Will SOE be ready for 500,000 players?

[Sndman]

I noticed that the trailer teaser posted yesterday on YouTube has 400,000+ views in just a little over one day. I wonder if SOE really is ready to have that many people download the game and start playing on release day? I seem to remember that when EQ was released they crashed the internet or something because so many people were trying to log on at the same time.

Just a thought, nothing like being ready for success when it happens.

[Fizzgig]

That's why they have tech tests, and beta. They'll gradually let more and more people into beta to test the servers can handle the load.

[SleepyZombie]

I dunno if they will have 400,000+ people on the day of launch.... If it is even 400,000 I will be surprised greatly.

6000 person servers
66+ servers

[helioN]

500,000? Nope, won't even happen. This game ain't WoW or LoL, you need a much better PC to run it. I'd be happy if 100,000 players played this game on a regular basis.

[Bags]

What is the point of this thread?

[Yutty]

in one of the vids higby was talking about having 2000 people on a continent. Since they only have 1 continent finished right now wonder if the beta server is only allowing 2000 ppl. If they get the EU server up is that another 2000 in tech test?

[Sndman]

To have a diehard troll like you come in and make a comment on my first post to PSU forums?

[SleepyZombie]

Yeah I realistically see maybe 100,000 people at start... The game is not as high profile as you may think. More than 80% of my friends have never even heard about planetside let alone planetside 2

"I have a lot of gamer friends"

[Bags]

To have a diehard troll like you come in and make a comment on my first post to PSU forums?

Make better threads then. There's no point of this thread.

There's no discussion value.

[Zar]

I noticed that the trailer teaser posted yesterday on YouTube has 400,000+ views in just a little over one day. I wonder if SOE really is ready to have that many people download the game and start playing on release day? I seem to remember that when EQ was released they crashed the internet or something because so many people were trying to log on at the same time.

Just a thought, nothing like being ready for success when it happens.
400,000 over many time zone's one thing about planetside 1 is that we almost had shift's if not shift's xD. like id crash out around 11 pm pst and the euro and aussie player's would play till morning people with day's off or jobless collage student's would take over as they crashed out xD

[n2q0_matrix]

They are gonna run this on the Amazon Cloud and just spin up VMs as needed.

:rofl: :lol:

[Shadowrath]

I dunno if they will have 400,000+ people on the day of launch.... If it is even 400,000 I will be surprised greatly.

6000 person servers
66+ servers

I as well will be surprised insanely. But we can all hope this game becomes that great. :)

[Sndman]

Make better threads then. There's no point of this thread.

There's no discussion value.

I am glad you are the discussion value know it all....maybe we should discuss why you think your opinion matters.

P.S. Why have you never made CR5 or BR 30? Maybe you should work toward that goal instead of spending your time trolling these forums.

[cellinaire]

Well, SOE has operated in this industry for more than a decade.
(I mean, 15+ years)

What makes you think they won't be ready? Number of servers? About their manpower?

[Sndman]

Just curious is all....I wonder how many max players one server can hold, maybe 10K? I have no idea....but if that is close to the number then that means ten servers for 100K players. If it is free a lot of people will check it out. I have no idea on the tech stuff, but if they have a peak of 500k then that means 50 servers. I think that EQ had about 30 servers at it's peak.

[SFJake]

Well, SOE has operated in this industry for more than a decade.
(I mean, 15+ years)

What makes you think they won't be ready? Number of servers? About their manpower?

All I know is on one side I see Blizzard with massive servers for some of the most massive games, and still they fail immensely everytime.

Being ready really just means, do they expect that many people and can they handle the heat? You can set up your servers for a million yet you open the doors and 2 millions comes running.

We never have a clue how big (or small) those games hit. I've seen small games grow to huge heights out of nowhere.

[capiqu]

He is just curious as to the number of people that will be allowed to play Beta. I'm sure that has crossed all our minds. Now the facebook page is about 70,000 and not everyone is on face book. The twitter is over 30,000 and thats people looking for keys.
I wouldn't be surprise if it will be 100,000+ and the numbers will only grow. You have to also take into account that this will be a free game so i'm sure SOE is prepared for what is coming.

[cellinaire]

All I know is on one side I see Blizzard with massive servers for some of the most massive games, and still they fail immensely everytime.

Being ready really just means, do they expect that many people and can they handle the heat? You can set up your servers for a million yet you open the doors and 2 millions comes running.

We never have a clue how big (or small) those games hit. I've seen small games grow to huge heights out of nowhere.

The lag which occurred in WoW's early days and all the brouhaha around recent Diablo3 servers were not systematic failures, these were just blunders on their part(I mean, these things don't happen that often). And this time, I'm pretty sure they will be ready, with all the information they'll get from Beta phase. :groovy:

[Astrok]

500,000? Nope, won't even happen. This game ain't WoW or LoL, you need a much better PC to run it. I'd be happy if 100,000 players played this game on a regular basis.

lol thats wrong what u sayin here.They aiming for 4-5 year old pc's....that it looks good is because of forgelight and forgelight may be able to run this game smooth on a low end machine to.(saw someone post here a freind of him got in with a core2duo machine and 2gb of ram and a normal videocard and he ran it fine).

like m i play firefall on my laptop on high setting with a dual core T4400(2,2 ghz) 4 gb ddr3 and a geforce nvidia 310m.

still have a nice high end pc but i think i can even run this game on my lappy when it comes out.

[lMABl]

I am glad you are the discussion value know it all....maybe we should discuss why you think your opinion matters.

