Jecca Mehlota (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jecca_mehlota) wrote2010-03-10 12:00 am
jecca_mehlota) wrote2010-03-10 12:00 am
FFXI and SE blahblah, move along
Some of you know this already (either because you follow the announcements or because you received a letter rambling on about it) (and some of you have a letter rambling about it coming...)! Some of you do not! Mmmmost of you probably do not care! And, honestly, since it doesn't directly affect me, I don't need to care. But I think too much.
LONG STORY SHORT: Squeenix (start your tallies now of the varied ways I refer to Square-Enix!) has decided to close servers! ... No, not all of them. The populations on some servers (thankfully not mine) are freakishly low (and then some are so full they've actually stopped allowing people to create characters on them). So they're closing eight servers (Fairy, Kujata, Remora, Midgardsormr, Hades, Seraph, Garuda, and Pandemonium) and transferring the residents to other, also low-population, servers (Sylph, Valefore, Leviathan, Quetzalcoatl, Cerberus, Bismark, Lakshmi, and Asura, respectively).
So sometime this month (since SE is not good at all about announcing dates - we know it'll be with the next update, and we know there's an update this month) sixteen severs are going to see a major upset. ... One half more so than the other.
Anyway, the way they're going about this is, everyone on the server that's staying up (the folks getting a wave of new citizens)? No changes. The only way this affects them is that all of a sudden there will be OTHER PEOPLE around. No more guaranteed claim to the best bird camp, guys, sorry.
But the people on the servers that are closing? Well.
The biggest thing is names. Only one use of a name is permitted on each server. So a lot of people moving to the new servers are going to be found they have to change their name. To some people this is no a big deal, but some of us grow very attached to our names. I'm a bit lucky in that, if Phoenix ever closed (unlikely for a while - we've got a good, healthy server for now), all three of my character names are uncommon (0, 3, and 4 other known instances), and also that two of them I could easily change their names, since I tweaked their original names to fit the naming conventions of their race, so I could shorten or lengthen either depending on my mood at the time (Hisime's full name, for example, is Hisi Mehlota, so I could drop it to Hisi, alter it to include more of her second name, or change it to Mehlota, though that last one's unlikely). Aya, well. She could be in trouble. Maybe I could just cut it to Aya? Who knows! Hopefully I don't have to worry about it for a long time!
Some people have already created temporary characters on the new server to "hold" their name, if their current one is available. Or to let them know they need to come up with something new.
The kicker here is, some people will be losing their name to players who have long since quit but never deleted their character (so the name is still flagged as used) or mules the player has no attachment to. A lot of people are wishing SquareEnix would have done a little more work with that, maybe purge the names of accounts long inactive (they claim they dump them after three months, but we all know this to be untrue because to their RETURN TO VANA'DIEL thing they offer), or take a look and see, oh, this person's been playing for six years, has days and days and days of playtime, lots of levels... and this person's barely logged any time in game and has never leveled once!
I remember when FF.net did away with their multiple instances of the same penname thing, they automatically gave the original name to the person with the oldest or most active account. Squeenix, if fanfiction.net can manage something like that, shouldn't you be able to?
Also. Linkshells* (they're, um. Like chatrooms, I guess, would be a decent enough comparison) don't survive world transfers! So people who've been playing for years, had the same Linkshell with the same name for years - that's gone. I mean, the person who created the Linkshell will be given a new item to create a new one (instead of having to buy a new one), but they'll have to hunt everyone down (and of course the name changes could make that hard) and oh by the way did I mention you can only have one Linkshell with a specific name per server, as well?
* TANGENT: just skimmed that article and at the bottom where they explain HNMLS, someone's written "Contrary to popular belief, HNM does not mean monsters are in it, but that this linkshell tries to fight these monsters." Haha, whaaaat? Who actually thinks that? That is hilarious, oh, man...
And then, of course, we've got the jerks creating characters or Linkshells solely to hold a name hostage and force someone to lose theirs. Way to be, guys. Way. To. Be.
Aaaand, of course, none of this affects me. At all. No one is coming to or from Phoenix. But maybe it could have been, or maybe someday it will be. And I know I'd be really sad to lose my Linkshells. I've hung onto all the ones I've had over the years. They're memories!
And my brother - two of his characters have names that are almost guaranteed to be taken. His third (the mule he never uses for anything) has a better chance of coming through with the same name, but even then, the only way we have to check only logs the Jeuno auction house. If someone has a starting town mule with the same name, well... He says if it came down to it, he might just quit. (A lot of people are saying the same thing now, because they really don't want to have to lose their name and its recognition.) (One of the most recognised members of the FFXI community is losing her name, actually. Story here, forum responses here. Just if you want to see this from the perspectives of people actually losing things.)
It's just a bit hard to think about, for me.
