Please, go back to the drawing board. Figure out a reasonable solution. Use some engineering ingenuity.
If you want to get rid of all the Dappers, get rid of the dappers.
Do a real merge (not a deletion) with the names changed.
Remove all land/guild ownership but let people keep their xp and items.
The battles will rage righteously with merged servers and a blank slate of a world for everyone to stake out.
Whatever you do, don't make everyone start over.
Do not take away everyone's hard earned time and effort.
Eat some humble pie, admit it was a mistake to even consider it, and beg for forgiveness from all of the people who pay to subscribe.
If you follow through with this, I see no reason to trust the company to ever preserve the integrity of protecting the time that so many put into the game. To take that away is wrong, economically, personally, as game developers, from a business perspective, moral perspective, there is no way to defend it.
And to say that the challenges are too difficult to overcome? We landed people on the moon damnit. You can merge servers and come up with a better solution than this.
I know for a fact it isn't impossible. "Technical issues" are never impossible to overcome.
I don't know what universe you're living in if you think merging MMORPG servers while preserving some items (doesn't need to be all), xp and social ties isn't possible. Change what you need to in the underlying game world, make some concessions here and there, but do what is right for the players and the game.
If you want to get rid of all the Dappers, get rid of the dappers.
Do a real merge (not a deletion) with the names changed.
Remove all land/guild ownership but let people keep their xp and items.
The battles will rage righteously with merged servers and a blank slate of a world for everyone to stake out.
Whatever you do, don't make everyone start over.
Do not take away everyone's hard earned time and effort.
Eat some humble pie, admit it was a mistake to even consider it, and beg for forgiveness from all of the people who pay to subscribe.
If you follow through with this, I see no reason to trust the company to ever preserve the integrity of protecting the time that so many put into the game. To take that away is wrong, economically, personally, as game developers, from a business perspective, moral perspective, there is no way to defend it.
And to say that the challenges are too difficult to overcome? We landed people on the moon damnit. You can merge servers and come up with a better solution than this.
I know for a fact it isn't impossible. "Technical issues" are never impossible to overcome.
I don't know what universe you're living in if you think merging MMORPG servers while preserving some items (doesn't need to be all), xp and social ties isn't possible. Change what you need to in the underlying game world, make some concessions here and there, but do what is right for the players and the game.