Once again GoA, what are the plans for Dyvet?

[Esselinithia]

About missing the old people I feel the same. I think dyvet won't be the same without Talsar, and without the rest of dragon raid crew. For about the last year when I was subscribed to DAOC EU I only logged in on Dragon Raids, as rejuv cleric in group 3. Yes, when I heard that we won't have any more raids with the team, sincel raids are cancelled for lack of interest and Talsar is quiuting daoc for good, it was the time to question, why should I keep my daoc accounts open. With Tallwiz and the rest of Hand of Chaos moving to other places years ago (yes, I followed them too, this is how I ended up in WoW even if I never liked it), Golem Girls (a realy good guild), Ironfalcon (is he back?), Talsar, etc. quit I seen no more reason to stay.

I remember the time, when I joined GoP, and I feared that they are too big and serious for me (I am a PVE player who came for community and fun raids), I had some fun, and then after some time, even GoP, a big and elite guild was gone.

I remember chatting with Swedishwolf, Smellysox, Xrysofer, etc. on MSN but we haven't found a good way to have fun on Prydwen in groups. Now I spoke with Promufa recently and I heard more left. What I can see on Prydwen? A few more friends, Mobs on Drugs (hey I am still their webmaster!)? Or a new start with new players.

And DAOC, if the community wakes up can get the new starts and new players. I don't miss daoc, I don't want to go back. BUT if there is a chance that with a good community I can help to save it for my friends who still play, I will open my subscribtion, even if it is an "unwanted exense". Why? Because there are still friends there, and friendship and community stays even out of game, and they might be happy if they get this support and help.

But they promised, if prydwen dies, they come and play wow on the server I am on, and will meet my wow friends. And people who don't want wow, might come to eve-online.

 

[Darzil]

Dyvet is what, down to 200 people at Primetime?

Not checked the figures, but I think Prydwen is about 250 odd, and Excal is always a good bit bigger. Only notice it in passing when I can't go in via quicklogins. That's logging in about 7:30ish.

Darzil

 

[Pirkel]

Dyvet is what, down to 200 people at Primetime?

Where the fuck do these stories come from? The last couple of times I did a /who I got more then that just in my realm.

Doom saying is fine but at least stick to the facts.

 

[Gahn]

Where the fuck do these stories come from? The last couple of times I did a /who I got more then that just in my realm.

Doom saying is fine but at least stick to the facts.

750 was my last check over all round 20 cet. Could be little more, little less.
My idea is that is around 800-1000 ppl short of an healty cluster.

 

[Pirkel]

750 was my last check over all round 20 cet. Could be little more, little less.
My idea is that is around 800-1000 ppl short of an healty cluster.

That is fine. Everybody can have their own ideas of how may people are needed for a healthy gaming experience.

I personally miss the really big raids as well but I find the server far from dead. There is always people in the capitals and I have no problems finding people to kill me in RvR either. But that could have something to do with the fact that people love to kill me so much ... wonder why that is

 

[Gahn]

That is fine. Everybody can have their own ideas of how may people are needed for a healthy gaming experience.

I personally miss the really big raids as well but I find the server far from dead. There is always people in the capitals and I have no problems finding people to kill me in RvR either. But that could have something to do with the fact that people love to kill me so much ... wonder why that is

It's a design problem really imo, NF is way too big for 750 ppl (and round the figures of how many are in RvR from that overall number), so peeps tend to concentrate in choke points, hence the whines cause choke points don't really give much opportunities to different playstyles etc etc. On Limors u can find RvR pretty much always even at central keeps (Bold etc). That said if the kind of RvR one prefers is Ze Labyrinth .. well it's another story ^^

 

[Punishment]

Is a pity lab was thrown into the mix with low pop ... as it has totally killed off any action in nf

Only rvr now is in lab and you need run back to get rebuff etc , and its 20 hibs owning 10 albs then 50 albs owning 20 hibs and on and on

 

[Esselinithia]

In my oppinion: The healthy population means: There are enough players for having a chance to enjoy the game for fans of different playing styles.

For a Cooperative Server the number of people you need to reach this goal, since you won't have to deal with RVR related playing styles, and for various kinds of PVE groups you can build on population of all 3 realms. (A big raid, 4-5 leveling group, 1-2 smaller raid, 1-2 farm group, etc. is enough). Also in most cases you don't need too much of inactive characters (buffbots)

The population need for PVP servers can be a bit higher (You still need raids, leveling groups, farming, but you have PVP battles, you prefer to have most keeps claimed, need multple guilds, etc). Also having buffbots is risky there.

