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Southern Hemisphere server

anonglitch

Co-Community Manager
Elvenar Team
Hey @Sir Derf :) thanks for your suggestion, however, the costs of running a server is high. A dedicated server you may contract with a hosting provider is not even a fraction of what a server of such proportions that a game like Elvenar requires. A new server would elevate the costs unnecessary.

In addition, these players will know everything six months beforehand due to our servers, and that means an unfair advantage. It will make players upset here in the northern hemisphere due to having to go first, and some of them will be unhappy because everything will arrive six month late to them.
 

Giraffi

Enchanter
@Sir Derf was very kind to suggest a way to accommodate those of us who are forever confronted with themes and events not suitable to our time of year. Really @anonglitch, how do you think that makes us feel? Forever the forgotten ones, or the stepchild, I can go on. Unfortunately the top brass of Inno has spoken out in public about having relevant events with time of year being one of the successes of Inno. Clearly he is not from the Southern Hemisphere or even the Equator areas.

In my opinion, Elvenar is a magical world, and as such should not have the seasons and the occasions of the human RL world. The imagination of the employees is excellent and I am sure they can put a schedule together that favours no particular section of our planet, Earth, nor what can be seen in its night skies.

A separate server may not be the answer, but there should be other ways of not polarising players.
 

anonglitch

Co-Community Manager
Elvenar Team
We understand you very well, @Giraffi but we can't say yes to everything, even if we wanted. It is not about being forgotten, but sometimes some ideas may upset other players. We try our best to keep everybody happy, but if the developers went ahead with this idea, it would bring more mayhem than positive results game wise.

I like your idea, and while initially, the developers are not focusing on this aspect of the game right now, all ideas are welcome :) so, thanks a lot for sharing ideas :)
 

Sir Derf

Adept
I'm asking it for curiosity, not for argumentative purposes...

How are you envisioning that adding a Southern Hemisphere server "may upset other players"?

You wouldn't be taking anything away from existing players on existing servers, so is it existing players you're worried about being upset? Or are you concerned about new players who discover that they are playing on a delayed server? Or is the problem not that there would be a new Southern Hemisphere server, but just that there would be a new server, regardless of the SH slant?
 

m4rt1n

Adept
If it's just the theme that is the main issue in the Southern Hemisphere they maybe the background themes could be made selective by the user from the 4? that occur so far through the year, although this summer we didn't see the beaches.
 

BlueBlou

Illusionist
Seperate updates? Is that not happening already with EN server getting different updates to the rest of the world?
 

Silmaril

Community Manager
Elvenar Team
Hardly the same as only the tournament differs, not the whole game.
Imagine half the world being 6 months out and having to work out who would have Christmas in December? just to give one of the reasons all servers are set to CEST.
 

Sir Derf

Adept
Imagine a community manager responding with hyperbole and mis-stating the original position..

"Imagine half the world" The suggestion was for a single server, not half the world.

"having to work out who would have Christmas in December" So, every event there would be confusion, because you'd loose track of which is the special server? And the problem would be which server had Christmas in June. Except it's not Christmas, it's Winter Magic. The better argument would be that Valentine's and Halloween shouldn't move. So, maybe the events would need some special scheduling considerations. Or maybe the events should be made more holiday-neutral and more seasonal-centric. Maybe some events would actually launch first on the Southern Hemisphere server. The end result, there would be no extra development time, you wouldn't be making twice the storylines and twice the special buildings. Develop an event, launch it to the appropriate server group, and eventually change the dates in the files and launch it on the other server group.

"set to CEST" You mean "set to Northern Hemisphere seasonal coordination"



I'm not dinging you, @Silmaril personally, just your argument. Are there points to make against the idea? Yes. But, even if it wasn't your motivation, it sounds more like motivated reasoning, like grasping at pushback to justify a pre-decided position, when exaggerations and mis-statements are part of the explanations.
 

m4rt1n

Adept
Imagine a community manager responding with hyperbole and mis-stating the original position..

"Imagine half the world" The suggestion was for a single server, not half the world.

"having to work out who would have Christmas in December" So, every event there would be confusion, because you'd loose track of which is the special server? And the problem would be which server had Christmas in June. Except it's not Christmas, it's Winter Magic. The better argument would be that Valentine's and Halloween shouldn't move. So, maybe the events would need some special scheduling considerations. Or maybe the events should be made more holiday-neutral and more seasonal-centric. Maybe some events would actually launch first on the Southern Hemisphere server. The end result, there would be no extra development time, you wouldn't be making twice the storylines and twice the special buildings. Develop an event, launch it to the appropriate server group, and eventually change the dates in the files and launch it on the other server group.