P.S. Why have you never made CR5 or BR 30? Maybe you should work toward that goal instead of spending your time trolling these forums. Bags is right, there really is no discussion value to this thread, there are several other threads on the same topic trying to "predict" how many people will be at launch and if SOE is prepared, the simple truth is no one knows, and SOE more than likely know what their doing. So please don't come on this forum and just start picking fights, it doesn't benefit anyone in any way.

[Ertwin]

The lag which occurred in WoW's early days and all the brouhaha around recent Diablo3 servers were not systematic failures, these were just blunders on their part(I mean, these things don't happen that often). And this time, I'm pretty sure they will be ready, with all the information they'll get from Beta phase. :groovy:

Every online game has a rough start. No exceptions.

[Sndman]

Bags is right, there really is no discussion value to this thread, there are several other threads on the same topic trying to "predict" how many people will be at launch and if SOE is prepared, the simple truth is no one knows, and SOE more than likely know what their doing. So please don't come on this forum and just start picking fights, it doesn't benefit anyone in any way.

Sticking up for myself from a Troll is not picking a fight. If you don't like what you read then ignore it. This a forum, people are discussing things, if your not interested then read and comment on something you are interested in. What gives anyone the right to say what has discussion value, if it has no value then nobody will join in the discussion.

[Naz The Eternal]

I can definitely see more than 500 000 on launch based on the publicity planetside 2 currently has

[Tehroth]

400,000 is not a big number these days. Very many mmorpgs have more than that at launch and most of them usually have server problems because they never have enough servers because they want to save cash.

There are alot of mmo hoppers these days since most of the games are trash, so don't be surprised if this game has tons of people. Lets just hope the game is sensational and retains those players.

[cellinaire]

Every online game has a rough start. No exceptions.

Hehe sorry if my comment was misleading. I was rather talking about the 'extent' or 'degree', not about 'if this game will have rough start or not'

[disky]

Bags is right, there really is no discussion value to this thread, there are several other threads on the same topic trying to "predict" how many people will be at launch and if SOE is prepared, the simple truth is no one knows, and SOE more than likely know what their doing. So please don't come on this forum and just start picking fights, it doesn't benefit anyone in any way.

I would like to discuss it. Obviously others do too.

Anyway, I personally think that 100,000 is an underestimation of the success of the game. I know we're all aboard the hype train, but PS2 has gained a lot of notoriety recently and the fact that it's free is a big deal.

I'm making a prediction here: HUGE SUCCESS.

[Dubious]

I guess more like 5 millions :p

[Littleman]

Name another FPS that has achieved Planetside's scale. Planetside was an FPS gamer's dream come true in 2003. I doubt that has changed 10 years later with the next generation of gamers.

P.S. Stop bickering about the discussion value. We're discussing the topic, as evidenced by 2 whole pages of discussion on said topic.

[ODonnell]

Every online game has a rough start. No exceptions.

Actually there are exceptions, but I only need one hand to count them.

[TheCaptainC]

i think there will be more than 500k people at launch. i mean the hype train just started. the mainstream media will give ps2 alot mor attention in the coming months plus its free. people would be fools if they wont at least try it

[Billen]

All I know is on one side I see Blizzard with massive servers for some of the most massive games, and still they fail immensely everytime.

Being ready really just means, do they expect that many people and can they handle the heat? You can set up your servers for a million yet you open the doors and 2 millions comes running.

We never have a clue how big (or small) those games hit. I've seen small games grow to huge heights out of nowhere.

I just registered (having been a lurker for a loooong time) to post something along the lines of this, since the op got some pretty rude answers.

There is a big risk associated with launching this according to Blizzard standard. Imagine if people can't login for a bunch of days, just as the experience was with Diablo 3. A lot of people will be put off, and the amount of players will be less that it would have otherwise.

The question is not only how Sony can try to predict the amount of players, but also what can be done without successful prediction. Perhaps they could have some form of delay, for example registration with a delayed activation time so they know exactly how many registered and active players there will be during next week. Of course, this would bring other problems, but keeping the activation system separated from the systems running the game is vital for success. I firmly believe that having a bad launch experience can hamper PS2s possibility for success in a big way. The other side of the coin, however, is that a smooth launch can boost it. :D

[Ivam Akorahil]

people learned from the brilliant way bioware handled early game access on swtor

seems everyone is doing things gradually now instead of opening the flood gates and having the dam breach :>

[PilotJack]

Hell i'd be happy if 10,000 people played PS1 regularly, i'm used to about 500 on PS1 right now.

[Gazanimal]

I think once the full CGI trailer is released (yeah I know it's cgi and not totally representative of the game) that the interest and hype levels will really start to kick in.

As mentioned with it being F2P it'll certainly get more people trying it than if it was a pay game. Best advertising is word of mouth so it'll snowball if the game is good and the beta proves it.

[Dubious]

the question is, how many will stay on an average, trough a week...

[ChipMHazard]

Success always seems to take companies by surprise. The question here being, will PS2 be successful enough at launch for this to become a problem.
Personally I would rather have the playerbase grow faster over a few months, than have their servers be strained at launch.

[Billen]

the question is, how many will stay on an average, trough a week...

Which, in turn, is pretty influenced by their experiences. Smooth fighting and people will return, difficulties logging in, bad hit detection and lousy update rates and many will be turned away.

Still, the opposite also goes. Smooth experiences and people WILL draw their friends into this not matter how long the registration queues are. :D

[Astrok]

This post is stupid for sure.

U think they cant handle 500.000 people?

I bet they want even more people on this damn game.

More people is more money...so im prety damn sure they can handle it.

[ChipMHazard]

This post is stupid for sure.

U think they cant handle 500.000 people?

I bet they want even more people on this damn game.

More people is more money...so im prety damn sure they can handle it.

