Will SOE be ready for 500,000 players? - Page 6

Landtank · 2012-07-19, 02:23 PM

[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 · 2012-07-19, 02:41 PM

Originally Posted by Goku

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 · 2012-07-19, 03:02 PM

Originally Posted by 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.

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 · 2012-07-19, 03:02 PM

Originally Posted by Landtank

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 · 2012-07-19, 03:04 PM

Originally Posted by Landtank

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...sid=1&pageNo=1

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

Landtank · 2012-07-19, 04:07 PM

Originally Posted by sylphaen

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 · 2012-07-19, 04:28 PM

Originally Posted by Landtank

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 · 2012-07-19, 05:38 PM

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 · 2012-07-19, 05:40 PM

Originally Posted by MrKWalmsley

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 · 2012-07-19, 06:05 PM

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 · 2012-07-19, 06:31 PM

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.