Server Merges

[trousers]

I think with all the Doom and Gloom talk, which may or may not be warranted, I think it may be wise for this community to have a contingency plan.

While other players will be all "QQ my City" or "OMG but I am the original "Leetownz" I don't want a -1" we will have to be talking about how to explain, in character, how all these new people suddenly show up.

What happens when suddenly there are two Security Ministers for Newland? What happens when suddenly a new Omni-Pol shows up working high profile cases no one has heard anything about before?

I think it should be handled using a Multiverse concept. Atlantean sends a forward scout through a portal to Rimor, pleading for immediate aid and seeking to petition our world's ICC for asylum, if our world has an ICC.

In Atlantean the alien's invasion plans were set in motion by the losing of a particular battle which the Rimorians won (perhaps the killing of the Art Commander, Rimor Represent!). This allows the Atlantean Omni-AF contingent to shuttle intelligence of where the aliens are staging and waiting for their opportunity to strike. With the intel the Humans will be able to preemptively strike and save the world.

Rimor is saved due to the Atlanteans, Asylum is granted, and an IC explanation is made available to the playerbase to use.

[Agentcora]

Sounds good! Always smart having a plan, just incase.

[trousers]

Server Merge
I've seen a lot of discussion about doing a server merge, and we are infact looking into the possibility of doing this. The server capability now compared to ten years ago is a little more buff, so the hardware can definately handle an increased population. It's too early to give our verdict, but Macrosun is doing his thing and as soon as I know the result I will talk about it more because we feel like this is a natural step that will allow us to have more enjoyable team based content no matter in which time zone you live in.

From today's post. It's clearly on the table. Get your thinking caps on, RPers. Trust me, you don't want to get caught with your pants down.

[Collodion]

So without digging through various websites and forum searches, this is what I remember about the origin lore. Atlantean was the name of the first colony ship to Rubi-ka, Rimor was the second. The Atlantean crashed landed in Milky Way. The Rimor never arrived and was presumed lost. The Rimor actually arrived on an 'alternate RK. RK3 was never named nor explained.

So there are a couple of obvious ways to explain the merger of RK1 and RK2. The first would be bad, to simply retcon the whole thing and say both vessels actually arrived. Second, you could say that the ship became "out of phase" with each other (this was a common occurrence in Star Trek). A third way, is the two alternates are slammed together, forming a new 'reality'. In some case this merger is smooth and in others it is violent (Fringe being an example of a dangerous merger).

I think the easiest and less stressful is to choose the "out of phase" device. It means there weren't alternate realities at all. One Rubi-ka, one Shadowlands. Just occupied by groups who can't see or interact, until one day... Could be caused by anything really. Aliens, Xan device, scientists, fluctuation in the Source. The obvious choice is The Source. The Source could have had a fluctuation that triggered the "out of phase" state of the two colony ships.

[trousers]

I never watched much Star Trek.

If the Rimor went out of Phase, while Atlantean and Earth remained in Phase, How would the Rimorian phase have received colonists and ongoing support from Earth and Omni-Prime?

[Makabey]

Following the Phasing suggestion...

How about this: (please bare with the fact that I read all of the lore too long ago, I might spawn inconsistencies/discrepencies)
Any ships built from The Rimor parallel is phased right? But if the phenomenon is tied to both the notum and the Source, leaving the planet would let your ship rephase with the universe. If we have now some polymer (or whatever compound) with some "memory", so a ship build on RK might remember its phasing (not intended by the concerned peoples/pilots) and be able to land back to The Atlantean or The Rimor.

Likewise, since both parallels live just about the same events, so are the messages sent to Earth and Omni-Prime, reaching them indiscriminatly (spelling?). Therefore, forces and colonists sent reach either parallels, based on where they land, that spot acting as a Beacon to pull them in the corresponding parrallel (provided The Rimor landed somewhere else than Milky Way). I assume here that whichever Omni-Trans (if its the right corps) responding first for permission do land -or- received landing coordinates (aka original Landing points) would decide the final parallel.


