server solution

[WildMare]

<DIV>One of the biggest problems this game has is the lack of being able to travel to any server you want at any time. There are alot of problems related to the inability to do this.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Give each server a max population, or whatever load it can handle currently (say 2000 for example). Then if you are BORED like MANY due to low server population you can just hop to another server. If the server you are trying to login on is full, simply go to different one. The servers would all balance out. Just have a screen with all the servers listed and the current number of people on each one and choose away.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>A few things that come to mind making this advantageous are:</DIV> <DIV>Freedom from the same old community. (more socializing)</DIV> <DIV>Access to alot more things to do like grouping and raids.</DIV> <DIV>The broker would balance out completely.</DIV> <DIV>During off peak hours there would still be many people playing--choose the server with the most people!</DIV> <DIV>Choice of going to a busy server or less busy server, whatever suits you.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>A few negative things because we are unable to server hop:</DIV> <DIV>NO ACCESS to more people and no gamewide freedom.</DIV> <DIV>Same ol' same ol'....And you know where thats at.</DIV> <DIV>People are able to monopolize market.</DIV> <DIV>A feeling of being "stuck" on the same server.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The whole concept of not being able to server hop almost ruins this game in a way. What? Pay 50 dollars to go to another server only to be stuck on that server? LAME!! </DIV> <DIV>Maybe transfer to be with other friends but it still seems like a money maker for SOE.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I cannot think of one bad thing about server hopping. If there is a population cap for each server how could it go wrong?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

[Magu]

It would screw up all the economies. Suddenly you can take a bunch of plat from over-inflated server A, and hop to normal-priced server B, buy up everything, then hop back to A, and make huge profits. If you want to hop servers, pay up. <div></div>

[Ziffna]

<P>While i can't see server hoping being a viable option for this game with all the instancing and such that is available i would think that if the servers were all merged into one super server it might be a viable situation tho the same problums you mention would still exist such as people monopolizing the market on certain goods but with an ecconomy of such a greater scale it would be much harder to do as you would have 20 times the people hunting in the same areas.  </P> <P>With a super server you would have the same problums that you have on smaller servers tho the effects would be minimalized with 20x the people out harvesting/hunting for stuff to sell along with 20x the people looking to buy that stuff it would basicly ballance itself out.  One thing that it would do is smooth over some of the rippling in the market value of stuff one person leveling a twink would hardly put a dent in the market if they were to go and buy 10 ebons and 15 rubies to make adept 3's, ebon weapons and armor all at once, where now someone doing that would buy half the supply on most markets.</P> <P>On the downside tho with a world that big compeating for contested mobs would be a down right violent situation.  And for the larger raiding guilds i could see them going from Sinking sands 1 - 15 clearing out, terrorantula in each zone leaving nothing for guilds that would like a chance to kill him.  Also the farmers would all end up on the same server which would mean that they would start to farm things that they previously left alone i can see it now 4 farmers with the 6 man farm teams joining up to farm 4 x instances at least weakly.</P> <P>Personally i think it would simply be a bad idea to have 1 huge server even with all the instiancing that could happen yes there would likly never be a shortage of poeple around but you also start to lose responceablity for your actions in a server that big.  The guy that ninja loots fabled gear from a pick up raid would go un noticed most of the time by 99% of the server the guy that is joining guilds to loot the guild banks then leaving would go largly unnoticed, basicly every form of unfriendly play would go unnoticed by such a large portion of the population that, these types of behavior would simply be encuraged if only passivly.  As for just adding free server hoping i for once agree with magus' that it would be a bad idea and mess up what are already harsh market conditions as is, servers with low inflation rates ie the ones that were started latter, would see people from high inflation rates going there to buy goods and return home to eather use the goods or resell them.</P>