I have joked, not entirely without seriousness, that part of what I like about being on an underpopulated server in Final Fantasy XI is the simple fact that it destroys any temptation I might have to get involved in the serious endgame. There’s no doubt that I do not need to get involved with it, obviously, but it’s very easy to get my attention by waving a pretty piece of armor or two in front of me. But without the crucial number of people around to make getting into it easy, I lose momentum and go back to focusing on other things. A bullet dodged, there.
Of course, the other side of things is that a smaller server can feel more empty, more barren, and generally lacking in several of the aspects which make a massively multiplayer game… both of those things. I play on one of the largest North American servers for Final Fantasy XIV, so I get all of those advantages there… along with server queues, crowding, and all of the downsides of having tons of people in a contained space. Both variants have positives and negatives, in other words. Which strikes you as better, dear readers? Do you prefer smaller or larger servers, and why? (If your answer is “I prefer no servers,” that counts as a vote for larger servers, since you can’t get much bigger than 100% of the game’s population.)
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
Large enough where I can run into strangers playing the game regularly and where game’s cities/hubs feel crowded. Otherwise it just doesn’t feel like an MMO.
For me it’s about player density. If it’s too dense and crowded with constant competition and camping and killstealing for a scarce few open-world shared resources then it’s frustrating. Doesn’t matter if it’s a tiny world with only a handful of players all squashed in on one another, or a huuuuge server with thousands and thousands of players swarming all over it.
I like a happy medium of enough people around to make it actually an MMO, without overcrowding.
I want them as crowded and busy as the servers can handle without sacrificing performance.
Otherwise might as well play an offline game.
Yeah, one of the top 3 reasons that I quit.
When I found out games like Rift allowed free transfers…
When you can play on any TSW server by just meeting up with someone.
Whatever.
Regular servers. No mega servers. No phasing, instancing, or channels.
I prefer smaller server populations, enough to always find groups etc, but not so large that general chat becomes white noise.
schmidtcapela SallyBowls1 ManastuUtakataÂ
To be clear, I wasn’t speaking whether a game is solo’able or not. But rather being around other folks to play with, as opposed to having no one to do so.
SallyBowls1Â ManastuUtakataÂ
Food for thought, when EA/Bioware did some research on the potential TOR player base, they found that most of those players actually preferred to play solo (AKA “be alone”) even though they wanted to play a MMO. Also, a very large part of the people that live in cities (where there’s a very high concentration of people to socialize with) are actually loners.
I prefer populated servers, I don’t get hung up on the size. I also prefer players who respect and participate in the theme of the game (roleplaying).
Doesn’t matter to me as long as the server doesn’t feel empty as I enjoy seeing other players running around questing.