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Request to reunite the two servers (Console US/EU) - or keep champion points the same.

  • anitajoneb17_ESO
    anitajoneb17_ESO
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    Ah I get it ... you're asking your fellow players to accept an arbitrary character name change to "thing1" "thing2", etc generated from a basic file manager.

    That won't start a revolt or anything.

    Don't be silly.
    You can still change it later like you can now.
    Name overlapping is not a hurdle to a database merge, and it is not a hurdle to server merges in ESO.

  • Tandor
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    Ah I get it ... you're asking your fellow players to accept an arbitrary character name change to "thing1" "thing2", etc generated from a basic file manager.

    That won't start a revolt or anything.

    Don't be silly.
    You can still change it later like you can now.
    Name overlapping is not a hurdle to a database merge, and it is not a hurdle to server merges in ESO.

    It's not a technical hurdle, no, but it can be a major hurdle nonetheless for players who have developed a character over several years, perhaps with a favourited MMO character name that is really significant to the player who then finds on logging in after the server merger that he/she has to change the name, not least if he/she is a one-character player. That can be nothing less than game-breaking for such a player, but you're right that it isn't a technical hurdle to merging servers.

    However, coding issues and resulting performance issues are major technical hurdles, not least in megaserver-based games where it's unlikely that provision was made in the original coding for mergers, which are routinely provided for in multi-server games where it's common to launch with a mass of servers which are then pruned down as the game population falls over time from the initial burst. It's inconceivable that mergers of the megaservers would happen in ESO unless the population had fallen to desperate levels, and there's no evidence of that whatsoever.
  • anitajoneb17_ESO
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    Tandor wrote: »
    It's not a technical hurdle, no, but it can be a major hurdle nonetheless for players who have developed a character over several years, perhaps with a favourited MMO character name that is really significant to the player who then finds on logging in after the server merger that he/she has to change the name, not least if he/she is a one-character player. That can be nothing less than game-breaking for such a player, but you're right that it isn't a technical hurdle to merging servers.

    Come on.
    Let's say you have a character called "Tandor" and ESO merges two megaservers. On the other megaserver another player also has a character named "Tandor" and the software changes one of the two into "Tandor1". Imagine you're the unlucky one ending up with your character name changed into "Tandor1", but you change change it. Not back to "Tandor", but to anything you like and that's not yet taken. Would it be that gamebreaking and heartbreaking to change it to "Tandoor", "Taandor", "Tahndor", "Tandore" or whatever ? Really ?
    Tandor wrote: »
    However, coding issues and resulting performance issues are major technical hurdles, not least in megaserver-based games where it's unlikely that provision was made in the original coding for mergers, which are routinely provided for in multi-server games where it's common to launch with a mass of servers which are then pruned down as the game population falls over time from the initial burst. It's inconceivable that mergers of the megaservers would happen in ESO unless the population had fallen to desperate levels, and there's no evidence of that whatsoever.

    I don't know enough about servers and interconnected databases to make an educated argument about that. I'm just a bit tired of people explaining over and over that it's because of overlapping names, when it's obviously not the case. But there may be other technical reasons that are valid ones.

    That being said, I think the reason why ZOS doesn't do it is far more simple : it's just because there are more pros than cons to having two megaservers per platform instead of one, and because no significant number of players are actually asking for servers to be merged.

    Edited by anitajoneb17_ESO on October 9, 2020 10:15PM
  • Sylvermynx
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    @anitajoneb17_ESO - that actually happened to me when I played WoW. I moved a favorite character from one server to another, hoping to play with Aussie friends. Unfortunately, my character name (a long time favorite for me) was taken on the new server. I renamed her, but couldn't stand playing her because she was no longer herself. So I did a placeholder really fast on the previous server using the original name, and paid to transfer her back.

    Some of us ARE that invested in character names.
  • kargen27
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    fced wrote: »
    To move characters between databases would require a program that takes the character from database A and moves it to database B.
    The thing people need to understand is they can't for overlapping names

    Come on everybody. Stop the BS.
    Even the most basic file manager out there has an option to automatically rename already existing names into "thing1" "thing2", etc...
    And since you can already change your character names (with tokens) and your game @ID, it means that the tools for spreading that change across all databases are already there.

