a new NA server is totally unnecessary, since 7/8 have a population problem.
but i see your point on fresh start and it would be a nice idea, after merging (if this is going to happen some day) the existing ones, to 2, maybe 3 servers and reset the DB on one of them.
this would be ideal
3 live euro servers
3 live NA servers
1 new NA server.
imho, this would give new meaning and life and MAYBE it would attract new players to a live game.
You want to start fresh start on sieghardt ... 500 people online, asuming half are giran shops/boxed buffers you got what 250 high level people? No biggie ... you ll be able to adena beg with ease :)
nah, a popular game should reshuffle it's servers and provide a fresh start to new people joining, most mmorgs do that. Problem with L2 is it's not advertised at all, so it doesnt get all that many new players starting, which pretty much negates the need for fresh servers.
I m guessing most of the Europeans that are starting now are former priv server players that got fed up playing c4 :)
I would rather see opening one more Euro server and merging few NA. Just my opinion, flame me for it but won't help you.
Get Hinde and Gustin on one so we can play together LJ ;)
There is no call for a new NA server. It actually costs money to run these things. It's not like they pick up a piece of machinery from newegg, do an install and away we go.
There would have to be an economic reason to do so.
And for what? So people can experience 1-20 content in a crowded area only to have the same issues about half a year down the line and then a call for another new server?
If that is the experience one wants then it makes more sense to have a limited lvl server or even one that is wiped every few months. Obviously alternate rules servers.
Because otherwise you will have the exact same issues on this "new" server, less population, people screaming for server mergers, same issues with bots, and still the other servers will be equally as empty. Which may or may not be a good/bad thing depending on how you see these things.
I would rather see opening one more Euro server and merging few NA. Just my opinion, flame me for it but won't help you.
Get Hinde and Gustin on one so we can play together LJ ;)
Priv servers are a much smaller issue, most people that play there wouldnt last a week in retail.
LOL, if you have no idea about certain things, you shouldn't talk about them. ATM Luna is great place where you can compare, how players with different histories do against each other.
L2's problem is and always has been the fact it's not promoted *at all*
compare WOW to L2 promotion ;)
Priv servers are a much smaller issue, most people that play there wouldnt last a week in retail.
Those are all just secondary effects. There are a lot of games that don't have much advertising until *after* they have achieved some amount of success. Once you have some momentum, it's a matter of *keeping* it going. As you usually only get once chance at it.
And that is where L2 failed first of all. The management of NA L2, ****** away all the momentum and goodwill by allowing griefers, botters, cheaters and farmers free reign. Once those unhealthy elements were firmly in place, your 'base' players left, which took the outlying players away, and then bit by bit you lose the remaining players as the game gets old and no appreciable 'new blood' joins or comes back.
And it takes far less 'advertising' to send or keep people away than it does to gain them. Word of mouth, opinions and first impressions go a long way at making a game healthy or not. If you have ever heard the phrase: "Birds of a Feather, Flock Together.", this is blindingly obvious. People who game, tend to have friends who game. And if one->some of them see the 'bad elements', by association so do the rest. So like a stack of dominoes falling, you lose 'creditability' not just with the people currently playing, but with those they know and everyone they talk to. Including those who are several times removed. (Ye' Ol "Six degrees of Seperation.") And as those people leave...they tend to take their friends with them, or influence others to leave as well. (Just think of how many people have transferred to different servers, and drag people they know along for the ride.)
So even if WOW has 1 billion farmers...so long as half are unnoticed in instances and the rest are at least visibly being fought, no matter how futiley, it will still have a better impression on players (and those they talk to!) than a game where there is only a handful of 'bad elements' left, but the players think the 'management' does nothing or doesn't care.
And that brings us to the second main failing of L2...the economy. Or more specifically, it's lack thereof. It seems like the developers are fighting a unwanted battle against a concept of 'inflation' that doesn't really exist. Any person who has played the game can attest that the main affect of their machinations has simply been "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer."
From poor rewards and crappy spoils, to insane consumable and crafting costs, the system in L2 hits the poorest hardest and the richest hardly at all. Instead of designing the game to be able to bleed off 'excess' income, the game tries instead to prevent you from getting excess income...except it tends to prevent you from getting ANY income at all instead!
And worst of all, when it comes time to 'fix' those shortcomings, what you end up with doesn't change the broken base, but just slaps a bandaid over the top. (Luxury shop, mammon, Shadow items, etc...it just keeps coming.)
So when you combine the first and the second point, they just feed on each other. The perception of cheaters playing the game and only cheating can help you play, is a loop that just feeds off itself. Leaving what is actually good about the game to languish and wither for lack of attention.
There is a huge list of reasons why new people dont come to L2 ... yes both lack of promotion (either from the company itself of players) is one them. Imo though the core of the reason people quit and new people dont come is the way ncsoft chose to devellop it's content. Think about it ... 4 years ago you were hitting mobs farming mats hoping to craft b grade and get to 75. 4 years later you still forced to spend and inordinate amount of time hitting mobs and farming to get to 85 and craft s80. That's just the problem, they are expanding the game but not adding content that would make sense to the bulk of Western players. The majority of Western players dont want to spend 4-5 years doing the exact same thing over and over and onver ... If ncsoft chose to just add real content for endgame instead of pushing endgame further maybe more people would play. I mean look at world bosses ... they should be bringing like 4-5 new bosses each update, not 1 boss a year (anthy - baium - valakas - tezza) ... endgame gear should be raid farmable only, not spend 6 months grinding in a spot to get a recipe that might fail so you ll need to spend another 6 months grinding again. They added raids, which were cool to begin with, that 's what endgame farming should be, get groups of people to cooperate to do something, but no, first they made raidbosses soloable, then they made them drop nothing end result? nobody does raids anymore ...
