ever wants to put any of my main toons there. I made 2 toons there so Cloudrat could put my globe travel cup in her house and make travel easier for peeps, and I tour the houses they have published, and that’s all the PVP server I want to see in person.)
I feel sorry for the people on Nagafen having to go to a pve server now DBG should at least give them a free server transfer token instead of forcing them onto some random server just to get them out of the way.
Feldon/Deathdlr – y’all should do a name check tool – compare the names of our My Characters to those that will be consolidated 🙂 I just went through several of my toons – it’s a pain. I think I’ll be losing several toon names.
It’s a sad day that EQ2’s population has dwindled to the point where only 4 servers are needed.
Honestly, they could have dropped it to two servers and still had plenty of room to fit any new stragglers that came along in the future. EQ2’s heyday is way over and done with.
E’ci for life! Oh, wrong game… 😉
Hope they answer about the character name situation soon. Will be interesting to know if we lose all our discos again as well.
well my main is again safe — for now — I renewed to see if I can get the others I’m kind of concerned about — just keep BB away from Unrest and I’m fine ( main has a “copy” there LOL — she was created one day before mine was )
it’s August 28th already — thought this was supposed to happen the “last” of August .. ?? well ???