You’re acting like there’s something FC can do that will simply make the problem go away without any sort of compromise or consequence. When there is an issue unique to a single server configuration, then the issue is not with the game, but the server or set of servers in question.
This means the change has to be done on the server(s) themselves. For an unmodded server, there is only one thing you can do. Wipe.
That means years of characters, builds, equipment, and resources start over.
But when you wipe the no-wipe servers. The idea of playing somewhere else gets a bit stronger. I mean most of you stay where you are because you are attached to your characters. If you logged in today, and everything was gone. Would you honestly stay?
A fresh start might be what some of you are actually looking for. But are you going to be tolerant of everyone else also getting a fresh start? That means starting naked in the south, moving north to the noob river and seeing sandstone structures as far as the eye can see.
Do you all really want to go through 2017-18 again with extra steps?
This is the alternative to playing somewhere else. Because I’ll say this right now, this stuff happening on these FC provided servers are not going to get better. There isn’t any sort of real optimization they can do on the development side to fix this. They MIGHT be able to find something to help stave it off. But come July when the next Age hits, and its fubar’d.
If you play on these servers, you play on barrowed and degraded time.
Even before the issue of disconnects, frequent server crashing (according the reports of roll backs increasing in frequency) was on the rise. Degraded server performance that daily restarts weren’t helping with was also common.
Funcom has made some really questionable choices governing those servers. Making a deal with G-portal being the first mistake, though admittedly this is one of hindsight since no one could have predicted this. But like I said earlier, just trying to host their own servers was always doomed to failure. They just could not moderate them the way they would need to. Moderation that would have helped cut down on the bloat, and made the experience 100x better for everyone involved. Then they made way too many servers and spread everyone out.
The final nail in the coffin was the much applauded 10 day decay timer. You’re seeing the results of that here. Its easier than ever to refresh. The benefit of a 7 day timer is the serial refreshers would occasionally get hemmed up and lose their buildings. Of course this occasionally caught non-refreshers too, but as harsh as it sounds, this was a good thing. As it continued to reduce load on the server in addition to everyone else. Now refreshers and non-refreshers both don’t get wrapped up in losing stuff, much applauded as I said, as it slowly kills each and every server. This community applauded its own doom.
I’m not faulting the players for this. This wasn’t their decision. It was on Funcom. But FC screwed each and every one of you when they set that timer to 240 hours. You got screwed, and you all thanked them for it.
There’s some hard decisions that will have to be made going forward, and pleasing the players is something they are going to have to compromise going forward. Having servers with more downtime than uptime is just ridiculous.