They will of course be wanting millions of users to make sure that there is a larger pool of players to convert into paying players. :p

[Firearms]

More people is more money...so im prety damn sure they can handle it.

I bet it says that over the office door.....:doh:

[Billen]

This post is stupid for sure.

U think they cant handle 500.000 people?

I bet they want even more people on this damn game.

More people is more money...so im prety damn sure they can handle it.

So, according to this argument Blizzard, who knew how many copies of diablo 3 was being distributed, did not want people to play their game? ;)

Just kidding, of course, but "worry" that Sony does not properly ramp up their servers is somewhat valid.

[Buggsy]

Will SOE be ready for 500,000 players?

Was Diablo3 ready for 500,000 players?

[PredatorFour]

There's no point of this thread.There's no discussion value.

Thats why theres 3 pages;)

Anyway i don`t think all them 500,000 people who watched the vid will all have the correct computer specs to play. Its going to be interesting if there is say 100, 000 people log in at the start as to how many servers they will put up to allow these to play. Will there be a limit on servers? or just keep making new ones?I kno my outfit wants to all play together as does any other so picking the right eu server is going to be fun;)

[Sledgecrushr]

According to this website http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=how%20many%20pcs%20were%20sold%20in%202011&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CF0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.worldometers.info%2Fcomputers %2F&ei=CO4HULiQEqPu2gXUkay0BA&usg=AFQjCNFInqvQVl9zqaLEqNS5Rpz03Is-zg. More than 193 million computers have been sold worldwide this year. So theres room for good things to happen to soe.

[KTNApollo]

So many people in here saying "this isn't WoW or LoL" and "I'd be surprised if 100,000 people played this game consistently"...So you're saying you expect the game to fail? Nice! Great outlook there guys.

This is a FREE TO PLAY game. Free to play means nobody will have a reason to not try it. SW:TOR costed $60 to play, and it had well over 500,000 on the first week. PS2 is free to play, and thus a lot more than 500,000 will try the game within the first week.


Was Diablo3 ready for 500,000 players?

Yes? Diablo 3 wasn't ready for 4,000,000 players. D3 was ready for 500,000, but not 4,000,000.

[GhettoPrince]

Yeah ,You're forgetting just how fast word of mouth can run around the internet now. World Of Tanks population went from 0 to 100,00 in a month based on nothing but word of mouth, and it's not like you need a thousand dollar PC to run this thing.

There's no $60 price tag keeping people from checking out the game, all you will have to do is download it, and it gives an experience that no other game can, 2000 person fights with base defenses, vehicle , tank and air combat.

And that's just the overall game, you're not even getting into the fact that any single person can decide to be a mini tank like MaserChief , or be a ninja cyborg like Adam Jensen. People that like fast paced combat can jetpack around like the mobile infantry and people that don't like twitch combat can pick up a heal gun and rez or play an engineer and drop turrets, mines, explosive charges and base defense items.

Planetside 1 was way ahead of its time, Planetside 2 is going to be huge.

[LazyBonez]

Lets see 500,000 subs

2000 players per continent with 3 continents per server

SOE would need about 84 servers give or take.

SOE can you handle say 85-90 servers?

[goneglockin]

If this game only fetches 100K players at launch, that's gonna be worse than PS1 and SOE is just gonna break my heart again with another game that withers and dies.

No one has ever asked SOE what the hell their problem is. Are they prepared for growth and sustainability or are they just looking to make a quick buck? Watching them stumble before was so frustrating it was like watching someone who didn't care run it.

[Loco]

No one has ever asked SOE what the hell their problem is. Are they prepared for growth and sustainability or are they just looking to make a quick buck? Watching them stumble before was so frustrating it was like watching someone who didn't care run it.

I don't know... it seems to me that if they wanted a quick buck they would charge $60 for the game.

They are in it for the micro-transactions. For that you need to have people coming back for more. Sure I'm not paying $15 a month for a subscription... however $5 here.. $15 there... you can easily spend that when some new way to look comes out.

Either way I feel the path of the Micro-transaction is the one of the patient long haul studio... not the get rich quick path.

[Landtank]

They are at 431,000 views on the teaser for the trailer after two days, I'd begin to suspect a lot of people might be into this game.

[morf]

I don't think the question is whether SoE is ready for 500,000 players, I think the question is whether they are ready for 5,000,000 players. Laugh at me all you want, just like you did in February 2011 when I predicted a Q4 2012 release date (http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=35808)(currently, I'm looking spot-on with Higby saying launch "by the end of the year")

I also predicted over a year ago on these boards that millions of people will play this game and my expectations have only gotten higher. I am conservatively predicting 5 million within 3 months of launch, with at least 2 million in the first month.

Take a look at how the launch of another ground-up F2P title went:

John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment, revealed that 1 million usershad signed up to Free Realms 18 days after its launch; a month after release Free Realms reached 2 million users, and registrations have continued growing at a steady rate since then. As of July 24, 2009, it had approximately 5 million registered users. [Sony Online Entertainment announced in February 2010 that the game now has 8 million registered users.

In April 2010, it was announced that the game has now 10 million players, with two million players signing up in March 2010


Now sure, free realms has a lower PC requirement than PS2, but the hype surrounding free realms isn't in the same universe with what we are experiencing with PS2. There's a whole huge market of millions of people who play PC shooters and have gaming systems to match whom wouldn't be likely to play free realms, but are almost certain to try PS2. During peak hours, Steam has around 5 million players connected, out of around 40 million registered accounts. Glancing at steam's hardware survey: it looks like over 60 percent of steam users are using machines w/ video cards that should run PS2 - and if anything, this number is low, because I didn't control for the people who are on their i-pads or laptops or otherwise showing up on the survey from something other than their primary gaming machine.