And for classic servers you need even higher number of players: Both leveling, some raiding (DR, summoner, SI dungeon), farming should be doable, you might want sieges, roaming rvr, chokepoint fights, pugs, good chance to rvr between soloers, duos, etc. But the amount of inactive characters (buffbots) are relatively low. The need for raids per realm are lower than the need for raids on cooperative (or PVP) server since no TOA, and only a few PVE people stays, but dragon raids (and sometimes sidi) is nice and you have to deal with 3 realms.

A normal cluster needs even higher population and also has buffbots (more PVE peope, TOA) to water it down. Say 2fg siege "zerg" per realm, 2 fg for fg roaming fights, 2 for rvr pugs, 1fg for chokepoint, 2 fg for smaller groups and rvr dunegons, 4fg total for raids, 5fg for leveling (different levels), 4 fg in battlegrounds, 2 fg farming, about an fg worth of people crafting and 2fg worth of inactive (AFK and buffbot) per realm looks like a reasonable minimum to have players with all playing styles happy. This looks 27fg or 216 people per realm (even for the lowest population realm).

Even at this number you have people who log in and can't do too much from the stuff they like, rvr people need to organize which zones they rvr in, you have to wait a lot of time for say, ml4 bg (not too many paralel raids), fights won't be that much varied, and you won't do your favorite stuff most of the time So it would be frustrating, but it is close to what I would call a minimum population for normal servers / clusters. And even this costs 650+ characters online for some considereable amount of time. And you would prefer some safety margin, you would prefer more varied fight, differences in realm population makes it even more problematic, so need to look for solutions are present at a bit higher population.

Anything under it makes it REALY hard to get new players and keep players who like different playing styles, and for many it could be a test of patience. And since some playing styles are more popular or ideally need bigger numbers (big sidi raid) even this low population is frustrating on a normal server.

On a Cooperative server a population of say 800 people would mean 100 fg, that is 20 different raids with 5 fg each, or equivalent amount of leveling / farming groups. That is a lot for that server type. Lot of activity... (Ok barrows migh be empty when xp groups at that level does instances, early toa quests, and hib land xping, but you don't have to go to barrows all the time!)

This is why it is hard to compare cooperative, PVP, classic and normal server populations.

 

[Kami]

Has there been any hints about what could be happening? I'd rather use my EU chars but currently there's so few people that there's little point in playing there. Ideally for me they'd cluster with the US or another EU server and keep it in English but again I'd rather have other english speaking people on the server.

The delay in letting us know is literally losing subscriptions and seems rather odd. Even just a "we're going to do X but it'll take us a few months to get it done" would be all that a lot of people would need.

It's currently too much of a case of "maybe GOA will fix it".

 

[rampant]

my guess is that they are in negotiation with EA / mythic to take the servers over to the US.

 

[Kami]

I hope so!

 

[atos]

That would own so bad. Give some reasonable ping delay and probably latest patching.

However I doubt that is the case.

 

[Imgormiel]

my guess is that they are in negotiation with EA / mythic to take the servers over to the US.

I don't see any reason why they shouldn't but from what I gathered while I was in HQ, I doubt that will be the case. GOA seem to have a very guarded position when it comes to their customers and as much as it would be ideal, I doubt that would be the outcome, afterall, there are other solutions that I bet they are working on at this moment in time.

 

[Esselinithia]

The reason to avoid giving english cluster to Mythic is: Several players play on multiple servers.

Like on Camlann. What would you do with that? And with the german / french, etc on it?

Like on Classic? Same kind of problem.

Like on french / german servers, either because they learn the language, or for other reasons and have guilds on both?

Would you make them pay for 2 accounts to play the same characters?

 

[Imgormiel]

The reason to avoid giving english cluster to Mythic is: Several players play on multiple servers.

Like on Camlann. What would you do with that? And with the german / french, etc on it?

Like on Classic? Same kind of problem.

Like on french / german servers, either because they learn the language, or for other reasons and have guilds on both?

Would you make them pay for 2 accounts to play the same characters?

I remember playing stonehenge to do precisely that - learn a new language. My German improved greatly and I met many people who rolled foreign servers to learn new languages, some of which were not even supported by the server. But I do believe that pure English server should be so and however the outcome is derived, I hope the solution suits all.

