Merge/Transfers Ra>Haven

[UlrenAsir]

Hi, i'm a user from Ra and i don't know why Haven is so empty in this times. Can anybody of the comunity here explain to me what's going on with your own people? Why Haven is getting empty ?

[Kimahri_Ronso]

We are sleeping or traveling to school or work at this time, simple as that .

[korag082007]

transferring characters would be better than merging, or may be allow ppl to transfer toons once in every 2 months or so.

[kaisom]

Originally Posted by UlrenAsir

Hi, i'm a user from Ra and i don't know why Haven is so empty in this times. Can anybody of the comunity here explain to me what's going on with your own people? Why Haven is getting empty ?

The TLDR version: many players became frustrated or angry at NGD for many reasons, and quit. Others were unhappy or bored with the game, and quit.

The longer explanation:

Many years ago, Raven was a server nearly as populated as Ra is now, and with about the same distribution of players through the day. Horus was another server, as populated as Ra is now, with a somewhat different distribution of players through the day.

These servers, however, grew thin in population. There were several reasons for this (which I will get to in a moment). But because they had grown thin, the decision was made to merge the servers to "Haven" ("Horus" + "Raven"). Many people were lost in the merge.

Others had accounts on both servers, and in different realms -- with the same basic account. NGD made the decision to allow those people to keep all their characters on those accounts. Thus, if someone had 3 toons in Alsius, and 3 toons in Ignis, they could play all those toons by merely "change character". Some people left the new Haven server because of this.

Mind you, this was not the start of multi-realming; NGD has never had an easy time stopping multi-realming. But it made multi-realming easier for certain people.

However, the realm imbalances that occurred because of the merge were drastic. We would see the realm balance shift from many Alsius logged in with few Ignis, to many Ignis logged in with few Alsius. The same problem no doubt happened with Syrtis and the other two realms also.

Right now, there are very few people in Syrtis on Haven. Many of us simply stopped playing on Haven and started characters on Ra (I did). Being invaded by 25 Alsius when there are 2 of us to defend the realm... sucks. Or, to put it another way: why bother playing? 2 against 25 is NOT fun. 25 against 2? I'm not sure how much fun they were having. I'm guessing Ignis was having fun when they deliberately camped the Wall Camp; they acted like it. 60th level characters dancing over the bodies of 30th level toons caused many new players to simply quit altogether right there. Bullying is never welcomed by anyone.

So, you know... why bother? We started logging out as soon as invasion happened when there weren't enough defenders to matter. Some stopped playing altogether, but some liked the game when there were enough players on to make a difference. So we switched servers. Ra has population imbalances, but because there are many more players, the problem is not as drastic. It is a problem, though, and something needs to be done to address that.

Now, why did the Raven and Horus servers grow so small?

Multiple reasons:

1. Lack of bug fixes, and some of them very serious ones. Many of those still exist today, and many players still quit because of them.

2. Many rage quits due to changes by NGD (the addition of War Masters was one such; post-TDM was another).

3. No significant EndGame play. You make 60 WM, you're bored. You quit.

4. General attrition of players without significant influx of new players.

5. New player retention was low. Still is.

6. Significant realm imbalances. Who wants to play against a stacked deck? So they quit.

7. The perception by players that NGD plays favorites (Alsius boat teleport is often mentioned by those who make this claim). Who wants to play against a stacked deck? So they quit.

8. Generally poor reputation among the MMORPG community, including Steam.

9. NGD has, in the past, banned those who have outspokenly and unabashedly criticized them on these fora. While we do not know the reasons for those bans, the apparent cause was their outspoken criticism. This has caused others to simply quit playing.

10. Even on Raven and Horus, there were realm imbalances, and "why bother, there are other games" became a thing then too. Many others simply switched realms when convenient to be on the winning side (the dreaded "multis"). A very few switched realms to be on the losing side to make up their numbers.

... I could go on. The factors are many.