"set to CEST" You mean "set to Northern Hemisphere seasonal coordination"



I'm not dinging you, @Silmaril personally, just your argument. Are there points to make against the idea? Yes. But, even if it wasn't your motivation, it sounds more like motivated reasoning, like grasping at pushback to justify a pre-decided position, when exaggerations and mis-statements are part of the explanations.

@Sir Derf Inno is a German Company based in Hamburg. We play their game for our pleasure.
It seems right that the game is set worldwide to their timezone.

Most staff here are volunteers giving up their free time to help everyone in the game and do the best they can I am sure to pass on feedback and get answers.

It's a tough job, I did it myself for Miniclip.com who I can mention as they host Inno games on the world biggest free game site, for 10 years of my life. I got a mug, T-shirt and 2 trips in those 10 years for a visit to HQ in Hatton Garden to meet the CEO and a staff meet in Manchester with Pizza and a beer on them.

I say this because I am seeing you having a little push at the staff all over the forum recently, give them a break, they deserve one. :)
 

Silmaril

Community Manager
Elvenar Team
My point was to simply point out what a server 6 months behind could cause by using an overt example Sir Derf, and I know you are not really dinging me and that has made me smile as been a while since I heard that phrase from family down under :D
 

Sir Derf

Adept
And my point was that argument absurdum isn't always a strongly persuasive position. A representative decides to give "one of the reasons", and weakens that position by incorrectly describing both the magnitude of the proposal and the resultant problem to the developers. @Silmaril described a problem that sounds like it gets harder to implement as the number of people increases, which wouldn't be true, as it was proposed to be one server, not 10,000 scattered players. She also makes it sound like keeping track of who is effected would be an ongoing struggle, that would be a challenge over and over again, when again, it would be a single server, the same server, over and over again. The answer was a bad answer.

I'm not trying to champion this proposal; it was a throw away based on a conversation on another thread. I didn't think it would be taken seriously, unless it struck someone's fancy as being a unique offering in gamespace, which might have a little positive PR to it. And I was trying to project that I wasn't really pushing back at staff, but rather at the argument.

PS - loved the irony of @Silmaril referring to "family down under" non-sequitorly in a hemisphere-related discussion.

PPS - Hemispherical seasonal differences are not a timezone issue. There are African countries in the same offset as CEST, as well as Troll Station in Antarctica. (Google-fu)
 

Lelanya

Mentor
I think the Australian server question has come up on another occasion, maybe over the winter of 2015/2016, when the first Christmas event occurred.
Elvenar seems to have a lot of holidays that are rooted in pagan tradition based on Germany's legacy, but also to a lesser extent on the general region. This really works for the fantasy theme of Elvenar, and I think the designers are hesitant to mess with this too far.
 

Julian

Sorcerer
Don't forget that Elvenar is another world. It's seasons just happen to coincide with the seasons on Earth's northern hemisphere.
 

Gargon667

Mentor
Hey @Sir Derf :) thanks for your suggestion, however, the costs of running a server is high. A dedicated server you may contract with a hosting provider is not even a fraction of what a server of such proportions that a game like Elvenar requires. A new server would elevate the costs unnecessary.

In addition, these players will know everything six months beforehand due to our servers, and that means an unfair advantage. It will make players upset here in the northern hemisphere due to having to go first, and some of them will be unhappy because everything will arrive six month late to them.

New servers do come up on occasion, there are lots of Austalians, South Africans and South Americans around that would be able to fill such a server, so the costs should not be a problem...

What exactly would be the advantage of knowing an event 6 month ahead of time??? Everybody who wants to has the quest list anyway. Having it for 6 month instead of 2 weeks may make them forget it more likely than be an advantage lol. And I sure wouldn´t mind them have that huge advantage of having the list for 6 month, they are welcome to have it, who reads those things anyways nowadays with auto-finishing events.
What other advantages would they have besides that? Well maybe looking forward to the super awesome prizes? What a torture for them, sure, but an advantage?

If I had to suggest a downside of having a south server: maybe people would be annoyed at always getting the stuff that is like half a year old before they get it. Makes them feel like the step child again that only gets second-hand clothes. But I see no reason for Inno not to try. If there are people willing to play, why would they waste the money?
 

Sir Derf

Adept
Advantage? Does anyone really compare cities cross-servers?

Advantage? Does anyone starting a new city, today, compare themselves to cities that were started earlier?
 

Sir Derf

Adept
Yes, we do. However, as I pointed out above, Elvenar mostly does not. The event's been Winter Magic the previous two years, a season that we don't all have in December. (I say mostly, because yeah, we've had two buildings with "Christmas" in the name.)

The better examples, as I also pointed out, would be the more explicit Valentine's Day and Halloween items.
 
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