 

[Syri]

While it would be nice to migrate the servers to a US cluster, there's on very major thing, apart from the moving, re-patching and such, that would need to be considered... payments. At the moment, the only way to pay for a USA account is to pay Mythic by credit card. GOA however, will take payments by european debit card, aswell as credit card. Migrating to Mythic's systems would mean no more debit card support. And if you kept the former-euro cluster on GOA's payment, well, you've skipped the whole point. It'd mean the subscribers would still only have access to the same server, it's just at a different location. I know it's not what a lot of people want to see, but it's realism, it can't be denied that moving the servers to the US and handing them over to Mythic simply wouldn't work out for the best due to payment differences. It's possible they may find a way, but I would doubt it would be easy.

The far more likely, in my opinion, path they will follow, is to work together to find a way to bring the servers together, but without needing to alter the language for npcs and dialogue, or a way to migrate the language choice to the client. If they could cluster the server with, for example, the german cluster, but still have npc dialogue while on excal or pryd in English, this could solve the problems in my view, in a more simple way. The rvr would be more active, and the language barrier would not be a problem, as those wanting to do pve in english would do so on excal or pryd, anyone wanting to pve in German/French would pick another server in that cluster.
As I said, this is just my view on what's more likely. It wouldn't really affect me, as I don't really play any more, and when I did it was on the US servers anyway, but I've still kept track on what's going on with the eu servers, and it would be a shame to see it die. I did after all still spend a lot of time on excal in my early days of playing the game.

 

[Kami]

The reason to avoid giving english cluster to Mythic is: Several players play on multiple servers.

Like on Camlann. What would you do with that? And with the german / french, etc on it?

Like on Classic? Same kind of problem.

Like on french / german servers, either because they learn the language, or for other reasons and have guilds on both?

Would you make them pay for 2 accounts to play the same characters?

Why I've started to think that an agreement between Mythic and GOA to transfer the english chars to US server of your choice would be best.

Example - I want my chars moved to Kay, I pay GOA, they pay mythic a percentage and hand over the account. GOA could even get a percentage of the monthly fees.

At the moment GOA will get nothing from me even though I want to play my EU chars.

At the moment there's 71 people on Hib on Dyvet. "We're working on a fix" isn't really good enough.

 

[gervaise]

Numbers are here remember folks: http://daoc.darkzone.net/

As for GoA / EA getting together I would assume that you would want to ceate a PvP cluster and then drop the UK servers into one of the US servers. It might help but there would be no guarantee me thinks.

Billing: GoA would still hold the accounts and would pay EA some percentage based which severs the characters play on. But what about new players brought into the game by GoA. Would this make it less profitable for them to run the French/German/Spanish/Italian servers - the cost of some services will be spread across all of these at the moment. Requiel for example promotes the game in other countries.

It is probably the only thing that can be done to help out the UK servers imo but will it be worthwhile? I fail to see how DAoC cannot suffer, in the UK in particular, when WH launches (let alone, LotR, PotBS, G&H, TR, SUN etc etc etc). If GoA decide it simply isn't worth it then it may be 'so long and thanks for the fish' later this year.

 

[Tesla Monkor]

In all likelihood GOA is leasing the rights and thus the accounts from Mythic anyway. It is not entirely impossible that the accounts are Mythics to begin with. It comes down to how their agreement has been drafted in the first place.

 

[Corran]

In all likelihood GOA is leasing the rights and thus the accounts from Mythic anyway. It is not entirely impossible that the accounts are Mythics to begin with. It comes down to how their agreement has been drafted in the first place.

You will probably find that GoA have purchased the rights to the software of the game. They pay Mythic the set fee for continuing to use the software (and associated copyrighted material etc) no matter the amount of subscribers to the game. Any accounts which GoA have opened on their servers have no links to any of those which mythic hold, and no doubt if Mythic wished to take over the GoA playerbase then it would be them paying GoA and not the otherway round.

At least from a business view if you were purchasing the rights to the game thats how you would do it. And being the person selling the rights you would rather have a certain amount coming in constantly then fluctuating levels which would be in constant decline.

 

[Mundokar]

We just quit our Rvr group on Dyvet. It's just plain silly to run on a sundayevening and make 6 kills in 1 hour because you dont encounter any enemies. Requil or Xalin we want an update please. Can you give an eta when things will be decided ?

 

[Kami]

They're sorting it, just like they sorted Glastonbury and are fixing Dyvet.

... oh hold on a minute Glastonbury is empty too and Dyvet isn't far off :-P

 

[scorge]

You will probably find that GoA have purchased the rights to the software of the game. They pay Mythic the set fee for continuing to use the software (and associated copyrighted material etc) no matter the amount of subscribers to the game. Any accounts which GoA have opened on their servers have no links to any of those which mythic hold, and no doubt if Mythic wished to take over the GoA playerbase then it would be them paying GoA and not the otherway round.

