Server Transfer

[Kelvas]

Yeah, would be must more interesting with a mega server. One thing is that there will be more people to play with.
It's pretty hard to enjoy Mabinogi as a casual scrub because I'm not active enough to join decent guilds, and any casual guilds die within months (would feel bad if I contributed to the death of a guild so I prefer not to join one.) And without a guild, I have to run with random peeps which is sometimes fun, but other times annoying (and takes to long to run and find a party). With the advent of the mega 20 channel server, finding decent people to run stuff with would be significantly easier.

I would argue is that the character who should get to keep their IGNs are those with the highest level. My main reason is that if someone signed up years ago and no longer plays, what's the point of giving them a IGN that someone else who still does, wants? People who are still active will most likely be of a much higher level due to the current state of leveling in Mabi.
If anything, just make it into two severs instead of four; that's still a lot better than having 2 active and 2 near-dead servers.

Anyways, regarding the OP of this thread, it would be pretty interesting to see it implemented, even if it is unlikely. I wouldn't be surprised if everyone moved out of Tarlach or something. Since pets are useless without a character on a server, people should be given the option to transfer their pets along with their character.

[Kapra]

I don't really think giving it to the highest level player is the best choice either. Someone might be lvl 5k and have quit mabi for good 2 years ago, whereas someone 1k could still be playing. On the flip side, someone who used to play mabi might come back, but having their name taken away from them can be discouragement enough to not even give the game another chance (this has happened to me before).

To be hoenst, what I would rather happen is something that probably can't be done. Each account is assigned a unique account ID they cannot change or customize. Adding a friend to your friends list requires their account ID, not character name, and friends lists are shared account wide. Character names still cannot be changed so easily, but they no longer share a pool either.

So summary of solution, everyone is forced into this account name they have no control over, and they can choose a nickname as whatever they want (similar to Phantasy Star Online 2).

Guild stone-able locations in general can be expanded on.

I recall reading that even if Mari, Ruairi, and Tarlach all merged, they would still be BARELY bigger than Alexina. (Taking into account actual active playerbase size and not total characters in servers).

[Bunny]

Or they can just give a specific colored halo or symbol next to the IGN so people know which server they're from.
On maple, you get a nice big ol' "immigrant" tag next to your name on the rankings if you transferred servers.

But alas, a server transfer/merge is just wishful thinking as of now.

[Rydian]

If pets could not be logged into anymore (and thus would just have display names and not character names), that would free up a ton of space in the name pool, so to speak. That's one of the things that would be required to make an automatic full merge possible.

I mean, think about how many pets the average established player has, even the newbies and stuff use up at least 2 names per player with the default horse, then there's all the event pets and saga pets people didn't even buy. The average player on Mabi probably has ~9+ names in the name pool used up even if they only have one "normal" character. Multiply that by all the players and you have a huge obstacle.

And yeah, one huge server with tons of channels please.

[Kapra]

A newbie that plays through all the tutorials and stuff should have three pets, a seven-day horse, a free invless horse, and a free invless bird. Assuming they never even do Saga 1 or buy any pets that's three unless they delete them or neglect to make them.

Making pets names act as display names and not character names would free up a lot of names, but it would only fix part of the problem. Characters with the same names would still be a cause for issue. Now, if they made it so players still kept their individual names but had some sort of indicator like Bunny suggested, that'd still cause friends list issues. Wait, which ___ do I add? Was he just ___ or did he have a server indicator attached? Mailing things is already annoying and glitchy enough (a friend of mine in Ruairi cannot have stuff mailed to him at all).

[Zeo]

One thing I am curious about though... what about the items stored in dress room? Would they get transferred into the new server as well or no?

Do your titles transfer as well or do you lose them? I have Sabina's Valentine title I'd like to keep and so on.

[Slayerj]

If pets could not be logged into anymore (and thus would just have display names and not character names), that would free up a ton of space in the name pool, so to speak. That's one of the things that would be required to make an automatic full merge possible.

And yeah, one huge server with tons of channels please.

Couldn't we keep the ability to play as pets (though no one really does that anymore) via having the pets labeled or something using the players account/character names, or something?

At this point, a giant server with many channels...would be best for Mabi NA..it really would. I wouldn't view it as defeat honestly because overall the game has a decent amount of people, just not enough to split between four servers...

[Kapra]

One thing I am curious about though... what about the items stored in dress room? Would they get transferred into the new server as well or no?

Do your titles transfer as well or do you lose them? I have Sabina's Valentine title I'd like to keep and so on.

Don't think there's been a server merge since the introduction of the dressing room, not sure.

[Rydian]

I've never actually experienced or seen a server transfer happen myself. This is just to confirm the rumors that it actually did exist at one point, at least in KR, for individual characters.

Couldn't we keep the ability to play as pets (though no one really does that anymore) via having the pets labeled or something using the players account/character names, or something?

That's a system mabi doesn't have.

Anything to handle any of this, mabi doesn't have. All of it would need to be designed, structured, coded, and edited into the existing game from scratch. A rename system, a sub-character system, a pet ID system, a post-move tagging system, how to handle server-centric data, all of it.

Mabi has nothing to handle any of it, all of it would need to be created first. And given the state of accounts and things in mabi, that's unlikely to happen barring an account system rewrite.

[Esileruf]

Don't think there's been a server merge since the introduction of the dressing room, not sure.

Didn't JP merge a few servers several months back?