    I don't care if ZOS merges or doesn't merge ESO megaservers, but if they don't do it, it's definitely NOT because of "overlapping names".

    You do realize the data associated with the character is already on the server. Changing the name of the character is easy because all the associated data is already there and is linked to the character by how the server identifies the character not by the name we choose to give that character. Transferring a character is a whole different animal. All those associations also need to be transferred making it not just a name change.
    and then the parrot said, "must be the water mines green too."
  • Tandor
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    Sylvermynx wrote: »
    @anitajoneb17_ESO - that actually happened to me when I played WoW. I moved a favorite character from one server to another, hoping to play with Aussie friends. Unfortunately, my character name (a long time favorite for me) was taken on the new server. I renamed her, but couldn't stand playing her because she was no longer herself. So I did a placeholder really fast on the previous server using the original name, and paid to transfer her back.

    Some of us ARE that invested in character names.

    Precisely that. I've had that experience myself with characters whose names and persona I have used in many games before, both online MMOs and offline RPGs, over some 20 years or more, and the idea of changing their names either to something similar but not the same, or to something completely different, did deter me from playing those particular characters - and in one case that particular game - again. These weren't characters that were rolled as alts and power-levelled to endgame with no concern for their names or persona, these were slowly developed and evolved characters, and there are still plenty of people who play their games in that way without necessarily being overly into role-playing as such.
  • Sylvermynx
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    Exactly @Tandor. I've been playing CRPGs since 1985 (and before that tabletop RPGs since 1975) so I have so many years of "this is who my character is, and s/he is not just some throwaway nonentity". Jaelythe was a tribute to Andre Norton, and will always be that (even though I tweaked the spelling). I couldn't even consider playing her under some other name....

    Good thing I didn't have an issue with paying twice for that transfer!
  • MJallday
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    Tandor wrote: »
    When you say "reunite" you make it sound like the regional servers were previously one. They were not. Nobody playing competitively in Europe would want a server in the US and vice versa. Given the server issues that some players - especially the competitive ones - have it is clear that merging server populations would be an absolute disaster and simply isn't going to happen.

    You might in any event want to edit the title of this topic to e.g. "request" as "petitions" are against forum rules and will get locked or deleted.

    How does this actually work in real life anyway. Have they literally got offices with servers in both the US and EU? Or are the servers just in the same building, but allocated to different regions?

    Their severs will be ina data centre , probably virtualised and not owned by ZOS

    With some IP changes they could probably be moved anywhere in the world.


  • MJallday
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    Just reading some of the above comments

    There no reason technically why a database merge cannot happen. There would be obstacles (duplicate char Names) but this would be easily solved with the addition of a flag field which tells the user at next login to change their char name. Alternatively there is
    No Reason why there can’t be duplicates if the char name isn’t based on a
    Primary key

    Feasibly would they do it? I doubt it - if you moved US to EU the Americans would
    Complain and vice versa

    There is a much stronger case to upgrade or replace now
  • Tandor
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    MJallday wrote: »
    Just reading some of the above comments

    There no reason technically why a database merge cannot happen. There would be obstacles (duplicate char Names) but this would be easily solved with the addition of a flag field which tells the user at next login to change their char name. Alternatively there is
    No Reason why there can’t be duplicates if the char name isn’t based on a
    Primary key

    Feasibly would they do it? I doubt it - if you moved US to EU the Americans would
    Complain and vice versa

    There is a much stronger case to upgrade or replace now

    ZOS are clearly of the view that any performance issues are down to software coding issues and not hardware issues, and this would seem to be borne out by what PvPers are reporting in Cyrodiil under the current software tests. I have little doubt that ZOS have already done what they can to upgrade the hardware, and of course it isn't a case of a megaserver being one piece of hardware that can be simply upgraded or replaced, each megaserver will consist of a lot of individual servers each carrying a different part of the game. It would be normal for such individual servers to be replaced regularly anyway as they don't have that long a life under constant heavy load. They will in any event be added to as player numbers and game expansion requires.

