My honest opinion this breaks the game

Unfadingsilence · March 2

There are many things you can criticize about The Elder Scrolls Online—whether it's the pay-to-play model, pay-to-win elements, or performance issues. But in my opinion, the biggest drawback is switching between the North American and European servers.

It's not the fact that you have to start over—I’m fine with that. With the current leveling system, it's much easier to progress. However, what truly sucks is that you have to repurchase all the DLCs...

Pixiepumpkin · March 2

Agreed 100%

My wife and I have our accounts in NA (because I lived in NA), now we are in Europe and the ping absolutely destroys our ability to do much of the content.

I dont mind starting a toon over, but what I can't let go of is the thousands we have spent on the game, that we have to essentially throw away in order to play with good ping.

Motifs and achievesment loss also sucks (because of the time/gold investment).

In fact, not being able to play in our region for a game we paid for 50x over turns us off from the game, and spending any more in the store knowing that someday we might be forced into playing locally and foregoing everything we paid for.

With wow coming out with housing, we will most likely move on to that game because the loss of starting over in a new region hurts a lot less due to the fact that the game is mostly sub only (no crown store).

TX12001rwb17_ESO · March 3

I think every collectable you own should be account-wide, real money was paid for all them mounts and costumes.

Even if the player homes you got were empty, the house itself should still belong to you regardless.

Sluggy · March 3

100% agree. Even if characters and CP and stickerbooks and whatnot couldn't be merged then at least purchased content should absolutely be shared across all servers. It's a game we're paying for, not a platform.

DreamyLu · March 3

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

Agreed 100%

My wife and I have our accounts in NA (because I lived in NA), now we are in Europe and the ping absolutely destroys our ability to do much of the content.

I'm surprised by what you say. I'm in Europe playing on NA servers and have a good connection. Or maybe you play at peak hours? I play out of peak hours, what could explain the different experience.

Ph1p · March 4

Seems like a byproduct of the megaserver logic that ESO is built on. Compared to WoW, for example, which has hundreds of individual realms, server transfer isn't as big or frequent of an issue. So ZOS probably did the math and concluded that setting up a feature and process for doing so wasn't worth the effort. Also, let's not forget that WoW charges up to $25 to transfer a character.

sans-culottes · March 4

Ph1p wrote: »

Seems like a byproduct of the megaserver logic that ESO is built on. Compared to WoW, for example, which has hundreds of individual realms, server transfer isn't as big or frequent of an issue. So ZOS probably did the math and concluded that setting up a feature and process for doing so wasn't worth the effort. Also, let's not forget that WoW charges up to $25 to transfer a character.

I’d gladly pay $25 to switch servers.

Tandor · March 4

I don't disagree with the principle of the objection, but in practice there is a danger that if they were pressured into changing the present arrangement so your purchases worked on both servers rather than having to be purchased separately then they would lose revenue and that shortfall would be made up by raising the price.

This is not simply about character transfers, it applies equally to all players who play on both regional servers on the same account.

BetweenMidgets · March 4

I don't play on the EU megaserver at all, but I 100% agree with this.
I wish I would have thought of it months ago when they had that pain points thread started.

Franchise408 · March 4

Wait your DLC's don't transfer over to the other server?

sans-culottes · March 4

Franchise408 wrote: »

Wait your DLC's don't transfer over to the other server?

Nothing does.

scrappy1342 · March 4

BetweenMidgets wrote: »

I don't play on the EU megaserver at all, but I 100% agree with this.
I wish I would have thought of it months ago when they had that pain points thread started.

i wish i had known this over the last year... i would have been collecting the free dlc's they gave away. i knew the mounts didn't carry over. i guess i didn't realize the zones didn't. in fact... i remember buying summerset when it came out and they had the pathfinder thing where everybody had to get the pathfinder achievement. they said it would count double if we did it on both servers. i remember getting the summerset pathfinder achievement on the EU server... is it -just- dlc's and not chapters then? of course if you are paying for a sub, i guess you get everything but the most current chapter anyways

tomofhyrule · March 4

The rule of thumb is that if you get it outside-of-game (e.g. Chapter purchases or special codes like the pink torchbugs from streamers), then it will be on both regional servers from a specific realm. If you buy it in-game (like DLCs or upgrades with Crowns from the in-game Crown Store), it will only be on that specific server.