I mean, I know technically every Vana'diel is identical, but, still. I'm attached to Phoenix, and I like my friends having the names they have. And. Yeah.
That's all! Clearly not much of a point, here. Just me going on. AS YOU DO.
LONG STORY SHORT: Squeenix (start your tallies now of the varied ways I refer to Square-Enix!) has decided to close servers! ... No, not all of them. The populations on some servers (thankfully not mine) are freakishly low (and then some are so full they've actually stopped allowing people to create characters on them). So they're closing eight servers (Fairy, Kujata, Remora, Midgardsormr, Hades, Seraph, Garuda, and Pandemonium) and transferring the residents to other, also low-population, servers (Sylph, Valefore, Leviathan, Quetzalcoatl, Cerberus, Bismark, Lakshmi, and Asura, respectively).
So sometime this month (since SE is not good at all about announcing dates - we know it'll be with the next update, and we know there's an update this month) sixteen severs are going to see a major upset. ... One half more so than the other.
Anyway, the way they're going about this is, everyone on the server that's staying up (the folks getting a wave of new citizens)? No changes. The only way this affects them is that all of a sudden there will be OTHER PEOPLE around. No more guaranteed claim to the best bird camp, guys, sorry.
But the people on the servers that are closing? Well.
The biggest thing is names. Only one use of a name is permitted on each server. So a lot of people moving to the new servers are going to be found they have to change their name. To some people this is no a big deal, but some of us grow very attached to our names. I'm a bit lucky in that, if Phoenix ever closed (unlikely for a while - we've got a good, healthy server for now), all three of my character names are uncommon (0, 3, and 4 other known instances), and also that two of them I could easily change their names, since I tweaked their original names to fit the naming conventions of their race, so I could shorten or lengthen either depending on my mood at the time (Hisime's full name, for example, is Hisi Mehlota, so I could drop it to Hisi, alter it to include more of her second name, or change it to Mehlota, though that last one's unlikely). Aya, well. She could be in trouble. Maybe I could just cut it to Aya? Who knows! Hopefully I don't have to worry about it for a long time!
Some people have already created temporary characters on the new server to "hold" their name, if their current one is available. Or to let them know they need to come up with something new.
The kicker here is, some people will be losing their name to players who have long since quit but never deleted their character (so the name is still flagged as used) or mules the player has no attachment to. A lot of people are wishing SquareEnix would have done a little more work with that, maybe purge the names of accounts long inactive (they claim they dump them after three months, but we all know this to be untrue because to their RETURN TO VANA'DIEL thing they offer), or take a look and see, oh, this person's been playing for six years, has days and days and days of playtime, lots of levels... and this person's barely logged any time in game and has never leveled once!
I remember when FF.net did away with their multiple instances of the same penname thing, they automatically gave the original name to the person with the oldest or most active account. Squeenix, if fanfiction.net can manage something like that, shouldn't you be able to?
Also. Linkshells* (they're, um. Like chatrooms, I guess, would be a decent enough comparison) don't survive world transfers! So people who've been playing for years, had the same Linkshell with the same name for years - that's gone. I mean, the person who created the Linkshell will be given a new item to create a new one (instead of having to buy a new one), but they'll have to hunt everyone down (and of course the name changes could make that hard) and oh by the way did I mention you can only have one Linkshell with a specific name per server, as well?
* TANGENT: just skimmed that article and at the bottom where they explain HNMLS, someone's written "Contrary to popular belief, HNM does not mean monsters are in it, but that this linkshell tries to fight these monsters." Haha, whaaaat? Who actually thinks that? That is hilarious, oh, man...
And then, of course, we've got the jerks creating characters or Linkshells solely to hold a name hostage and force someone to lose theirs. Way to be, guys. Way. To. Be.
Aaaand, of course, none of this affects me. At all. No one is coming to or from Phoenix. But maybe it could have been, or maybe someday it will be. And I know I'd be really sad to lose my Linkshells. I've hung onto all the ones I've had over the years. They're memories!
And my brother - two of his characters have names that are almost guaranteed to be taken. His third (the mule he never uses for anything) has a better chance of coming through with the same name, but even then, the only way we have to check only logs the Jeuno auction house. If someone has a starting town mule with the same name, well... He says if it came down to it, he might just quit. (A lot of people are saying the same thing now, because they really don't want to have to lose their name and its recognition.) (One of the most recognised members of the FFXI community is losing her name, actually. Story here, forum responses here. Just if you want to see this from the perspectives of people actually losing things.)
It's just a bit hard to think about, for me.
I mean, I know technically every Vana'diel is identical, but, still. I'm attached to Phoenix, and I like my friends having the names they have. And. Yeah.
That's all! Clearly not much of a point, here. Just me going on. AS YOU DO.