Additionally, EQ2 has around 12 million registered accounts, if I remember correctly. I'm sure many of them have some sort of gaming hardware, even if it's only 25 percent of them, that's still 3 million. Conservatively speaking, SoE could easily conjure up more than 1.5 million people in a very short time just by marketing to their existing playerbase.

This game won't be big, it will be massive. At least 5 million within 3 months of launch - write it down.

[wasdie]

That's what beta is for.

They'll probably have a very loose closed beta for a month or two and then have an open beta starting in each major server region a month before "release".

When the game is officially "released" we'll all have been playing it freely for a few weeks.

[OnexBigxHebrew]

Yeah I realistically see maybe 100,000 people at start... The game is not as high profile as you may think. More than 80% of my friends have never even heard about planetside let alone planetside 2

"I have a lot of gamer friends"

This. As a non-vet with no life's work at stake, I can tell you that this game is quietly hyping up, but what my gaming friends know of PS2 almost entirely comes from me hyping it. The game is not really as anticipated By the general population as it is by most of the vets and new players in the community like myself. This game hasn't gotten a lot of coverage outside of MMO sites yet. I do, however, expect things to change, and while I don't have the false view that this game will derail the AAA fps market in any way, I do think this game and its F2P model have the potential to spawn an entirely new and large genre of games.

Basically I think PS2 has the potential to be successful and great for the industry and the ball is in SOE's court atm.

[Landtank]

Just look at how long it took LoL to get 40 million registered accounts.

I would expect a LOT of people to register for this game and try it out, its gonna be aWeSoMe!!1

[Figment]

They should really reduce the amount of servers needed by pre-emptively expanding the size of servers tbh.

6.000 players per server is way too few. Should be around 30.000 capacity IMO with placeholder continents that will eventually be replaced by new continents.

Whether or not they are "doubles", you will have to fight on "doubles" anyway, they'll just be on another server and you'll risk being further removed from your friends.

http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=41711

[Kevin D Lee]

#1 This is going to be a F2P game

That means DROVES of people that would otherwise never give it a chance will be trying it at launch because it only costs them a download to play.

#2 If you don't expect problems at launch with the servers like with any MMO wake up. There will be issues.

[Landtank]

They should really reduce the amount of servers needed by pre-emptively expanding the size of servers tbh.

6.000 players per server is way too few. Should be around 30.000 capacity IMO with placeholder continents that will eventually be replaced by new continents.

Whether or not they are "doubles", you will have to fight on "doubles" anyway, they'll just be on another server and you'll risk being further removed from your friends.

http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=41711

Lol that idea is so bad.

I would never, ever. in a million years even suggest making two of the same continent on one server, that thread sums up why it is a terrible idea.

You won't have to fight on doubles anyways, what are you talking about? It's not 6,000 per server, its around 6,500 active and more likely than not 10,000 registered per server.

Anyways, that thread is dead for good reason.

I don't think it will end up being too much of a problem, they know more about this then we do so I'm not worried.

[Xyntech]

It depends heavily on hype, but right now I would expect the game to pull in something like 400,000 at start, assuming they can manage to make it play acceptably and still look relatively decent on a 5 year old system.

Since it's F2P, that number could either stay steady for a few years, or grow several times depending on how the game turns out, along with further advertising and word of mouth.

But if the trailer ends up getting a lot of buzz and if the positive coverage keeps ramping up at the rate it's been going at lately, PS2 could surprise us and launch with 1M players or more. It's really tough to call this far from launch. At least SOE is slowly starting to step it up, already giving the game more advertising than the first Planetside ever got (not a hard thing to do).

The original Planetside did pretty well for itself at launch early on, and that was back in the days where internet connections sucked, MMO's were just starting to take off, and video games in general were only just starting to go mainstream. Plus it had all of the pricing barriers to entry. The gaming market is a lot larger now, so I'd say PS2 is almost guaranteed to do at least several times better than the original Planetside at launch.

Just look at how long it took LoL to get 40 million registered accounts.

I would expect a LOT of people to register for this game and try it out, its gonna be aWeSoMe!!1

I hope that Planetside 2 follows suit, and manages to keep getting increasing numbers of players over time thanks to F2P instead of getting a big influx at the start which wanes over time.

If populations do manage to keep rising over time, that's going to be perfect for adding new continents. They'll be able to keep the number of servers relatively constant and accommodate the new players with new contestable land on the same servers. That would be brilliant.

[MrBloodworth]

Make better threads then. There's no point of this thread.

There's no discussion value.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QAxnSQX8Ylo/Trr-f3KcxoI/AAAAAAAAARY/JJ9CD4n8t_o/s1600/FORUM_POLICE.jpg

[Goku]

I don't think the question is whether SoE is ready for 500,000 players, I think the question is whether they are ready for 5,000,000 players. Laugh at me all you want, just like you did in February 2011 when I predicted a Q4 2012 release date (http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=35808)(currently, I'm looking spot-on with Higby saying launch "by the end of the year")


Just in regards to the release date. At that point I think SOE was considering just reskinning PS and re-releasing that way. Instead they decided to make a whole new game out of it to make a true sequel. Thats why back then everyone wasn't expecting this to be so long of a wait.

I do however agree on player numbers. I wouldn't be shocked to see this game in the millions of players. Not sure if that will be on at the same time, but active sure.

[Sledgecrushr]

To me the trailer teaser is fantastic. Wait till they show the full trailer on tv..around the world. Day one they might kick off with more than a million downloads.

[Xyntech]

How many players and how much money does Planetside 2 have to get before SOE keep Higby and TRay on as permanent indentured developers who will never get a weekend off ever again?

