It’s nice to have a choice of servers. If you don’t like the escaper-friendly policy of KGS, you can play on OGS or Pandanet. If you don’t like the lack of chat on Pandanet you can use KGS or OGS. And so on.
But with too many servers, the Go community is fragmented. A few years ago you could get a new even game on IGS in a few seconds. Now, when I want a game, I open challenges on both OGS and Pandanet until I get a game. And it still often takes about 5 minutes.
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Is this really that long, tho?
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What you need to understand about PandaNet/IGS is that you are the product. This is a paid service for Japanese people who wants to play against international players. So its free to use anywhere, except in Japan.
Now with more options to play anywhere in the world. Mostly competitions coming from China and Korea. Japanese people can choose to play elsewhere. Fox and Tygem being the most popular as far as I can see.
it used to be impossible to play on your phone (2008-2011)
and also many options were windows only. so when OGS came, it was revolutionary. correspondence makes it easy to have many games while keeping our busy life with kids and demanding jobs.
Lots of my friends main complains about OGS is performance with blitz. during byoyomi, network latency can make you lose a game. so Blitz are played elsewhere.
Another increasing problems with all servers. is cheating. People use AI to assist their win rate. That is everywhere.
So like languages in the world, I don’t think there can be too many, but each can have their best strength.
With the built-in AI analysis that OGS has now, maybe they could automatically determine if someone is cheating. That could be only visible for moderator at first. and as they algorithm improves, it could totally flag people.
cheers,
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Also ice-cream flavors.
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Basically all desserts
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dammit I was just about to pull the joke of “we need to make a new one to get everyone else to play on”
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CGS should be out soon-ish. At least maybe in this year.
More worry about less and less players, as worry about Too many go servers .
@S_Alexander : How specific will be CGS? Any link?
In a world where people play 10 min or 5 min GO games yes. : )
We want it now.
Actually it’s the newer Chinese and Korean servers that only work on Microsoft Windows (and some cellphones). I’ve been playing on KGS and IGS from my Linux desktop since 2000. When IGS started (1992, in the USA), Microsoft didn’t even have internet access out of the box.
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On goquest i get in few seconds a game. Besides this you could open more (as OGS and IGS) servers to ask at same time, sounds not that difficult too. You will not make all these players join on a global one, so its on your side to manage to get a game.
Goquest pairs you with a bot if no humans are available. Every server has its ways to give its players what they want, which is great because we all have different needs in different situations. ^___^
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Question: what is the geographical coverage of other servers? I guess it makes sense to need a tad patience to get a pairing when the players are spread across timezones? (I’m not against the ones that focus on regions obviously, just wondering how much it factors in).
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What’s CGS? (cgs.gr is the site of one of the best private schools here, I can’t get anything useful out of google results).
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Ah, interesting. It actually looks pretty cool, and I’m sure it’s really helpful for beginners.
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It looks cool, I just might. 
Do the nice people who develop CGS have to battle with the usual purist crowd? I’ll be awed if they don’t.
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I thought CGS looked pretty cool when I first heard about it a while back and thought it could be really helpful in bringing new players/helping new players learn some aspects of the game more quickly. So I volunteered to help out by doing the Chinese translation for CGS. This doesn’t make me a traitor, does it? 
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Apparently there is no pitchfork emoji
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