At least from a business view if you were purchasing the rights to the game thats how you would do it. And being the person selling the rights you would rather have a certain amount coming in constantly then fluctuating levels which would be in constant decline.

GOA on the other hand might see that the servers are running at a loss and instead of closing the servers (which would be very bad for marketing in view of warhammer.) Could hand them over to Mythic.

IT would be marketing suicide if GOA closed down any servers at this stage as it might put some people off from subscribing to WHO with them, and it would drive more players to Mythic owned servers.

 

[Rhana]

They're sorting it, just like they sorted Glastonbury and are fixing Dyvet.

... oh hold on a minute Glastonbury is empty too and Dyvet isn't far off :-P

Thats plane wrong. About 300-450 players on glaston and 700+ on Sals makes nice RvR and PvE with no ower crowdiness. Well, was a bit crowded around the HUB in Lab but that got better when Alb took Mid relics just to get the RvR in other zones going.. Looks like it worked.

 

[Kami]

Sorry but 300-450 players on a classic server is pathetic, that's less than 15% capacity at peak time and you think that's good enough?

Hopefully GOA are working on a solution for Dyvet that will be in place soon and will actually work.

 

[chretien]

Sorry but 300-450 players on a classic server is pathetic, that's less than 15% capacity at peak time and you think that's good enough.

That was just on one server of the cluster. 1100ish total including the Sals players is decent.

 

[Toggers]

I always said i really cba to re-roll and ill stay on dyvet til WH is released but last nite aside its been an awful 2 weeks on the server, barely any action at all. im down to one active acct now and if it doesnt pick up in the next 3 weeks ill more than likely start again on US servers, whilst GOA looks into solutions im looking into placing my accts elsewhere.

never been one to bash GOA but this is getting stupid now, whats the big secret? either let us know that nothing can be done or say if were going to merge with US or with avalon eventually, either would be fine for me but if this server is going to stay as it is I wont put anymore of my time and money into it.

 

[Corran]

I always said i really cba to re-roll and ill stay on dyvet til WH is released but last nite aside its been an awful 2 weeks on the server, barely any action at all. im down to one active acct now and if it doesnt pick up in the next 3 weeks ill more than likely start again on US servers, whilst GOA looks into solutions im looking into placing my accts elsewhere.

never been one to bash GOA but this is getting stupid now, whats the big secret? either let us know that nothing can be done or say if were going to merge with US or with avalon eventually, either would be fine for me but if this server is going to stay as it is I wont put anymore of my time and money into it.

They are most likely doing feasability studies at the moment. That would mean it premature to actually make any comments because the study may come up with something not thought about, wether it financial, technical etc etc.

I would suggest that GoA are looking at possibly a few ideas at the moment and so if they come out with all them, and people got 2 they like and 1 they not so keen on then there be complaints about them picking the least like idea even if it does help the overal situation.

I am waiting in keen interest on what is going to happen as it could persuade me to return and it is annoying not having any information on the issue. But the fact is that rushing them could worsen the situation in the long run. Lets just hope that they go with one the better idea's i can think off. But this really may end up going down a path where one portion of the players are happy and a few come back, but another equal portion quit the game altogether.

 

[Kami]

Well I'm sticking with GOA for now, I'll PVE on my own if I have to rather than do MLs on US servers. Quite enjoyed being on a TOA server again.. good god did I just say that?

 

[Phantomby]

They are most likely doing feasability studies at the moment. That would mean it premature to actually make any comments because the study may come up with something not thought about, wether it financial, technical etc etc.

I would suggest that GoA are looking at possibly a few ideas at the moment and so if they come out with all them, and people got 2 they like and 1 they not so keen on then there be complaints about them picking the least like idea even if it does help the overal situation.

I am waiting in keen interest on what is going to happen as it could persuade me to return and it is annoying not having any information on the issue. But the fact is that rushing them could worsen the situation in the long run. Lets just hope that they go with one the better idea's i can think off. But this really may end up going down a path where one portion of the players are happy and a few come back, but another equal portion quit the game altogether.

Somone needs to light a fire under GOA's ass. Feasability studies or not they have a degrading set of servers and need to act quickly. Its been a while since the original post and still no information.

Actually if you think about it, it could be a huge distraction tactic. Say as little as possible while maintaining hope of a solution so the die hards continue to pay their subs until they get WHO running and drop daoc like a hot rock.