[Marsgrim]

I said this before, but the manner of gauging numbers via marketing or political polls applies here.

When you have 70,000 people liking the game on facebook that probably represents 1 in 20 or 1 in 50 who are interested in the game and went to the effort of linking it to facebook.

[MrKWalmsley]

So many people in here saying "this isn't WoW or LoL" and "I'd be surprised if 100,000 people played this game consistently"...So you're saying you expect the game to fail? Nice! Great outlook there guys.

This is a FREE TO PLAY game. Free to play means nobody will have a reason to not try it. SW:TOR costed $60 to play, and it had well over 500,000 on the first week. PS2 is free to play, and thus a lot more than 500,000 will try the game within the first week.




Yes? Diablo 3 wasn't ready for 4,000,000 players. D3 was ready for 500,000, but not 4,000,000.

First of all, expecting PS2 to not reach the heights of WoW and LoL does not equal fail. Just like every single film that does not equal the height of the film industry at the time does not make them failures. Learn the fact that the "success-to-failure" chart is not an absolute binary system, it has degrees.

Secondly, comparing Swtor (a classic-style MMO with a substantial marketing campaign, a large group of SWG players looking for a newer version and based in such an iconic universe with an instantly recognisable name for a large proportion of the world) with PS2 (a fresh style of MMO without even a nearly comparable marketing campaign, with a relatively niche fan-base and being based in a universe which very few outside the fan-base have even heard of) is pretty damn disingenuous. Also F2P tends to put off the more snooty players instantly, which unfortunately make up too much of the gaming community already.

[MrBloodworth]

You know, I read the OP and it reads to me he is asking if SOE are prepared to support, with hardware and bandwidth ETC.., a large number of players.

It was not asking how popular Planetside would be.

[MrKWalmsley]

You know, I read the OP and it reads to me he is asking if SOE are prepared to support, with hardware and bandwidth ETC.., a large number of players.

It was not asking how popular Planetside would be.

Yes but since it did come up there's no reason not to respond to it.

[Xyntech]

You know, I read the OP and it reads to me he is asking if SOE are prepared to support, with hardware and bandwidth ETC.., a large number of players.

It was not asking how popular Planetside would be.

Right, but there is some overlap.

It's a matter of expectations. Not how popular PS2 will be, but how popular it will be compared to how popular SOE thinks it will be.

Right now, I'm assuming that SOE knows a little more accurately what to expect the numbers to be than we do, but I don't think they know much more accurately than us.

As beta goes on and as more people learn about the game heading towards launch, I think they'll start getting a better idea. It wouldn't shock me if they had more players than they were ready for at launch, but considering what they've learned from DCUO's F2P launch, I think that they'll tend to be more prepared than not.

Maybe they'll use an open beta time to act as a buffer. It's mostly pointless to have an open beta on a F2P game, but they could use the "beta" excuse to avoid criticism of not having enough servers at launch. That, or they could go Firefall's or Tribes Ascend's route and have a soft release, where they start giving out beta invites more and more freely until one day the game is just officially out of beta.

We're still a long ways off from the end of beta though, so whether or not SOE has a good idea of how many players they could expect to have if they somehow launched a completed game today is somewhat irrelevant. The number is going to change over time as more people find out about the game.

We'll have to see how the hype looks after the full trailer is released.

[The Degenatron]

I'm predicting...ONE BILLION!

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OjrbRW6e1VE/THP3sett2tI/AAAAAAAAFBw/rsQC8kBELBw/s1600/Dr_Evil.jpg

[Hamma]

Nobody can truly be 100% ready for a massive influx. But they sure as hell can try their best ;)

[Oryon22]

Nobody can truly be 100% ready for a massive influx. But they sure as hell can try their best ;)

Even with these tech tests, I'm still bracing for some server issues at launch. It will suck, but at least I know there is a great interest, and plentiful targets :cool:

[Figment]

Lol that idea is so bad.

I would never, ever. in a million years even suggest making two of the same continent on one server, that thread sums up why it is a terrible idea. You won't have to fight on doubles anyways, what are you talking about?

No, instead you'll fight on THE SAME CONTINENT on 50 servers.


What's the difference?

Or do you have access to secret servers and continents where you get to play on more than the same continent when you're poplocked out of your own server? Meaning you'll always have to fight on the same three continents. What's it to you that it's officially on the same server?

And why don't you like playing with your buddies who didn't get locked out of your own server? Hmm? Besides, all the continents will be continues instances that hardly affect each other when full.

It's not 6,000 per server, its around 6,500 active and more likely than not 10,000 registered per server.

Just because you talk about registered users and I talk about ACTIVE users per server doesn't mean we're talking about different numbers. Sheesh. Besides, I'm suggesting approximately 30K capacity per server, just to make sure it's easier to add new servers and receive loads of people again without having to merge unevenly in the future.

And actually, with this many players, we may well be talking about everyone being registered with the company and having to server hop for a position.

Anyways, that thread is dead for good reason.

Yeah. Half agreed, half didn't, but since we couldn't do much more with it till beta than wait, there was little point to debate further. That's a good reason to postpone debate.

Don't think that because half didn't agree and half did, there's a concensus that it was a good or bad idea.

I don't think it will end up being too much of a problem, they know more about this then we do so I'm not worried.

I'm sure there's no other game before that underestimated the amount of servers and server stress upon launch and that their fanbase was certain their devs had things under control! :lol:

"Ignorance is bliss" ("nobody knows, it must be fine!"), was that written specifically for you? :)

Maybe they'll use an open beta time to act as a buffer. It's mostly pointless to have an open beta on a F2P game, but they could use the "beta" excuse to avoid criticism of not having enough servers at launch. That, or they could go Firefall's or Tribes Ascend's route and have a soft release, where they start giving out beta invites more and more freely until one day the game is just officially out of beta.