NGD is attempting to address some of these issues. For example, they recently re-aligned and re-defined the quests for the first 30 levels, which means you can get to 30th inside a week.

Other issues, however, NGD has not addressed and apparently will not be addressing this year. The many bugs in the various clients are one example (or perhaps many examples, depending on your point of view). They have tried to address the realm imbalance issue, but on Haven there are far too few players for any of that to be effective.

Note that all of these factors are still operating in all the servers today. Haven is merely the most advanced victim of the disease. The same things that have caused Haven's lack of population are already at work in Ra and may cause Ra to fail in the same way.

With utter sincerity,

Kaisom

[Gnupis]

Let me add to all these the fact Regnum is a pretty old game. The face of the gaming industry has radically changed since RO was first created and there are many other games that fell apart much faster because they couldn't evolve. In fact, the last year's updates with tdm and the upcoming dungeons update, are attempts to make regnum be more on par with other MMOs. As I see it that's not really working, mostly because what has kept regnum alive is the points it differs from other games, RvR combat and Linux support.

I am under the impression Linux support is sadly not a first priority though I could be wrong as I had to use windows the last years and I haven't been watching closely. As for RvR, warmasters and changes to invasion system were decent efforts in bringing in something new. I am eagerly waiting for that small part in Adrian's roadmap saying
- Creation of a system of objectives in specific zones, allowing a more favourable use of the map. Example: when entering a zone, such as the "Swamp", every X hours there is an objective that when fulfilled will give prizes to the first places.

It should spread war activity away from forts and create new combat situations. I just hope we won't see a bunch of PvE tasks instead.

No matter what though, none of this can help Haven. In a server empty of people no one can enjoy the new content and the new players will be bored and driven away from the game before they realise they could have rolled a character on Ra and enjoy the game as it is supposed to be. As it stands now, Haven is not doing any good to anyone, let it close, let us move, and if everything goes great for CoR and Ra is too full of players just open it again and let the English speaking players move back in, or just don't and make plans to handle the extra players. Keeping a dead server open is only torturing the few that have remained in it and driving away the clueless newcomers.

[UlrenAsir]

I would write a lot of things that i have in mind but my phone is a crap Anyway. A lot of complicated problems like NGD always have (anothers more personals like life's things from users, it's normal ). I support the idea of unify both servers but we don't know what will happened or what desition NGD gonna take about this. The only thing that i know is the lag gonna be owfull.
(but can be repaired).
If they take the option to unify both servers, i hope the users from Haven keep their characters like ever (with lvl, drops, rps, and everything like that).

[Hayir]

Well I feel like they want it to be a spanish server only.

During the trivia the helpers did the questions only in spanish. When I asked why only spanish, all I got was sarcastic "polish?" "german?" etc. Even though the website clearly states RA (international), international does not mean spanish as far as I am concerned but more likely english. Don't think the helper even speaks english at all. Shouldn't be too hard to ask those questions in english as well.

R.I.P. Haven.

[Uncle-Che]

Originally Posted by Hayir

.......

Which realm?..

[hellscraem]

so NGD isn't even going to comment on this post ok im not surprised but come on NGD you have to have a plan for haven its not like this just happened a week ago its been happening for years now tell us something

[Elva Hunter]

Originally Posted by Hayir

Even though the website clearly states RA (international), international does not mean spanish as far as I am concerned but more likely english.

aahaha ajajaj oh my god! The Ego of North Americans seems to have no end.... ^^"

"International" also can mean "north korean", "Russian", "Iranian", "Chinese" after all...It's a International server.

You, from the high of your small mind think that everything called "international" mean english? you dumb.....

The Ra is a spanish speaker's server, and no matter if it is international, yet, the main language is Spanish, so.....just respect it.

By the way, i am not giving my position in favor or against the merge, because i still did not gave my official position about it, i just came here to point what was said above because it was too much non sense and i could not just "watch" while someone destroy the meaning of the word "International".

Kind Regards,

Elva Hunter - Elite of Syrtis