As to server transfers, ZOS has mentioned several times that they have no mechanism to do so, and are not currently thinking about making a tool to do so. Now, that doesn't mean that it'll never happen, but it would take quite a bit of work to get it to happen (and as we saw from the PTS copy debacle last year, could also be rife with bugs and other database errors). Obviously in a perfect world, such a feature would be great to have, especially considering local populations.

Server merges to enable something like crossplay or crossave would be much more difficult because of ESO's architecture. I think that the first step to go towards something like crossplay would be to first make a tool to get transfers to work seamlessly, as the megaserver architecture would essentially mean that 'crossplay' means 'make a new server that's a merging of two or more existing servers,' and ZOS hasn't yet merged servers (the console transfer in 2015 was a once-off transfer to an empty database, and did not merge multiple servers together as much as split servers apart).

Of course, this is all still ignoring if there is any legalese that also needs to be worked through as well, considering how Sony is notoriously protective of its players and probably would not look kindly on a potential exodus from their platform.

All of this is a 'never say never' situation considering how popular of a request it is, but it is also something that would demand a significant amount of work to do to get it to work.

Lags · March 5

Tandor wrote: »

I don't disagree with the principle of the objection, but in practice there is a danger that if they were pressured into changing the present arrangement so your purchases worked on both servers rather than having to be purchased separately then they would lose revenue and that shortfall would be made up by raising the price.

This is not simply about character transfers, it applies equally to all players who play on both regional servers on the same account.

lose revenue from the handful of players who actually come from na to go to eu, or vice versa? And are actually going to spend money getting everything again? Or the small amount of people that buy things on 2 separate platforms, and actually play those platforms? I promise you that is not the norm.

Surely not enough by a noticeable amount. Maybe if it was all platforms, but even then that is not something they should be worrying about. The only thing they should worry about is why people are fleeing one platform to go to another. yet again here we are, defending the indefensible.

Heres my own personal example, and its not as simple as NA-EU. I restarted on pc na from xbox na. I did this because xbox performed like garbage. I couldnt even load into my house, and still cant to this day. A house that cost hundreds of dollars. And the game performed terribly. These issues are on zenimax. It is their fault. They decided to put the game on console, and when it stops working properly they just say "oh well sorry cant help you". So i bought everything again on PC after 5 years on xbox. And im sure they were very happy about it. But ill never spend money on eso like i did on xbox.

Like i said, you are defending something that is indefensible. There is no excuse. You should not have to buy things again for a game that you already bought all of the same things in, because you still want to play but the platform you are playing on is garbage. And if you have to worry about a loss of revenue from the people that have ran away from one platform to go to another, then you have utterly failed your players.

But dont worry because they will never do this. I wont explain why i know they wont do it, because i will probably get moderated. But trust me, they wont.

redlink1979 · March 5

Unfadingsilence wrote: »

(...) However, what truly sucks is that you have to repurchase all the DLCs...

If you sub eso+ you can access to all dlcs on both servers.

AlnilamE · March 5

Franchise408 wrote: »

Wait your DLC's don't transfer over to the other server?

If you bought them with money as a Chapter, they are available on both servers. If you bought them with crowns, they only exist in the server you bought them on.

ESO+ works on both servers, though, so if you have that, you get all DLCs on both sides of the pond.

Dagoth_Rac · March 5

TX12001rwb17_ESO wrote: »

I think every collectable you own should be account-wide, real money was paid for all them mounts and costumes.

For legal reasons, ZOS treat crowns as an "in-game currency". So items bought with crowns on PC-NA not transferring over to PC-EU is no different than items bought with AP or Archival Fortunes not transferring over. You did not pay real money for all those mounts and costumes. You paid real money for an in-game currency. If you open up the Currency tab in your inventory, you'll even see Crowns right in there with Undaunted Keys and Tel Var.

This is not just a technical limitation. It is a legal limitation, too.

Pixiepumpkin · March 5

DreamyLu wrote: »

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

Agreed 100%

My wife and I have our accounts in NA (because I lived in NA), now we are in Europe and the ping absolutely destroys our ability to do much of the content.

