PotBS - Servers Merge Explained @ WarCry

An interesting read is up at WarCry where CEO Russel Williams speaks about the recent merge from 11 to 4 servers in Pirates of the Burning Sea. It is difficult not to quote the entire text but here is an excerpt:

Earlier this week, Flying Lab Software made the most dreaded of announcements: server merges. Typically, this means an MMO is in trouble, but according to CEO Russell Williams, that is not the case for Pirates of the Burning Sea, which remains a healthy game, for the most part in line with their projections.

"Companies are so afraid of any negative publicity that they basically wait until the game is on life support," said Williams. "People are always nervous about change, but the fact is the game has so many interrelated systems that the game really does function better when there is a higher density of people."

Currently, Pirates of the Burning Sea has 11 servers and after the merges in 30 days, that number will be cut to four (five including Australia and a Russian one coming in June). However, the capacity of each of those four servers is double that of each of the 11 they have now, which obviously helps population density. Further, one of those servers was for their Spanish launch, a debacle Williams has yet to fully understand.

"The Spanish launch is extremely disappointing," admitted Williams. The theory seemed solid. Spain is one of the four playable nations in Pirates of the Burning Sea and often ignored by the MMO community. As such, FLS decided to put some effort into a simultaneous Spanish launch and a dedicated Spanish server. It didn't work. Williams, to this day, has absolutely no idea what went wrong. He's seen some evidence that the game did, in fact, make it to shelves in Spain, but the subscribers never materialized.