https://twitter.com/j_smedley/status/304207140019654656

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 they don't reduce their server numbers by 90% like SWTOR, I wouldn't be worried.

Originally posted by huskie77
Certain servers never had much of a population and were wasting resources. It makes much more sense to consolodate the population, [mod edit]

Lots of dead server zone flippers are about to be hot dropped into fully blown war zones with triple tiered ground, armor, air assaults and...

...there will be mincemeat. The weak shall cry piteously for their matriarch while the strong do the teabag dance across mountains of noobskulls.

Im not seeing a problem here :D

Originally posted by FromHell

 they don't reduce their server numbers by 90% like SWTOR, I wouldn't be worried.

as far as i can see there is no info yet on how many servers are being merged yet, but its going to be interesting to see just how many are left after its all said and done and what impact it has. One idea Ive seen on the official forums lately is the request for a "Members ONLY" sever. I think that is a great idea and hope to see that option added with these merges.

Well for starters they made too many servers.  They totaly misread  the size of player base they thought they had.  So now you got 5 servers that are sitting at medium the rest are at low.   when I checked https://www.soe.com/status/ there is even 5 missing servers.  

So I would bet they roll up to 5 too 8 servers.    Then to take into account a lot of folks are playing for free and not using the store.  I give PS2 1 year from now to be quite honest.  There are much better shooter games out there, and that entire we want to make this an e-sport, yea lol. 

Originally posted by snapfusion
There is nothing good about merging servers, it means one thing and one thing only, your game is not growing in populatiry.   If a game as new as PS2 has already stopped growing there is only one direction it can take from here.

Post WoW, I dont think any MMO has steadily grown after a release, EVE still grows, but its a niche game, and it started very very small. 

There is a very large population of MMO nomads who try every new MMO that comes out and leave after a few months, it's just the way the market works.  Large initial adoption, expecially since this game was free to play, then people get bored and wander off, waiting for the next big thing, with a smaller amount of people who really enjoy the game staying.

I'm glad they are merging, im on a decently populated server so I never really experienced a really low pop, but doing it when it needs to be done, especially in a game like this that relies so heavily on player population is FAR FAR better than pretending that there isnt a problem for appearances sake and letting more players get bored and leave because no one is on their server.

looks like they are merging 10 of the servers down to 5 going from 14 to 9 total -

The following servers will be getting Merged:

US West:
Genudine and Helios -> Helios

US East:
Mattherson and SolTech -> Mattherson
Waterson and Jaeger -> Waterson

EU:
Cobalt and Lithcorp -> Cobalt
Ceres and Mallory -> Ceres

Connery, Woodman, Miller and Briggs will not be part of the merges.

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/roadmap-players-site-and-server-merges.96517/#post-1278648

Ah that's normal, they always overestimate these things at launch. Though I do also think the game's appeal is waning a bit. They managed to make a great concept into a fairly two-dimensional zerg fest. The first planetside was more nuanced, player roles weren't so stupidly pigeon holed and battles were more complex. FIghts actually felt like they meant something and you didnt get lost in the crowd like you do in PS2. I think they should have stuck to the same formula exactly and just updated the engine...minus the BFRs of course!

If it aint broken etc...

They created too many servers at launch, you need to expand and contract the amount of servers to suit your population as it just doesn't work the other way around. Too few MMO publishers seem to think that they can expand the customer base to accomadate the dead servers which remain after the initial launch resulting in a dead game.

Thankfully Sony is going to bite the bullet and contract the servers to suit the playerbase, no doubt in the hope it will improve gameplay allowing them to expand back in the future if required. My only gripe is that they may not be contracting the server population enough, I hope that they are doing this with the thought in mind of further merges.

I play on Woodman and quite frankly Easmir and Amerish need players, just a merge with another EU server would solve the problem as many of us would love to take the fight to another coninent but ghost capping bases gets pretty damn boring after a while.

BTW take a look at the changes sony have made so that you can look up your chars statisics,

https://players.planetside2.com/

pretty awesome in my opinion.

Originally posted by Teala
The game is dying rather quickly.  It is not a successor to PS1 and it is full of hackers.   The games population is probably 1/5th what it was at launch.   Server merges are necessary to keep people playing because so few are left.

Prove what you say.