Earlier this month, when Daybreak and Toadman finally merged the PlanetSide 2 North American servers into one, players had quite a shock when they realized the studios had merged the zippy east coast server, Emerald, into the sluggish and largely abandoned west coast server, Connery. The move led players to widespread complaining about ping and lag, as the vast majority of North American players are on the east coast, and Connery had been the subject of longstanding unfixed server problems.
At the time, ToadBreak had been slow to respond to the uproar, saying only that it “could possible touch base on this topic” in the next dev letter. Yesterday, a full week after the fiasco began, it finally did so.
ToadBreak begins by saying that all merges require trade-offs, and that there was no way to make everyone fully happy. But it also acknowledges some of the problems players have been having with Connery in the last week (which, we note, were also longstanding problems with Connery before too). And now it’s digging into trying to fix them, telling players that if it can’t, it will consider a server location move or provider move as what sure sounds like a last resort.
“Here’s what we’re doing to address these issues:
● Network & Routing Adjustments – We’re working with our infrastructure team to optimize data paths and reduce latency for players with extreme cases of high server latency.
● Server Performance Tuning – We’re investigating the root causes of lag spikes and adjusting server settings to improve stability.
● Population & Queue Management – We’re exploring ways to alleviate login queues, including potential spawn system tweaks and incentives to balance faction populations.
● Long-Term Infrastructure Review – If necessary, we’ll evaluate alternative solutions, including server location adjustments or provider changes, to ensure a smoother experience.”
“We know this transition hasn’t been perfect, but we believe merging Connery and Emerald will strengthen the long-term health of the game by consolidating the player base and improving match quality,” the studio concludes. “Our goal is to make these adjustments as quickly as possible while keeping you informed every step of the way.”
Worth noting is that this memo hasn’t really appeased the playerbase at all; right now the top thread is from a player offering ToadBreak $10,000 to move everyone back to Emerald – and ironically, she’s a west coast player. As our own team was discussing this morning, we can hardly blame the playerbase for panicking here: There really isn’t a good replacement in our genre for PlanetSide 2 if it goes belly-up.
