First off, congratulations to the devs for getting hold of the game again, and lots (and lots, and lots) of thanks for restarting active development.
Hz was the first mmorpg I played, and consumed much of my free time. Playable dragons drew me in, but the community kept me here. I grew very attached to my little hatchie alter ego - I even postponed a get-together with friends so I could ascend to adulthood on my birthday (which probably says more about me than the game, but still...).
I could go on and on about how watching Unity die was depressing, but all the Unitarians know that, and those on the remaining servers probably had it worse - you got to watch the game die and get ripped off while it happened.
Unlike a lot of other people on the forum, I'm not terribly fussed about the cost of the new subscriptions. I'm in the happy situation of having enough money to pay for things like this without worrying. I am, however, worried about what exactly will happen with the import of Unity accounts.
I know, I know, Virtrium are still working out the details, so anything anyone says is pure speculation. That doesn't stop me raising my concerns .
A post in the subscription thread indicates that the solution currently under consideration is adding Unity characters to Chaos or Order. I understand that under the current finance-lacking circumstances, an entire server-farm for Unity isn't plausible. But simply dumping everyone into the US servers has its own issues.
Names: I like my name. It's mine. I chose it. What are the chances of name-collisions when we're all imported?
Plots: I read somewhere that there is a lack of plots on Chaos. Whether a plot reclamation will solve this, I don't know. But the chances are, there'll be a lot of people owning plots that are already taken. Oh, and the player-suggested "Unity island" would probably cost more to design, develop and test than the cost of a new Unity shard. Not to mention we don't want to be discriminated against / quarantined. We did get around to curing Zymosis Morbidae, you know .
Maintenance: US off-peak times != EU off-peak times. 'nuff said.
Community: When Wind, Earth and Ice were combined into Unity (sounds like something out of anime), the community went silent for a long time. No-one knew each other, running jokes stopped running, and everyone seemed to be afraid of talking to anyone they didn't know. Fortunately, the situation improved, although we never truly recovered. I don't want the same thing to happen if the Unity community became part of a US shard. I have no doubt we would be welcomed with open arms, but there's still going to be awkwardness.
Oh well, wait and see I guess.
Antonath