I'm surprised by what you say. I'm in Europe playing on NA servers and have a good connection. Or maybe you play at peak hours? I play out of peak hours, what could explain the different experience.

We play off peak (london time) or 6 hours ahead of the servers location. We both have over 200 ping on average, where it takes literally 3-4 seconds of button mashing in PVP to get an ability fire, heal to go off, shield etc.

I often die in 1 second to 5+ attacks happening to me that I never see, same happens to her.

Tandor · March 5

Lags wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

I don't disagree with the principle of the objection, but in practice there is a danger that if they were pressured into changing the present arrangement so your purchases worked on both servers rather than having to be purchased separately then they would lose revenue and that shortfall would be made up by raising the price.

This is not simply about character transfers, it applies equally to all players who play on both regional servers on the same account.

lose revenue from the handful of players who actually come from na to go to eu, or vice versa? And are actually going to spend money getting everything again? Or the small amount of people that buy things on 2 separate platforms, and actually play those platforms? I promise you that is not the norm.

Surely not enough by a noticeable amount. Maybe if it was all platforms, but even then that is not something they should be worrying about. The only thing they should worry about is why people are fleeing one platform to go to another. yet again here we are, defending the indefensible.

Heres my own personal example, and its not as simple as NA-EU. I restarted on pc na from xbox na. I did this because xbox performed like garbage. I couldnt even load into my house, and still cant to this day. A house that cost hundreds of dollars. And the game performed terribly. These issues are on zenimax. It is their fault. They decided to put the game on console, and when it stops working properly they just say "oh well sorry cant help you". So i bought everything again on PC after 5 years on xbox. And im sure they were very happy about it. But ill never spend money on eso like i did on xbox.

Like i said, you are defending something that is indefensible. There is no excuse. You should not have to buy things again for a game that you already bought all of the same things in, because you still want to play but the platform you are playing on is garbage. And if you have to worry about a loss of revenue from the people that have ran away from one platform to go to another, then you have utterly failed your players.

But dont worry because they will never do this. I wont explain why i know they wont do it, because i will probably get moderated. But trust me, they wont.

I'm not sure how agreeing with the principle of a suggestion while pointing out a possible consequence of implementing it can fairly be described as "defending something that is indefensible".

Kahnak · March 5

Tandor wrote: »

Lags wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

I don't disagree with the principle of the objection, but in practice there is a danger that if they were pressured into changing the present arrangement so your purchases worked on both servers rather than having to be purchased separately then they would lose revenue and that shortfall would be made up by raising the price.

This is not simply about character transfers, it applies equally to all players who play on both regional servers on the same account.

lose revenue from the handful of players who actually come from na to go to eu, or vice versa? And are actually going to spend money getting everything again? Or the small amount of people that buy things on 2 separate platforms, and actually play those platforms? I promise you that is not the norm.

Surely not enough by a noticeable amount. Maybe if it was all platforms, but even then that is not something they should be worrying about. The only thing they should worry about is why people are fleeing one platform to go to another. yet again here we are, defending the indefensible.

Heres my own personal example, and its not as simple as NA-EU. I restarted on pc na from xbox na. I did this because xbox performed like garbage. I couldnt even load into my house, and still cant to this day. A house that cost hundreds of dollars. And the game performed terribly. These issues are on zenimax. It is their fault. They decided to put the game on console, and when it stops working properly they just say "oh well sorry cant help you". So i bought everything again on PC after 5 years on xbox. And im sure they were very happy about it. But ill never spend money on eso like i did on xbox.

Like i said, you are defending something that is indefensible. There is no excuse. You should not have to buy things again for a game that you already bought all of the same things in, because you still want to play but the platform you are playing on is garbage. And if you have to worry about a loss of revenue from the people that have ran away from one platform to go to another, then you have utterly failed your players.

But dont worry because they will never do this. I wont explain why i know they wont do it, because i will probably get moderated. But trust me, they wont.

I'm not sure how agreeing with the principle of a suggestion while pointing out a possible consequence of implementing it can fairly be described as "defending something that is indefensible".

It can't.

But you're not supposed to provide a nuanced take here. Only extreme opinions allowed.

I won't explain why, because I'll probably get moderated, but trust me, a stranger on the internet with an uncompromising position.