What about the merge?

I imagine that even if there would be some foreword and/or events and thus time to try and prevent immediate future events, most (player) cities will fall, so thats why lots will be empty.

Towers? What is there inside them? Batteries, weapons, forcefields... boom, vaporised!

Borealis? Rome? Athen? Somehow, aside from a couple of chairs that could merge, they won't be too affected. They were built mosly the "old fashioned way". No? Player cities are "plop the bots here", thats why they don't merge. At best a flower or two will die, at worst Trouser's desk will turn Pink... please consider that I have no idea whatsoever who is his counterpart, but could be a woman who happens to like pink. I dunno. And Meetmedere won't show any changes, trust me, one or two more bricks falling is a moot point.

P.S.: English not first language.
PPS: I didn't cheat and use Babelfish
PPPS: Hey Trousers, remember a 220 Doc from "Shattered Dreams" named Clementine?

[Boltgun]

Cataclysm ! Too much playing around in SL broke dimensional barriers and everyone met his good twin ! Panic strikes as we're out of bronto meat for the ensuing barbecue.

Gameplay speaking I hope that it will be the occasion to give the instanced cities a system where shops can be used. It's truely unfair to them. Maybe I'll consider moving out of newland desert and get a bigger city.

[Towerblock]

Well, an idea that I used in another game that might work (it also resulted in two or three dimensions slamming into each other) was the introduction of an idea we called "Metaplanar Techtonics"

The storyline included years and years of pre-quakes that happened periodically during Earth's history that resulted in varying strangeness. When the big one hit, it knocked the planes askew so badly that two realities nearly fused completely, while a third was so close that more then a few portals opened up.

[trousers]

I think we're on the same page, Bubba.

I made this image for the Trans-Universal thread, it appears I just never bothered to link it in it .. I'll need to fix that.

For the sake of this discussion UA collides with UR, leaving us all together.

Question would be - What kind of effects should result from such a collision, and do you think they would be easily implemented?

Edit: In The Kitchen With Pants explains Dimensions

[Collodion]

The obvious ones are that you have 2 cities in each location that need to be merged and characters with the same name.

Solutions for the cities are simple, the oldest one stays the other goes to instanced. First they need to find a way to have player shops in instanced cities. As for in-game explanation, because of the merger, ICC relocated the 'younger' of the cities to their facility.

As for player names, there'll need to be a character wipe first, then a check to see if the conflicted name is on the same account, if they are, assign the -1 tag to the lower or younger character and give the player a free name change. If they aren't on the same account, tag the younger one with an RK#, and give that player a free name change. Then, if after a certain period of time has passed and the toon hasn't been renamed, you freeze it until they do. In-game explanation, because of the merging of the universes, some designations need to be changed and some citizens will need to re-establish their identification records.

In both cases your still going to piss off players. But I think this would be a fair way to do it. You could also take in to consideration things like org activity/population for cities or more/recently active for names. I don't want to see more player city zones. I'd rather see new actual zones with normal city plots.

[Leileena]

As for the cities, I don't believe it's possible to relocate cities to instance because of the different floorplan. Also, I don't remember anything about ICC owning Serenity Islands. Personally I think it's best to link GMS to the mail system and make everything instanced, but that's just my 2 creds.

Back on topic: I personally don't like making up some huge fuzzy coverup story. No matter how well you write it it'll always seem fabricated and far-fetched. The whole multi-dimentional thing or even phase theories are not quite my cup of tea, and I tend to avoid them because they make things very complicated for the average player. I don't like to call retcon on things, I don't think any roleplayer ever does. But in this case I think it's a valid option. I figure meeting your counterpart is easier settled OOCly for every instance it happens than it is to write a confusing coverup story that has to cater to every individual occurrence.

