I know what you’re thinking - “How could you dare suggest a server merge? The last merges were awful! The game will look like it’s dying if we merge the servers! Order needs to exist as a place for role-play!! What about Order people’s plots?! What about their community? The devs already said it doesn’t cost them much to keep another server up, so why bother changing that?!”

So let me answer those questions -
(Side note - this theoretical quote isn’t meant to be a ‘stereotypical dumb anti-merger’ thing)

How could you dare suggest a server merge?

As it is right now, Order is, unfortunately, a dead server. I can’t put it any other way; last year it so when the last merge thread went up, it was livable. Had around 20-30 players average during the months of no double EXP. It was enough to do epic hunts and play content and introduce new players to the game.

Now, it averages 5. I’m not joking; every weekday I have logged in, there is between 3 and 7 players online. The absolute max it hit was on a Friday night and that was 18 people. On Saturday night, there was 8. This isn’t enough people to play the game’s content anymore; epic hunts are out of the question. Finishing epic quests are out of the question. Even rift runs are out of the question most of the time since most people online in these numbers are actually bipeds.

For months, the players of Order tried their hardest to campaign for the server; we suggested Chaos players copy over for events, we dragged newbies into groups immediately to show that the server has people on it, we helped anyone new that we saw; it wasn’t enough. Newbie after newbie has left the server and returning player after returning player has followed, too.

For years, the server has been on a steady decline; in 2012, you could have 40-50+ players on, just like Chaos today. In 2013, it started hovering around 40. 2014, 30-40. 2015, 20-30. 2016, 10-25. This year.. 5-15. It’s a very clear pattern; Order isn’t retaining players. The server is fading away.

The last merges were awful!

Yes, they were. However, there is something extremely important people are overlooking when comparing the old merges to this one; the old merges were when hundreds of people played the game at any given time across the merged servers. You had populations of 50+ converging; three or four servers into one new server. It was shoving fish into a puddle and expecting them to swim.

This is merging an active 20-30 total people into a server that has a total of 100-150 active people. It’s very, very different.

The game will look like it’s dying if we merge the servers!

That depends on how you spin it. Many games these days use instancing, which basically makes servers invalid; Elder Scrolls Online uses one megaserver. Different servers aren’t really necessary. Merging the servers could be modernizing.

While it would probably be better for Istaria to use instances instead of merging the servers entirely, the technology doesn’t support that as far as we know…

Either way, the game is not dying. Order is dying.

Order needs to exist as a place for role-play!!

Order being the only server with role-play is a sad misconception. Yes, it’s specialized for role-play, but if you’ve ever played on Order recently, you need to realise that the only RP that happens is in the RP channel unless it’s organised between friends. Chaos has an RP channel, too, that has activity. It’s no different.

The only real thing that Order would need to be separate for in the role-play line of things is public and random RP where you assume the others are always in-character. This simply hasn’t been a thing on Order in years. That’s really all I can tell you; it’s not something that happens anymore. A sad truth, but truth regardless.

What about Order people’s plots?!

This is the biggest problem. This was suggested in the Discord:

  1. 100% novian reimbursement from all structures
  2. 100% reimbursement on cost


Furthermore, if the person’s plot on Order is unowned on Chaos, ownership would simply transfer. It was suggested to transfer the structures, too, but I don’t remember if that was possible.

The issue arises with plot conflicts. The big questions are these:

1. What do we do with someone who owns an empty sleeper plot on Chaos conflicting with someone’s plot on Order that is active and built? Does the Chaos player get the boot?
2. What do we do if there are two active players with two well-placed and active plots? Who gets the boot then?

So that would need to be figured out…

What about their community?
This is part of the response given by the devs as to why Order isn’t merged with Chaos right now - “Order players prefer their plots and smaller community”.

So the former was just addressed, but community, well… the idea of Order having a small and welcoming community came from when Order did. Right now there is no community unless you’re on on Friday nights; 5 people can’t be considered a community. Beforehand, the 15-25 people Order had could be considered a tight-knit community. It just… isn’t like that anymore. The community has faded with time. It’s a very sad truth.

The people who made up the bulk of the community at this point have mostly moved to Chaos already, copied there, or have quit the game entirely. Those left are the ones who do not want to go to Chaos for their own reasons or can’t afford it.

The devs already said it doesn’t cost them much to keep another server up, so why bother changing that?!

This is where the biggest and final pushes for the merge come in:

Order is driving away new and returning players.

This sounds cruel, but you have to think about it. You’re joining a brand new MMORPG - *massively multiplayer* online rpg. You pop up in, say, Skalkaar and look around. No one. Okay… that’s strange, but it’s an old MMO. It’s either quiet or instanced, right? So you go through the tutorial and pop out in the first real town. Still quiet. You run through the trial until lvl 15 and you still see no one except maybe 1 other newbie.

This game has to be dead, right? No use paying for it. You leave.

Even if this newbie joined the chat channels, they would be seeing a handful of other people online (usually only 80% of Order is in market, so if 10 are online, 8 are in market). A good lot of these people are rather quiet unless bothered.

In a MASSIVELY multiplayer game, you are seeing such a small number of people you can count it on your fingers. This doesn’t bode well for the game and, again, you quit.

This isn’t just an exaggerated situation; I have watched newbie after newbie after newbie join and quit. There have been more newbies joining Order and quitting than there are people actively logging into Order. It’s a very real situation; Order is driving away new players, which we desperately need to keep going on.

Now, old players. You played about 5 years ago, say, and you want to come back for some good ol’ Istaria and its RP. You log in… and there’s only 6 people online. Of those, only 1 RP. You don’t know any of them. How long are you going to stay? You can’t do anything with just 6 people on your old ancient; starting a new character doesn’t sound fun if there’s no one to develop its story with.

Thus, you quit.

While I don’t know their reasoning, something similar to this happened really recently. A huge surge of old players came to Order, knocking the numbers way up to 20-30 averages again. However, this was at the tail end of double EXP; the seasonal players left. Once the number dropped below 20, there was little to keep these returning players interested. There was little to do. So they left and don’t really bother logging in unless there’s good reason to.

They are one big friend group and if they get bored playing, they can all go play another game together. One friend group can make or break the amount of players on a server with this population.

And thus, we are down to averaging 5.

So, do you see the reasoning behind this? Please try to understand; we don’t want to merge the servers because “hey, lol, screw Order, who needs an rp server?” or “wow these people need to grow up and merge in lol”. It’s for the game’s future; it’s for the game’s content; it’s for the sake of the game itself.

Please give it a little thought before giving a kneejerk response and please be civil. We don’t want this thread locked like the last one!