Is that viable if you consider Pro7 will eventually take up a lot of players on their own servers?


Which beckons another question: will Pro7 be ready for the amount of people?

[SleepyZombie]

This. As a non-vet with no life's work at stake, I can tell you that this game is quietly hyping up, but what my gaming friends know of PS2 almost entirely comes from me hyping it. The game is not really as anticipated By the general population as it is by most of the vets and new players in the community like myself. This game hasn't gotten a lot of coverage outside of MMO sites yet. I do, however, expect things to change, and while I don't have the false view that this game will derail the AAA fps market in any way, I do think this game and its F2P model have the potential to spawn an entirely new and large genre of games.

Basically I think PS2 has the potential to be successful and great for the industry and the ball is in SOE's court atm.

Hey I completely agree.... Planetside 1 was kind of a cult followed game that didn't have the most successful launch in the world. I think people will tend to give planetside 2 more of a shake because of its free 2 play model.

Me personally I am glad for the lack of general population hype, It takes the pressure off the devs and people don't get there expectations to such a huge level it could never live up to. So I think free 2 play is the wave of online gaming future and that ps2 is off the general populations radar are things this game has going for it and I genuinely hope SOE does well with this game because they have such a poor track record with others.

[Xyntech]

The argument for having multiple copies of continents at launch is also partially dependent on populations peaking at launch and staying steady or going down afterwards. If the populations keep growing over time (as has been the case with many F2P games), then adding more continents may end up being the solution instead of adding more servers, and not require any server mergers at all.

So yes, it is far too early for that discussion to matter much, and it probably won't be an important discussion until well after launch, when we actually see whether the populations are going up, staying level, or going down.

But it's still a kind of lame solution. I don't think that sever mergers will have nearly as bad of a stigma in a F2P game which still has dozens of servers after some mergers, especially if SOE is smart with some press releases and points out that the populations are still high and are being accommodated on more continents while on less servers.

Players understand that going to a different server means the same landmasses in a different state of persistence, but if you had a bunch of dupes of the same continents all pretending to coexist in the same "world," it's just going to feel lame and tacky and unfinished.

There is plenty of time to evolve the global strategy, and some potential ideas don't even require more than 3 continents to implement, so I really think the duplicate continents would do more harm than good.

We've already got 6000 people spread across one Planetside 2 server, which is more than the original ever had playing on a single server. We may as well see how that plays out before trying to artificially bump it up to 12,000.

[Landtank]

No, instead you'll fight on THE SAME CONTINENT on 50 servers.


What's the difference?

Or do you have access to secret servers and continents where you get to play on more than the same continent when you're poplocked out of your own server? Meaning you'll always have to fight on the same three continents. What's it to you that it's officially on the same server?

And why don't you like playing with your buddies who didn't get locked out of your own server? Hmm? Besides, all the continents will be continues instances that hardly affect each other when full.



Just because you talk about registered users and I talk about ACTIVE users per server doesn't mean we're talking about different numbers. Sheesh. Besides, I'm suggesting approximately 30K capacity per server, just to make sure it's easier to add new servers and receive loads of people again without having to merge unevenly in the future.

And actually, with this many players, we may well be talking about everyone being registered with the company and having to server hop for a position.



Yeah. Half agreed, half didn't, but since we couldn't do much more with it till beta than wait, there was little point to debate further. That's a good reason to postpone debate.

Don't think that because half didn't agree and half did, there's a concensus that it was a good or bad idea.



I'm sure there's no other game before that underestimated the amount of servers and server stress upon launch and that their fanbase was certain their devs had things under control! :lol:

"Ignorance is bliss" ("nobody knows, it must be fine!"), was that written specifically for you? :)


You think far too highly of yourself if you think that you know more about this game than the developers.

People are complaining about how not having enter/exit animations feels unfinished, so you want them to play on continents that are clones of themselves, basically taking away the point of the game, just so they can boost server populations? They can just merge servers when they add continents, or "gasp" go back to the PS1 system.

I understand what you're saying with your system, and I see the advantages its has, but the disadvantages are simply too high. A proper system would need to be worked out.

Anyways. In terms of netcode and server capacity and whether or not they will be able to handle it, SOE has been dealing with 12 million accounts on Everquest II, so they have far more experience than anyone on this forum in terms of F2P MMO games.

[Figment]

You think far too highly of yourself if you think that you know more about this game than the developers.

I never said that, did I? I simply provided an alternative. Though on particular in-game elements, I'm quite sure I and many others have more experience, sure

Designers are not omniscient gods but humans. Besides, working on something can create group tunnelvision, complacency, bias, etc. as well. Worked with many design students who got completely caught in their own vision, while missing the obvious and at times dismissed my analyses as "you think too hard about that, I'm sure it's not going to be a problem and otherwise we'll fix that later" (sound familiar?). First thing mentors say when they see the result?

"Why didn't you think of that?"

Yeah... why didn't they...


Better safe than sorry. That's the point of feedback and alternatives: provide knowledge they MAY not have access to and alternatives they MAY not have thought about and let them decide. At least if they do, you know they at least considered it. Or completely ignored feedback because they thought they knew better and it would be alright. *cough*Phantasm12mm*cough* ;)

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps/posts/list.m?topic_id=88000012392

Threads like the above wouldn't have existed had they listened to the critical "bittervets" in the threads that came before it went live.

http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=25087&page=4

Guess what type of players made sure it reached live with a gun? :p "It'll be fiiiiine, I'm sure the devs will be on top of this!". And you see how in the end the majority of people were idiots for trusting devs implicitly. Devs make a lot of sweet things happen, but they do mess up. Regularly.