Actually, I think with the current playerbase of 3 and a half roleplayer, a retcon would have little impact anyway. A phasing event would, realistically, be all people are talking about for months to come, which sort of forces casual roleplayers to know all about it as it should be the topic of conversation in all encounters. Personally, I'm not looking forward to that.

[Collodion]

Retcon sets precedence. Once you start retconning elements it becomes easier to retcon in the future.

As for floorplan, I'm not denying it won't take changes to the city instance system, and I don't think it would take all that much effort to make a variety of floorplans to instance. I mean, how many mission instances do you think there are?

As for ownership of Serenity Islands, I didn't mean to imply that ICC owned them, but that the access point to the Islands occurs in ICC.

Am I the .5?

And it doesn't matter what FC decides to do when it happens. It will be the topic of conversation anyway.

[Zeephonz]

I think a storyline where the cool and up with it RK2 population invade the hippy stoner population on RK1 would be the way to go... all the RK1 hippy stoners get relocated to a tent city somewhere in the middle of PW.... the RK1 hippy stoners don't notice any change.



/FlameSuitOn

[Towerblock]

I personally don't like making up some huge fuzzy coverup story. No matter how well you write it it'll always seem fabricated and far-fetched. The whole multi-dimentional thing or even phase theories are not quite my cup of tea, and I tend to avoid them because they make things very complicated for the average player.

You must hate the shadowlands then. Its all about shaky meta-planar deterioration thanks to hecklers.

[Leileena]

You must hate the shadowlands then. Its all about shaky meta-planar deterioration thanks to hecklers.

Correct. You'll never hear Leil or any other char of mine talk about SL unless they really have to. And even then I try to avoid the whole scientific explanation about SL.

[JungleGeorgeRK2]

Planning ahead and floating ideas about a server merger is a good idea.

Assuming RK2 will be moved to RK1 is not a safe assumption just because 1 comes before 2. Maybe both will be moved to a new instance.

Org Cities

Determining ownership of cities based on oldest owner as oppose to active membership of the org has its points. However, how will the org's buildings be added to the lot? I do not see a developer setting up each lot for each none-instanced city.

If all the none-instance city lots are empty, here is one plan.

1) Return all city buildings to org president. Hopefully he/she is still active

2) None-instanced city lots are empty on merged dimension.

3) Each org can petition for ownership of their city lot. Oldest org getting lot.

4) Those who lost on their petition, will be assign a lot from those remaining.

5) Lot owners will have a month to plant their HQ before loosing ownership.


Tower Fields
Make them all empty and let them fight it out as it should be.


Organization name
Allow orgs with same name to be merged otherwise rename all duplicate orgnames.

[B]Toon Name[B]
Rename all duplicate names and the first to change their name back wins.

[Collodion]

5) Lot owners will have a month to plant their HQ before loosing ownership.


Tower Fields
Make them all empty and let them fight it out as it should be.

[B]Toon Name[B]
Rename all duplicate names and the first to change their name back wins.

Well... in normal methods, you only get 24 hours to plant the HQ before losing the plot.

Darn right about the Towers.

How do you go about renaming duplicates? A quick check and I think you'll find that nearly all names are duplicated. So you want to rename everybody? I hope you just mean a -1 or -2 tag.

And I don't think it'll be a RK1 into RK2 or RK2 into RK1, they'll take both RK1 and RK2 and combine them into SuperMegaRK.

[trousers]

When your powers combine, I am Captain Rubi!

[Leileena]

3) Each org can petition for ownership of their city lot. Oldest org getting lot.

I don't think the 4 active ARK's and GM's are looking forward to handling something like 100 petitions a day.

However, this isn't something for this topic. The topic is about the RP effects and possible backstory should a server merge happen. There'll be plenty of "omg what to do with my city" in the rest of the forums.

[Keanne]

I agree with Leileena: retconning (where needed) is the easiest and cleanest way to carry on after server merge.