    So far as the EU servers are concerned, German players have previously raised questions over whether Germany is the best place to host game servers as the infrastructure is allegedly poor. In my experience whenever separate EU-based servers were added to a game that originally had everyone connected to US-based servers (e.g. EQ2), performance for European players improved dramatically while whenever EU servers were relocated to the US (e.g. LoTRO) performance plummeted. Much can depend on how well localised servers are managed, and SOE's transfer of EQ's EU servers to Ubisoft was a disaster and had to be reversed following a campaign by some players aided by a particularly sympathetic and helpful Customer Support GM. In this case I have no doubt that moving the EU servers to NA would be a disaster, quite apart from merging them with existing US servers which would just be wrong in so many ways.
    Edited by Tandor on October 10, 2020 7:32AM
  • MJallday
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    Tandor wrote: »
    MJallday wrote: »
    Just reading some of the above comments

    There no reason technically why a database merge cannot happen. There would be obstacles (duplicate char Names) but this would be easily solved with the addition of a flag field which tells the user at next login to change their char name. Alternatively there is
    No Reason why there can’t be duplicates if the char name isn’t based on a
    Primary key

    Feasibly would they do it? I doubt it - if you moved US to EU the Americans would
    Complain and vice versa

    There is a much stronger case to upgrade or replace now

    ZOS are clearly of the view that any performance issues are down to software coding issues and not hardware issues, and this would seem to be borne out by what PvPers are reporting in Cyrodiil under the current software tests. I have little doubt that ZOS have already done what they can to upgrade the hardware, and of course it isn't a case of a megaserver being one piece of hardware that can be simply upgraded or replaced, each megaserver will consist of a lot of individual servers each carrying a different part of the game. It would be normal for such individual servers to be replaced regularly anyway as they don't have that long a life under constant heavy load. They will in any event be added to as player numbers and game expansion requires.

    So far as the EU servers are concerned, German players have previously raised questions over whether Germany is the best place to host game servers as the infrastructure is allegedly poor. In my experience whenever separate EU-based servers were added to a game that originally had everyone connected to US-based servers (e.g. EQ2), performance for European players improved dramatically while whenever EU servers were relocated to the US (e.g. LoTRO) performance plummeted. Much can depend on how well localised servers are managed, and SOE's transfer of EQ's EU servers to Ubisoft was a disaster and had to be reversed following a campaign by some players aided by a particularly sympathetic and helpful Customer Support GM. In this case I have no doubt that moving the EU servers to NA would be a disaster, quite apart from merging them with existing US servers which would just be wrong in so many ways.

    Tbh I agree. The performance issues are not hardware related

    It’s very easy to diagnose and fix hardware issues (throw more processor, ram
    , bandwidth etc)

    It’s less easy and more Expensive to diagnose and fix software issues (single threading, coding, calculations etc)

    Unfortunately that’s where most of not all of the eso issues are, not hardware

  • fced
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    MJallday wrote: »
    Tandor wrote: »
    When you say "reunite" you make it sound like the regional servers were previously one. They were not. Nobody playing competitively in Europe would want a server in the US and vice versa. Given the server issues that some players - especially the competitive ones - have it is clear that merging server populations would be an absolute disaster and simply isn't going to happen.

    You might in any event want to edit the title of this topic to e.g. "request" as "petitions" are against forum rules and will get locked or deleted.

    How does this actually work in real life anyway. Have they literally got offices with servers in both the US and EU? Or are the servers just in the same building, but allocated to different regions?

    Their severs will be ina data centre , probably virtualised and not owned by ZOS

    With some IP changes they could probably be moved anywhere in the world.


    absolutely...
    I don't know if you (you all) have already played Warframe, but in this game you can play with everybody in the world, market with everybody in the world, but you have a ping setting to limit the distance of the other players you will play with and a regional language setting, for the chat (english, spanish spain, spanish south america,... )
    If you limit the ping to 50 ms, you are sure to play with people of your country...
    For a Free game, it is an amazing game, well coded, well made...
    Edited by fced on October 11, 2020 4:04PM
  • anitajoneb17_ESO
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    @Tandor and @Sylvermynx : All right, then. I can understand a strong bond with our characters, but to me their identities are not linked to their actual name. But obviously it's different for other people.
    Maybe this is a result of my real life, where noone on earth, no matter which region or language, manages to spell or pronounce my names (both first and last) properly. I learned to disconnect my personal identity from my name, as a result of this.
    But enough with my real life. You both explained why the names of your characters mattered to you... well, actually not "why", but as a fact, so yes, in this case, for people like you, a database merge is a real no-go.

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