And often it's in the overlooked details that completely change everything. :/ In case of the Phant it was assumptions you could use AA on them (turned out lock on AA didn't apply), that it'd be a light aircraft (turned out to have armour of a Liberator), that it'd decloak upon firing (turned out to only slightly decloak), that the gun couldn't really be used for farming or solo and would be more like the Wasp gun (turned out to be an accurate pilot gun) and that it'd be visible from up close (turned out to not be the case, only if they're moving or got bugged after being hit).

People are complaining about how not having enter/exit animations feels unfinished, so you want them to play on continents that are clones of themselves, basically taking away the point of the game, just so they can boost server populations? They can just merge servers when they add continents, or "gasp" go back to the PS1 system.

They already took away the "point of the game" the moment the footholds were implemented as sanctuaries, so sorry, can't take credit for that. If they clearly provide disclaimers and plans for those continents and give a thorough reasoning on why it's solved in a particular way, then people wouldn't really care much about it. It's not like they could fight on other continents instead anyway. I understand your point and it's not ideal, but neither is introducing continents one by one if you for instance want to go for a larger lattice at some point or try that out.

I also wouldn't mind if there were only trial servers for different conquest meta game systems though. Do think it would help to see how a bigger server could be made stable and different mechanics could be tested on a larger scale than the "small" servers. Which would you guess would be more popular, the bigger with a global lattice meta game, or the smaller servers with "instanced" single continents?

I understand what you're saying with your system, and I see the advantages its has, but the disadvantages are simply too high. A proper system would need to be worked out.

Of course it'd be much, much better to never get to this point, but they intend to release an unfinished game anyway, regardless of how beta plays out. :/ Again, that's not my choice and we're going to have to deal with that.

Anyways. In terms of netcode and server capacity and whether or not they will be able to handle it, SOE has been dealing with 12 million accounts on Everquest II, so they have far more experience than anyone on this forum in terms of F2P MMO games.

http://www.soe.com/status/

Of course they have experience with running multiple servers. That wasn't the question. The question of the OP was whether they will have adequate and accurate expectations of the numbers coming in and have enough stable servers ready by that time. Beta will already require a large amount of servers, so will the European servers (and I do wonder how the European beta will relate to the American beta with regards to Pro7 - could well be they will use the EU beta test to make Pro7 familiar with "the controls").

Either way, I'm sure the kind of things thathappened when D3, CoD MW3 and BF3 were launched want to be avoided. If EA and Blizzard can't have accurate expectancies and severe issues on launch with their primary titles, you honestly think SOE would be an exception? I hope they took those launches as warnings.

Of course we all hope SOE prepared excessively and have sufficient (over)capacity. But if you never raise the question IF they did and trust they'll sort things out... They might just be underestimating own success.


Hell, they may even simply have issues with the client download! (They should probably create many more download sites than just from their own webby).


Either way, the Initial experiences are going to go in the first "hands on" reviews. Those will be providing the first impression for the game to many still unaware of PS2. You don't want people (who missed out and haven't been convinced so far) hear about it through reports on massive connection issues!

The world of "free to play" as of yet has to prove they can be quality games, certainly on a large scale and for the FPS genre. Having issues at launch might actually reflect on the game as amateuristic or subpar, simply because it's f2p and relatively unknown (may not either, of course - but how many players already get turned off because they have yet to hear of a good f2p FPS game? They can't quite live off the credit the title has yet).

[Landtank]

[QUOTE=Figment;792544]
Either way, I'm sure the kind of things thathappened when D3, CoD MW3 and BF3 were launched want to be avoided. If EA and Blizzard can't have accurate expectancies and severe issues on launch with their primary titles, you honestly think SOE would be an exception? I hope they took those launches as warnings.

I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say that I had no problems with D3 other than getting hacked, though I know a lot of people did, and I played WoW through all of its expansions, including when everyone charged through the Dark Portal (absolutely awesome) for BC. I had 0 issues, they actually handled it really well. And that was on a High population server, and one of the original 13 servers from the WoW beta. Oh Gorefiend..

Anyways, I suspect there will be few problems, the games listed don't use one server for 10,000 people, they use one server for 100,000 people.

SOE will do good with the online part, they always have.

[morf]

Just in regards to the release date. At that point I think SOE was considering just reskinning PS and re-releasing that way. Instead they decided to make a whole new game out of it to make a true sequel. Thats why back then everyone wasn't expecting this to be so long of a wait.

You're right that SoE was planning on re-skinning, but we didn't know that. It wasn't until that April, just after that producer's letteer, when Smedley revealed that it was originally supposed to be a re-skin. Even then he said that we'd see the game "later on in the year" - give credit where credit is due, assuming it lands Q4 2012, I knew the release date before Smed did ;p

[Flaropri]

I noticed that the trailer teaser posted yesterday on YouTube has 400,000+ views in just a little over one day. I wonder if SOE really is ready to have that many people download the game and start playing on release day? I seem to remember that when EQ was released they crashed the internet or something because so many people were trying to log on at the same time.

Just a thought, nothing like being ready for success when it happens.

Views is not the same as future players. A lot of people won't be interested, won't be able due to system requirements, will want to wait a while to avoid problems at launch or to hear back from friends and reviewers before bothering to try it out themselves, etc.

Also, remember that it would be spread out around the world, with people having different peak hours depending on time zone. Even if you have 400k players registered, the active population could easily be 1/3rd of that at any given time even on the first day.