I put it all down to culture differences. Koreans actually love the repetitive never ending playstyle L2 has, Euros/Americans dont, they expect some finite point where you reap the benefits of going through the repetitive stages. Wow provides that, l2 doesnt
New NA server take too much resource and will get little return for NCSOFT so I don't think that will happen- What I hope would more likely to happen is to merge the lowest population server and convert the empty server into a more relax pve server- A fresh start so everyone is lvl 1 no tranfers- even through it an open pvp game there is a very large player base that love the relax PvE side and some pvp like castle seige. Add more penalty for going red like item drop on 1st pk when red.. also when being red - shadows and augmented item cannot be use...
With the new xp bonus coming up when in a safe zone while you are afk in shop mode or not even log on you won'rt be left behind in level by those who xp all the time-since it a relax server impose a max 8 hour of game play a day- so player can interact more then just xp all the time. And last on this relax server make it fun at all level and not just for 76+ lvl. make it so that castle and fort in low level area like gludin/gludio are seigeable by lvl 20-30 for gludin and lvl 30-40 for gludio, and dion area for lvl 40-52. Off course the fort/castle npc level will be adjusted and To keep it balance all higher lvl player then enter seiged area castle/fort will be teleport to town. So no A grade-S Grade group come to mess up the fort/castle seige- where there nothing your lowbie group can do except call in a nothet high lvl group to attack them- This method keep the lowbie seige/fort balance. And bring more player out when there is a fort/castle seige.
It make no sense where the it an low lvl xp area town gludin/gludio that the fortress/castle cannot be taken by several group of lvl 20-40 players... Yes Clan and allaince need to grow to do big thing- but these clan/ally need to learn and experience what a clan/ally can do then just get to clan lvl 5 and get everyone to S grade to be able to enjoy the end game content-..
Well just my 2 cent suggestion on re-wipe relax server either for NA/uero or both.. if more trully new player can experience and have fun at those "end game content" -seiges/raid.. at lower level we would have many many new player and not re-roll or alt from 3+ years player..
I speak fluent Ashley.
Translation, LEAVE LIONNA ALONE!
... and let us play a Massively Multiplayer RolePlaying Game as a Small Singleplayer RolePlaying Game.
Yeah right...
Go play Neverwinter Nights, L2 is not for you.
New NA server take too much resource and will get little return for NCSOFT
i believe the same argument was made about whether or not another Euro server should open.
subscriptions stay the same - the players just transfer. spreading the pop thinner.
so IMO, a) this is a moot point b) your own statement is proof positive of why nc SHOULD open another NA server.
NEW NA server as in new server-hardware-linked database-added backup software the works, that was what I was reffering too.. To merge-then wipe -then reuse the same existing server/hardware to become a new relax/or fresh NA server would be more cost effective- so there might be a possible to this sugession maybe later down the road.. this will attact new player to join an 4 year old game and not have to worry about catching up or falling behind long time player
If you like the concept of starting out fresh, may i make the suggestion of playing on the public test server. You will have the chance to start fresh twice a year.
I'd like the idea of a New NA server, if everyone from all the NA servers transfered. I recently resubscribed to L2, after about a year of inactivity. I got the itch to try and get my Orcish Destroyer going again. Now that I've logged in and played for a while, I remember why I left. I'm lvl 49 and still using a D-grade weapon. I still don't have the adena to afford a C grade. What's worse, I've been gone so long I don't even remember how to get a C grade weapon, except to buy one from a private store. What I remember from before, though, is that just about all private stores are a rip-off. So I decided to try something new, and started a DE Mystic. During my play time on my Orc and DE, I noticed the population was pretty light. What's the point in playing an MMO if I'll be playing solo all the time? So perhaps with a new server, and marked interested, or perhaps a server merge, the game would be more appealing.
Particularly this MMO - it really needs a certain population for the game mechanics (competition over resources, etc) to kick in. I can appreciate that some folks are enjoying the more "back woods" flavor of the game, but I remember what it was like at release. You did not hold a favored xp spot without a fight, and players lived and died by the strength of their clan and alliance. Not to say that this was a Golden Age - there is a reason I got burnt out and quit after six months - but I don't think the game "works" without a certain population going.
That said, so far Bartz seems just fine to me. I think that NCsoft needs to seriously consider consolidating servers. The problem is that their product is not especially new-player friendly to begin with. Compound this with empty servers, and you virtually ensure you will not get many new customers.
I think they need to look at something like this:
(1) Leave Bartz alone and offer free xfer to, for a limited time.
(2) Leave Lionna alone and offer free xfer to, for a limited time.
(3) Declare 1 new server, no xfers allowed.
(4) All remaining servers to be merged, naming resolved based on active status and then by seniority.
Honestly this game does not need more than four NA servers right now. The resultant structure should also be more profitable (although I suspect that the operating costs of each server at this point are minimal - so this is more about creating a better play experience than saving money).
/edit: forgot to add: the offering of a new, "fresh start" NA server should be done in conjunction with a direct marketing campaign - emails sent to all current and former subscribers letting them know that this is a terrific opportunity to take a new look at L2, relive memories, etc.