Why merging?

[Moranu]

It seems we merged on this international board and indeed for the dutch boardmembers without notice.

But what really makes me wonder, since when is English an official language in the Netherlands and in addition for the dutch-speaking Belgians as well?

In the Netherlands they speak Dutch, Frisian and some dialects. It's true that English is an official language in the Caribbean Netherlands but I'm guessing that not many players on the dutch server are resident there.

In Belgium the official languages are Dutch, French and German.

And no offense to anybody, except if anyone wants to be offended by this : but the childish caracteristics of the game targets also younger players who aren't so skilled in foreign languages .

So I wonder, what's the benefit?

(ps I like to add the tag V for Vendetta, but doesn't work )

[Acheron]

well, i see this forum merger as a precursor for "server merger", i.e. that the 3 dutch servers are merged with the swedish and japanese servers under one domain, e.g.

s1.sfgame.nl (first dutch server) becomes s1.sfgame.com
s2.sfgame.nl becomes s2.sfgame.com
s1.sfgame.jp (first japanese server) s4.sfgame.com

etc etc

i hope this is not the case though, but with global financial troubles a move i'd understand...

[Leander]

Instead of having many small communities with only 10-50 active users in the forums Playa decided to merge them and start a more active combined forum.

Concerning server mergers I highly doubt this will ever happen. It doesn't make sense and isn't possible technically speaking as far as I know. Moreover, the game would get messed up with level 300 players of "old" servers and fresh servers that just were started months ago.

[Acheron]

Instead of having many small communities with only 10-50 active users in the forums Playa decided to merge them and start a more active combined forum.

Concerning server mergers I highly doubt this will ever happen. It doesn't make sense and isn't possible technically speaking as far as I know. Moreover, the game would get messed up with level 300 players of "old" servers and fresh servers that just were started months ago.

well with server mergers i actually meant renaming them and hosting them under one single primary domain instead of seperate ones per country. it would mean though that language usage restrictions (e.g. dutch only on dutch servers) would be dropped, making english pretty much the only public language on the servers.

[Moranu]

What acheron just mentioned sounds a possible solution for melting servers into one. Offcourse with creating a great mess because topplayers on a newer server wouldn't be happy if they join players from older servers, if you're used to be a top-50 player, you won't be amused if you're suddenly a mediocre character.

But what I actually meant: with merging the boards together and obliging us to conversate in English, playa is excluding a lot of players from the dutch community who're not able to do so. I also noticed that the old dutch board has the "read only"-label.
So a lot of them are left behind, it reminds me of an album from the band S.O.D.: Speak English or Die!

What are the solutions offered to solve this problem?

In my opinion dutchlish is a solution, let the dutch form their sentences in dutch and then translate them word for word. For example:

Volgens mij kunnen we dutchlish als oplossing gebruiken -> Following me, we can use dutchlish if solvation

Just kidding, but I'm curious about how some of us can be helped to conversate on this board

[Leander]

Ok but I don't get your point why one "big" server would make sense. It does not matter if you have 5 servers to manage and moderate or just one as the number of users is the same.

[JuliusMoormann]

Instead of having many small communities with only 10-50 active users in the forums Playa decided to merge them and start a more active combined forum.

Sure, but from that 10-50, there will be a big part that will stop because they don't speak English. The same for the other merged countries. And at each forum, there were similar topics, so the only difference is that we can see the same stuff in English, instead of our own language.

[Leander]

All other languages are still allowed here...and English is the language of the internet and gaming so it shouldn't really be a problem if you can talk to ALL people from other countries in English but also with your own players in your Native language.

We had a lot of small forums with only a handful of people and Playa decided to merge them