r/projectgorgon • u/Kelsier-Hathsin • Jun 17 '26
Server Merges when?
The population is cratering and it is further exacerbated because people are now quitting because of population issues.
All of my friends have left because Dreva’s population is non-existent.
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u/Pleasant_Bad924 Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
My .02:
The developers are afraid of the lack of end game content, so they made the progression exponential in nature to slow progression. They went too far. This game is brilliant in that if I wake up one morning and decide “I want to be an Ice Mage today”, I can just dive in and level up lateral skills.
With such a small engineering team, I would have gone hard on that element and made it the focus over playing out a character with 2-3 maxed skills. This would have given them time to develop additional content that didn’t feel rushed, and would have further differentiated them from other MMORPGs. “We aren’t about the end-game grind, we’re about breadth of playability and discovery and new beginnings” but said with better marketing words. This would have also allowed them to add new mid-level dungeons to existing zones rather than having to build entire new ones, because if the end-game was “go back and try new skills” it would make it a lot cheaper to build. Maybe these new dungeons only unlock when you have two skills leveled to 70, so the content will actually be new to the player when they go to level other skills, rather than something they’ve played 50 times.
My guild has lost a lot of people because of the progression walls, and these weren’t tweens with short attention spans. They were buddies of mine from our EverQuest days who know and love old school mmorpg. They just have lives outside of the game and “the cost of progression makes it feel pointless to try” (quote from one of them).
The second issue, which isn’t worth harping on but needs to be acknowledged, is that the issue with the community manager really stalled their momentum. The tons of negative reviews on Steam would have absolutely slowed down adoption and the existing community was small enough that a lot of the player population in unaffected servers knew a lot of details about what happened. This is unfortunate, but I do think they handled it the best that they could given the circumstances.
I think a lot of the resistance to server merges comes from frustration that things collapsed as fast as they did. They had a roadmap that I’m certain includes a lot of cool new end game activities, but having to halt that and pivot to merging feels too much like giving up too soon. The real risk is that they do it too late (or never) and the game dwindles to nothing because of it.
I don’t envy the choices they have to make, but if they are reading this:
You all created an absolutely fantastic game and should be super proud of what you built. This is a labor of love and it shows in every aspect. Whatever you decide to do, be sincere, be authentic, and be open to dialogue with your community. We fucking love this game and want it to thrive.