Glad to hear that sever merges are coming, slowly but surely! I'd like to put my server out there for consideration too; S18 Haku is definitely not as bad off as some other servers, at least on the surface - we can still kill the Nine Tails, we still have four groups in GNW, and we can still do the Sage World and Fighting Matsuri events. However, if you ask anyone actually playing on our server, you'll get mostly negative feelings about playing the game, and here's why:
- GNW is dominated by my group, where we haven't lost a single war yet, either in qualifiers or finals. Other groups have been registering, but at most have nine people participate where our group has 20+. This is great for my group, but it is extremely discouraging for others - the number of participants from other groups has been steadily declining. Recently, there was a round where we fought against 4 people in total.
- Sage Worlds has around 9-10 players per battlefield; again, not terrible in comparison, but I'd say about 66% of the people are members of my group. Not too bad, but at this point people know each others' lineups so well that it's pretty much determined who will win before the fight even starts. The last time I fought in Sage Worlds, I won 5/11 fights just because my opponent refreshed and was unwilling to even try to fight. For some of you this doesn't sound like a bad thing, but part of the fun of Naruto Online is the PvP aspect.
- Fighting Matsuri is pretty terrible; if you don't fight in the first hour or so, you're stuck waiting 20-30 minutes for a fight. This has happened to me on multiple occasions, when I couldn't make it home in time to actually finish my fights in the first hour of the event. On one especially memorable occasion, I queued for 46 minutes and 32 seconds -- and no, I didn't get a fight, the event ended.
- Nine Tails is probably the best event, if only because people are pretty consistent in coming for the coupons, experience, and coins. However, more and more of our higher players have been not showing up for the event. In theory, this is great for the rest of us, but where we could kill the Nine Tails in 20 minutes before, it now takes us closer to the full 40 minutes. My worry is that as people get more and more bored/frustrated with the game, the less people will show up to the event, thus potentially putting us in a situation where the server won't be able to kill the Nine Tails anymore.
The new permanent events, such as the Wanted Missions, Kage Treasures, and Anko's Exam, as well as great weekly events have added a bit of interest that has helped keep players active. However, looking back from the start of the server, all our top players have basically up and quit, save for only a few - those of you on S18 may remember Cheeno/Hent@i, Yugao, Shu/Turalyon, Kakashi, IsamiYuhi, OmegaPheonix, and others who have quit playing out of boredom and a lack of challenge within the server. At the moment, we have two still have two of said top players, but one is semi-active, only attending the GNW/Sage Worlds/Nine Tails events. The other pops in on occasion, just to see if a merge has happened yet -- he rarely attends events. Other players, who are #3-20 in the rankings, have been playing less as well, and have stuck around only for the community within individual groups. This is also not even mentioning the number of players who drop off the face of the earth out of nowhere; and these players range from being new, lower levels to players who are Lvl 75+.
TL;DR: Our server is at the moment still not that bad off, but morale and activity are declining as players are steadily losing interest in the game, whether it is for lack of challenge within the server, or with the frustration of not being able to do as well as some of our top players. A merge would do wonders in bringing some fresh blood into the game, and more of a challenge to keep people interested and willing to participate more. Hope you consider S18 for merges sometime in the near future!