[Figment]

I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say that I had no problems with D3 other than getting hacked, though I know a lot of people did, and I played WoW through all of its expansions, including when everyone charged through the Dark Portal (absolutely awesome) for BC. I had 0 issues, they actually handled it really well. And that was on a High population server, and one of the original 13 servers from the WoW beta. Oh Gorefiend..

Anyways, I suspect there will be few problems, the games listed don't use one server for 10,000 people, they use one server for 100,000 people.

SOE will do good with the online part, they always have.

Let's hope so. A warned person counts for two.

[sylphaen]

Oh Gorefiend..

You were on Gorefiend ? Wow... Did the Alliance population imbalance ever fixed itself ? I remember when every Horde player was so often outnumbered that we could decently fight in 1 vs. 3 and do ok.

Were you Alliance ? Horde ?

Sinister, Pain Train, Angry Mob, Deadmoon Tribe, CPL, eXcessive, RedCell, Savage Fury, Short Bus, EPK, No Quarters, etc... Old crew guilds !

Loooooots of jerks and large egos but lots of memories and fun too.
:)

Worst server ever but still great experience in the end. Mainly pre-expansions, though. It never got fun after...

Edit: and here is a great thread for memories:
http://wowarchive.yg.com/thread.html?topicId=3272965989&sid=1&pageNo=1
;)

Sorry for the off-topic, mods ! I hope you'll understand the nostalgia.

[Landtank]

You were on Gorefiend ? Wow... Did the Alliance population imbalance ever fixed itself ? I remember when every Horde player was so often outnumbered that we could decently fight in 1 vs. 3 and do ok.

Were you Alliance ? Horde ?

Sinister, Pain Train, Angry Mob, Deadmoon Tribe, CPL, eXcessive, RedCell, Savage Fury, Short Bus, EPK, No Quarters, etc... Old crew guilds !

Loooooots of jerks and large egos but lots of memories and fun too.
:)

Worst server ever but still great experience in the end. Mainly pre-expansions, though. It never got fun after...

Sorry for the off-topic, mods ! I hope you'll understand the nostalgia.

HAH! I was Alliance, in Pain Train, I remember those guilds. Oh man sooo long ago.

The populations eventually figured themselves out by Burning Crusade once everyone and their mother went Blood Elf.

This just makes me want to play PS2 more >.>

Can't wait for SOE to release this game to the masses, I really want the questions raised in this thread to be answered.

[sylphaen]

HAH! I was Alliance, in Pain Train, I remember those guilds. Oh man sooo long ago.

The populations eventually figured themselves out by Burning Crusade once everyone and their mother went Blood Elf.

This just makes me want to play PS2 more >.>

Can't wait for SOE to release this game to the masses, I really want the questions raised in this thread to be answered.

haha, bunch of gankers. You were actually one of the fun PvP guilds to fight around. Unless you alone waiting for teammates around Stratholme.
;)

I was Horde side CPL (and shortly with Limbo/DMT before I stopped playing). I couldn't stand the terrible PvP post-expansion. I still tried the expansions but they were not interesting. Just the same grinding/lootwhoring stuff all over again with larger stat points.

Cheers and good luck in PS2 !

Edit: btw, if you do not have a group yet, I suggest you takle a look at the outfits forum. I can vouch for GotR on VS (very friendly group but somewhat large so it may not be your thing) and The Enclave on TR (they fit the TR stereotype by being jerks but they get things done). Not sure about NC if that's what you aim for.

Anyways, you'll find your home at release or during beta.
:)

[Tigersmith]

Gorefiend <3 right here. Played huge hours back then and I pretty sure I had one of the best warriors lol. Not bragging or anything had a great damn time with all of you guy

[FuzzyandBlue]

Also F2P tends to put off the more snooty players instantly, which unfortunately make up too much of the gaming community already.

There are some where around 10 million people playing League of Legends actively. Even if you factor in people that play on multiple accounts we could very safely assume that there are around 8 million active players. I'm gonna go ahead and say that the snooty players are in the minority. At least on the PC.

In my experience people that try one F2P game are likely to try another.

[GuyFawkes]

I'm more concerned with having only 3 continents at launch.

With large queues the knee jerk reaction would be like when DCUO went ftp and smedley was all over twitter giving % increase to the game then backtracking to open extra servers to keep up with it all.

Having half empty servers is ok for a pve game, but not great for ps2. Having outfits split up over servers isn't good either. Having to open up a ton of servers to meet demand, or hope the initial rush soon goes and players aren't put off to much by long queues is a tough decision. Flipside is you open too many, some are half empty, and they start closing servers down and you get negative feedback that the game is failing, which is not necessarily true but the damage is done.

Having more continents gives each server more flexibility (as well as bringing the global feel back to the game from ps1) but this adds to the development cycle and a lot longer wait till release, a real catch 22. Individuals it may not be an issue , or even tight medium sized outfits like DT, but it may be that Azure Twilight and 666th are spread out over 6 servers if they ever want to play the game, or wait a month or 2 before they can play as a unit again.

[sylphaen]

IMO, after release, it will be fixed by queues and priority access to paying players.

Not sure how they will do once free players are being crowded out to new servers by paying players.

Let's say your outfit is on server 1 and that's absolutely where you want to play but you are F2P; do you:
- start paying
- give up and get on another server

Once everyone or a non-negligible amount of players on server 1 start being paying customers, how will they deal with paying customers having to queue ?

Essentially, I guess things will balance out with 1500-1700 primetime players to be paying and the rest will fill up with free players who care less about which server to play on.

Big question: should characters be server specific or account specific ?
(I think they should be account specific)

If they are account specific, should we be able to have 3 empire characters ?
(I think it should be allowed)

Should that be available to everyone or should it be a privilege to paying customers ?

Once you are used to a server and its community, you usually do not want to have to transfer out.