Hello Everybody,
The big news these days seems to be the progression server officially named The Combine. First off, I am overwhelmed by the interest and although I know it won't satisfy everyone's desires it does look like the idea is appealing to a large number of people. It is great to see the excitement out there and not just with our active players but hearing a lot of people talking about reforming old guilds and coming back to the game.
The response has also, quite honestly, got us a bit worried. We are working on taking a few steps to make sure we can handle the possible load. Primarily we are going to cap the maximum online population. We consider this a much better solution than the inevitable zone crashes that would begin when we start to hit higher loads. The last thing we want to do is limit the amount of players that can participate but we have to make sure we maintain a good play experience as well. Over the past few years the servers have stayed very stable so they can handle some pretty big populations so the server will still be plenty full.
We understand that there are many players that have become attached to their character name. In an effort to allow people to reserve their name before the launch of the server we are going to set up a limited version that will allow you to log on and create a character. You will not be able to enter the game world itself but you will be able to pre-create your character and reserve your name. Having the name you want is even more important when you consider that this server will be freshly tracking all item discoveries and leaderboards on our EQPlayers service. Who will be first to discover the highly sought after Fire Beetle Eye!?
There will be a lot more to talk about as we get into our beta and closer to the launch of The Combine server.
Chris "Raghnell" Lena
EQ Producer
